Just Buffalo Literary Center's 2016 Members' Reading

2016

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 24 / 7:30pm 468 WASHINGTON @ MOHAWK, 2ND FLOOR

JUST BUFFALO’S 8 TH ANNUAL MEMBERS’ WRITING CONTEST & READING

THE 8TH ANNUAL JUST BUFFALO MEMBERS’ READING Wednesday, February 24, 2016 at 7:30pm Just Buffalo Literary Center 468 Washington Street @ Mohawk 2nd Floor Buffalo NY 14203-1708

Special thanks to Brian Castner 2016 Judge

TABLE OF CONTENTS Venezia Appleby........................ 1 Laurence T. Beahan MD.............. 7 Kenneth A. Boos........................ 8 Stephen Cocca .........................12 Sharon F. Cramer, Ph.D. ...........15 David Cummings ......................17 Trudy Cusella...........................23 Mitch Flynn..............................26 Regina Forni ............................27 Natalie Gerich Brabson ..............34 Veronica Hogle.........................37 Hal A. Limebeer .......................43 Khalil Ihsan Nieves ...................46 Kay Patterson ..........................52 Maria Scrivani ..........................55 David M. Smeltz .......................57 Chera Thompson ......................63 Ann Marie Trietley ....................65 Michelle Vanstrom ....................67 Lois Vidaver.............................68 Paul White...............................70

The 8th Annual Just Buffalo Members’ Reading

Venezia Appleby #1 I Am This Moment It’s Friday night and I’m in my hotel room hot and groggy after a midday sleep. Preparing myself for a date with a man I’m already sure is too good to keep. Drinking sake, the acquisition of which I had used earlier in the day as an excuse for briefly venturing out into the unfamiliar city streets. Guzzling water to subdue the rush of MSG from lunch’s Mediterranean binge. He says 7:30 pm. I scream inside with pleasure but all that escapes to the outside is a squeak and an expansive smile I can feel but can’t see. One can never really see her own head.

I’m dressed. A plain dress. Dark grey. Modest crew neck and long sleeves with a strip of sheer black along the length of the arms. Cable knit tights colored slightly off white. A black hoodie. Flat black sneakers.

Face colored for the evening. Cat eyes. Slight flush. Subtle glow. I achieved the goal of feeling comfortably beautiful. Comfortable enough to walk all night. To sit in any position. To recline into myself or into him.

The scent of musk and lust across my chest and wrists. A bra just uncomfortable enough to remind me to remember my body and to remind me I’m a desirable woman. The only thing keeping me from exploding into mania is the tension in my solar plexus whispering: “Bitch, you better check yourself.”

When he arrives to the hotel he asks if he should come up or if I’m coming down. I’m coming down to him, obviously. Grab my things and rush down to meet him. Ignoring anyone that I know isn’t. The thought crosses my mind that I don’t want anyone but him to see me. That I would like to be invisible to everything but him until the moment I feel the solidity of some part of his body against some part of mine. I’m focused like a laser. I’ve never seen him in person before but convinced I would recognize him from any angle. Too happy to really give energy to my anxiety. Working around that shit effortlessly. My nose isn’t even sweating yet. Or at least I don’t notice if it is. Elevator, please hurry.

Hotel lobby and I’m whipping my body around 180 degrees as a time. Adjusting my feet. Running my eyes across irrelevant bodies of human and concrete. Looking for the center of my newly discovered universe. Where might he be? I don’t like the idea of anyone seeing me looking for something so feverishly.

Even him. My feet carry me outside as soon as the thought crosses my mind. I’m so alive as I walk around the outside to the front of the hotel. I’m completely whole.

I approach the right side of the tall window glass leading with my face so my eyes catch the light bouncing from the objects beyond the glass before theirs catch mine. I’m doubtful that I’m so stealthy but the impulse comes naturally. Looking inside I can see him sitting calmly. Slight smile on his face. Eyes downcast and dreamy. I step back for barely a moment. I want to see him without the pressure of being seen.

I wonder what he’s looking at with such dreamy eyes.

My feet are too excited to delay the meeting any longer and I move closer to the entrance. My mind wants to have an opinion about his appearance but I don’t find the task interesting for now. As soon as my full body is in front of the glass I think he looks up and sees me. I think there is a brief contact of eyes but just as soon he gets up from his seat, turns his back, and begins to walk away. Hands in his pockets. His eyes cast upward and his head flitting about his shoulders like that of a bird.

I move quickly through the revolving doors to go after him. I call his name as loudly as my selfconsciousness allows. I think it should be loud enough but he doesn’t turn. I have covered my mouth and glanced over both shoulders in embarrassment from having yelled after him. I give up easily on the yelling and break into slow jog to catch him. In retrospect I saw him slow down a bit. He’s doing this on purpose but I don’t realize it yet. Too excited to care. It’s finally happening. It’s right here, right now. No more waiting. I am this moment.

I run into the back of him with my arm as a clothesline. Had he not been so impenetrable I might have choked a hug out of him. Or even toppled him to the ground and smothered him with squeezes and kisses to his sweetly rounded face. Rather however, he is a strong wall and surprisingly unaffected by the force of my contact. “A pleasure to meet you!” He says with a smile and a hand outstretched for shaking. He’s doing this his own way and I notice it right away. I’m momentarily disarmed. I’m on his right side with my left arm still along his back and shoulders. I’m laughing at myself while he greets me and look down to see his hand.

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Page 2 of nonfiction by Venezia Appleby I release my arm from him and I grab his hand saying… some form of awkward, joy-filled hello. And we begin to walk toward the exit. I know where I’m going without asking.

Me in front of him into the revolving doors. I can feel him behind me speeding up to share the space with me. Without thinking I speed up through the door to prevent the option but he manages to squeeze in with me. My efforts almost jamming him in the door. “You could’ve hurt me!” he says. “Well I didn’t expect you to try to get in here with me.” I respond. “…but you could’ve hurt me!” he insists. I feel a little bad for my unintentional aggression, but not enough to let it bug me. I feel powerful and delighted. I am bouncing with satisfaction.

We walk and we’re chatting. I enjoy his voice and manner of speech. Composed, quick in both pace and wit, and with a subtle but clear sense of command. “So this is how it works…” he starts. Explaining the method by which we’ll choose a restaurant for dinner. It goes something like this: If we’re interested we’ll check it out. If we like it we’ll stay. If we don’t we’ll leave and find something else. Easy except that I’m so delighted by him that I don’t care to think about where to go. I’m already exactly where I want to be.

Nonetheless, we’re moving. At a decent speed really as far as walking goes. He doesn’t slow down without reason I’ve since learned. For now though, I only notice the motion and the quickness. It’s me and him and the city at night. We are alive and everything is alive with us.

All is bright. Unfiltered commentary is escaping my lips diverting my attention to and from one thing or another. I’m an excited electron. Expressing my current enjoyment of being flooded with sensory input, he asks “So does that make you an extrovert?” I laugh. “Nooooo, not at all.”

I am enamored with a huge building ahead of us with wavy patterns of glowing leaflike shapes. He isn’t impressed and instead moves to the left to an old dark building with a small iron plaque embedded to the front of it. Raised words providing historical facts for any passer by that cared enough to notice. He reads it aloud and I barely listen. In that moment he learned of my trouble with boredom. “That’s boring.” I say playfully teasing myself and him simultaneously. “What doesn’t bore you?” He asks teasing back. I feel the impact of the question but easily give a genuine answer. “This isn’t boring to me.” Meaning us. Now. The expansive moment that was us. He asks me my favorite sense. I remind him that he advised not to choose a favorite. He recalls. “Like children.” He praises his mother for that lesson. “A very smart woman, my mother.” I remembered him saying it before tonight.

I’m noticing some things on my left or directly ahead of me but he has become the entirety of my right side and there is nothing of interest to me beyond him. Everything is huge. McDonalds. Pho. He teases my incorrect mispronunciation. I barely notice. Turn left corner. Pizza place stretching longly on my left.

Darkened street, light filled perimeter. Tall rectangular growths of imported rock planted sturdily. Places for humans to live and work and rest and socialize. Synthetic trees of the street so we can pretend we’re better than forest animals. People bubbling all around us but to me they blend with the shade of nightfall. Just slightly more substantial than shadows.

There’s an Intersection. A dark, mysterious, normal-sized restaurant down the left. I mention it. It’s a burger place. Not feeling invested in stopping our movement though intrigued by the blackened corner dimly smoldering with white or blue light. He’s a vegetarian and I worry he won’t find a suitable meal. “I’ve eaten there before.” He says and smoothly guides our course leftward down the street toward the restaurant.

We walk into the restaurant. I see that it is quite full of people and comment on it. I’d rather sit outside.

He leads the way without hesitation to the outside seating and we arrange ourselves at the metal grated table on metal grated chairs. I take off my hoodie and place it on the back of my chair. Pull myself together to sit like a lady. A host comes out and mentions something about they weren’t seating people outside anymore, but since we’re already seated… I caught a glimpse of his fearlessness. Something so simple as choosing a restaurant. Choosing a seat. The ease and simplicity with which he accessed reasonable comfort.

He’s seated with beautiful posture. Straight back and a bold chest. His eyes are sparkling and his head moves as a sort of reptile. Sharp, controlled movements when he chose to move it at all. A quick tilt here and there. Even still there is nothing cold-blooded about him that I can feel. I feel warm and cozy. I still don’t know if the heat and softness I was easing into was his or my own. He has a flask with rum that he takes a

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Page 3 of nonfiction by Venezia Appleby drink from. He offers it to me. Says it’s fancy. I would’ve taken a sip anyway but I’m not surprised he bottled up the good shit.

We order liquored up milkshakes. He informs me that maraschino cherries are one of the most highly processed foods there are. I won’t forget the fact and I’ve shared it several times since, but when my shake comes I eat the cherry without reservation. “What would you say is the most immature thing about you?” he asks. I’m disarmed again, though I like feeling him dive into me. I hadn’t expected a question of that sort. I hadn’t been asked anything like that before. Taking time to think. Side-eyeing the suspect across the table from me now. My mind finally finished the task of deciding his appearance. He looks like a friend; or at least someone I want as a friend. As suspicious as I am I can’t prevent myself from gulping down his charm.

Watching him there across from me he looked almost to be a prince. His crown to the sky. A strong, bold chest and relaxed smile. And oh god, his eyes. His beautiful eyes are islands. Worlds grown lush with the long green lashes and limbs of tropical vegetation. A heavy dusting of sand all golden-glittery carpeting the coasts of deep his seas. How did I not know then that I had been taken? He’s seemingly tickled by catching me off guard. I brush my chin with my thumb and pointer finger in playful but serious contemplation, looking away from him toward my left side into the empty space that held us. So many thoughts but one sticks out. After a few more seconds I answer in a vulnerable rush and manage to get words out with minimal stuttering...“Hmm, I have a tough time pushing myself into the future.” Hand gestures of pushing away from me. Ahead of me. Tight smile of guarded weakness on my face. “Very present-oriented.” he responds. I’m not sure if that’s really it; at least, not when it gets bad. I shrug my shoulders, supposing so. It sounds like a good thing so I don’t challenge it. I’m too distracted by a sudden wave of fear to ask him to answer his own question.

A cute waitress comes to take our order. Her hands are close to my face and I notice her manicure.

Nothing spectacular really but I’m in love with this moment and she’s now a part of it. He is about to order and I interrupt the momentum to compliment her painted fingernails and extend my open palm for a closer look. She obliges and says something about how bad her nails look. I’ve done the same. Feeling unworthy of a simple compliment. Apologizing for not being perfect. After looking at her fingers for a few moments I return my attention and that of the waitress’ to him. Still holding his menu and waiting for his order to be taken. “I’m sorry.” I say. He shrugs it off. It is no matter to him.

I order a fish sandwich. He orders fried pickles and…? I can’t remember by now. He mentions thoughtcrimes. I tell him right away that I’m not going to share my thoughtcrimes with him on our first date.

He says something about how he would never ask me to. I have no idea yet that he doesn’t need me to say much for him to learn all about me. I am an open book. Spilling out my precious details without knowing. He is reading me with ease. I don’t know yet that I am already doomed and it’s everything I needed.

After dinner we walk away from the dark and dimly glowing corner, leftward back into the busy streets.

We’re moving quickly again. I have no idea where we’re walking and it’s fine with me. I am exactly where I want to be. He notices a toy store and wants to go in. I’m touching objects without much thought. Twirling around tables. Becoming his shadow.

I notice a sign in front of a liquor store. They’re giving out free samples and this seems to me an obvious choice. He doesn’t seem impressed at all. We walk in. He makes some sound of disapproval at the selections they have offered free samples of. He turns to walk back out. I don’t argue at all. Just slightly embarassed. …and then we’re moving quickly again. I’m on his right. The street and the rest of the world is on mine.

We walk past a truck playing some form of trap shit. I pause to bounce a bit. Two things I think. I was inspired to dance in the moment for me own entertainment, but I also wanted him to know that the trap is in me. He doesn’t turn to look at me.

He tells me about a place that he would like to take me to. A place he thinks I’ll like. I’m smiling at the thought. A craft beer bar. He points the direction we are to walk and off we go.

We walk in. Crowded, of course. I can’t catch a break. We walk over to the chalkboard where all of the beer options are listed. I tell him the way I order these things is to look for the strongest available drink and go with that. That’s what I do. I am not interested much in what he orders. I give him $20.00 to go buy our

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Page 4 of nonfiction by Venezia Appleby drinks and wait for him to come back. I’m pressed against the edge of the room. It is rather loud with the DJ is playing mixes of some old school hip hop. I am a little anxious with so many people seeing me plastered to the wall but I don’t want to have to figure out where or how to move myself. I look for him to see where he is with ordering our drinks. I want him to come back to me. I should have went with him. The line is moving too slowly for my tastes.

When he comes back he asks me if we’re going to keep standing at the wall or if we should find a seat. I see space for two at the table I’ve been eyeing and we walk over to it. Wooden benches. He is closely seated on my left. I have my tiny white backpack between us. Not because I wish for a division, but because it is safe between us. I am afraid if I put it on my right, on the side where he is not, it will get taken because, well, he is on my left now so my right side is getting only so much attention as it requires to prevent me from invading the space of the party to that side of me. Eventually, I realize I want to move closer to him and so I move the backpack to the other side of me. I manage to pay enough attention to it that it doesn’t get stolen.

Or, perhaps no one cared to take it from me.

He mentions that he would like to learn the piano so that he could express the music inside of him. He makes a joke about being nerdy and pretends to push the glasses that he isn’t wearing up the bridge of his nose. Apparently they had slid down. I giggle with nerdy pleasure. He mentions that he misses his cat. He places his left hand over his chest and breathes deeply and mentions omething about being woefully underhugged. I have no idea if he’s talking about himself or his cat but hearing this, I ask if he wants a hug. I don’t wait for his answer and swing my left arm around his neck and shoulders to pull him in for a chokehold hug.

He answers then after hesitating a bit “…ok.” and presses his cheek against mine. I am slightly embarrassed.

After finishing our drinks, I am feeling the need to escape the noise of the place and suggest that we leave. We walk out and I burst out of the doors with open arms to embrace the freedom of the night. It is so good to feel unconfined. We’re moving quickly again. I am on his right.

We approach a candy store. He wants to go in so we do. An attractive store with many plastic containers full of sugar molded into various shapes and sizes. So many options. I go for some neon color chewy sugar strings. I have no idea what he picked up. Dammit, again. I pull out my fuzzy Totoro change purse to pay and the young lady cashing me out compliments it. “That’s so cute.” she says. It really is. “Thanks!” I say.

Then try to make some joke for her to laugh about me being too dumb to have anything more then $0.25 in coin form. That a $2.00 coin is tricky. She laughs. I have the $2.00 coin in my hand. “Nope, that’s a Tooney, not a quarter!” They are young. Probably not even 20 years old yet. For the first time of the night, I feel oldish. I am going to be 30 years old in less than a year and here I am bouncing around like some tiny tot with the man of my dreams. Pretending that I’ll never have to wake up. Ever.

I can see that we are walking back in the direction of my hotel and I’m finally craving a cigarette.

“Would you think I was the most disgusting person in the world if I smoked a cigarette right now?” I ask, sort of not caring much how he responds. “I’m not Judge Judy the Executioner!” he responds. Cigarettes are gross no matter how much of a judge he is. Truthfully, I’m only judging myself.

Chatting on the way up to my room. I think he’s mentioning movies for me to check out. I know I won’t remember them. Say I’ll have to write down all of the titles he’s thrown at me this evening knowing I’ll never get to it. Knowing already that so much of the words themselves will fade and that what will be left most of all is the feeling. Right now, I feel tipsy, well-oxygenated, craving Nicotine, beautiful, pleased.

I forgot I left the ironing board upside down on the floor in front of the door. It greets us as we walk in. I hadn’t been able to figure out how to close it earlier. He bends down to try to fix it. I’m buzzing around him, being unnecessarily wordy, telling him he doesn’t have to worry about the ironing board. He’s determined to close it and he does. “How did you do that?!” In no time at all he had located a small metal protrusion that was the mechanism for closing the board. I had been distracted by the obviousness of the long metal rod sticking out of it. He pressed down hard on it at first, same as I had. Only he didn’t obsess over it after it failed. Pressing so hard he might’ve broken it, swearing at it and at himself, and asking all manner of “What the fuck is wrong with you?” of an inanimate object that was still waiting to be fully understood.

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Page 5 of nonfiction by Venezia Appleby I’m delighted and impressed with his quickness. By now I’ve forgotten about the cigarettes. “What did I come up here for?”… “You needed something…” “Oh yeah…” I say almost regretfully. I’m already embarrassed about the cigarettes. Now I’m embarrassed that I’d forgotten them only to remember them and be all embarrassed by the habit all over again. Canadian cigarettes have to be the most vile reminders of death by mouth rot. Pictures of lips exploded with black craters. Swollen, diseased tongues. The reality of self-destructive tendencies. A serious warning against willful ignorance loudly wrapped around the package.

I grab the box and comment on how disgusting the pictures are, adding facetiously: “Who doesn’t know cigarettes are bad for you?” He answers my sarcasm in a way that doesn’t allow me to fully disregard the inherent serious of the moment… “Children.”

Moving outward from the room back down to the ground I realize the sensation of him and I being a force together. We have grown closer over the evening and our chemistries are mixing. Back outside and I realize I have no lighter. “…fire?” he steals the word out of my mouth. He notices a man on the sidewalk leaning against some form of ground protrusion. Maybe a tree. Maybe a street sign. The man is smoking a cigarette and he suggests that the man probably has a lighter. I run sloppily over to the smoking man, tipsy and asking for fire. The man pulls out a lighter and makes motion to light my cigarette. I lean forward and get lit. I sit on the curb. My date is ahead of me and I motion for him to sit down. Pretending to brush off any street dirt with my hand. Telling him it’s not so bad down here on the pavement. He sits down on my left I make sure to hold my cigarette out with my right hand, blowing away from him and our conversation.

We got onto topic about the shootings at Parliament Hill in Ottawa only occurring the day prior. October 22, 2014. A Canadian soldier had been shot and killed by another man for reasons unknown. The shooter was later shot to death himself inside of the parliament building. It had been all over the News and it was quite the headliner. I was feeling jaded about the act and asked why it was being made such a big deal of. He said that it was the first time in Canada’s history that such a thing had occurred. “Why did he do it?” I asked.

He answers my question with a question. “What was his purpose? I don’t know.”

We chit chat while longer while seated on the curb and I finish burning and inhaling. I notice a pause in our conversation so I fill it with desire: “Sooooo, do you want to come upstairs?” He responds, “Sure.” I am pleased, though less oxygenated than before. We make the short journey back up the sidewalk, past a fake, decorative tree, into the hotel lobby, around the left corner, into the elevator, down the winding hall with strange hotel carpet, and into my room. He’s willingly mine for the evening.

He takes a seat on the bed and I take the office chair in front of the desk. I take down the top knot from my hair and let the length of it fall down my back and over my shoulders. I have sake for us to drink. “Sake.

Classy lady.” he says. “Am I a lady?” I ask. Not really sure that I am. “Sure you are!” he answers. I apologize that the sake hasn’t been chilled. I don’t have a refrigerator in the room. He doesn’t mind.

I can feel myself getting restless with the thirst of touching him but want to maintain my new status as a “lady”, so I burn off as much energy as I can by oscillating side to side in my chair by pushing off of the tip of my toe. I feel myself smiling widely and he is smiling back, both with his mouth and his eyes. We talk a little about music and he tells me about a man that does a cover of Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance with Somebody”. My computer is on my right sitting atop the desk so I quickly turn to it and use YouTube to find a video of the man to which he refers. He helps me spell the name of the man and the video pops up. It is a man with a guitar on a stage with a much less beautiful voice than Whitney crooning to the crowd that he wants to dance with someone that loves him. I laugh as I interpret the image and voice. “It’s just his voice” he responds. I feel a little bad for having laughed, but not very.

I’m releasing a lot of water with the sake and other drinking. I use a bathroom trip as an excuse to peel off my tights and, when I finish, I belly-flop behind him onto the bed. He turns to face me and I roll onto my back, giggling and finding reasons to touch him. I use my palm to feel the blunted hairs on the top of his head. Electricity buzzes through my hand and arm as the sensation registers. He twiddles my hair between his fingers and smiles some kind of smile. I try to tickle him next. First his left knee by sprawling my finger nails from a concentrated location at the center of it out toward the edges. “Does that tickle?” “No, not really.

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Page 6 of nonfiction by Venezia Appleby I feel it but it doesn’t tickle.” I try the palm of his hand next using the same technique, but again, he is not reactive. “I can turn it off like a light switch” he says. I am mildly disappointed, but not surprised.

He eventually lays down next to me and we talk about nothing for a while. I am touching his torso and his hands and smelling his body and falling under his spell. Happily helpless, I curl myself under his left arm, mixing our scents. Then, it happens. Lifting my head, I find his lips with mine and kiss him intently. With my eyes opened at a soft slit I can narrowly see his face twitching at the left side. I wonder why. Is he nervous? It only adds to his charm and I kiss into him even more deeply. Opening my mouth to let the air from his into me. He is kissing me carefully so I swallow my passion and kiss him sweetly and patiently.

Soon enough the world stops and I slip into the vacuum of time that only the deepest hypnosis can produce.

This I fear is where the story loses its detail. I am completely lost in the savory taste of him. My breathing gets very shallow as I meditate on his flavor, scent and touch. He must notice because he holds my face with both of his hands and gifts me with his breath, slowly and gently. I softly hold his wrists as he does it and sensitive to the pure intimacy of it all I twitch a little with both pleasure and fright for the territory I find myself in. We’ve been exploring and kissing each other for hours.

As our passion plateaus I have the sensation that I’ve died for a moment and voice this to him. “What do you mean by that?” he asks. I’m not sure how to answer. “I feel like I’m coming back to life now.” I answer.

“Then you should sleep.” he says. He turns the light off and comes into the bed facing me. I bury my face into the fur of his chest and he quietly counts backwards from fifty, each number floating on less and less breath until my muscles loosen and my body calms.

I am in love. Crazy, blinding, consuming, bright, fiery love. Fuck.

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Laurence T. Beahan MD #2 Come to the “Rise Up for Climate Justice Rally” in Niagara Square Following the Pope’s speech to Congress Thursday September 24, on The Road to the United Nations Climate Change Conference, Paris, December 2015.

By A. Fallinaway Catholic A hundred and fifty nations are meeting at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris in December 2015. Let us pray that they will come to a workable and binding agreement that will put us on a path to zero greenhouse gasses before New York and New Orleans are totally inundated and California is scorched beyond habitability.

Agreed, church and state should be well insulated from one another, usually. But with our planet on a deadly track for carbon-fueled climate disaster and with our politicians fumbling the ball, a prayer or two, maybe even a Hail Mary Pass is in order.

On TV the other night eleven presidential candidates vied for that quarterback-slot. These eleven apostles of doom, one after another, washed their hands of the climate warming crisis. Meanwhile the religious leaders of the world have all dropped their prayer books and demanded that we quit strangling this God-given planet with fossil fuel fumes.

In August Muslim leaders from twenty countries called on the 1.6 billion Muslims to phase out greenhouse gas by midcentury.

But Florida Senator Marco Rubio says, “I do not believe that human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists are portraying it.” His teammate, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie says, "We shouldn't be destroying our economy in order to chase some wild, left-wing idea that somehow, us, by ourselves, are going to fix the climate."

Yet the leaders of the Anglican and Eastern Orthodox churches urge in a letter to the NY Times, that the nations of the world craft a clear and convincing course of decarbonization at the Paris Conference.

President Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency issued its CO2-reducing Clean Power Plan that delivers the death blow to coal as a source of electric power yet the President has authorized drilling for oil near the dwindling Arctic ice cap.

In May, three hundred and forty Jewish rabbis released a Rabbinic letter on Climate Crisis calling for, “spiritual leadership of the Jewish people in this deep crisis in the history of the human species.”

And Donald Trump says, “I consider climate change to be not one of our big problems. I consider it to be not a big problem at all. I think it’s …weather.”

The Dalai Lama disagrees. He calls on governments around the world to stop deforestation and stop burning fossil fuels. He says, “It is not sufficient to just express views, we must set a timetable for change in the next two to four years.”

Jeb Bush brushes off climate change, "I don't think it's the highest priority. I don't think we should ignore it, either.

Good Pope Francis is coming to the US on September 24th to deliver what is expected to be a “Dutch Uncle” lecture to the US Congress. He will likely remind us that the United States has pumped carbon into the skies for generations, to profit this country but at great cost to poorer nations. He needs to say that if climate change is to be curbed the United States will have to lead with a war-time, Manhattan Project-style total mobilization away from coal and gas and on to solar, wind and geothermal energy.

So here goes a Hail Mary that Pope Francis will succeed in persuading our politicians to go to the Paris UN Climate Change Conference in December and come away with binding agreements to cut greenhouse gasses by at least 40 % in 2025 and 85% in 2050.

The environmental, social justice and religious communities of Western NY are united in the “Rise up for Climate Justice” campaign. Join them at 5pm in Niagara Square on September 24 to demonstrate Buffalo’s support of Pope Francis on his Hail Mary mission to Washington.

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Kenneth A. Boos #3 Pretty in Pink This is what I came to see, the place where I came to be. Not the Great Wall, Temple of Heaven, or the Silk Market. Not the sweeping pagodas, rural rice patties, or pandas in the zoo. If there was only one attraction that I could visit while in China, there could be no other choice.

Be there or be Tiān’ānmén Square.

“The traffic is horrible!” my wife, Kelly exclaimed, disembarking from the taxi she and I took with my mother from the hotel.

“I think we could have walked here faster,” my daughter, Amanda said, jumping out from the other cab that was also carrying Hao (pronounced “How”) and Mingjue (Meeng-jee-aire) who goes by “Mandy,” the honeymoon couple from Suzhou (Sue-Joe) China.

“Not me” my 83-year-old mother said as she stepped up to the curb wielding her cane.

We still had a ways to walk. Barricades are set all around Tiān’ānmén Square with members of the People’s Armed Police in drab olive-green uniforms posted throughout. Access is by way of a tunnel on Chang’an Avenue, the 12-lane thoroughfare between the square and the Forbidden City known as the Avenue of Eternal Peace. Taxis and other vehicles are prohibited from stopping there because it would make intense traffic worse and raise security concerns.

“Most of the people here are not from Beijing,” Hao said as we waited to cross the street. “They are from the country.”

“It is a pilgrimage for Chinese people to come and see Tiān’ānmén Square and the Forbidden City,” Mandy said.

“The teacher will use it as a way to get their students to study,” Hao added. “They will say, ‘if you get do not get good grades, your parents will not take you to Beijing!’”

Hao probably got good grades, but this was his first trip to Beijing. We know that Mandy got good grades—she recently scored 760 out of 800 on the GMAT in her second language—though she has not been to Beijing since she was six years old.

“Hey Mom, were my grades good enough for me to come to Beijing?” I asked.

“I don’t have to answer that, do I?” “Well, we’re all here now,” Kelly said. “And by the way Amanda, your grades were certainly good enough to come to Beijing.”

“Damn straight,” Amanda said.

“Straight A’s as I recall.”

Security getting through the tunnel to the square is tighter than TSA at a USA airport. A large metal container near the x-ray machines serves as a collection bin for cigarette lighters, expressly not allowed. I remember Zippo lighters in plain stark colors made in Bradford, Pennsylvania, but now made in China with a much greater variety of colors and designs. The box was filled with thousands of these instruments of selfimmolation, which is what the Chinese Communist authorities are obviously trying to prevent in Tiān’ānmén Square.

It took Hao and Mandy about 20 minutes to clear security and receive official tickets to enter the square.

As westerners, my family and I were sent through immediately, bypassing the x-ray machine and any groping or further inspection without anyone so much as asking, “Comrade can you spare a smoke?”

Security was a different matter traveling from Shanghai to Beijing. Our gang of six took two separate taxis from the Hunting Hotel to the Shanghai-Hongqiao airport. Although Hao, Mandy, and Amanda caught the second cab, they arrived before Kelly, my mother, and me because, “I fastest taxi driver in Shanghai!” their cabbie boasted in English. That is quite a distinction, as a typical cab ride in Shanghai is better than any roller coaster.

I set my small suitcase on the conveyor and walked through the metal detector without alarm but was flagged by two excited guards pointing frantically at my carry-on bag. One spoke in machine-gun Mandarin

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Page 2 of nonfiction by Kenneth A. Boos to Hao, who translated for me. He said that the x-ray machine detected something that could not be identified. They needed to open my suitcase and conduct a search.

“They want to air my dirty laundry? Sure, why not?”

“I did your laundry at the hotel last night, remember?” Kelly said in protest.

“Just an expression, dear.”

The guards told Hao that there is a room in the back where they open bags to be searched, and according to regulations, the owner has to be present. The guard who had spoken to Hao gestured to summon me.

This was ominous. Despite the blatant, cut-throat capitalism that we had seen all over Shanghai, we were still in a communist country with a highly-centralized government that prides itself in ring-tight security. I could be minutes away from disappearing forever into the bowels of the Chinese criminal justice system. Or maybe it would just be a private shake-down for an American Express card and every RMB I had on me. Either way, I couldn’t wait to get back there behind the scenes and check it out. I needed a wingman though, and asked Hao to enter into negotiations on my behalf.

“Yes, Ken. They have agreed to allow me to come with you and translate.”

“Thank you, Hao. It will be my honor for us to be imprisoned and tortured together.”

Hao laughed. “Oh no, Ken, do not be afraid. You are a westerner. There is nothing to worry about.”

“Let’s see what they find first.”

As we were led to a nearby room, I wondered what was in my carry-on that triggered the alarm. I checked two bags on our original flight to China, one for my stuff, and one nearly empty for Kelly to fill up with gifts and souvenirs. Maybe they grabbed the suitcase packed with several bottles of rice wine, a party gift for everyone at the wedding reception. Amanda had one, and Kelly, my mother, and I each took one from our table, though we might have picked up a few unclaimed bottles here and there. I tried a glass while we were still in Suzhou. It was awful, the kind of wine that should come with a warning label, “Open only in case of an emergency.” Kelly said we should leave the bottles behind in Shanghai as a gratuity for the hotel staff, but I packed every last one because who knows what sort of emergencies you might run into in Beijing?

The guards rifled through my suitcase, filled mostly with clean laundry. The booze must be in the larger suitcase I checked. In the absence of firearms, narcotics, or state secrets, the guards seemed puzzled until one came across a heavy object wrapped in an undershirt. Its mate was soon discovered. As a favor to my mother, I packed the two lead-cast statues of lions she bought in Suzhou. Many a Chinese building has a male statue on one side of the entrance and a female lion on the other for protection of the premises. It works better than paying off the mob because the eyes of both guards bulged upon their discovery. They rewrapped the figures and laid them down gently, tidied up what they disrupted as best they could and apologized profusely as they bowed their heads to me. That’s right. The great and powerful state-sponsored security apparatus yields to the old ways. No messing with the lions.

Tiān’ānmén Square is a staunch rectangle about half-a-mile long that divides Beijing by east and west, north and south. Bright red and yellow flower beds and well-manicured shrubbery including colorful cylindrical and spherical designs line the lengthwise perimeters near the entrance. Stanchions made of concrete connected by heavy-duty chain links keep visitors away from the landscaping and other off-limits areas, though the uprights feature a pleasing traditional Chinese design. The rest of the square is a vast sea of concrete paver stones with three imposing structures: Mao’s Mausoleum to the south, the Monument to the People’s Heroes of the Revolution in the center, and a cross-ways wall of two-sided video screens to rival the most elaborate stadium scoreboards in the NFL. The screens show various scenes of giddy Chinese people of all ages enjoying life amidst their daily activities. Triumphant music and upbeat voices blare from loudspeakers atop the lampposts in accompaniment.

“That’s all a bunch of propaganda,” Mandy said about the video displays.

There are no benches, chairs, or any place to sit in Tiān’ānmén Square. It is a festive place, but designed for milling about, not congregating, though crowds of women gather every day at the northern end before

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Page 3 of nonfiction by Kenneth A. Boos sunrise. They dutifully watch the ceremonies to raise the official national flag of the People’s Republic of China.

The tall flag pole is fixed in front of a white granite base with two sets of red-carpeted steps at both ends—more symmetry—that lead up to a platform where a band plays the national anthem while members of the People’s Armed Police conduct the ceremony.

“The men all have to be tall and the same height,” Hao said.

“And handsome,” Mandy added. “They are specially chosen, like super models. That is why the women come out so early in the morning to see them.”

“They can also watch it on TV,” Hao said.

“In the United States they used to play the national anthem on TV whenever the station signed off for the night,” my mother said.

“They don’t do that anymore?” Hao asked.

“They still do,” I said, “but first they say, ‘we interrupt this infomercial to bring you our national anthem.’ And then they try to sell you a few flags.”

“Really, Ken? Is that true?” Hao asked.

“Don’t you listen to him, Hao!” Kelly said.

Hao laughed.

We looked around. We walked around. We joined the long line to view Chairman Mao’s preserved body, but at 11:00 a.m. it was time for a nap and his remains went back into slumber before we even got close to the mausoleum. An attendant told Hao that the next viewing would be at 2:00 p.m., but no one carrying a bag, camera, or anything in his or her hands would be allowed to see the venerated chairman.

“I think they are extra worried about security because of the anniversary of the demonstrations in Tiān’ānmén Square,” Mandy said.

“Yes, soon there will be a news blackout throughout China. Nothing about Tiān’ānmén Square will be mentioned in the newspapers, on TV, or even on the Internet,” Hao said.

“Don’t you think that makes it more conspicuous?” my mother asked.

It was a time of unbridled enthusiasm in the west. The economy was soaring. The Soviet Union was crumbling. The youth of China were awakening. Michael Dukakis rode in a tank during his presidential campaign and it made us laugh and not vote for him. Boris Yeltsin sat atop a tank facing the Russian White House and the cheering crowds vaulted him into the presidency of a hopeful new Russia. A lone, unknown protester faced down a row of tanks heading west on Chang’an Avenue toward Tiān’ānmén Square and became a folk hero.

Hu Yaobang served as General Secretary of the Communist Party in the 1980s, but was forced out of office in 1987 in disgrace and humiliation for his reformist positions—like greater autonomy for Tibet—and his encouragement of widespread protests by university students in 1986. The press and party officials gave little public mention when he died on April 15, 1989 until some 100,000 students in Beijing marched on Tiān’ānmén Square to call for a proper tribute to Hu. The government consented to hold a state funeral, though they refused to meet with student petitioners about democratic reforms.

Demonstrations continued in the square, which party officials expected to run their course and be done with after Hu’s funeral on April 22nd. Still seeking satisfaction, the students kept it up, which prompted Deng Xiaoping, paramount leader of Communist China, to denounce them on April 26th in the People’s Daily newspaper. Bolstered by throngs of ordinary citizens joining them in protest, the students then ramped it up with a hunger strike on May 13th as demonstrations spread to scores, maybe hundreds of other cities throughout China.

Despite outward signs of internal party strife, the hardliners won. Deng declared martial law on May 20th and mobilized the People’s Liberation Army. The students remained steadfast and inspired the world when they crafted a metal frame and built a 10-meter (33-ft.) high statue made of Styrofoam and plaster that they dubbed the “Goddess of Democracy and Liberty.” Using two hands, she clutched a torch that harkened to the Statue of Liberty and made all Americans feel proud. Cloaked for 40 years under communist rule, out

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Page 4 of nonfiction by Kenneth A. Boos of nowhere there was now a genuine connection with the youth of China. Then, on the morning of June 3rd, more than a quarter-million troops from outlying provinces rolled into the heart of the capital.

The tickets we received to verify our security clearance and allow entry into Tiān’ānmén Square contained a bilingual list of Do’s and Don’ts—mostly Don’ts—including “No inappropriate attire.” I considered the phrase, “No inappropriate attire” an adept translation compared to the awkward interpretations I had seen this past week in China, “Jane’s Pub Bar” in Suzhou still the most amusing. I reached into my back pocket for a blue bandana and tied it around my head.

“What do you see?” Kelly asked.

I saw what she saw, a sprawling, immaculate public space filled with the ebullient faces of at least a hundred-thousand Chinese with good grades. Between the barricades and security, though, Tiān’ānmén Square was like a giant playpen boxed in by two landmarks on either side, the National Museum of China on the east, and the Great Hall of the People, seat of the government, to the west. From a distance, the similar buildings look neo-classical with flat roofs and tall Doric-like columns, yet upon closer inspection, they are filled with detailed Chinese patterns and inscriptions.

“It’s not what I see. It’s what I hear, what I feel beneath my feet.”

“What do you hear? What do you feel?”

The ground quaked from the rumble of tanks approaching. Men and women screamed and fled every which way, their eyes burning from tear gas engulfing the square. Shots rang out, fired indiscriminately into the crowd. Soldiers wielding bayonets slashed at the faces of terrified demonstrators. Blood splattered.

Plaster cracked and crumbled. Bodies tumbled onto the hard concrete, kicked and trampled in a chaotic mess.

Gasoline from torched vehicles fouled the air.

On June 4, 1989, within 24 hours after arriving, the army had cleared Tiān’ānmén Square of about a million protesters, killing maybe a few hundred, a few thousand, several thousand. No one knows. Certainly thousands were wounded and a reported 1,600 workers who joined the students were later arrested and executed. Many of the casualties were a result of fighting in nearby streets where several soldiers, likely the same ages as the students, were among the first to die.

With no place to sit, my mother leaned against a recycling bin. Hao, Mandy, and Amanda were laughing and taking pictures of one another. A Chinese couple approached Hao and Mandy. They had a girl about six years old who wore a white dress decorated with pink flowers to match her pink top and round pink hat. A gold-colored medallion hung from her neck.

“Amanda, they are asking for permission to take a picture of you posing with their daughter,” Mandy said.

“You are a westerner, so it will bring good luck to their daughter and honor to their family,” Hao said.

“Especially since you are a blonde,” Mandy added.

Not only a blonde. Amanda was also wearing a pink top to go with her colorful flower-patterned dress she bought in Suzhou. She kneeled down to the right of the girl and curled her left hand around the girl’s left shoulder. The Chinese girl held a souvenir flag of China while Amanda flashed the peace sign, a gesture that Amanda and the other bridesmaids in Hao and Mandy’s wedding often displayed when posing for pictures.

The girl at first seemed bewildered at having to stand with a stranger, but now she smiled and mimicked Amanda’s peace sign. Cameras on all sides clicked. The Chinese couple bowed to Amanda and said, “Tank yoo, tank yoo.”

This is what I came to see. I thought I had come to Tiān’ānmén Square to conjure up a sense of history and recapture what it felt like a generation ago when there was a glimmer of hope that the world would enter an era of universal peace and prosperity.

That was delusional. A market-based economy will vault way up and then stream back down like any roller coaster or cab ride in Shanghai. Russia, once again under autocratic rule, will always be Russia. But the youth of China are still awakening. Be there.

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Stephen Cocca #4 The Early Warning System The Emergency Broadcast System (EBS) created in 1963 to warn Americans about nuclear threats or other emergency situations used to effectively startle people with the blaring of a very disturbing sound rudely interrupting a television or radio program, then after a minute, allayed fear with the words “if this had been an actual emergency.”

But the EBS had nothing on my mother.

Instead of an EBS she had her four sons to warn her. Not about an impending missile attack by the Soviet Union, or some other weather-related warning. No such thing. She had her sons to warn her when their father reached a certain point on his walk home from work so she could get dinner ready!

My father’s name was Charles, but everyone called him “Charlie.” He owned a jewelry store, but he wasn’t just a merchant; he had a special skill. He was a watchmaker. In those days, everyone wore a watch.

No phones or “Fitbits” existed in those days to tell the time. And everybody’s watch was mechanical. When that watch stopped running, a change of battery would not get it started again. It had to be taken completely apart, cleaned, oiled, reassembled and “tuned” to keep perfect time by a trained and experienced watch repairman like my dad. He could repair anything that was wrong with a watch, from a broken glass crystal to a winding stem that had worn down or just plain come off. He could replace the mainspring in any watch and do it quickly because very few people in those days had a second watch. Customers would always moan, “What will I do without my watch?” when they were told it would be ready in a few days.

Watching him repair a woman’s watch was the most amazing thing of all, because it was often no bigger than a dime, yet it contained just as many parts as a big old pocket watch. He could disassemble each part from that tiny movement, place the parts into a small wire basket and run them with parts from several other watches through a three-jar machine that looked like the mixer that mom had in the kitchen. Most importantly, when he was finished “cleaning” the watch mechanism he could put the whole thing back together, shine the watchcase, and put it on a machine to fine-tune it to keep perfect time and guarantee its accuracy to his customer. He had a successful business that kept me and my three brothers and our mom in clothes and that put food on the table.

Looking back on our home life, I would say it was like it was an “Ozzie and Harriet” episode or perhaps more like a Norman Rockwell painting of the typical American middle-class family. I lived an idyllic childhood and adolescence complete with the family around the dinner table, dad seated at the head of the table and mom sitting down at the other end of the table after removing her apron and serving the steaming hot supper to her hungry minions and appreciative husband. During the meal we talked about our days and no shouting or arguing was allowed. Everyone had a chance to speak, starting with my oldest brother, who would tell about high school and his cross-country team exploits, and moving around the table in descending order of age. My dad would patiently listen to his sons, ask questions, address a problem, or admonish outof-line behavior. Mom often was like the clerk or sergeant-at-arms and would “fill in” what we conveniently left out -- a teachers’ note, for example, or a problem with another kid or neighbor. We were, after all, normal boys. Mom also reported on her activities, especially those involving a day trip with a lady friend, an invitation to a social event, or a visit or phone call from a relative.

Dad’s life was like a precisely tooled watch with every part working in perfect order. A quiet and gentle man who loved to whistle, he always drove a modest car, dressed conservatively in a clean, neatly pressed white shirt and tie seven days a week, and went to the same church service every Sunday, family in tow. He belonged to the Kiwanis club that gathered every Thursday for its dinner meeting, kept the store open late on Friday night, eating dinner at the local diner but always expecting us to be together at the table for supper the other five nights—boys in clean shirts with hands washed (both sides) and mom appropriately dressed as well. Most importantly, he expected that dinner would be served promptly at 6 p.m. so he could slide his feet into his brown leather house slipper and watch the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite at 6:30, reading the evening newspaper as he sat in his easy chair. His hard work was done for the day; he had provided everything his family needed to be content and happy.

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Page 2 of nonfiction by Stephen Cocca It was mom’s job to manage and coordinate the household and successfully complete her portion of the tasks, and she took her job seriously and performed it in an imaginative way, just as dad performed his responsibility of providing for his family. But one of the keys to our well-run household truly challenged her and her solution to the problem demonstrated her brilliance, since it was the biggest challenge she faced every day. To meet that challenge she utilized her sons in a dazzling and dynamic early warning operation that saved her bacon many, many times to successfully get supper on the table at 6 p.m.

Her name was Camille, but her mother and her lady friends called her “Cam” and using a few clever “tricks” and some unorthodox methods she was able to accomplish two of the three keys to our household contentment: my father's daily clean white shirt and having the four of us clothed, with homework and chores completed.

To complete the first “key,” the brother next to me was bribed with a sufficient monetary reward (a percentage of her weekly allowance for groceries and household expenses) to iron the seven shirts—a job he excelled at—as well as performing many of the household cleaning jobs that kept the house under control.

To accomplish the second, mom taught my older brothers to take care of themselves and to be responsible for the younger ones. My second oldest brother was responsible for making sure I was washed up and into clean duds for dinner and church (since I was the baby of the family), and my oldest brother was the model for all of us as he worked a paper route and always did well in school and displayed exemplary behavior—to this day we call him the “perfect brother.” All of these tricks or methods were part of her effective mothering, and as we look back today it seems we did these things because we wanted to, not because we had to do them. We didn’t protest or rebel because mom had a special way to make each of us feel good about helping.

Still, we were four normal boys. As soon as the school day was over or all day in the summertime, we loved to play outside and get real dirty. Calling us in and getting us cleaned up would be hard for any mother to do on a consistent basis, but she trained us well and we cooperated. That’s not to say that once in a while a small stain on a shirt or a smudge on a cheek just under an ear wasn’t noticed by our father’s observant eye.

After all, if the man could find a speck of dust in the power train of a dinky little watch, how could he not see the aftermath of the slide into second base under our fingernails?

What about that third key? This is the one mom had the hardest time with. You see, she was a procrastinator, especially when it came to cooking. It was not her favorite thing to do. Educated, a writer of poetry, a stimulating conversationalist, a strong voice for civil rights, devoted to her adopted religion (she converted to Catholicism when she married my dad) and an avid reader, the desire to spend hours in the kitchen creating culinary masterpieces was not her cup of tea. Not to say she wasn’t creative. It was just that the new food innovations, designed to present meals that would satisfy any palate quickly, were certainly created with her in mind.

Sometime around 5 p.m., jolted as if an earthquake had shaken her, she would rouse herself from the book she was reading or put down her latest poem, often scribbled on the back of an envelope, remove from the corner of her mouth the cigarette that had smoldered into a thin, remarkably intact and fragile line of ash, and plunk it in the ashtray moaning, “Oh, dinner…”

Quickly she would assess the situation like a general on a battlefield. Gathering whatever son or sons who had wandered into the house, stomachs growling, she would say, “Get down the street and listen for your father’s whistle. When you hear it, you know what to do!” While one or two of us rushed out the door to grab one of the fleet of bikes in the front yard, she would spring into action. Orders to pick up toys were parlayed to whomever was left in the house, along with reminders to get cleaned-up.

The chosen spies would peddle down the street as fast as they could, about half of the mile-long distance to the downtown shopping district where my dad’s store was located. If there were two of us, one would stop first about a quarter-mile from home on a small bridge that spanned a little brook, and the other would be the “advance scout” and ride the rest of the way to the street corner at the end of the block. As soon as dad’s distinctive whistle was heard, he would turn and take off for home. The one stationed closer to home would then turn and fly like the wind toward home as soon as he saw the lead man riding his way with a hand

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Page 3 of nonfiction by Stephen Cocca waving. When she had two of us as scouts, she knew she had a little more than 15 minutes to “do her magic” as soon as the closest lookout returned; if she had one, only 10 though. Regardless of available personnel, her EBS system worked flawlessly. When the sentinels returned, they went right upstairs to wash up, and those of us who were already home set the table. As dad walked in the door, he was greeted by the smell of a cooking dinner, his washed- and-ready boys greeting him, and a house made presentable for the return of our bread-winner.

I don’t know how she did it! I’m not even sure what we had for dinner sometimes! She would throw some exotic name at us, or say it was a new recipe from somewhere, China maybe, (Later, I found out that a product called Chung-King came in a can.) Once, she put a plate of raw meat and vegetables on the table with a pot of boiling oil suspended by a contraption over a burning candle and when we scrunched up our noses, she said in her best “high-brow” accent, “Boys, this is called fondue — it’s from France!” Dinner was served; dad was happy, and we lived another day of our wonderful family life.

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Sharon F. Cramer, Ph.D. #5 Recalling Grief Letters obtained through Freedom of Information requests, with nearly all lines blacked out: this is how I picture the history of my father and his three uncles. Although I knew that my father’s uncles came to Chicago from Vienna after World War I, everything else about their history was obfuscated. I knew my uncles only through their summer visits.

Throughout the summer, on Sundays, they would journey from downtown Chicago to our suburban home by train. Uncle Jack and Uncle Eddie, confirmed bachelors, traveled with Uncle Sidney and his wife, Aunt Margaret. For them, recreation consisted entirely of sitting in the backyard. Although my father did no cooking during the week, when his uncles arrived, he mounded charcoal briquettes in the grill, and cooked the Kosher hot dogs Uncle Eddie brought. In the decades I lived at home, Sundays include the uncles, relaxing in the sunshine, and talking to my father. Only one Sunday, something happened that always left me wondering, “Who were these uncles? What parts of their lives did they share with my father? What were their mysteries?”

One Sunday afternoon, perhaps due to a relentless summer rain, we all crowded into the den. The uncles, Aunt Margaret and I were relieved when my father took out his photo album. Rarely seen, it was one of the few things my father and his younger sister, Rose, brought with them from Vienna in 1938.

Anticipation widened my eyes, while my lips tightened, shrank; if I remained silent, small, perhaps they would forget I was there, and I would finally learn something new about my father’s early life.

The first pages of pictures in the album were of young men in the woods, climbing on rocks, clowning around waterfalls. I’d seen these before, but had no idea where they were taken.

“I remember how excited you were about going out into the woods near Vienna. You thought you’d be an outdoorsman,” Uncle Eddie shook his head, at such a fantastic dream.

“We did a lot to get ready for Palestine,” my father said proudly to all of us. “We learned Hebrew, and spent weekends in the woods, because we heard Palestine was rugged.”

“Remember? At the last minute, your mother decided that Palestine would be too rough for Rose.

Instead, you came to us in Chicago,” Uncle Jack reminded him.

Uncle Eddie and Uncle Jack nodded, and smiled tightly, remembering. No one spoke. i watched all of them intently. This much I had heard before. I thought, “Maybe now – maybe this time I will learn something new.”

Then, my father turned the page, and revealed a picture of three people stiffly posed in front of a building: a man, a woman, a child in a coat and hat. Suddenly, the room exploded with sobbing – Uncle Sidney was crying. The innocent picture made him fold into himself and wail.

I had never heard a grown man cry. The frightening sounds got louder as others rushed to comfort him, softly murmuring in German, words I couldn’t understand.

“Daddy, daddy, why is Uncle Sidney crying?” I pleaded to know before I was hurried out of the room. The piercing, undulating sounds of his crying followed me out.

Only much later did I learn that the picture was of Uncle Sidney’s first family, in Vienna: the Nazis had taken his wife and child from their home. Only because Uncle Sidney was away did he survive. I pictured his return to his silent, violated home. When I learned that Uncle Sidney immediately abandoned Vienna, for America (via Shanghai), I wondered if any fragile hopes for his family penetrated his fears.

Today, I realize that any remaining questions can never be answered, because I’m the only person from that room left alive. Reflecting on that moment from my life’s vantage point, I now recognize the raw grief he spilled out that day. Now, I wonder what happened after he left our house, and how the sight of his first family left him. Did his sobs reconnect him with his vanished wife, lost child?

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Page 2 of nonfiction by Sharon F. Cramer, Ph.D. My recollections are now colored by the deaths that penetrated my own life: my mother, my father, my husband. Sometimes, when unexpected memory pounces on me, I lean closer to my husband. Other times, the hopelessness of my sobs leaves me more empty and alone. How about Uncle Sidney: did those endless tears give solace, or blister up more pain? In grief, across the decades, I reach out to him.

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David Cummings #6 For My Daughters My daughters cared for my mother as she ended her days. When she passed away it was a time of healing and a time of truth. One day, when my daughters gathered together, I shared our story.

I am so proud of you, each taking turns caring for your grandmother. This is our nature. It is a great deal of work and frustration and patience and caring. I know. When I was in high school, my grandmother, Margaret, had a stroke. After school I would go over to her house where she lived with my Aunt Mary. We would get Grandma Margaret up in her chair. I would sit with my grandmother, reading to her, while the feeding tube dripped baby formula into her stomach.

This history is for you, my girls. It belongs to you. Decisions of your ancestors are how we came to be here, in Buffalo. Let it teach you what we value and why. Maybe it will explain why I am the man I am. You will make your own decisions in life and these accounts can be a map to help find your way.

One simply truth: generations go, but they will not fade if their stories are passed on.

My parents, your grandparents, were born in 1924. They would experience the Great Depression, having a father out of work, and knowing the scarcity of food. The Great Depression would teach them to share, to sacrifice, and to help others. They would listen to the comforting fireside chats of FDR on the radio. They would be high school seniors when the bombs fell on Pearl Harbor. That would be the window through which one would view life if you were born in 1924.

Kathleen came into the world at Millard Fillmore Hospital on a cold September Buffalo morning. She was the first in her family to not be delivered at home. Kathleen was frail and she cried at the rough-handed doctor but calmed at her mother’s breast. She was the third McLaughlin girl of George McLaughlin and Margaret Ferris.

The family of George McLaughlin, Kathleen would learn, stayed as long as they could during the Irish potato famine. They watched family members die from diseases of poverty such as tuberculosis.

McLaughlins were either exiled to Australia for stealing chickens, or emigrated to the States.

The McLaughlin clan settled in the Finger Lakes region. George’s father died when George was a boy, and he became the main provider for his younger siblings and mother. George married, but his wife’s life was cut short from TB, so he sought to move on. He left for Buffalo where he had cousins, and found a job working for the city as a truck mechanic. He would stop in the Ferris’ corner store where Margaret clerked, chatting with her about life and being Irish and his family. Margaret, who was barely five foot, was impressed by the red-headed, muscular six-foot Irishman. They married. Life was good in their west side apartment as they started their family.

On the weekends the family liked to get out of the city and visit the southern tier. To make the road shorter, an Irish phrase, is to tell a story or sing a song. George would croon all the old homesick-for-Ireland tunes and Take Me Home Again, Kathleen was one of his favorites. Kathleen loved it, too, and her father liked to have her sing it to him.

Kathleen never told you about her father’s drinking. This was a great sense of sorrow in Kathleen’s life.

One time George, inebriated, was driving to Letchworth State Park with Kathleen in the car. An East Aurora cop pulled him over and took him in to sleep it off in the jail.

The policeman called a local woman who came to the police station; she was very kind, chatting with and consoling Kathleen. She even took her for ice cream while they waited for Margaret to find a way to come out to East Aurora. Always remember that acts of kindness reverberate through the lives of children long after they have grown.

So why did George drink? Maybe it was the pain from the loss of his first wife. George was an honest man, a hardworking man, but whatever pain and disappointment in life that weighed on him he tried to solve with drink. So, remember that the drink runs in our veins and you must never let it take hold.

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Page 2 of nonfiction by David Cummings Asthma was a problem for the McLaughlin girls. Kathleen’s asthma exceeded her sisters’ and she would often sleep sitting up in a chair. She said there is nothing worse than that sensation of not being able to breathe. Respiratory issues plagued Kathleen throughout her life.

Food was scarce all around in the 1930s, including for the McLaughlins. When serving chicken, every part had to be shared except for the neck which Kathleen asked for as that was the only part she could savor all to herself.

Margaret fed the hobos who came to the door (her brother, Alec, had been one for a few years). During the Depression men rode the rails from town to town. Hobos sought chores in return for their meals. These men had their own special code, symbols marked on trees and posts for others to learn of the town they were coming to. The McLaughlin home was labeled as a safe haven for the hungry. Remember to respect the poor as our ancestors lived close to their plight.

Political parties changed hands in Buffalo and George was registered with the losing party. He came home to show Margaret his pink slip from the city garage. Margaret took Kathleen to City Hall to give hell to everyone; they brought George back part time. The fact that Kathleen was the daughter chosen to go was not lost on her. Being the skinniest, she was touted as the starving daughter. But remember, she would say, you must fight periodic battles to keep your family’s rights.

When Kathleen started Lafayette High School she heard a boy criticize her hand-me-down dress.

Clothes started with eldest sister Eileen then to Mary and then to her. Taunts followed about her kinky bright red hair: redhead, redhead, fire in the woodshed! Beware of the remarks you make in jest as their sting lives on.

Halfway through Kathleen’s senior year came shock and anger as they listened to radio broadcasts: over 2300 Americans killed in Pearl Harbor on a Sunday morning raid while people dressed for church. Her classes dwindled as young men enlisted.

Everyone wanted to help. Kathleen joined the volunteer sky watch air patrol. They surveyed the night skies for Japanese planes. It’s funny to say that we believed the Japanese would bomb Buffalo, Kathleen said, but in such moments people feel the need to help.

Thoughts of the war consumed everyone. Letchworth set up a POW camp for German soldiers. Mary enrolled in nurse training, and upon graduation joined the Army Nurse Corps in the Pacific. Factories hired again and Kathleen went to work for Bell Aircraft.

The government would need more nurses, and like her sister, Mary, this sponsorship would be her only opportunity to go to college. Kathleen decided to leave her factory job. She trained and lived at the Meyer Memorial, but it had plenty of faults, including being cold and unclean and overrun with cockroaches. Not all physicians liked being part of a training hospital. Handing a doctor a wrong forceps was punished by having a basin of water thrown in a nurse’s face. The Meyer was a difficult place to train.

One floor held insane patients. While on her rotation, a patient chased Kathleen across the room until a group of nursing students jumped the would-be rapist, throttling him until the orderlies arrived. The young women learned to stick together.

And then there were the babies. During deliveries the doctors assessed the newborns. Infants with disabilities wound up placed next to open windows and cold Buffalo winter nights took care of the rest.

Poorly nourished nursing students spent considerable time in the tuberculin ward of the Meyer. Then coughing started. When one nurse was checked for strep throat, it was discovered she had contracted TB. The nursing students all were tested. Kathleen’s cough brought up bright foamy blood; she, too, had TB. The Board of Health stormed in and investigated the Meyer up and down. Those in charge were reprimanded for lack of cleanliness, for poor supervision, for weak concern for procedures and the safety of their nursing students. The Health Department threatened closure of the Meyer’s training program. But it was too late for Kathleen.

Her hopeful plans of building a career for herself and being independent were shattered. She was sent to a sanatorium in the Finger Lakes to heal. The physician at the sanatorium treated her with sunbaths, which

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Page 3 of nonfiction by David Cummings has the age-old remedy. Surgery removed part of a lung. Then came something new the doctors were trying out, antibiotics.

Kathleen experienced profound loneliness and isolation. People were so terrified of TB that many of those she considered friends never contacted her. She was shunned like a leper. This sense of abandonment is why she never talked about her TB. Her family made the occasional trek to the sanatorium. But for Kathleen’s father, her illness was a horrible reenactment of the tribulations of his first wife. George had seen the slow ravages of TB, the way it consumed the body, and it was difficult for him to watch it in his own daughter.

Visitors comprised the intermittent priest who brought books for the patients to read. Kathleen said the authors were typically the likes of Elizabeth Barrett Browning or the Brontë sisters; the irony being authors who died of TB. You know that your grandmother did not like people to see her misshapen back, and chose her clothes accordingly. A sad truth is men accept their scars better than women. That is because people are less accepting in women of the dueling marks of living.

Kathleen contemplated over and over that she should have stayed at the factory job. When you cannot know for certain the outcome, you make your best decision. You cannot feel guilt over a reasonable choice.

This is just the challenge of life.

Kathleen sat on the long porch of the sanatorium wondering what would come of her future.

Doral was born October 1924. He was delivered at home in Portageville, the sixth child of Floyd Cummings and Jessie Bailey. Doral grew up especially close to his brother, Warren, who was known as Bones. Bones was less than a year older than he, an Irish twin. Their parents lived in a small house on the Genesee River, bordering Letchworth State Park. Cummingses had slowly migrated west since the American Revolution, winding up in Livingston County.

A few days from Thanksgiving 1927, one more child was born to Jessie. The six children were excited that their mom was having a seventh and they guessed how this one would break the tie of three girls and three boys. The doctor warned Jessie of possible complications but hospital delivery would have been miles away and expensive. After a long, hard labor, Garland was born. Where Jessie came up with the name Garland (or Doral for that matter) would never be known as by the time they were old enough to ask, she would be gone.

Jessie held the baby Garland but she knew that something was not right inside her. Floyd went up the hill to his parents’ house with Jessie and Garland and asked his parents to watch the newborn for a little while as he needed to take her to the hospital in Warsaw. Doral was three and was excited to visit his grandparents. He didn’t know then they would all move into the three-bedroom farmhouse with no running water.

The people of the Portageville Baptist Church held a service for Jessie. Cummings children sang the hymns. The congregation supported them again the next year when nine-year-old sister Eilene died of a kidney ailment. Girls, remember the importance of community support. And be aware that not long ago we were a country without health care, and this is what it was like.

Portageville’s one-room schoolhouse was down by the river. Each row held a different grade and the Cummings clan were well represented. Schoolhouse chores included keeping the coals burning, cleaning the slates, and winding the regulator clock. It was a thrill to be chosen as the one to wind the clock each week.

When they tore down the old schoolhouse, the clock made its way to a local antique shop where Doral purchased it. That clock hangs in our living room, and I hope you will find the sentimental value in its octagonal wooden face that I have.

Generations lived in the farmhouse: Doral, his siblings, his father, his father’s parents, his grandmother’s mother. Crowded as they were, Doral said those days were fun. Great-grandmother Gertrude Jewett, who was born in 1851, jigged at all the weddings. She also loved to tell how she shook hands with Abe Lincoln during his train stop in Buffalo.

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Page 4 of nonfiction by David Cummings Various foods came by door-to-door delivery in those days. A kind-hearted meat man in a horse-drawn cart dropped off extra hotdogs to the children on his route. After eating their hotdogs, Bones had an idea.

Doral hid under the shed making plenty of barking and snarling noises. Bones let out a hoot and a holler: the dog snatched his hotdog and hid under the shed! Sure enough the meat man returned to his cart and got another hotdog for the boy.

While making his delivery inside the house, the meat man explained to the boys’ grandmother, Bertha, what occurred. The two looked out the window to catch Bones and Doral splitting the extra hotdog. The boys spotted Grandma Bertha shaking her cane and they lit off like the wind.

On days off of school when Doral and Bones completed their chores collecting the eggs and milking the cow, they hiked through Letchworth, climbing the cliffs, exploring caves, and swimming in the Genesee. By age twelve the boys carried their own .22 rifles. Quite the marksmen, they brought home rabbits or squirrels for their grandmother to cook. When especially hungry, the boys would shoot pigeons in barns, wrap them in fresh-dug clay and roast them.

President Roosevelt put unemployed Americans back to work through the CCC camps. Many men, including Doral’s brother, Garland, and father, Floyd, built the trails and stone walls in Letchworth.

Philosophical arguments about economies adjusting over time do not put food on tables.

The term dropout was not coined until 1948; back in their era if a teen quit high school to take a job that showed admirable concern for the family. The teenage Cummings children worked as much as they could for neighbors as farmhands or laundresses. Photos on the mantle were not in cap and gown, but in military uniforms. Their eldest brother, Ernest (known as Skip), mailed home a Cavalry photo of himself on horseback. Once the war started, his horse would be traded for a tank. And the war did start.

When Doral turned 18 in 1941, he and Bones signed up together. Their induction began when they got off the train at Fort Niagara. Bones joined the Army Air Corps and was off to the Pacific. Doral joined the Army Paratroopers. Years of farm labor prepared Doral for Fort Bragg’s grueling 82nd Airborne Division training.

Doral never spoke to me directly about his war experiences. Mainly, he advised me to study hard and go to college so I did not get drafted into Vietnam. His war experiences were always with him. We knew never to wake him up abruptly from a nap or he would leap off the couch thrashing out. George McLaughlin learned the hard way and wound up pinned against the wall. Doral’s sleep lacked the peace he deserved.

I learned combat soldiers shared war stories with those who had been in the fray. These men could always recognize each other in barbershops or mechanic garages. I am not sure how: a look, a movement, a casual word. In this indirect way my father would talk about his experiences, and there, alone, I was allowed to listen.

The 82nd invaded Italy. It didn’t start well as the US artillery shot down their own planes until notified that this was a US invasion. Once on the ground, the men’s training propelled them to hunt down German machine gunner nests. Quick and sinewy, Doral crept through brush just under the relentless pounding MG42. His previous encounter left him so close to the nest that his own grenade showered him with metal fragments (scars you’d seen along his back). As he belly-crawled closer, he checked back on his friend who provided the suppressing fire from the side of a tree. This friend had been the first boy from the South he had ever met; a boy who had grown up on a farm like Doral had; they had much in common. A volley of machine gun fire took off the boy’s head. Doral pulled himself within throwing distance and yanked the grenade pin. The machine gun tipped up, smoke billowed through a white t-shirt over the barrel. Doral threw his grenade.

The GIs regrouped seeking out the dead and wounded. His company brethren patted Doral on the back for ending the engagement. But that was not the way the lieutenant saw it. The lieutenant threatened to write Doral up for a court martial. An understanding captain intervened, calling Doral before him. The captain had a friend involved in the reorganization of the 101st as an airborne division. The captain would transfer Doral, drop his rank from corporal to buck private—it would be the one opportunity Doral would have. He took it.

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Page 5 of nonfiction by David Cummings The 101st trained for the D-Day Invasion near Hungerford, England. The British welcomed the help but not the antics. Leaves had been canceled because the military could not risk that any man might talk about the invasion, and the boys grew restless. Eating K rations wore on them; so, they fished the lakes–with hand grenades. One explosion would bring dozens of stunned fish to the surface to be scooped up in nets. And they would hunt deer, which was not allowed because the deer belong to the royal family. Alarms would blare up and down the lanes followed by shouts of “the Yanks are poaching the king’s deer!” as the men dragged the venison back to their quarters.

General Dwight D. Eisenhower gave the go-ahead for the invasion. The Supreme Allied Commander received projections that the casualties might be very high for the airborne troops so on June 5 he visited the men. You have seen the photo in your American history books: Ike advises troops before D-Day. But fivestar generals do not give advice to foot soldiers. Great generals give encouragement and that is what he was there to do. Ike chatted about fishing. His presence gave credence that he believed in the men.

The photo appears to imply that the men ran down the road to greet the general; actually they spotted a young woman with him, Eisenhower’s personal driver, the Irish lass, Kay Summersby. The men enjoyed the sight of a beautiful woman in their midst. That is how your grandfather, Doral, wound up in the photo with Eisenhower. Sometimes a pretty face does as much for morale as the words of a general.

A couple hours later Doral’s pathfinder chalk flew over the English Channel on their way to setting up jump sites for those to come.

A week after D-Day Doral’s company scoured the Norman countryside, securing one farmhouse after the next. Doral circled a cow barn. At the corner he halted, face-to-face with a German. The boy was so close, Doral could count the pimples on his face. Stunned, they both turned, running in opposite directions– until it struck them equally they were enemies. Both swung around and fired. The German boy did not fire again.

Doral’s left arm hung at his side as if broken. He saw straight through where the bullet passed. The medic had been killed earlier so he tended to the wound himself: sulfa powder and compression bandages.

He wrapped his arm. Men of his company checked on him but they had to move on. The next morning the French Underground took him on a horse cart to a medic’s station. The army medic said the best course of action was to amputate. Doral knew better.

Doral complained of a toothache while in training and a military dentist, just out of dental school, responded by pulling the tooth. Extract: a simple solution to any problem. Doral demanded the medic not cut off his arm. His life skills consisted of manual work and, if possible, he would return home with two arms.

The medic relented. When you girls were young you laughed that your grandfather’s bicep had a belly button on each side. His continuous exercising and stretching eventually brought the arm to back to use.

Doral recuperated in a VA in New Jersey. As he healed, he walked the Atlantic City Boardwalk. Shows allowed entry for soldiers in uniform for free, so he heard entertainers such as Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington. Jazz musicians graciously accepted these guests from the services.

Military command kept their injured men busy. Doral joined those who notified kin of the loss of their loved ones, and supported families by attending funerals. Such familial duties put their plight in perspective.

Doral got off the train a few days before his brothers. He detoured down to Letchworth and bivouacked along the Genesee River. Bones and Skip would join him within few days. Big tobacco provided free cigarettes to soldiers—a method to help with nerves, they said. Doral smoked on the shore as the watched the waters run over the falls.

When his brothers arrived, they hugged and laughed, and even skinny dipped in the Genesee like they did as boys. Lying on the ground they stared up at the canopy watching the squirrels building nests. The sound of the falls lulled them and Doral said at that moment he felt he had come home. Then the oddest occurrence came about, he added. German POWs had been housed in camps in the park and must have been preparing for release. One of the Germans, hiking through the trees, held out his hands and said in broken English, “Dis is surely God’s country.”

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Page 6 of nonfiction by David Cummings As the boys came up the hill to the old homestead, the neighbors rushed out of their houses to escort them. Garland was the first of the family to greet his older brothers. He had grown so tall, and would enlist on his next birthday.

“The boys are here, Ma!” Grandmother Bertha shouted.

When Skip and Bones and Doral entered the door, their 94-year-old Great-grandma Gertrude jumped up on the dining room table and danced the wildest of all jigs. The boys were home.

Kathleen returned to Buffalo to live with her parents. Health issues kept her from working as a nurse, and she wondered if her RN degree had been for naught. Each day Doral carpooled to Buffalo, working in a factory as a mechanic.

One of Kathleen’s nursing friends encouraged Kathleen to get out and socialize more. Her friend set her up on a blind date. Kathleen McLaughlin and Doral Cummings found in their stories a common theme of tribulations and understanding and caring. Kathleen said it was as if two streams had come together. They found comfort in each other and married in 1952, moving into an apartment in Mount Morris on the Genesee.

They did not have much furniture, using boxes as end tables, but they were happy.

Kathleen’s parents expressed disappointment that she did not marry a good Catholic boy, but it is important when that time comes that you find a man of integrity who loves you.

A year after marrying, Kathleen’s breathing became labored. Tests proved that her TB returned. She was crestfallen. After years of medical troubles, she had found love and was a newlywed, but now might not survive this new round. Surgeons removed ribs, and more of her lung with the masses. Again, she was banished to a sanatorium, one even farther away, at Lake George. Recovery without her husband was bleak.

Old feelings of abandonment overwhelmed her. She doubted her marriage could last.

But Doral stayed. He would work all week then drive the 300 miles to visit her on the weekend. With the strength of her husband, Kathleen kept up her spirits and pulled through.

Historian Will Durant remarked, a child wants to forget what a grandchild wants to remember. ’Tis a good thing for a daughter to know the paths so many people took to bring her to where she is. Recognize our interconnection to history. Remember the people we have come from and their challenges. Their stories flow into our lives.

Be understanding of others as you do not always know their struggles. Avoid dangerous habits like smoking, which took your grandfather; what the Hun could not do to him, the tobacco industry did.

Caregivers are a special breed to which you belong. You nursed your grandmother, Kathleen. You have the gift to find that caregiving spirit in others, just as Doral recognized those who suffered in battle. Seek out the kindness in such people.

You will have new challenges that I cannot imagine. Draw from within. Accept the strength of your family, of each other, and of your community. Be there for each other.

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Trudy Cusella #7 Good To The Last Breath When my mother was a young woman, the first thing you noticed were her large peridot green eyes underlined by tiny sacs that should have aged her but gave her a Bette Davis appearance—buggy, flirtatious eyes. Mischief lurked in those eyes accompanied by a hint of I dare you. Other times, Joan Crawford came to mind: pencil-thin lips outlined and filled in with garnet or ruby red lipstick; eyebrows tweezed down to bare skin, a russet crayon defining their arch. Freckles sprinkled across mother’s eggshell skin as if a pastry-chef had gotten fast and loose with a can of nutmeg. She reminded us often of her freckles. She bore the freckles that in an Irish girl were usually complimented by fiery red hair, “but when God was passing things out, he gave me the freckles alright, but then He screwed up and gave me shit-on-a-shingle brown hair.”

Back then, we lived with extended family and during the shank of her day, between chores and while the men were still at work and the kids in school, mother sat at the far end of the long dining room table. She sipped black coffee and turned smoking into an art form: remove a Camel cigarette from a metal case; place it carefully between the lips; flip the lid of a knock-off silver lighter; flick the lighter to flame; as the cigarette ignites, inhale deeply; remove cigarette from mouth; use thumb and ring finger to wipe a trace of tobacco from lower lip; carelessly exhale in whatever direction suits the moment; dangle the cigarette between the fore and middle finger; wave it in the air like a baton; observe as the smoke swirls up to the heavens; tap ashes into ashtray; after several delectable puffs, stub out the lipstick-stained butt; begin the process again. Her movements were as orchestrated and precise as the swing of Mickey Mantle’s bat or the inner workings of a Bulova watch. She almost made us forget the foul air that surrounded us.

Mother seemed more enthralled with smoking than any other aspect of her life. Smoking relaxed her otherwise jangled nerves, enhanced her social encounters, comforted and nourished her in times of stress, distracted her from the mundane tasks of housewifery and motherhood and served as armor when her spirit needed defending. She could dismiss you or anything you had to say with a wave of her cigarette or a puff of smoke blown shrewdly in your direction. Nicotine fortified her during her long days of caretaking.

When my mother was a little girl, her father came home from work one day and announced to my grandmother, “no wife of mine is ever going to smoke a cigarette and that’s final.” My grandmother had never smoked, never considered smoking. She thought smoking was an expensive, dirty and unladylike habit. However, as she explained later, “no man was going to tell me what I could or couldn’t do.” She walked to the market and bought her first pack of cigarettes. “I coughed and choked and even threw up before I finished the pack, but with a little help from my friends, I learned to smoke. That was the last time he came home with orders for me.”

We learned later that while Grandma was a chain smoker, she seldom inhaled. She lived to be ninetytwo years old when she fell to the floor, the victim of a fatal stroke. Her lit cigarette seared a hole in the carpet where she fell.

In the pre-depression years, at the age of thirteen, mother started smoking. She did it for all the peer pressure reasons and because she thought herself sophisticated and it was easy, “kids could go into the corner store with a penny and buy a cigarette. Just like candy.”

“I liked it once I got the hang of it”, she said. “And later, smoking helped me keep my legs crossed, I can tell you that. Your father was all over me like a crocodile but I’d reach for a cigarette, make him light it and offer him a puff. It kept him at arm’s length, which is right where he belonged until we got married. He was ten years older and had been screwing around for a long time before I met him. He wasn’t going to screw around with me. Everyone thought I got married at eighteen because I was pregnant. I wasn’t pregnant, I was in love.”

Health problems, including a bout with kidney tuberculosis when she was in her forties, didn’t stop her permanently. The doctor told her: you have to take medicine for a year. If you smoke during that year, just flush the medicine down the toilet. Mother stopped smoking, took the medicine and when she was diagnosed cured, she bought a carton of cigarettes to celebrate.

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Page 2 of nonfiction by Trudy Cusella I remember when mother and her friends decided to try and quit together. All sixty-something, for years they had ignored the surgeon general and their doctor’s warnings. Finally, a few health crises motivated the close-knit group. Any suggested or prescribed treatment, or device became fair game for mother and her friends, intractable smokers all: education and behavior modification classes, the nicotine patch, cold turkey, a switch to menthol lights (like sucking air, mother declared.) support groups, nicotine gum, desensitization groups that studied x-rays of blackened lungs, photos of scarred faces and necks and visited nursing home patients permanently hooked up to oxygen. When all else failed, Father O’Malley received a donation for Sunday mass to be offered up in the name of their cause.

Mother gave it her all but she had no idea what she was up against. For one of the first times in her life, she failed at something she had put all her energy and determination into achieving. Most of her goals were modest: keep the house clean and the kids scrubbed and polished and put a good meal on the table every night. Some were more daunting: keep a smile on my father’s face and make sure her girls went to college.

Smoking cessation would not be on her list of accomplishments.

Mother finally gave up on her efforts when her best friend succeeded. Her friend’s husband had lung cancer and he insisted that there be no smoke in the house. Mom and her friend smoked outside or in the basement, which the friend found humiliating. During one of her attempts to quit, she was admitted to a psychiatric facility. The panic disorder lurking under the smoke surfaced. After several admissions, her friend quit for good. Mother knew she suffered the same affliction. “I’m not going to the nut house to quit smoking” became her final proclamation.

She was angry and embarrassed by her failure. My father ran interference for her. “Leave her alone, he said. “She tried, she can’t quit and that’s the end of it.”

My dad gave up smoking when he was forty-five after a heart attack and open-heart surgery. When he died, at the age of eighty-four, after almost sixty years of marriage, mother spent even more time at her post at the end of the dining room table chain smoking. “Sometimes when I’m sitting here figuring things out, I talk to your father,” she told me, “and I know just what he’d say to me.”

The five siblings couldn’t approach mother on the subject of cessation, “it’s my house and if you don’t like the smoke, get the hell out,” was her official response.

We continued to breathe the smoke that relentlessly enveloped her. We resigned ourselves to accept the inevitable and did our best to protect ourselves in her presence. I insisted on visiting outside when possible and requested no cigarettes at the dinner table. She begrudgingly complied. We chipped in for a large air purifier and set it up near her post. When alone, she didn’t use it, “that damn thing makes too much noise” was the verdict but we turned it on as soon as we came in.

I watched as the effects of seventy years of smoking assaulted her body. Her powerful genes kept her alive for the last few years, but every breath produced a rattle, every cough volcanic, every step an effort, fatigue a constant companion. Emphysema brought on congestive heart failure and that manifested itself in swollen legs, skin breakdown, and flu and cold bugs that attacked her vulnerable lungs. Any physical activity resulted in a protracted coughing episode. Shortness of breath slowed her down and limited her abilities. She visited her doctor frequently (she liked him) but seldom followed his instructions. “I’m not walking around hooked up to a machine (oxygen). That’s for old people and it’s dangerous.” Medicines would be tried for a few days and then complaints of side effects retired them to the shelf.

When the skin on her legs cracked and threatened to ulcerate and end her mobility, she fully cooperated with the nurse who came every day to dress her legs. “What a lovely woman,” she said, “we have tea before she leaves.” With poor circulation and swollen limbs, mother managed to heal three different areas of excoriated skin. The smoking continued.

In May of 2010, she was admitted to the hospital for the first time since the tubercular episode. She suffered from an intestinal infection. Antibiotics prescribed multiple times for her lungs eradicated healthy bacteria. She was dehydrated and in a weakened state. She spent ten days in the hospital without cigarettes.

When she came home, she was still weak and required assistance to get out of chairs and navigate stairs. She had given up driving a few years previous.

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Page 3 of nonfiction by Trudy Cusella As a family and with her doctor’s insistence, we decided no more cigarettes. Mother seemed lost and afraid. She didn’t speak much, she ate the minimum and only if it was prepared for her and she didn’t attend to her personal hygiene. In short, she wasn’t herself. A month after her first hospitalization, she was readmitted with vague symptoms of pain in her abdomen. She refused most attempts at treatment—no tube to her stomach and no surgery. She told the night nurse who took her to x-ray, “I don’t want all this. I want to die.”

Before he called hospice, the attending physician came to her room to be assured of her wishes. He put his arm under her shoulders and lifted her up. “I have to hear if from you”, he said moving his ear close to her mouth. “I don’t want any more treatment”, she said, “now get the hell out of here and leave me alone.”

Those were her last words. She lie back on the bed, closed her eyes for the last time and died a few hours later, gently, surrounded by her family. It was two days before her eighty-seventh birthday.

The hospice nurse assured us that her body told the tale: she was at the end of her life. But I often wonder if we had provided her with her precious cigarettes would she have been with us longer? Cigarettes were her pleasure, her crutch and her life-line and for my mother, truly good to the last breath.

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Mitch Flynn #8 An A To Z Of A Bike Ride From Buffalo To Washington DC Alphabetically arranged, this is an account of my bicycle trip to Washington, D.C., with my next-door neighbor Dave (who goes the distance) and our friend Tom, who accompanies us for the first day.

Buffalo is separated from the nation’s capital by 442 miles and what seems like that many hills.

Considering how few words rhyme with “Cuba,” it’s remarkable that we are met there at the end of our first day by a woman named “Luba” – Tom’s ride home.

Dogs are not a problem on this trip. Our one and only chase is a half-hearted bark ’n’ lope by an arthritic black lab out to bow-wow his master.

Eldred, Pa., (Day 2) is made memorable by the fact that we ride through it on Memorial Day with a 15mph tailwind. Scores of little American flags lining Route 446 flap exactly in our direction of travel.

America the beautiful.

Flats and flatulence. Only one of the former, but a whole lot of the latter thanks to our deep-fried, smalltown-diner diet.

Georgetown University is my alma mater, and going to my college reunion was the nominal reason for this trip.

Harper’s Ferry is one of many places steeped in Civil War history we pass through. My maternal greatgreat-grandfather fought for the South at Vicksburg.

Inch-and-a-quarter-wide, my brand new touring tires make me ponder how many miles it will take before their flashing wears flush.

Joke told during a PowerBar break on the third day: What’s brown and sounds like a doorbell? Answer: Dung.

Keating Summit, Pennsylvania, marks the beginning of a 34-mile downhill along PA Route 607.

Leesburg, Va., is our fifth night’s stop, following an 88-mile day, our longest. The next day, we take a 45-mile-long bike path to within 5 miles of D.C. Upon exiting the trail, we immediately get lost.

McConnellsburg, Pa., is where we stay on our fourth night. While next-valley-over Mercersburg was burned down by the Confederate Army, this burg was spared.

Near Sinnemahoning, Pa., the annual rattlesnake roundup is now monitored by the SPCA. Odometerus Interruptus: On Day 3, my cyclometer mysteriously and suddenly resets itself, erasing all cumulative trip information.

Pennsylvania’s pre-eminent topological feature is a 75-mile-wide band of SW-to-NE-running ridges – serial tsunamis frozen in stone. We go over, around or through Bald Eagle, Brush, Tussey, Jacks, Blue, Blacklog and Tuscarora mountains.

Questions frequently asked: “Where ya’ goin’?” “How many flats have ya’ had?” “Are ya’ carryin’ a gun?”

Round trip. I rode this route in reverse in 1974, my first bike tour.

Spruce Creek, Pa., is our stopover at the end of Day 3. Jimmy Carter used to go fly fishing here.

Tuscarora Mountain is the last of our long climbs. It takes over an hour of steady pedaling to “summit” at 2,300 vertical feet. The ride down takes less than 5 minutes.

Urination happens. When you sip water all day from a Camelback, you look for concealing shrubbery with more than average frequency.

Velocity. Our trip average is 11.3 mph. Our maximum downhill is 43.5 mph.

White House. Arriving in Washington, we ride to the first residence and take a souvenir photo standing next to our bikes.

XOX - My wife, Ellen, drives down to join me for the reunion and take me home.

Yes, I would do it again. My 45th reunion comes up in 2017.

Zzzzs come easily at the end of a day of biking. Perhaps also at the end of this account of five-and-ahalf days in the saddle.

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The 8th Annual Just Buffalo Members’ Reading

Regina Forni #9 Birding the Amazon From January 7 to January 14, 2016, Richard Root went on a birdwatching trip in the Ecuadorian Amazon with his good friend Regina.

Day 1: The Asshole Donald Trump The morning of the flight to Coca, Richard and Reg are the first at the Hotel Quito breakfast buffet.

Soon Denise and Michelle arrive, one statuesque the other short. The two women from Montreal keep to themselves, speaking French quietly with that cadence of annoyance that comes with the language and possibly the culture. The night before, Richard and Reg had had dinner in the hotel restaurant and had sat at a table next to the women, whom they’d already met on the flight from Miami. However, at dinner they did not join tables. They did not share language despite the excellent English the Canadian women spoke. Their only departure from separate tables and conversations was a brief exploration of their shared horror at the possible presidency of Donald Trump.

“We’d better be careful tomorrow,” warned Reg. “The other guy on this tour is from Kansas, and a few years ago Kansas outlawed teaching evolution science in the entire state. Who knows how this guy feels about Trump.”

The guy shows up at breakfast with the tour leader, Paul Greenfield. Paul is the illustrator of the Field Guide to the Birds of Ecuador and a pre-eminent tropical bird expert, but a friendly and unassuming person despite his renown. The fifth tour participant is Mark. He is tall, large in the upper body, talkative, and generally pleasant. Richard decides that Mark at fifty-ish is probably the youngest of the group.

Reg takes the plunge.

“So last night we were talking about Donald Trump, and this morning CNN had something about how popular he is.”

Immediately Mark and Paul react with a diatribe against Trump, grimacing at the idea that he might be nominated. Mark reveals that, yes, he works at a university in Kansas, but he was born in Minnesota and is one of the few science professors at his current institution who teach evolution.

“And they can’t fire me. I have tenure!”

The conversation continues with happy consensus and ends with a spirited bellowing of epithets against Trump. “Idiot! Clown! Asshole!”

So when Richard finds himself sitting next to Mark on the plane, he is somewhat assuaged. Mark prattles on about Ecuador, birds, his avaricious ex-wife. When Richard requests a second water from the flight attendant, Mark seems surprised. So Richard confides in Mark about his advanced melanoma, about the radiation to his upper neck and the consequent destruction of his salivary glands.

“Yeah, I know,” says Mark. “My girlfriend has the same problem. No saliva.”

At that point, Richard recalls something he read somewhere, that everyone seems normal until you get to know them.

Day 2: Hoatzin, Come Here, I Need You Marcos, who runs the lodge in the Amazon, comes to the dock at 6:00 AM to see them off. They are traveling by canoe through the creeks that branch off Añangu Lake where the lodge is situated. Everyone is in the canoe except Mark. Finally, Mark arrives carrying a large duffel bag full of equipment, a backpack full of more stuff, a fanny-pack, and a five-foot camera monopod that he uses as a walking stick. Clomping down the dock, he reminds Richard of Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings or maybe Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments. Mark’s disability is obvious as he stumbles around and is helped into the canoe by the two guides from the lodge.

“What do you think?” Reg had asked Richard the night before as they walked to their rooms after dinner. “Polio?”

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The 8th Annual Just Buffalo Members’ Reading

Page 2 of nonfiction by Regina Forni Mark towers shakily above the canoe, and Richard lends him a hand as he slinks down into the seat next to Paul. Whatever Mark’s problem is, it’s not good. The local guides, Jorge and his young protégé Carlito, lower all of Mark’s things into the boat next to him.

“What the Romans called ‘impedimenta’,” whispers Reg next to Richard, although he’s not sure what she’s talking about and can’t really ask.

Jorge and Carlito take their positions at the two ends of the canoe. They are also the paddlers. Marcos waves at the departing group, giving them a final word of advice.

“And don’t forget the golden rule of the Amazon. Try to be quiet.”

Almost immediately, Mark begins to jabber at Paul.

“I heard a Black-capped Donacobius this morning. I downloaded the Donacobius atricapilla sounds from xeno-canto. Do you like that website? I actually have three donacobiuses on my iPod, but the one from Cornell is a Venezuelan bird, probably not the same race. The other recording is Krabbe and Nilsson.

They’re pretty reliable.” Mark takes his iPod and portable speaker out of his backpack, ready for “playback”, a trick to lure birds closer when they hear the voice of one of their own species. Richard calls it Dial-a-Bird. “I hear a donacobius there on the shore. So should I play it?”

Paul responds by coughing violently, one of his jungle ailments that persist through the entire trip. The other one is Mark. “Not yet,” croaks Paul.

“I also wanna get a good shot of a hoatzin. They’re all over the place. But the light’s bad.”

Nonetheless, Mark extracts a camera with a mammoth lens from his duffel bag and places it on the floor of the canoe.

Behind Mark and in front of him, the others sit in silence. The sky brightens as the canoe enters a shallow creek where the group will be birding all day. The heat begins to press on them.

“Now the light’s perfect,” says Mark. “But the hoatzins are all behind us. Where’s a hoatzin when you want it?”

That day they see 55 different species of birds and hear another 14. They also hear 22 recorded bird calls that fail to draw birds into view. Most of these are played by Paul and Jorge, but a growing number are being played by Mark. By now, Paul is coughing pretty regularly. Richard thinks he just doesn’t have the strength to tell Mark to shut the fuck up.

Day 3: Eat My Cancer A word about The Uniform: all birders wear the same uniform, even in the steamy tropics – a longsleeved shirt, long cargo pants, socks (often pulled up over the pant legs), hiking shoes, and a baseball cap.

The snobbier birders have clothes that display a pricey brand name, like Patagonia or Arc’teryx or, at the very least, Columbia. All birders, however, are optics snobs, covertly glancing at one another’s binoculars or cameras, and always judging, judging. Thanks to Reg, Richard’s binoculars are new Swarovskis, the best on the market and identical to hers. He’s far less confident, however, about his camera, which he does have with him on this trip but which he rarely uses. Because of their high-end binoculars, he and Reg both feel entitled to depart a bit from the uniform, wearing crappy T-shirts instead of the long-sleeved Omni-wick UPF 40 shirts. It is, after all, beastly hot here. It’s noteworthy that, apart from Paul, the best birders among them – Jorge and Carlito – wear whatever shirts, pants, and shoes they can afford, and use decidedly inferior binoculars.

In addition to glancing at optics, Richard notices other glancing going on. Mark seems constantly to glance at Paul, with a look that shows a hunger for acknowledgment. Pre-dinner the previous night, Reg had told Richard that Mark was probably bullied a lot as a kid, and Richard sees that now. The other glancing is more surprising. Denise (now thought of by Richard as Tall Montreal, the stately elderly beauty) seems always to be glancing furtively at Reg, but Richard can’t quite read the attitude. Curiosity? Disapproval?

Envy? At any rate, very different from Mark’s.

This morning, the group is heading for the Napo River Tower, a structure built in the middle of the forest that shoots out above the canopy. It’s maybe an hour’s hike from the place where they leave the

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The 8th Annual Just Buffalo Members’ Reading

Page 3 of nonfiction by Regina Forni canoe, but, with birding along the way, it takes many hours to get there. The jungle is a relentless wall of foliage on either side of their trail, but Jorge is uncanny in his ability to tell what birds are nearby. He and Paul lead the group, while at the rear of the column Mark keeps up as best he can. Carlito follows Mark carrying all the bags (Mark’s stuff, everybody’s lunch, extra water) and, today, a new encumbrance, a plastic chair for Mark to use whenever he feels the need.

Paul becomes noticeably weaker as he walks. Occasionally, he sits on the ground and tells the others to go on and that he’ll catch up. However, as tiring as the walking is, Richard has come to prefer it to standing and looking for birds, only because it creates a current of air on his bare arms and head. Finally they arrive at the tower and climb 252 steps (Richard counts them) to the small viewing platform. The platform surrounds the upper trunk of a tall tree whose top branches provide a bit of shade. The tree, however, can be dangerous. Paul warns everyone not to touch any branches because of the bullet ants. These inch-long creatures can be seen on the tree bark hunting smaller invertebrates. Paul explains that if a bullet ant is spooked by a perceived predator (like a human), it will pounce on the predator with an audible shriek, then deliver a toxic sting that ranks as the most painful in the world. Everyone moves away from the tree.

From the platform, the view is breathtaking and endless, a massive expanse of green with the big river just visible in the distance. Mark is the last to make it up and dumps all of his gear onto a small wooden table. He is drenched with sweat and so are his backpack and fanny pack. The birders take up positions along the perimeter railing and start to scan with their binoculars. The birding is slow but satisfactory – a toucan here, a cotinga there – and Paul is quick to set up his spotting telescope (carried by Jorge) to give closer views. Hours go by; the heat and sun become increasingly oppressive. And then the swarms of insects arrive.

Richard manages to hold his binoculars steady with one hand while swatting away mosquitoes with the other. But the bees are the final straw. Scores of them descend on Mark’s soaked sweaty gear and then all over Mark himself. They seem benign, only wanting to drink, and Mark can do nothing to get rid of them, so he cavalierly ignores them. But Richard decides to go back down from the platform and Reg follows.

“I can’t stand the bugs,” he says, “but I don’t like using repellent on top of the sun block.”

“I go for repellent over sun block,” she says. “Although I hate the smell.”

“Well, I don’t have much choice. Gotta use sun block. I have a bunch of bites on my arm and one or two on my neck. Here, I think,” he touches a bulge below his right jaw. “Right near the tumor.” He laughs softly. No matter where he goes, melanoma goes with him. Well, if Mark can be cavalier, so can he.

“Damn bugs,” he sighs. “Maybe they’ll eat my cancer.”

Day 4: Reg Casts a Movie After morning birding and lunch, Paul grants them a siesta before dinner. Richard tries to nap, despite the ferocious heat. He turns on the ceiling fan in his room, but the current of air can’t make it past the folds of mosquito netting that canopy his bed. Nevertheless, exhaustion brings on sleep.

After dinner, the group disembarks for a night trip to see owls, nightjars, and especially the rare Zigzag Heron. Richard and Reg get to the dock early and Reg, who couldn’t nap at all, tells Richard about which actors remind her of the members of the birding party and would play them in a movie. Jamie Lee Curtis is Reg, although she smiles more than Reg does, at least in those Activia commercials. Mandy Patinkin is Paul, a sweet, soft-faced Jewish man, capable of great patience. John Lithgow is Mark, with a strikingly similar face and a complicated nature. Julie Christie is Tall Montreal, beautiful, privileged, and loaded with hauteur. Tracy Ullman is Small Montreal, mostly because they look alike. Benicio del Toro is Jorge, although Reg feels the actor has a bit too much gravitas (maybe in the movie Jorge can have a larger role). Gael Garcia Bernal is Carlito – not a big role, but significant eye-candy. And for Richard – Jack Nicholson!

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Page 4 of nonfiction by Regina Forni “All right!” says Richard. He’s pleased with his actor – audacious, badly behaved, and always a scenestealer.

They set out in the canoe at the start of sundown. The Zigzag Heron is a dusk-lover, and, because dawn and dusk last all of twenty minutes at the equator, they need to move quickly to a spot on a creek where Jorge has seen the birds before.

Richard falls into a reverie about the movie. It’ll be an action/adventure/intrigue sort of thing with lots of Tarantino brutality. The characters are all villains, four pairs in total, and they’re using this trip as a ruse to get to a remote Amazonian village to steal a treasure. Somebody (probably Benicio del Toro) is working for big-time organized crime and will contact helicopter mercenaries when they reach the treasure. By the end, everyone dies in bloody agony, but because they’re all so despicable (even lovable Mandy Patinkin), it’s OK. The last one to go is Jack Nicholson, in a surprise plot twist that Richard hasn’t figured out yet.

His movie fantasy ends abruptly when the canoe arrives at the heron spot. They stop the boat and wait.

Paul and Jorge play Zigzag Heron calls. Richard stares at the waning light in the sky. He can smell the fumes of the DEET that Reg sprayed on her arms. Finally, they hear it – a heron answers the recorded calls.

Everyone gets excited, but must remain completely silent, an especially difficult task for Mark.

The bird comes closer and closer and finally reveals itself. Jorge illuminates it with his flashlight and several people fall into a frenzy of picture taking. The bird is fairly boring-looking, small for a heron, special only because of its rarity in this area and its elusiveness. When they’ve all had their fill, Jorge and Carlito turn the canoe back toward Añangu Lake.

It’s a long, peaceful, cool ride back, hours in the blackness. Jorge finds them a Black-banded Owl, a Great Potoo, and a sleeping Pygmy Kingfisher. Dozens of bats zip around overhead, giving off a bitter smell. Hundreds of red-gold fireflies float slowly through the trees, like levitating lit cigarette-ends.

Thousands of firefly larvae shine through jellied sacs along the shoreline, creating corridors of incandescence.

But always there’s Mark, with his own high-power flashlight, the only technology left to him now.

“Look for the eye-shine,” he says repeatedly, training his light into pockets of the forest as if he’s actually going to see something.

Richard thinks he wants to kill him. Jack Nicholson would.

Day 5: Watch Out for the Slippery Roots Canoe ride, march to another tower, climb up. Richard knows the drill. This morning Mark enters the canoe with the weather report from the Internet: at least 100° in this area today and tomorrow. Richard wonders if Mark can look up the Dow Jones for him. Then he revises the movie he’s imagined. Now it’ll be Murder on the Amazon Express.

“The Orient Express,” he tells Reg. “That’s the movie where everybody killed the guy. Then the detective lets them all off because he sympathizes with them.”

Today Mark is relentless. Every time Jorge mentions a bird, Mark begs to play it on his iPod. “Can I play it? Can I play it now? Let me know, okay?” Unless Paul says no, Mark plays it; clearly Paul has given up trying to restrain him.

They walk, they walk. Richard finds himself telling the Montreals about his Agatha Christie movie.

Immediately, they understand who the victim is and laugh, a bonding moment for them all.

“But I still feel sorry for him,” says Richard. “He keeps dragging himself around with that pole of his.”

Tall Montreal flashes Richard an implacable look.

“Eet eez too bad,” she tells him. “You suffer from ze culture of politeness.” Something he’s sure that she’s immune to.

The trail to the Kuri Muyo Tower becomes wet and difficult. “Watch out for the slippery roots,” warns Paul, but it’s Paul himself that Richard worries about. Whenever the group stops for a bird, Paul sinks to the ground to rest. Mark, of course, has a chair, which Carlito promptly sets down for him so he can sit and watch the bird. His throne, Mark now calls it.

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The 8th Annual Just Buffalo Members’ Reading

Page 5 of nonfiction by Regina Forni Richard loses patience. “Maybe Mark’ll be a man and give you his chair,” he says to Paul, loudly enough for everyone to hear. But Mark feigns unawareness and continues to sit. “I paid for this trip,” Richard imagines Mark saying to himself. “I paid for this chair.”

The damp ground smells of rotting vegetation, especially the places where pieces of fruit have been dropped by foraging monkeys overhead. In the rainforest, everything’s growing, but everything’s also dying.

By the time they are up the tower (298 steps), Richard has fallen into thinking about the lunch he had with his five siblings a few days before the birding trip. After his mother died three years earlier, Richard stopped communicating with some of them. His sisters had rapaciously taken all of his mother’s possessions from her house while his mother was sick. They took antiques, furniture, jewelry, feeling entitled to these things because they had taken care of her. (“I paid for this chair.”) Another sibling that Richard stopped seeing, his youngest brother Glenn, was living in Hong Kong squandering the money he got after his mother’s death, mostly on booze and drugs. But then Glenn got sick (cirrhosis of the liver) and a few weeks ago returned to America for a visit. Richard’s older sister organized a lunch, a Root family reunion, she said. Richard nervously consented to go. However, despite the potential for conflict, the lunch was uneventful. Nobody had much they were willing to say to anyone else, so they all smiled and shrugged a lot.

“They’re up to something,” Richard told Reg the following day. “She’s a snake, my sister. And Glenn, he looked awful. He may actually die before me.”

On the tower, Richard distracts himself by watching a family of Yellow-tufted Woodpeckers on a nearby tree. Cooperative, beautiful, full of life. He marvels that such things happen on earth.

Day 6: “…to the interior” (Elizabeth Bishop) This morning the troupe is flagging seriously, especially Paul whose cough will not let up. Mark, however, seems undaunted. It’s as though he believes that his interminable chattering about arcane bits of ornithology earns him his seat next to Paul. Like he wants to be admitted to the big boys’ club.

“So the bird feathers with color from pigment don’t last as long as those with structural color. I’ve seen the difference with museum specimens. Trogons, for instance. They always fade in the drawer.”

When they’re all out of the canoe and ready to confront the jungle, Paul announces, “Birding the Amazon is the most difficult birding in the world.”

“What’s he trying to tell us?” wonders Richard.

After the first couple of hours, it’s apparent that the forest itself is the only destination today. Jorge leads them off the trail and into the interior. Bullet ants, camouflaged vipers, toxic plants – they all surround the group trudging behind Jorge and Paul. Richard and Reg, T-shirted as usual, walk with their arms up to avoid contact with anything. Intermittently there’s some break-neck birding, although the equatorial sunlight is never at a slant and every bird they manage to see is backlit and unsatisfying. Hour after hour, they slog through the pathless tangle of trees and shrubs, trusting Jorge to know where they are and how to get them out.

Occasionally Richard speaks. “What time is it?” “When’s lunch?” He’s impressed that he and the others keep going, and then it occurs to him that they have no choice. The only unfaltering ones are Jorge and Carlito. Richard starts wishing they, too, would become tired so they could all just go home.

Late in the day, Jorge starts to lead them out. By now, Mark, always at the rear of the line, is huffing and grunting, sounding very much like the alarm call of a hoatzin. The prospect of getting back to the canoe gives everyone a little lift. Richard even ventures a bit of levity.

“So Mark says, ‘What should I play?’” he tells Reg. “And I say, ‘Far far away,’ but he doesn’t get it.”

Then, when they’re almost at the creek, when most of them are fairly sprinting ahead, Mark takes a fall.

Richard and the others hear him shout in pain, then hear Carlito scrambling to help him as Jorge dashes back toward Mark. They stand for a moment looking at one another, all thinking the same thing: “Fuck. What do we do now?” However, after a few minutes, Mark limps into view with Jorge and Carlito at his elbows.

“I’m OK. Maybe a sprain,” he says. “Not sure. But I can walk.” As though they actually care about him at that moment, are actually thinking about anything other than themselves.

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Page 6 of nonfiction by Regina Forni After dinner that night, during the customary listing of the day’s birds, everyone is dull. They have seen a good number of hard-to-find forest-dwellers, but their weariness cuts through any sense of accomplishment. Richard feels punchy and inadequate. The only bird names that even occur to him are “Yellow-tufted Woodpecker” and “Hoatzin,” which he thinks of as “Watson” and which always sends him to some Sherlock Holmes movie in his head.

Day 7: The Clay Lick Vigil The next day however is magical, as if the universe wants to make amends. The boat ride begins and almost at once a large family of howler monkeys starts calling offshore. To Richard, they sound like the wind in the mountains of the Southwest or like a freight train. Halfway down the creek, close by and in plain view, are two giant otters eating. The animals dive for fish, then emerge with a slimy wriggling thing in their small clawed paws, then crunch into it, as if they are eating a sub.

The canoe goes out to the big river where the birders transfer to a motorized boat with cushioned seats.

In a half-hour they arrive at the walking trail, a comfortable concrete path leading to a large roofed enclosure.

This is the viewing blind at the parrot lick.

It resembles an open-air chapel. There are several rows of wooden benches all facing the same direction, toward a raw-looking cliff-side some sixty feet away. At the base of the cliff is a small pool of water, and at the top of the cliff, not visible to the viewers because of the roof, are parrots, a huge number of them, raucous and squawking.

The parrots want to eat the clay from the cliff-side and drink from the clay-infused water in the pool.

The clay is an antidote to the poisonous alkaloids in the seeds they consume, and it’s necessary for their survival. However, coming down from the safety of the canopy to the clay lick below is a risk that the parrots don’t take lightly. So the birders silently take seats in the pews and do what they have done so often.

They wait.

At least an hour goes by with no sign of birds except for the non-stop noise. Richard stretches out on a bench and sleeps. He dreams about being somewhere with his siblings. They are going to an event together, but the others are all impossibly over-dressed. Richard is in charge, but he’s not in charge. He’s supposed to be presiding but he has no control. Somehow, he contrives a way to mess up their clothes, and now they can proceed, but then….

“Scarlet Macaw!” Reg whispers to him. He sits upright. Sure enough, a macaw is creeping down a branch toward the clay lick, the only parrot bold enough to hazard an approach. It moves toward the clay, it moves back, it flies out of view. Everyone exhales. But it’s enough to keep them awake and watching for another hour.

The macaw returns. Eventually it flies to the clay pool. Then another bird climbs down toward the clay, a Cobalt-winged Parakeet. A thread of excitement, like electricity, shoots through the birders. Other parrots follow, but are hesitant to drop down all the way. The parrots, first dozens, then hundreds, bunch up in the branches, yawping and fighting, but unwilling to leave the trees. Finally, one brave soul flies down to the pool. In fifteen minutes, they are all at the clay or in the water. The noise in the blind is staggering. Mark and the Montreals take picture after picture; even Richard has lugged his camera today for this show and takes some shots. Reg just gapes.

Then something frightens the birds. In an instant they take off, but instead of going back up to the canopy they fly in the direction of the blind. They fly through the only opening they have, which is under the ceiling of the blind and over the heads of the viewers, a deafening chaos of bright blue and green. They course through in waves, the first group of a hundred or so passing completely through before the next contingent, and then the next. When the last parrot has flown through, the birders cheer. This has been worth all the punishing hours, all the sweat and torment in the blistering heat of the forest.

The trip back to the lodge is pure after-glow. There are Blue Morpho butterflies stitching through the air and oropendolas burbling in the trees, flashing the gold (oro) in their tails as they hang onto their pendulous (pendola) nests. Everyone is quiet, even Mark. Today has been perfection.

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The 8th Annual Just Buffalo Members’ Reading

Page 7 of nonfiction by Regina Forni Day 8: The Caiman It’s 4:30 AM, impossibly early, as they start the trip back to Coca and ultimately to their lives in the north. Bizarrely, Mark talks to Paul about his will. He has purchased some land in Ecuador and wants to leave it to a worthy conservation organization. What does Paul think? Paul finds a polite way to tell him to do whatever the fuck he wants. Richard, of course, starts to think about his own will – his estate, the kids, the tedious decisions.

Then the canoe comes to sudden halt in the pitch darkness. Jorge’s flashlight reveals a ten-foot caiman stretched across the creek and blocking their way.

“Holy shit!” “Oh, my God!” “Mon dieu!”

The creek is especially narrow so there’s no way to paddle around the thing. Jorge and Carlito exchange rapid Spanish, and then Jorge pokes the caiman with his paddle. This angers the animal, who swims closer to the boat, opens its mouth wide, and hisses. The caiman’s head, about a foot and a half long, is in striking distance of Small Montreal. Jorge then grabs a long, wooden pole and tries pushing the caiman. The caiman swims a few feet downstream, but then takes up the same position as before perpendicular to the canoe’s path, as though it’s refusing to let them pass.

Jorge and Carlito paddle forward to another standoff. The caiman moves, bares its teeth again, hisses, and touches the side of the boat with its snout. Its spikey undulating tail sends small waves across the creek.

“That tail,” says Richard. “If it whips that tail….”

Jorge, however, is undeterred. He pushes the caiman again with the pole while the others hold their breath. It doesn’t occur to them that he’s done this before, that like everything else they’ve been through on this trip, it’s just another workday for Jorge. The caiman reacts in the same way, swimming a bit downstream and stopping. But the creek at this point is wider and Jorge says something to Carlito, pointing to a spot up ahead where the water bulges out into the forest.

This time they paddle as far as they can to the shore opposite the bulge. Jorge pushes the caiman one more time with his pole, and it swims into the curving recess on the other side. Wordlessly and slowly, Jorge and Carlito maneuver the canoe past the caiman, then pick up speed as soon as they can.

That evening at dinner in the fancy hotel in Coca, the talk turns to the caiman. Everyone except Richard claims not to have been scared. “Yeah, right,” Richard tells Reg privately, “like they all didn’t need clean underwear after that.”

But this is their last night together, and honesty is not a driving concern. Tonight they pretend they are friends; they bestow fake smiles on one another, fake camaraderie, and, when Mark rises to make an early departure, fake murmurs of goodbye, safe trip, keep in touch, all sorts of lies.

Richard guzzles his third pint of water for the day. There’s one more thing he’s curious about: even in this brand new hotel, they still have to drink bottled water. “Why is that, Paul?”

“Actually,” says Paul, “the country does a pretty good job with water treatment, but the tap water comes from cisterns, and who knows what kinds of creatures are living in those things.”

“Indeed,” thinks Richard, with an image of a caiman thrashing in the water.

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Natalie Gerich Brabson #10 Childhood “May I not simply understand that a painter does well if he starts from the colours on his palette instead of starting from the colours in nature?... If you think this is a dangerous tendency toward romanticism, a betrayal of ‘realism’—painting from the imagination— having a greater love for the colourist’s palette than for nature, well then, so be it.”

-Vincent van Gogh, Letter to Theo van Gogh, on or about 28 October 1885.

The summer of ’98 was one of the few in Canada’s Algonquin Provincial Park in which campers lay sweating instead of shivering in their sleeping bags. August, usually bringing the first blush of fall to the western half of the Park, the side more populated with deciduous trees, remained a sunwarmed but not yet yellowing green. It was humid, and the pungent smell of pine hung heavily in the air.

The Park officials had chosen that summer to widen Highway 60. Though the road was only wider by a few feet on each side, the infringement of pavement on former habitat caused a ripple of change throughout the Park’s ecosystem. When we went up one weekend at the end of the summer, the majority of the roadwork had been completed, but enough trucks and men were still out that the Park’s residents remained disturbed. Many animals, even human-shy ones like foxes and bears, could be seen as they searched for new, safer homes. I was five, newly initiated to the wonders of the Park, and that trip I wanted nothing more than to see as many of Algonquin’s species as possible.

Early evening is the best time to spot animals, and my mom, our dog Bridget, and I often drove up and down 60 after a day of hiking or paddling. Usually we first ate dinner at our Timber Trails cabin, a little past the Park’s west gate, and then headed out again about an hour before sunset to search for moose. We always kept our eyes peeled for bears, beavers, and wolves too, but visitors so rarely spot these that we never got our hopes up.

One late afternoon, we drove back to our cabin after hiking, the sun glaring but still high enough that we could block it with visors. My mom planned to put a quick dinner together—either peanut butter and jam sandwiches or Annie’s natural macaroni and cheese—before we set out again to look for wildlife. We were listening to the bilingual Ontario weather station, my mom driving carefully as usual, not expecting animals this early but always scanning ahead just in case. Close to the Park’s border, a form on the roadside of the railing caused her to slow. A gray wolf stood tense with anticipated movement, about to cross, and my mom stopped the truck. Cautiously, the wolf loped out to the center of the highway. Its legs and belly were a sandy tan, and the head, back, and tail the gray-black of crepuscular shadows. The shadow spread over the wolf’s face like a mask, darkest above the eyes and over the snout, elongating its nose and directing its gaze. It looked toward our truck, probably sizing it up but appearing to acknowledge my mom and me inside. After a moment of what felt to us humans like a connection, it took off once again, trotting efficiently with its head and tail in line with its back. It dipped into the gulley next to the highway, then into the forest.

The next day, our last day of the trip, we stopped in Timber Trails’ trading post to get our annual souvenirs—good fudge and maple candy that could not be gotten in the States. My mom, a teacher, often tried to make the real more real and help me to cement my memories. She asked if I wanted anything wolfrelated to celebrate. Most people never saw a wolf in their lifetime. I chose a small gray wolf stuffed animal.

It was the color of ash, with large ears and a long unfeathered tail, clearly a puppy. My mom named him Louie, derived from loup, French for wolf. Louie came back home with us and became one of my favorite stuffed animal friends, often playing dog with Bridget and me.

••• That fall, a full-grown wolf moved in and made its home in my closet. I had a walk-in closet, and besides a couple racks from which to hang clothes, it had three walls’ worth of shelves, which were used for my Halloween costumes, games, stuffed animals out of rotation, and the like. Underneath the shelves there was space for storage, but I didn’t usually keep much there.

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Page 2 of nonfiction by Natalie Gerich Brabson I learned of the wolf’s presence one morning while choosing my outfit for school. As I looked for my favorite jumper, I heard a slight rustling to my left, and I knew from the amount of noise and how high it was off the ground that it was a wolf. The rest I guessed—that he had somehow followed us home from up north—but as there were no wolves around Buffalo, I could not assume otherwise.

That morning, I was too spooked to look in his direction. Even if I had, I doubt I would have seen him.

My closet was fairly deep and disorganized, an excellent place for a wolf to hide. I found the jumper, and then carefully stepped off my stool. I normally leaped but that day didn’t dare make any sudden moves. I had read enough fairy tales, knew how to act around wolves. I backed out of the closet and continued my routine.

During the day I tried not to think much about my new roommate; I concerned myself with school, playing with Bridget and my mom, and hoping we would go to Spot Coffee to eat a cookie and look at clothing catalogues. But that night I could not fall asleep for fear. I didn’t know if he planned to live in my closet long-term or only spend the night, but either way, he would need to come out soon to hunt. I stretched the covers tight up to my chin and waited.

Once all the lights of the house were off, I heard the closet door open. The wolf came out and circled around my room. I huddled in the middle of my bed, making sure to keep my limbs tucked up instead of hanging over the sides of the bed. The wolf was unlikely to attack, I knew, but I had to keep my distance. I slowed and quieted my breathing, trying to draw no attention to myself. He eventually left, and in his absence I fell asleep.

The next morning, I turned my closet light on and peeked through the half-open door. The lower rack’s line of clothes had been freshly mussed on the left, and hadn’t yet settled back into place. The wolf had come to stay.

••• The air grew crisp, and the leaves of the crabapple tree outside my window dropped off until there was only a bark skeleton, stretching up toward the disappearing sun. My mom spent increasing time with Roland, whom she had met in the summer. He came with children: Doug, five years older than me, and Emily, just six weeks younger. Including age and a love of dogs and pretty clothes, Emily and I had enough in common that, added to us being thrown together by circumstance, we quickly became best friends. Occasionally she slept over in my room, and we stayed up late playing and listening for the wolf. But Emily, unaffected by insomnia (“able to fall asleep at the drop of a hat,” I quoted my mother to Emily’s chagrin), usually drifted off before the wolf crept out. I continued to hear the click in the night that signified his emerging from the closet, and I felt his presence as I picked out my clothes each morning. Though he still hadn’t attempted to harm any of us, I grew uneasy. He showed no sign of leaving, and I wondered what he was waiting for.

By Christmas, I could no longer stand the uncertainty of whether the wolf was dangerous or not, and I decided that he needed to go. I did not want to directly confront him, so I made signs to help him understand he was no longer welcome. On some signs I wrote “NO WOLFS ALLOWD,” and I posted them around the house for him to see during his nightly rounds. On others I drew arrows to show him out. I always placed them directing to the back door, which we hardly used, for both his benefit and my own. I didn’t want to run into him when he decided to leave.

When the wolf didn’t react immediately, I enlisted Emily in my campaign for his evacuation. I taught her to write “NO WOLFS ALLOWD,” and we posted yet more signs so that each room now had at least one rule posting and set of directions to exit the house.

He dug in his heels and waited awhile longer, perhaps planning to overwinter in our home. But we continued to insist that he leave, leaving the signs up, tracing the letters in bold, reading them aloud to make sure he understood.

Mid-January, he finally did. He left one day while my mom and I were at school. There were flurries that afternoon, and by the time we came home, his tracks were filled in and smoothed over.

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Page 3 of nonfiction by Natalie Gerich Brabson I left the signs up for some time after in case he came back, but he never returned. My mom took them down one day in the spring. When we were preparing to move years later, I found my NO WOLFS signs packed into a blue portfolio. Inside there were also my drawings of people with hair starting on the sides of their heads, little turkey decorations I had traced from the outline of my hand, molded snakes and dogs.

Markers of my first impressions of the world, all made in paper and clay and other materials that could easily be cut up or reshaped into a new version.

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Veronica Hogle #11 The Woman Who Loved The Sea When the shrill ring of the phone pierced the quietness of the night, I woke up right away. It was still dark out. I looked at the clock and it said it was ten minutes after three. The answering machine clicked on, and while I listened, I stayed stuck to the sheets.

“This is Mary. The hospital just called. Your mother’s condition has deteriorated. I’m going to the hospital now. It’s a little after eight in the morning here in Ireland. I’ll phone again when I come home,” my sister-in-law, who lived in Donegal, said. My heart started to beat like a tom tom. I was wide awake now. I got up and listened to the message over and over.

Mammy was 90 years old, frail, and ninety percent deaf. With the help of Nan, a beloved caregiver, she was still able to live at home. She told us many times that when the day came for her departure from this world, she wanted to die in her own bed. Now, l pictured her alone and afraid in a strange place, not able to hear or understand what nurses and doctors said to her. Mammy will hate that. She’ll be frantic, I thought and a wild cry shook my whole body. Two hours later the phone rang again. I picked it up and Mary said my mother’s condition had stabilized, but her kidney’s were not working well.

Relief washed over me. Mammy will rally, I thought to myself.

At fifteen minutes after noon, Buffalo time, the phone rang again.

“The news isn’t good.” Silence.

“She went off in her sleep ten minutes ago,” said Mary.

I looked at the clock. It was 5:15 p.m. Irish time on Friday, May 5, 2006.

Oh, what will I do without her weekly letters and our regular chin-wags on the phone? the poems she wrote on the backs of envelopes? the newspaper clippings she sent with “Save” written in the margins? Her St. Patrick’s Day cards with harps and shamrocks? the family news? and the Christmas parcels that arrived in October tied up with yards and yards of twine?

I‘d been preparing for this day for ages. Now that it was here, I wasn’t ready for it at all.

It was hours before I found my voice to say” “My mother has died.” I finally called my son and sobbed a message on his cell phone. A friend helped me to get a plane from Buffalo to JFK Airport and catch the night flight to Dublin. My daughter, Lisa came with me.

On Saturday night, we were on our way across the Atlantic Ocean to Dublin. Sleep wouldn’t come. As the night went on, I cried off and on and thought about my mother. Most of her life, she lived in Bagenalstown, County Carlow, 70- miles south of Dublin, a small flourmill and railway town on the Barrow River, at the heel of the Blackstairs Mountains.

Mammy was the last member of the Walshe family who had lived in Bagenalstown for 130 years. She was the only one left to keep the family’s lights on, and she did not spare the electricity.

My mother’s name was Eileen Josephine, the third of seven children born to William and Mary Kate Earls. Her mother gave birth to her in the Curragh Army Camp in Kildare, near Dublin, on March 27, 1916.

Two weeks later Irish rebels took over the General Post Office and other major buildings in Dublin.\ World War 1 was in its second year. Her father, originally from Galway, was a career soldier with the British Army.

The day his daughter was born \he was in Calcutta with his regiment, the Eleventh Hussars.

Mammy was petite with nut brown curly hair, emerald green eyes, and\ flawless skin. She dressed in an elegant, practical way. At the drop of a hat, she wrote satirical poems and sent them to elected officials, world leaders, and newspaper editors letting them know her opinions on matters happening in the world.

Many wrote back to her. Her poetry was published in books, journals, television radio newspapers.

When she was 20 years old, she moved to Waterford, a big seaport town in the south of Ireland where she had a job in a hotel beside the main post office. That’s where she met Richard Breen, a postal worker whose wife died giving birth to a son, who survived. The widower came in to the hotel every day, looking handsome with his Robert Mitchum-type of sultry-blue eyes, made bluer by his navy and blue postal uniform. He swept her off her feet, and in no time they were married. Soon, she had three children under three. But my father still went to the hotel every day where he drank more and more, while Mammy stayed

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Page 2 of nonfiction by Veronica Hogle home. Alcohol made him violent - so violent that one Friday night during a severe beating, she saw her own blood splatter on my baby brother’s downy blond hair.

“Like a cat, I knew there and then I’d to move my kittens to safety,” Mammy told me when I asked her why we had no daddy of our own. When he passed out, she packed my brothers Antoin, Traloch, and me into the pram and wheeled us away in the middle of the night to a friend’s house. The friend said she’d keep sixmonth old Traloch, until Mammy got settled. She gave her the fare to get the train back to her family in Bagenalstown. I was two years old, and Antoin was one year older than I. My grandmother’s sister, Aunt Christina, who was married to Jim Fitzpatrick, also lived in Bagenalstown. While visiting her in a sanitarium in Kilkenny, Mammy met Mary, a patient in the next bed.

She was the wife of Michael, (Dottie) Walsh, a tailor, who had his own business. A friendship developed between the families. Dottie needed someone to live-in and take care of Mary who had many health problems. He asked Mammy if she could help him. He said she could keep one child with her. To keep us out of orphanages, the Fitzpatrick’s took me in and gave me a home. Mammy began taking care of Mary, who was in lots of pain. Sometimes at night, Dottie and Mammy would carry Mary in their arms to give her some relief from the pain.

When Mary died in 1945, Dottie offered Mammy the chance to learn the tailoring business. The family in Bagenalstown urged her to leave the town and go to England and start her life over. Because she was a married woman living apart from her husband, and living with another man, a dark cloud of disapproval hung over her.

“But how could I go to England an’ leave the children?” she’d ask them. She stayed living with Dottie.

But there were times I did worry that Mammy would go away, and not come back. Sometimes, Mammy said her nerves were at her and she would disappear into her room for weeks and get lost reading book after book, and she wouldn’t talk to anyone. Other times, she’d tell me what was bothering her.

“I think it’s strange that no one asks me about my situation. The silence makes me feel lonely. I feel like an outsider in my own town,” she’d say.

I’d tell her that she was the best-looking mother in all of Carlow. She would give me a small smile and a little light would come back in her eyes.

She told me she knew where she stood when she was never invited to join the Irish Countrywomen’s Association, go with them to the Dublin horse show, the spring flower show. She would have loved to go up to Dublin and see a play at the Abbey Theatre. She said she had never been to the horse races, where all the women wear wide hats made of lace and feathers “Even though people said nothing, I knew they were talking about me and judging me. I think that’s why I went deaf - I closed my ears on what they were saying about me. I felt invisible,” Mammy told me more than once. To let people know that she was a real live person, she often wore a red coat with a matching red lipstick.

“Ah, sure I got used to being alone by myself,” she said and looked into the distance. Mammy said her best friends were the books and the classics in the library. She often quoted from the Bible, The Koran, and The Torah.

We settled down. My baby brother Traloch stayed with the family Mammy left him with. Sometimes, we went by train to visit him, and it was easy to see that he was happy, well loved and cared for. I was happy living with the Fitzpatricks, and Antoin was content being with Mammy and Dottie. Antoin was studious and he was always reading The Beno or The Dandy comic books, or his head would be stuck in a book. Dottie was usually pounding creases into pants with a heavy iron that hissed and steamed, and brought\ the smell of a sheep’s wool coat, after a heavy rain, into the room. He was of average build, with gray eyes. His receding straight brown hair was brushed back showing a face that seemed to always laugh.

He was known for his quick wit, telling yarns, and singing.

When I visited Mammy and Antoin after school, it was usual to see Mammy\and Dottie making the afternoon tea in the brown ceramic teapot, then pouring it into china cups with hunting dogs painted on the

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Page 3 of nonfiction by Veronica Hogle sides. While they talked .and looked at each other with soft eyes, the two of them would sit close to each other, shrouded in a thick grey-blue cloud of Player’s cigarette smoke.

“Say that poem f\or me again,” Dottie would say to her, and she would. He often sat lotus style on his tailor’s bench, his sewing needle darting in and out of a pair of dark trousers, like a minnow glinting in and out of the waving reeds in the Barrow River. He had a Bing Crosby kind of a voice and the song he sang most often was Beautiful dreamer… out on the sea… mermaids are chanting the wild lorelei…

On Mondays, Mammy gave me sixpence to learn Irish step dancing from Mrs. Rea. Every week, Mammy asked me to show her what I learned. I’d put on my hornpipe shoes with steel tips under the toes and they made lovely loud clattering sounds on the flag floor as I danced in the kitchen.

Antoin attended a boy’s school taught by the De LaSalle Christian Brothers. I was taught by an enclosed order of nuns. The nuns and the brothers reminded us often that missionaries were urgently needed \around the world. They said we’d become educated and travel to exotic places like Africa and India. Traveling had a great appeal for Antoin. He signed a paper stating he wanted to become a missionary. Because he was from a broken home, Mammy had to get a special dispensation letter from the bishop so Antoin could be accepted into the religious order. At age 15, he went into a training school to become a teaching brother. He could only talk for one hour a day, and wasn’t allowed to read the paper, or listen to the wireless. When we visited him, we just sat in silence. We had nothing to talk about.

Mammy’s sister, Aunt Greta lived in Dublin and had ten children. To give Aunt Greta a break, Mammy often took one of her children and kept him for months at a time.

It was before Christmas. I went to visit Mammy as usual after school. Her face was very serious. I saw no smile at all. She said she had something to tell me. A feeling of dread came over me. Mammy is going to tell me she’s leaving, I said to myself.

“I’m going up to Dublin to stay with my brother Louie for a while….I don’t want you to tell anyone. It will be our secret... I’m going to… I’m going to have a baby in April,” she said.

I was so shocked I didn’t ask her anything. She said she’d write to me often. She did write every week.

It was very hard on me not to be able to talk to anyone about the new baby. Even the Fitzpatricks didn’t ask about her, and I thought that was strange. I felt that they knew.

In April 1954, Mammy had a baby boy. She had him baptized in Dublin and named him Gerard. When she brought him home, she told people that he was one of Aunt Greta’s children. Dottie’s tailoring business fell off. One by one his customers stopped coming to him .To keep money coming in, he carried his metal lunch box, and got the train every day to a job as a trouser maker in Carlow, a bigger town ten miles away.

Around the same time, lines men were putting in telephone poles around our part of the country and they needed places to stay. The hotel had closed, so Dottie and Mammy took in lodgers. The house became a boarding house and a restaurant. The lodgers often played the piano, squeeze box and the harmonica. When a fiddler drew his bow and made his fiddle sound like a wild talking thing, I’d put on my hornpipe shoes and dance in the circle made just for me.

When Antoin was nineteen years old, he got a bad pain in his side and had to be taken to hospital. A doctor told him he had to have his appendix taken out. A young good-looking nurse came to prepare him, which included shaving his pubic hair. That’s when he changed his mind about being a missionary. When he went back to the training college, he packed up his things and left for England right away. He joined the Royal Air Force. He finished his education to be a teacher and became a drama teacher. He married Mary, a teacher from Donegal. They returned to Ireland and lived in Donegal and had a daughter and a son.

Before Antoin’s return to Ireland, I worked as a hairdresser in Dublin. Then I lived in France for a year, and I got a chance to come to America. I got married, had three children and made my permanent home in Buffalo New York.

Traylock worked for the telephone company in Ireland. He married Anne and had five children.

Gerard, inherited his father’s musical talents. At an early age, he took piano lessons until the piano teacher could teach him no more. At age eighteen, he was awarded a scholarship to college, and after seven years he was graduated as a medical doctor from the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin.

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Page 4 of nonfiction by Veronica Hogle Time was good to Mammy. She made friends with people who came to live in the town. She was proud of her four children. She loved to get on the train and go visit Traylock and his family. Over the years, they became very close.

She loved to visit old churches with cemeteries, and study epitaphs on the ancient tombstones. She’d leave the old churches ablaze from lighting rows of penny candles for all branches of the family. She was happiest of all when she was beside the sea.

“I’d love to have been a sailor,” she’d say as she sang, “If I were a blackbird, I’d whistle an’ sing, and folla the ship that my true love sails in..... an’ in the top Rigg’n, I’d there build my nest, and bury my head in his lily white chest.”

Bagenalstown had a busy railway station on the Waterford to Dublin line. She often went alone by train to Tramore, a popular seaside place outside Waterford, where she sat in a little teahouse overlooking the ocean. That’s where she wrote her poems, while the waves lashed the pier, and seagulls screamed and wheeled overhead.

“Oh, I love the smell of the sea,” she’d say. Her favorite photo of herself was one in a sailor’s dress.

Carlow is an area of Ireland where major battles of the 1798 Rebellion took place, and Mammy knew the burial places of all the rebels. She tended their graves as if her own sons were buried there. She supported the families of the Irish political hunger strikers who died in the 1980s. Through Amnesty International, she also adopted and supported a family in Zimbabwe.

As the plane cut through the dark night, restless babies interrupted my thoughts. I cried along with them.

I watched the navy sky become blood red, and the dawn break. The captain’s voice came over the loud speakers and \wished us a good morning. He gave the weather fore cast, and said we’d land in Dublin at 5:30 on Sunday morning.

Antoin, was already at the B&B when we arrived.

“Will you go and be in the funeral home and greet people after mass?” he asked me.

“I will,” I told him. I didn’t tell him that at that moment, I’d sooner have to go before a firing squad. My breathing cut in and out as I braced myself for the dread of seeing Mammy lying dead in a coffin.

I walked in the door of the funeral parlor and took deep breaths as I went towards the open coffin that seemed huge in the stark room. I held a long breath and lowered my eyes and looked at the small marble-like doll in the big oak coffin. It was lined with white lace. Mammy was dressed in white and her silver hair was dragged back, not showing her usual crown of silver curls. I didn’t remember her eyebrows being so bushy.

All the white made her look cold. She was the color of a wax candle. I knelt at her feet, thinking how tiny and severe she looked. Not at all the soft, beautiful face I knew. I was shocked that I hardly recognized my own mother, even though I saw her ten weeks before, looking lovely in red, with a cloud of soft silver curls around her face. I made my way up to the head of her coffin and\ studied every line of her tiny face and her classic nose. I looked at her clasped empty hands and wondered why she wasn’t holding something like a rosary, or a flower. I put the palm of my hand on her forehead, which was cold as marble, and cupped her icy hands that looked like they were made of wax. When I touched Mammy, a feeling of relief washed over me. The dread of seeing her dead flowed out of me. She was the first dead person I ever touched. I felt calm and was able to breathe again.

I brought some photographs of Mammy when she was different ages, and put them on the altar near her coffin. The pictures softened the harshness of her and the sterile room. I also put out copies of two of her poems. People started to arrive. Mary Doyle, who had come to the town in recent years and Mammy became good friends. Mary was the first to arrive. She went directly to my mother, caressed her face, her hair, her hands, and wept “There was never… and will never… be anyone like her.” the postman said and tears drenched his weather-beaten face.

People embraced me. We cried and laughed at the same time. The funeral parlor was open all day and evening Sunday and Monday. People came and went. My mother’s house, at 3 Main Street, is just around the corner from the funeral parlor. I went back and forth between the house and the wake. While I was at the

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Page 5 of nonfiction by Veronica Hogle house, Amanda Stevenson Rothwell came to the wake and left a message with my niece to tell me, “The friend who has no picture of the Sacred Heart over the mantle piece was here.” Amanda was my only Protestant friend growing up. When I was in Bagenalstown visiting last February, we got together for dinner.

I told her that as a child, I thought she was deprived because her family had no statues or religious objects.

The Fitzpatricks had so many we could easily have given some to Amanda.

Two priests came at different times to get more information about Mammy and how she came to be in town. One noted the coincidence of her coming into the house to take care of the wife of a tailor. In the same house, Mammy herself had been taken care of by Nell O’Riordan, also the wife of a tailor.

On Monday, my brother Tralock and his family arrived. At 7:15 p.m. the funeral home was crowded. A priest performed a ceremony for the dead. It was time for people to leave and wait outside. Only the family remained. More prayers were said. Then, the room fell silent. Antoin walked up to the head of the coffin. He stood there and looked at Mammy for what seemed like a long time. Tralock followed and did the same. I was standing behind them. I gazed at my mother and I caressed her face for the last time. Lisa wept and lovingly touched her as well. Only sobs and coughs broke the silence. We sat down again, Then, it was time to close her coffin. The funeral director asked me if I wanted to leave, or stay while the lid was put on. I said I wanted to stay. The oak lid with the brass name plate that said Eileen Breen, 1916 - 2006 was smoothly eased over her feet, her torso, her face and her head. Four men from the funeral parlor inserted eight large brass screws into the lid. My breathing cut out knowing I’d never see Mammy’s face again.

She was wheeled out and eased into the hearse\ with a glass interior and a glass railing around the roof.

Her flowers were arranged on her coffin and on the roof. Family and friends linked arms and we walked behind .her. The hearse moved slowly and stopped for a minute of silence outside the \house where Mammy had lived and worked for sixty-four years. It was an agonizing sixty seconds. My heart was being ripped out..

The only sounds came from the solo bell ringing from St. Andrew’s Roman Catholic Church and the sound of leather-soled shoes walking in place. I looked over at the house that had been a lively boarding house and a restaurant. Now, there was no light in the window, the curtains did not move. The house stood sad and silent. Only her death notice, attached to a black bow, was tacked to the front door.

The hearse began to move again and when we arrived at the church, a priest wearing white vestments was waiting at the door to receive her remains. He said mass and talked about my mother’s life and how her home was a haven for old people needing care. He told of the three old gentlemen who lived in the house for years and were looked after by Dottie and Mammy until they died. The men’s choir sang. Mammy was left in front of the altar overnight surrounded by the flowers, photographs and tall thick candles. Then we went to a community center where women from the town had prepared fancy sandwiches and tea.

On Tuesday we went to St. Andrew’s for Mammy’s Requiem Mass at 11 a.m. It was celebrated by another priest. In his homily, he said Mammy was a poet, philanthropist, proud mother of four, and preserver of Carlow’s history. The full choir sang “The Old House,” and some of her favorite hymns. Antoin eulogized her.

“She used to light so many candles in churches, she was a threat to global warming,” he said and people laughed. Her generosity was noted and one of her poems was read. Her sons carried her coffin out of the church and put it into the hearse. We walked behind the hearse as it crawled past the Old Barracks, her mother’s former house, in Kilree Street, and around the town. Shops closed, cars, lorries, and tractors pulled out of the streets and roads until we had all passed by. The old postman also followed and was in tears again as the funeral procession ended at the river, where Mammy began her daily five-mile walks.

A convoy of cars followed the hearse with the glass interior. We made our way through heavy traffic to Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin for her cremation. From time to time, I lost sight of the hearse, but it would reappear, and the brass handles on her coffin glinted in the bright sunlight. Her sons and grandsons carried her into the chapel of Glasnevin cemetery. A priest conducted a commital service and said more prayers. A choir from Zimbabwe had recorded “The Lord Is My Shepherd. Antoin had it played.

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Page 6 of nonfiction by Veronica Hogle Then there was a strange noise and, her coffin rolled forward. Heavy maroon-colored, velvet draperies closed together embracing her coffin. That was my last glimpse of Mammy.

As she wished, we then \back to Mammy’s house in Bagenalstown to pack up the books/and pictures she left us.

“Look!” said Lisa, “A trunk full of letters from you! One dated four days after your wedding in September 1966!. Let’s bring them home!”

“I’ve boxes of her letters back in Buffalo too!” I said. We laughed over old photos of me in ball gowns.

I had a yearning to sleep in the house one last time. But the shower didn’t work, the refrigerator was broken The song “The Old House,” stayed in my head. I went through each room for the last time. I hugged Mammy to myself and I knew I’d never be in the old house again.

“We learned a lot more about your mother from the eulogies. But we were both struck by no mention of a husband or the children’s father,” the woman of the house said to me.

“You don’t know how much it means to me that you say this. You have begun to break the silence of my mother’s life.” There were more tears as I filled in Mammy’s story.

The funeral director kept some floral arrangements for me to put on the family graves in Bagenalstown.

He drove us up to the cemetery where our family plots have been clustered together for over 130 years.

Nearby is Dottie, buried with his wife, Mary. I placed a wreath on their grave. When I visited the cemetery with Mammy in 1984, she put a red rose on their tombstone.

“I buried him there, because that’s where he belongs,” she said. “He loved her before he loved me,” she went on. “”Will you be buried here?” I asked.

“No. There’s no place for me here. I’ve found my perfect place near the sea.”

Lisa and I took the train to Dublin. While waiting at the Station, my eyes brimmed over, realizing I will have no reason to return here. Mammy was the magnet that drew me back ten times.

We went to visit Gerard, who lived in Dublin. He had under-gone major surgeries as a result of a car accident and could not attend Mammy’s funeral. He married and had two daughters.

“Could you bring me back a thimbleful of my mother’s ashes for me to sprinkle on my father’s grave?” he asked me. I said yes, I would.

Antoin and his wife Mary, brought the ashes back in the hand-carved mahogany urn that Mammy had custom made for herself. It has a picture of birds with wide outstretched wings flying towards the sea. In the five years she had the urn, she joyfully used it as a vase for fragrant wildflowers. While showing it to people, she would say “When it’s time for me to leave this old world behind, I’ll rest where every day, the bountiful ocean goes out and comes back in.

On Friday, we traveled by car across Ireland to Inver, Donegal.

It was crisp and sunny at noon on Saturday, May 13th. A moderate wind tossed the sweet scents of lilac around in the air. We were all standing at her grave with an opening just big enough for her urn. There was a laurel wreath tied with the green, white and gold colors of the Irish flag from a beloved granddaughter. A priest began the burial ceremony. The easing of her urn into the grave was not as brutal as the lowering of a coffin. As the priest sprinkled dust over her and said, “ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” I was relieved not to hear the harsh sound of hard clay landing on her wood urn. Instead, there was just the droning of the priest saying the twenty-third psalm. Thrushes, robins and black birds flew from tree to tree and chirped intermittently. Mammy’s memorial booklet, which she designed and had printed showed a photo of her in the poppy fields near our house. After her eight-day funeral, I felt able to let go of her. I’ll keep the old letters we found in her trunk. They will remind me of the old house and keep my little town in Ireland in the catacombs of my heart.

Mammy is buried in a small wind-swept cemetery at the top of Inver Bay, in Donegal. She is surrounded by the Blue Stack Mountains, home to silver-winged falcons that soar, twist and turn against the gray-blue sky, and glide towards the sea, the place where Mammy most loved to be..…and out on the sea… mermaids are chanting the wild. Lorelei.

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Hal A. Limebeer #12 The Green Hornet Dad owned many different vehicles over his many years: a red Ford pick-up truck, a turquoise Ford pick-up truck, a red and white Ford pick-up truck, a blue and white Ford pick-up truck; Dad worked for The Ford Motor Company. He only ever owned a pick-up truck, except once when he owned a Lincoln Continental. Dad would often say, ‘I can’t even spell Lincoln Continental’, long before he owned one.

Working for Ford, or Henry, as Dad liked to say, was Dad’s, and our family’s, central life and identity.

Dad worked just outside Buffalo, but we lived in Fort Erie, on the Canadian side of the Niagara River.

At six years old, I couldn’t understand how we could be Americans since we lived in Canada. I had completed the first grade, and I knew it was 1967 and Canada was celebrating its one-hundredth birthday. I thought one hundred years was very old, even for a country.

Dad worked for Henry during the week, but the neighbors all knew him better as a backyard mechanic.

On weekends, Dad was always in The Garage fixing someone’s car and drinking Carling O’Keefe Red Cap Ales from the beer-fridge tucked into the corner next to the big, red Snap-On toolbox. Dad worked on his pick-up truck, or Mom’s black Mustang, which I thought was the coolest car in the world, and he worked on neighbors’ cars and co-workers’ cars. Co-workers would drive over early on Saturday mornings from Buffalo, give their keys to Dad, and then go in the house and drink coffee and smoke cigarettes with Mom. Back then, nobody gave two thoughts to mixing a houseful of burning cigarettes with a houseful of kids.

Nope, they just drank coffee and smoked cigarettes and waited for Dad to finish working on their cars.

All the neighbors and co-workers drove cars. Only Dad drove a pick-up truck, his favorite vehicle. My favorite was The Green Hornet that Dad owned for a season. It was not a pick-up truck, but it was a Ford.

The Green Hornet wasn’t dark green or light green; it was just green. It didn’t have license plates, because it wasn’t for driving on the main streets, but for driving in The Woods or along The Back Way. Growing up, certain things, when mentioned by Dad or Mom, were preceded by the word ‘The’ in such a way as to silently capitalize them and emphasize that they were significant or important like other proper nouns: The Garage, The Woods, The Yard, The Pool. All were proper nouns in our average, middle-class family.

The Woods were behind our home. Not scary Woods like in horror movies, but fun Woods. My sisters and I (‘The Three Little Ones’, as Dad and Mom called us) spent lots of time in The Woods, usually playing in tree-forts and ground-forts, built by our brothers (‘The Three Boys’). We were habitually getting yelled at

by The Three Boys for going into their forts.

My most favorite fun thing to do in The Woods was to ride in the backseat of The Green Hornet with my sisters, while Dad drove around and around The Racetrack that he and The Three Boys, and Jimmy Mills, had made in The Woods. Jimmy usually sat up in the front seat with Dad. Jimmy was Dad’s favorite helper in the garage. Dad called him ‘Go-for’, because he could tell him to go for this and go for that, and Go-for would do it. Jimmy called Dad ‘Boss-man’, or sometimes just ‘Boss’. When Boss-man found a cheap car to buy, Go-for would help Boss turn it into a car for driving in The Woods.

The Green Hornet had no front fenders and it had no side windows, because it didn’t have any doors where the glass usually goes. In some places, The Green Hornet didn’t even have a bottom; it had gaping holes in the floorboards, some big enough for a foot to slip through them. My oldest sister, Cathy, and I would watch the flattened weeds and grass and dirt-road pass under the holes in long stripes of brown and green and yellow. Sometimes, if Dad was driving very fast, the long stripes would make me feel dizzy. Even at slow speeds, Cindy, my other sister, also older but not the oldest, would complain that the moving stripes made her dizzy, so Cindy wouldn’t look down through the holes.

But before we could go on these adventures in The Woods, there was a long morning and even longer afternoon of waiting - waiting for Dad to finish up with his customers’ cars in The Garage. While Dad and Jimmy and The Three Boys helped Dad in The Garage, my sisters and I had to find things to do until the late afternoon. That’s when Dad would start up The Green Hornet. We always heard it, because it had no muffler.

Who would need a muffler on a car that was just for driving in The Woods?

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Page 2 of nonfiction by Hal A. Limebeer We would scramble out the side door as Dad, with Jimmy riding shotgun, drove The Green Hornet from The Garage around to the other side of our house to The Road Allowance, which separated our property from the Eaton’s property. We would run to find our flip-flops and get outside before Dad lost his patience and drove off without with us. I was always the last one out the screen door, and I would let the metal door slam back with a Thwack! against the metal frame.

Dad and Jimmy would be in the front seat, a tan vinyl bench with a split back because it was once a twodoor, now a no-door, and we would spring into the backseat, and I would land in the middle, in between my two sisters. The springing and landing was a lot easier without the doors. Dad would rev the engine, The Green Hornet would holler rudely to the neighbors and rumble and vibrate underneath us, and we would set off towards The Racetrack in The Woods.

To get to The Racetrack in The Woods, Dad would drive The Green Hornet on The Road Allowance, past The Pool in The Yard. Dad and Mom called it The Road Allowance because some day The Town was going to build a new sub-division of houses in The Woods. Until then, The Three Boys had to take turns mowing the grass that grew on The Road Allowance. The Eatons never took their turn mowing the grass.

When I was older and it came my turn, I thought The Town should have to mow the grass. But, at age six, the only thing that mattered about The Road Allowance was that it led us – Dad and Jimmy and me and my sisters – a quarter-mile to The Racetrack.

A quarter-mile drive took a long time when you were only six. The excitement would build as we all looked to find the left turn-off from The Road Allowance which would take us directly to The Racetrack.

Then Dad would turn right, never left, onto The Racetrack and he would begin driving in circles.

There were no seatbelts in The Green Hornet, at least none that I can remember, and as Dad drove around The Racetrack, we bounced up and down with the bumps and dints and tried to not fall out. The latest growth of weeds, getting cut down once again by The Green Hornet, would shed their seeds and pollen which would coat The Green Hornet and all of us inside it. Soon we were laughing and giggling and wiping the seeds and pollen from our eyes and our ears and our mouths. Cindy didn’t laugh and giggle as much as the rest of us. When I looked at her, I was often sure she was going to cry, but she never did. I think she was too scared to cry as much as she was too scared to laugh. I think she knew if she cried she might not be able to ride in The Green Hornet the next time; and not being able to ride with everyone else probably scared her more than riding in The Green Hornet. Who would want to be left at home? So she sat in the backseat, her frizzy hair sticking out in every which direction, next to me, her little brother. And she would be white as a sheet and would whisper to me, ‘I think I’m going to pee my pants.’

Cathy was on my other side, and she appeared to have no fear, even at age nine. ‘Faster, Daddy! Make it go faster’, she would yell. And she laughed the hardest and she giggled the loudest. ‘Faster! Faster! Faster!’

I wasn’t sure if she had no fear, or if her fear was calmed just knowing that Cindy was really, really scared.

Cathy would look at me and she would see the fear beginning to show on my face, too. ‘Faster Daddy, faster!’ And she laughed and giggled and said out loud for all of us to hear, ‘I think I’m going to pee my pants.’

After a few circles, Dad would slow down and make the right turn that took us back to The Road Allowance. Our anticipation would build again: would Dad turn right onto The Road Allowance and head towards home, or would he turn left and drive The Back Way to The Doben’s Cottage?

On those days when Dad turned left, Cindy, Cathy and I, and probably Jimmy, too, knew it was a special day; we were headed to The Doben’s Cottage to visit with Rosie and Big Nick. Maybe Big Nick had candy in his pocket. Maybe Little Nick would be there, too, with his own older sisters, Denise and Linda.

Maybe Rosie would give us each our own can of soda. Mom never bought soda. Mom gave us Kool-Aid to drink. Red Kool-Aid. I remember the glass pitcher with the smiling face on the side, but I’m not really sure if we actually had a smiling Kool-Aid pitcher, or if I had just seen it so many times on TV that it seemed we had one.

These thoughts and more would occupy my mind as we drove The Back Way to The Cottage. The Road Allowance soon became a stone road, and after a right turn onto another stone road, Dad would make a left

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Page 3 of nonfiction by Hal A. Limebeer turn onto Nigh Road, another stone road. Nigh Road was much longer than the other stone roads, and it had a stop-sign that marked the half-way point. Dad would only pause at the stop-sign, because you could see any oncoming cars in every direction, even if they were a long way back, and there were rarely any other cars.

That’s why just a pause, a slight slow-down, not a stop.

A big dip in the road, and soon we were making a right turn onto Oakhill Boulevard, the last stone road on The Back Way. The Doben’s Cottage was down on the right in the middle of the block. We got out of The Green Hornet with much hooting and hollering. This is how we announced to The Dobens we were now at The Cottage.

After an hour’s visit that included cans of sodas and maybe listening to records on the portable record player or maybe playing badminton in the backyard (the Dobens had a net and racquets and birdies; our family was always missing at least one of these) and after Dad had a Red Cap Ale with Big Nick, we would pile back into The Green Hornet and head back home.

Driving home, Cathy and I would look through the holes and watch the stone roads; the long, blurry, white and gray stripes passing underneath us. Cindy still wouldn’t look through the holes, and Cathy never shouted for Daddy to drive faster when we were on stone roads because Daddy would holler at her for yelling ‘Faster!’ when we were driving The Green Hornet on stone roads.

Dad would make the last turn onto the last stone road which ended just as fast as it had started an hour or so before when it was the first stone road, and we would drive along The Road Allowance that ran along our property. Dad would park The Green Hornet behind The Garage and we would jump out and run into the house and put on our swimsuits then go out into The Yard for a plunge in The Pool. The Pool had no fence, no deck, and only a six-inch-wide rail that circled it.

We would climb up onto the slippery rail and do cannonballs into the water to see who could make the highest splash. And no one ever got hurt on the slippery rails, just as no one ever got hurt in The Green Hornet with no fenders, and no glass and no doors and no seatbelts, with gaping holes in the floorboards, some big enough for a foot to slip through them.

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Khalil Ihsan Nieves #13 My Father Is Dying April 2013: My father is dying. In a gated community in Sarasota, Florida.

But today he is well, and is driving up to the guardhouse with a Puerto Rican flag front license plate of his Mazda as he tells me, “In our development, the houses average $500,000. We’re the only black family here out of 200 households. I’ve done good for a simple Puerto Rican.” Most of the guards are Mexicans or recent black immigrants. I imagine them smiling, saying, “Hey, Chico, you’ve done good. Go ahead, man.”

However, he is dying.

He was not always dying. Here, listen, I will tell you some of the story to why he is dying. A story mirroring many experiences of conquered peoples negotiating empire.

1929, Santurce, Puerto Rico: My father was born Luis Nieves on 15 de diciembre, 1929. He is a very private person, and does not talk a lot about his background, even to this own children, but suddenly one day.

“I didn’t know my father, he was from Spain, and had another family.” Because of that, my grandmother, a Taino Indian and black woman, raised my father alone in Puerto Rico. In 1932 she told my father, “Vamos a Nueve York.” and they left Puerto Rico,along with the other thousands fleeing the colony.

Puerto Rico had been conquered by the Spanish, and out of 20-50 thousand Taino Indians, only an undocumented handful remained. My grandmother was a descendant of those survivors. But conquest didn’t end there. In 1898, the U.S. wages war against Spain, sends in troops and turns a Spanish colony into an American one. This conquest gave the U.S. a naval as it expanded its power in the region, gave American manufacturers access to a new market, and crippled the already weak Puerto Rican economy.

These social, economic and political forces accelerated over the next thirty years and eventually drove my grandmother and father to Spanish Harlem, where U.S. clothing manufacturers needed Puerto Rican women to sew clothing. But this was not all. Farmers in Massachusetts and New Jersey exploited Puerto Rican agricultural workers.

It was as if the Statue of Liberty proclaimed, “Give me your tired and poor and I will make them garment sewers in our sweatshops. My doctors will sterilize unsuspecting women to test new medical procedures. I will pay your people less than the minimum wage to pick apples, cut cabbage, and nanny our spoiled children.” Thus, American manufacturers, farmers and rich families killed two birds, rather, two Puerto Ricans, with one policy stone.

My father was part of this flight, and virtually all Puerto Rican families caught in this hurricane have a relative who is an alcoholic, drug addict, in prison, or has died a premature death. Had Dad talked about this, he might have said. “I left New York because Pepe was in jail, Maria was pregnant, and Roberto was dead.”

He never went back to Spanish Harlem, and my mother who had also been raised in New York City once told us, “We were raised in New York City, and we made sure that you never lived in an inner-city.”

To escape the dying, my father joined the Air Force, where he married my mother, who, as an AfricanAmerican, was escaping her dying and they both lived out the last days of American apartheid. Remember, Emmitt Till, a 14 year old boy will be killed in 1954 for whistling at a white woman. Whistling.

Dancing. That’s what dad was doing. Dancing around racism and white supremacy. But with a critical edge to him. One day around 1962 he came home and gave me a copy of the magazine, the Airman. It focused on Africa and when dad gave it to me, I laughed, “What does Africa have to offer?” He got mad. ”Africa has gold and diamonds. Boy, all people and countries are important.” He instructed this sheltered, silly boy.

But this was contradicted by his insistence that I become what he was denied: My father wanted me to become an officer in the Air Force, but in 1969, while he was in Vietnam, I went in a different direction. I became an anti-imperialist and supported The Young Lords, a Puerto Rican anti-imperialist movement who believed in an independent Puerto Rico. Even later I seriously considered going to Guinea-Bissau to help the liberation movement, the PAIGC, fight the Portuguese.

But, back to the contradiction. In 1968 just as he was preparing to go to Vietnam Dad told me “Read broadly, even communist literature.” I did and have continued to read broadly. My mother once said,

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Page 2 of nonfiction by Khalil Ihsan Nieves “Part of the reason you read so much was that when you were a baby, your father would sit you in his lap while he read the newspaper, and your little eyes would follow his, like you were reading the newspaper.”

Dad only briefly talked about Vietnam, and I never brought it up. However, in 1978, after my son, Ibrahim was born, my mother visited me and began talking about dad’s choices. “He joined the Air Force because it offered training, a steady job, medical benefits, good schools for his children, and a safe and clean neighborhood.” Remember, black and Latino unemployment was still at Depression levels.

But, this is a Faustian bargain.

Dad was poor. He did his calculations. He surveyed his options. My father joined the Air Force because the rich and powerful elites in empires incorporate the conquered peoples into their colonial armies. The Roman were experts at it and later the English refined it by conquering the Irish, destroying the Irish economy and then sending Irish colonial soldiers to India and Australia where Irish soldiers conquered the Indians and Aborigines. The British then sent conquered Indians to kill Africans, or sent indentured Indians to the Caribbean to create a buffer between freed Africans and colonial settler whites. Similarly, the U.S., in pursuit of its Manifest Destiny of “From sea to shining sea”, incorporated black soldiers to fight Mexicans so slavery could be extended further south and used recently freed slaves to complete the conquest of Native Americans.

But American empire did not end there. The conquered Native Americans, African Americans, Puerto Ricans, and Mexicans would later wage war against the Koreans, Vietnamese, Dominicans, Panamanians, Grenadians, Somalis, the Iraqis, the Afghanis, and the Iraqis again.

And this is only a partial list of the wars. This is longer history behind why my father began dying in Liverpool, NY. Autumn, 1975, Liverpool, NY: When my father retired from the Air Force in 1971 my parents bought a house in Liverpool, NY. In the autumn of 1975 he began having severe stomach pain. Although my father was stoic about the pain, my mother insisted that he goes to the VA hospital. At the doctor’s office, the doctor says, “We do not see anything wrong.” My father rises, “Well, if you do not find out what is wrongyou see all those windows. I’m going to break all of them.”

The doctor’s eyes widened, “You’re crazy.”

“But, wait, Mr. Nieves, (frantically, the doctor looks at the chart so he can at least know who he is talking to now, because there are no security guards around.) “I tell you what, we will do more tests.”

A week passes. The doctor called my father, “You have stomach cancer. You have 3- 6 months to live.”

Agent Orange: The U.S. Government will deny it for 40 years. But many soldiers and airmen who were in the areas sprayed by Agent Orange will get cancer. My father was stationed at Dang Nang Air Force Base which had a dioxin contamination up to 350 times higher than permissible levels. By April 1993, the Department of Veterans Affairs had only compensated 486 victims, although it had received disability claims from 39,419 soldiers who had been exposed to Agent Orange while serving in Vietnam. My father was never compensated.

My mother tells me about how she coped with Dad’s sickness, “I continued working as a secretary to supplement the Air Force retirement income. Still, even with his illness, we paid off our 30 year mortgage in eight years.” This is in Liverpool, NY, in a neighborhood where there were only two black families and my high school had 2,400 students. In my senior year, 1969-1970, at Liverpool High there are five black women, and one black male. Me. My father talks about that time. “When I got sick, I couldn’t work for two years; I started reading Business Week and studied investing for two years. That’s how we were able to buy a house in Westchester Pennsylvania, along with my Air Force retirement, my job at the Postal Service and what your mother made as an airline attendant at US Air in Philadelphia. We paid off that house in four years.”

However, in Pennsylvania he and mom realize that they are getting older, and want a warmer climate.

Mom won’t move to Puerto Rico, so they settle on Sarasota, Florida.

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Page 3 of nonfiction by Khalil Ihsan Nieves When I first visited my parents in Sarasota, we took my sons to the beach, and began talking. “Your mother and I took the proceeds from the Pennsylvania house sale, our stocks and retirement incomes and we designed our house, and bought it. Cash.”

Because of this practicality, they have done well. My father smiles one day as relates the brief interaction he had with a pushy Toyota salesman in 2004. “When we traded in your mother’s three year old Bonneville for a 2004 Camry. I told him, I don’t need your finance. I will buy it, cash. Did you hear me?

Cash. Understand!”

June 2013: Beginning in October 2012, my brother Rafael calls. “Mom and Dad have been sick and going to the doctors every week.“ My three brothers, sister and I begin coming down for days or a week at a time starting in December 2012. Beginning April 2013, through mid-July my parents are seeing two or three doctors each week. It overwhelms them, and us. Some days I take mom to the doctor in the morning, come home, eat, and then take dad to his appointment. Then, there are the pills. Mom takes one a 10:00, dad at 1:00. Mom again at 5:00. And dad and mom both at 8:00.

I cannot even keep up with the different doctors, appointments, medications and follow ups.

My father’s strength goes up and down. When I take him to Wal-Mart he asks me, “Get me a shopping cart.” which he uses to hold him up as he slowly walks through the store. The year before he mowed the lawn, and did the house repairs. Two years before, he painted the outside of the house. He normally, at 5-8, weighs 124 pounds. He now weighs 94.

In July I was down for a week, but Friday, the day before I am to return home, mom rushed into the living room, “Your father is bleeding from the bowels, we need to go to the emergency room.” He does not complain in the waiting room, but winces. Fortunately, they admit him quickly.

By Monday they give him a blood transfusion, and his hemoglobin count goes up. When the nurse comes by and asks if he can walk so she can assess his strength, he says, “Shoot, Miss, I can run.” After he is home and is better, I leave on Tuesday.

July, 2013 Sarasota, Florida: But this recovery is temporary. In August my sister, Norma, is down again. This time for four weeks, not two.

After months of CAT and PET scans the verdict is clear: Pancreatic cancer. There is no cure for it at this stage. It could be the return of the stomach cancer that was diagnosed in 1975.

August 2: Norma calls. “Dad has 5- 7 days to live.” He is taken to Treadwell Hospice so he can gain some strength and then my mother asks that he be transferred home to die there. He never comes home.

August 18: We come in individually from Syracuse, Newtown, Atlanta, and Buffalo. His body is shutting systems down, conserving the fading strength just enough so he can go into a deep sleep that at least allows him to keep breathing. We kiss his face, hold his hands, and cry. We all cry.

My mother reads from the Bible, kisses him and says, “You’re a good man. You’re a good father.”

We touch his face, kiss him, hold his hands, and cry. We all cry, and hold each other.

Occasionally he opens his eyes briefly. Soon, even that stops.

August 30: The breathing became heavier. Then stops.

September 2: That morning it rains. The temperature is in the 80s.

Mom is cleaning the house, fussing with her dress, “Do I look good?” Her mind is somewhere else.

Maybe thinking of her own mother’s death. Maybe of her father’s death. But it is not here.

Dany stays close to Mom, and holds her. He is constantly hovering over her, catering to whatever she wants. “Mom, would you like some water.” “Okay, if you want, I’ll get some milk from the store.” But, she is distracted, not quite there. She does not feel anything. It is all too unreal to her. This finality. This death. She just stares off into some unknown distance.

I can’t imagine him dead. It seems, as if, suddenly, he will appear, sitting at the dining room table, his right leg crossed over the left, sipping his coffee, reading the business news And calculating prices.

Finally, we leave the house. We drive in two cars, just the six of us. My mother did not want anyone else. “I just want my children with me. We were always together.”

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Page 4 of nonfiction by Khalil Ihsan Nieves We get to the cemetery where we will hold the service. The sun is starting to shine. My mother says, “It started shining when it was time for dad’s service. He was always on time.”

Rafael has taken the responsibility for coordinating our care for mom and dad these past six months, and has ensured that everything is taken care of. He is quiet, very quiet today. We run together 2 miles at the beach several mornings as we talk about ourselves, and mom and dad. Earlier he had told me, “Dad or Mom could die at any time.” I hadn’t thought that their health was that fragile, but he was right.

Steve is calm, says little, but holds Mom. Norma is quiet. Very Quiet. She has spent at least three months with mom and dad during these six months. I ask her how she is, “I’m okay, I had to be strong for mom, but I’ll cry later.” She had driven 1,000 miles on the last trip, even though in June she had to go to the emergency room because of her high blood pressure.

My mother says, “I called to have the Air Force to sends an honor guard for a 21 gun salute.” It is a moving ceremony. I understand this military ceremony, I spent the first 17 years of my life in an Air Force environment, and if I had been born in an Islamic society, I, too, would have joined the military. I have that disposition and bearing. So, I understand. I understand.

After the three volleys are fired, the sergeant comes over, and personally hands my mother the American flag and three shells. Duty, Dedication. Discipline She sits, quietly, still not either here or there, but says “Thank you, thank you very much.”.

Most of his life, my father was not religious, but towards the last two years, he started talking about religion and God to my sister. He wanted a religious ceremony, and Rafael and my mother found a Catholic priest. He speaks to our family. We have always been religious. My mother is Baptist, Norma is a Jehovah’s Witness, and I am Muslim. Steve and Ruffie are religious, but don’t go to church. We listen to the priest in our own ways. Finally, he asks, “Would anyone like to speak.”

I get up, and slowly begin: From God we come, and to God, we return.

When I think of my father, I think of rivers.

Some Saturday mornings, my father drove us into the purple mountains to fish the Spokane River for rainbow trout. We loved going fishing…

Later he told me that I should read broadly, even communist literature, and I have and continue to read broadly. Eventually I taught at the University of Buffalo in African American Studies and became one of the best teachers at the university. My students knew that I was proud to be of African and Latino descent.

In 1968 he went to Vietnam and when he returned he told me that the Vietnamese people reminded him of Puerto Rican people in their simplicity and humility. He transmitted this caring and sense of one humanity and when my son Ibrahim came and spoke to his grandfather when Dad was in a coma, saying “You passed on a sense of caring for others. I am passing this on to my two sons. My wife and I give them chores, and then pay them. My sons then go buy food to give to the food bank. Also, my sister, Asiya, volunteers and goes to Latin America and does volunteer work for children.”

Asiya, had also spoken to my father. “Me escrito un manual en espanol para los physical therapists. Y me dedicado este libro a ti, Grandpa.” “I’ve written a Spanish manual for physical therapists , and I am dedicating this book to you, Grandpa.”

So, there are rivers in my family. Rivers have flown through my father from him to me, and from me to Ibrahim and Asiya, and to all my children.

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Page 5 of nonfiction by Khalil Ihsan Nieves In 1997, I wrote this poem, that I would like to share with each of you. It was a reconciliation: rivers dad, it is late summer, as I am cutting guinea grass for mulch around my avocado trees, and watching the sun setting behind the wooded hills. people tell me, that when the atlantic ocean wind is cool and calm you can see for miles, and today, i imagine that it is 1963 and see you watching me play in the water at crash boat beach in puerto rico. a lifetime past, i cried, you are not committed to our people, even as you sent me to le moyne college where i read the wretched of the earth, the autobiography of malcolm x, the weapon of theory, and we walk the way of the new world. then, storm seasons whirled, a wife, seven children needing shoes and braces a mortgage, brothers abandoning me and our 10 years of collective work, and i needed you. people say i am inquisitive, others say i am a book traveler, and some say, my son, ibrahim, walks like me. i believe in rivers. the last grass is cut, and when i look out to st.croix’s south shore i vision you and i walking the water’s edge, and we are watching ibrahim run into the surf.

God has called you back to Him, but on earth, your life flows through your children, your grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

I believe in rivers.

All my children are praying for you, we will plant seventeen trees in your memory, and we will give that fruit to the poor. Also, when anyone, every bird or creature that eats from those trees, you will receive a reward from God.

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Page 6 of nonfiction by Khalil Ihsan Nieves Goodbye, Dad. Te quiero mucho en esto mundo and el mundo que viene. I love you in this world and the world to come.

He is dead. A man from a conquered people dead from an illness contracted while fighting a colonial war, and buried in a national veteran’s cemetery in Sarasota overlooking the water.

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Kay Patterson #14 Hiroshima, 2011 – A Peace Story The relentless downpour let up briefly as my wife and I walked onto the grounds of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park and stood face to face with the damage an atom bomb creates. Not a symbol. The real wreckage, skeletal remains left standing as witness to the devastation nuclear war brings.

And with every subsequent step we took, the message was: Peace – and nuclear disarmament - is the only way forward.

It was May, 2011, and this was the poignant last stop on a tour of Japan that is, in itself, a peace story.

In 1964, my family welcomed Ikuhisa Ishikawa into our home for a year as an international exchange student. Fewer than two decades years before, our countries had been at war.

When the U.S. dropped the atomic bomb in Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, Ikuhisa’s father was a recently-returned veteran of the Japanese invasion of China and my parents worked in defense plants in Michigan. My father had lost a brother after the Battle of the Bulge and my mother's brother had just returned from the European Theater. Peace did not seem at hand. US forces were about to occupy Japan.

By 1964, however, so much had changed. The occupation had ended. A primary goal of the Japanese political leaders in World War II – positioning Japan as a global leader equivalent to the mightiest in the West - was occurring not through war, but through the power of a booming economy with vast international influence. Mass media, though still in its infancy, was making the world a smaller place as one culture’s icons found audiences abroad by the magic of the airwaves.

Our countries were strong allies, not combatants.

At the human level, these changes opened the door to a year of mutual fascination between a Japanese teenager and an American family living in Toledo, Ohio.

On a hot August day, exactly 19 years after the bomb, my family of four– mom, dad, 17-year-old boy and a 15-year-old girl – stood in the lobby of the bus station, impatiently waiting for the Greyhound from San Francisco that was bringing our newest family member.

We had nearly given up hope of being a host family when, one day at the end of July, a postcard arrived.

It said matter-of-factly that a Japanese exchange student would be on our doorstep the next week. The rush was on to get the house reorganized to accommodate him.

We were intrigued that he was Japanese and mystified by the pronunciation of his first name. My father immediately nicknamed him “Ike.” It didn’t occur to us – though it should have - that there might be unwelcome political overtones to that nickname.

Ike immediately demonstrated the well-earned Japanese reputation for eternal politeness as we stumbled over his name, but much later confessed it was a constant source of amusement. He welcomed his nickname.

“I loved it. I still love it,” he said. “The Japanese don’t hate the people of the country we have a fight against.”

After the travel fog lifted, Ike began integrating into this household halfway around the world from everything he knew. But the airwaves were already helping. A singer by nature and habit, Ike was in love with American folk music. The Brothers Four and the Kingston Trio were his particular favorites as he sang his way to fluency in conversational English.

At that time, a Japanese song was popular with American teenagers. On the US airwaves, it was called Sukiyaki, but “it’s all about lost love,” Ike explained to his new American siblings. It really wasn’t about that famous stew, but was called that on our side of the Pacific because it was easy for Americans to pronounce and understand.

It’s safe to say – an understatement, in fact – that then, as now, the penetration of American culture into international markets was much better than the opposite. That left Ike with much more insight into and curiosity about American culture than ours for Japanese culture.

Despite our eagerness to host an exchange student, we were culturally myopic; more fascinated with his interest in all things American than curious about all things Japanese. Many stories prove this point, not the

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Page 2 of nonfiction by Kay Patterson least of which was our meager effort to learn how to use chopsticks when we had an in-house expert for a year.

Nevertheless, it worked.

Ike came to us through the American Field Service, an organization that began in World War I when a group of ex-patriots living in Paris volunteered as ambulance drivers and transported more than 500,000 wounded soldiers to hospitals.

In the interim between the World Wars, the group stayed active by establishing a French-American international scholarship program which has developed today into the organization known worldwide for the quality of its international exchange programs designed to promote peace and understanding one person, one family at a time. Its peace mission is as deep as that of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park.

Perhaps it’s more accurate to say it builds peace two families at a time, since the families in both countries are changed forever.

The power of that peace initiative was apparent from the day Ike stepped off the bus and into our lives.

It was wildly successful on the home front and when Ike arrived at our high school, he was an immediate hit. The gregarious 18-year-old was our school’s first exchange student and he made it part of his job to be an AFS ambassador.

It was a year filled with life-changing experiences, both for Ike and for us.

The day Ike left Toledo at the end of that exchange year, he waved all the way up the steps to the bus that was taking him and a group of AFS students on a cross county trip before they returned home. It was the first time I ever saw my father cry. Ike later told us “that first day all you heard were people crying in 35 different languages.”

What we couldn’t know on that sad day was scope of the experience. This was to be a lifetime bond that continued and deepened over five decades so far and a distance of 6,500 miles, adding a new generation in its wake.

In 1970, Rod and I encouraged our parents to take a trip to Japan for their 25th anniversary. By serendipity, as our talks were occurring in Ohio, Ike announced his engagement in Tokyo.

My parents participated as family members in his Shinto wedding ceremony.

Ike's parents invited mine to stay in their home, a very uncommon honor in Japan where private homes are not venues for social occasions. For three weeks, they became part of the household, getting a rare, intimate look at how Ike and his family lived their lives. Ike’s two moms and two dads compared notes. That certainly deepens a bond!

Life went on and so did our times together, intermittent as they were.

Ike’s career in the import-export business, much enhanced by his fluency in English, brought him back to the US in the mid-70s. During this four-year assignment, his young family joined him, creating the tremendous opportunity for us to participate in each other’s lives. His two sons are age-mates of my brother’s children and at several gatherings throughout those years we watched them grow.

In 1996, Ike, Rod and I and our spouses vacationed together in Hawaii. Japanese and American, we saw the Pearl Harbor Memorial together. It was our first stop after Ike and Yoko arrived in Honolulu. I was quite nervous, hovering around them for fear of an ugly American moment. Not to worry. Our fellow travelers were well-behaved and the only anti-Japanese sentiment came out of FDR’s mouth in the newsreel that was part of the introduction to the Memorial. It was dark in that theater and Ike and Yoko, both jet-lagged, dosed peacefully through that introduction.

Ike continued to be devoted to AFS, serving on the Board of Directors of AFS Japan for seven years, including three years as Chair. At several points he organized peace events with another AFSer, Tadatoshi Akiba, then mayor of Hiroshima. During Ike’s tenure as Chair, AFS Japan held its 50th anniversary celebration in peace-loving Hiroshima.

Ike stepped down from the board of AFS-Japan when he was sent back to New York City on a business assignment from 2004 to 2008. His children were grown and Yoko stayed behind in Japan to care for aging

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Page 3 of nonfiction by Kay Patterson parents, but Ike was a regular at our family Thanksgiving dinners, telephone contact was easy and he delighted in introducing my wife, Susan, and me to Japanese-style karaoke in New York City.

And then in 2011, it was my turn to visit Japan, see Ike in his home environment and meet his family.

It was thrilling.

Ike showed Susan and me around his Tokyo. Travelling by foot, subway and train, we saw the neighborhoods on his daily route and places, particularly museums, that he loves. He made it his mission to introduce us to every major style of Japanese cuisine, each at the best restaurant specializing in that fare. Of course, that included sushi from fish caught steps away from our dining room on Tokyo Bay. We were charmed by a simple luncheon with his mother and brother, especially because his mother made a Herculean effort to be there, Back problems typically prevent her from sitting for prolonged periods of time. But, after all these years, she wanted to meet Ike’s American sister, her friend Jinny’s daughter.

She glowed. With lots of intervention from Ike and his brother, we talked. After lunch, I took her hand and walked her out to the porch to await the taxi that would take her back home.

The next evening, feet throbbing after tours of two unforgettable museums, we stopped at Ike’s condo for an evening with his son and his young family. Ike’s granddaughter, Kaede, aged 4, warbled the alphabet song in English for our benefit. And, by chance, we participated in a tender moment. Ike’s beloved Yoko had died two years earlier after a protracted battle with cancer. Her friends devoted themselves to redesigning some of Yoko’s most beautiful kimonos for her two granddaughters. They were ready and Ike tenderly presented them as we looked on.

Within 24 hours of these events, we had email or Facebook messages establishing a direct communication – an ongoing relationship – with Ike’s brother, Fumimasa, and his son, Taro.

Fumimasa, who had lived in Kyoto for many years, offered advice on an artist to seek out when we got to there the next week.

Taro, whom I had last seen 31 years before as an eight-year-old, wrote on my Facebook wall: “Thanks for the wonderful Tokyo meeting of last night. It was GREAT. To be honest, it has been a long time since we met, and the little chance to meet American people in ordinary life in Japan made me slightly nervous before we met. But there was absolutely nothing to worry about.” He went on to remember my family back in Ohio and deliver greetings to them.

This is the human-level parallel to diplomatic peace initiatives among nations.

I took the images at Hiroshima very personally.

When I saw pictures of the suffering of human beings, I saw the Ishikawas.

When I saw photos of neighborhoods here one minute, completely decimated the next, I pictured Ike’s tree-lined street and condo.

When I heard about the mobilized students, I pictured Ike, his brothers and his sons. Those teenagers, students in local junior and senior high schools, had been called up to serve at Hiroshima’s battlefront, clearing a firebreak in an attempt to save the city from anticipated bombing raids. No one knew that this raid would not be ordinary. The atomic bomb annihilated them where they stood.

And when I saw the artwork created by atomic bomb survivors, I was moved beyond tears.

For two families, one Japanese and one American, who have created a personal zone of peace, war between our countries is unimaginable.

This is peace, acted out in the real world on a very human scale.

Let there be peace on earth.

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Maria Scrivani #15 Where Mom Lives Where you are right now is what’s important.

Yoga class mantras see me through visits to my 95-year-old mother in her home, an assisted living facility. She has dementia, which has knocked her short-term memory for a loop, so she doesn’t remember when I’ve been to see her, let alone what we may have just eaten for lunch. What I call the back issues of her mind are a little bit faded, but come into sharp and surprising relief when coaxed by memory-stoking conversation, a spark brought to flame by a few choice words: “Remember the time Aunt Mary got so mad at us for using squirt guns in her living room…” Mom laughs, and I see for that moment she does indeed remember.

She is definitely and absolutely living in the moment, a blessing and a grace note at the end of a long and fruitful life. I am the sixth of nine children, all save one still alive and tending to our mom. I often say that she had so many kids in anticipation of having someone around to care for her in her infirm years. She does not have the blessing of late-life coupledom, which is so lovely when the marriage has been happy as well as enduring. Dad died too young, just shy of his fifty-first birthday, of a cancer highly curable these days when found in early stages.

At the home, an all-female facility located in a gracious old mansion—we eschewed the newer places, nice as they are, for one that exudes coziness and the charm of another more gracious era— Mom is the envy of the other ladies because she seems to have so many visitors. On special occasions, holidays or for her annual birthday celebration, when we all seem to show up at once, hovering and buzzing around like bees at a hive, I tell her she had too many kids. She certainly had too many kids when we sometimes disagree on decisions to be made about her care. On the other hand, she had the perfect number of children when we are busy with our own extended families or work or travel plans—there is always someone to cover, and Mom will not be left alone.

Alone means without a family member nearby, as this facility is well-staffed with competent and caring aides. What is envied by other residents must surely be sometimes an annoyance to the workers, I sometimes think. Mom’s been there for five years, one of the longer-tenured residents. So the staff knows her well, and notice when something is awry. A dietary aide says Mom did not eat much breakfast and wasn’t interested in the noonday meal. Can she make something special for her? They are kind to all the ladies, and I wonder if our near-constant presence seems like a rebuke. A lack of trust? I have asked, and been reassured that they understand. “It’s your mom,” said one aide recently, when we fretted and fussed over her during a summer bout with pneumonia, from which she fully recovered. “I would be the same way with my mom.”

That’s what I want to hear, and that’s what I want to believe. I do believe it, because I am there often enough—we are there often enough, at different times of day—that I think we would know if things were otherwise. Mom’s continuing care, and ensuring, insofar as that can be done, that her remaining years are not just comfortable but fully lived, is the most important goal. But I have another goal in mind, and it’s personal.

I want to learn from these elders how to live. I want to learn how, if given the opportunity someday, to withdraw from this world gently, and to leave behind some goodness. Kind words to a grieving person.

Smiles for the sad. An ear that listens, a hand that holds, an arm that braces. The pat on the back. The soft response to a complaint. Standing in support against wrong, from small indignities to greater injustice.

At my mother’s last home I have met many widows, many mothers and grandmothers who live with heartache and loneliness. I have seen unlikely friendships forged. I have seen heartwarming family reunions. I have heard remarkable tales of childhood, from a midwestern cropduster’s daughter who, as a young girl, went up in rickety planes with her father, amazed at the geometry of fields below. I have heard of nights of terror during the London blitz, from a woman who grew up to become a war bride, moving to

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Page 2 of nonfiction by Maria Scrivani Buffalo with her American G.I. beau. I have witnessed both railing against the infirmities of advanced age as well as laughter in the face of debilitating illness.

Above all I have seen the most amazing grace, in a place where people truly live in the moment, by necessity and choice. I am reminded, with each visit, that where they are right now is what’s most important.

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David M. Smeltz #16 The Perpetual Revolution of the U.S.C.T. United States Colored Troops– U.S.C.T., but of course everybody, North and South, called them n––s.a At least, they did at first. And what the hell were they doing in the blue suit? Hadn’t the darkies squatted on slave row for two hundred years, docile as rabbits?

“Yassuh marse.Sho’nuff, marse.”b That ain’t the stuff of soldiers. No fire– no bounce! They couldn’t stand up to the likes of Jeff Davis’s butternut infantry. But, by God, the North was running out of men. * * * The North was running out of men. In the springtime of the Civil War immediately after the bombardment of Fort Sumter in 1861, President Lincoln called for 75,000 men to put down “combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary force of judicial proceedings.” Combinations indeed! Those combinations were the Confederate States of America and were led by the likes of Robert E. Lee, Thomas Jackson, Albert Sidney Johnson and the notorious Nathan B. Forrest. By 1863, seventy-five thousand men had become the small change of war. * * * Only eight miles from Richmond along New Market Road in the earliest autumn of ’64, two U.S.C.T. regiments, the 4th and 6th of Sam Duncan’s 3rd Brigade in General Charlie Paine’s 3rd Division, Army of the James were kneeling in the pre-dawn gloom with their useless Springfield muskets cradled in their arms. The weapons were useless because their colonel, Sam Duncan, reckoned them green troops and didn’t want accidental fire to alert the Rebels entrenched up the slope on the other side of a nasty little swamp. The men were ordered not to place percussion caps on their loads. But of course the Johnnies knew. They were General Gary’s Texas brigade, veterans of the worst of it, and you couldn’t move thousands of men across their front without their pickets nosing it out. They were up early, those Texas boys. They calmly bided in their trenches, spooning their hot breakfast through their beards, waiting for the Yankees to come. They didn’t know the Yankees were colored troops yet– but they would soon enough. * * * The First Battle of Bull Run was really a glorified skirmish between amateur soldiers. Both sides entered the War with romantic notions of Sir Lancelot, Yorktown, and Wellington. One glorious battle would settle the matter and they would be home before their three-month enlistment was up. The battle was a fiasco on both sides, but at the end of the day the South held the field. Total casualties amounted to less than 5000, but the nation roared in anger and howled in grief. Then the Northern nation strapped tight its haversack, squared its kepi, and got serious with the business of Civil War. Lincoln called for 300,000 men for three years, and then 300,000 more, and then still more and then still more. There were never enough.

The Texas Confederates up New Market Heights were dug into trenches that doughboys of a later generation would recognize as home. They were zigzagged to contain any blast damage from the huge mortars the Yankees deployed from railroad flatcars and armored barges. The men slept underground in bunkers beneath great logs, criss-crossed and covered with a yard of earth. To poke your head above the wall of the trench (the Rebels called them ditches) was suicide. Snipers waited like spiders to murder any soldier boy who showed himself. Soldiers stayed down in the mud with the rats and fleas and stink. To repel attack they’d man the fire steps and draw their beads. The Johnnies had been in those ditches for months and would be through the winter and into the next spring. Fields of fire had been cleared for hundreds of yards.

Artillery was sighted in, each line of fire interlocking with other batteries to the left and to the right. In front of the ditches was the 19th century version of barbed wire; chevaux-de-frise, lines of logs with porcupines of sharpened stakes facing all avenues of assault. Two hundred yards before these were abatis, whole trees a

I consider his slur to be the most obscene word in the register. It shall never disgrace my pen. What was permissible for Mark Twain in 1885 is not permissible for me. b ‘Marse,’ not ‘massa’ is the historically correct slave term for ‘master.’

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Page 2 of nonfiction by David M. Smeltz felled side by side with sharpened branches interlocking toward the enemy. The Confederates had invested three years and swarms of slaves to prepare the killing ground. Good troops could fire three aimed rounds a minute and bring down a man at two hundred yards– the Texas boys were good troops. The only suicide more certain than a defender showing himself above the trench was an attacker assaulting those works. * * * If you reflect on Civil War combat you probably think of bold regiments, banners to the front, drummer boys beating the step, brave officers with sabers drawn directing the action, maybe with their plumed bonnets lofted on their swords. There is glory in such a notion, and pageantry and drama! By 1864 this romantic notion had shattered under the realities of modern warfare. * * * In the morning damp and dew Southern pickets saw Duncan’s 3rd Brigade as it emerged from the gloaming fog.

“N––rs, boys! N––rs!” the pickets shouted with rage. Nothing was a greater insult to Southern honor than to be challenged by their own darkies marching in the Yankee Army against their betters. “N––rs! It’s N––r Yankees!”

The Confederates licked their breakfast off their spoons, rubbed spit on their sights and listened as their artillery opened up on the advancing line of black soldiers in Union Blue. * * * Under the April blossoms around a rustic chapel named Shiloh, 24,000 men were laid low in two days of violence. What began as an adventure showed itself to be a new type of war backed by railroads, steamboats, telegraphs and mass-produced weapons. Horror swept the land. In Virginia the Seven Days Battle brought Robert E. Lee glory, but 35,000 men paid for that glory with their blood. The Second Battle of Bull Run more than tripled the butcher’s bill of the first, with 18,000 boys shot, maimed and missing.

Perryville, a mostly forgotten killing in Kentucky, slaughtered another 8,000. America has no national memory of South Mountain but it brought sobs of anguish to 5,000 American hearths. On one September day along Antietam Creek, 23,000 fell. Fredericksburg brought a bleak Christmas to 18,000 mothers and wives.

Add in the lesser killings and President Lincoln’s original call for 75,000 volunteers was more than spent. It was not yet 1863.c * * * The Army of the James was commanded by Ben Butler– ‘Beast’ Butler to the Rebels. He was a political general with a face like a bloodhound, a gut like the bow fender of a barge, grand ideas and diminutive military skills. While Grant was stalemated by Lee in bloody trench warfare at Petersburg thirty miles to the south, Butler reckoned to take Richmond all by himself. He’d be famous. He’d be a hero. By God, he’d be president! He would swarm his army up New Market Road into Richmond, capture Jeff Davis at his desk and win the War. But he was a Massachusetts politician, not a general. His orders were muddled, their execution haphazard and most of the troops who were to make the assault with Duncan’s 3rd didn’t show up on time.

The colored troops of the 4th and 6th had been marching all night to get into position. They had no breakfast, no sleep, their uniforms were soggy from the heavy dew and their fingers were stiff from the cold. In the dim light of dawn they could find no support to the left or the right but Colonel Duncan was a good soldier and he had his orders.

The word came quietly down the ranks, “Drummer boys to the rear, fix bayonets! Forward at the walk!”

Two regiments of Black Yankees disappeared into the fog that covered the swamp between them and the Rebel ditches. * * * Using the same tactics as in the Napoleonic Wars, officers sent tight formations of troops marching against enemy lines. At first, neither side was obliged to entrench. The newly developed minié-ball bullet, c

All casualty figures sited include killed, wounded, missing and prisoners from both sides of the battle.

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Page 3 of nonfiction by David M. Smeltz shot from rifles fired with percussion caps, led to unprecedented and horrendous casualties. The increased range and rate of fire decimated soldiers fighting in open formations. However, it wasn’t just outdated tactics and much more efficient weapons which made the Civil War so deadly; it was the diarrhea. Measles, croup and pneumonia killed tens of thousands, but mostly it was the diarrhea; the bloody flux. The men laughed at it and called it the Tennessee two-step or the backdoor trots or simply the squirts, but it killed more men than all of the battles put together. Every soldier in the Civil War, on both sides, from the commanding general to the most ignorant private in the ranks, had the bloody flux. Half a million of them died from it. The North had more money, railroads, shipyards, foundries, grain and guns; but it was running out of soldiers. * * * The color-bearers and the officers went down first. The officers were all white men and the Johnny gunners had a grudge against those n––r lovers. Black soldiers were not permitted to be officers in their own regiments. They weren’t considered up to the task. For white soldiers taking a commission in the U.S.C.T. was considered a military dead end, but there were always enough volunteers for officer slots. For many it was their only path to promotion. Others, such as Colonel Duncan, were true believers in the cause of abolition. That morning Duncan died on the field from his fourth wound in fifteen minutes. The colors never touched the ground. As a bearer went down a hero swept them up and kept them to the front, and then another hero, and then another. A dozen men made up the color guard of the 4th, two sergeants and ten corporals. One survived the day. With the officers butchered, sergeants took command of the regiment. The sergeants were Negroes, but they were indeed up to the task and they swept the men along, through the swamp, through the mist, and up the slope. * * * From 1861 to 1863 Federal soldiers were white to a man. The Confederates, of course, wouldn’t have a black man in their ranks. That was the whole proposition behind their rebellion. Any man wrapped in a black skin was only fit for the cotton patch and auction block. But what about the Yankees? They wouldn’t have them either. It was common knowledge– Blacky can’t fight! It was a white man’s war and the Union needed more men. White men!

The first blush of patriotic zeal brought hundreds of thousands of stout northern hearts into the ranks.

They did not own any Negroes and did not care about the few who lived in their midst, but they did know they had a country. They had a country that was their treasure and knew it was a pearl beyond price. They knew if they were anywhere else in the world, or lived at any other time, they would be bound to the land and fated to labor under the heel of a hereditary aristocrat. The Billy Yanks knew they were freer than any men anywhere, at any time in history. Now freedom was in jeopardy. The Johnny Rebs were willing to destroy their country because they did not have the wit to imagine a world where darkies were not property.

Southerners lost the election of 1860 and bolted the Union in a fright that Lincoln and the Black Republicans would interfere with their peculiar institution. If half the country could secede because it lost an election then the whole notion of a republic was the fantasy of a fool. Northerners knew they had a treasure worth more than their lives and were willing to wage terrible war to keep it. At first the slavery question did not consider in the cause for most Yankees. They were fighting for the Old Flag– at least in the beginning. * * * At a measured two hundred yards, while the 3rd Brigade was hacking through the line of abatis, the Texas infantry opened fire. The colored attackers capped their muskets and returned a ragged volley at the entrenched enemy. They reloaded as they advanced, their ranks swept with withering rifle and artillery fire.

The men leaned forward as if into a heavy squall of rain. Canister tore bloody gaps through the Federal lines and the sickening slap of .50 caliber minié balls could be heard amid the screams. It was a hopeless slaughter. No two regiments on earth could take those trenches, no matter what color skin wrapped the soldiers. The 3rd Brigade was wrecked as a fighting unit. After the battle survivors were merged into other units and the 4th and 6th regiments disappeared from the muster rolls. * * *

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Page 4 of nonfiction by David M. Smeltz The government, desperate for men, drafted shovel labor off the grain docks in Buffalo. Packers were drafted bloody from the stockyards of Chicago. Riff-raff was bribed into the ranks with bounty money. The bounty men were mostly scoundrels who deserted, took new names and joined again claiming another bounty, and so on and so on. Boys were enlisted at the schoolhouse door. As immigrant ships docked at bowery piers Irish and Germans were mustered into the ranks as they stepped down the gangplanks.

It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t just the combat and disease, it was the nature of the War itself. When the Federals took a stretch of railroad they had to guard every trestle and culvert. Flotillas of gunboats were needed to insure navigation on the Mississippi, Tennessee, Cumberland and a dozen other rivers. Blockade fleets perpetually patrolled Southern ports. Conquered cities had to be fortified and garrisoned. That took men– armies of men. And for the first time the nation began to consider that some of these men could be black. * * * Colonel Alonzo Draper’s 2nd Brigade of General Charlie Paine’s 3rd Division finally arrived at their jump off point as the survivors of the first assault splashed back through the swamp. They too were exhausted from marching all night. With no breakfast the men crunched hardtack as they waited for orders.

It was full light when General Paine gave those orders and sent his entire command up the New Market Road. It was a repeat of the earlier slaughter but this time it was a full brigade and not merely two regiments. In modern terms the Texas boys had a target rich environment. Rebel artillery again sent swarms of canister into the crowded blue ranks. Exploding shrapnel slammed bodies down into the mud like the hand of God. In the two assaults 130 men were killed, 45 went missing and an astonishing 666 were wounded.

Colonel Draper was the only officer surviving to write a report of the battle. He lost an arm. * * * The U.S.C.T. didn’t start out with a plan. Many grand things on this earth don’t begin with a plan. It just happened, and the first to notice were the Union soldiers in the ranks. In 1861 the Yankees began to move South, and the only comfort they were likely to get in this hostile land came from the mobs of slaves, men, women and children, that swarmed after the blue columns. Of course the War wasn’t about the slaves, yet, but the slaves didn’t know that. When they saw the Blue Armies marching past they saw freedom and they were swept along.

Most boys from Vermont or Wisconsin or Iowa had never seen Negroes before. At first the darkies about the camp were objects of curiosity, but they were very handy objects. They scrubbed pots, scrapped privies, mended britches and dug graves. Every mess had its colored cooks. Every company had its black teamsters. Every platoon had its darkie domestics to pitch tents and polish tackle. And the soldiers paid them the first pennies they had ever earned doing labor that they themselves had chosen to do. Many former slaves replaced their rags with cast off Union uniforms, held up the britches with string and buttoned the jackets to their necks. They loved their work and their pennies and their blue suits– and they loved the Union Army. * * * The second assault took the ditches. Glory, Hallelujah! The black Yankees had driven the white Texans back up the New Market Heights and into their second line of trenches. Praise God for victory! The survivors wept in each other’s arms. They waved their shot-torn regimental banners above the Confederate works. They gazed in wonder at the white men they had killed. Victory! * * * These first runaway darkies weren’t free. They were runaway slaves and the Union Army had no right to keep them. The 1850 Fugitive Slave Law was still in effect and their owners had every legal right to reclaim their property. It stuck in Billy Yank’s craw when a secesh grandee would drive his wagon into a Federal camp and demand his property back with all the arrogance of Lucifer– but then Beast Butler had a notion. He was poor stuff as a general but as a lawyer he was without peer. The South was in rebellion. Any property they owned that could aid the rebellion, mules, cotton, lumber, or slaves could be confiscated as contraband of war. Butler declared the runaways to be contraband property. These “contrabands” were a world away from being men-o-war. They were property in litigation.

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Page 5 of nonfiction by David M. Smeltz In 1862 the Union Army of the Potomac suffered one humiliating defeat after another– and then Lee crossed the Potomac to invade the North. The nation had been fighting to save the Republic but President Lincoln reasoned that a greater cause was needed to justify the blood and agony– a holy cause. As the armies converged on the Maryland village of Sharpsburg along pretty Antietam Creek, Lincoln made a pact with God. If the Blue Army prevailed in the coming fight he would free the slaves. * * * The 3rd Brigade, 3rd Division of the Army of the James had won, but they didn’t win much and they didn’t win it for long. They had conquered a few hundred yards of ditch littered with dead Texans, smashed guns and the rubbish of war. They were alone, 800 yards in front of the rest of the Army. They weren’t going to take Richmond from there. Richmond wouldn’t fall for another seven months. Orders came to retreat and the Black sergeants led them back across the swamp. Sergeant Major Christian Fleetwood, one of the few to survive the day’s work, was awarded the Medal of Honor. * * * Antietam was the bloodiest day in America’s history, but it was a Union victory and Lincoln kept his pact with God. On New Years Day, 1863, emancipation was proclaimed. It was an imperfect instrument, freeing only the slaves in states in rebellion and leaving others in bondage, but Lincoln knew and the bondsmen knew that slavery was dead. The Union cause was now a holy one– “As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free.” God was marching with the Union. The War was created as a new thing.

It was now a revolution in fact and not just in name. The Southerners fancied themselves to be the Rebels but now they were merely desperate reactionaries fighting to stop a real revolution. * * * Victory or defeat was beside the point and the soldiers of General Paine’s 3rd Division, U.S.C.T. were men out to make their own point. J.D. Pickens, an officer of the Texas Brigade, wrote this after the battle.

“No troops up to that time had fought us with more bravery than did those Negroes.” That was the point.

They weren’t fighting to take a ditch or kill Texas boys or even take Richmond. They were fighting for the right to be called men– for their race to be fully recognized as being members of the human race. Today that point is self-evident. It wasn’t then. * * * The South would now fight to the last ditch to stop Lincoln’s revolution. To win, the North would have to kill them in that last ditch. Discounting the deficiencies of the Southern cause, Southern manhood was gallant and dedicated. They were among the finest soldiers in history. The Union troops were the first to figure out the grim arithmetic of their situation. Such and such a number of men were going to be shot to win this War. How many men, nobody could know, but the number would be vast. Why couldn’t black men stop some of those bullets? It was now their war as much as, or more than, the white soldiers. They were already present in the camps and about the bivouacs. More were coming in every day and still more. Where the blue soldiers marched runaways followed, clogging the roads in their numbers, pathetic bundles piled on the women’s heads, children trailing behind, eyes full of fear and hope. The Republic could certainly make better use of them than as cooks, domestics, or idle refugees. Early in 1863 Massachusetts and the pacified areas of Tennessee and South Carolina began organizing the first Negro regiments. * * * General Ben Butler was an abolitionist to his Massachusetts roots. He bungled the battle, but was politician enough to make the most of it. After all, 3rd Division did take the trench. He wired to Lincoln’s ‘God of War’, Secretary Edwin Stanton, “My colored troops under General Paine…carried entrenchments at the point of a bayonet….It was most gallantly done, with most severe loss. Their praises are in the mouth of every officer in this army. Treated fairly and disciplined, they have fought most heroically.” Since Fort Sumter Butler had been lobbying the administration to recruit Negroes. New Market Heights gave proof to his argument. The men of the U.S.C.T had given proof to their own point.

They were heroes, every one of them, those runaway slaves and those soldiers of color. They could have hunkered down and waited for the issue to be settled by the white armies, and if God was good, the Yankees

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Page 6 of nonfiction by David M. Smeltz would win and they wouldn’t have had to run or fight after all. But they did. All over the South by the hundreds and then the thousands, and finally in a black mass, they fled their shackles. Thousands of them died from it. The runaways starved and froze and perished of neglect along the roads. The soldiers died in battle where Rebel veterans often declined to take prisoners or give quarter.

History mostly forgets the black soldiers of the U.S.C.T. The great majority of them began life as slaves, but they didn’t die as slaves. They died as free men, and freedom’s a fine thing to die for. All men long to be free, and these black men had the courage to reach for it and grab it at the first glimmer of a chance, even if it meant they would die in the reach. All men long to plot their own course and trim their own sails. When it comes to courage and freedom the color of a man’s skin isn’t a feather’s weight on the scales. * * * 180,000 Negroes put on Yankee blue, studied war, and came at their old masters over the blade of a bayonet. They manned one hundred and seventy five regiments and made up a solid tenth of the Federal Army. Another 19,000 served as sailors in the Navy. 70,000 of them died in their blue suits and no one ever cared to count the runaways that perished anonymously along the lanes and rivers of the South.

There were seventy-five major battles in the Civil War and over seven thousand skirmishes, raids and engagements. Except for the glamorous slaughters like Shiloh and Gettysburg few are remembered. New Market Heights is forgotten. The first Union troops into Richmond in April of ’65 were Colored soldiers, but nobody remembers them either. But the results of the Battle of New Market Heights are with us still. They will be with us forever. * * * The Black soldiers of the U.S.C.T. were the real revolutionaries. Free, educated Negroes manned only a handful of regiments. The rest filled their ranks with runaway slaves fresh from the plantation. They had no notion of freedom. Freedom was a wish. They had never looked a white man in the eye. Such defiance would earn the lash. They had never held a weapon. They had never struck a white man. Such a sign of insurrection led to the gallows. They had never made a choice. The first decision they ever made was to run. That choice made them free. That choice made them rebels.

And their revolution continues, across the oceans and across the generations. If these African slaves could be free, if they could look their masters in the eye over the sights of their own muskets, than anyone could be free– everyone could be free– everyone in the wide world and everyone through time could be free.

If these men, damned by their own skins to perpetual slavery could be free, than every man could and should be free! Lincoln knew exactly what he was doing when he signed his Proclamation. The black soldiers of the U.S.C.T. knew exactly what they were doing when they put on the blue suit. It was in September of 1864 when they fought through the swamp, up the slope and into the Confederate ditches along the New Market Road, but their revolution goes on. The American Civil War was the essential war for human freedom, not just for the runaways and the black soldiers, but for everyone, everywhere, for all time.

Don’t condemn the outcome. Don’t point out the obvious. Any fool can point to Jim Crow or find an unfortunate quote from Lincoln or sneer “hypocrisy” at a country that waited one hundred years before the great grandchildren of the U.S.C.T. could vote. The revolutionaries of the 3rd Division, XX Corps, Army of the James may have been illiterate field hands, but they were in no way fools. They knew they would not find New Jerusalem at the end of that road to Richmond. They were Americans and knew America and they knew the score. They knew they were just beginning a revolution. Not a revolution the likes of Jeff Davis’s and Bobby Lee’s, a desperate clutch to retain the past– but a real revolution. And it rolls on today and it will roll on tomorrow; and Glory, Halleluiah!

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Chera Thompson #17 Nua-Un Her trunk, a gray leather glove snatches sugar cane and bananas, and shoves them into her waiting mouth, here, where I’m doing a home stay at the Thai Elephant Conservation Center.

“She happy,” my mahout, the trainer says grinning. He hands me more bananas. She wraps her trunk around them and plucks them from my hand.

“What’s her name?”

“Nua -Un. Mean warm body, in Thai.”

I stand close to her and stroke her floppy ear. It is the closest I’ve ever been to an elephant. I look into her long- lashed eye. It stares open back at me. “Do I know you?” we ask each other. Blink. I pet her thick, gray body, as rough as a farmer’s fist. Can she feel my touch? I rub my fingers deeper into her hide. Can she feel me now?

“She born here,” the mahout says, sweeping his arm out across the grounds that resemble a manicured jungle. “She nine years old. She my daughter.”

My mahout, whose name sounds like Tao, gives the command and Nua-Un lifts her paw. Rather her foot. I smile, noticing her big toenails that look almost cartoonish. She bends her knee and I step onto it as easily as a foot stool. At the mahout’s direction I grip her ear with one hand and grab the rope that’s around her body with the other and heave myself sloppily onto her back. I spread into a starfish stretch to hold on to anything I can with everything I’ve got, as she stands up straight. Suddenly I’m higher than I’ve ever been before. And as wobbly as a kite, dipping to one side as she bends to eat a forgotten banana, swerving to the other as she sniffs up a flowering tree and bouncing forward and backward with each lumbering step. At the mahout’s direction, I scoot forward onto her neck, tuck my knees behind her ears and put my hands on the top of her knobby head ignoring my fingers screaming for something to hang onto. This is the way she likes it, he indicates with a thumbs up. We plod around the sanctuary grounds and I get the feel of her. She’s between my legs, under my pelvis, in my fingers. My toes clench inside my canvas slip- ons as I try to cling to this massive gray entity moving in all directions through my mind and body’s eye.

The mahouts are demonstrating to a small audience how they train people like me, a middle aged, suburban American, to ride an elephant. She kneels and I slide down her trunk. She doesn’t seem to mind. At the mahout’s command, she curls her trunk upward and gives the crowd a wide smile. I am so close I can look inside her mouth and see some teeth beyond her ample tongue. Nua-Un offers her knee and I climb back up, more assured and less clumsy. Her trunk reaches up and back searching for the bananas I hold in my hand. One by one I place them sideways across her nostrils and she shovels them into her mouth. The crowd applauds me. Me, who within 24 hours will be squished into an airplane hurling back to the land of ice and snow, not sprawling bareback on an elephant in the jungle.

We walk down to the pond for a bath with the other elephants and trainees in our group. The audience follows. My mahout crouches lightly behind me and calls out commands. I kick off my shoes and Nua Un lowers us into the swampy brown water and gently rolls to one side. I cling to her ears, and neck desperate not to slip off. She settles upright and her trunk curls backward and sprays a full shot of lake water into my face. I am so surprised I shout out and get another mouthful. The crowd goes mad with laughter. Then it is unbridled fun and abandon in the pond as these mammoth creatures frolic inches around me spraying each other, rolling, trumpeting and well, taking a bath. Mischievous mahouts yell commands from their perch behind us and it’s a melee of trainees slipping off, scooting on and getting blasted by trunkfuls of water streaming in all directions. We yell and shout and laugh as we are dunked and sprayed. And the elephants cavort like kids at the beach. Exhausted and sopping, we trudge back into the show ring and the mahouts give a gentle demonstration of elephant-friendly activities, like ringing a bell, throwing a ball, stacking bamboo sticks. And the big old rascal JOJO periodically turns on a water faucet to get a drink, then sprays into the gleeful audience.

The ring clears and three art easels are set up. Nua-Un steps lightly to her place before one of the easels.

Tao dips an oversized paintbrush in a palette and she curls her trunk around it. I watch ringside as she

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Page 2 of nonfiction by Chera Thompson painstakingly strokes stems and flowers onto the paper by swinging her trunk. With very little guidance, a masterpiece is created. And I buy it.

Dinner is a wheelbarrow of corn still in the husk. I watch in amazement as the thick stubby feet and trunk work in tandem to peel back the husk and pop the ear into an always waiting mouth. Crunchy sugar cane is dessert. After dinner, the area is cleaned up and the elephant dung taken to a hut where it is cleaned in bleached water, strained through a screen, pressed through a wringer and dried into recycled paper. I buy authentic elephant dung bookmarks and note cards.

At sunset I swing up onto Nua-Un’s back with ease and we plod quietly down the dirt path back into the mountainside. Over a river and through trees laden with bananas and mangos and jack fruit. At different intervals, the mahouts stake each elephant with lengthy chains to a tree or rock within a large space of wilderness. I am disturbed by this, but am told they will escape and may be killed by hunters if they wander.

Documentaries with brutal images of tusk-less elephant carcasses invade my mind.

I pet Nua-Un, her ears, her trunk, her head, her massive body. Does she feel me yet? Her ears sway. And she is looking at me with the one eye that has me in her view. The one I am standing inches away from. She lets out a mild trumpet.

The sky has faded into an orange haze. Other elephants walk by swinging their tails and ears. Waving to us? A stately elephant passes carrying sheaths of palm leaves in his trunk. Nua Un looks up.

“He Nua-Un’s father,” the mahout says.

“Does she know?” I ask, remembering my kitten didn’t recognize her mother after being only a couple weeks away from her.

“She know. And her mother too.”

Earlier in the day, I had watched a mother elephant nurse her 22 week old baby and was embarrassed to realize my only knowledge of baby elephants came from the Disney movie Dumbo.

Back at the center, I learn that elephants have a similar life span to ours, they are very family oriented and can identify their parents as well as children throughout the years, and they remember things for decades.

They also grieve lost loved ones.

That evening, I lie on the cot in my hut listening to the night noises. The soft resonance of Thai conversations, low strumming of indigenous instruments and an occasional distant trumpeting. A random thought is nagging me. A feeling of déjà vu. What is it? I’ve always had cats and dogs, but have never even touched an elephant. Then it comes to me. Babar! My first elephant. I envision my five- year- old self turning the pages of a library book. Travels With Babar. The seeds of my future career in travel were planted by an elephant in a hot air balloon.

Dawn breaks with the rooster’s crow. My mahout and I and the rest of the farangs, as foreigners are called, walk down the dirt path to gather our charges. Nua Un is standing, waiting for the sugar cane I carry across my shoulders. The mahout releases her from her chains and guides her to a cove in the nearby river where she rolls over in the clear water, spraying and cleansing herself. Tao painstakingly washes off the dirt which she rolled in during the night. I now swing like a pro onto her neck and barely hold onto her head as we walk back to the sanctuary for a breakfast of corn and bananas.

The airport van arrives. It’s time to say goodbye. I load my luggage in the back and run down the path to Nua-Un for one last cuddle. I settle for petting as much of her as I can while looking her in one eye. Or the other. I rub my cheek on her cheek. Press my head against her neck. Caress her winding trunk. Stroke the flapping ears. “Pretty girl,” I murmur.

Nua-Un looks me in the eye. And then, without the mahout’s command, she opens her mouth into a smile.

She feels me now.

I pull off my shoes and hand them to Tao, who delightedly kicks off his worn-out plastic flip-flops. A perfect fit. Scampering barefoot back to the van, I try to remember which bag has my winter boots. The van pulls away, racing to the airport. I close my eyes and picture my navy blue slip-ons walking down the path

by Nua-Un’s side. The path that leads to animal rights awareness.

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Ann Marie Trietley #18 Travis’s Face The time is ten years ago. I’m pedaling frantically on a Huffy in pursuit of a cigarette.

It’s summer and I’m home from college, back at my parent’s abode. The city is looking mildly pleasant today, I think to myself. A hostage situation is going on, and a SWAT team has closed off the block. The same familiar dude is pushing a pilfered shopping cart up the street. Rattling of aluminum and glass creates music in the air.

And then – I get a whiff of those fumes. Somebody is smoking. I ride up to a skinny, 5′ 4” dude in cargo shorts. He’s puffing away in front of Consumer’s Beverage.

“Hey, can I bum a cigarette?” I say.

“Yeah, sure,” he says, removing a Marb Light from the pack. “I’m Travis.”

We begin to chat. Travis has half-closed stoner eyes and a receding hairline. A Molson Canadian t-shirt hangs off his scrawny physique. I learn that he is 24 (old enough to buy booze) and lives nearby (in his own apartment).

“Do you need a job?” Travis says, exhaling a final plume. “We’re hiring here.”

Well, yeah, I guess I do…. Just something for the summer until I return to school. But this Travis fellow could just be the cherry on top.

I’m given a navy blue Consumer’s tee, and a name tag. My boss, Seth, is a thirtysomething lamebrain who hates black people and girls. He mostly sits in his office, overlooking his dominion. When people come in with a cart full of empties, he shouts “fucking scumbags” and pops in a wad of Skoal.

I’ve come to know the regulars, including Janelle, who lives next door. She once asked me to blow in her car’s breath alyzer so she could leave for work. Seth and/or Travis deliver Mike’s Hard Lemonade and cigarettes to her house. Travis was gone for an hour one time, and returned saying she “took off all her clothes and started reenacting soap operas.”

This story gives me a mild pang of jealousy. Why doesn’t Travis ever do anything romantic, like take me anywhere to eat? Our after-work “romance” has consisted of me going to his house to smoke pot and watch Roseanne. Despite flirtatious efforts and the shortest of shorts - which made even Seth shake his head in dismay - Travis falls flat. He is usually slumped over the counter, chewing on chips.

“So, Travis, what are we, like, doing tonight?” I ask, fluttering by and tossing my hair. He looks up. A chip crumb is stuck to his lip.

“Let’s go to Bill’s and play beer pong,” he says.

That has become the plan for tonight. I’m upstairs in my bedroom getting ready when I hear the familiar sound of Travis’s car. It has a broken muffler or something, and it’s so loud you can hear it coming a mile away.

“Oh, he’s here, your man,” my mom says, rolling her eyes. Travis beeps his horn. “My mother always said to never go out with a guy who beeps his horn.”

“Oh, whatever!” I say. “I’ll be back later! Late. So don’t bother waiting up.”

We go to our co-worker Bill’s house. Bill is a decent looking 25-year-old with manners, and I think he has a crush on me. But I’m more interested in Travis, for whatever reason. I’m wearing a shredded-up denim mini skirt and white tank top. I forgot to put a bra on. After a few rounds of beer pong, I’m three sheets to the wind and have tossed all regard for getting home to the wayside.

The three of us go sit on Bill’s porch. We stare off into the dark night. Travis pops some pills from a prescription bottle. The two of us decide to leave, and go back to Travis’s house, muffler vroooom-ing all the way.

Travis has a pitbull named Max, who starts barking as we creep up to Travis’s second floor apartment.

We have to creep, because Travis lives above his mom and her boyfriend. His mom’s boyfriend usually stands in the front yard with no shirt on. He makes me mildly uncomfortable.

“Yay!” I say, taking my shirt off and whipping it around my head. “Woo!”

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Page 2 of nonfiction by Ann Marie Trietley “Calm down…calm down…Daddy’s tired,” Travis says, schlepping across the kitchen floor to his cupboard full of E-Z-Mac. We both pass out on the couch in the middle of a Cops marathon, and wake up to Seth’s gruff voice on Travis’s answering machine.

“Hey, fucks,” he says. “Ann’s parents are looking for her. So if she’s there, you might want to call them.” Click.

I hear someone rapping on the front door. Travis jumps up, and peers through the blinds. I hear my mom and dad shouting my name from below.

“Oh God, my damn parents showed up?” I say.

Travis has decided to hide in the corner, behind a stack of Maxim magazines as tall as him. I slip into my flip-flops, knowing full well that I reek of multiple Labatts.

“They called the cops. They called the cops! They called the cops?” Travis says, walking in circles like a maniac. I peer out the window. A police car is parked down the street.

“No, they didn’t,” I say. “A cop is just coincidentally on your street. You live in the hood, hello.”

But I am not getting through to Travis. Does he think I’m a shitty girlfriend? I don’t want him to dump me… The whole time I’m collecting my belongings, Travis is silent. Once I get home, I plop my weary body down at the kitchen table with dry toast and a Vitamin Water.

“You don’t even have a bra on,” my mom says.

For the first time, I see the time. The clock tells me it’s only 8 a.m. I finish the toast and go back to bed.

The next day at work, Travis gives me shocking news.

“Your dad was here, and he called me a drifter,” Travis says. “What the hell is a drifter?”

“Someone who wanders around, aimlessly,” I say.

“Fuck that,” he says. “Fuck this. I’m moving to Colorado with Max.” And he does. The next week, he is gone, with cash that he stole from Consumer’s through bottle return fraud. I start tearing up all my issues of Cosmo, which contain sex tips I’ll no longer need.

“Why?” I ask myself.

I’m in my bedroom blaring Britney Spears “Toxic” and drinking from a bottle of Steel Reserve. Bill had to get it for me at work. He seemed concerned.

“Life is meaningless!” I say. “Meaningless as fuck.”

I’ve finished all 24 Steely ounces of beer and move on to my parent’s boxed merlot. In a frenzy I consume a giant mug, wishing there was an everlasting fountain of liquor. Lying face down on my bed, vomit rises up in my throat. I throw up all over my white comforter. It’s nothing but an ocean of red wine flowing all over my white comforter – and I’ll be damned if it didn’t look like Travis’s face.

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Michelle Vanstrom #19 Buffalo Nickels I. In the picture circa early 1960s: a five-year-old black-haired girl—chin length, sun glossy—astride a brown and white pinto pony, small hands clutching the saddle horn in a short leg straddle in front of a Native American adorned with ceremonial feathers. A second child, a flat-chested girl with a boy’s short haircut, an unruly pixie, stands next to the horse, arm extended, hand not quite touching the nose.

II. Ten years old, sweating in the back seat with two sisters, four windows rolled down, face in a hot wind, on the only vacation my family will ever take, a drive cross-country from western New York to visit several national parks—Yellowstone, the Badlands, the Grand Canyon, the Grand Tetons, Devil’s Tower—a loop down into Texas, up California's coast, US Highway 1, and through the Dakotas before endless black asphalt shimmers into an opportunity to have a photograph taken on a tobiano-patterned pinto pony while seated in front of a Native American wearing traditional garb; a white feather headdress flows down his back.

My turn, after my little sister, before my older sister, and I refuse. My mother cajoles, and I shake my head, back up, eyes on the horse I desperately want to touch—it’s bigger than the ones that circle-walk at Allan Park. Here, the real horse I’ve spent my entire life dreaming; my bedroom a stable for over 30 captured in glass, plastic, and bronze, caught mid leap, or standing, or rearing. The man watches me, hears my mother say, He’s a real Indian on a real Indian pony. You’ll regret not having your picture taken, once we’re home.

My mother’s ensnared, a Kerouac passenger with three kids, right arm sun burnt on the open window’s ledge, a dreamer dropped into a television show she loves, the spaghetti-western landscape now in Technicolor. She’s a pioneer behind a creaking covered wagon, replete with caravan dust and resinous sagebrush, skin and clothes perfumed, a salty reek, air smoky from small campfires, when a sinuous line of Indian ponies forms on the distant mountains’ rocky crest. When she returns, she’ll buy me a coveted souvenir in the gift shop, a small Plexiglas cube with three, gold, tiny palominos glued inside, a mare with two foals.

Finally, my mother—or maybe my dad—asks if I want to pet the horse. Blue gaze jumps to fathomless brown, his nod almost imperceptible, and my hand’s snuffled by warm air and crushed soft velvet.

III. Decades later, skimming a Native American anthology, I’m stopped by an essay—maybe a short story—penned by a Native American male who, to earn money, poses on a horse outside a reservation store so the invaders’ children can sit in front of a wild west legend. The author describes a resistant child—whose spirit he silently admires—as a small, curly haired boy. He relates an entire conversation, parents extolling the idea of a child seated with a real Indian and silently jeers, wonders if they are deliberately obtuse, and silently congratulates the boy for taking and maintaining a stand.

When the mother exclaims in exasperation, “well at least pet the horse so I can take your picture,” his head tips when the sky’s gaze lifts and meets his.

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Lois Vidaver #20 Talk, Talk, Talk As I step off the third floor elevator, I am accosted by that smell of cold cream the aides slather on the patients. It is overwhelming. Ironically, it was a “Mom” smell I grew up with every night. My mother bragged in those years that the cream took 10 years off her age. That was true, and even now at 96, her skin is smooth and silky. But this assault of that much moisturizer is not pleasant. I have to keep myself from holding my nose.

I walk into her room past her roommate who is awake but lies silently, a blanket up to her chin, her wide eyes watching me. I stride across the room to the window bed. I’m not conscious of odors any more, wanting only to see how my mother is doing.

“Hi, Mom, it’s Lois,” I say softly as I take her hand. She looks more gaunt, eating less every day, the nurses tell me, but still able to communicate. I say a silent prayer of thanks for this every time I visit.

My mother was a marathon talker, all her secrets tumbling out in numerous daily soliloquies. At times I wanted to blurt out, “Stop talking, I’m tired of listening!” But now I can say as I watch her slip away from me day by day, “I really know my mother--her thoughts, her fears, her joys. I really know her very, very well.” This realization fills me with such peace; no one can ever imagine how much.

Her first words to me this day are not cheerful.

“They said I died last week. I even had the death rattle and they brought me back. They’re trying to keep me alive and I want to die.” She pauses, then goes on. “It’s taking me so long to die.” I smooth her hair but there are just a few wisps left, sticking out at odd angles. Her eyes, though open, don’t see me; she’s been blind for years. There is nothing at all wrong with her hearing. She is described by the nurses as being “able to hear grass grow.” And for the sightless, this is an amazing blessing.

Then, “I miss cooking my Thanksgiving dinner,” she says. I am not surprised, it was always her favorite holiday. ”I always picture my table and my gold dishes with a bouquet of flowers in the middle.

“I just want to get out of the world. They’re doing everything to keep me here.”

“In God’s time, Mom,” I answer.

“He’s hard to win with,” my mother says and I smile at the wisdom of that. “A lot of us would be better off…. I have skin as smooth as a baby, don’t I?” she interrupts herself.

“Did we have a dog King?” she goes on. “He was as good as any person. He would never go out of that yard.

“Walter lived next door, Millie Scott across the street.” Mom was remembering the days of South Ozone Park in Queens when we lived in an attached house, and had a bulldog named King. My brother Roy strode off to war from that neighborhood, leaving behind his little sister Lois, me, age eight.

“Minnie Scott,” I correct her, then thought, how petty! What difference does the right name mean in either of our lives?

“I remember sitting in the breakfast nook in her kitchen. Isn’t that right?” she asks. I gently squeeze her hand in answer.

“Am I that bad they have to feed me? Am I sick?” she asks.

“No,” I answer. “It’s just that your body is tired.”

A voice from the other bed pipes up like a choir responding with an antiphon, “That’s all. Our body is tired.”

After glancing over at the roommate whose eyes are still staring at me, I turn back to my mother. “I’ll call Roy. What would you like me to tell him?”

“Only that I love him so much. I miss him. I miss Jayne so much. Everyone loved Jayne. Karen was so jealous, she ruined her sister’s life. Are they close?”

“No,” I say bluntly. Jayne is my mother’s favorite grandchild. My mother never saw the need to ever apologize for favoring one of my brother’s children. When confronted with that fact, she would retort, “Teachers have favorites,” as if that was the only justification needed. Family memories of those years make my heart ache.

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Page 2 of nonfiction by Lois Vidaver “Jayne and Karen aren’t even speaking,” I tell her.

“That’s too bad. There would have been wonderful affection there,” she says.

“Am I losing my mind?” She suddenly sounds frantic, her voice gains in volume, her body tenses.

“What are you, Lois? Are you my daughter?” She’s actually trying to sit up in bed, reaching forward with flailing hands and arms. Where is this strength coming from? I wonder. My heart is pounding. Should I call a nurse?

“Are you married to Michael?” she calls out. “I love him. Do you mind if I love your husband? I’m saying that but I don’t know what it means,” she sputters as her voice loses steam, like a tea kettle forcing out its last dying whistle.

The roommate’s voice almost sings again, “Don’t know what love means,” she says.

“Shut her up!” my mother responds with vehemence. “She’s driving me out of my mind!” Almost instantly, though, her strength wanes, and collapsing back onto the pillow, she looks spent.

The voice coming from the next bed lodges a protest: “The nurse loves to hear me sing,” she whines.

“You never have real quiet here” my mother suddenly whispers as if conspiring to reveal a deep dark secret, “and I love a place where no one talks.” She says this with a strong sense of injustice. Her voice has become so soft I have to lean forward to hear it.

“It’s awful when your memory slips. Everyone does your thinking for you. I love you, Lois and Mike.”

She pauses. “Who’s my son?” she suddenly asks with again more energy, then provides her own answer. “Roy,” she says with some relief, “and Mike’s my son-in-law.”

Mother’s hand under mine suddenly sinks into the bedclothes like a burst balloon. I lift it slightly off the bedspread and it is so light I imagine it floating off into space except for my protective pressure.

“How do I go to sleep?” she asks with bewilderment.

“I’ll tuck you in and kiss you goodnight, just like you used to do for me,” I answer. Leaning over and pressing my lips on her forehead, they linger for a moment in remembrances. “Close your eyes,” I say in my most comforting cadence. “There you go, Mom. Have a nice nap.” I draw the words out ever so slowly in order to lengthen the time we still have together. Wiping a tear slipping down my cheek, I watch her drifting quickly into the rhythmic quiet of sleep.

Walking toward the door, my eyes seek out the roommate’s. “Talk, talk, talk till you feel happy,” she reminds me with her sing-song voice. I nod my head and walk out into the hallway, breathing in deeply the smell of home and mother.

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Paul White #21 Poetry Unites!

In the early 1980's I bought a book in New York City by the poet David Ignatow. I swear I remember sliding the spine, out from among the other books, and seeing its shiny, red black and white covers. The poems were short, and they used a simple language in free verse. They were mental snapshots, what I would come to know as an emotional autobiography, catching moments of feeling in pictures, like dreams do. The poems were trying to catch up with the speed of life, as if it had somehow gotten away. They were so concise and lacking in pretension, trying to grapple with life and its problems, to lay hold of emotion in its essence.

They were just what I needed.

I was about 20 years old and visiting my Aunt for the weekend. She was on a six month assignment in the city for the telephone company. I think I picked the book because I couldn't pay attention well enough to read poems that were any longer. It could have been like so many other books, which I started and then discarded before finishing, losing patience with my own thoughts. But about halfway through the book, I read the poem "Sunday at the State Hospital." It's about David Ignatow visiting his schizophrenic son.

It describes two people sitting across the table from each other at a mental hospital eating sandwiches.

The poet calls it his visit sandwich, but the person he is visiting is having trouble eating. He is frozen and staring at the table with the sandwich suspended in mid-air. The poet eats and pretends everything is normal, but the mood of the illness infects him, and the sandwich tastes mad. He goes on to say his past is sitting before him, filled with itself, and unable to bring the present to its mouth. The poet implicates himself, he seems to blame himself for the illness. After this poem, I read David Ignatow's poetry like it was food for a starving man.

I was diagnosed a paranoid schizophrenic at age seventeen. The poetry of David Ignatow helped to save my life. I carried his little red book of selected poems wherever I went. My hands began to wear the colors off the covers. His book was like a talisman to ward off anxiety. If I could only stop and read for a moment, I'd be okay. In general, people do not want to know about schizophrenia. When I would try to tell people about my experience, it was as if a brick had fallen out of my mouth and landed on their foot. I learned to keep my mouth shut. David Ignatow's notebooks are full of desperation and anguish in dealing with a mentally ill son. Even though I never met him, David Ignatow became like a spiritual father to me. His son never recovered.

Today, I'm happily married and I work as a Registered Nurse. I take care of critically ill children living at home with their families. I'm also a poet, and I often write about my experiences with schizophrenia, and my long road to recovery. I tell my story to advocacy groups for families of the mentally ill. I also have spoken to Psychiatrists in training at The University of Buffalo. I tell them what it felt like and how I got better. David Ignatow was a lifeline for me in the long process of my recovery and it started with the poem, "Sunday at the State Hospital."

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The 8th Annual Just Buffalo Members’ Reading

LIST OF CONTESTANTS 1

Venezia Appleby ................... I Am This Moment

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Laurence T. Beahan MD ....... Come to the “Rise Up for Climate Justice Rally” in .............................................. Niagara Square Following the Pope’s speech to Congress .............................................. Thursday September 24, on The Road to the United Nations .............................................. Climate Change Conference, Paris, December 2015. .............................................. By A. Fallinaway Catholic

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Kenneth A. Boos ................... Pretty in Pink

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Stephen Cocca...................... The Early Warning System

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Sharon F. Cramer, Ph.D........ Recalling Grief

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David Cummings................... For My Daughters

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Trudy Cusella ........................ Good To The Last Breath

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Mitch Flynn............................ An A To Z Of A Bike Ride From Buffalo To Washington DC

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Regina Forni.......................... Birding the Amazon

10 Natalie Gerich Brabson ......... Childhood 11 Veronica Hogle...................... The Woman Who Loved The Sea 12 Hal A. Limebeer .................... The Green Hornet 13 Khalil Ihsan Nieves................ My Father Is Dying 14 Kay Patterson........................ Hiroshima, 2011 – A Peace Story 15 Maria Scrivani ....................... Where Mom Lives 16 David M. Smeltz .................... The Perpetual Revolution of the U.S.C.T. 17 Chera Thompson .................. Nua-Un 18 Ann Marie Trietley ................. Travis’s Face 19 Michelle Vanstrom................. Buffalo Nickels

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The 8th Annual Just Buffalo Members’ Reading

20 Lois Vidaver .......................... Talk, Talk, Talk 21 Paul White............................. Poetry Unites!

SELECT YOUR FAVORITE NONFICTION AND ENTER THE NUMBER IN THE BOX BELOW

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