Gmr vol14 full

THE GEORGE MASON REVIEW

An Anthology

of

Exemplary Undergraduate Writing 2004-2005

THE GEORGE MASON REVIEW An Anthology of Exemplary Undergraduate Writing Volume 14, 2005-2006

Editor Brian Patrick Heston Assistant Editor Reba Elliot Reader Jennifer Stein Faculty Advisor Christopher Thaiss Web Address www.gmu.edu/org/gmreview

The George Mason Review is intended to both a showcase for the accomplishments of undergraduate writers and as an instructional text for basic composition and creative writing classes. The works chosen here are intended to serve as examples to foster classroom discussion and to model the answers to technical questions.

Submissions: The editors invite undergraduates working in all disciplines at George Mason University to submit essays, research papers, creative nonfiction, fiction, and poetry to the George Mason Review. We also publish artwork.

Submissions should be sent by e-mail to gmreview@gmu.edu as a Microsoft Word attachment. Art work should be 300 DPI or higher, or you may send a link to a web site where your artwork is already displayed. All work should be double-spaced, and include your name, address, phone number, e-mail address, and year at George Mason—in the body of the e-mail as well as paper itself.

Hard copies may be sent to: George Mason Review, 4400 University Drive, MS 2D6, SUB I, Room 206A, Fairfax, VA 22030. We accept submissions yearround.

TABLE OF CONTENTS Poetry Rick Clark: Eight Crows Winner of the George Mason Review Poetry Prize Blurring

Ed Vanburen: Medusa Hafsah Shaker Elsayed: Naivete`

Brittany Kerfoot: myopia Massacre of Youth

5 6 7 8 9 10

Leslie Jones: Toffee

11

Jennifer Stein: 1996—While We Were Out

12

Megan White: tendons blinds and bills

13

Fiction Milad Meamarian: New Skin Winner of the George Mason Review Fiction Prize

15

Creative Non-Fiction Todd Imus: West, Into Westchester Winner of the George Mason Review Essay Prize Kathleen Downs: Divorce: An Ever Lasting Impact

Omar Shafi: Unspoken Language

24 31 33

Megan White: On The Outskirts 37

Academic Essays Matthew S. Becker:

Victory At All Costs

41

Kathleen Downs: MTV: The Creators of a New American Culture

48

Ada Valaitis: How An Underground Phenomenon Becomes Mainstream: Tracing the Transitions of Visual, Linguistic and Thematic Modes of Youth Rebellion from CKY through to Viva La Bam

52

Michael Willems: Eel Anxiety: The Role of Food in Aristophanes

58

Kyle Purdy: Theoretical Studies on Interaction Potentials for the Interstellar Interaction Between Methanol and Hydrogen

64

Laura Elwood: Amélie: The Situationist’s Lifestyle

James “Tyler” Grimm: The Sun’s Not Yellow, It’s Chicken

72 78

Art Lee Mckinster: Untitled Winner of the George Mason Review Cover Prize Andy Ortiz: Untitled Untitled

Sean Steege: Amy Nepal

Cover 4 14 23 36

Andy Ortiz

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Rick Clark Eight Crows Remember the Sabbath, to keep it holy.

I step outside into crisp, Cape air, amidst sharp sounds of screaming.

The grey haze of Harwichport’s morning is rent by the noise.

Eight little Iscariots notice me leaning against the house’s door.

They jeer and cry guttural curses.

“Nothing to see here,” they shriek as they tear apart one of their own.

“What are you keeping from them?”

I ask the dying one.

It makes no move to answer and I go back inside quite suddenly alone.

7

Rick Clark Blurring Look at how beautiful death can be; I see its splendor as I drive south, speeding homeward down I-95.

It explodes around me ―those reds and oranges and yellows― like the blast of a grenade thrown by some young, angry Iraqi.

The image makes me think of Scott, and how he is doing.

Is he still alive and loving that living even as he teeters at its brink?

I look around at the fires lit by autumn’s arrival and realize that, quite soon we’ll have reached another year.

A long year, surely, but finally twenty-two.

I miss my old friend’s nearness.

That smoky-smooth breeze of autumn soaks into my lungs and I imagine the war-hot wind that must wrap around the muzzle of your gun.

How far away you are right now, my friend and I won’t endeavor to understand; presumption can be such an ugly sin.

I only hope you return before we’re twenty-three and together we’ll commemorate another year while we marvel at this inferno of leaves.

When our times do arrive and that cold murk of winter pushes into the autumn of our lives, let us go out as brilliantly as the fronds of these trees and not as wilted men, grey and silent.

8

Ed Vanburen Medusa She and her blind men; she thrives on them.

She bids them jelly eyes as they watch her scalp sliver alive.

She knows they love their mistress and the stiff statues in her halls.

Her servants always find her beautiful.

They listen beyond one another’s breath for the whisper of her tail in the sand.

And when they hear her arrive, their feet slap the stone floor carrying the weight of swords, shields and mirrors; they strain against the dark— their minds and heartbeats pulse a blind prayer, a frantic chant of silence: Grant to our ears, O gods, the hushed crunch— static of our enemies’ blood going hard.

9

Hafasah Shaker Elsayed Naivete

For Ahmed You were green when you rode your bike around Arlington.

Shackles and prison were for criminals so you never considered a jailbird’s life.

A felon, you thought, must earn his black rank.

Shackles and prison were for criminals.

Airport screening rooms picture you and your Muslim friends— a felon, you thought, must earn his black rank but today all you need is a funny last name.

Although airports screen pictures of you and your friends you never considered a jailbird’s life.

Don’t you have a funny last name?

You were green when you rode your bike around Arlington.

10

Brittany Kerfoot myopia we sit down by the rain streaked window for cheap coffee and instinctively begin citing transcendentalist evidence in modern literature running our hands through Descartes and Voltaire and as i trace my finger around the sticky rim of my empty cup my mind races with thoughts of how to get you into the bathroom and ravage your metaphors and rip off your analogies stripping you down to reveal your naked splendor slamming your lean idyllic body against the wall all the while discussing the brilliance of Vonnegut in between each sigh and thrust and moan and chapters later when we finish we leave behind remnants of a work so divine it would be a crime to clean it up even you can’t deny it would be beautiful to have me.

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Brittany Kerfoot Massacre Of Youth Before I can even taste it it’s hanging from an oak tree, a tattered noose dangling and swaying with the cadence of the wind.

You speak with razors, neatly slicing my pale, brittle wrists.

Every time I’m near you I inject a little more oxygen into my veins.

When your façade finally shatters I will inundate the crimson fragments with the words you so eloquently took back.

You have never even held me yet you slaughter all advances with your indignity and dangle resolution on your ragged rope.

But then you touch me, so intentionally and emphatically and run your long hands over the scars, as if for but a moment to dissolve them.

Later, tonight, you will rip them open again with precision.

12

Leslie Jones Toffee Mind in tune like a primed musician Hands fixated with inspiration Waiting to command pleasure for my release.

Flavors inside don’t always reveal seasoned compositions But if words could come out as they taste My tongue would drip with sticky rhythm.

13

Jennifer Stein 1996 – While We Were Out The sewage seeped into the stacks of newsprint and National Geographics, worked its way into boxes of books, into the nooks and crannies of the unkempt cool basement.

The stench of shit was everywhere, soaking pages of poems (penned years before) yearbooks and yarn balls, yellowed flowers pressed and dried. Doilies and dolls, toys, tinsel, and the Christmas tree.

When we returned, we were greeted by the stench of months of muck and mire that flowed in from the septic tank.

Mom mourned the loss of most of her curios and china, of old cards and little things she thought would last— Dad, the price of plumbers and parts and the time it would take to sort the trash.

I wept for the words I’d written. I’d kept them in boxes in the basement, hidden behind the vinyl records that were my parents’ voice.

Those brown cardboard boxes were bent and stained, the soggy pages slick, the runny ink and revisions lost.

Nouns and verbs were now nothing—jumbled and powerless paper from the faded past.

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Megan White

tendons blinds and bills

“My friend, the boy next door, I don’t know how to tell you...”

These people have so many loaves of bread in their pockets, like you wouldn’t believe, when all I’ve got in mine is a nickel and a bill. I love the forest, but I love my family too. Go There One morning I woke up just like further my friend, go is always any other morning. With light further and hopefully a silent momfiltered orange through the blinds I won’t have to follow ent before the and the smell of coffee coming from you. “My friend, the crash. After the the kitchen. An imprint of your body boy next door, I don’t buzzing roar has left in the flannel sheets, twisted besknow how to tell you…” severed all the tendide me. Your warm shadow singing in ons, the gasping last the kitchen, bare feet shuffling back breath, the spine stretchdown the hall with plates of toast and ed tall, and shoulders flung orange slices. Your smile and short back. When all the birds have curling, morning-glowing hair shimflown away, and the squirrels have mer as you climb back into bed with scattered, and the chainsaw has been me. Before I can wrap my arms around turned off. Then….out of this ephemeral your soft stomach, your hand reaches quiet, comes a tremendous battle cry, spreadplayfully for the blinds. I laugh and say ing through the forest in a falling arch, proud belly its too early for more sun. But you brush flop salute, and finally the great THUD. Then all is the hair out of my eyes as you call me lazy quiet again. But in this quiet, the air is filled with ghosts bones. The blind goes up and we both gasp. quietly moaning, softly singing, turning into grass to be dug The forest beyond our river is gone, into cinderblock basement holes. flattened, a thousand corpses lying mutilated in the dirt. I quickly drag the blind down, and we pull our arms around each other like branches. Like branches.

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Andy Ortiz

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Milad Meamarian NEW SKIN

Craig Johnson walked down the street towards his appointment. The sky was overcast, acned with patches of visibility. The trees were bare, their complicated branches weaving in and out of each other in an intricate dance.

When Craig looked more carefully, he could distinguish knobby little buds at the end of the branches. Here and there, little dots of green poked out at the end of the buds, vegetable moths about to emerge from wooden chrysalises. In the distance, the sun suddenly reflected off the thousand windows of the Sears Tower, like an oil slick seen through the eyes of a fly. Passersby smiled at each other at the unexpected warmth. The morning seemed mundanely mystical.

His fat, tiny hands fiddled with the pocket organizer, pulled up an address identical to the one on the dull mauve building in front of him. Craig took a deep breath before opening the door and walking in. Inside the waiting room, all eyes turned to him, and he spent more time than necessary closing the door in order to not have to face them again so soon. Finally, though, Craig turned around and took a good look at the people with whom he was to wait with. There was a bearded, dark-haired man reclining in the corner, his Hawaiian-shirt sleeve stapled up where his arm was missing at the elbow. On his left, a woman with light ivory skin and a completely bald head furtively inspected Craig out of the corner of her eyes. Craig moved towards a seat next to a little man in corduroy pants and a wheelchair, who was disinterestedly reading an old National Geographic. Everyone took advantage of Craig’s entering the room to clear their throats, rustle about in their seats and get new reading material. Craig hopped up into the seat next to the man in the wheelchair. After a moment, he began kicking his feet back and forth in the air, a habit acquired in childhood. However, he self-consciously stilled them when the man in the Hawaiian shirt looked up at him. How ridiculous his feet must have looked suspended in midair; these things had been bothering him more and more lately.

But at the same time, he felt an indistinct sense of relief at these reminders of his height, knowing that all of his problems would be done and over with soon enough. Craig started kicking his feet again, a guilty smile diffusing his round little face.

Another half-hour of waiting and then a slim nurse, wearing the standard issue white coat and efficient smile, called his name, bidding him to follow her through the waiting room doors. The nurse led the way through antiseptic white halls. Following her, Craig found himself staring at her finely sculpted calve muscles at the bottom of her coat.

He thought the nurse would just deposit him into a smaller waiting room but, instead, she took him into the office of a clean-cut young man whom she introduced as Doctor Kentridge. The office was warm and casual, with black leather couches and a coffee-maker percolating in the corner. A desk was crammed into another corner and holo-projections of various human muscles and body parts riddled the walls. Rather than asking him to sit down, the doctor 17

got up from his desk and approached Craig, affixing him with a cool smile and a handshake.

“Well Mr. Johnson, I hear that you’re in the market for a new body.”

Unable to help himself, Craig laughed and replied: “Yes, what do you have in a Caucasian today?”

Now it was the doctor’s turn to laugh. Crinkling his brow, he then smiled solemnly and bowed. “Follow me, please,” he said.

He walked down the hall again. The doctor continued talking in an unhurried tone, occasionally meeting Craig’s gaze with his blue eyes in order to emphasize a particularly important point.

“But in all seriousness, Mr. Johnson, I think you will be pleasantly surprised with how easily and painlessly we can give you the body you’ve always wanted. Of course, your brain, your thoughts and memories will be your own, but the body—the body will allow you to be reborn any which way you choose. Our bodies are created fully mature, in a variety of physiques and skin colors. And each body is unique in its physiognomy and genetic structure. I trust you have heard some of the bad news that has been spread about our company, how some Luddites think that our practices will create a nation of clones, with the exact same bodies created for thousands of unique individuals. I assure you, however, that this is far from the truth. A wide pool of available genetic material and superior recombination of algorithms ensure an almost infinite number of possible children that we can create. In addition, since we also have the ability to go in and tweak the individual genes of a body to emphasize particularly desirable traits and de-emphasize any negative ones, we create even more possibilities for individuality. But rather than talk any more than necessary, I will let you see for yourself what we’re capable of. One moment please.”

Dr. Kentridge placed his eyes in front of a retina-scanner flanking an unmarked, navy-blue door. The door slid aside with a low whoosh and a blast of arctic air blew through the wide hall.

“What if I wanted to design my own body, instead of choosing one from your stock?” Craig asked.

“Well, that’s always a possibility. I’ve worked with patients in the past who come in knowing exactly what kind of body they want to live in, and we can certainly aid you in designing one if there is a particular look that you’re after. I should warn you, however, that the price tag for a custom-built body is considerably higher than one of the ready-mades. I advise you to take a look at what we have in stock, and if there’s nothing that catches your eye then we can discuss a custom model.”

As he was talking, Dr. Kentridge opened a sliding closet on the other side of the door and pulled out two arctic coats, the smaller of which he handed to Craig. “The bodies are stored in sub-zero temperatures in order to retard any decay or diseases which might infect them. You will be more comfortable with this on.”

The coat looked too big for Craig, but he accepted it anyway, eager to move forward. The fur lining around the collar hugged his neck and chin, sealed him in its igloo warmth. It became more comfortable as he went through the blue door, where yellow lights on the ground illuminated a path through the dim 18

metal hall. He recalled a yellow road from a movie his mom used to watch with him many years ago, when he was still the same height as his friends, before they started calling him Munchkin, Elf-boy, and all of those other clever, hurtful names. But this time, he felt more like Dorothy walking down that road towards her destiny, and the great Wizard was walking alongside him in his priestly white coat underneath thick furs.

Presently, the darkness in front of them became an opening, a large chamber whose multicolored lights blinked seductively from the distance. A server robot moved silently towards them, its unblinking red eye expanding as it came closer. Intent on its appointed task. Its tires made little trails on the lightly frosted floor as it passed by.

As they entered the portal, the hum of machinery cut through the silence. They were in a large, metallic chamber whose ceiling disappeared into darkness far above their heads. Great, circular tubes were arranged in rows on either side of the room, their ranks receding into the far corners’ shadows. The tubes had cities of wires and light connecting them to the ground and stretching forth from their tops. Obscure shadows shone against the cold blue light they cast forth into the chamber. More robots scurried across the floor, servicing the tubes and performing other mysterious tasks. Craig’s eyes opened wide; his hands suddenly seemed clammy under the layers of fur.

“Yes, we’ve been thinking of moving the showroom to a more cheery environment but for now, this is the best place to keep the bodies in case of any unforeseen.... problems. Come, let me introduce you to them.”

As they neared the first tubular vat, the shadows inside coagulated into a human body, a dark-skinned man with widely set brown eyes, small ears, and a blank expression on his squarish face. He was floating in a clear liquid that was given a bluish tint by the lights and monitors inside the great container. Looking up, Craig judged the man to be more than six feet tall, with a wide, prominent chest, and very muscular body.

“This specimen can lift well over a thousand pounds, utilizing a unique new muscle and bone structure designed to enhance the strength and endurance of both tissues. In addition, the reflexes have also been tailored in order to give the body better reaction capabilities. Part of this tailoring involves an increase in the body’s adrenaline production, which makes it capable of performing even better in times of stress or heightened activity. If you enjoy sports and other physical activities then this is the perfect body for you.” Dr. Kentridge looked up from his electronic note pad and smiled at Craig, who examined the body again before looking back at him.

“Thanks, Doctor, but I think this one’s too much of a beefcake for me.

I’m nearly forty-four years old, and while all that exercise and adventure does sound enticing, I don’t really think I’ll be able to use this body the way it’s meant to be.”

“Of course, this is but our first example. Let’s take a look at some of the others.” And without consulting his notes, Dr. Kentridge introduced him to a handsome, lean Asian which, he informed Craig with apparent glee, came equipped with a free memory upgrade and state of the art optical enhancements as well as being visibly endowed in other areas.

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Dr. Kentridge handled the showcasing of each body with the visible pride of a young father, informing Craig how fast this one could run, how that one had telepathic abilities which made it possible to read other people’s emotions and intentions with some accuracy. Face after face looked out at him, through him. Some of their eyes actually shone with a faint consciousness, as if they too were inspecting him as he looked them up and down. At the same time, Dr. Kentridge sprinkled his praises with facts and stories about the process of bodybuilding itself, how, for example, growth engines could bring a newly formed body to its adult state within mere months. He told Craig about the cocktail of nutrients and hormones that fed every cell of the bodies, a patented process that he described with the relish of a master chef describing his piece de resistance. He even talked about his dreams for the future of bodybuilding, how “one day, everybody will be able to be reborn in their own personal dream-body for a fraction of the present cost.”

Craig was sure at several points that he had to be dreaming this.

Shifting blue light, rows and rows of naked gods suspended in vats, a doctor who was apparently lecturing at no-one in particular; it all seemed too unreal.

Then, suddenly, a pair of cold brown eyes broke through the sensation.

The body was very tall, with taut muscles underneath a rich olive complexion.

The face had a sharp, masculine bone structure. Dark hair flowed back and forth with the waves, responding to some unseen fan or mechanism in the tank.

And those eyes still stared back at him, deep-set and intelligent even without a brain turning inside. Craig asked Dr. Kentridge about the body, whose container simply referred to it as #15.

“Yes, this is one of our earlier models,” remarked the doctor, looking down at his note pad. “There are really no augmentations performed on it, just a slight enhancement of the immune system which is actually standard on most of the newer models. However, as you can see, it’s a very handsome specimen, with distinctive Greco-Roman features. It has been dubbed Apollo by its designer.”

“I’ll take it,” said Craig, admiring the long, tightly knuckled hands floating at Apollo’s sides.

“Well, then.” Startled by the eagerness of his customer, the doctor composed himself and then clapped his hands together as if to signal the resolution of the deal. “All that remains is to wrap up the business of payment and get a sample of your DNA, so we can prep the body to accept your brain.

If I may ask, though, out of sheer curiosity, what made you choose this specific body?.”

Craig thought a minute before answering. “Well, Doctor, the Buddha said that the middle path is the way to righteousness. I’ve spent most of my life walking the low road; maybe if I take the high road now, I’ll eventually find myself somewhere in the middle.”

“Ha! May I say, Mr. Johnson that I’ve never heard the Buddha’s philosophy expressed so clearly and so correctly. Many of our patients choose a body that’s dramatically different from their old one. I often get people who have been paralyzed their entire life wanting the most athletic, pumped up body we can offer, for example. Now, if you will just follow me back to credits and 20

accounts, we can get you signed in and ready to go.”

The lady in charge of credits and accounts was an old Russian with a black business skirt and hair pulled up into a tight bun. She informed Craig that he could have his old body cremated for a small sum or donate it to science for free, which he did. While he was filling out the payment forms, a nurse took his blood and scraped some skin off his arm with what looked like a tiny cheese grater. The total cost came to over two million, a large sum, but one which he could afford. Craig signed his name to nine different forms and a liability waiver, after which the nurse let him out again through the waiting room. There were different people there now. He smiled at them like they were all family.

Two days. In just two days, he would return again, and leave the building reborn.

Craig opened the door with a swagger and stepped out onto the afternoon street. #

The next two days went by in a slow haze of daily tasks. Craig thought about not going to his job at the Chicago Tribune, but the thought of sitting listlessly at home for the entire day was too much for him. On the night before the surgery, however, he and his friends did go out bar-hopping downtown. It was between rounds at the “Caulfax Kid” where most of them heard for the first time what he was planning to do. The story was initially met with incredulity; many were not even aware that Craig had that kind of money. Nevertheless, congratulations were in order and everybody eventually wished him well; he was knocked off his chair on several occasions by a hardy, overenthusiastic slap on the back.

“You can start carrying me around now, instead,” said Bear, a gruff behemoth of a man who worked with Craig at the Tribune. One of them even bought cigarettes from a dealer hanging around outside the bar. The Cigarette companies had been driven out of business since the Casey-Feingold Bill of ‘68, but Craig figured that he might as well enjoy himself for this one last night, especially since he wouldn’t be around to deal with the consequences which the toxic, illegally made tobacco could wreak on the system. On a dare, he even put the cigarette out on his arm, getting the maximum wear out of his body before the doctors claimed it. This hurt much more than he had expected.

Even though he got home at a very late hour, Craig had trouble sleeping that night. He got out of bed and walked around the house sipping a glass of milk, taking stock of all the rooms as if for the last time. Looking at the tiny chairs and custom-made lounger in the living room, he suddenly realized that he would have to get completely new furniture after tomorrow. His sink, his bed, the little desk that he used in his den—all of it would have to be thrown away.

He had an image of a seven-foot Apollo squeezing into the once roomy ottoman, his legs mashed together, his eyes staring blankly ahead like in the tank that day.

Craig walked over to the mirror. He inspected his round face, which would have looked like a child’s if not for the wrinkles and the stern look in the eyes. His feet poked out underneath checkered pajamas, the toes wriggling on the cold, wooden floor. On this day of resurrection, why did he suddenly feel as if his life was ending? Another sleepless night slowly ticked by, the block of sky outside 21

his window gradually turning from a pin pricked black to lighter shades of russet, salmon, and finally, the dawn.

Craig got out of bed a few minutes before his alarm rang, feeling tired but remarkably lucid. He showered, scrubbing up and down and shampooing twice. He might as well be clean, though exactly why he couldn’t say. He dry-swallowed an Insta-detox; no sense in going into surgery with last night’s alcohol still in his system, even if his old body would be someone else’s problem soon enough. After fidgeting with his cigarette burn for another quarter hour, he turned off the kitchen light and went outside to wait for the cab.

The clinic was bustling when he finally made it through the rush hour traffic, and it took a few minutes before anyone could figure out where Dr. Kentridge was. However, the nurses got him into a paper robe and walked him down to the surgery room, depositing his clothes into a trash incinerator on the way. The doctor was waiting in surgery, surrounded by a team of surgeon-robots and various other devices extending from the low ceiling. He shook Craig’s hand and helped him up to the operating table, acting more serious and business-like than the last time they had met. He did give Craig some words of encouragement as the robots were being tested, confiding in him that he had performed this procedure over twenty times without any discernible complications. He tested his own laser-scalpel while one of the nurses administered a somnolent to Craig through a needle. The effect was almost immediate.

#

The voices came first, murky and distant, as if heard from underwater.

He paid them no mind for a long time, contenting himself with the all-body warmth encircling him. Presently, though, the warmth began to fade, little by little at first then folding in its edges further down his head, past his chest, until he just didn’t want to sleep anymore. He opened his eyes onto a hazy something, felt his body breathing. He felt prickly, like his foot had fallen asleep but all over.

A lilting, female voice came from his left. “You’re awake, Mr. Johnson,” it said with certainty. “I’m Nurse Karen. You probably can’t see me right now; but don’t worry, your eyesight should get better in just a little while.

Don’t try to move, your new body won’t be completely operational for another five hours or so.”

Craig tried to reply, found his voice unwilling to cooperate. It really didn’t bother him, though, and he absently busied himself trying to make out the blurs in front of his eyes.

Nurse Karen continued to talk: “I’m going to attempt a TP linkup in just a minute. It’s nothing serious, but it does involve my entering your mind for a while. Don’t panic, I’m only going to check your biochemistry and see if there’s anything I can get you, as you’ve probably found out by now that you can’t talk.”

“Hello.” It was the same voice, but he didn’t hear it now so much as feel that sing-song cadence bouncing inside his head. “The operation was a complete success, Mr. Johnson.”

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“How?” He asked. He felt his thoughts were stuck and sluggish in comparison to her graceful ricochet.

“I’ve been supplied with a tank-grown body just like yours Mr. Johnson, except mine is equipped to allow telepathic linkups. I’m touching your forehead with my hand right now, establishing a link between us, though you can’t feel or see me yet.”

The words came from everywhere, soft and soothing. His eyes became dark and then began to focus. A female face, large, bovine eyes, a petite nose, and shiny lips smiling at him. One hand was indeed stretched over his head, disappearing above his line of sight at the palm. The other held a small waterbottle which suddenly made him unimaginably thirsty.

“There. The somnolent in your body has been completely purged. And I see you have your eyesight back. How do you feel?

“Can’t you tell?” Craig asked, beginning to become concerned with just how much this woman already knew about him.”

“Actually, it’s against company policy to read a patient’s thoughts. I’m authorized only to observe your body chemistry. Seeing the world through your senses is an inevitable part of the TP link. However, the patient’s thoughts are his own, and deemed off-limits to health-care personnel.”

Nurse Karen’s voice seemed hurt by Craig’s accusation, and it receded to a corner in his mind. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to accuse you of anything. I can tell it bothered you. “This thought was quickly followed by another:” How can I tell it bothered you?”

Nurse Karen switched back to her real voice. “Communicating with the mind is like communicating with the voice in many ways. When people first start talking, they are very honest emotionally. It’s only after lots of practice that we learn to hide our feelings from others. I’m rather new at it myself; this body isn’t even six months old yet.” She put the water bottle down to adjust the collar on her white nurse coat, which reminded Craig how thirsty he was.

“Karen?”

“Yes, Mr. Johnson?”

So the link still worked. “Do you think I can get a drink of water? I feel so thirsty.”

“Certainly. Actually, I brought this one just for you.” She propped up Craig’s head and pulled the straw out of the water bottle. “Now just a sip, alright? Your throat muscles are still not fully functional, and I wouldn’t want to strain them.”

“Alright. You know, you can talk to me through the link if you want.

It’s really not so bad.”

She squeezed a gulp of water down his throat and smiled at him again.

“Just so you know, Mr. Johnson, there’s no need to apologize. Most people react similarly when I first attempt the link, thinking of it initially as a violation of their privacy. No offense was ever taken.”

“That’s nice to know.”

She performed a few other tests on Craig with strange instruments whose function he could neither guess nor feel yet. After a while, she left, 23

waving goodbye and promising to return shortly. Craig was too fatigued to stay awake long after she was gone. He slipped back into nothingness, while the still turned on holo-vision danced above his head, a news-reel of riots, ants in a terrarium suspended in midair.

Craig was awakened by Nurse Karen. He found that he could now move and tried to kick the blanket off of himself. But he was restrained by her slim, gentle hands. Karen took his pulse and checked his other vital signs on slick, flashing instruments connected to his chest. He tried to speak; a weak, croaking sound came out which made her laugh.

“Don’t worry,” she teased, giving him a knowing look. “It won’t stay that way forever.”

Craig finally managed to croak for a mirror. Karen took one off the wall and carefully brought it up to his face. Apollo quizzically looked back at him, his long, dark hair shaved clean. The skin was even more golden than he remembered; crisp shadows around the sides of the face framed the sharp brow, the aquiline nose and full, slightly ribbed lips. He smiled weakly back at Apollo eyeing him in the mirror. No, not Apollo anymore. This was him. This was Craig Johnson now.

#

Time passed. Craig fully took advantage of his new body, which the doctors said would function for another forty years or so before the brain inside tired and shut down. He started exercising again. He started going out more, and people looked at him with admiration as he walked down the streets. He took time off work to visit the beaches of the East Coast along with all the other pale, city-caged people. It was at Bethany Beach, in Virginia, that he met Christine, a bronzed surfer-girl with pale blonde hair that always smelled like the ocean.

Craig’s shyness, his tenderness when he held her, as if sure that he would break her with one wrong move, these things endeared him to her instantly. And Craig for his part adored her. The way that she walked into a room and instantly drew everyone’s attention to herself like a magnet, the way she walked down the street with such confidence, even her insistent claims that she had lived a past life as a Mayan villager, he remembered all these with fondness later on. It was a full four months before he worked up the nerve to tell her what he really was.

The time just never seemed right to say, “You know, I used to be a midget before I met you.” The ensuing fight was not pretty by any stretch of the imagination.

Words were exchanged that, once spoken aloud, could never be taken back.

She said it wasn’t natural for him to switch bodies like that. He never knew she was so religious, nor so self-righteous. After all, she certainly hadn’t chosen to remain the way God had made her. As she stood at the threshold and eyed him for the last time before picking up her suitcase and leaving, Craig had the distinct impression that she was looking down at him, even though he was almost two heads taller than she.

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Sean Steege

A

m

y

25

Todd Imus West, into Winchester

The motorcyclist had impacted the rear end of a stalled flatbed truck at sufficient speed and angle to detach his head. Cars behind swerved to avoid the bouncing, still-helmeted cranium as it wound an awkward path to the shoulder where it came to a stop among other, more typical roadside detritus. The rest of the rider was beneath the truck, wedged sideways against a tire, still astride his bike.

Or so my wife, Anna, tells it. She who watched as her mother stopped the car at the nearest farmhouse to dial an ambulance. “Stay here,” her mother had said, attempting to keep this roadside death from her ten-year-old daughter.

Anna acquiesced. She could clearly see the head from where she sat in the back of the car, the dead man’s eyes visible and staring heavenwards. ***

So long as roads were tarred blue and straight; not hedged; and empty and dry, so long I was rich.

–T.E. Lawrence

The early morning air shears before me as I press westward via a ribbon of two-lane blacktop hewn into mist-laden hills. Approaching a straightaway, my motorcycle settles at seventy, a contented drone coming from the nine hundred cc v-twin engine that sounds more like a fifty-year-old fighter plane than a modern means of transportation. I’m hunched into the wind. The first great secret I’ve learned is that the density of air which pushes against me is not to be fought against: it is an ally, a hard-won comrade, something to support the weight of my body at speed. I lean into the buffeting atmosphere, en route to Winchester as usual, where I’ll turn around in the diner parking lot and make for home as the sun rises.

I’m intimately familiar with the road. Out from my apartment, a meandering back route through a series of office parks ends at an intersection.

Take a right and it’s east to Chantilly, Fairfax, and some twenty miles further, Washington, DC. A left goes west through Aldie and Middleburg to end in Winchester. A series of historic towns once known only as sites of Civil War battles, now noted also for their burgeoning wine industry and equestrian events.

Yet, today, as on every early Sunday morning, I’m alone, heading into the western darkness. ***

Men lounging on weary porches and loitering by rusting sedans whistled and catcalled as she walked the half-block to her apartment after work alone. She slept with a claw hammer under her pillow, a big Craftsman job capable of taking half a man’s face off. When I visited, I’d pause a moment in

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my car to steel myself for possible physical confrontation before venturing forth.

All I ever got were blank stares from the dead-eyed men, endlessly waiting for something or someone from their bottle-strewn vantage points. Something I didn’t have, someone I was not.

Her apartment door rattled in the frame when I knocked, no matter how softly. Two dead bolts and a chain later, Anna, a perfect emulation of Debbie Harry in all her bleached blonde glory, would let me in to the efficiency, a smallish rectangle of a room converted from the attic of an old townhouse.

Cheapest rent around, and it showed. A two-burner stove jutting from the wall made up the kitchen. Rough wood plank flooring the color of a mottled cockroach. When I arrived, we left as quickly as possible. There was nothing to keep us there.

In her old Volkswagen, listening to punk rock nearly as old as we were, we went on driving tours of the town. Near the railroad tracks by her place was the White House factory, and on lucky days the air smelled like warm apple cider, an unexpected bit of hominess amongst the crates and dumpsters of this industrial area.

“Oh, do they make apples there?” I was sarcastic, deliberately obtuse for absurdity, hopefully humorous.

“Yeah. You know all those orchards?” Anna said. I nodded. “Nothing but a sham. They make the apples themselves in there. Amazing, huh?”

“Amazing, all right. Do you like it here?” I asked.

“Next to the factory? Sure, it smells nice.”

“No. In Winchester.”

“It’s cheap.”

“Cheap’s good enough?”

“Cheap’s all I can afford right now.” We pulled out from the industrial park and onto the main drag. The town proper rose with a shimmer in the thick August evening.

“Looks like cheap’s got a new Cracker Barrel restaurant. You wanna eat there tonight?”

“You should’ve seen the place I grew up in, and no. Let’s eat at the diner, it’ll be cheaper,” she said.

“Nah, you’re worth Cracker Barrel. I dunno if you’re worth Chinese food yet, but you’re definitely worth Cracker Barrel.”

She smiled. “Well then, big spender, let’s go get some grits.” ***

Less than two years later, we’re fighting in a way that is alien to us.

“Why the fuck are you getting a motorcycle?” She’s beyond irate.

Beyond anger, I’ve offended, misled, betrayed her.

“Honestly, I don’t know. I woke up one day and –”

“And shit! Don’t give me some crap about how this is something you need to do! How this is another one of your ‘romantic’ ideas that you use to justify ridiculous shit when you can’t think of a better excuse.”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s like –”

“Like what? An early mid-life crisis? It’s stupid! I am not spending my

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life with someone who’s going to get killed for no good reason!”

“Well, if I die, you won’t be –”

“It’s not funny! You know how I feel about this!” She’s crying now.

“I’ll be safe.”

“It’s not you! The guy I saw die was probably safe and he crashed anyway and his fucking head came off!”

Defense by wit is useless here. Useless.

“And one of my friends knew a guy who wrecked on a curve like two months ago when he was riding! You know what happened to him?”

I shrug.

“He was cut in half by a guardrail! Cut in half!”

I’ve got nothing to say.

“You’re not getting a motorcycle. We just got married, and you’re not getting one. That’s it.”

Suddenly there was no time to fight about death and motorcycles, because we had to fight about where she was going to graduate school. The full scholarship she received to the foremost Ph.D. program in her field, six hundred miles away, decided for us, despite the remainder of my own degree hanging in the balance. ***

I let the clutch out and the machine begins to roll. Despite the enrichment of full choke, it lurches, stupid and jumpy, the engine not yet properly warmed. I lever myself into a standing position on the foot pegs and navigate the speed bumps as the bike and I mutter through the creeping darkness of four a.m. Out of the apartment complex, we find our usual route through the labyrinth of office parks and back roads to the stop light where we’ll make a left and head west. West, into Winchester. Towards the town where I fell in love with the woman who would become my wife by way of the road where I fell in love with the feeling of unprotected speed. I push the choke in and the bike settles into a loping cadence, a charming growl. In the heat now baking off the exposed engine rises the promise of ability, an almost sentient sense of stored energy, the impression of being astride an eager companion intent on trouble.

The light changes, and I lean through the empty intersection. There are six miles of straightaway before the first curve. No cars are in sight. I pin the throttle and lever through the gears. The machine rewards with a rush of sudden gravity, the force of acceleration nearly pulling me off. I laugh amid the howl of the wound-up engine and the tearing wind. We race into the headlight’s meager spill.

Here. This is why it’s done. The moment-to-moment immortality implied by the necessary clarity of traveling at such speed, each second alive a triumph. Far be it from me to travel down the already rutted road of motorcycles and mysticism, but we’re in too deep now, aren’t we? Let me try: Something primal is found here, a struggle absent from modern life. Something I’d been missing, unaware. The complete absence of safety, the complete responsibility for continuing survival resting in my hands alone, astride a primitive brute

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built only to hasten death. It’s a contest. It’s pure joy. It’s hard to remember to breathe. It’s the finest rush imaginable, and it’s mine alone for the next hour and a half while I make the eighty-five mile round trip.

We hammer through the first two small towns lining the road, slowing only for known speed traps, should some sleepy officer be awaiting early prey. Out of Middleburg’s strictly enforced quaintness (there is a town statute regarding style and color of Christmas lights), the road flattens. Ahead is a fivemile high speed run with only a few curves to diminish velocity. Forward we go, and soon enough we’re climbing into the first authentic foothills of the Blue Ridge mountains. From the top of the rise, I see the determined glow from the lights of my destination, Winchester. A rush of emotion, vastly different from the excitement of speed takes me over. Nostalgia for something simpler, easier, perhaps. ***

There’s only a smattering of customers, suitably cheap diner dwellers, each one torn from a guidebook of night shift stereotypes. Truckers sit alone, forking scrambled eggs around greasy plates. There’s a late-twenties dirt bag entertaining his underage girlfriend in the corner by the jukebox. A solemn drunk staring out the window from the booth two down from us. We find we no longer fit in with the regular crowd, we’ve moved on somehow. Ken, the cook with the jittery gait and green ink of prison tattoos on his hands, brings over our plates. I thank him and turn back to my wife to continue our conversation.

“You remember when we used to come here all the time?”

She’s glaring at her hash browns, burned on one side, uncooked on the other.

“Yeah. It’s the same. Depressing.”

“This town means a lot to me in some odd way.”

“That’s because you didn’t live here for two years.”

“Well, sure. Don’t you have good memories about it though? You know, stories we’ll tell our kids some day?”

“The only good memories are when you came to visit. Did you know I was so poor I only ate what I could get free at the restaurant? If the kitchen didn’t fuck up someone’s order, I didn’t eat. The days I didn’t work, I’d get some change together and go to one of the fast food places that had dollar specials.”

“Jesus fuck. You’ve never told me that. I would’ve given—”

“I didn’t want money. That’s not why I was dating you, and it’s not why I married you.”

“That’s good, because I’m more broke than ever.”

She laughs and puts her fork down. “You remember that crazy guy who had the apartment next to mine?”

“Which one, the Vietnam vet?”

“Yeah, him.” Suddenly serious now. “He’s the reason I moved out of that place. One night he started screaming through the other side of the wall that he was going to kill me. That’s what I remember about Winchester. I remember waking up at night, feeling something tickling my stomach. I turned the light on

29

and it was a roach, big as my thumb. No matter how clean I kept that apartment, there were always roaches. Shit like that is what I remember. The guys who’d yell at me everywhere I went. I couldn’t even put gas in my car without them coming up to me saying they liked my ass. Didn’t matter what I wore. Shit like that. The cop who got killed on my block.”

I remembered walking by the memorial. Lilies piled on the hood of a police car they kept parked for a week at the scene of the crime, an act of defiance against the unknown murderer. I’d seen the story in the paper; the dead man had a wife and two young kids.

Anna’s given up on dinner. “The list never ends. Remember the other guy in my apartment building? The retarded guy who shit all over the 3rd floor steps right outside my door? I called the health department and they laughed at me when I told them where I lived. What do you remember about this town that you like so much?”

“The drive out here is beautiful. It’s a living postcard.”

“Look at where the road ends, though. Here. What the hell’s so special about this place?”

“It’s real. It’s the embodiment of some kind of small-town desperation.

It’s… I guess it’s romantic to me in a weird way. I’m from the suburbs, we don’t have shit like this, you know? I’m used to being the entirety of the criminal element in any given place at any given time.”

“You want cop killers and stair shitters for company where you live?

Where we live now?”

“Fuck of a lot more interesting than soccer moms and Starbucks.

Besides, the only reason for me to ever have come to this town was you. There were good parts, you know? Remember the pigeons that lived on the roof of your building? They’d sit on your windowsill and coo to wake us up in the morning. It was like something out of a poem. Being awoken-”

“Stupid birds.” She’s trying to be serious, but she’s smiling. “You’re just lucky you didn’t wake up to that every day.”

“That’s it, though. I didn’t. It was interesting, it was new. If it wasn’t for you, I never would have experienced any of this stuff.”

“You would have been better off.”

“Shit. Eat your hash browns or I’ll get Ken over here. He made those with pride, you know? The man’s a wizard with a spatula, don’t go insulting his artistry.”

Anna glances over at our favorite speed addict, who’s poking at a fresh pile of shredded potatoes on the griddle. She smiles, genuinely. “Maybe someday I’ll feel the same. Look back and laugh, right? Look back and laugh.” ***

There are no other customers in the diner when I stop in to grab a fiveminute cup of coffee before turning around. The night shift long gone, only one unfamiliar waitress on duty. I sit in our booth and remembered. ***

Now dropping into the hills nearer home, the mist rises from roadside

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ponds, gathering thick before the sunlight, still some ten minutes distant, can begin to disperse it. Diving into a trough between curves, I find my helmet’s face shield beading with droplets of moisture, condensing on my visor, blurring my field of vision. I lever the helmet open to the roar of the passing road. Sudden tears streak my face, from the wind blast or longing, neither or both. I blink, squint, and lean close to the motorcycle, concentrate and continue onwards.

Cresting a rise, I can see the traffic light at an intersection some hundred yards ahead. I’m green, clear to proceed, so I raise my speed to just over the legal limit of fifty. Then, there is a car in the road before me, blocking my lane. An enormous white Cadillac, oncoming, immaculate and glistening in the sunlight barely beginning to rise, meandering through a left hand turn at perhaps three miles an hour. Probably some wealthy loon from the city out for an early jaunt to Virginia’s wine country. There is no chance the car will pass through the intersection in time for me to avoid it. What happens next takes maybe all of three seconds.

I stab at the rear brake pedal with my right foot. The wheel locks, skittering the motorcycle into a fishtail but doing little to halt forward movement. I grasp the lever for the front brake, knowing that if I pull too hard, the front wheel will lock up as well, throwing me over the handlebars.

I ease off the rear. The bike instantly steadies by virtue of gyroscopic force, and I continue towards my momentum driven demise. The Cadillac is still in the intersection, and now, closer, I can see inside. The driver is a middle aged man nosing through a folded over map by the overhead light, one hand on the wheel, oblivious. I squeeze the more powerful front brake and feel the bike begin to slow, but not enough—quick visual calculation determines I’ll hit the rear quarter panel. I squeeze harder, and return my foot to the rear brake as well.

This combination throws my weight forward, the dual disc brakes working together to haul down the bike’s speed like the hand of God. At this point, I’m not sure, but I believe my rear wheel leaves the ground for a moment, result of my suddenly shifted body mass. It dawns on me that I should have used my horn by now, but I’m holding on too tightly to spare my left thumb to the button.

The car, now some three bike lengths before me, is still in the intersection. I juke left, touching the yellow center line. The Cadillac clears a foot to my right.

I correct my path and resume forward in my own lane as a previously unseen pickup truck blows by, his horn blaring, on my left. I’m off the brakes and go to accelerate but the bike protests, the engine lugging. I’m four gears too high for my current speed, ten miles an hour. I clutch in and notch down. The motorcycle burbles a thanks and we continue on towards home.

I don’t realize how badly I’m shaking until I almost drop the bike at a lonely stoplight outside a housing development. I pull onto a residential street, put down the kickstand, and sit on the curb to watch the sun finish rising and wait to quit shuddering.

Is this it? What I’m searching for? This is stupid. You’re going to kill yourself. And for what? You can read T.E. Lawrence all day long, but remember: He died on a motorcycle.

The sun’s up. Traffic is beginning to fill the road halfheartedly, the responsible and upstanding on their way to church. A pair of motorcyclists

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passes me as I ride home - enormous Harleys twice the size of my own. Glinting monstrosities strewn with gleaming gewgaws and chromed-out trinkets. We wave to one another, though they’ve already missed out on the day’s christening.

Back to my apartment complex and I park the bike, hang my helmet from a handlebar, then dig in my jacket for my phone. She answers, half-asleep.

“Hey baby. You out riding?”

“Yeah, just got back. You know how I like to go out before anyone else gets on the road. Safer, right.”

“I worry. I try not to, but I do.” A lump rises.

“Don’t,” I choke out.

“You okay?”

“Fine, I’m fine.”

“Good. Be careful. I don’t know what I’d do without you. I never want to tell you what to do, but-”

“I’m alive. The ride was boring, nothing crazy happened.”

“Okay. Call me later?”

“Yeah. Go back to sleep, baby.”

She does. The war of attrition I’ve waged has finally started to wear her down. Whether this victory is what’s best for either our relationship or my survival remains to be seen.

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Kathleen Downs Divorce: An Everlasting Impact

When I was three years old, my parents decided to get divorced.

Obviously, at such a young age, I had no comprehension of what divorce meant or how it would affect the rest of my life. To me, divorce simply meant that my mother was sad a lot and my father was no longer coming around. I wish it was that simple. There were unforeseen effects that would shape the person I would become and the way that I would look at the world, especially my views of education, money, marriage, and family. It would be the foundation upon which many of my core beliefs would be built.

My parents’ divorce made me realize how important getting an education was. After watching my mother struggle to go back to school while raising four kids and working a full-time job, I decided that I would never allow that to happen to me. College became a necessity rather than an option. I also knew that my mother would never be able to afford to pay for my college, so receiving scholarships became an absolute must. I became obsessed with my grade point average and panicked whenever my prized 4.0 was threatened. I also joined every club I could and worked thirty-five hours per week at a local grocery store to help ensure that my dream of college would become a reality.

I was never really able to be what is considered a “normal teenager.” I did not party or spend my days “just chillin’,” mostly because I saw it as a waste of the thing I never seemed to have enough of—time. There were days when I resented responsibility and my inability to be carefree, but by then I knew too much about consequence. I had lost my innocence. I knew that everything that I was doing then was, in some way, shaping my future, so mediocrity was not an option. Ultimately, though, the lessons learned and the sacrifices made brought me to the culmination of my dream—college.

Growing up in a single parent home also taught me the value of money.

Since my mother was the sole provider in a house of five, money was often tight.

I remember searching the house for spare change in order to buy a gallon of milk because we were broke until the next pay day. Somehow we always managed to get by, but by the time I was ten, I decided that I wanted to make a contribution to the family as well. I got a job and have been working ever since. At that age, I did not notice that my situation was different from other kids, but as my life progressed into the high school years, I realized that my life was not the standard. Having responsibility set me apart from my friends. While they were recovering from their Friday night hangovers, my Saturday mornings usually consisted of a 6 a.m. alarm and an 8-10 hour shift at work. Sunday afternoons became vital to survival and were usually spent sleeping away the exhaustion that had accumulated during the week. At times I wished that things were as easy for me as they seemed to be for others, but that was not my reality. It was not until college that I realized that those hard years of work were excellent preparation for the real world.

Watching the effects of my parents’ divorce has also drastically shaped my view of marriage. Marriage, to me, is something that can be wonderful if

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it is to the right person, but it should also be the subject of much consideration.

I believe that the high divorce rate in the United States is a result of people entering into unions with another person without really considering whether or not this is the person with whom they want to spend the rest of their lives.

My parents, for example, dated for a mere six weeks before getting engaged.

Although it would be inaccurate to cite this as the only cause of their divorce, it is fair to say that if given more time, they might have considered their decision more carefully. Marriage is about a lifetime of commitment, not one day of bliss. Oftentimes, I think that proposals end up being more about feeling obligated than a true desire to be married to that person. Even more often than an obligatory proposal is the feeling that if asked, one must accept. If and when I am married, I want it to be because it is what we both truly want, not because we feel it is what we should do.

The greatest effect, though, that my parents’ divorce had on me was my appreciation of family. Once my dad left, it was my mom and we four kids against the world. We were a team. We saw each other through the best and worst times of our lives. When my mother almost died from cardiac arrest, we were all crowded around her hospital bed. When my older brother, Jon, would sit on the porch all day hoping that my father would stop to see him, we would all sit there with him. When my oldest brother, Michael, built his first house, we were all there to watch the ground-breaking. When my youngest brother, Joe, got caught drinking for the first time, we all told him what a mistake he had made. And when I got my heart broken for the very first time, it was my family who stood by my side. Sure, not every day was perfect. We had our share of fights and arguments, but no matter what we did or said, at the end of the day we knew that we had each other. Through all of this I learned how truly important family is.

The effects of that one moment, that one legal document, have resonated throughout my life. I’ve never really known anything other than living with the consequences of that day. It is through all of this, though, that I have learned that strength can only be tested by hardship. I have learned that life is not always a fairy tale, that not everyone lives happily ever after. There will be people that will break my heart and then there will be those people who help me to pick up the pieces. In the end, it will be the culmination of these events that will shape but not define the person I am to become.

34

Omar Shafi Unspoken Language

The busy bazaar buzzed with fascinated tourists, noisy children, and Egyptian merchants selling their distinctive goods. The warm weather of Egypt intensified with the mass of humanity crowding the marketplace. As I made my way through the traffic, I heard Arabic phrases being exchanged with every step. Among these conversations, I identified English words that the merchants have acquired over decades to entice Western tourists. I was impressed by the bona-fide artifacts they had on display. Tourists around me haggled down prices significantly while merchants happily complied. Watching people use this “unspoken language” of bargaining excited me from the first. The thrill of bargaining down Egyptian pounds is like being in a stock market for wood and glass creations.

My fingers traced the handsome pattern of a wooden table an artisan had on display. The table would fit perfectly in the living room of my Grandmother’s new home. I hesitantly approached the artisan and inquired about the table’s price. Disappointed by the high amount, I timidly suggested the only sum I wanted to pay. I am surprised when the merchant rejected my offer and uttered his initial amount. Having observed the other tourists bargain so easily, I expected my negotiation to be a fairly simple task. Unsure of what to do next, I told the merchant I was sorry to bug him on such a busy day. I walked away deeper into the market pondering strategies and ideas to obtain my grandmother’s table for the desired price.

I know I had done something wrong. Shoppers walked happily around me with their newly purchased items; none of their negotiations were rejected.

Perhaps the merchant could see my low sense of confidence and took advantage of my vulnerability. My tone of voice must be stern so the merchant would know that he could not sway me to pay a higher price. I attentively watched the shoppers bargain as I continued my stroll through the market. As I listened to their dialogues, I realized it was essential to make the merchants believe I had done them a favor by purchasing their item. I mentally charged myself up for another verbal bout.

I moved towards the other end of the market, while stopping at those stalls filled with genuine crafts. I once again aimed my attention at a merchant to engage in a battle of propositions. “Ten pounds for the glass vase,” I exclaimed. However, he refuted me and insisted on twenty pounds. “Ten pounds and that’s my final offer,” I said, but he didn’t budge. The intensity increased as I maintained a persistent and confident demeanor. I explained to the merchant, “My mother bought a similar vase for ten pounds, and I wanted mine for the same price. But you have been such a kind man that I want to pay you thirteen pounds.” I looked at him assertively and finally said, “My friend, I’ll just purchase this item from where my mother purchased hers. But hey, thanks for your time.” Once he knew I was on the brinks of leaving, the merchant quickly gave into my offer and wrapped up my elegant glass vase. I knew I succeeded in our verbal bout with the man, but I felt unfulfilled. On my

35

way back through the market, I found myself drawn to the same stall with the table…

My grandmother’s fingers traced the pattern of the table as I did in bazaar. My grandmother, whom my family called Apaji, was interested in the details of my excursion and asked me to frequently pause to elaborate on a particular occasion. We talked and laughed for several hours as she listened to me ramble on.

Days earlier, I had requested that Apaji sit with me so we could converse about her experiences in Egypt. Apaji explained, “Of all the different places I have seen and touched, the land of sand has always been my favorite.”

My grandmother was delighted I chose her as my informant. She happily said, “People interview film actresses, musicians, and politicians. I am unsure where ‘grandmother’ fits, but I am more then willing to be of help to you!” Before my arrival to her home, I filled my backpack with a notebook, pencil, and tape recorder to precisely record her thoughts. I even brought a handful of pictures I took in Egypt, hoping they would refresh her memory of the ancient land. I was hoping our interview would be a fluid conversation on Egypt; however, we talked primarily about “communication.” I quickly scribbled key phrases as she spoke. She told me that effective communication was vital when she taught Montessori school years ago. I immediately thought about how essential communication was when I was in the bazaar. If I was unable to communicate effectively with the merchant, it would have been impossible to obtain my grandmother’s table. Although the classroom and bazaar have their obvious differences, literacy is inherent in both.

An understanding smile stretched across Apaji’s face as I explained my bargaining experience with the merchants. Apaji says, “You are still young so you have time to grow and improve your communication with people.

Sometimes your efficiency will even work to your benefit.” Her eyes closed slightly as she reminisced about her days as a teacher. She said, “I have been able to enhance my communication skills over time. You see, taming 20 children to sit alphabetically in a line takes effective speaking skills.” Interested with what she was saying, I insisted she speak on. Apaji continued, “If you make smart deals with children, they always think they are getting the best out of a situation.” I laughed, thinking about the childhood deals I thought I won with my parents. For instance, I was so excited when my mother allowed me to stay up an extra half hour if I completed double my chores in return. At the time, I thought I had a significant advantage over my parents in this proposition.

So it is true, I thought to myself, parents are smart. Apaji interrupted my thoughts. “To be sure to get what you want your behavior must be assertive.

Always allow the [opposition] to feel you are doing them a favor. In return, you will win.” I knew there was truth in her statement, because I used the same technique with the merchant in the bazaar.

I quickly realized that Apaji and I used the same communication technique to obtain what we wanted. Apaji agreed and said, “The two techniques are quite similar because we both used speech to obtain what we

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wanted.” However, my grandmother seemed to be much more proficient in this practice than I was. She sarcastically stated, “I simply have been in the business longer.” I was being taught a fundamental lesson. Apaji was teaching me the art of successful communication. Because of our conversation, my confidence in bargaining had increased since my experience at the bazaar. Apaji said it best: “The market is waiting for you!”

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Sean Steege

N

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38

Megan White On The Outskirts

On a hot and humid summer day, I drive up to the only intersection in the tiny town of Catlett, Virginia. Stopping in the shade created by a tunnel of low hanging maple branches, I look right then left down the narrow straightaway of Route 28 that leads in and out and anywhere else in “town.” This is a blinkand-you-miss-it town with a post office on one side and, about a mile away on the other end, a meat market, recycling center, stop and shop, and, oddly enough, Buddhist monastery. As the light slowly ekes from red to green, I drive through the intersection. In the equivalent of about half a block, I turn into a narrow gravel driveway that leads to the big gravel parking lot visible from the stoplight. This parking lot is home to Wilson’s Meat Market, Brooks Auction Transfer, and Cedar Run Antiques.

Steering around the potholes that have taken on a life of their own, I swing left and pull up to the railroad tie that serves as a parking space marker.

I ease the door of my car open then closed, step out onto the gravel, and walk towards the big, blue, metal door of Cedar Run Antiques. As I open the door, the familiar buzzer goes off, and I silence it by closing the door. I look to the right to see if there is any candy in the glass bowl sitting on the marble top dresser.

I grab a piece and jog to the back of the store. I peer out through the panels of glass in the white wooden door and through the dusty workshop filled with furniture and odd scraps of wood, metal, and glass. I see my dad, known by others as Dave, working in the piercing sun.

He stands, bending over a kitchen table, latex surgical gloves on his hands as he heals one of the pieces of weathered furniture that found a home in his shop. A can of stain is in one hand, a thick, bristly brush is in the other as he moves with the quick ease of someone who has been refinishing furniture for over eighteen years. His skin is a dark tan, stained by the sun, and sweat trickles down his arms and face. His khaki colored shorts are splattered with dots from the rare misplaced drips of stain that have accumulated over the years, and his shirt is a threadbare striped polo with the buttons loose and a little blue AT&T notebook and pen in the chest pocket. His curly reddish hair and graying beard outline his relaxed face as he straightens after spreading the final coat of stain.

“Hey Dad.”

“Howdy,” he says with a grimace turned smile. “You’re late.” He pays attention to detail.

He pays attention to detail in everything that he does, from refinishing antiques to keeping track of the birds he spots while bird watching, and to being on time. When I was little, my father used to tell me about Native American customs. One of his favorites facts to share, especially when we were sitting in the car, ready to go, waiting for my mom to finish getting dressed, was that certain tribes of Native Americans were always on time. Even if both people were early, they would hide in the woods and only step out at the specified time.

It was a matter of respect for each other.

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This respect for others and attention to detail is part of what my father calls Right Living. Right Living is a term from Buddhist culture that refers, in a paradoxical way, to “avoiding wrong living.” In its most basic terms Wrong Living is being selfish, lazy, untruthful, etc. Right Living is everything that is not Wrong Living; it is taking your responsibility to others seriously, doing everything that you do to the best of your ability, living as close to the truth as possible, and trying to create some good for the world, in whatever way you can.

Knowing the difference between Right Living and Wrong Living creates Right Awareness, which is all part of the Buddhist’s eightfold path of enlightenment (True 1).

One of the ways my father chooses to embody Right Living is by refinishing antiques. To him, this is a way of bringing something back to life that would have otherwise no longer been of use. By recycling old furniture, he has an opportunity to create life in something. He contributes, not only to a spiritual kind of community of energy by doing this, but also to the human community around him. He says the people he is mainly targeting with his antique store are young couples just starting out on their lives together, who need quality furniture for a fair price. He sells them antique furniture that is sturdier than new furniture for a lower price than anything they could find at an outlet store. It is part of Right Living to do something to make the world better, but, more importantly, to do something that you love. This way you are not only helping the world in a small or big way, you are leading a happy life, and, therefore, contributing positive energy to the world. My father loves refinishing furniture and helping anyone who comes in the door of his shop.

Talking to the people who end up in his shop is just as important to him as the actual refinishing of antiques. He has built a community of people that drop by, not to Cedar Run Antiques, but to Dave’s Place. The shop is an abandoned dairy barn turned basement hangout. No parents allowed. The members of his adopted community range from the people who are around the area for a couple of months, like the wandering cowboy who joined the Buddhist Monastery and lived in a hut one summer, to the people who rent spaces from him, to the people who have lived in the area for generations, like Byron the conservative Republican who in true hillbilly fashion struck oil and became rich, although you would never know it. Cedar Run Antiques serves as a public space for this odd collection of people to form an impromptu civil society. They come together for what Don Eberly describes as “a search for a greater degree of harmony, balance, and cohesion-within scholarship, public policy, and the wider public alike. Embracing the desire to transcend social division and political chaos, they practice such essential democratic habits such as trust, collaboration, and compromise” (Eberly 6). In my father’s antique shop everyone has a place to speak his or her mind and share concerns about everything from children’s education, to the problems of getting older, to antiques, to the spiritual essence of being. My father, known not as Dad, but as Dave in his sanctuary of wood, marble, tin, and stained glass, is the sage of this community.

Like all middle aged mystics, almost shamanistic wise men, my father lives on the outskirts of society and is more in touch with nature than politics.

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The fact that his shop is named for the tiny creek that runs behind it, parallel to the railroad tracks, is the first hint that he has a deep connection with nature. The second is that no matter where we live we have a forest connected to the back of our yard and generally a creek running through some corner or another. But it is most evident that my father is more connected to the community of nature than to the political community through his behavior and movement. He is soft spoken like trees and moves slowly like the sun on a hot summer day. His legs are an extension of the earth he walks on. His breath is wind gently blowing in and out of his body, and his mind is a stream that wanders, meanders, twists around itself, and rushes occasionally towards a new gush of ideas.

My father is similar to the Koyukon people described by Richard Nelson in “Patriots for the American Land.” He believes that “nature is more than a source of food, more than a wellspring of beauty, more than a place to carry out subsistence activities. The living world is also a congregation of sensitive, conscious, spiritually powerful beings” (5). He believes everything has its own spirit and is part of a delicate balance of order that is being tipped and jolted by humans. My father does not try to change national legislation to save the environment, or participate in any environmental activist groups. Instead, he lives his life taking nature into account, immersing himself in it by wandering through forests, looking for what might be beyond the next curve and breathing with the same rhythm as the earth. He tries to be as respectful of it as possible, believing, like the Koyukon people again, that “the proper role of human kind is obedience toward the natural world and that service toward the environment gives them life” (Nelson 7).

My father is a citizen living on the boundary of society, with one foot in America and one foot in the forests that serve as the backdrop of America.

You must come to his dairy barn in Catlett to see him, but there, he is the center of his own society. He is connected to the rest of society by a string of antiques, giving life to old furniture and blessings to young people starting out their lives together. He also offers support and conversation to anyone traveling through his lands, those who stumble into his little sanctuary unconsciously looking for advice or spiritual healing. And finally, within his self-made community, he is a voice for the natural community. As Chief Joseph, leader of the Nez Perce Indians, expressed “The earth and myself are of one mind. The measure of the land and the measure of our bodies is the same” (Nelson 8). This sentiment describes how I see my father as a citizen of the natural community and his own community and the message he tries to spread from the tiny town of Catlett to whoever will listen.

A child is an impressionable being, alive, and awake, hearing everything even before sounds form themselves into words. I grew up first on a farm in Kansas, where my parents grew asparagus and tomatoes, and canned their own food. Then on a farm in Virginia, where when my father walked me down the dirt paths that he landscaped, I learned the real sounds that animals make. I was confused in Kindergarten when my classmates said horses went “neigh” not “mmmhhhmmhmmhm,” or that roosters went “cock-a-doodledoo,” not “errr a errrr a err!” When we moved away from the farm to a house in

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Manassas, I played in forests and streams instead of pastures and fields. My dad and I would go for walks in the woods where I would learn not only the names of trees, but to be careful not to break their limbs, and to prop up tiny saplings that had fallen over in wind storms.

As well as seeing myself as part of nature, I also learned from my father to make my own society when I don’t like the one I am in. As you can assume a kid who listens to animals and believes in the magic of nature does not fit well into a tiny conservative high school. So I created my own version of my father’s antique shop. Instead of meeting in a renovated dairy barn, we met under a tree. We came together, in response to what Eberly called “real inadequacies in the current ideological frameworks” of society in general, and our school in particular, to vent the oppression of going to school with people who talk about their family yacht, complain about getting sapphire rings instead of diamonds for their birthdays, and who have no appreciation for mild insanity.

Our civic association, which we happily named “The Lunch Bunch of Social Non-Conformity,” gave, much like my father’s in Catlett, anyone who was willing to eat outside with us unconditional support and a platform to launch into creativity.

My father has influenced my ideas about citizenship. We both consider ourselves citizens of nature, and we both create our own civic associations.

Neither of us is a perfect citizen. We both stray away from the mainstream of suburbs. We don’t tend to join volunteer groups. We don’t go to church or PTA meetings. But in our own way, we are effective citizens. We are the people on the outskirts of the community, who poke at it every so often, making sure it doesn’t get too comfortable and reminding it to progress while respecting the past.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Eberly, Don. E. (2000). The Meaning, Origins, and Applications of Civil Society. In The Essential Civil Society Reader. (p. 3-11, 15-29). Lanholm, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc. Nelson, Richard. “Patriots for the American Land.” In Patriotism and the American Land. Great Barrington: The Onion Society, 2002.

Snyder, Gary. “For All.” No Nature: New and Selected Poems. Pantheon Books, 1992. 308.

True Buddha School Net. 16 April. 2003 www.tbsn.org/english/library/reference/eight/eightc~1.htm White, David. Personal Interview. 16 April. 2003.

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Matthew S. Becker Victory At All Costs

On the morning of May 10, 1940, the German Wehrmacht, under the orders of German Fuhrer Adolf Hitler, invaded Western Europe. After months of relative calm between the Allies (France and England) and Germany, fighting had finally broken out. Just months before, France and England (along with Australia, Canada and New Zealand) had declared war on Germany after it invaded Poland. On this momentous day, a second event took place which would have a decisive impact. The Government of Neville Chamberlain fell, and Winston S. Churchill became the Prime Minister of England.

Over the next several weeks, the Allied army was continuously defeated in battle, and pushed further and further across Europe toward the English Channel. The situation became increasingly desperate, and on May 26 the British began an evacuation of allied troops from the French port of Dunkirk.

The operation, called “Dynamo,” was carried out by the British Royal Navy with the help of courageous British citizens who lent their boats to the operation.

Only a few thousand soldiers were expected to be rescued. However, between May 27 and June 4, 338,226 British and French were miraculously brought back to British soil (Shirer 735-737). However, the equipment lost on the beaches of Dunkirk was a serious and potentially fatal blow to the British army. The British army alone lost 7,000 tons of ammunition, 90,000 rifles, 2,300 guns, 120,000 vehicles, 8,000 Bren guns, and 400 anti-tank rifles (Their Finest Hour 125).

With the evacuation from Dunkirk and the French surrender on June 24, 1940, Germany had swept Great Britain and her allies from continental Europe. Adolf Hitler now only had to subdue the English homeland and thereby crush Allied resistance.

Hitler expected the British to come to terms with the Germans. When this did not happen, he ordered that a plan be developed for invasion of the British Isles. On July 16, 1940, he issued the following directive: “Since England in spite of her militarily hopeless position shows no sign of coming to terms, I have decided to prepare a landing operation against England, and, if necessary, to carry it out” (Their Finest Hour 267). This operation would forever bear the name “Sea Lion”, a name which would eternally be synonymous with failure (The Grand Alliance 634). This failure was due to the British preeminence in naval power, control of the air by the Royal Air Force, and the existence of a large, well-trained ground force on the British homeland available to repel any German invasion forces which may have managed to land on British soil.

Despite being routed and thrown into the sea by the German military juggernaut, Prime Minister Churchill and the British nation remained staunchly defiant. At his disposal, he had the Royal Navy which rivaled any other navy in the world. The Royal Air Force was heavily populated with skilled pilots who had earned combat experience flying during the battle for France. They now had the advantage operative from and flying over friendly territory, making

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it much easier for shot down pilots to be rescued and returned to combat duty.

And, despite significant material loses, 338,226 combat-hardened Army veterans provided a solid foundation for the expansion and rebuilding of the British army.

Churchill made his intentions for how England would proceed with the war after the fall of France known on numerous occasions, including the famous speech given to the House of Commons on June 18th, 1940, in which he said: What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilisation. Upon it depends our own British life and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age, made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves, that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say: ‘This was their finest hour’ (Their Finest Hour 199).

Despite Hitler’s hopes for a negotiated peace, Churchill could not have made it any clearer that England would not surrender, would not negotiate, and would not leave the fight. Hitler clearly had only one remaining option for eliminating the threat of a hostile nation: invasion. The German military machine would now have to cross the English Channel, a natural protector of England, which had discouraged invasion of Great Britain by continental European armies, including that of Napoleon, for almost 900 years.

Throughout history, the German navy has traditionally been inferior to that of the British and, despite efforts by the Germans to change this equation, this would hold true during World War II as well. This inferiority in sea power proved to be a significant deterrent to launching Operation Sea Lion. During the 1930’s, Hitler began an enormous ship building program to increase the size and capabilities of the German navy. Several war ships, including battleships, cruisers, destroyers, submarines, and three new class ships, called pocket battleships, were constructed in German ship yards.

Unfortunately, the German navy was never able to eclipse British naval might. From the onset of the war, the British navy (despite some serious losses) was able to hunt down and destroy many of the newly built German boats. On December 17, 1939 the British won the first major naval battle of World War II, when they sunk the German pocket battleship Graf Spree (Doenitz). Another serious blow was dealt to the Germans the following year in the waters off Norway. The British seriously damaged the German battle cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau and sunk several destroyers. This was the beginning of a series of British victories that rendered the German navy incapable of providing protection for the transports that would be required to ferry an invasion army

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from continental Europe to England.

By June 1940, according to Winston Churchill, “The effective German Fleet consisted of no more than one (8-inch gun) cruiser, two light cruisers, and four destroyers. Although their damaged ships, like ours, could be repaired, the German Navy was no factor in the supreme issue of the invasion of Britain” (The Gathering Storm 519). Thus, before Germany had even defeated the Allied ground force in Western Europe, its navy had already become so weak that the only role it would have been capable of playing in the invasion of England would have been to operate troop transports.

Even the mundane requirement of transporting troops would be difficult for the German navy. Again, according to Churchill, “Germany had around 1,200,000 tons of seagoing shipping available to meet all her needs” (Their Finest Hour 271). An effective invasion force would have required half this amount, which would mean that other vital needs such as commercial shipping would have to be significantly curtailed or even halted. All tolled, the German navy was able to requisition 168 transports, 1,910 barges, 419 tugs and trawlers, and 1,600 motor-boats, some of them barely sea worthy (Their Finest Hour 271).

The invasion plan of the German army required that the navy land troops at a series of locations along the entire English southern coast. Given their meager resources, the navy informed the army that they had only enough capacity, if the Germans were able to maintain air supremacy, to undertake one passage at a time and only between the narrowest parts of the Straits of Dover (Their Finest Hour 269). The navy also informed the army that they could only land a small force to form a bridgehead, and would then require two additional days to bring reinforcements. Weather conditions were another complication. Operation Sea Lion would have to be completed by September 15, due to the seasonal deterioration of conditions in the North Sea and English Channel (on which the transports would sail) after that date.

Under these conditions, Hitler’s only hope for invading England rested with the Luftwaffe (German Air Force). If they were able to control the skies, not only would the RAF be of no danger to the German navy transports ferrying troops to England, but the Luftwaffe would also pose a significant threat to any British naval ships. Hopefully, this threat would force the British fleet to withdraw from the English Channel, making the German navy’s task even easier (von Manstein 165).

If the German Luftwaffe did not control the skies over England and the English Channel, the RAF and the British navy would be able to attack at will the German troop transports enroute to England and thwart any attempted invasion. Thus, the fate of England rested on the Royal Air Force. If the German Luftwaffe could destroy British air power, Operation Sea Lion could be launched. This struggle of air superiority came to be called the Battle of Britain.

The Germans began phase I of the air war. It was to last until September 6th, 1940. Luftwaffe Field Marshal Albert Kesselring wrote about his services objectives in A Soldier’s Record: “The first phase, from 8 August to 6 September 1940, includes the air preparations for the invasion contemplated for the middle of September;

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in other words, the elimination of the English air defence simultaneously with the continuation of the campaign against merchant shipping to strangle supply lines and to cripple air-force armament production. The methods employed ranged from air penetration by strong formations of fighters to irregular fighter and low-flying attacks on air bases in Southeast England, reinforced by raids on airfield and plants by single bomber formations of varying strength escorted by fighters” (Kesselring 73).

Despite constant attacks on vital components of Britain’s air defense, including air fields and aircraft production factories, the Luftwaffe could not knock the RAF from the sky. The cost was high on both sides. During this brief period, the RAF lost 500 fighters out of an initial strength of 700, while the Germans lost 800 fighters, bombers and reconnaissance planes (Kesselring 74).

However, the British were able to reinforce most of their loses. During the month of August, they produced 476 fighters alone (Their Finest Hour 640).

These planes would be rolled off the production line and put into use almost immediately. The Germans on the other hand, could not match this output, and every plane lost was a drain on their available combat air-fleet. This was a significant factor that seriously limited the fighter protection that could be provided to German bombers. Each German fighter plane could fly in combat over England for no more than 30 minutes. Without the fighters, the bombers were all alone and easy prey for the RAF. As the Germans continued their Phase I strategy, loses began to mount.

Despite the punishment being handed out to the Luftwaffe, the RAF was running into a very serious problem; it had too few pilots, and all of them were exhausted. During the first Phase, the RAF pilots had no chance to take a break from combat. Not only were they attacked in the air, but also at the airfields where they were based. They could get no rest, because they were always. They were flying into combat three, even four times a day. Even with the advantage of the best radar in the world, which allowed the RAF to scramble its pilots at the last possible minute in order to conserve fuel and be able to maximize the amount of time in the air, by September 1940, the endurance of the RAF pilots was near the breaking point.

At this pivotal moment, the Germans changed their strategy.

Kesserling explained the new objective as follows, “Our main assignments were now the disturbance of production and incoming supplies with the underlying purpose of slowing down British armament production and initiating a fullscale economic war” (Kesselring 80). Although Kesselring states that the new phase began on September 7, 1940, Churchill believes that it actually began following the crucial day of September 15, in which the Germans lost 56 planes.

Patrick Bishop agrees with Churchill in his book Fighter Boys: “There were many parties that night as the pilots celebrated the unusual feeling of being in control of their own skies. The next day’s newspapers presented 15 September as a great victory for the RAF and one of the most severe defeats the Luftwaffe had yet suffered, and they carried hugely inflated figures of the German losses” (Bishop 373). Whatever the exact date may have been, during this phase the Luftwaffe stopped directly attacking the RAF and started terrorizing British

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civilians. This phase saw the terror bombing of British cities, including the now famous London “blitz.” From September 7 to November 3, an average of 200 German bombers attacked London every night (Their Finest Hour 303).

Despite the deaths and mass destruction they caused, this new strategy gave the RAF and its pilots the break they needed. Now the pilots were able to take rest, recuperate and take leave. They no longer had to be constantly on standby at all hours of the day and night, and the airfields they flew from were no longer in danger of being completely destroyed. The new German strategy intended to bring Britain to its knees, actually had the opposite effect; it took the pressure off the RAF and allowed them to refit and regroup. From mid-September 1940 on, British air power grew stronger. The Luftwaffe had been on the verge of success during Phase I of the air battle. However, all was lost when it switched its strategy. The German air force failed its mission, and with its failure all hope of launching Sea Lion was lost.

Hitler had given instructions to have preparations for Sea Lion ready by the middle of August. At the end of July, he was told by the three military services that D-Day (invasion day) could come no earlier than September 15. On August 30, at the request of the navy, Hitler postponed D-Day until September 21. A few days later it was postponed to the 24 and yet again on the 14 (Their Finest Hour 274). Finally, on September 17, 1940, the invasion was called off with the pretense that it would have to wait until the spring of 1941.

The reason given was that the weather was no longer favorable. This might have been a valid point at the time, but everyone knew that there would be no invasion of England. The German navy was too weak and vulnerable to ferry troops across the English Channel, the air force was defeated, and thus the army would have to remain on continental Europe. The opportunity for invasion had come and gone. On June 21, 1941 Hitler turned his attention to the east and launched Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of The Soviet Union. The threat of invasion against England was finally gone and would not return. England and its Empire had stood alone against the tyrant, and now the coalition that would win World War II began to form.

Works Cited Primary Sources Cited: Churchill, Winston S. Their Finest Hour. London: Cassell & CO. LTD, 1949.

Churchill, Winston S. The Gathering Storm. London: Cassell & CO. LTD, 1948.

Churchill, Winston S. The Grand Alliance. London: Cassell & CO. LTD, 1950.

Doenitz, Grand Admiral Karl. Ten Years and Twenty Days. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1958.

Kesserling, Grand-Field Marshal Albert. A Soldier’s Record. New York:

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William Morrow & Company, 1954. von Manstein, Field Marshal Erich. Lost Victories. Osceola: Zenith Press, 2004.

Secondary Sources Cited: Bishop, Patrick. Fighter Boys. New York: Viking, 2003.

Shirer, William L. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. New York: MJF Books, 1990.

Primary Sources Consulted: Cunningham of Hyndhope, Viscount. A Sailor’s Odyssey. New York: E.P. Dutton & Company, INC., 1951.

Speer, Albert. Inside the Third Reich. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1970.

Townsend, Peter. Duel of Eagles. Edison: Castle Books, 2003.

Secondary Sources Consulted: Heaton, Colin D. “Final Thoughts of the Blond Knight.” World War II September 2002: 30-42, 85.

Jenkins, Roy. Churchill. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001.

Johnson, David Alan. “Americans in the Battle of Britain.”

American History Illustrated July/August 1990: 20-27.

Johnson, David Alan. “Winston Churchill’s Two Battles.” WWII History January 2002: 72-81.

Lippman, David H. “Showdown on the River Plate.” WWII History January 2004: 48-61.

Meacham, Jon. Franklin and Winston. New York: Random House, 2003.

O’Connor, Jerome. “In the Lair of the Wolf Pack.” World War II July 2002: 30-36.

Oxford, Edward. “Battle for the Atlantic.” American History Illustrated November/December 1993: 32-43.

Price, Alfred. “The Fuhrer’s Fighters.” World War II March 2002: 46-61.

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Shirer, William L. The Sinking of the Bismarck. New York: Random House, 1962.

Smith, Robert Barr. “All Alone.” WWII History March 2004: 54-57.

Taylor, John M. “Germany’s Hard-Luck Sea Raider.” World War II May 2003: 30-35.

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Kathleen Downs MTV: The Creators of a New American Culture

There have always been things that have defined generations, certain fads and trends that, when recalled, bookmark certain points in time. Sometimes it is clothing, sometimes it is a hairstyle, and sometimes it is one specific, iconic person. For the generations of the latter part of the twentieth century, it was MTV. What started as a television channel became one of the greatest pop-culture phenomena of all time. MTV would impact the American youth culture through music, television, social issues, and the way that they spend their money.

It all started in 1981 with the visions and dreams of two men, founder John Lack and designer Robert Pittman. The idea was derived from the fact that album sales were dwindling toward the end of the 1970s, but there was an obvious surge in the cable market (Williams 21). After extensive research of the market for an all-music television channel, it was decided that this could be the new way of channeling music to the masses (Williams 20). With the support of Warner Amex Satellite Entertainment Co., MTV was launched on August 1, 1981, with these famous words: “Ladies and Gentlemen, rock and roll” (Denisoff 37).

MTV’s influence began, of course, with music. When the channel first started, record labels would provide, free of charge, music videos to be placed in the MTV rotation. Within a few years, though, record companies realized that having a popular music video could be a vital indicator of how well an artist’s album would do. Michael Jackson’s music video “Thriller” is one of the greatest examples of this theory. In 1983, MTV put Jackson’s music video into heavy rotation, playing it some six or seven times a day. The album, also entitled “Thriller,” would go on to be one of the best selling albums of all time, selling close to 37 million units worldwide (Mercer 93–108). Successes like these have been attributed to the fact that viewers were able to connect the emotions and the messages that artists were trying to portray to their projected audience visually as opposed to interpretive listening of the pre-MTV generations. In 1989, Lawrence Grossberg, a cultural theorist and professor of communications studies at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, wrote, “Indeed, the ways that popular music and television are seen, made, and consumed have been transformed with the arrival of MTV” (254-268). But MTV’s influence would not stop with the world of music.

In 1992, after being purchased by the media giant, Viacom, MTV underwent a structural renovation. The executives decided that it was time to extend their focus from the limited world of music videos. What they ended up doing was creating a new type of television commonly referred to as “reality TV.” They called it “The Real World” even though the premise, in terms of the every day world of most teenagers, was far from reality. It was a world where seven attractive, young people live in an apartment where they could drink, hookup, and live without consequence for a couple months (Williams 80-81). It

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was a ratings hit—a must-see in millions of teenager’s homes across America.

It was followed up by such MTV shows as “Road Rules,” “Newlyweds,” “Punk’d,” “Viva La Bam,” “The Osbournes,” and countless other shows that required little thought and distorted reality with a corporate-manipulated world.

Along with reality shows, though, would also come the wave of shows that addressed social issues and encouraged teenagers to take active roles in their community.

MTV has addressed some important issues throughout its twentythree years of existence. For example, in 1998, MTV premiered its newest answer to an ever-changing culture, “True Life.” This show became a weekly documentary of how the youth of America deal with their own real-life, controversial issues. They have addressed subjects such as interracial dating, binge drinking, drugs, eating disorders, and homosexuality (MTV 1). It is through these shows that MTV has helped to promote tolerance in a generation known for its diverse composition. To many conservative parents across the nation, though, this is dangerous. In a movie produced by Christian company Reel to Reel Ministries, it was said that “Watching MTV is like playing Russian Roulette, you never know when the gun is going to go off” (“Examined”). It is networks such as MTV that are undermining their ideals and the things that they have always taught their children to view as immoral such as homosexuality and pre-marital sex. But, according to research done by Dr. Nancy L. Douglas at the University of Michigan- Dearborn, the opposite is true. In her study performed on middle school students she found the following results:

In an age when many think that young people rebel against the values of their parents to forge new identities for themselves, we were struck by the degree to which students internalized their parents’ values in deciding whether the artists were good or poor role models (Douglas).

The extent to which MTV and the images displayed by them affect young people is debatable, but most will agree that they do have an effect, either on their minds or on their spending habits. With the millions of loyal teenage viewers amassed by MTV, they also revolutionized the way in which teens are targeted in the marketing world. Instead of openly promoting a product or a certain fashion trend through billboards and commercials, advertisers merely had to give teenagers the illusion that they understood their culture and they would sell the product. Douglas Rushkoff, a professor of communications and author of eight books on new media and pop-culture, arranged the following scenario as an example of how this actually works: So let’s connect the dots. Sprite rents out the Roseland Ballroom and pays kids 50 bucks a pop to fill it up and look cool. The rap artists who perform for this paid audience get a plug on MTV’s show, Direct Effects, for which Sprite is a sponsor. MTV gobbles up the cheap programming, promoting the music of the record companies who advertise on their channel. Everybody’s happy (“Cool”).

So why does MTV have such an influential power? MTV is able to sell the idea of what is cool and what is acceptable in American culture, because they appeal to a teenager’s ideal look and environment. They understand that to the average, teenage girl, clothing, hairstyles and makeup are important. In

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turn, they display images of girls wearing the most current fashion trends and featuring the guise of the moment. They also appeal to the male sense of style.

Guys can learn how to dress and what hairstyle to wear by watching the actors and artists featured on the shows and music videos. They have even gone as far as promoting the ideal lifestyle through shows like “MTV: Cribs.” On this show, celebrities take viewers on a tour of their home and their automobiles, many of which are extravagant and lavish. To many teenagers, then, owning things such as these become the greatest indicators of one’s success.

But MTV goes even beyond the teenager’s wallet and how his or her money is spent. MTV has the ability to promote their ideals and social stances to young minds without giving the impression that the young people are being lectured. In fall of 2004, they decided that having such pop-culture figureheads as Sean “P. Diddy” Combs and Paris Hilton tell the youth of America that they should vote would be far more likely to spur political involvement in America’s youth than most attempts made by teachers and parents.

Questions arose concerning the motives behind the “Citizen Change” movement, though, when New York Daily News reported that Hilton did not even register to vote and P. Diddy’s “Vote or Die” shirts became the must-have fashion item of the season (Grove). The campaign also failed to encourage the voters to make an informed decision and simply told them to just vote. Ilya Somin, a professor at George Mason University Law School, sees this as a potentially dangerous approach. In a study entitled “When Ignorance Isn’t Bliss: How Political Ignorance Threatens Democracy,” Professor Somin wrote that “voter ignorance poses a serious danger to American democracy” and that “close to one-third of Americans can be categorized as ‘know-nothings’, almost completely ignorant of relevant political information” (qtd. in “Voter Ignorance”). Whether politically ignorant or not, though, voter turnout for ages 18-30 was up by 9.3% for the 2004 election (Fleischer 1). It has yet to be proven that MTV is solely responsible for this upsurge.

Joseph Scimecca, a professor of sociology at George Mason University, suggested in a November 2004 lecture that the reason why media such as MTV have a stronghold on American youth is because of a breakdown in the basic socialization process of children (Scimecca). MTV is doing in the 21st century what families, communities and churches did up until the mid-1900s. Now, with absentee-parents and a de-emphasis on strict, religious practices, kids are learning their ideals from a cable television channel. Time that was once spent conversing with family members over the dinner table is now being spent in front of a television or on the Internet. Children are being fed their set of ideals from a media conglomerate, a corporation which earns annual revenues in the multi-billions by simply telling kids what is acceptable and by what shallow standards they should measure their friends, themselves and the world. There has been a shift in society and MTV has definitely promoted momentum.

There is no question that MTV is a powerful force. They have the ability to make and break artists, to shape the minds of the youth everywhere and to promote their set of ideals and values to millions of children everyday.

They do this because they can, and because for the past twenty-three years, it has been profitable. It is not that they feel a deep moral obligation to nurture the

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abandoned minds of teens in America; rather, they see them as an easy target to propagate the products and habits that keep MTV revenues on the rise. Indeed, popular culture influences in society are inevitable; they are part of the structure.

But, should they be the foundation on which the minds of the America’s future build their logic, values and belief system? And if so, what will be the next driving force—the next big thing to shape generations in the profound way that MTV has?

Works Cited Denisoff, Serge R. Inside MTV. New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1990.

Douglas, Nancy. Critical Media Literacy. 2001. 19 Nov. 2004. <http://www. umd.umich.edu/mitten/ndouglas/introduction.htm>.

Fleischer, Michael. “Voter Turnout Up Sharply in 2004.” Center for Information and Researchon Civic Learning and Engagement. 3 Nov. 2004: 1. 12 April 2005 <http://www.civicyouth.org/PopUps/Release_Turnout2004.pdf>.

Grossberg, Lawrence. “MTV: Swinging on a (Postmodern) Star.” Cultural Politics in Contemporary America. Ed. I. Angus and S. Jhally. New York: Routledge, 1989. 254–268.

Grove, Lloyd. “Celeb ‘Voters’ Poll a Fast One.” New York Daily News 3 Nov. 2004: 1. 12 April 2005 <http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/249134p213102c.html>.

Mercer, Kobena. “Monster Metaphors: Notes on Michael Jackson’s Thriller.”

Sound and Vision: The Music Video Reader. Ed. Simon Frith, Andrew Goodwin, and Lawrence Grossberg. New York: Routledge, 1993. 93–108.

MTV Examined. Reel to Reel Ministries, 1994.

MTV Networks. True Life: About the Show. 2004. MTVN Direct Inc. 19 Nov. 2004. <http://mtv.com/onair/dyn/truelife/about.jhtml>.

“Professor Ilya Somin’s Voter Ignorance Study Continues to Receive National Attention.” George Mason University Law School. 16 April 2005.

Scimecca, Joseph. “Mass Media.” George Mason University, Fairfax, VA. The Merchants of Cool. Dir. Neil Doherty. Narr. Douglas Rushkoff. PBS Video, 2001.

Williams, Kevin. Why I [Still] Want My MTV. New Jersey: Hampton Press, Inc., 2003.80–81.

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Ada Valaitis How An Underground Phenomenon Becomes Mainstream: Tracing the Transitions of Visual, Linguistic, and Thematic Modes of Youth Rebellion From CKY Through to Viva La Bam

Skateboarding, as a subculture, has oscillated between being on the periphery of and in the limelight of mainstream society. It is consistently associated by mainstream society with youth rebellion, independent of where it is on the cycle of its oscillations. As an individual activity, skateboarding rebels against organized team sports. More importantly, there are significant cultural aspects to skateboarding that are non-physical, such as music, visual arts, and clothing. In the street skate style, public spaces are subverted; for instance, transition, or vert skating, re-contextualizes the utility of swimming pools and other curved, walled surfaces. Skaters also design and build skate specific ramps and parks separated from the non-skating world. Jocko Weyland, in his book The Answer is Never: A Skateboarder’s History of the World writes, “Being a skater means a life lived differently, in pursuit of something elusive. Skateboarding is misunderstood because it is outside the normal scheme of things. It is a singular activity with fluctuating and contradictory philosophies, a true subculture that has resisted attempts at going mainstream.

It’s ugly and beautiful at the same time, a physical activity that isn’t really a sport but is definitely a way of life” (7). In the subculture of skateboarding, the maneuvering between underground and mainstream elicits a discourse on the rebellion shown therein.

Bam Margera, in the first episode of Viva La Bam, exemplifies these rebellious elements of skateboarding when he builds a series of ramps in and throughout his home. Bam, in both his physical skating abilities and his public persona, is a ripe example of the complexities found within skateboarding and its relationship to mainstream society. By comparing Viva La Bam: The Complete First Season and its earlier installments—the CKY and CKY2K videos, the subsequent Jackass series and movie—one can trace the evolution of visual, thematic, and co-modified elements in each. Transitions in the personas, the activities, the packaging and the techniques of representation mark the emergence of a branded, commercial venture. In order both to appeal and be available to a mass youth audience, a phenomenon of a subculture (in this instance skateboarding and skaters filming themselves performing stunts), has to make and/or undergo significant visual, linguistic, and thematic changes.

The Bam brand began as an underground collective of skaters taping themselves performing stunts and acting out. CKY was the first publicly available product, released in a limited fashion in 1999, featuring skateboarding and stunts recorded with hand-held cameras. The title CKY is taken from the name of a band, Camp Kill Yourself, in which Jesse Margera, Bam’s brother, who is also featured in the videos and the television series, plays drums. It is the product of a small group of friends, made for the pleasure of an equally small audience. Originally, CKY’s principal mode of distribution was through mail

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order advertisements in skateboarding publications. Now the CKY videos are widely available, through such mainstream distribution channels as mtv.com (CKY trilogy available from The MTV Shop for $20.48. mtvshop.mtv.com). The wide availability of the product is due to the support of an outside distribution source, MTV.

The involvement of a non-participatory adult figure enables the transition from underground to mainstream. Alissa Quart in her book Branded: The Buying and Selling of Teenagers, writes about adults who help propel teen literary sensations by association with their own name. Quart notes the example of Nick McDonnell, author of the book Twelve. As McDonnell is the godson of Hunter S. Thompson, association with a famous author, Quart argues, helped to boost book sales. Hunter S. Thompson, a prominent writer for many decades and perhaps best known for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, has, according to Quart “sung the praises of Twelve” (Quart, 171). Such a familial relation is not the only way to gain an “adult adulator.” Quart also tells about literary sensation JT LeRoy: “JT LeRoy contacted novelists Mary Gaitskill and Dennis Cooper, and also songwriter Suzanne Vega, who embraced the charismatic LeRoy when he was still in his mid-teens” (Quart, 172). Such “adult adulation” was also a factor in the transition from CKY to Viva La Bam. The adult support of a major media outlet, represented by the brand MTV, affects this change through methods including the financing of production, marketing, and the provision of tools needed to release and distribute Viva La Bam to a large youth audience.

The “adult adulators” enable and promote the youth, whether personified by authors or skateboarding pranksters. MTV serves not only as the distributor, but also as the symbolic “adult adulator” of the Bam brand.

The appeal of Viva La Bam to a young audience is apparent in several visual, audible, linguistic, and thematic elements of the program. The opening credits sequence establishes a “connection” with the youth audience, as it is quickly paced, brightly colored, stylized, and accompanied by a memorable soundtrack. Bam is riding in or atop his orange H2 Hummer. His crew, in the car, flail and spaz about, punching one another in a visual stirring of energy and rebellion. Each character is introduced by name: Bam Margera, Bam’s father (Phil Margera), Bam’s mother (April Margera), Bam’s uncle (Don Vito), and Bam’s crew (Ryan Dunn, Raab Himself, Brandon DiCamillo, Rake Yohn). In the second season of Viva La Bam, airing on MTV, a similar stylized, fast-paced intro segment includes a deep voiceover asking this rhetorical question: “He’s Bam Margera, what will he do next?” Bam answers as he pops from out of the lip of a skateboard ramp: “Whatever the fuck I want.”

This explicit statement of rebellion both reflects the tone of the program, as Bam does do whatever he wants, and also becomes a recognizable mantra, as Bam is selling the “rebel” image. The economical, five word form of the statement illustrates the evolution of language from CKY through to Viva La Bam. In the opening segment of Jackass, the second vehicle of the Bam brand, the attractive and charismatic Johnny Knoxville introduces the program with this warning to viewers: “The following show features stunts performed by either by professionals or under the supervision of professionals. Accordingly, MTV and the producers must insist that no one attempt to recreate or re-enact any stunt

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or activity performed on this show” (Jackass). He goes on to say, “My name is Johnny Knoxville. Welcome to Jackass.” The subtly ironic statements of Knoxville and the explicit declaration of Bam, through repetition and association with the main characters in the programs, are powerful devices of effective branding.

How language is visually represented on screen also evolves in the progression from CKY through to Viva La Bam. In CKY, the stunts are a random mix of situations- skate montages are intermixed with scenes of Bam, seated in a shopping cart, being run into a median by Brandon Di Camillo. Sometimes the participants narrate their activities and at other times they don’t. Jackass brands itself as a product via the insertion of graphically rendered titles that identify each of the stunts and segments. With these graphic insertions, the stunts are now named entities, readily identifiable by viewers. As such, they are both more easily consumed. What in CKY was just Bam Margera running around, flailing his arms, rolling on the green of a golf course, annoying the golfers (symbolic “adults” to rebel against), in Jackass becomes “Golf Course Airhorn” (Jackass, scene 36). Such graphically inserted labels/titles are used in every Viva La Bam episode. For example, within the first two and a half minutes of episode 8, “Scavenger Hunt,” the following stylized, colorful, full screen language graphic insertions appear: “Cars for the HUNT/ And the teams are.../ Gnar KillScavanger, Vert, Street, Hunter/ Policia- Driver, Shotgun, Driver #2/ LadyboyLady, Boy, Neurosurgeon/ Guest Starring/ Bloodhound Gang- Jimmy Pop, Evil Jared, Guinea Pig, Rick the Driver.”

The evolutionary change in the use of visual labels from CKY to Jackass exemplifies the modes by which production of a series through the successful reception of repeated language (“Whatever the fuck I want”) and the recurring inclusion of visual labels (“Golf Course Airhorn”), the young audience concedes that there is now a title for a particular stunt and that the stunt itself has a particular invariable identity. A consequence of the concession is that, what is originated within a representational act of rebellion becomes, in its own evolution to mainstream consumption, a method by which the rebellion is sublimated. The consumers “choose” to return time and again to MTV programming to watch the series, and thus can begin the process of further consumption of the subculture of skateboarding.

Skateboarding montages make up a significant part of the CKY video, interspersed with the stunts. In these skate montage scenes, CKY is indistinguishable from standard skate videos. The actual act of skateboarding plays a lesser role (in terms of time allotted to montages) in the Jackass and Viva La Bam programs. And yet, skateboards, skate montage, and professional skateboarders are a significant part in the visual presentation of the program, both as the episodes air and also on the mtv.com Viva La Bam website.

Quart, in her book Branded: The Buying and Selling of Teenagers, includes a chapter entitled “More Than a (Video) Game.” Here she explores the popularity of the “Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3” video game, and the marketing opportunities available and used therein. She identifies the pervasive product placement in video games. She interviews both young and older skaters to observe different views on the inclusion of consumer goods in the “Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3”

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video game (97-106). This section of the video game industry, in its intersection with skateboarding, creates not only consumers for its products, but also consumers of skateboarding products. Quart states, “The gamers who now play ‘Tony Hawk’ are typically not skaters first; they may get on boards after they have learned about ollies or toe grabs from their Playstations” (106). Becoming involved in skateboarding requires a significant financial commitment. A quick look at the CCS (California Cheap Skates) skateboarding catalog online store reveals the amount of money that can be spent on becoming a skater.

First a kid buys “Tony Hawk’s Underground 2” the latest installment in the Tony Hawk series, available at Amazon.com for $45.79. To be a skater, one needs some gear: a complete skateboard—Element Bam Heart Complete $114.99, shoes—Adio Bam V2 $69.99, t-shirt- Transworld “Arrest me, I’m A Skateboarder” tee $18.99, pants—Volcom cargo pants $54.99, backpackIndependent Burnside bag $34.99 (ccs.com). The total: $339.74. This estimate does not even include protective gear, skate park membership, skate magazine subscriptions, hats, stickers, and skate videos. The amount of money that can be made by the video game industry, clothing manufacturers, skateboarding companies, and specialty retailers from a young skater is significant, and thus maintaining the coolness and popularity of skateboarding is a top priority.

In a revealing example of how a mainstream outlet, namely MTV, maintains the appeal of skateboarding, language again is central device.

The MTV website includes a section for Viva La Bam. This page has show schedules, questions with the cast, merchandise for sale, and a section entitled “Skate Speak.” An online, real time quiz can be taken to measure and confirm your skate lingo prowess. Within the pop-up quiz, a tag line asks: “So you walk the walk, but can you talk the talk? We’ve pulled together an impressive collection of skate lingo—some are pure punk and others are straight-up poser.

Can you tell the legit skate speak from the phony baloney?” (mtv.com). The use of slang words, such as “pure punk,” aimed at a young audience, immediately sets the tone of the activity—candid, humorous, and self-serious. The direct line of questioning is an imperative interrogative device that elicits both the need and the ability to do well on the quiz. Doing well on the quiz is an elementary proof that you are a skater, or can at least “Talk the talk.” I took the quiz and did well for a while. A correct answer elicited a positive response such as, “Correct. Ok now we’re going somewhere.” Whereas, an incorrect response was followed by, “Wrong. We nearly pissed our pants laughing so hard! Boy, you suck” (mtv. com). The role that being considered cool plays in the need for acceptance is demonstrated precisely in this format.

The act of branding as a means to transition from subculture to mainstream is not limited to the identification of personas, visual effects, and commercialization. Quart, in the chapter “X-Large and X-Small” describes selfbranding to include such extreme measures as body branding through cosmetic surgery, pro-anorexia, and dietary supplementation. Bam, in one of his modes of self-branding, has appropriated the logo of HIM, a Finnish metal band. This logo, which itself has a name, the heartagram, is a heart forming three points in a pentagram. While Jackass also has a readily identifiable logo—a skull and crossbones, (the crossbones are a pair of crutches), this logo does not enjoy the

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marketability (t-shirts, stickers, skateboards) that the heartagram has achieved.

While Bam promotes the band HIM on Viva La Bam, the successful recontextualization of the heartagram is the product of Bam’s own self-branding.

It is unclear to what extent the heartagram maintains a meaning independent of Bam. Episode 4 in Viva La Bam, entitled “Viva Las Vegas,” chronicles Bam and Don Vito’s trip to a tattoo shop, where Don Vito gets a heartagram tattoo. The tattoos (Bam gets one as well), are but one of a series of actions that exemplify rebellion. In fact, tattoos, historically taboo, are means of self branding. The branded body is a billboard for the branded individual. Bam declares in the tattoo shop: “That’s the coolest thing that you can do” (Viva La Bam, episode 4). This declaration, in its poignant precision, is entirely consistent with the use of language found in mediums such as the “Skate Speak” quiz. The visual implication of Don Vito’s tattoo of Bam’s appropriated logo is that participation in self-branding is as achievable as passing the “Skate Speak” quiz.

In the transition from CKY to Viva La Bam, there is a change in the thematic modes of rebellion as presented in the stunts. CKY appeals to youth in part because it represents rebellion as physical acts of a kind with those that can be achieved through skateboarding. However, a more potent thematic representation of rebellion is found in actions against a visible authority figure, mostly, though not limited to Bam Margera’s parents. Throughout the trajectory from underground to mainstream, this mode of rebellion becomes more central to the themes of the show. In CKY and CKY2K, the crew, led by Bam, can be seen rebelling against authority figures and adults. In a scene in CKY2K, the stunt involves kicking a football into passing traffic, and hitting cars with the ball. The adult drivers are angry and reprimand the boys. The reactions of the adults create a tone of rebellion as the crew talks their way out of a sticky situation.

The appeal of rebellion is more directly expressed in Viva La Bam. The impetus for the show, as the introduction sequence states, is so that Bam can do “Whatever the fuck I want.” This rebellion recurrently comes at the expense of, or pushes against Bam’s parents, Phil and April Margera. The first episode on Viva La Bam DVD is “Phil’s Hell Day.” The title speaks for itself. Bam irons hamburgers on all of Phil’s clothes, builds a fire pole in the middle of the house, and demolishes Phil’s van. These transgressions against parental authority would in themselves be potent rebellion, especially if they were enacted with some pursuant consequence. However, here the rebellion is redoubled because there is no representation of any consequence whatsoever.

The parental authority has been so thoroughly subverted that some actions by the parents seem as childish as Bam’s. In Episode 7 “April’s Revenge,” the roles of prankster and pranked are reversed as April goes after Bam and his crew.

While Bam’s parents are prominent figures, the show is titled Viva La Bam, not Viva La Bam’s Parents. Rebellion against your own parents is, within the Viva La Bam show, the ultimate act of rebellion, and also the easiest and most familiar. The reactions of the parents, particularly the vocal admonitions of April Margera (her high pitched voice screaming BAAAAMM!), are both the fodder that feeds rebellion and also signal the accomplishment of it. Because Bam is able to perform outlandish stunts, he builds a skate park in the house,

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demolishes the entrance to the house to build a moat, paints the entire kitchen blue, and convinces the whole town of West Chester, Pennsylvani, “Don’t Feel Phil” (Episode 2). His appeal and that of the show has moved from the smaller stunts of CKY to home rebuilding, trips to Vegas, and celebrity guest stars (Bloodhound Gang, Tony Hawk, Turbonegro), all of whom have rebellious appeal.

The phenomenon of skaters taping themselves performing stunts has undergone changes in order to be available to and appeal to a mass youth audience. In looking at the visual, linguistic, and thematic changes from CKY through to Viva La Bam, one is able to trace the transition from underground to mainstream. This transition was not independent of the involvement of a large scale distributor and symbolic “adult adulators,” namely MTV programming and Mtv.com. Viva La Bam, now in its third season, continues to appeal to mass youth audiences through modes of rebellion.

Works Cited CCS. California Cheap Skates Products. http://shop.ccs.com/catalog/browse/ productgroup CKY. Dir. Bam Margera, 1999.

CKY2K. Dir. Bam Margera, 2000.

Jackass: The Movie. Dir. Jeff Tremain. Paramount Pictures, 2002.

MTV Shop. mtvshop.mtv.com Quart, Alissa. Branded: The Buying and Selling of Teenagers. New York: Perseus, 2003.

“Skate Speak Quiz” Viva La Bam Website. www.mtv.com/onair/dyn/viva_la_ bam/series.jhtml Viva La Bam- The Complete First Season 2003. Paramount Home Video, 2004.

Weyland, Jocko. The Answer is Never: A Skateboarder’s History of the World.

New York: Grove Press, 2002.

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Michael Willems -

Eel Anxiety: The Role of Food in Aristophanes “O loved, and lost, and longed for, thou art come, A presence grateful to the comic choirs, […]

Behold, my lads, the best of all eels, O children, welcome her; to you I’ll give A charcoal fire for this sweet stranger’s sake.

Out with her! Never may I lose her again, Not even in death, my darling dressed in- beet.”

(Acharnians, 885-894)

If Aristophanes’ Acharnians was one’s first contact with classical comedy, this mock-tragic passage concerning an eel would be completely opaque. One might be tempted to dismiss it as merely an oddball moment; after all, humor thrives on incongruity. But this slippery customer recurs in Acharnians, pops up again in Knights, and gets a further mention in Wasps.

Eventually, one is forced to ask, What’s all the fuss about an eel, anyway? Food plays a prominent role in Old Comedy, a role that is complicated by our own lack of understanding about ancient eating habits. Careful comediographers, like Aristophanes, used the associations attached to food to produce specific effects on their audience, to draw certain connections which are in large part opaque to us. It is my assertion that food and eating in Classical Athens were politically and morally charged, and adduce as evidence the body of Attic Comedy. Many of the jokes surrounding food are nonsensical without presupposing a certain moral or political attitude towards that food. While other ancient comediographers involved food in their work to varying degrees, none was as outspoken on matters culinary as Aristophanes. He will provide the bulk of the banquet, with occasional sampling from secondary sources.

Acharnians is the board most heavily laden with food, so it will be examined first. Dicaeopolis, fed up with war, makes a separate peace with Sparta. The primary effect of that peace is the opening of his market place, where traders from cities at war with Athens come to exchange foodstuffs made unavailable by the war. A Megarian tradesman arrives:

MEGARIAN Come, poor little daughters of an unfortunate father, try

to find something to eat; listen to me with the full heed of an empty

belly. Which would you prefer? To be sold or to cry with hunger?

DAUGHTERS To be sold, to be sold!

MEGARIAN That is my opinion too. But who would make so sorry

a deal as to buy you? Ah! I recall me a Megarian trick; I am going

to disguise you as little porkers, that I am offering for sale. Fit your

hands with these hoofs and take care to appear the issue of a sow

of good breed, for, if I am forced to take you back to the house, by

Hermes! you will suffer cruelly of hunger! Then fix on these snouts and

cram ourselves into this sack. Forget not to grunt and to say wee-wee

like the little pigs that are sacrificed in the Mysteries.

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(Acharnians, 730-743)

He then proceeds to sell his ‘pigs,’ which are in fact his daughters. He exchanges them for garlic and salt, commodities controlled by Athens. He is selling them because he cannot feed them; this, combined with the fact that he is selling them as foodstuffs, in exchange for foodstuffs, clearly characterizes the war in terms of food and hunger. Nor will this be the only time we see women conflated with food. Just after the Megarian, in fact, comes a Boeotian bringing:

BOEOTIAN All that is good in Boeotia, marjoram, penny-royal, rush-

mats, lampwicks, ducks, jays, woodcocks, water-fowl, wrens, divers.

DICAEOPOLIS A regular hail of birds is beating down on my market.

BOEOTIAN I also bring geese, hares, foxes, moles, hedgehogs, cats,

lyres, martins, otters and eels from the Copaic lake.

DICAEOPOLIS Ah! my friend, you, who bring me the most delicious

of fish, let me salute your eels.

BOEOTIAN (in tragic style) Come, thou, the eldest of my fifty Copaic

virgins, come and complete the joy of our host.

(Acharnians, 873-884)

The exchange ends with the tragic ode to an eel quoted above. Note, furthermore, that virtually everything brought by the Boeotian merchant is food, and again, desire for a woman is compared to desire for food (Davidson, 10). Aristophanes is articulating his resistance to the war along culinary lines for two reasons. The obvious reason is that reducing anxiety over serious and complex political situations to concern over filling one’s belly is intrinsically humorous (about on a par with Freedom Fries in our day and age). There is a less obvious and more subversive reason, however, and it shows Aristophanes to be an astute psychologist. Regardless of what personal stake members of his audience have in the war, regardless of their position in society, they are affected by wartime food shortages: the rich miss imported delicacies, now contraband because of the war, and the poor, like the poor Megarian, are having trouble finding anything to eat at all. By recreating the war in terms of hunger, Aristophanes can subtly appeal to his audiences on the most basic level. This is carried forward later when Lamachus, a general and proponent of the war, sends to the market offering three drachmas for an eel (43). Now as Davidson notes, “A good wage for a skilled laborer around the end of the 5th century was one drachma (six obols) a day.”(186) Three drachmas, then, would be three day’s wages for a skilled laborer. By way of a loose comparison, a modern skilled laborer (brickmason, carpenter, construction worker, etc.) can expect to earn approximately $3181 in three days (U.S. Census Bureau). Lamachus is closely identified with the war; his spending that kind of money on a contraband luxury would inflame an audience earning an average of a drachma a day. It serves to reinforce the sense of wrong the audience was already beginning to feel in their bellies, putting their sympathies firmly behind Dicaeoplis when he refuses to sell Lamachus so much as an anchovy. Lamachus soon is called to the wars and Dicaeopolis is called to a feast and drinking contest. Eventually, they engage in a mock stichomythia that directly contrasts war and food:

LAMACHUS Slave! slave! my knapsack!

DICAEOPOLIS Slave! slave! a basket!

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LAMACHUS Take salt and thyme, slave, and don’t forget the onions.

DICAEOPOLIS Get some fish for me; I cannot bear onions. […]

LAMACHUS Bring me the plumes for my helmet.

DICAEOPOLIS Bring me wild pigeons and thrushes.

LAMACHUS How white and beautiful are these ostrich feathers!

DICAEOPOLIS How fat and well browned is the flesh of this wood-

pigeon!

LAMACHUS (to DICAEOPOLIS) My friend, stop scoffing at my

armour.

DICAEOPOLIS (to LAMACHUS) My friend, stop staring at my

thrushes.

(Acharnians, 1097-1109)

And it goes on in this way for some distance, ending with both men going off to their respective contests. The results are as one might expect: Lamachus is defeated, and returns wounded, and Dicaeopolis returns the victor of a drinking contest, with two beautiful women on his arms. Clearly, Aristophanes is setting up a false comic dichotomy between the enjoyment of life (symbolized by food), and the wages of war, hoping to stir up longing for peace in the hearts of his audience. This identification of food with wartime politics is taken up again in Peace when War intends to grind the Greek cities to dust with a mortar and pestle:

WAR Oh! Prasiae! thrice wretched, five times, aye, a thousand times

wretched! for thou shalt be destroyed this day. (He throws some leeks

into the mortar.) […]

WAR Oh! Megara! Megara! utterly are you going to be ground up!

what fine mincemeat are you to be made into!

(He throws in some garlic.) […]

WAR (throwing in some cheese) Oh, Sicily! you too must perish! Your

wretched towns shall be grated like this cheese. Now let us pour some

Attic honey into the mortar. (He does so.)

(Peace, 238-253)

Here War sets to grinding, and by way of demonstration he throws foodstuffs imported from different cities to stand as synecdoche for the cities themselves. Absurdly, a Panhellenic war is likened to preparing a dish for dinner. This presages a certain change in tone concerning food. Dicaeopolis’s love affair with food is portrayed in a unilaterally wholesome light, but Aristophanes later displays a very different attitude towards love of food, likening gluttony to rapacity.

For example, in Knights, the Sausage Seller seeks to replace Paphlagon (Cleon) as rascal-in-chief of Athens and their argument quickly turns to food:

CLEON Can you match me with a rival? Me? When I have devoured a

good hot tunny-fish and drunk on top of it a great jar of unmixed wine.

I say “to Hell with the generals of Pylos!”

SAUSAGE-SELLER And I, when I have bolted the tripe of an ox together with a sow’s belly and swallowed the broth as well, I am fit, though slobbering with grease, to bellow louder than all orators

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and to terrify Nicias.

(Knights,353-358)

Here they attempt to outdo one another not only in demagoguery but in gluttony. Aristophanes is making fun of the luxurious lives these “friends of the people” live, growing fat at public expense, but he is also drawing a connection between two different kinds of behavior: one is obviously rapacious (eating too much), and the other is less obviously rapacious (leading the people through flattery and petty tricks). Likewise, earlier in Knights: “I denounce him; he runs into the Prytaneum2 with an empty belly and comes out with it full . . . And by Zeus! he carries off bread, meat, and fish, which is forbidden. Pericles himself never had this right”(63). Aristophanes again characterizes the vice of Cleon in terms of gluttony. He also engages in a common conceit: comparing the rogue’s gallery of present public servants with the better ones of days gone by (Pericles).

Later the Sausage Seller gains the ear of the Senate by announcing that the price of anchovies has dropped, and then declaring a public sacrifice twice as large as the one proposed by Cleon (Knights, 76). These “sacrifices” were sacrifices in only the most nominal sense; they amounted to enormous feasts at the public expense, which would naturally be quite popular with the populace at large (Davidson, 12). Again food drives politics, the gluttony of the assembly echoing the gluttony of their leaders.

And if Aristophanes had not drawn the connection between gluttony and political corruption clearly enough, near the end of Knights the Sausage Seller curses Cleon:

For me no threat-only one simple wish. That you may be having some

cuttle-fish fried on the stove just as you are going to set forth

to plead the cause of the Milesians, which, if you gain it, means a

talent3 in your, pocket; that you hurry over devouring the fish to rush

off to the Assembly; suddenly you are called and run off with

your mouth full so as not to lose the talent and choke yourself. There!

that is my wish.

(Knights, 927-940)

This somewhat negative treatment of food, specifically seafood, continues in other plays. Eating seafood is enumerated among Bad Logic’s vices in Clouds (983). Likewise, in Wasps, choosing luxury items (seafood again) is jokingly characterized as anti-democratic:

Everything is now tyranny with us, no matter what is concerned […] now it is more common than salt-fish, the word is even current on the market.

If you are buying gurnards and don’t want anchovies, the huckster next door, who is selling the latter, at once exclaims, “That is a man whose kitchen savours of tyranny!” (Wasps, 488-495)

Food and eating were consistently given a political and moral dimension by Aristophanes, but the qualities of those dimensions were different at different times. And why was seafood, in particular, targeted? We come back to the original question: “What’s all the fuss about an eel, anyway?” Davidson has written extensively on the subject of the many-faceted role of seafood in classical Athens, and the following passage represents his conclusions on the matter:

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“Eating fish was free of a prehistory commemorated in festival banquets, or Homer’s epics, or Platonic recollections of the primitive condition.

It was not a serious or venerable activity. Fish were not slaughtered or distributed in a ritualized symbolic context. Fish stood outside the theater of sacrifice and outside official banquets. It had no public role or responsibilities, free to play itself, the quintessential modern commodity fully fetishized for the private consumer” (Davidson, 20).

To the conservative, religious, publicly-oriented society of 5th century Athens, seafood was an uncomfortably slippery substance. No traditional religious or civic significance was attached to it: seafood was a thing inherently desirable, not because it was life-sustaining, but because it brought pleasure.

Nor was seafood the only such source of discomfort. It was simply more visible, more tangible, and more easily addressed than other more serious issues of public morality. Which is not to say that Aristophanes did not address deeper social issues, he just often did so through the medium of pleasure (food, wine and especially sex). Moses Hadas notes that “the comic poet was something like a newspaper columnist, and as in the case of thoughtful columnists it happened that Aristophanes’ comments on all questions followed a consistent direction. The direction is at all points conservative. Aristophanes plainly does not like the relaxation of traditional standards which attended the rise of democratic power and looks back wistfully to the soberer ways of earlier days” (8).

Seafood was merely a favored metonym for vice and the collapse of traditional morality. It would seem, then, that all the “fuss about the eel” was essentially an attempt to articulate a deep distrust of the pursuit of private pleasure at the expense of public welfare. Aristophanes’ peculiar treatment of food is another expression of the passionate cultural conservatism typical of his mature work.

Works Cited Aristophanes. The E-Server Drama Collection. Trans. Anonymous http://drama. eserver.org/plays/classical/aristophanes/ [In-text quotations are drawn from this site, and checked against Hadas {infra} for accuracy] Aristophanes. The Complete Plays of Aristophanes. Ed. Moses Hadas. New York: Bantam, 1962.

Davidson, James. Courtesans and Fishcakes. New York: HarperCollins, 1999.

Hadas, Moses. Introduction. The Complete Plays of Aristophanes. Ed. Moses Hadas. New York: Bantam, 1962. 1-12 U.S. Census Bureau. Table PINC-06: Occupation of Longest Job in 2003-People 15 Years Old and Over, by Total Money Earnings in 2003, Work Experience In 2003, Race, Hispanic Origin, and Sex. http://pubdb3.census.gov/ macro/032004/perinc/new06_001.htm

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(Footnotes) 1

The U.S. census bureau gives the median income for construction workers as $26,508.00 per annum in 2003. Five working days per week and fifty working weeks per year yields app. $106 a day.

2

The City Hall of Athens, where distinguished citizens and foreign dignitaries dined.

3

A â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;talentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; was an ancient monetary unit representing about six thousand drachmas vide supra for the app. value of a drachma (Davidson, 185)

65

Kyle Purdy Theoretical Study on Interaction Potentials for the Interstellar Interaction between Methanol and Hydrogen Kyle A. Purdy and Dr. Stephen L. Davis George Mason University, Chemistry Department Summary

A theoretical study on the interaction between methanol and hydrogen, as a possible source for interstellar star formation, has been carried out. The relative interaction energies were obtained through calculations using two basis sets, the double and triple zeta. The interaction potentials were obtained through calculations at the second-order Moller-Plesset theory. These calculations demonstrate how the relative position of the molecules in space affect whether the interaction is repulsive or attractive. In addition, the ab initio values were fit to a 24 and 48-point angular expansion and displayed a high levels of convergence at both the long and short range with respect to grid size. It was found however, that close range interactions do not necessarily converge with respect to basis set size, where as the long range interactions do show convergence for basis sets.

Introduction

The hydrogen molecule is the most prominent molecule in interstellar space, approximately four times the amount of interstellar helium. Methanol is present as well. Unlike most other neutral molecules in deep space, methanol is capable of undergoing spectroscopic transitions at radio and microwave frequencies.

This can ultimately prove useful in understanding what is happening in some regions of interstellar space1. For most intermolecular interactions, the interaction potentials are not well known so it is the goal of the theoretical scientists to investigate the potential energy surface and evaluate the dynamics of the collision. In interstellar space several molecules have been identified.

The known molecules are greatly vast to terrestrial scientists however some are difficult to confirm such as cation species PNH2+.2 Well known molecules in interstellar space include methanol and hydrogen, which are the molecules of interest for this research.

Interaction potentials are very important in understanding molecular substrates and how they interact with one another. The variational method is a possible way to evaluate the magnitude of the interaction energy. Accuracy in this method shows a major dependence on the quality of the size of the basis set employed to describe each of the interacting substrates. Using a finite basis set in the calculation of interaction potentials allows for a basis set superposition error. The basis set used to represent each one of the interacting system also serves to improve the description of each other3. If we look at an interaction

66

between two molecules the interaction energy is given by

∆E ( A B ) = E( A B ) − E ( A) − E ( B) (1) where E(AB) is the energy of the interaction between the interacting species and E(A) and E(B) are the energies of the substrates which are the methanol and hydrogen. Basis set superposition error occurs when the three terms on the right hand side of Equation 1 are not computed with saturated basis sets, that is the amount of functions in each are not equivalent. When BSSE occurs it may lead to unphysical results in which can lead to a misrepresentation and misinterpretation of the interacting system in that the magnitude of the energy is substrate heavy3. The basis set superposition error may be overcome by implementing the Boys and Bernadi’s functional counterpoise method4.

It is of great importance to note that the accuracy of a basis set depends heavily on the number of functions contained by each. The DZ basis set possesses 100 functions, the Green basis possesses 132, and the TZ possesses 230. However, since a larger basis sets require more computational time an interpolation method was evaluated which would allow a minimization of the TZ grid size. Reducing the number of theta data points by half would greatly shorten computational time but not the accuracy. This method is possible because the energies of the lower and larger basis set run parallel to one another. This interpolation method was carried out by the following equation 1

V TZ = V DZ + ( V TZ − V DZ ) + (V TZ − V DZ ) est

2

o +1

o +1

o −1

o −1

(2) where the VTZ is the desired energy at a specific point in space.

The interacting system can be described in fixed space with coordinates R,Ө,Φ,α, and β. Methanol is fixed in space while the hydrogen is rotated around the molecule and rotated around it own axis. The R parameter is the radial distance from the methanol center to the hydrogen center of mass. Hydrogen’s orientation with respect to methanol is given by two parameters; Ө is measured with respect to the z axis and the angle Φ is measured in the xz plane. Hydrogen has its own axis of rotation and are described by the angles α and β. Calculations of interaction potentials up to Φ=180 were necessary because of the symmetry of the methanol molecule, further calculations of a greater Φ would have resulted in redundant interaction energies.

Orthonormality may be used to obtain the expansion coefficients to yield the u(R) coefficients that are defined by the double spherical harmonic expansion. The interaction potential is given by

V ( R,q , f , a , b ) = ∑ u l1m1l2 m2 ( R) Yl1 ,m1 (q , f )Yl2 ,m2 (a , b )

(3) where the u-coefficients are multiplied by spherical harmonics to yield interaction energy. Due to rotational invariance, physically meaningful quantities like the interaction potential depend on a smaller number of relative fixed body angles. In general one can choose three angles corresponding to rotation of the system as a whole. A convenient choice accomplishes this by fixing

67

the methanol molecule orientation and defining Ө,Φ,α, and β as the collision direction and the hydrogen orientation relative to the methanol molecule bodyfixed axis system1. In terms of these coordinates the interaction potential is expanded in the set of rotationally invariant angular functions.

Computational Details

The interaction potentials were found by running GAUSSIAN 98 on several machines operating on a Linux platform. Interaction potentials were calculated using the double and triple zeta basis sets that will and have been denoted as DZ and TZ respectively. Electron optimization was included through the second order Moller-Plesset perturbation theory. The counterpoise method was used as a correction factor for hydrogen and methanol as to compensate for missing basis set functions. Calculations made using the DZ and TZ basis sets were compared to previously calculated Green basis set which has a size in between that of the double and triple basis set. Additional programs were used to calculate the u- and v-coefficients but were operated on a windows/DOS operating system and written by Dr. Davis of George Mason University.

Results and Discussion

In Appendix A, Table 1 and Table 3, samples of error analysis are shown which demonstrate that the interpolation of TZ data points is possible for long and short range interactions. The error at the long range value, R=16, yielded a large spread in error. This range spanned from 0.3% to 186% with an overall average error of 7%. The R=8 gave slightly better error results than the larger R value. The error ranged from 0.056% to 109% with an average percent error of 6%. The reason for the large error values at both distances was the result of sparse large values which affected the total error. Even though these kinds of errors were present, it did not greatly affect the total percent error. On Graph 2 in Appendix A, the estimated interaction potentials are plotted with the ab initio TZ and DZ potentials. There is a nice correspondence between the interpolated and ab initio data and the parallel nature of both can be observed.

The large number of interaction energies were expanded as products of spherical harmonics and angular functions which gave the u(R)-coefficients.

This data was then fit back to the interaction energy by using Equation 3 from above. The fitted V values can be seen in Appendix A as Tables 4, 5, and 6. The fit was very nice at long ranges of R where the l1 and l2 coefficients where kept at reduced size of 6 and 4, respectively. When R went to smaller values the fit started to deviate away from the ab inito interaction values. Deviation like this could be counteracted by increasing the size of l1 and l2 which would serve to increase the expansion size and yield a better fit. The deviation at small R could be understood in terms of the waviness of the interaction energy. A nice fit for a function of greater variance would require that more terms be included in the summation process of the products. It is clear that at long range R, the function is not very wavy-like. Since the energy has such a small magnitude, the u(R)

68

coefficient calculated drop off to 0 because it does not take as many terms to describe the angular dependence of the interaction energy. So, fitting the u(R) values to the ab initio values shows that it is not necessary to include many terms to get an accurate output this can be seen on Tables 4 and 5 in Appendix A. Unfortunately, this kind of fitting/interpolation scheme is as much art as a science for surfaces with more than a few dimensions due to the mathematical complexity6.

Tables 7 and 8 in Appendix A, show how well the three basis sets agree with one another. At long ranges of R, which is dominated by electrostatic interactions and not much more, there is a very nice correlation between the three basis sets. At R=8, there is a nice agreement between the three basis sets as well. This suggests the Green basis set is a viable method for calculating interaction energies for the methanol and hydrogen system although the accuracy is not much greater than that off the DZ basis.

Conclusion

Interactions between methanol and hydrogen molecules were carried using the quantum mechanical computational program GAUSSIAN 98. An interpolation method was used to verify that approximation of sparser TZ grids would not compromise the accuracy of the interaction energies. The interaction energies were then expanded to a 24 and 48-term grid which yielded the u(R)-coefficients. The u(R)-coefficients were then compared to a previously calculated Green basis which necessarily used the same level of electron optimization and saturated basis set principle and resulted in possessing a magnitude, as expected, in between the DZ and TZ basis. Comparission of the Green basis to the DZ and TZ showed that it is a viable method for calculating interaction potential between the methanol and hydrogen system.

Appendix A R theta %error 16 0 16 15 0.546924 16 30 16 45 4.482 16 60

phi

alpha beta

V(DZ) V(TZ) TZ estimate

0 0 12.068 0 0

0 0

0 0

-2.33202 -2.56739 0.501084 0.621987

0 0

0 0

2.04222 2.36927 1.39043 1.63091 1.5578175

0

0

0

-0.359349

16 3.856 16

75

0

0

0

-1.63676 -1.79271 -1.723587

90

0

0

0

-0.351624

-1.84078 -2.02216 69

16 1.071 16

105

0

0

0

-1.30917 -1.42845 -1.413155

120

0

0

0

-0.581279

-0.607868

0 4.841 0 0 4.275 0

0

0

0.043773

0.115083

0 0

0 0

0.470573 0.62864 0.62019 0.822618

0

0

0.412782

16 135 0.109512 16 150 16 165 0.787447 16 180

0.589229

Table 1: Interpolation of TZ values at R=16 R theta %error 8 0 8 15 8 30 8 45 2.450608 8 60 8 75 8 90 8 105 2.603785 8 120 8 135 -0.8843 8 150 8 165 -0.42972 8 180

phi

alpha beta

V(DZ) V(TZ) TZ_estimate

0 0 0 0

0 0 0 0

0 0 0 0

-80.4935 -92.9704 9.92682 5.43104 3.86152 -28.8991 40.4659 40.8122 -12.25 -15.3819 -15.75885

0 0 0 0

0 0 0 0

0 0 0 0

-64.8998 -72.2638 -70.8495 -78.2706 -77.4669 -1.02682 -53.5783 -59.4491 -38.189 -43.7613 -44.90075

0 0

0 0

0 0

-31.0375 -38.5902 -30.6665 -41.9258 -41.55505

0 0

0 0

0 0

-35.2968 -49.5212 -45.2799 -59.2123 -58.95785

0

0

0

-51.6459 -64.7774

Table 2: Interpolation of TZ values at R=8 R 18 18 18 18 18

Theta 15 30 45 60 75

Phi 30 30 30 30 30

Alpha 90 90 90 90 90

Beta 30 30 30 30 30 70

V-Fit V-Raw -0.79724 -0.79917 -1.30064 -1.29975 -0.88851 -0.87662 0.012037 0.032074 0.740287 0.762941

18 18 18 18 18 18

90 105 120 135 150 165

30 30 30 30 30 30

90 90 90 90 90 90

30 30 30 30 30 30

0.969368 0.992134 0.75374 0.771432 0.288635 0.297164 -0.23438 -0.23164 -0.65239 -0.65018 -0.8557 -0.85411

Table 3: TZ fit for Grid 48-24-24-24, R 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16

Theta 0 15 30 45 60 75 90 105 120 135 150 165 180

Phi 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Alpha 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Beta 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

V-Fit V-Raw -2.53646 -2.56739 0.585938 0.621987 2.315168 2.36927 1.616274 1.63091 -0.34699 -0.35162 -1.78504 -1.79271 -2.00173 -2.02216 -1.42306 -1.42845 -0.62459 -0.60787 0.117556 0.115083 0.636652 0.62864 0.788011 0.822618 0.544501 0.589229

Table 4: TZ fit for Grid 48-24-24-24 R 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 T

Theta 15 30 45 60 75 90 105 120 135 150 165

Phi 60 60 60 60 60 60 60 60 60 60 60

Alpha 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90

Beta 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Table 5: TZ fit for Grid 24-12-12-12

V-Fit V-Raw -59.031 -55.0464 -77.3559 -76.2952 -81.597 -84.2689 -77.6423 -77.4385 -72.2265 -72.3819 -66.6274 -65.5358 -54.4997 -56.3245 -34.4071 -36.699 -22.1111 -21.7045 -34.8049 -36.3586 -63.0192 -67.2648

71

24_24_ m1 L1 m2 l2 R=16 3 2 2 -1 4.132364 3 1 2 -1 3.484277 3 0 2 1 2.240678 4 2 2 -1 4 0 2 1 1.352159 3 1 2 -2 1.311363 4 4 2 -2 1.233141

48_24_24_24_ 48_24_24_24_ 48_24_ DZ_R=16

D3g_R=16

3.699169

3.956276

3.105919

3.347811

2.032153

2.173643

TZ_

1.9856 2.112244 2.187767 1.258803 1.339588 1.171505

1.252876

1.104178

1.165798

Table 6: Comparison of u(R)-coefficients at R=16 where l1=6 and l2 =4 (sorted highest)

24_24_ m1 L1 m2 l2 0 0 0 0 536.009798 3 3 2 -2 79.632449 4 3 2 -2 64.92281 4 1 2 0 60.280039 4 0 0 0 54.511351 1 0 0 0 58.953389 3 0 2 0 50.643541 3 1 2 0 44.619261

48_24_24_24_ 48_24_24_24_ 48_24_ DZ_R=8 D3G_R=8 TZ_R=8 -435.366787 -446.865842 -

-72.283458

-77.006524

-

-59.999008

-63.377037

-

-56.469546

-59.308844

-

-63.668679

-58.796427

-

-56.220656

-57.120232

-

-55.207772

-50.071407

-

-46.734936

-49.369462

-

72

Table 7: Comparison of u(R)-coefficients at R=8 where l1=6 and l2 =4 (sorted lowest) Acknowledgements 1. Philips, T., Maluendes, and S., McLean, A.D., J. Chem. Phys., 101, 5824, 1994 2. Largo, A., Flores, J. R., Barrientos, C. and Ugalde, J. M., J. Phys. Chem., 95, 178, 1991 3. Sordo, J. A., Sordo, T. L., Fernandez, G. M., Chin, S., Gomperts, R. and Clementi, E., J. Chem. Phys. 90, 6361, 1989 4. Gutowski, M., Jeanne, G. C. M., Lenth, J., and Duijneveldt, F., J. Chem.

Phys., 98, 4728, 1993 5. Steven Davis, George Mason University, Fitting the Angular Dependence of the CH3OH_H2 Interaction 6. Philips, T., Maluendes, and S., McLean, A.D., J. Chem. Phys., 101, 5826, 1994

73

Laura Elwood Amélie: The Situationist’s Lifestyle

It has always been assumed that art has an instructive power. Butwith the Moderns, a new view begins to emerge: Life as art. In the nineteenth century, Charles Baudelaire introduced a new idea for art. For Baudelaire, beauty was eternal, but it was also particular. A little over a century later, the Situationist International (SI) continued the French conversation of the role of art. The SI wanted to redefine everyday life by making it intentional, and thus, valuable. An example of this is seen in Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s film Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain (2001), or simply Amélie, as it is known in the U.S. The title character takes traits of the situationist lifestyle to enhance her life and those of others, while other characters in the film either follow a Baudelaire model or none at all and end up distinctly less satisfied with life.

Frenchman Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) has been called the father of modern art criticism. Not only was he a poet, but he was also an aesthetician and essayist (Mayne xviii). His family was middle class and he “would descend in the social hierarchy, partly as the result of conscious choice” (Pichois 3). The society at the time in France was more focused on militaristic aspects, and choosing an artistic life associated Baudelaire with “decadence and disgrace” (Pichois 3). His biographer Jonathan Mayne notes that Baudelaire is a “landmark in the development of our understanding of the arts” (xviii). In Baudelaire’s essay “The Painter of Modern Life” he looks at the artist “in a very restricted sense,” as a “specialist, a man wedded to his palette like the serf to the soil” (7). He limits his view of an artist to something that is specialized, such as a painter or a poet. It is something very specific and very different from the situationist view of an artist.

In 1957 the situationists started as an avant-garde art group in Europe.

Members of the group included a “union of two prior avant-garde groups, the movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus (Asger Jorn, Pinot Gallizio and others) and the Lettrist International (led by Guy Debord)” (Wollen 9). The situationists are disturbed by society’s lack of creative life and by the society’s complacency for the spectacle, “non-intervention” (Debord 27). “As a start they aimed to go beyond artistic specialization”, that is, to change the idea that art is a “separate activity” from everyday life (Bernstein 61). In order to do this, they created activities to interact with their environment in new ways (Wollen 9).

The failed painter and writer in Amélie fit into Baudelaire’s “specialist” category (7). The painter, Raymond Dufayel, is known as the “glass man,” because of the fragility of his bones. All the furniture in his house is padded and he has not left his apartment in twenty years. Dufayel is an example of the “eternal convalescent” about whom Baudelaire writes excitedly (8). To Baudelaire, convalescence can be seen as a return to something more whimsical than normal, adult life. Indeed, he views it as a “return to childhood.” He writes that the convalescent “possessed in the highest degree the faculty of keenly interesting himself in things, be they apparently of the most trivial” (7-8). While

74

Dufayel may not leave his apartment, he still is actively interested in Amélie’s little adventures. Throughout the movie he spies on her with binoculars and invites her in his apartment for mulled wine and spiced cookies. He also shows her the painting he has been working on, a replica of Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating Party. Dufayel’s reproduction of Renoir’s painting is amazing, but then less so as he opens a closet and shows twenty other copies of the exact same painting. He has painted a copy each year for the past two decades he has stayed in his apartment.

Though Dufayel falls under the category of a specialist and a convalescent, he does one of the things that Baudelaire despises in art. Rather than painting a scene of modern life, Dufayel looks back to a classical artist and copies the artist’s work. Baudelaire acknowledges that beauty is eternal but that it needs to be clothed in the robes of the particular artist’s time (12). Dufayel completely breaks this rule by not only studying Renoir’s work but also painting nothing else but the Luncheon of the Boating Party. He is extremely capable but rather than using his talent in new, creative ways, he has simply been painting another artist’s work for the past twenty years. Even though Dufayel is a gifted painter, there has been one face in the painting that eludes his skill. The face can be viewed as a metaphor for the eternal beauty that should not always be in classical robes. Because Dufayel is not from Renoir’s time, he is not able to successfully capture the face’s beauty. Also, Baudelaire may be enthralled with the convalescent life but for Dufayel it means that he has no friends and no life outside of his apartment. The only small pleasures he receives are experienced vicariously through Amélie.

The failed writer, Hipolito, also follows a Baudelaire model of art.

He too is a specialist, but his convalescence is more mental than physical. In Amélie, Hipolito is only ever seen at the café where Amélie works. One of the first things Hipolito says is “I write crap that nobody publishes,” and he tells Madame Suzanne, the café owner, that he has just faced his thirtieth rejection.

In this case, the publishing world looks back to a specific model of what type of writing sells. For Hipolito, the publishers are the painters that continuously look back to a classical style. Hipolito is caught in a state of mental convalescence that precedes his failures. He expects himself to fail, so he does. Later in the film, he says, “Failed writer, failed life. I love the word ‘fail.’” The fact that he has received thirty rejections shows that he is unwilling to give up, but he clearly leads an unfulfilling life.

Minor characters in the movie that follow neither the Baudelaire model nor the situationist one, show that this too is a fruitless life. Madeleine Wallace, the concierge of the apartment building in which Amélie and Dufayel live, is caught in the past. In a conversation with Amélie, Madeleine compares herself with Mary Magdalene, saying that she was born to cry. Years ago Madeleine’s husband ran off to Panama with his secretary and was later killed in a car accident. However, Madeleine constantly rereads the letters her husband wrote to her when he was a soldier and kisses a framed portrait of him. Without any form of art to distract her from a melancholy past, Madeleine is miserable.

Georgette, a woman with whom Amélie works, also follows neither model. She complains of health problems, and rather than pursue an artistic life,

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Georgette pursues the life of a typical hypochondriac. One day she is crippled with migraines, the next a “howling gale” is coming through the café door to get her even sicker. Even when Amélie works her magic to set Georgette up with a daily customer, in a few days the relationship has fallen to pieces and Georgette leaves work early in hysterics while her ex-lover torments her. With neither the outlet of a specialist art nor of a situationist one, there is nothing to distract Georgette from her imaginary health problems.

A final example of a non-participant in the art world is Monsieur Collignon. He is a grocer who also lives in the apartment building with Amélie and Dufayel. Every time Amélie is at Collignon’s stall he is terrorizing his employee, Lucien. Lucien may or may not have mental disabilities and Collignon refers to him as the “cretin.” Collignon derides the way Lucien lovingly handles the vegetables and that Lucien sees beauty in them. The grocer is so miserable and dissatisfied with himself (a perpetual mama’s boy as it is revealed later in the movie that his mother still does his bookkeeping even though Collignon is fifty-years-old) that he ridicules Lucien for his artistic insight. Perhaps Collignon recognizes that this small joy that Lucien has fills an emptiness that Collignon sees in himself.

The magic that gives Amélie a fulfilled life stems from her situationist approach to life. One gets the feeling that there is something so important to what she does and as Jess Cagle writes, “You could get drunk, or ill, on the high dose of whimsy in Amélie” (online). In the beginning of the film, we are introduced to Amélie as a six-year-old and the narrator perfectly sums up her childhood in one sentence, “Slung between a neurotic and an iceberg, Amélie retreats into her imagination.” Her mother is hysterical and her nerves are always on the brink of a meltdown; her father is extremely distant. Soon into the film, Amélie’s mother dies and her father withdraws further. She grows up lonely with an active imagination and, as soon as she is able, moves out and becomes a waitress at Les Deux Moulins. One day in her apartment she finds a treasure box hidden in the wall of her bathroom. She is delighted by the discovery and “only the discoverer of Tutankhamen’s tomb would know how she felt upon finding this treasure hidden by a little boy forty years ago” (Amelie). Amélie decides to reunite the original owner and the box. Hidden, she sees the cathartic glow on his face as he recognizes the box and henceforth, she becomes the situationist Amélie, doing good acts for those around her.

In the introduction to a situationist scrapbook, Peter Wollen writes, “Artists were to break down the divisions between individual art-forms, to create situations, constructed encounters and creatively lived moments in specific urban settings, instances of a critically transformed everyday life” (9). This not only is a good starting point for understanding situationist theory, but also for understanding Amélie. After finding the old treasure box, Amélie concocts several playful situations in Montmartre. She is wholly devoted to reducing what situationist leader Guy Debord calls “the empty moments of life as much as possible” in her Parisian urban world (27). The situations she creates involving a homeless blind man, Madeleine Wallace, and Nino Quincampoix are for her fulfillment as well as that of the unsuspecting participants.

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One of the first of Amélie’s situationist experiments involves a blind man that we have met earlier in the film. We originally see him in the metro station with a portable record payer from which a romantic French song from the 1930s echoes in the abandoned station. She drops money into his cup and we do not meet him again until later. He is standing on a curb while busy traffic whirs past; he taps his guiding stick against the curb. Amélie stares at him from behind with a determined and mischievous look on her face; for a moment it seems as if we are not sure whether she is going to push him into the traffic or help him in some way. But while Debord outlines the “very principle of the spectacle” as “nonintervention,” Amélie embraces intervening and helps the blind man (27). She gently takes hold of his arm and guides him across the busy street. Though Amélie takes normal intervention one-step further to a situationist method of a “creatively lived moment” (Wollen 9). She leads the blind man along the active Parisian street, describing the sights to him.

She says, “That’s the florist laughing, he has crinkly eyes” and as they pass the butcher’s shop, “Ham, 79 francs! Spareribs, 45!” among many other little details. As Amélie leaves the blind man at a kiosk in front of the metro station, a transformation takes place inside the man. The camera goes to an aerial shot and the color of the man takes an unrealistic tone. He emanates golden light and he seems to be literally warmed from the inside out by her deed. By intervening, Amélie has not only enriched her life, but also that of the blind man.

In another example of situationist spirit, Amélie delivers long awaited happiness to the aforementioned Madeleine Wallace. The planning for the situation involving Madeleine beings when Amélie reads in a newspaper about a bag of mail that was discovered, lost since a plane crash in the 1960s. Then one day, when Madeleine leaves the door to her apartment open, Amélie sneaks in and steals the stack of letters that Madeleine’s husband wrote her when he was a soldier. She photocopies the letters, then cuts out certain sentences and pastes them together to form a new letter and then photocopies her creation.

Next Amélie soaks the letter in tea to age it. In a few days, Madeleine receives this letter with a letter of apology, supposedly from the Customer Service Department of the Postal Service. This is the only moment in the film in which Madeleine is not in a foul mood. In fact, she is ecstatic about the “hard proof” that her husband loved her. As Amélie comes home that day, Madeleine’s shouts follow her five flights up the staircase. Without Madeleine knowing it, Amélie has developed what Debord calls a “methodical intervention” into her (Madeleine’s) dismal life, thus enhancing the lives of both women (27).

Finally, the most intricate and lengthy situationist interaction Amélie devises involves Nino Quincampoix. She first sees Nino rooting underneath a photo booth in a metro station. She stares for a second, recognizing a fellow dreamer then hurries on once he notices her. A photo booth in a different metro station is their next meeting place. Once again, Amélie stops and stares and we can literally see and hear her heart pounding.

The series of situations Amélie creates for Nino starts off with one of which the situationists would most likely approve. The SI encouraged situations

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involving architecture and public urban landscapes, such as what Amélie uses for her first situation with Nino (Debord, 26). After a boat ride at a carnival where Nino works, Amélie leaves a note on Nino’s scooter, asking for him to be at the carousel in front of the Sacré-Coeur. He receives a phone call on a nearby pay phone and Amélie quickly tells him to follow the blue arrows. Nino is confused but then notices arrows in blue chalk on the pavement. They lead him to coin-operated binoculars, which show him a costumed Amélie waving his photo album and leaving it on the scooter. He races down but by the time he gets there, she is gone. On a two-page spread in the album, Amélie has disguised herself and taken photo booth pictures, accompanied by the question “Do you want to meet me?” Their situationist games continue without Nino knowing who she is. When he eventually confronts her where she works, Amélie shrugs, retreats to the back of the café and literally dissolves in a pool of tears. She gets another waitress to put a note in Nino’s pocket and, by the end of the film, they end up meeting and falling for one another. The details of Amélie and Nino’s situationist courtship are so important because they illustrate the way in which Amélie operates in life.

The aphorism of the situationist Alexander Trocchi “Man has forgotten how to play” does not relate to Amélie (54). Indeed, Amélie embodies the playful interactions the situationists describe. In some way she touches every character she meets in the movie. The way in which she exists is simply different than that of a normal person. As the situationist Raoul Vaneigem writes, “the vast majority of people have always devoted all their energy to survival, thereby denying themselves any chance to live” (30). Because Amélie’s survival is not in danger, she has plenty of energy, time, and creativity to live. By living we can assume Vaneigem means acts that evoke an emotional response from the architects and unsuspecting participants. She does not waste her “leisure hours” in mindless entertainment, but energetically instigates fulfilling activities for herself and others (Vaneigem, 54). Amélie also does not skimp on her preparation of the actualization of these projects. In her everyday life, the events that Amélie creates carry out the situationist ideal and, as a result, further heighten her lived experience.

Not only does Amélie exemplify certain situationist principles, she also goes beyond them. She clearly takes hold of their more useful ideas and realizes them, but she is not a full-blown situationist in that she is not “overtly political (and revolutionary)” (Wollen, 10). But in this manner Amélie is a beacon for the best points in the situationist model. She rises above concerns with art, politics, and time, and simply concentrates on living.

Works Cited Amélie. Dir. Jean-Pierre Jeunet. DVD. Miramax, 2001.

Baudelaire, Charles. The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays. Ed. And Trans. Jonathan Mayne. London: Phaidon, 1965.

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Bernstein, Michèle. “The Situationist International.” An Endless Adventure…

An Endless Passion…An Endless Banquet. Blazwick, Iwona, ed. London: ICA V, 1989. p. 61.

Blazwick, Iwona, ed. An Endless Adventure…An Endless Passion…An Endless Banquet. London: ICA V, 1989.

Cagle, Jess. “Affairs of the Heart: Radiant Audrey Tautou Stars in a Romantic Fantasy That May Be the Next Foreign Film Americans Love.” Time Nov. 2001: 93+.

Debord, Guy. “Toward a Situationist International.” An Endless Adventure…An Endless Passion…An Endless Banquet. Blazwick, Iwona, ed. London: ICA V, 1989. pp. 26-28.

Pichois, Claude. Baudelaire. Trans. Graham Robb. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1989.

Trocchi, Alexander. “Invisible Insurrection of a Million Minds.” An Endless Adventure…An Endless Passion…An Endless Banquet. Blazwick, Iwona, ed.

London: ICA V, 1989. pp. 53-57.

Vaneigem, Raoul. “Basic Banalities (II).” An Endless Adventure…An Endless Passion…An Endless Banquet. Blazwick, Iwona, ed. London: ICA V, 1989. pp.

30-39.

Works Consulted Debord, Guy. “Détournement as Negation and Prelude.” An Endless Adventure…An Endless Passion…An Endless Banquet. Blazwick, Iwona, ed.

London: ICA V, 1989. p. 29.

Debord, Guy. The Society of the Spectacle. Detroit: Black & Red, 1983.

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James “Tyler” Grimm The Sun’s Not Yellow, It’s Chicken!

Wells are running dry! The planet is overheating! All the while, America is comfortably driving its minivans and SUVs in an ignorant decadence that will inevitably annihilate the earth. Complete oil depletion is on the horizon and it is imperative that something is done (Freeman). The answer is for the United States to implement a policy requiring automobiles to get better gas mileage. Because America accounts for 30 percent of annual carbon dioxide emissions, this would drastically slow global warming and allow time to explore other sources of energy for transportation (Union of Concerned Scientists).

Higher fuel efficiency can protect the environment, stop war, and promote global diplomacy.

It is vital to first explain how fuel efficiency is increased. Auto manufacturers have the resources, such as better tires, smaller engines, direct fuel injection, and hybrid cars to improve the miles per gallon their cars can attain. Standards have been placed on the fuel consumption of cars since the 1970s (Byrne 1). The capacity to raise these standards is available. When the standards were implemented in the 1970s and 1980s, car companies were able to keep up and meet the requirements set by the government. However, according to the Progressive Policy Institute, auto manufacturers complain that it “forces them to make costly trade-offs in terms of vehicle performance and safety. They also claim that higher standards would force them to build vehicles that consumers do not want” (Ballantine 1). This is a fallacy. As Clarence M. Ditlow, the director of the Center for Auto Safety says, “You can get a 20 to 40 percent increase in fuel economy without decreasing weight. You don’t have to decrease performance either. The technology exists to do it” (1). Understanding that this task is feasible gives more credence to the resolution it will provide.

Global warming is a threat that needs to be alleviated. Left untended, this malignant, anthropogenic force could bear unimaginable consequences.

According to Roger Ballantine: “For nearly half a century, transportation has accounted for about one-fourth of total United States energy use and two-thirds of total oil consumption. Tailpipe exhaust remains a leading source of air pollution and accounts for roughly one-third of the nation’s emissions of carbon dioxide, a key contributor to global warming.”

There are skeptics who question whether the climate is even changing.

To contradict these naïve conspiracy theorists, one can turn to people like Eileen Clausen. Her study showed that President Bush was among those in doubt, so he asked the National Academy of Sciences to undertake a special review. A very well balanced panel was established that included widely known skeptical scientists. It came back with the very same conclusion: “the planet is warming and we are largely responsible”(Claussen). If warming is allowed to continue, the repercussions will be catastrophic. Claussen goes on to explain the severe consequences including massive flooding that could consume masses of land

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near the coast and “storm surges threatening communities all along our nations coastline.” Increasing fuel efficiency, though not an end to anthropogenic warming, would at least slow the process and allow for things like alternatively powered cars to become more prevalent. In turn, this will halt the onset of oil wars.

America’s dependence on foreign oil could be its demise. With 60% of the world’s oil in the hands of countries hostile to the United States, the US is driven to an aggressive military posture to carry out a “nakedly colonial expropriation of resources” (Freeman 3). Many of these countries stay out of third-world stature simply because America thrives on their oil. Oil is a finite resource that will be depleted. What will these countries do when there is no more oil to sell and the United States is not interested in protecting them anymore? America must wean itself off of foreign oil. Higher fuel efficiency allows the Middle East and other regions dependent on the export of oil a chance to find other ways to maintain their economies while not completely abandoning the oil market all at once. If our dependence on these countries for oil persists, more war is inevitable. Look at the United States invasion of Iraq to seize its oil fields. Look at its positioning of forces for an invasion of neighboring Saudi Arabia when that country is inevitably destroyed by internal civil war (Freeman 3). This kind of jingoism is what tarnishes the image America reflects to the world.

Good international relations are inherent in a healthy nation. When a country such as the United States puts oil paramount to international relations, it is looked down upon in the global community. Other countries have violent civil wars over water while the U.S. domineeringly invades countries to support its lust for oil. This is horrible foreign policy and will eventually come back to haunt America. While the current administration is at the whim of oil corporations, foreign relations are crumbling and with them America’s safety. Many countries are gaining on the U.S. as the world’s chief superpower.

Both Russia and China consider the mid-east part of their “sphere of strategic influence,” portending significant clashes with the U.S. over coming decades (Freeman 3). Robert McNamara, the former secretary of defense, stated: It is true that the U.S. and Russia have made substantial reductions in their arsenals. Yet these reductions still leave the U.S. with the capacity to kill approximately 67 million Russians using only one-third of its forces, while the Russians can kill 75 million Americans, using 40% of their weapons (1).

This is significant because as Russia and China become more industrialized they will have a larger industry for automobiles and will need oil much like the U.S. This, in turn, could cause wars over oil among these superpowers. The United Nations would crumble in lieu of oil wars among these overbearing countries. Fuel efficiency standards can solve this because as the U.S. works its way off of oil, the technology will be available to other countries to do the same.

The answer is not more oil, but rather more judicious use of it.

According to Robert Kennedy, a lawyer for the National Resources Defense

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Council, “If overall energy conservation options available in 1989 were implemented today, each year we would save 54 times the oil that would have been used from the Artic that year, at a fraction of the price of drilling there” (1).

Higher fuel efficiency can solve many of the world’s problems. Congress should immediately pass legislation requiring the implementation of higher standards as soon as possible. If the status quo is continued and the current administration not stopped, America’s greed will put a dent in civilization. The interest of the future needs to be superlative to the superfluity of oil in the over consumptive lives of Americans.

Works Cited Ballantine, Roger, Jan Mazurek. “Clean Cars Statement.” Progressive Policy Institute. 19 Mar. 2004. <http://www.ppionline.org/documents/clean_cars_0304.pdf>.

Byrne, Richard. “Life in the Slow Lane.” Union of Concerned Scientists, July 2003. <www.ucsusa.org/clean_vehichles/cars_and_suvs/page. cfm?pageID=1230>.

Claussen, Eileen. “Climate Change: Myths and Realities.” Center on Global Climate Change, 17 July 2002. <www.pewclimate.org/media/transcript_swissre.cfm>.

Ditlow, Clarence M. “Cars will get more Fuel Efficient Without getting to Small”. New York Times, June 28, 2003, p. LN JW. Dylan, Bob. “Tombstone Blues.” Highway 61 Revisited, Columbia Records.

1965.

Freeman, Robert. “Will the End of Oil mean The End of America?” Mar. 2004. <www.commondreams.org/view04/0301-12.htm>.

Kennedy, Robert F. “Better Gas Mileage, Greater Security”. 2004. <www.frugalmarketing.com/dtb/kennedy.shtml>.

McNamara, Robert. “Clashes With Russia Lead to Extinction.” Los Angeles Times.

24 June 2001: A8.

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