Paddlefish 2022-2023

PADDLEFISH a

student literary and art journal

Editor Jim Reese

Associate Editor

Jamie Sullivan

Review Editor Katherine Blankenau

Copy Editor

Arts Editor

Editorial Assistant

Cover Art

Book Design & Layout

Advisory Board

Jamie Sullivan

David Kahle

Ally DeLange

Elita Eastman

Looking Forward to Freedom

Ashley Bargstadt

S. Cynthia Binder

Katherine Blankenau

S. Marielle Frigge

Jamie Sullivan

Copyright © 2023 by Paddlefish

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

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

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

Paddlefish

Snagging good literature one line at a time.

PADDLEFISH 2022-2023

a student literary and art journal

Table of Contents

5 Rita Woodraska

• “Woven Love” [Winner of the 2022 Father Jack Garvey Award for Nonfiction]

10 Lauren Stiefvater

• “The Birthday Storm” [Winner of the 2022 Eugene Brinkmeyer Award for Prose]

13 Christian Mickelson

• “Telling Stories” [Winner of the 2022 Sister Eileen Neville Award for Poetry]

• “Like A Battery” 15 Dr. William J. Miller

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• “Paging STAT 1” 21 Lexa Burtzlaff

• “Doing the Next Right Thing”

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• “The

• The Correlation Between the War on Drugs, Race and Mass Incarceration”

• “Open

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• “Junk

• “Wild

• “Deye

• “Empty

• “The

• “My

• “Paper”

• “Never

• “God’s

• “Love

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Woven Love

by Rita Woodraska

My mom threads her fingers through my hair and combs out the snarls. She hushes my hiccuping sobs as she pulls me into an embrace. Her touch soothes the pain that no hand can reach. She knows any words she could use would fail to mend whatever wound has pierced my heart. My wounds are exposed and raw. My mom’s love is the salve.

This is a familiar memory. One I experienced over and over. It has taken me a long time to appreciate the ways in which my mom shows me she loves me. All my life, I have taken what she has done for me at face value. But she did much more than I was aware.

One night when I was young, I found my mom sitting on the couch crocheting. Her fingers moved quickly, looping yarn around a metal hook and smoothly slipping the hook in and out of stitches without even looking. She made hats, blankets, and doilies. I sat beside her and watched, mesmerized by the motions and the way her fingers flew when she created something out of nothing.

I remember the way her eyebrows would draw together while reading a crochet pattern and how she would admit defeat and begin pulling out rows and rows of stitches. I remember the first time I asked my mom to teach me to crochet. She was unsure because I was left-handed and she had taught herself. She adapted her skills into lessons for me. She went over the stitches again and again. I remember crying out of frustration and my mom taking the tools away and storing them for later. I went back over and over to ask if she could show me again.

I thought it was easy when she taught me the first steps of crocheting. She made me work on chaining with the yarn. This is the equivalent of learning how to dribble in basketball. It is the preparation for creation in crocheting. My confidence turned into uncertainty when she taught me my first stitch. It took me years to understand where you insert the hook to create a stitch. I messed up stitches and had to redo them. I came back to my mom with a new row and she inspected the stitches. Almost every time, she mumbled, “Now how did you do that? I don’t know how you did that, but that’s not right.” She unraveled it for me and let me sit next to her. She even crocheted left-handed to help me understand. She explained in gentle tones, showing me again and again.

Winner of the 2022 Father Jack Garvey Award for Nonfiction

I finally made a small pot holder with the stitch I mastered. I couldn’t believe I had done it. I asked her if there was more to learn. It turned out I had only touched the surface of crocheting. I was ambitious, but I struggled to keep my attention on something so repetitive. It wasn’t until high school that I realized how comforting that repetition could be. I could get lost in the stitches, or I could use the nervous energy from anxiety to make a scarf I would never finish. Sometimes I put a project away for months. The yarn became so tangled when I started again, I gave up. I wonder how my mother felt watching her daughter take up and give up the skill over and over again. A skill she worked so hard to teach. All to make nothing of it.

I never finished any noteworthy projects. But Mom’s projects were always something intriguing. She made an octopus hat for the county fair one year and shark socks the following year. She could make just about anything. She would test the limits, especially come Halloween.

She enchanted Halloween with her creativity. Rarely did we buy costumes. Mom asked us in September what we thought we wanted to be. She was crafty when creating costumes. One year, she crocheted my sister a Princess Leia wig. She created a pair of mummy costumes using old sheets. She sewed octopus legs to a shirt so my sister could be Ursula from The Little Mermaid.

My mom loved to dress up for Halloween with us. One year, she took a bunch of socks that had long lost their partners and sewed them to a large shirt. She became the monster that stole your socks in the dryer. I remember watching her carefully stitch each sock to the shirt she used. She invented a pattern for the wig. I can still see my mom safety-pinning swaths of white fabric to my brother and sister. She used what spare time she had in a month to help us become some fantastical creatures for a single night.

She gave me so much of her time when I was a child. I could ask her questions for hours and she would try her best to explain, even if I wasn’t able to understand. She helped me even when she didn’t have the answers.

When I was in middle school I asked my mom how to do make-up. She never wore make-up. She had a very small set of skills and tools to teach me with, but when I asked, she helped me. I remember her taking a dull eyeliner pencil and drawing light lines on my eyes. Her breath washed over my face in warm waves as she concentrated. She swiped touches of mascara on my lashes and dabbed blush on my cheeks. I looked in the mirror and saw the work of a hand that was not familiar with these tools. My mom was practical. Make-up wasn’t. She didn’t see the point of putting on a bunch of make-up everyday just to take it off. So when she asked how I liked the make-up, even though I didn’t think it looked very good, I smiled and said, “I like it.”

For every moment I said the right thing, there were a thousand moments where I said every possible wrong thing. I was the first of the siblings to enter middle school, and I blazed an awful trail. My mother was the one who got me through my worst days.

I remember Valentine’s Day when I was a sixth grader. Someone over the intercom at school called several girls up to the office at the end of the day because they had been sent flowers. I felt left out and unlovable all because I hadn’t been sent flowers. I remember going to my mom that night, crying. I had this idea that love solved all problems, and I was going to be stuck with all my problems because no one loved me. My mom let me lie beside her. She stroked my hair and listened. She didn’t interrupt me. She didn’t laugh at me. She didn’t say I was being silly. She let me cry. She told me it was okay that “no one loved me, yet.” She reminded me, “But I love you, and Dad loves you.”

My mom must have felt an awful sting at my ignorance. Her love was always there. It was there even when she wasn’t gentle. There were times when she traded her gentle tones for quiet, tight words from pursed lips. I constantly tested her limits and suffered the consequences.

My mom did not stand for disrespect. She always said, “You don’t have to love everyone, you don’t even have to like them, but you have to show everyone respect.” When I showed disrespect, my mom was quick to show me the consequences. Should I have spoken with even a hint of attitude, my mom would drag me to the bathroom and stick a soapcovered finger in my mouth. With every taste of soap, I became more aware of my words.

Other times, it was my actions that got me into trouble. One night my mom was cooking a very odorous stew. I walked in and asked, “Why is dinner so smelly?” My mom was not amused. She told me if I complained again, I would be sent to bed with water and a slice of bread. It was almost dinner time when I visited the kitchen again. I made a face and tried to hold my breath. I was unable to contain myself saying, “I hope it tastes better than it smells.” My mother snapped at me, “Well I guess you don’t get to find out!” I was given a single slice of bread and sent to my room. I cried. I hadn’t meant to hurt her feelings. I went to the living room where everyone was eating. My heart sank when I saw my brother and sisters enjoying the meal I had insulted. “That looks pretty good, Mom.” I hoped buttering her up might allow me to eat dinner. “Maybe you’ll think before you insult my food again.” I remember that glare every time I begin to judge a meal before I even try it.

My mom didn’t get a manual when she had kids. When I was born, she was only a year older than I am now. It feels so strange to imagine being married and having a kid at this stage in my life, but my mom did it. She didn’t spend her early twenties partying and living carefree. She had two kids by the time she was twenty-three. By twenty-four, her second child was diagnosed with leukemia. She spent months in a hospital looking after my sister, Grace. I was left with my grandparents and

cousins. Sometimes I would visit my sister, which meant I also got to visit Mom.

I remember seeing Mom sitting in a chair in a sterile hospital room. It had been a while since I saw her curly black hair and heard her reassuring voice. All of the need and love for my mother made me bawl. She scooped me up and held me. It only made me miss her more when I had to eventually leave.

Now, I get this same feeling every time I come home for the holidays. I follow her around the house when I have nothing to do. I stand in the doorway of her bedroom and talk with her until she kicks me out. She asks me, “Why do you keep following me around?” I miss her. I miss the comfort of her fingers in my hair. I miss her gentle tones when nothing in the world makes sense. I even miss the mouthfuls of soap.

But I never realized I would miss her this much until I went to college. I didn’t miss our evening conversations until I was sitting in my dorm with a roommate who didn’t like to talk. I didn’t miss the way I could confide in her until I realized I didn’t want to talk things through with anyone else. Eventually, I was forced to survive without these luxuries because my mom was busy and so was I. Phone calls helped, and so did my new friends, but I missed her all the same.

It was also during this time that I learned just how human my mom was. I had built her up as someone capable of anything and everything, despite her flaws. After the shutdown in the spring of 2020, I fell into a very dark place. I was crawling through each day with knots in my stomach, fearing the challenges I faced. I was so desperate to be rid of this gut-wrenching feeling that my mind began considering death. I reached out to my doctor. I described again and again this hopeless hole I was sitting in, waiting for someone to bury me. Waiting for my hands to have the courage to do it themselves. After taking a few paper assessments, I was diagnosed with generalized anxiety and depression. The doctor called my mom to pick me up. When I got into the car I couldn’t look at her. Neither of us said anything. The silence was sickening, but I couldn’t say a word. When we got home, she wanted to talk. She couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t have said something sooner. Why didn’t I go to her first? Why was she getting a phone call that her daughter was suicidal when she seemed fine? I didn’t want to admit I was broken. That every stitch of my life I had worked so hard to make was coming unraveled. I couldn’t show her the mess I had become. I wanted to show her I was strong. I wanted to show her I could conquer college and life. She had given me so many skills, but I failed to use them. I didn’t want her to freak out and waste time worrying about me when so much was already going on.

When I wasn’t able to tell her what I was feeling or why, she told me about her struggle. She told me she had struggled with anxiety for most of her life. She explained that just because I’m broken doesn’t mean

she doesn’t love me. She used those same soft tones. She used the same gentle touches. She told me she loved me over and over and over. She held me with a new gentleness, combing out anxiety with every knot in my hair. She let me see the cracks in her own heart, so I knew mine weren’t so strange.

When my situation became less dire, I was able to appreciate how much she gave of herself that day. I know my mom doesn’t feel I owe her anything, but I want to show her the same love she showed me. So when I come home, I crochet with my mom. We sit in each other’s quiet company, working yarn into stitches. I no longer need her to help me with every step. I no longer need her to check my stitches. My hands make the same swift movements I used to admire. I still falter when my anxiety rises. But somewhere along the way, I’ve learned to weave my mother’s words into my mind. With a thought, I can feel her fingers in my hair and her love fills the cracks in my broken heart.

The Birthday Storm

by Lauren Stiefvater

Everyone dreams of their birthday as a special day filled with presents, cake, and attention. My sister’s 7th birthday was not a traditional birthday. May 30, 2011 was a day that changed my family’s life forever when a straight-line wind storm tore through our farm. Our farmyard went from a hustling operation in the middle of planting season to pieces of machinery crumpled and buildings torn apart. Even though we had several pieces of rubble to pick up and lost most of the farm structures, it was the way the community responded that changed our lives.

My sister’s birthday, which happened to also be Memorial Day that year, was an average farm summer birthday. We were celebrating my sister’s birthday in the evening and invited my grandma out to the farm for cake and ice cream. We were singing happy birthday and opening gifts when the weather radio went off. Suddenly, we had a new shift of focus when the message of high winds and heavy rain followed the emergency alarms. We noticed the weather was changing to rain in our area with the hint of a severe windstorm setting in. Grandma decided to head home, and my dad told us we better start battening down the hatches of the farm for a storm.

My dad drove tractors into the sheds, backed augurs into the gaps between the bins, and put away other pieces of equipment the wind might take advantage of. My mom covered her flowers with buckets and mineral tubs in the hope of saving them from the wind. My two sisters and I gathered things around our house we wanted to keep safe. We gathered our favorite blankets and stuffed animals while in a complete panic because we did not understand what was happening around us.

A dominant moment I remember from that evening happened after the weather moved in. All I could hear was rain hitting our house and the voice of the meteorologist on the television explaining where the tornado warning was. My mom, sisters, and I were sitting in our storm closet since funnel clouds were spotted in our county. We clinched tightly to our rosaries praying for safety from the storm. My dad was still upstairs watching out our bay window as the rain increased and wind speeds picked up. He saw the bins start to move towards the house and he came down to the basement. He stood on the top stair and said, “the farm is gone.” I instantly saw the fear in my parents’ faces. Our farm was damaged by the weather leaving us to pick up the pieces.

Winner of the 2022 Eugene Brinkmeyer Award for Prose

After the straight-line winds passed and there was a steady rain, we all came upstairs to see the farm. It was dark outside, but all I could see was a shiny reflection next to our swing set. I was staring at a grain bin that was stopped by two trees before it would have destroyed our house. After we collected ourselves and counted our blessings for everyone being safe, we drove around as a family making sure others were safe. We knew the damage that happened on our farm but did not know the status of others’ safety. Everyone was safe and the cattle were still standing in the pastures after we completed our check. We drove back into our yard, parked the truck, and went back into the house. My dad wandered around our yard trying to survey the damage in the dark, but not sure it was safe to continue. Within an hour of the storm, the McCook County Search and Rescue team showed up and a few other family friends to make sure we were safe.

The next morning was complete chaos on the farm. We had almost 50 people in our yard ready to help us start the cleanup process. The National Weather Service sent out meteorologists to survey the damage concluding it to be caused by straight-line winds of 80 to 110 miles per hour. My dad completed an interview that day with The Mitchell Republic newspaper giving a recap of the events. The Mitchell Republic describes the damage as “a war zone after straight-line winds toppled three-grain bins, tore open two machine sheds, shredded the tops of two silos, and damaged four augers, a grain cart, and a grain dryer.”

A war zone was a true description of how our farm looked, but as in any war, an army is standing by. Our community was our army, ready to help us in any way we needed. They came into our yard car by car making sure our family was safe and with helping hands in the clean-up process. Many brought out meals and treats for our family and those helping us. Our community showed our family kindness when they did not have to. They supported us in one of the most stressful, scary, and emotional times in our lives.

According to an article on Scientific American’s website, “one reason why stress may lead to a cooperative behavior is our profound need for social connection.” We are social creatures who need to connect, even in the ups and downs of life. This event bonded our community because of the stressful environment it produced. We, as a community, bonded over the food shared, pieces picked up, and memories created through the reconstruction of our farm.

The generosity of kindness shown to my family in our time of stress and chaos changed my family’s life. The assistance and support came unexpectedly when the storm hit. We did not expect our community to put their lives on hold to help us put ours back together. They showed us hope and a glimpse at our new future when so much was lost and destroyed. They shared their time and talents by bringing food and helping hands. These actions inspired my family and me to be there for others when life blows through at 100 miles per hour. Our community impacted our lives

Works Cited

“Monday Storm Leaves Damage in Wake.” Mitchell Republic, Mitchell Republic, 1 June 2011,

https://www.mitchellrepublic.com/news/monday-storm-leaves-damage-in-wake.

Seppala, Emma. “How the Stress of Disaster Brings People Together.” Scientific American, Scientific American, 6 Nov. 2012,

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-the-stress-of-disaster-bringspeople-together/.

when our farm became a war zone of damage, but most importantly it impacted us to pay their kindness forward.

Telling Stories

by Christian Mickelson

Winner of the 2022 Sister Eileen Neville Award in Poetry

I feel as though I’m locked behind the bars of my vivid imagination.

I am living vicariously through the version of myself I make up in my head. Experiencing things, I’ll never truly experience.

I watch the screen I put up in the currents of my mind, starring the heroic version of myself that matters, while the authentic version of myself lives in the shadows of the theater cast by whom I wish I were.

Daydreaming of this fantasy is always like a strip of film I rewind repeatedly.

A movie I direct, and like all films, something I wish could come to fruition, but deep down, I know it will always stay fictional.

Like A Battery

by Christian Mickelson

Drained

Like the plug to a tv being pulled from the wall

The electricity drains from the innermost parts of my brain.

As if a lightning strike took out my antenna, I’ve lost all signals.

The days feel longer than ever.

It seems as if the rechargeable batteries within me have been replaced, With cheap, off-brand garbage.

All I can do now is wait, Impatiently, until the batteries drain completely.

My surge protector has broken, And I am electrocuted constantly with doubt and contempt.

I am constantly left begging the question, How much charge could I possibly have left?

A Letter To Students: Curiosity And Open Mindedness As A Foundation For Intellectual Development

by Dr. William J. Miller

Dear Class,

It was a privilege to spend time with all of you a couple of weeks ago. I always enjoy meeting new students, exchanging ideas and discussing important social issues. In fact, if any of you are CJ majors or are working on a CJ related paper/project for some other class and want to talk with me, I am always willing to be a resource. Feel free to contact me any time.

I sincerely appreciate all the thoughtful letters you wrote. It was fun to learn a bit about each one of you and your perspectives on various things related to race, prejudice, discrimination, the police, and the criminal justice system. As I reflected on your letters, several themes emerged: (1) Perspective; (2) Curiosity; and (3) Open-mindedness.

Many of you indicated that my presentation “opened your eyes” or offered a “different perspective.” As a professor, scholar, and writer I am keenly aware of the role perspective plays in social analysis. When you change your perspective on something, you literally see it differently. This is true of anything, not just ideas or political points of view. Take any threedimensional object laying around. Pick it up and look at it from a different angle, from a different distance or perhaps in different lighting. Lay it down on a table and look at how the shadows change as you move it into different positions. New perspective gives us an opportunity to see things in fresh ways, to get different ideas and to ask new questions. Things that may have always seemed clear from the comfort of a single point of view, may seem less clear when viewed from another perspective.

Ultimately, being curious, asking questions and being open minded is critical for intellectual development. Throughout my scholarly life, I have stumbled across far more questions than answers. If you reach a point in your life where you assume that you have all the answers, that your opinion is correct and nothing will change your mind, then you can no longer be educated. As you explore your own thoughts about something, always take the time to ask the next question(s). For example, one student letter respectfully expressed the view that the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement is rooted in hatred of the police and designed to promote violence against the police. I can understand how and why this point of view has emerged. But as most points of view, for me, this one raises many questions. For example: Other than a general impression from

media accounts, what real evidence is there to support this claim? What is the source or sources of supporting evidence? Is the evidence valid and how do we know? Can that evidence be reliably applied to everyone in the BLM movement and if not why? Finally, I am particularly interested in the reference to the word “hate.” Let’s assume for a moment that this part of the claim is in part or in whole correct. In our own personal lives, when we dislike or “hate” someone or something, we usually have clear and convincing reasons for our feelings. If members of BLM don’t like the police, I would like to understand why. What are their specific reasons? There must be an explanation for why BLM members, and so many of the communities they represent, have such a different view of the police than so many middle- and upper-class people in the United States. What is that explanation? Is there valid evidence that support their perspective? I don’t have answers to these questions, but I would like to explore these kinds of questions before I draw a conclusion.

My greatest hope for each of you is that your university experience teaches you how to think rather than what to think. I say this because logic, reasoning, and effectively using valid evidence to build persuasive arguments are skills that will last a lifetime. Being educated requires your analysis to change as the world changes (e.g., culture, social context, history, evidence, etc.). Remember that as certain as you may be about your opinion about something at this moment, human knowledge and understanding is by nature tentative. In other words, many things that were once believed to be true were ultimately proven untrue. For example, at one point, science believed that the world was flat and that the sun orbited the earth. But open mindedness, curiosity and the scientific method changed those beliefs. Even now, consider how tenuous our knowledge about COVID has been. What we know and believe to be true about this virus, its transmission and its treatment seems to change by the week.

Understanding that things change, seeing things differently, being curious, asking questions, and even changing your mind are all signs of a mature intellect. It is my sincere desire that you use your time at MMU to free yourself from the social pressure to have a definitive opinion about everything. Instead, spend your time learning how to think, how to use and evaluate evidence, and how to form and defend an educated opinion.

Best Wishes,

William J. Miller Executive Vice President and Provost

When Teaching and Writer Intersect

by Mary Haug

In reading your responses to my class presentation, I had an epiphany. Many of you used words like authentic, honest, open, and brave to describe my work as an author. I realized that I treat being a writer the way I once treated being a professor. It took time, patience, experimentation, and preparation to become an effective teacher. Becoming a polished writer requires the same.

In terms of authenticity, I quickly recognized that students have a built-in radar that detects phoniness in a teacher. Readers are the same. So, what do we mean by being authentic? I think it begins with our voice, with the language we choose to use whether between concrete and abstract words, allusions and metaphors, long sentences and short, or luscious and sparse imagery. I grew up in the grasslands of central South Dakota where language was direct, to the point, and never pretentious. At the same I was an avid reader and learned by reading writers like Willa Cather that language can be both simple and beautiful. I have always strived to find this balance.

All writers must choose their narrative point of view. My preference is first person because that voice offers an intimacy or authenticity that allows the readers to feel as if the writer is speaking directly to them. Although I didn’t have the language to define first-person narrative, I first experienced that sense the author was speaking to me when I was a young girl and read The Diary of Anne Frank. I was hooked. I can’t imagine writing with an objective voice. In everything I write, I immerse myself into the lives of my characters so thoroughly that I feel an intimacy with them that inspires empathy. I hope I can affect my readers in the same way.

Like teachers and students, authors and readers must trust one another. We have to believe that each demonstrates honesty and integrity in our work. This often means intensive research so that the reader knows you’re telling the truth as best you can. I did extensive research in writing

Out of Loneliness. I read the transcripts of the murder trial, five books on LBTQG+ issues, nine true-crime memoirs, as well as many newspaper stories. I interviewed several people including two transgender women, the son of the defense attorney, classmates, and family. I wrote of my own memories. When it was impossible to document or validate memory, (often because we all tended to recall the same event in different ways)

I alerted the reader that I was uncertain about my recollections of that event or person. Integrity demands that honesty. It definitely doesn’t mean manipulating the facts to fit the narrative I hoped to tell. Writers like James Fry and Greg Mortenson painfully learned this lesson.

As for bravery in the face of criticism: When I was in grade school, I had a common nightmare. I was in the cloakroom of the school, and when I took off my coat to hang it on the hook, I discovered I was wearing nothing underneath. Having someone read words you struggled to write can be like that nightmare. My students were so brave when they wrote personal narrative for me because they shed the layer that protected their failings, secrets, or desires. All personal writing whether essays or books is an act of self-discovery, a process that allows you to make meaning of your experiences and to face painful moments or truths. Perhaps such writing can heal us. As Isak Dinesen once said, “All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them.”

It’s not easy to deal with criticism, but again, I learned to handle it better during my teaching career. Each semester the students evaluated my course. When the criticisms were nonspecific, like “This class sucks,” I learned to let it go because the comment was so vague. If the student wrote something concrete like “It would have been helpful if we had read Orwell’s essay earlier in the semester,” then I could tweak the syllabus to accommodate that legitimate suggestion.

I try to apply the same objective strategy to criticisms of my book. One person accused me of using a murder “to make her book one somebody would want to read, more salacious.” I could only laugh because I’m not making money off this book. Another writer said she grew up in my hometown and found the book “too boring” to finish reading. I can’t change that opinion whether it’s based on reading taste or anger about the subject matter. Unlike a course syllabus, a published book is not easily altered. Someone else accused me of making the murderer a victim, a criticism I fully understood but didn’t think was true. I was trying to explain but not excuse Bev’s violence. I was trying to give context to a tragedy.

But just as some students wrote positive comments on my evaluations, some readers commented in ways that reaffirmed my work. This response in particular pleased me because it captured my intent in writing about the murder: “I think it would be hard for this straight white woman to write this story without giving offense, but I think she managed it in no small part because she made herself vulnerable.” I did, in fact, believe that since I was exploring the painful experiences of others that I needed to expose myself and be honest about my own pain.

I also struggled with my authority in writing this book because I am not a lesbian or transgender man. Did I even have the right to tell this story? But this story had haunted me for several years before I began to write it. Perhaps it’s true what blogger Richard P. Denny wrote; “Authors do not choose a story to write, the story chooses them.” I never felt I had a choice but to say yes to this book.

Paging SCAT 1

by Andrea Garcia

“SCAT 1. You are needed for a …” The thrill. Every morning getting to wake up wondering what we are going to encounter. Is it good? Is it bad? Do we need to call for extra hands or are we going to be okay? We never know what is waiting for us at the scene because if we are being honest, the page doesn’t always come out to be as serious as it sounds.

“SCAT 1, You are needed for a self-inflicted gunshot wound …” What in the world is going on? I rush down to the station, and as I get there, my director looks at me and asks, “Are you going to be alright with what you’re about to see?” I say yes, simply because I am curious about what I am going to see and what I could do to help. We get to the scene and it’s nothing like I thought it was going to be. Someone took their own life. A bullet so small but did so much damage to one person. How could this be? What was going on through this person’s mind? I step back to take a breather. The birds were chirping, and the sun was extremely bright and hot. The person I once knew is gone. Who will tell their family? I was the one.

As I arrived at the hospital, my heart skipped a beat. I almost didn’t go inside. When I saw the parents of the patient, my heart dropped. The family that was so kind and welcoming, their world had just turned upside down. How will I gather the strength to tell them the news? I wait for the on-call doctor to come in to declare the time of death. Every second that the clock ticks, my heart seems to drop lower and lower.

The time comes to tell the family the news. They are a Mexican family that don’t speak English and I was the only Spanish speaker at the hospital during this whole incident. I walk into the private waiting room with the doctor as he tells me what to say. I first notice the bright yellow dandelions and the nude color of the walls as I nervously make eye contact with the parents. I try pushing back the tears as I’ve been told it’s not professional to cry, but what else am I supposed to do when I must deliver the worst news to the family that I’ve known since childhood. “I regret to inform you that your daughter has passed away,” I say (in Spanish) as drops of tears roll down my cheeks. I had just delivered the worst news to this family, and I was only 19 at the time. As they sit there crying their hearts out, all I can think is that they will now remember my face, my voice, and my words forever. One minute of my life changed years of their lives.

“SCAT 1, you are needed for an infant that is unresponsive …” A kid. A baby. As my heart fills with sadness, I rush over to the station preparing for the worst situation. We get to the scene and seeing the parents of the infant, my mind knows where this is going. I mentally prepare myself for the thought that this little six-month-old baby is not going to live. I went to high school with the parents of the infant. They were not good people; they would always post videos of themselves drinking and smoking, even while the mother was pregnant. The mother of the infant is holding her child; she brings her over to us begging for help. Our medic takes over, checks for breathing and a pulse; he immediately starts CPR. I prepare myself to take over compressions, if needed, but thankfully we get the infant breathing again. Her breathes are slow and shallow, but at least she’s still alive. Well… just for the moment, I thought.

We get to the hospital and give a report to both the nurses and the physician in the ER. I pull our medic aside because I saw something on the infant that I don’t believe he saw. When I go on calls, I am very observant. I tell the medic what I saw, and he went back in the trauma room to look for himself. He informs the nurses and the physician, and they automatically call the police. The infant gets flown out to a hospital in Sioux Falls where she eventually passes away two days later. Her little lungs and heart could not fight enough to make it through. A week later, I get called down to the station to give a statement. Justice, I thought. The little girl had her whole life ahead of her. A year later, she gets her justice. Her father got sentenced to five years in prison for suffocating her to death and bodily injuring her.

Our lives can seem meaningless at one point, but we all have someone who is an advocate for us. We all have a reason to live or someone or something to fight for. Six months or 16 years old, we all deserve to live the life God intended for us to live. Death not only affects our lives, but also the lives of those that we love. Getting to be a part of such a great ambulance team who is there for me during my achievements but also when I am going through something after a bad call, I cannot begin to express how that makes me feel. Despite all the bad calls, I am honored to be part of a team that not only gets to save lives, but that also makes an impact in our community.

Doing the Next Right Thing

by Lexa Burtzlaff

In 1991, at 51 years old, Gloria Burtzlaff was sentenced to 20 years in prison for first degree manslaughter. Gloria had shot her husband, Larry, after being physically, mentally, and sexually abused by him for almost the entirety of their thirty-two-year marriage. Gloria spent the next six and a half years at Mike Durfee State Prison in Springfield, South Dakota before being released on parole for five years. Her time in prison changed her and impacted her life in many ways.

In the trial, Gloria claimed self-defense as a battered woman, but in 1991 South Dakota did not recognize Battered Woman Syndrome as admissible in courts. It wasn’t until three years later that the United States passed the Violence Against Women Act of 1994. This signaled a significant change in our nation’s efforts to control and prevent crimes such as domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking. Gloria, however, was not able to use her diagnoses in court.

“We had an expert witness, a psychiatrist from Denver. When we were in court, the judge only allowed him to explain what Battered Woman Syndrome was. The judge didn’t allow him to say that I fit the criteria. So basically, halfway through the trial the judge took my defense away from me.” Burtzlaff stated. “The trial ended up going to the Supreme Court with twelve different issues that were raised in the trial which is the maximum number allowed. However, at the time the Supreme Court believed the trial to be fair, as South Dakota was only one of two states that didn’t follow the federal guidelines for sentencing.”

Two months after the trial was taken to the Supreme Court, South Dakota accepted the federal guidelines that would have stated Burtzlaff’s case to be unfair. Unfortunately, her case was not able to be grandfathered in. Three years later, when the Violence Against Women Act of 1994 was passed, Gloria’s case was still unable to be reexamined.

Burtzlaff ’s first job after getting out of prison was at a video store in Hot Springs, South Dakota. When asked if she enjoyed it, she joked, “It worked out quite nicely because there was about eleven years’ worth of movies, I had never seen that I got to watch for free!”

After getting out of prison, she took classes through the Career Learning Center in Hot Springs and later took classes through the Graduate Center for South Dakota State University. She ended up getting

her master’s degree in counseling in 2006, which she now uses as a drug and alcohol counselor for first-time and multiple-time offenders.

“I originally wanted to work with women coming out of prison, because they have a harder time. But unfortunately, that wasn’t meant to be.” Burtzlaff said after being asked why she chose counseling. “But then I got the job I have now and am working with people coming right out of prison. So, I am right where I am meant to be.”

Gloria now uses her time spent in prison to help relate to her clients better. She has often had her clients tell her that they feel more relaxed and less judged knowing that she has gone through similar experiences. “It’s given me more of an understanding of other people and has given me more patience,” Burtzlaff said. “How dare I judge someone? I would never do that. Not after what I’ve done.”

When asked about the biggest thing she has learned from her experiences in prison and life, Gloria was quick to answer with a quote that she tells her clients all the time: “The shortest distance between two people is a story.”

Gloria and her cousin Bill next to Larry’s grave Larry’s grave

Money

by Lexa Burtzlaff

When I was younger, I would go to my friends’ houses and look at the ceilings, walls, and rooms, and I would automatically start judging if they were rich or not. I would grade them on a scale that I created in my ten-year-old mind about what was considered wealthy and what was considered poor. Small hallways equaled poor, but if you had a large living room with a mounted tv you were rich. If your garage fit more than two cars you were basically a millionaire in my mind. My reasoning was very botched, but it was something I believed in all the way to the point that one time I did not want to invite one of my first-grade friends to my house for my birthday because I didn’t want them to get jealous.

One day, when I was in about second grade, my older brother came home fuming. Payton was in fourth grade and their teacher created a behavior program called “Gator Bucks”. The object of this program was that every time a kid did something good, they were given little monopoly dollars and whenever they were bad the money was taken away. They kept their little paper bills in piggy banks that they made the first day of school and they stored them in their desks. Every week they could go to the class store and buy little erasers, pens, gum, snacks, and really anything else the teacher could probably find at the dollar store. Payton was mad because he was convinced that this girl was stealing money from everyone else in the class so that she could buy goodies at the class store. He was convinced because he sat next to her in class, and he knew that she was not a good student. She was always talking and getting her money taken away, so Payton knew she was not earning the money she all the sudden had every week at the class store. The next day, Payton came home and said that the girl got caught stealing money. She had been stealing the money from her classmates’ piggy banks. It boggled my brain how, at such a young age, this girl was so worried about fake money that she would spend on suckers. Even in elementary school, these fake dollar bills influenced how this girl acted and, in the end, got her in trouble.

During Christmas, I would get presents from all my aunts and uncles. Of course, there were certain families I knew would give me some good presents. They had the money that my parents didn’t, and I loved the times when I would get spoiled by them. My Aunt Mackenzie was my favorite to give me presents because she always spoiled me. Judging by her house, she was rich because her ceilings were tall, art lined her walls, and she had marble countertops. Her daughter, my cousin Brady, had a huge Barbie house that literally towered over eight-year-old me. Brady was spoiled when she was younger and at once told me that I wasn’t allowed to like the color pink because that was her favorite color. I was okay with it because purple was a close second and I would do anything to play with all her dolls and fairy dress up costumes for even a minute. For Christmas,

from Mackenzie, I would get bright colored makeup kits that made my eyelids look like blue, sparkly disco balls and Zhu Zhu Pets that were basically glorified robotic mice. One year, I was so excited to get a present from her but all I got was clothes. I acted very appreciative, because I was raised with manners, but in my head, I was so disgusted and mad that the one aunt I had faith in to get me something worth my while got me a Justice T-shirt and matching shorts.

As I grew up, I realized that money and popularity were usually grouped together. In my small town, the more well-off people tended to be well known and “popular,” but sometimes not for the best reasons. My hometown had a lot of lower-class families in the school but also a good number of families that had money or at least were financially stable. My parents supplied my brothers and I with everything that we needed, and I can truly say I never wanted for anything. My high school was small, and I can confidently tell you that I knew everyone, freshmen to seniors, by name. I may not have talked to them, but I knew who they were. High school changed my perception on how money can influence how people think about you very quickly. Freshman year, I was told I was privileged because I had the money to pack my lunch every day. That was the reason. I was privileged because my family did not want me to eat the gross cafeteria food and encouraged me to pack my lunch every morning. The irony of being told that I was privileged, was I was told that by someone who had a newer cell phone than me and had just bragged to me that they got a Nintendo Switch. In my mind, I viewed it not as much as privilege, but more priorities. Throughout the rest of my high school experience, my brothers and I had many related experiences from my younger brother, Colton, being called an asshole because he didn’t want this random kid to drive his new-to-him pickup, to me being told I’m spoiled because I got braces.

I remember a specific conversation I had with my dad the summer before my senior year. I was complaining about my job and how “little” money I was getting. I said something along the lines of how it’s sad to think that my life will always be about making money. He said something that stuck with me, as it made me realize how wrong my views on life were. He stated that although we never got the newest things and and the coolest new phones, we never missed out on an opportunity to do something. He said that he was not one to spend a lot of money on the materialistic things, but rather to spend money on the experiences and trips. He told me to look at life as more than just your job and how much money you earn, because if you were to just look at your career you would never make yourself happy.

Money is something that will always have a large impact in everyone’s life. Society pushes people to work hard, succeed, and make money so that then you will be happy. The problem with having those types of goals, is you will focus on obtaining your goal so much that you will forget to enjoy the process.

Poetic Little Minds

by Lauryn Bernt

One evening at the lake, I sat on the side of a bluff with my best friend, watching the sunset. We watched as the vibrant oranges and pinks faded into a deep violet. The last of the sun’s golden rays folded into the darkness of night. The stars twinkled above us, and the clusters illuminated the rhythmic lapping of the water beneath us. As we watched, we talked. It is usually moments like these that we have what people call the “deep convos.” Together, we shared stories. We shared our lives. We pondered life and death. We questioned Heaven and Hell. We questioned our purpose. After several twists and turns in our conversation, we paused. We fell into a peaceful silence where you are left to ruminate, and you become blissfully aware of what’s around you—the hushing of the trees, the damp earth beneath your feet, the sun gently kissing the horizon. Suddenly, a curious expression painted my best friend’s face, one that I’ve only seen in the wild, beautiful imagination of a child’s. She posed herself as if she were going to say something profound. With a precious light in her eyes, she turned my attention to the sky and said, “this sunset–the one we see here, right now– nobody will ever see this same sunset the way that we see it right now.”

A feeling washed over my body– a feeling of… uniqueness? Centrality? Divinity? Words can hardly describe it. She was right. Nobody would ever see this same sunset again, let alone from my perspective, from my eyes and my being. I didn’t understand this feeling until I read “This is Water” by David Foster Wallace. I was especially drawn to his concept of our hard-wired, default human setting. I realized that this concept was very applicable to what my best friend and I had experienced. It also helped me realize that a myopic perspective isn’t necessarily wrong, despite what society claims. We can understand this by first recognizing what our default setting is, the driving factors of good will, and how it can actually be okay to be “self-centered.”

So, what exactly is this “default setting?” As Wallace explains it, you are “the absolute centre of the universe; the realest, most vivid and important person in existence” (Wallace, 2009). Though we may not be aware of it, we really do see the world as it revolves around us. How can we otherwise? Our perspective of the world is as we see it– we see the traffic on the road, strangers’ interactions, and the sunset– all from our own eyes. It isn’t until we make the conscious decision to consider

the thoughts and feelings of another’s world that we can see outside of our own. That fast, reckless driver who just sped past you on the highway? Their wife may be in labor, or their mother may be dying in the hospital. That rude waitress whose service is disappointing? She may be overworked, putting in exhausting hours just to make ends meet. That is looking beyond your own small, generally insignificant world. It isn’t easy. It isn’t supposed to be. We would all much rather take care of ourselves, worry about our own problems, and always put ourselves first. Not because it is moral (it’s not), but because it is easier. So then, I question, why do we do it? What drives us and motivates us to look beyond the needs of our own?

There is not one answer for this. Selflessness, or good will, is driven by something different for each person. There are several motivating factors. Some are driven by nature. Like a mother and child, for example. When a child is born, a mother feels a powerful, insurmountable love for their child, that they now are responsible for the care and well-being of this tiny, extraordinary human being. The mother’s world is no longer just her own. Everything she does– waking up, cooking meals, going to work– is done with her child in mind. Some are driven by self-benefit. These people do things for others, then believe they are entitled to receive something in return. They do it for their own personal gain. An example of this is the people who post videos of themselves performing “acts of kindness” on the internet, all the while their main intention is to gain likes, shares, and followers. The only reward they care about is the publicity. Out of all the motivating factors, this is the least desirable. Others, on the other hand, are driven by faith. You see, there’s this thing the Bible tells us about good works. Many Christians believe that serving others is one way they can become closer to God. We are to relieve the lot of the poor, clothe the naked, visit the sick, and bury the dead. Doing these acts for those around us, as Jesus tells us, is just the same as doing them for the king Himself (Holy Bible, Mt. 25.40). This is how the Word teaches us to look beyond our own selfish interests and benefits. To serve others is to serve the Lord. These are all reasons why peering past our own perspectives can help us, but is our “default setting” necessarily a bad thing?

In short, it is not. While we cannot deny that it is self-centered to some extent, we also must accept that it is a basic, natural occurrence. As Wallace says, “...it’s so socially repulsive. But it’s pretty much the same for all of us. It is our default setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth.” By this, he implies that the feeling of centrality isn’t by any means a negative thing in itself, but it has been deemed so by society. In essence, it comes down to the way we use it. We can become shut off from the world, and forever wallow in our cynical, egocentric being. On the contrary, we can see it as an opportunity to become self-aware, to be open-minded to the truth. There is nothing wrong with feeling like you are the center of everything because you are. Wallace explains this with, “The world as you experience it is there in front of YOU or behind YOU, to the left or right

of YOU, on YOUR TV or YOUR monitor. And so on.” There is no issue with putting yourself first. There is no issue with addressing your own problems before you assist others. YOUR health and YOUR happiness are a priority. There is no shame in being self-centered, despite the negative connotation. Your being is quite literally centered around yourself.

I hold moments like the one my best friend and I shared close to my heart. They’re both enlightening and exhilarating. To feel important and special– isn’t that what we all seek, deep down? The human mind is so fascinating. It’s complexity and ability of self-awareness are simply unfathomable. For us to witness something as simple as a sunset and form such philosophical questions is almost… poetic. Us humans, with our poetic, magnificent little minds! Nobody will ever see that same sunset the way we saw it– that’s the beauty of life. The ability to ponder such questions and more importantly, have someone to share them with. Someone who will listen and understand. My best friend was that person in that moment, and I will never forget the evening that we spent sitting by the lake. How in that moment, we felt like the only people in existence. In that moment, our minds became one as we shared the deepest parts of ourselves.

The moon shone brightly that night, illuminating a pearl-like path on the water. It seemed as if it was begging us to follow it. We did. That carpet of light was like a pristine path to a kind of deeper, philosophical thinking. Even though we seemed tiny and insignificant compared to the millions of ancient stars in the sky, we simultaneously felt like the prime matter of existence. By understanding how we are hard-wired, what motivates us to look beyond our realm of self-perception, and how being “self-centered” isn’t always a negative term, we can realize that a myopic perspective isn’t necessarily wrong. That feeling of uniqueness, individuality and centrality are normal. That’s being human. A beautiful, imperfect, fearfully and wonderfully made human.

Works Cited

Wallace, David Foster. This is Water. Little, Brown & Company, 2009. Holy Bible. New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition, Catholic Bible Press, 1989.

The Success in Life That Comes from Horses

by Hailey Crowe

No matter how many times in high school I was told that horses will never help me be successful in life or that I would never accomplish anything with horses, I chose not to listen. It’s been six years since I’ve graduated high school and the only thing that stayed consistent in my life were my horses. From Washington State to South Dakota, my mare, Fancy came with me. She was the only family I had within 1,000-mile radius. Through heartbreak, failed classes, and holidays spent alone, Fancy never let me down.

People say diamonds are a girl’s best friend; that’s just because they’ve never had a horse before. There’s something about the bond between a horse and a girl that is unbeatable. Even when I was in middle and high school, I always knew that there was friend waiting for me at the barn. The horses didn’t care what I looked like or about popularity; my horses cared more about my character and well-being. Having horses in my life inspired me to be a better person, not only for myself but for them. Working with horses taught me about work ethic, consistency, and the importance of understanding behaviors.

For five years, I rode and showed other people’s horses. I volunteered at camps starting at 11 years old. After years of hard work, it paid off; I was finally able to purchase my first horse when I was a freshman in high school. I was able to get a loan from my neighbors and I spent three years mowing their lawn to pay for my horse Buddy. My parents drove me to Idaho where we met Buddy. I was lucky enough to have parents that valued my hard work and put in the time to help me find the perfect horse.

My parents showed me what it meant to be a hard worker, but they knew that a horse would teach me what a good work ethic really meant. Every day I went to the barn to feed and care for my horses before and after school. I learned how to manage my time between feeding horses, going to school, completing my homework, and I was still able to find a way to sneak a ride in. “It’s not just important to be a hard worker at the barn, but out in the world too. Whether you’re a student in school or a working professional, the more effort you put forth the further you’ll get” (Fought, 2018).

If I had it my way while I was in high school, I would ride my horse every day and maybe go to school if there was time. However, my parents knew a horse would motivate me while I was in school because I had to go to school to be able to ride my horse. “After working hard all day, the biggest reward is going for a ride” (Fought, 2018). Consistency with horses is key; the more I worked with my horses and rode them, the better our relationship was and the better I felt.

Each day I was at the barn I was improving myself as a horse owner and my horsemanship. “Horses love a routine and it’s the sacred job of every rider to leave the horse in a better place at the end of the ride than at the beginning” (Blake, 2015). My goal each day is to always leave on a good note; it doesn’t matter if 90% of ride was terrible. As long as the last 10% left us both feeling calm and at peace with one another. I would never let my horse down because I never would leave on a bad note, even if it took all night.

Horses are sensitive souls, and they sense everything around them. Whatever I’m feeling, my horses start to feel it too. If I’m anxious, their bodies tense up just like mine and they become more cautious of their surroundings as if something bad could happen. Somedays I think it’s because they want to protect me and other days, I think they’re scared of what is making me nervous. Horses look for confidence in their riders because horses are herd animals and easily dominated. There is a hierarchy in a herd of horses and when the human is confident the horse won’t immediately go into the fight or flight instinct as they trust that the rider has their best interest and will keep them safe.

Before I walk into the barn, I check my attitude so I have a clean slate for the horses, and I can see how they’re feeling. Just by watching their body language, it’s a guide on how I should approach my horse. It could be a day they need a little more love and compassion, or it could be they’re craving structure and need someone to be assertive to keep up with hierarchy. Watching their eyes, ears, and stance, shows me all that I need to know to help give them what they need and that continues to build our relationship.

There are times in my life, I question myself for picking what seems to be the most expensive hobby out there. However, the love, sense of belonging, and life lessons my horses have provided me is something I never would have learned without them. If it wasn’t for horses, I wouldn’t have the same work ethic I do now or understand the importance of consistency. Understanding behaviors is what I do for a living, and I learned the foundation of that from horses. They also have also provided me with a sense of peace because going for ride keeps me in the moment. It’s the one place I don’t think about what’s going on in the world, I am able to focus on just my horse and me. I can taste freedom and a price tag can’t be put on that.

Works Cited

Berry, Rebecca. “Never Underestimate What Horses Teach Us.” Horse Network, Horse Network, 20 Jan. 2021, https://horsenetwork.com/2021/01/never-underestimate-what-horses-teach-us/.

Blake, Anna. “Invest in Consistency with Your Horse.” Equine Monthly, Equine Monthly, 20 Jan. 2021, https://equinemonthly.com/consistency/.

Fought, Emily. “What’s the Most Important Lesson Horses Can Teach You?”

COWGIRL Magazine, Cowgirl Magazine, 26 Nov. 2018, https://cowgirlmagazine.com/horses-teach/.

The Correlation Between The War on Drugs, Race, and Mass Incarceration

by Megan Mellem

The war on drugs was officially declared in June 1971 by thenpresident Richard Nixon. In the turbulent decades of the sixties and seventies, many drugs were widely known and used recreationally. It originally included more funding for rehab and addiction centers, but this nearly disappeared over time. The war on drugs may have seemed like a practical fix for drug issues, but it has proved itself to be a near failure.

Since the beginning of the war on drugs in 1971, The United States is the home to nearly twenty-five percent of the world’s incarcerated population (Drug Policy Alliance, 2018) although, the United States has only five percent of the world’s total population. From 1980 until 2014, the drug sale arrests in the United States have hardly increased, while drugrelated arrests have tripled at times. There were also three million arrests for drug offenses from 1993 to 2009 (Drug Policy Alliance, 2018). These staggering statistics are all direct consequences of the war on drugs.

The war on drugs has also been biased towards people of color since its inception. According to Drug Policy Alliance, “People of color experience discrimination at every stage of the judicial system and are more likely to be stopped, searched, arrested, convicted, harshly sentenced and saddled with a lifelong criminal record” (Drug Policy Alliance, 2018). This is particularly the case for drug law violations. African Americans make up around 13 percent of the U.S. population, and it has been documented that they use drugs at similar rates to people of other races (Drug Policy Alliance, 2018). But African Americans comprise around “29 percent of those arrested for drug law violations, and nearly 40 percent of those incarcerated in state or federal prison for drug law violations” (Drug Policy Alliance, 2018). We need to be asking ourselves as a society, “why are people who aren’t different being treated completely different?” and “why have we just accepted this as being okay?”

On a side note, South Dakota leads the nation in jail admissions, and half of the arrests in the state are drug or alcohol-related. Eightyfive percent of all arrests in South Dakota are for non-violent offenses as well (Rakia, Corey, Weill-Greenberg, Hagan, & Coleman, 2019). While racial disparities are painfully common throughout all parts of the justice system, South Dakota’s are far worse. According to The Appeal, “Natives between the ages of 15 and 64 are incarcerated at 10 times the rate of

white people in South Dakota.” The article also states that “This disparity is particularly acute for drug- and alcohol-related offenses, where Native Americans account for the majority of all arrests in the state. For instance, out of nearly 7,000 arrests for public intoxication reported to the FBI’s national database, all but 56 involved Natives” (Rakia, et al, 2019). While most other states are notably biased against African Americans, South Dakota is horribly biased against Native Americans-- and for no good reason at all.

Mass incarceration has also been a direct consequence of the war on drugs for over fifty years now. According to Drug Policy Alliance, “Almost 500,000 people are behind bars for a drug law violation on any given night in the United States – ten times the total in 1980” (Drug Policy Alliance, 2018). Being convicted of any crime (including a drug crime) can stay on your record for years and carry adverse repercussions. The most well-known repercussion would be having your voting rights revoked. Another more “life-changing” repercussion would be being denied loans, whether it be personal loans for various purposes or student aid. As most people know, higher education is definitely an expensive investment for their future and being denied financial aid could completely deter anyone from pursuing higher education. A criminal record will also stick around with individuals when trying to find jobs post-conviction. Many job applications ask if the applicant has ever been convicted of a felony. Checking the “yes” box on the application definitely makes the individual look like an undesirable applicant. All of these unnecessary laws and mandatory minimums are negatively impacting people’s lives. America’s criminal justice system is very much focused on punitive punishment while expecting inmates to come out of prison rehabilitated, all while lacking focus on rehabilitation. By expanding rehabilitation methods throughout all jails and state and federal prisons, prisoners who are serving long (or short) sentences could benefit from education and professional development opportunities for when they are released. A few different organizations have attempted to create an anti-drug curriculum to teach students to try to show how unappealing drug use should be. These programs’ effectiveness has been questioned, especially in more recent years.

Arguably one of the most well-known drug education programs, D.A.R.E began in 1983 with high hopes of educating students on the repercussions of using drugs. However, even with its high cost of operations, the entire program has been deemed ineffective by several groups. A few common theories about its ineffectiveness have come about over the years. One of the main complaints with the program was that it was taught in a nearly hysterical fashion instead of an evidence-based one. When the program began in 1983, the war on drugs was circulating throughout the media in a near-delusional manner. Another issue commonly brought up is who taught the course to students. Mainly armed police officers taught the courses, and “some experts claimed that the presence of uniformed, armed police actually made the program more

adversarial than educational, especially for children who had policeinvolved experiences outside of the classroom” (Berry, 2022). Since police officers taught the course, it noticeably focused on punitive consequences (such as jail) rather than rehabilitation.

In conclusion, the war on drugs may have had some judicious ideas to fight the usage of drugs, but it is a near-complete failure. Since 1971, drug-related arrests have skyrocketed. But, is there a better way to take this on? Many people will continue to use drugs if they really want to, and putting people with drug addictions into prison is an injustice for those people. Drug (or alcohol) addicts need skilled help, and do not deserve to go through withdrawals alone in a cell. At the end of the day, we should be making laws and giving funding to causes that benefit all people, and do not have extreme biases against certain groups. The society we live in could greatly benefit from more rehabilitation and addiction services to try and keep people who need help out of prison.

Works Cited

Berry, Matt. “3 Reasons Why the Dare Program Failed.” American Addiction Centers, 22 Feb. 2022

https://americanaddictioncenters.org/blog/why-the-dare-program-failed.

The Drug War, Mass Incarceration and Race. Jan. 2018,

https://drugpolicy.org/sites/default/files/drug-war-mass-incarceration-andrace_01_18_0.pdf.

Rakia, Raven, et al. “South Dakota Leads Nation on Jail Admissions, New Report Finds.” The Appeal, 18 Sept. 2019,

https://theappeal.org/south-dakota-leads-nation-on-jail-admissions-new-reportfinds/.

Open Letter to the Students in Professor Reese’s Creative Writing Class

by Maria Gillan

Dear students, I so appreciate your letters and your openness in writing and being willing to share your own dreams and aspirations. I think the wonderful thing about writing is it allows us to show who we really are on the inside. So much of life teaches us never to allow anyone to see past the walls we put up so we won’t be vulnerable. I’m grateful that you share with me some experiences you’ve had that are in some way similar to mine but in other ways not so similar. I love that you were able to let me into your life through your writing.

For many of you your experience has made you afraid to share in class or show anyone your writing. I hope that the class helped you to get beyond that and just to see that we’re all afraid, we all wear masks, we all hide something of ourselves but then when we let go, when we open ourselves to other people, then we are able to grow as human beings. I certainly struggled with shyness and the inability to speak up in class and I see that many of you have done the same thing, that you have not spoken when you should’ve spoken. For those of you who asked about how to connect with people in your life when you have difficulty expressing yourself, I say try to ask questions of the person, act interested, listen to the responses. What does the person tell you about his or her life ? about his her childhood ? his memories or her memories ?

It was a real pleasure and honor to speak to you about writing and about my life and I’m so honored that you wrote back to me in such an open and amazing way. I have to say that you made me cry and I loved hearing your individual stories which you should put into poems and stories of your own.

With great respect and admiration,

MARIA GILLAN

The American Dream Illusion

by Ally DeLange

Junk Drawer Full of Thoughts

by Kendra Horsley

She was ten years old when her mother, siblings, and her were forced out of their home. The rush of it all made her wonder if family was nothing but a word. As she sat in front of the desk in her room, she slid the bottom drawer toward her chest. A junk drawer full of ordinary objects took hold of her thoughts and engulfed her whole.

As she searched through the mess, ordinary quickly turned to chaos. She pulled out a box of colored pens, a gift from her sister, which had kept her mind occupied for hours on end. Next was a wooden, handheld cross, a token of faith which her grandmother had given her for Christmas. There were loose ponytails, colored pencils, and notepads too. The polaroids and paper clips were layered among the mess. Q-tips, with no cotton on either side, were pushed to the corners of the drawer; they served as keys to locked doors. The birthday card from her step-father no longer seemed too important to hold. The journal her teacher had handed her, months before, was stored at the bottom, unbothered. She tossed what was useless and taped the box of her belongings closed.

With a Sharpie, she marked the box with her name. She carried it carefully down the hall making sure not to bump into her stepfather’s precious walls. As she returned to the house she caught herself holding her breath. The realization of the picture above the living room chair threw her off-guard; she was never given the chance to tell her stepbrothers a proper goodbye.

The next two weeks went by in a blur, and the box full of what once was sat unpacked. She was terrified to touch anything ordinary because her mind had convinced her of so many lies. The day she had to pack her belongings was the day she decided to hide as a whole. Her thoughts were held captive within the junk drawer of thoughts she had become engulfed in: you are the problem, you are the burden, you are the cause of it all, and you deserve to sit within the complexity and pain of chaos. She kept quiet, carried the loads which were not hers, and watched as her mother and siblings suffered. She placed the responsibility of pain from the past within the drawers of her young heart and mind.

As the years progressed, she had to learn the importance of letting go and starting fresh. She eventually unpacked her box, and found a new place for what was hers. Time and time again, she sat in front of her junk

drawer and became lost in the story of each aspect and object. Her mother, siblings, grandparents, and best friends have placed themselves beside her, on the floor, and held her as she tries to process and organize what is within.

Perhaps the beauty of her junk drawer is the capability to lose what she thought she needed and simultaneously find what she was not even searching for. For far too long, she held onto the chaos which had become her ordinary. The lies she told herself are slowly being pushed to the back, and her truth is becoming more evident within the chaos as a whole. She will, someday, have to pack her new ordinary into a box and take what is useless and toss it aside. She is learning to face her thoughts with grace, knowing she has the choice to choose which ones to hold onto: you are loved, you are strong, you are more, and you are worth fighting for. Her junk drawer full of thoughts has allowed her to find some extraordinary truths amidst the chaos she refers to as ordinary.

Wildflowers

by Kendra Horsley

I have tried more than once to sit down and write about her, but there always seems to be this daunting hesitation, which leaves me without words. Where words lack, emotion carries with all too swift of a motion. The depth at which I love her leaves me feeling senseless because she tries to lead a quiet life, but her heart is wild and deserves to be understood and heard with more volume than a whisper. I have said time and time again, her story is not mine to tell; however, the perspective at which I have witnessed it has led me through heartache and a wholehearted desire to bring her back to the home within herself.

My perspective will never be hers, but my hope is someday she will see how wild and wondrous she truly is. What you must understand is her story is boundless, and the portion of my perspective may not match the portion of another. The thought of putting this down on paper makes my thoughts fog with a sense of resistance; however, the perspective of my own story has taught me the importance of quiet courage.

It was early May, and my mother and I were in the car talking back and forth about the semester coming to a close. The phone began to ring, and I watched the color drain from my mother’s face as her voice dropped to a low.

“Is she okay? We’re on our way.”

Tears streamed down my face as I watched the freshly bloomed wildflowers, on the side of the road, go by in a blur.

My thoughts flashed back to early childhood, and there she sat with tears in her eyes. She held me tight as the yelling increased from behind the door and handed me the blankie patterned with flowers, which once was hers.

As my mother parked the car, I sat with my hands intertwined. The air stood still, and I could not help but let my mind flash to the memory from several months prior. In a field with flowers scattered across her cardigan she had her hands held to her stomach, and her soft smile reminded me of who she was in our younger years. The one whom I admire was soon to be a mother. Her independence was of no question, and the strength of her soul was an aspect I had never had to question.

You see, she is a fighter. The ache of suicidal thoughts and addiction almost took her completely from this world, but she found a way through. Her baby boy arrived and so did the light, but she traveled through deep darkness which, to me, deserves recognition too.

“It will be okay, hold your nephew tight.”

The weather was cold, but the bundles of flowers through the gas station window were bright and warm. My mind was brought back to reality as I walked toward the police officer’s passenger door. Much like when we were younger, tears ran down her face, and the fear in her eyes left an imprint in my mind.

I held her tight in my arms before walking with my nephew, back to the car. She shared another truth to her story on this night. Her voice was heard, and she told my mother and I she had been abused by another. The bruises on her arms and neck seemed to grow darker with these words, but through it all she seemed to stand in grace with each passing storm. Although she is not quick to admit it, her perseverance, in combination with heart, has kept her going.

Fast forward, her second baby boy is on the way, and she is learning every day.

Even in adversity, she has been able to bloom. My perspective of her story has been written with delicacy because the depth of her beauty is beyond any words I could ever place on paper.

Not many know of her struggle because of her ability to bloom within any given place: a wildflower, one of which I have the privilege of calling my sister.

Deye Mon Gen Mon

by Christa Lotz

In the Encyclopedia Brittanica entry on Haiti, author James Ferguson tells us that, “the name Haiti was derived from the indigenous Arawak language, which means ‘Mountainous Land.’” That is a fantastic description of Haiti, where mountains and valleys fill your view for miles and miles. There is a phrase in Haitian Creole that reflects the land, but also gives a bit of insight into the complexity of Haiti’s history. ‘Deye Mon Gen Mon,’ or, ‘behind mountains, there are mountains’ is used to figuratively describe the sense that ‘you can conquer one thing, but the next thing looms in the distance.’ People unfamiliar with Haiti tend to think it is supposed to be an inspiring quote about overcoming obstacles, but in the country, it is just a fact of life. When you learn about the struggles of the island, it makes sense. Poverty and natural disasters have long plagued the nation one after the other, all while it is still recovering from the last. The saying ties in the terrain of mountains with the uphill battle that Haiti has always faced to create a quote that has a variety of meanings.

One early fall, I was on a hiking trip through the Haiti countryside with a group of family and friends. We were attempting to hike twenty-six miles over two days, up and down what were essentially goat trails, until we reached the ocean in a town a few hours from the capital. Towards the end of the first day, twelve or thirteen miles in, we reached what we thought was the last climb of the day. Exhausted and hungry, we turned the corner on the switchbacks, occasionally catching glimpses of the trees that marked the top. Those trees were our goal and as we got closer, we regained some of our excitement. We were so close to a hot dinner and maybe even a hot shower! A couple of ladies walking down crossed our path and we asked them how long they thought we had to go. They erupted into giggles and said, “A year left!” That last mile or two definitely felt like a year as the trees seemed to get further away the higher we climbed. Every climb looked like it would be the last until we turned the corner to see another mountain waiting, every false summit reminding us that deye mon gen mon. When we finally reached the lodge, we warmed our hands on mugs full of hot peppermint tea that they provided—which was a comforting luxury in the chilly mountains. When we awoke the next morning, legs sore and tired, we strapped the packs to our backs and set off again, because deye mon gen mon.

The people that worked at the mountain-top market knew that deye mon gen mon as they walked up the steep ascent to sell their fruits and veggies. The donkeys that carried the produce alongside the ladies knew what was meant by deye mon gen mon. The kids that hiked the mountains in the early mornings to pick and sell raspberries in the market knew. Our Durango, which left us stranded one too many times to be considered a reliable car, definitely knew that deye mon gen mon. You say a quick prayer before you begin the climb that today will not be the day it overheats, and starts the crawl, pedal to the metal the whole way up.

When said by Haitians, deye mon gen mon is said in an exasperated tone, when nothing you do is quite enough. It is usually said on a daily basis in Haiti, where the government never quite works the way it should, and everyone is always running on island time. It is said when you bring your child to the one hospital in town, and it is so full that they turn you away, or the doctors cannot make it due to protests. When an earthquake devastates the island, and then when things finally start to resemble normalcy, hurricane season starts flooding rivers and there is a cholera outbreak that kills thousands. When the president is assassinated, and a month later another earthquake shakes up the already disheveled country leading to more destruction. Despite the difficulties that persist, perseverance is an incredible characteristic of the people of Haiti. Even with the knowledge that there will always be an obstacle in their path, they continue to climb the figurative mountains. No matter what, you get up the next day and keep fighting for your family and standing up for your country. That perseverance and strength are my favorite qualities in the Haitian people, and I have an immense amount of admiration and respect for the country.

It might not be a stereotypical inspirational quote, but that does not make it any less encouraging to me. Deye mon gen mon does not mean that you should give up, or that it is not worth trying. It does not mean that you are discontented with life and the struggles faced. It does not mean that you burn yourself out on a single mountain. It means taking things one at a time, slow and steady, because there will be something else waiting for you. It is a beautiful sentiment to figuratively stand on top of that mountain and be able to see all the peaks that you have already conquered and the ones that you still have in front of you. It is how I imagine graduation to be, with all the semesters over the next four years as the past mountains and my whole life ahead as the upcoming mountains, whether I am ready for them or not. Deye mon gen mon is the pain, exhaustion, and beauty of something that you have poured so much time and energy into. It is solving problems as they come up because there is usually no other choice. So much of life is spent fighting your way through struggles and when it finally feels like things are good again, the clouds lift to reveal the next mountain. Deye mon gen mon is when you finally make it to America after so many issues and then when you expect a sense of normalcy, there is a pandemic, and then your mom dies from brain cancer. The mountains never stop coming.

Deye mon gen mon is not an admission of defeat. It does not mean to abandon hope, it does not mean that you stop trying. To me, it means never getting complacent where you are or letting your struggles defeat you. It can be overwhelming when you know that you will never ‘reach’ the end, but I think that is the beautiful thing about life. There is always more to learn, and always more mountains to climb.

Works Cited Ferguson, James A. “Haiti.” Encyclopedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/place/Haiti. Accessed 25 October 2022.

Empty Thoughts

by Jordyn Fischer

The Van Gilder Ghosts

by Elizabeth Langerock

I’m not sure that I believe in spirits and ghosts. Sometimes I feel like I do and other times I don’t. Usually, all these seemingly paranormal things happen because of the environment and a push from the imagination. Supernatural entities, such as ghosts and spirits, may coexist with us in our world. That being said, I have a story to tell.

This past summer I went to Alaska with my extended family. All the guys had gone fishing except Jeffery. Most of the women and young ladies went into Seward, we were camping nearby, to go shopping and go to the aquarium. At this time, we were walking to this really cool old church that had been converted into a coffee shop/art gallery/used bookstore. On our walk over there, I noticed an old-looking hotel. I mentioned that I wanted to go in and look around after we had our coffee. The hotel, The Van Gilder Hotel, was really fascinating. It was not modern by any means. The furniture and layout were still the same as it was when the hotel first opened.

As we were looking around the first floor, the manager walked in. The best way to describe him is a modern California hippie. He had his long hair unbound and free, earrings that went past his chin, layered necklaces strewn all across his chest, and massive rings on all of his fingers. He was absolutely amazing, super-nice, and knowledgeable. He asked if we were checking in. I told him that we were just looking around, and he asked us if we wanted to hear the history of the building. Of course, I said that I did; I mean why wouldn’t I? He told us to follow him to the parlor. As we did my cousin Emma looked up the staircase, turned to me, and said “this place is kind of scary.” The first thing the manager said as we filed into the parlor was “I hope you guys don’t get scared easily.” I thought this was perfect timing, seeing as Emma just told me she was scared.

He started by telling us that he was from California and that the in-house spirit called him here. Then he began telling us the history of the hotel. The hotel was originally a safe house for women and a brothel. I’m not exactly sure how it could be both of these things at the same time, but it is what it is. He then told us that there was a woman who ran from her abusive husband and sought safety at this building. However, her husband eventually found her and killed her (Van Gilder). He told us that she now

haunts the building and protects all the females that visit and is said to attract young, strong, independent women.

After telling the story he told us that there is a portrait of a young woman holding an average sized wine glass, that he believes should be ten times bigger, hanging on the landing of the second floor, that he likes to imagine is her. He then invited us to go upstairs and look around. Naturally, I took him up on this offer and went up the stairs, tripping on the middle landing as I ascended. He was absolutely right about the wine glass. The room next to the room she was killed in was open, so I went in and looked around. I looked around the bathroom, which had no shower, as the showers were communal, and noticed the closed antique window had a nice view of the mountains. As I was walking back to the hall, and my family that was hovering around the door, the bathroom door slammed shut. Most of my family booked it down the stairs and out of the building faster than you could say “boo.” I will admit, I jumped a bit. I stayed in the room and investigated for a bit. The best explanation I could come up with was that there was a draft coming from the window. Yes, I realize how weak of an explanation that is, but it was the best I could come up with without assuming it was her spirit.

My Dearest Grandmother

by Madelyn Heckenlaible

It is time to turn the page. The job to which I have been entrusted by my grandmother has finally come. I turned the sheet of music as fast as I could, trying not to disrupt my grandma’s playing. Although I was not the best, I enjoyed sitting by and helping her while she played piano in church. We shared a special bond and passion for the piano. She instilled in me the discipline, patience, and love required for the art of piano from a very young age. I still remember practicing for what felt like hours at her house. She always told me, “If you can’t do it perfectly here, you will not be able to play well in front of people. Again. . ..” Even though it has been nearly three years since she has passed away, I remember her as though time has not moved on and taken her with it.

On June 6, 1937, Velda and Verletta Schlechter were born in Kaylor, SD. Back then, they did not have ultrasounds, so Grandma’s parents were not expecting twins until the day they were born. I was told that Velda, my grandma, always hated her first name and middle name. Her middle name was Christina, but she wanted it to be Christine. Velda was a woman of many talents. In 1977 she went to Cliff Mann Floral Design School with her 18-year-old daughter Cindy, my aunt. Grandma had a very keen eye for flower arranging and thrived doing her own business. I still hear people to this day tell me that my grandma did their wedding flowers and how hard she worked to get the job done. Her artistic vision with the art of flower arranging also carried into her music. Velda later went to school for choral directing at Freeman Junior College. Sadly, I never saw her direct any performances herself because she was long retired by the time I came around. Even so, when I sat by her at church, she would direct from her pew seat. She swayed her arms like a seasoned master in time with the music and mumbled cues and counts under her breath. It always made me smile when I saw her get into the music.

Velda was the definition of a social butterfly. I swear she knew everyone and everything about Menno. She used to drag my grandpa to friends’ houses to play cards and eat out with friends when she was still able to. Grandma was known around the community to be a talker. Our pastor said that she was the easiest person to visit because all he would have to do is show up, and she would start talking for him. I do not know where she would have been without the invention of the telephone. It was fitting that her first job out of high school was running a switchboard as

a telephone operator. Later on in her life, the telephone became a way to easily communicate with loved ones when going out became harder to do. I think our household was her favorite to call because we would get, at a minimum, five calls a day from her. Every day she had her rounds of people she would call; this is how she knew things about my school before I even knew it. My friend’s grandmother was her neighbor, and Velda would call her almost daily. Between the two of them, they knew all the town gossip and current happenings.

I started to notice her declining health back in 2015. She already had an oxygen machine, but she also started acting more forgetful than normal. Glenn, my grandpa, took her to the doctor, and they found a tumor in her brain. It was located near the front of the brain, and if it grew too big, her body would shut down. The doctors said that an operation could be done to remove the rapidly growing tumor, but the rate of success was low because of her lungs. She had developed COPD due to chronic bronchitis. Reluctantly, our family decided not to do a high-risk surgery. A miracle happened; the tumor stopped growing completely for no explainable reason. I now know that the Lord showed favor to His loyal servant. My grandmother’s faith in the Lord guided my spiritual journey and inspired me to commit myself to Jesus. I personally know the mercies of our Lord that kept my grandma alive much longer than doctors expected. We were just hoping that she would make it to my cousin’s wedding in 2016 so she could see at least one grandkid get married. She did this feat and did one better; she lived to see my sister graduate in 2018.

At the end of 2018, her health took another hit. Velda had many lung infections over the years despite never smoking. This time it took a huge toll on her body, and it became increasingly hard for Grandpa to take care of her. Velda ended up being admitted into the Menno Olivet Care Center, which is just across town from her house. At this time, I was a sophomore at Menno High School, and I made the effort to stop by almost every day after school during track season since this time of year was a break from sports for me. My visits with her lasted at least an hour, and we talked for a long time. Most days she would have to chase me away so I could do my homework. I even got to know her roommate very well. She has a hard time remembering people, but since I came every day, she started to know who I was. One day, her roommate said, “I wish you were my granddaughter.” This broke my heart because I know she has grandkids that just choose not to visit her. I hugged her and told her I loved her. Later on, I started bringing a large Oreo cookie dough blizzard from the Dairy Bar, my grandma’s favorite restaurant in town on my visits most days. I brought an extra cup and spoon so we could share it. A few years later, a worker told me that my visits were the highlight of her day. Around 3:15 she would get excited because she knew I was coming soon. Even if she did not eat anything else that day, she would always eat the ice cream I brought her.

In March of 2019, Grandma had a run-in with her old friend pneumonia and was sent to the hospital. When we went to visit her, I knew that she was on her death bed. Every breath she took was accompanied by liquid unable to escape her lungs that hissed in protest to her labored breathing. She could hardly talk or move. She knew she was on her last legs, and her face told me she did not want to leave us yet. I prayed for more time with my grandma because I was not ready to lose her yet, and promised myself to use the extra time, if allotted to me, wisely and continue to visit her daily. My prayer was answered that day, and Velda bounced back to her old self.

It turns out that God gave me a whole month more with my grandma. I stuck true to my promise and visited her as much as I could. April came and her health plummeted. She was again back on her death bed, but this time she was in the nursing home constantly surrounded by loved ones who lived nearby. Several days of the struggle to live ensued. Velda could not talk and had fleeting moments of consciousness. During these rare moments of consciousness, she spent her time looking at our faces, memorizing the love they represented in her heart. I was holding her hand when she woke up, and she squeezed my hand with tears in her eyes. It became apparent that going on like this was not helping anyone, so my entire family gave her permission to go home to Jesus and we said our goodbyes. We told my grandpa that he had to go home to take care of himself. He reluctantly complied, but in the short time that he was gone, Velda passed away on April 20, 2019.

Grandpa requested that my sister and I sing at our grandma’s funeral. Since we would be a mess at the funeral, we recorded it ahead of time. The whole day was surreal. I felt chills down to my very bones when I approached the coffin. Once I peered in, I saw my role model, friend, and grandma lying cold and lifeless, the opposite of the woman I came to know. The moment that broke my heart the most happened with my grandpa. He was raised to be strong and not show much emotion, so when, in a moment of despair, he hugged me and finally showed those pent-up tears, I fell apart, for there was nothing I could do for him except be there. I think my grandpa has a special connection with me since I look like his mother, whom I never got to meet. I do not remember much after our recording played. To this day, I can hardly sing or listen to the two songs we sang at the funeral without crying. My sister even forgot that we sang those songs, and when she heard them being played again, she started crying and didn’t know why. It is as if a small part of her remembered the pain strung by those solemn chords.

Not long after the funeral, I told my mom that I wanted to become a CNA in my grandma’s memory. Though slightly apprehensive in the beginning, she agreed. My mom, with the best of intentions, had a hard time believing her baby was ready for big steps like getting my first real job. Grandma always told me that I would make a great nurse when I helped her, so I applied for a CNA training camp in a town half an hour

away since my local nursing did not have the staff to train new hires at the time. It was a week full of stepping far out of my comfort zone and tough, rewarding work. I got my certification and landed a job in the nursing home where my grandma spent her last days. In the beginning, I was not confident in my abilities, but with the help of a few patient coworkers, I improved and was able to do things on my own. Soon, I fell in love with my job and the people I took care of. I have always gotten along with my elders, so naturally, I liked hanging out and helping them with activities in the nursing home. It was honestly a win-win for me; I got to have great conversations with these people I have grown fond of and get paid to do it. After working for over a year at the home and with part of it during the pandemic, I decided that nursing was my true calling. The only college I ever went and toured was Mount Marty. I instantly felt like this was the place I was meant to become the best nurse I could be. My conviction that nursing was what God wanted me to do with my life came when I got word that I received the Dakota Corps Scholarship. This is practically a full-ride scholarship that requires the recipient to apply for a major in a critical need area in South Dakota and to work for five years in the state. I applied for nursing and found out in July that I was one of the 45 students in the entire state who received this blessing. My mom broke into tears of joy upon reading that I had actually gotten it. To be honest, when I applied, I thought I would never get it. I know that my grandma would be very proud of me and react to the news with her trademark, shockinglydramatic performance, and I would not have it any other way.

Paper by Madelyn Heckenlaible

Blank and bland

But so much more than this

Paper listens better

It lets me get things out

Without judgement

Without insults

Without accusations

Without fear

A cherished confidante

Nothing can compare

A cluster of thoughts

Turn to a collection of words

Words of power and persuasion of the heart

That touch their readers

An old method of communication

That still holds those willing to listen

And learn from the wisdom of others

From different walks of life

Breathing sense into a world of chaos

Mayhem is quelled with meaning

In paper, we find new hope

In paper, I find peace.

Never Ending Thoughts

by Sydney Kotz

Two million voices racing in my mind, Which thoughts are truly mine?

One moment I am fine, Then in a blink of an eye I am dying inside.

Someone is mad at me, I did something wrong. Constantly fixing a problem when there is not one at all. I can not breath, I am drowning in fear. These voices are hiding what is visibly real.

I know people love me, I know they will not leave. Can these voices just leave me be? I love myself, I love who I am.

I am letting these doubts consume my head.

Two million voice racing in my mind, Which thoughts are truly mine?

I know which thoughts are lies, It is time to bring out mine.

God’s Palette

by Terry Lafferty

Light and color

wed by the circling celestial orb on a palette of wood and stone. The image moving, melding, molding itself to the solid canvas of wall and pew. Each day presents its own fleeting moment of divine artistry. If only I pass by at just the right time, and I, with seeking heart, look every day for the voice of the One who calls to me, “Look! See what I did for you today?” A vision, public, for anyone to view and take notice, yet I venture in daily to steal a glimpse at what He who seeks me has prepared. Sharp, vibrant, clear images or muted, blended, blurred shapes and hues, all speak a message of comfort into my heart and mind.

Love and Lust: The Most Arduous Addictions

by Chesney Olson

Shakespeare’s Sonnet 129 and Sonnet 147 exemplify the phenomenon of lust lost in the confusion of love when a man is unable to recognize when and how his abusive relationship turns his everlasting love into a deadly game of lust. Sonnet 129 speaks of the first-person experience of lust, while Sonnet 147 talks about being caught in the crossfires of someone’s lust, yet also seems to touch on a deeper psychological connection that refuses to be broken. Together, these sonnets encompass and recount the conflicting emotions rooted in both individuals’ desperate pursuit for an unreciprocated and pernicious relationship in which one seeks fulfillment of the body and the other seeks fulfillment of the heart, and the intricate web of addictions to love, lust, and lies becomes too intertwined to comprehend.

What are love and lust? Love is defined in the article “How love and lust change people’s perceptions of relationship partners” as “wishes to self expand and caring for or identifying with a person, including feelings of infatuation and emotional bonding” (Förster et al. NA). It is an intense, deep, genuine care and affection for someone or something and often includes thoughts in the future tense and desires outside of simple physical intimacy. On the other hand, lust focuses solely on sexual drive, present thoughts, and immediate satisfaction. In the same article, lust was described as a “wish, need, or drive to seek out sexual objects or to engage in sexual activities, including feelings of sexual desire” (Förster et al. NA). Notice the word “objects” is used in describing what is sought by individuals plagued with lust. This comes into play in misogyny and misandry where an individual, whether male or female, is objectified and seen only for sex.

Lust includes many narcissistic tendencies since the individual cares only for their own satisfaction and does not show interest, care, or respect for the other person involved. Narcissism is defined as “selfishness, involving a sense of entitlement, a lack of empathy, and a need for admiration, as characterizing a personality type” (Google Dictionary). Studies have also shown that “lust lights up the brain in the same areas an addict’s brain does on drugs. Intense physical attraction and hormones together fuel projection and idealization which can cloud our judgment of reality” (BetterHelp Editorial Team). Although mild lust is relatively common and normal in a healthy relationship, extreme lust is

an addiction causing selfish impulses that can actually stem from mental illness, low self-esteem, and personality disorders.

Sonnet 129 explains how a person goes to extreme lengths and finds joy in the pursuit and deed of their sexual desires but finds extreme regret and sorrow after the rush of the hunt fades and the reality of emotions and repercussions comes to the surface. This could be said of many addictions as well; individuals may become crazed or find an extreme rush in the chase for their object of addiction but end up hurt and empty once that burning fire of desire is quenched. Notice, the idea of objectification plays a role in addiction as well because addicts can use people as their objects of addiction. Addictive and narcissistic characteristics can be seen alongside the many differences and similarities between lust and love in Shakespeare’s sonnets.

I believe Sonnet 129 was ultimately written from the perspective of the Dark Lady, yet also includes some truth pertaining to Shakespeare’s own mentality. The journal article “The Concept of Love in Shakespeare’s Sonnets” about Sonnet 129 said, “It is in some sense a kind of definition or analysis of Lust…He elaborates on it through the images of war, murder, savagery, cruelty, hunting, and baiting.” (Ma 922). The sonnet itself serves as the narrator’s own definition of lust and as a recognition of its existence in oneself as well as in another person who may be in lust with him/ her. In the Dark Lady’s perspective, I think she is speaking of her own experience of the emotions and struggles she faces with her lust addiction and her brutally honest acknowledgement of her own personal issues and mental illness. She critiques lust and admits just how awful it is on herself and the other person in the arrangement. However, I also see echoes of Shakespeare himself in this sonnet, especially in the last line of the sonnet, “All this the world well knows; yet none knows well / To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell” (13-14). Sonnet 147 furthers this idea that although he knows better and has reason to stop what he is doing, he just can’t find the courage to do so, which may be an echo of lust rather than love. Therefore, I believe the Dark Lady is extremely lustful and Shakespeare could be seen as a sort of victim, but we must first consider that he does not seem to have perfectly clean hands in this lustful affair either because he also shows subtle signs of lust similar to the Dark Lady. Just as the Dark Lady speaks of her criticism and despises the concept of lust, Shakespeare shares these same deep feelings. “Despite the very fact that the poet despises erotic love, he cannot resist the temptation from his mistress” (Ma 922). Even though he hates lust and how it has caused him to be treated by the Dark Lady, he knows that deep down he is somewhat guilty of committing lust towards his mistress as well.

The concept of lust also raises another question regarding the complex relationship between Shakespeare and the Dark Lady: does cheating come into play? In Shakespeare’s Sonnet 138, he says, “When my love swears that she is made of truth / I do believe her, though I know she lies, / That she might think me some untutor’d youth, / Unlearned in the world’s false subtleties” suggesting that he knows his mistress lies

to him, but he chooses to accept rather than challenge them for possible fear of abandonment and loss (1-4). Although the majority of this sonnet talks about lies of age and vanity, I think there are subtle undertones of something much deeper in the truth value of his mistress’s words. I find it very easy to believe that the Dark Lady cheated on Shakespeare quite frequently, especially since the Dark Lady shows extreme signs of lust. It has been shown that “this sexual desire is often defined as being for someone other than a partner” (BetterHelp Editorial Team), which further confirms the allegation that the lust of the Dark Lady caused her to commit infidelity. Unfortunately, the ignorance of a significant other’s lack of truth and loyalty is not relatively uncommon and adds another light from which to look upon Shakespeare’s predicament.

Sonnet 147 can be described in one short phrase: love is blind, but lust is blinding. In love, people are able to look past people’s flaws and insecurities and see them for who they really are. Mary Wroth speaks of the blindness of love and of Cupid himself in her Sonnet 7 of Pamphilia to Amphilanthus when she says in the last line, “Your charms I obey, but love not want of eyes” (14). In lust, people look past everything and see the person for who they want or wish them to be to satisfy their own needs. Shakespeare admits his mistaken perceptions of the Dark Lady in Sonnet 147 when he says, “For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright, / Who art as black as hell, as dark as night” (13-14). Therefore, was Shakespeare in love with The Dark Lady or just in lust? I would argue that he was both in love with and in lust with her. He spoke of her outside of the physical world and expressed genuine care of her as a human being, whereas the Dark Lady’s narrative in Sonnet 129 was completely about herself and her own struggles, not once taking into account the person she was hurting by her lust. This observation fits the definition of lust in which she did not show genuine interest or care for the other person, only for herself. She was a troubled woman who found solace in the vulnerable Shakespeare who had just been heartbroken by the Fair Young Man. He was susceptible to manipulation and fell victim to the Dark Lady’s selfish pursuits. Furthermore, Shakespeare also seemed to have an addiction to the idea of love because he was so desperate to make things work with the Dark Lady in such a short time after his split from the Fair Young Man, no matter the cost. I believe his wrongdoings in the relationship were forced or caused in the aftermath of the Dark Lady’s selfish actions. He convinces himself that he is so in love with her that he cannot leave her even though she treats him poorly and might have even cheated on him. However, he is finally forced to face the realization that there are fragments of lust that he has mistaken as love and struggles to find the fine line between where his love ends, and his lust begins.

Sonnet 147 seems to be like an ending or a revelation in which he finally is able to acknowledge that his relationship with the Dark Lady is like a sickness and his reason is telling him he should run away; however, I wonder if it is not his lust, instead of his love, that keeps him from being able to escape. His lines, “Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,

/ The uncertain sickly appetite to please ‘’ (3-4) describe that he is still feeding off that relationship to fulfill the unhealthy appetite of his body, not of his love, heart, or mind. Furthermore, his lines contain suggestions of madness and discourse, which are common symptoms and characteristics of someone suffering with lust. If this is the case, then it is no wonder he is unable to break off from the Dark Lady because he is now legitimately addicted to her. The sonnet shows the extent of power and control the disease of lust can have over a person because it is described as both a physical and mental sickness by the narrator himself.

Sonnet 129 and Sonnet 147 also contain themes of loss in both individuals. In Sonnet 129, lust causes a loss of rational thought, selfrespect, and eventually the loss of the intense hunger for the body and for sex. Instead of looking at the unfortunate plot unfolding within his relationship with the Dark Lady and speaking of losing her as a person who he loves, he recounts a loss of his own reason, an abstract mental process. The journal article title “Is loss the dominant feeling of lyric?” focused on this idea of loss in Sonnet 147 by saying, “the narrator’s lack is not just an empty space but an emptied space. Yet what is lost is not love but his reason…The medical metaphor situates reason as a figure of trust, respect, and rational thought” (Reading 2). The empty space this author is referring to is not a physical space occupied by a person, which he would have been referring to if his loss was in fact of the Dark Lady herself, but is instead an empty space created in his mind when his reason fled. As we can see, lust not only creates loss for the person experiencing it but also for the person who falls victim to it, and this loss may not be tangible to the human eye. However, Shakespeare did experience the loss of the Fair Young Man prior to his connection with the Dark Lady, and the effects of this loss reverberate throughout the last 28 of his sonnets.

We can clearly see the difference between Shakespeare’s sonnets of the Fair Young Man and of the Dark Lady. He uses much darker, negative connotations in sonnets of the Dark Lady, which could suggest the pain he already endured from his failed relationship with the Fair Young Man or the pain he encountered in his toxic relationship with the Dark Lady. However, we could also argue that the Dark Lady might have been facing some of her own mental battles or responding to personal psychological traumas which caused her abusive and extremely lustful behaviors. Unfortunately, many people suffer under very similar circumstances as Shakespeare and the Dark Lady in relationships labeled as codependent.

Codependency is “an emotional and behavioral condition that affects an individual’s ability to have a healthy, mutually satisfying relationship. It is also known as ‘relationship addiction’ because people with codependency often form or maintain relationships that are onesided, emotionally destructive and/or abusive” (Mental Health America).

It is an extremely common phenomenon that includes the following signs and symptoms: a tendency to confuse love and pity, with the tendency to “love” people they can pity and rescue; a tendency to become hurt when

people don’t recognize their efforts; the co-dependent will do anything to hold on to a relationship to avoid the feeling of abandonment; an extreme need for approval and recognition; lack of trust in self and/or others; difficulty identifying feelings; and problems with intimacy/boundaries (Mental Health America). Shakespeare shockingly fits precisely into the box of a codependent. He stayed in a relationship in which he did not feel comfortable or loved and knew was very detrimental to him. He was willing to do anything to keep her, including ignoring her words he knew were false. The Dark Lady’s tendencies to objectify Shakespeare to satisfy her lust could also cause him to lack feelings of approval and recognition from his mistress. This type of relationship is another form of addiction not commonly recognized but extremely prevalent. Codependency is greatly highlighted in the following quote:

Excitement and desire may be heightened by intrigue or our partner’s unpredictability or unavailability. We may remain attached and even crave our partner, but our discomfort or unhappiness grows. Instead of focusing on that, our hunger to be with him or her takes center stage, despite the fact that disturbing facts or character traits arise that are hard to ignore. We may feel controlled or neglected, unsafe or disrespected, or discover that our partner is unreliable or lies, manipulates, rages, has secrets, or has a major problem…Whether we provoke conflict or try to avoid it, we stay and don’t heed our better judgment to leave. Increasingly, we hide our worries and doubts and rely on sex, romance, and fantasy to sustain the relationship. Out of sympathy, we might even be drawn to help and “rescue” our partner and/or try to change him or her back into the ideal we “fell” for. These are signs of addiction (Lancer).

Individuals who are seen as codependents often take on the role of caretaker for their abusive partner. Information from Mental Health America says, “When the caretaking becomes compulsive, the codependent feels choiceless and helpless in the relationship, but is unable to break away from the cycle of behavior that causes it” (Mental Health America). This serves as the underlying reasoning in Sonnet 147 for why Shakespeare was unable to break away from the relationship even though he eventually came to the realization that he needed to. Furthermore, “the co-dependent person typically sacrifices his or her needs to take care of a person who is sick. When co-dependents place other people’s health, welfare and safety before their own, they can lose contact with their own needs, desires, and sense of self” (Mental Health America). Shakespeare enables the Dark Lady to feed her addiction of lust and even ignore her own mental illnesses by staying in this abusive relationship that is damaging both individuals. His addiction to this codependent relationship was so strong that he felt he had no way of living without it. We see this very often with people who suffer with addictions to drugs and alcohol.

These signs and symptoms of addiction are evident in Shakespeare’s sonnets. A journal article analyzing Sonnet 147 states,

“In short, the poet’s situation is tragic, in which he suffers, struggles, and despairs. He loves a woman he really has every reason to despise. He knows that the Dark Lady is only a “bad angel”, “the worser spirit” (Sonnet 144) (Wilson, 1966b, p.74), and repeatedly he indicates that his love towards the woman is sinful, disfiguring as well as defiling, but he just has no way out” (Ma 922). The attention he receives from the Dark Lady is anything but love in its purest form, and he feels extreme guilt for loving her in a way that he knows she never could. Alice Reading’s article says, “In Shakespeare’s sonnet, unreciprocated love not only leaves a man lacking affection but losing the rational, trustworthy, and respectful side of himself,” which further supports the idea of a codependent relationship existing between the two (Reading 2). This lack of reciprocation of love from the Dark Lady creates a desperate and irrational Shakespeare who tries anything to receive the love he is missing. The line becomes extremely blurred between codependency, love, and lust because so many of the signs and symptoms are shared across the board. I believe all three can co-exist in the same relationship, including the relationship between Shakespeare and the Dark Lady.

Sonnet 129 and Sonnet 147 written by Shakespeare are intricate works of love and lust and the complicated realm encompassing them in his relationship with his mistress. While they are different in delivery of the experience of lust on both ends of the spectrum, it becomes a very short range between the two as he dives into the complexity of emotions leading to every resulting action and the similarities soon begin to outweigh the differences between an addiction of lust and an addiction of love. An in-depth analysis of both the Dark Lady and Shakespeare himself uncovered the possibility of many root causes to the pain experienced by both parties and scenarios of intense codependency. The individuals unknowingly fed each other’s addictions, which ultimately led them down a one-way, dead-end street with no means of return. Shakespeare’s sonnets illustrated a tragedy of heartbreak and mental illness with absolute wisdom, whether intentional or not, into the anomaly suffered by so many people in which emotional turmoil, lack of knowledge, and intense desires lacking appropriate outlets go completely unrecognized and result in disastrous behaviors that leave minds, hearts, and bodies in ruins.

Bibliography

BetterHelp Editorial Team. “What Does Lust Mean? Is It Love?” BetterHelp, 6 October 2022, https://www.betterhelp.com/advice/intimacy/what-does-lustmean/. Accessed 26 November 2022.

Förster, Jens, et al. “How love and lust change people’s perception of relationship partners.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, vol. 46, no. 2, 2010, pp. 237-246. science direct.com, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022103109002121.

Google Dictionary. “Google Dictionary.” Google, 2022,

https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=narcissism&ie=UTF8&oe=UTF-8 Accessed 25 November 2022.

BetterHelp Editorial Team. “What Does Lust Mean? Is It Love?” BetterHelp, 6 October 2022,

https://www.betterhelp.com/advice/intimacy/what-does-lust-mean/. Accessed 26 November 2022.

Lancer, Darlene. “Love, Lust, or Addiction? | What Is Codependency?” Darlene Lancer, 1 October 2014

https://whatiscodependency.com/love-lust-relationship-addiction/. Accessed 26 November 2022.

Ma, Fenghua. “The Concept of Love in Shakespeare’s Sonnets.” Journal of Language Teaching and Research, vol. 5, no. 4, 2014, pp. 918-923. academypublication.com,

http://www.academypublication.com/issues/past/jltr/vol05/04/24.pdf.

Mental Health America. “Co-Dependency.” Mental Health America, 2022,

https://www.mhanational.org/co-dependency. Accessed 26 November 2022.

Reading, Alice. “Is loss the dominant feeling of lyric?” InnerVate: Leading undergraduate work in English studies, vol. 12, no. ISSN: 2041-6776, 2019-20, pp. 1-7. nottingham.ac.uk,

https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/english/documents/innervate/19-20/engl3046alice-reading.pdf.

Response Letter Back to MMU Students

by Brian Daldorph

Thank you all for this opportunity and for your great questions!

Did your viewpoint of the word “inmate” change over time? (Jared)

Yes. I used the word in my writing because it was the term I always heard used by jail staff and by the incarcerated writers themselves. I thought that it was a word as neutral as “student.” Then at a meeting of the Justice Arts Coalition when I used the word, I was challenged by one of the facilitators who pointed out to me that the word is now thought by some to be a negative term for incarcerated people, especially because of the way it dehumanizes an individual, takes away his name and makes him no more than an “inmate.” Now I try not to use it though alternatives, such as “incarcerated person,” tend to be cumbersome.

Difference between teaching college students and “prisoners”? (Jared)

To a large extent, my teaching goal in the college classroom and in jail is similar: I want to give my students the best opportunity to express themselves in creative ways. Because my college classes have regular attendance, the class can work as a workshop, with students presenting their work to the class and getting feedback on it in discussion and in writing (critiques). On the other hand, in the jail classroom the writers present their work without the workshop dimension of feedback, apart from comments like, “That’s what’s up,” “That’s for real,” etc. The jail class turned into more of a forum than a workshop because that was the best way to run it in the situation we were in, especially with the turnover of class members.

How did you first get involved? (Joey) What made you want to work in prison? (Cade) What got you into the program? (Andrew)

I’ve always been interested in working outside of academia. I believe that the work I do in any classroom is about more than the grade and credit achieved at the end of the semester. I think that Creative Writing, in particular, gives the opportunity for important work on the self, and this is particularly important for people whose lives are in crisis. Before teaching in prisons, I worked at the Adolescent Treatment Center in Olathe, Kansas, teaching a creative writing class to young people in the legal system with addiction issues.

Of course, there are many instructors like me who have worked in jails/ prisons for a similar reason. It’s quite thrilling to see how beneficial writing can be for people who need it the most.

Turnover in class. Different abilities of students. (Brynn) What motivates you? What is most rewarding part of your job? (Brynn)

The turnover in class in the jail was one of the biggest challenges of jail teaching. It meant that from week to week the class would change, and we’d lose our best writers, who’d be released or move on to another jurisdiction, and we’d have to start over with some old faces and some new. But there was a lot of creative energy in reinventing the class week by week by week, and we never knew who’d come through the jail classroom door and what they’d bring to our writing community. In this way, we tried to see the turnover as a positive.

I’m motivated by my love of literature, and my belief that writing—and the arts, in general--can change lives for the better. My own writing helps to get me through my own hard times. I love to share that opportunity with others, especially with people who find themselves locked in society’s basement, or as Antonio Sanchez-Day would put it, in the basement of society’s basement.

The most rewarding part of the work is when one of my students gets it, sees that what we’re doing in the classroom is important and might bring real benefits. Antonio would bring to class a new poem he’d been working on, and it was brilliant. You could see how thrilled he was by the positive feedback, and how much his poetry meant to all of us in class.

Why is creative writing a lifeline? (Drew) Would 3-part class in jail work in college? (Drew)

Creative writing can be a lifeline because it allows us to address whatever it is we have to deal with in our lives, to give form to it, to make it tangible, to give it some sort of meaning. The first step in dealing with any issue is to identify it. I know what it’s like to have no words for something horrible that happened to me. I know the relief I felt when I’d found words for it. Too often if you don’t find words for some trouble then it will wring the life out of you. Of course, there’s a lot of climbing to be done out of the deep pit even if you do have a lifeline, but without one, you’re lost.

I’d like to use the 3-part class that worked so well for us in the jail classroom in college, but if we did that then we wouldn’t do the workshopping part of the class that students expect. So, in my college classes we spend most of our time workshopping, and most of the students’ writing is done outside the classroom. The 3-part class—reading last week’s poems, free writing then reading our new poems—is pure creativity and I’d like to do that in college, just to generate as much new material as possible!

Did you meet prisoners after release? Did they go back to crime? (Micah)

Yes, I’d meet fairly often the formerly incarcerated “outside the walls.” Quite often a guy would come up to me in the supermarket or on the street and say, “Hey, you’re the guy who does the class at the jail, right? I really enjoyed it.” My daughters liked it when this happened--they were proud of me.

As you probably know, jails and prisons have rotating doors. I’d see guys back in jail after a short time out. They hadn’t addressed their underlying problems that had gotten them incarcerated in the first place, like addiction, and they’d gotten in trouble again. With a criminal record, it’s hard to get a job, hard to get an apartment, hard to live in society, easy to slip back into crime.

For more about this, see the brilliant book, The New Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander, which I discuss in my book about the class, Words Is a Powerful Thing. Alexander argues that the formerly incarcerated, with a higher percentage of minorities than the average population, are legally discriminated against in a way that was formerly seen in Jim Crow.

One thing people wouldn’t know unless they worked in a jail. (Sami)

There are a lot of things! A jail is a special world with its own rules, its own language, its own culture—its own smell. I think what most people don’t know about a jail is how much the incarcerated people are just like you and me, with similar concerns and joys, once you get past their immediate legal predicaments.

Working with an incarcerated population, getting to know some of them quite well, you soon realize that if a few things went against you—losing a job, illness, a bad break, an accident—you could quite easily be on the inside. I know that I took risks when I was young like drinking too much, trying drugs, that could have gone very badly wrong.

How many students in class? (Hailey). Challenging to teach them? What did you learn about yourself? (Hailey)

When I started teaching the class in 2001, the Programs Director and I would let everyone come to class who’d signed up so we ‘d often have more than twenty in the classroom. It’s hard to make that work for a writing class. We found that some guys were coming to class more for an outing than because they wanted to write.

So we restricted the class to guys who’d written something that they were planning to bring to class, and cut the number down to between 10 and 15, which tends to be a good sort of number for the work we were doing. With this smaller number, everyone had their chance to present their work to the group, and yet it was still a dynamic group with plenty of energy and different voices.

Were there other transformations like Antonio’s? (Tuenidi)

Antonio was the student who made the biggest transformation in the class. After 13 years of incarceration, he made the decision to change his life and stuck to it, in spite of temptations. His writing often enabled him to keep his head above the water. He knew if he hadn’t changed, then he’d have died in prison.

There were many other transformations. Guys came to class, did some writing often for the first time and surprised themselves by how much they enjoyed it. Feeling better about themselves and more positive about the future, after class they’d go back to the pod to make plans to keep out of trouble when they got out.

One of the best writers I worked with in the jail was Shane Crady. (I shared some of Shane’s poems at my presentation). He’d bring a stack of poems to class every week and when his turn came to read, he’d want to read ten new poems. At first, he read poems that deliberately violated our rules for the class and caused trouble. He said he was really angry and wanted to be disruptive. We told him that he couldn’t keep coming to class if he kept violating the rules. So he started choosing poems to read that didn’t cross the lines we’d set, and he loved the good feedback he got for his writing. He’d never done well in school (or in life), but in the jail classroom, he excelled!

Saddest most powerful thing people confronted? Where did class take place within jail? (Taya)

Inmates cried in class because they couldn’t see their kids, because they felt like they were letting their kids down, the way that often enough their own parents had failed them. But I think I saw even more tears about dogs that the guys had to give up when they were incarcerated.

I worked with young guys looking at long sentences, most often for drugrelated offenses, and I watched them try to come to terms with having large sections of their lives taken away from them. They probably knew that they’d be missing out on the key things that many people do in the middle years: get married, have families, establish careers. They’d be spending all their time trying to make it through long sentences, their “real” lives on hiatus.

The class took place in the main classroom in the jail. There was a smaller classroom connected, where at certain times there was a class attended by female inmates. The only way out of that second classroom was through the main classroom, and that’s when we had the problem of guys in our class trying to communicate with wives, girlfriends, friends in the other class, as the line of female students crossed the main classroom to the exit. Any sort of communication was absolutely against jail rules and yet so tempting. It led to tense moments before the line of women passed and the classroom door shut behind them.

What’s it like to be published? Any other books cooking? (Isaac)

It is a thrill every time to be published, to think that someone is interested enough in something I’ve written to want to publish it so that other people can read it. Poetry has a small audience, but it’s a passionate audience, and when my poems and stories go out there, I quite often get feedback of some sort. I love that. Publication does feel like a validation of something I’ve written: at least one person, the editor, was impressed.

The next book that I’ll see through the press as editor is the collection of Antonio Sanchez-Day’s poems, I’ve been fighting this war within myself. It will be published by Meadowlark Press at the beginning of 2023. I edited the poems Antonio left behind when he died in March 2021. Some of his family wrote tributes to him that will be included, and the book includes an endorsement by Jimmy Santiago Baca, a formerly incarcerated writer who won the National Book Award. (This book has now been published. April 2023)

Reading their stories, do you feel empathy for them? (Brooklyn)

Yes, very much so. I know what it’s like to be in trouble with a lot of people against me, so that even though I haven’t been incarcerated, I can relate. The writers write about their families, their kids, their medical troubles, their hopes, their struggles, their journeys, their dreams, things that happened to them as kids. I can relate.

Did poems help inmates connect with society while in jail? (Jade)

Yes. I’d quite often hear that a poem written in class had been sent out to Mom or to a wife or girlfriend, or to a daughter who was missed so much. Most of the guys were proud of what they wrote in class and wanted to share what they’d written with the people who mattered most to them. I think they wanted to show that they were doing good work in a bad place, that they were working on making things better.

Writing poems is quite similar to writing letters, in many ways, so we kept their pens moving!

What I heard most of all from incarcerated writers was that they feared being forgotten by their families and friends. This happens all the time as people “on the outs” get busy with their own lives and forget about the incarcerated. Writing is often the best connection between the incarcerated and those on the outside.

Ever felt nervous around them? (Hardie) . Ever nervous in class?

(Liam)

We had one fight in the class (as described in my book), which was nothing to do with the class, just two guys with a beef getting into it. We had a number of tense confrontations in the class, including one occasion when two guys were very close to starting a fight, but it didn’t quite explode. There was often a lot of tension between some of the guys, which is understandable with a lot of men living closely together, none of

them doing well and some of them with beefs against others from before they were incarcerated.

But I’d visited the jail so many times that I felt pretty confident about being there. And because the work was so important to me, I knew I’d keep coming in whatever happened.

How has it shaped how you are today? (Liam)

I’m proud of the work I did in the jail (and in other carceral institutions), proud of the book I wrote about it. I feel confident that I can be a teacher in most any situation, after doing this tough work for so long. I know that my work helped me to develop as an individual and member of the community.

As I can no longer work at the jail because of staffing shortages at the jail and Covid concerns, I’ve been volunteering at the Lawrence homeless shelter and liking this work very much too. Unfortunately, there’s quite a crossover between incarcerated and homeless populations.

Are inmates more engaged in the classroom than college students? (Calvin)

Yes, for the most part I found incarcerated writers more engaged than my college students. I heard very often that the writing class was the favorite event of the week for the writers, and much as my college students like their Creative Writing classes, they’re seldom the highlights of their weeks. Often enough, inmates have had “big losses” in their lives because of their troubles, losing families, money, housing, jobs, etc. The writing class was something good in their lives when a lot was not going well for them, so they clung onto it.

What other programs would you add to system? What to do with inmates who resist rehab? (Lexi)

We’d often talked about continuing the class outside of the walls so that the writers could keep writing on the outside too. We just couldn’t get that off the ground for various reasons, but just imagine a community writing class for formerly incarcerated writers and community members? Think how much good that would do in breaking down barriers between the formerly incarcerated and the community!

Dr. Reese asked me about “evil.” Some guys I worked with had no remorse for what they’d done and saw incarceration as a temporary pause in their criminality. Though some people advocate for the complete abolition of the prison system, I think most people agree that for those individuals who will keep going back to crime, incarceration needs to be an option.

Favorite thing about jail teaching? What does writing poetry help inmates in jail then when they get out? (Rachel)

My favorite thing about teaching at the jail was beginning class and wondering about everything good that would happen in the next

two hours. Most always there was outstanding writing by one of the established writers, or maybe a new writer, in class for the first time. At the end of class, after the guys had been escorted back to their pods, we’d often say, “Wow!”

For the most part, I didn’t see what became of our writers once they got out. I do know that their lives would speed up, especially if they got back into the bad habits of addiction that had caused their troubles in the first place. But I know a few of our students at least were able to live their lives a little better because of their work in the class. Even if they hadn’t evicted their demons, at least they’d learned how to better control them, and that is a lot, a lot. I know from my own experience.

Words Is a Powerful Thing: Twenty Years of Teaching Creative Writing at Douglas County Jail. Brian Daldorph. University of Kansas Press. 2021. Kansas Poems. Brian Daldorph. Meadowlark Press, 2021.

I’ve been fighting this war within myself: The Poetry of Antonio SanchezDay. Antonio Sanchez-Day. Meadowlark Press. 2023.

This pen and paper Antonio Sanchez-Day

This

Performing Past Potential

by Brady Klassen

Everyone has an idea of what it takes to become an expert in a specific craft. Ten thousand hours of practice, discipline, and determination are attributes that first come to mind. All of those are required to master the sport of archery. Depending on the type of competition, an archer is expected to hit the bullseye anywhere between 90 to 144 times in a row, and if they do not, their competitors will. For that reason, archers spend hours training to perfect their form and fine-tune their bow. Archers must use specific muscles to effectively fire the arrow while relaxing all other muscles to conserve energy. The equipment itself can be fine-tuned with extreme precision, like how many experienced archers add twists in their strings to subtly perfect the bow’s draw length to a sixty-fourth of an inch, or how archers add weights to the bow to help stabilize any naturally occurring body movements that translate into the archer’s sight. However, with all this practice and equipment tuning, archers rarely reach their full potential. They may shoot perfect scores in practice but fail to meet their expectations in a tournament setting. They may shoot an arrow that lands just outside the bullseye and throw a fit, slamming their bow on the ground as they spiral downward into an increasingly worse state of performance. But why? When an archer has put in countless hours of training and gained the skills required to perform, why do they choke when it matters most?

Most archers --and most people in general-- live with an internal dialogue that threatens their self-image. Ever stumble on your own words and ask yourself how you could be so stupid? Or have you scrolled for hours on social media, comparing yourself negatively to others? It is human to beat yourself up and over-critique who you are, but it can become a dangerous habit. Think of this negative internal dialogue as something that you practice. The more you do it, the easier it becomes. Many archers unintentionally practice this negative self-talk. When an arrow does not land where the archer wanted it to, or when the shot doesn’t feel the way it’s supposed to, archers tend to fixate on that issue, forgetting all the arrows that they executed well. They may say things like, “I just cannot hold in the center” or “I can never get my shots feeling the way I want” which destroys any previous perceptions of success they had.

If someone wishes to perform at their best, whether that is on the shooting line or anywhere else in life, they must develop a better

relationship between the conscious and subconscious mind as detailed in Feeling is the Secret by Neville Goddard. He explains that the conscious mind controls our thoughts and awareness, whereas our subconscious mind deals with our reactions and beliefs. Think of the conscious mind as male and the subconscious mind as female. The male conscious mind constantly tries to persuade the female subconscious mind. It does not take demands; it can only be persuaded. So, the more often the male conscious mind persuades the female subconscious mind of something, the more the female subconscious mind will believe whatever the conscious mind is telling. Take, for example, someone who stutters; if they constantly tell themselves that they are incapable of speaking in front of others, their subconscious mind agrees. But the opposite thought process can be developed over time and training. Want to become better at speaking in public? It all starts by telling yourself you already can speak in front of others, and with constant practice, your subconscious mind will soon agree with that statement instead. It is important to note, however, that the human brain is good at deciphering fact from fiction, so it is important to emphasize that this practice works with changing one’s beliefs in themselves, not with something factual and, for the most part, unchangeable. For example, telling yourself it is warm outside when it is the middle of winter will likely not get rid of any shivers or jittering teeth.

So how can an archer use this to perform at their best? What does this look like when it is put into practice? I tested this out during a scoring round of 30 arrows where the best possible score is out of 300 where Xs are used for tie-breaks and bragging rights. Before every arrow, I would look at the target and tell myself consciously something positive to relay to my subconscious, usually telling myself that I can hold dead still in the middle of the target and that it is like me to use my back muscles to activate the shot. I instantly started shooting better-feeling shots. My arrows landed exactly in the bullseye, rather than barely catching the point. Every time I shot the bullseye, I took a moment to consciously highlight the proof of my abilities to my subconscious, repeating the process every arrow after. My first arrow on the second target hit low in the nine-scoring ring. I kept aiming at the hole it made for the next three ends, continuing to hit low. I finally decided to repair the paper and cover up the hole. Before I shot another arrow at that problematic target, I took an extra couple of seconds to tell myself that I aim perfectly in the middle and that I perform my best on my second target. The next shot could not have been any better. As my release went off and I followed through, I watched my arrow find the bullseye like a laser beam. I turned what was an obstacle and flipped it to better my performance, all by changing my thought process.

I finished with a score of 296 out of three hundred with 23 X’s. It is not quite a personal best for me, which was a 300 with 28 X’s, but I was still incredibly proud of myself. After the COVID-19 pandemic, I developed severe anxiety about my performance. I was unable to aim at the target and execute a shot. It got so bad that pulling back the bow itself became

a challenge because every time I did, my subconscious would force me to release before I even got set up to start aiming. I had to start from scratch, relearning how to fire an arrow with the proper muscles and pulling with my back while aiming at a target. I had to shoot a specifically designed release that would only fire the bow when I used the correct muscles and pulled hard enough. I went through all that earlier this year. Now, I am almost back to the level of performance I am capable of. By developing my subconscious mind to help rather than hinder me when I perform, my archery performance has improved drastically.

I encourage every archer to practice developing their subconscious mind to improve their performance. I even recommend anyone seeking improvement within any area of life to strengthen the relationship between their conscious and subconscious minds. How you talk to yourself can drastically change your performance and mental health, for better or worse.

The 2022 World Field Championships

by Brady Klassen

A Japanese Night

by Daniel Roche

Note: The stories here are based on true events. They have been reorganized to fit one night. The names of the people involved have been changed to protect relationships and their secrets.

“Maybe we should watch a movie at some point,” she says.

My heartbeat elevates. My body temperature rises.

“Sure,” I answer, “that could be cool.”

From nothing, something.

“It looks like maybe we will have to find a different night,” she says, looking at the bottle in my hand.

I laugh, “Yeah, maybe you’re right.”

“Well,” she smiles. That smile. “You have a good time,” she winks. I smile back, dumbfounded.

She turns away, walking back down the hallway to her room.

Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit. This is not happening right now. This is not. What am I even supposed to say after that? Nothing? Good Lord, could it have gone any worse? I turn and find myself rushing down the hallway. Am I really running away? Why did it have to be her? I was just trying to have a nice night with Alex. We were gonna go to the onsen, drink a bottle of Suntory whiskey, and play some cards. Maybe even write a song. A simple night. Couldn’t I run into someone else? Anyone else?

I can still smell her. A mix of lavender shampoo and vanilla perfume. Her raven hair is still in my mind’s eye. She had it permed. The curls are new. I like them. A lot. Almost as much as the three small moles on her cheek, just below her right eye. They make a triangle. It feels like Bermuda. I could be lost forever.

Uh-oh.

Now I am heading in the wrong direction. Did I pass that tiger before? No wonder they call this the Maze Hotel. What was the actual name again? Marumori? No, that is the one that overlooks the ocean.

Furutakiya? All these Japanese names get mixed up in my head. Except one. I can’t get her name out of my head.

Focus.

Find the stupid, sketchy elevator and get to the right floor. If you would’ve done that in the first place this wouldn’t have happened. Did you do that on purpose? Get off on the wrong floor? No. You were just confused. Nothing to worry about. What time is it? 21:33.23 Another corner passes by. Was that a left turn? It would’ve been a right on the way up. Oh no. Should I call someone? Alex? No. He’d only tease me. Plus, he probably can’t see straight right now. Justin? Also, no. He’d be more lost than I am. I guess I could call Soma. Soma will know. He’s the Stage Manager. He’s stayed here hundreds of times.

I pull out my phone. His name comes up. Ring…ring…ri—answer. “Hello?” Groggy.

“Shit…did I wake you up?”

He laughs, “No worries, brother. What’s up?”

“I’m lost,” I say. “Extra lost.”

“Just tell me kind of where you are.” He has done this before.

I give him a description of my surroundings. I am on the fourth floor of the main building. Our hostel is split into three. The top section is built into the side of a cliff and another section connects the main building to the top, making the hotel a labyrinth. The main building is seven floors. The third floor isn’t accessible by the elevator. I think it is where they store the bodies of people who get lost in the maze. A long hallway connects the main building to the top section. Soma tells me to turn at the dragon painting, walk past the red and white urn, and I’ll be at the elevator. Easier said than done. I thank him and hang up the phone, looking up and down the hallway. No dragons. Maybe I’ll just pick a direction. Right or left?

Left.

I walk, slowly, taking in every detail of the hallway. The brown walls with odd pimply texture, the fluorescent lights, and the…that isn’t a dragon. Fuck me. What even is that? Buddha and the devil combined? Left was not the right choice. I turn around and head back down the hallway. The fluorescent lights are not helpful. I feel like my brain is on fire. I check my watch again. 21:42.47 I can’t think straight, let alone find my way back to my room. If I just pick a direction and walk to the end of the hallway, I’ll eventually hit the stairs.

I keep walking until I see the end of the hallway. There is a window, flashing with light from the outside. I walk to the window and pull the curtain to look through the rain spattered window into Japan.

A starless sky, A clouded moon, We can’t seem to get by, It’ll be over soon.

I readjust the curtains, blocking out the city. There isn’t enough time to ponder the sky. The hallway still flickers with fluorescent light. I turn, looking back to where I came from. I don’t see anyone. Everyone is doing what they can to prepare for tomorrow. Tomorrow is going to be a long day. An all day bus ride. Which brings with it new challenges.

Will Alex sit by me, or will he trade places so that he can sit with Katie? He was the one who wanted to be bus partners. “I want my first and only tour to be spent with my friends.” That’s what he said, but now he doesn’t even sit with me! I wonder if Alex even knows Katie and Quinn are together. Alex hasn’t been around for the last few years. A lot has changed since our “New Kid Year,” our first year in the performing group. Knowing Alex, he does know. He just doesn’t care.

Alex and Katie have always had a spark. Sly glances at each other and physical contact that lasts just a little…too…long. I see it. Everyone sees it. But no one is very confident in Katie and Quinn right now, so the glances and touches go uncontested. But not unnoticed. They make each other smile. They both deserve to smile. Even if the smile is forbidden.

There it is. The dragon picture. Relief washes over me. Thank the Lord. And it’s only…21:46.55. Still plenty of night left. I continue my journey down the dragon hallway which leads me to the red and white urn. It sits in the corner of the hallway with a large painting hanging over it. I could stand here gazing at it for hours. I don’t know what it is. The swoops of color are soothing. The blues and greens calm me down. It helps me—

“Whatcha doing?”

I jump, “Christ, La, I almost punched you!” I quickly put the bottle in my hand smoothly into my jacket. It isn’t a secret that we drink on tour, but we definitely are not supposed to.

She laughs, her thick, blonde curls bouncing. “You were totally zoned out.” Isn’t that the truth. “What are you still doing up?”

I wish I could explain, I

The words to tell you

The millions of thoughts in my brain.

“We have a long ride tomorrow!” The Company Manager is showing through.

Lauren is the Company Manager for the tour. This basically means she is the cast mom. She makes sure everyone is happy, healthy, and thriving. She’s got a lot to deal with: going to the hospital with injured cast members, talking with contacts (leaders who bring our group to their town), making sure the cast has food, a place to stay, and dealing with all of our worried parents. All this on top of the normal responsibilities a cast

wish I had the words.

member has: performing, teaching, and caring for the students that take our workshops. I’ve never met another person with her work ethic or her ability to make you feel better with a few simple words.

I sigh, “I know, I know. I just got a little lost, that’s all.”

“You wouldn’t be the first!” She puts her arm around me, “I just walked Alex back to your room actually.”

Alex is out too? That dumbass. I hope he’s sober. If not we’re both screwed.

“Maybe you can do the same for me?”

“Awesome,” she says, guiding me toward the elevator.

The walk back is uneventful. I find myself relaxing and enjoying La’s company. Two Nebraska kids in a country we don’t know, but we find connections. Nebraska life is imprinted on us. Unbearable humidity in the summer, flash floods in the spring, blizzards in the winter, and the crinkle of dried leaves in the fall. We talk of families we miss, nieces and nephews we haven’t had the chance to meet yet, and parents who are always worrying. The distance from home is always taxing, especially on newer cast members.

“How many tours have you been on, La?”

“A lot. I’m an obachan.” She laughs.

“Grandma? I wouldn’t say that! You’re just experienced,” I say with a wink.

We walk along in silence for a few moments.

“Did you get the notification at your home stay a few weeks ago?” she asks.

A home stay is a family that takes care of us for the duration of a workshop.

“Which one are you talking about?”

“The one super early in the morning. The whole TV screen turned red and an emergency alert went off,” she explains.

Right. This alert was the talk of the cast for the last few weeks.

“Yeah, we were at breakfast,” I say. “My home stay said it was pretty normal recently, but no one is worrying about it. He said it was more just routine for the Japanese government.”

North Korea is testing new missiles. They are shooting them over the islands of Japan into the Pacific Ocean. Many of our parents are worried. Lauren, being the Company Manager, has had to field all of the frantic emails and phone calls from directors and parents. There has been

some talk about canceling the tour and bringing us all home. We wouldn’t stand for that. This is our life. We’ve given everything to be here. There is no way we’re going home. We live fully dedicated to our cast, students, and tours.

“I guess,” she replies. “How are your parents handling it?”

“I’m not the best communicator,” I laugh. “I think they’re okay. No news is good news.”

“Hopefully it will all pass by soon,” she says. “Here’s your door.”

“Thanks.”

I slide the door open.

“You have a good night. Think you can make it to the elevator in the morning?” She smiles.

“Yeah, Alex and I will find it together,” I laugh as I pull the door shut. “Goodnight, La La!”

“Goodnight!”

I turn and take in the tatami mat room. It is all very non-American. I love it. The slightly musty smell of the old room, the warm yellow of the lights, and the hiss of the shower greet me. There are four mats laid out for the night. Each contains a sheet, a pillow, and a blanket. They are in different corners of the room. Guys don’t enjoy sleeping next to other guys. Especially when the room is as warm as it has been. I feel the sweat start to roll down my back. A bug is buzzing in the screen of the open window. The sounds of the city and drizzle of rain leak in. The old room mixes with the modern world outside.

I take off my shoes before I take the step up into the room. In my socks, I cross the small space in six steps. The window is open and the flashing lights of the city pierce my eyes. Small pinpricks of car lights zoom past, their tires zipping through puddles. I look down at my watch. The black numbers glare up at me. 22:01.10…11…12…13 I look up. A whisper of wind brushes my hair.

Rest now, be still, You’ve had your time of thrill. It’s time to be still.

I hear the shower trickle off and the gurgle of the drain. Without the noise of the water I hear a song playing…Because I might just cry if I don’t keep it moving / I focus on what I can make and not what just got ruined / ‘Cause every stone will crumble down to dust, to dust, to dust—the song goes quiet. Alex must be finished. I can hear him working through an aftershower routine. I don’t know what his routine is, but I have a few minutes

before he finishes and the room is no longer mine.

I breathe in the fresh air from the outside one more time, pulling the window shut. I am sweating now, but the nights have been chilly. I walk back to my mat and lie down. I reach into my coat and pull out the bottle of golden liquid. I twist the lid. The crack of the seal is satisfying, almost as satisfying as the feel of the whisky down my throat. The burn is refreshing. I close my eyes and let my mind relax and wander. I think back to the first time I was in Japan.

Walking off the plane was surreal. The signs were all in a language I didn’t understand. I couldn’t recognize any of the letters. Each one looked like a little picture. I didn’t know where to go or even where the bathroom was. I quickly realized life in America had not prepared me for anything I was about to experience. Millions of people walked the streets of Tokyo, and I was only one. The world was bigger than I ever imagined. I saw more people on that first day than I had seen in my entire life.

My hometown was not the smallest town, but it was nothing compared to Tokyo. I remember walking downtown, one little street, and feeling overwhelmed. I walked past bars and small shops wondering when it would be me behind those windows. My friends and I surrounding the bar, taking shots on someone’s twenty-first birthday. Instead, I missed out on the normal college experience. Many of my friends from back home went to college together or at least met up on weekends and holidays. I don’t speak to many of them anymore. Time zones are a killer, but they weren’t the only thing keeping me from reaching out.

I am not the same person I was. My life is changing and I am changing with it. What if my friends and I no longer see eye to eye? My life carried me far away from the small-town values and influences we shared.

Where to look, Where

to find, Inside a book, Or in your mind?

Thoughts are free.

No one can censor

What my mind is trying to be.

I open my eyes. Who drank my bottle? I stand—

Try to stand. I drank it. I definitely drank it.

Instead of standing, I roll over to the black cloth guitar case. Giggling to myself, I pull out Alex’s guitar and get myself into a sitting position on one of the other mats. I strum a few chords and let the strings

ring. I rifle through the case until I find my journal. I keep it in the case so we can write whenever inspiration hits us.

There is a shuffle as the bathroom door opens.

“Hey, buddy!” Alex stands, framed in the doorway, with only a smile.

“WHOA!” I exclaim, covering my eyes. “Careful where you point that thing!”

“My room, my rules,” he says.

“Our room,” I smile, throwing my notebook towards him. Dodging the missile, he makes his way over to me. “That was a terrible throw. You feeling okay there, buddy?”

I hold up the empty bottle. “I feel fantastic, asshole.”

“Hey,” he smirks, “I thought we were going to drink that together!”

I glare at him. “We were. And then I waited in the bathhouse for an hour. You never showed up.”

“Come on, man.” He shrugs. “I was going to show up. I really was, but I had another…engagement…”

“Her name is Katie,” I shoot back. “She isn’t an ‘engagement.’”

I must’ve guessed correctly. I can see his cheeks start to flush.

“Shut up,” he says as he pulls his clothes on.

With the whisky’s influence, I sing, “Alex loves Katie / He don’t know what to say / He traveled all this way / and his heart’s been traded away / Never in his life / would he think of having a wife / He doesn—!”

The pillow interrupts me with a whoosh and a pop as it hits my face. I do what I can to pull away, but the wall connects, solidly, with the back of my head.

“Fuck,” I whisper, grabbing the back of my head. “You suck.”

“You deserve it,” he says. “What if someone heard you?”

“Why does it matter? No one really cares. Everyone knows that you guys make each other happy. We’re all jealous.”

The corners of his electric blue eyes crinkle as he smiles. He pulls his blonde hair up and out of his face. Alex is the most practical. Especially when it comes to love. He gives his heart to the person who is closest and willing to hold on to it. This makes things complicated at times, but he does it over and over. I know that one day it will work out for him. He will find someone who will hold on to him for more than a few months. He is a wonderful man: funny, strong, a person people want to be around. I look up to him.

“Wake up, Buttercup,” he says. He is sitting right in front of me. I look up, realizing I have been daydreaming. “Sorry, thinking.”

“What are you thinking about?”

Conversation, conversation. How should I act in this situation?

I want to know which way to go, Should I go fast?

Or should I go slow?

Maybe I’ll sit and let things continue, Letting things pass until, finally, She sees me as more.

Someone to share the journey, Someone who makes life less of a chore, Someone with whom she doesn’t have to worry.

“Nothing,” I sigh, pulling my mind back into my head.

“I see,” he starts. “So what you’re really saying is you need another bottle?”

I look up into his electric eyes and know he is serious. I smirk, “You’ll have to help me up, dude.”

I offer him my hand and he helps me to my feet. I take a deep breath and steady myself. With one arm around Alex’s shoulders, we make our way to the door. He helps me sit down. I reach out and grab my shoes: The Original New Arrival 2017 Adidas Bounce Men’s Running Shoes Sneakers in dark gray. I had just bought them a few days ago when we stopped in Harajuku. Takeshita street to be exact.

I remember feeling overwhelmed with the sheer volume of people. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. Thousands of people flooded a street that is roughly the length of four football fields. I am claustrophobic, especially when it comes to small, indoor spaces. Elevators and trains are my worst enemies. Takeshita street made me claustrophobic, but I was outside. There was no escape. I stumbled blindly into a back alley that wasn’t as crowded.

I leaned up against the wall of the alley. The building was a clothing store. It contained mountains of mass-produced shirts, pants, and jewelry. It was there I found my breath again. I stayed and leaned against this store, breathing, for what seemed like hours.

The walls were older. They showed the age of the area I was in.

The flashing lights of the main part of Takeshita street were hiding its age, trying to show a bright, new future.

I would’ve stayed longer, but this alley had stores. They were smaller, run by older men and women who looked as old as the walls. One woman, a shop owner, saw me trying to catch my breath and came up to me.

“Daijōbudesu ka?” She asked. Are you okay?

“Yes,” I said, “Hai, daijōbudesu, I’m okay.”

She smiled and offered me her aged hand. It was gentle. We could barely understand each other’s words, but she was still compassionate. The little Japanese I knew helped me communicate the basics as we walked over to her small store, more of a hut really. She smiled as she showed me the items she had for sale. I bought a ring from her. I wanted to repay her for her compassion. It was a simple silver band. She indicated she could engrave it for me by showing me examples of what she could do.

“Yes,” I replied, “Hai, I like it. Daisuki.”

“Nandeshou?” She asked. What do you want? She was helping me. This wasn’t the proper use of this word, but she knew I would understand.

“Nihon,” I replied. Japan.

She went to work. It was a simple interaction, civilized and kind. She was wonderful. I felt so calm in this alley. There were still many people, but I was in my own world with this woman. We had an understanding. It soothed me.

She handed the ring back to me.

The small characters were beautifully written. I slipped the ring around the middle finger of my right hand.

“Arigatōgozaimasu,” I said with a slight bow.

She smiled and waved as I turned and made my way back to Takeshita Street.

The silver of my ring catches the light and reminds me of that elderly woman. I wonder what she’s doing now. She has gone home from the little stall in the alley, I am sure about that, but I wonder if she is with her family. If she has a husband or a son to go home to.

“Brother,” Alex says, “are you doing okay?

Kazoku,

To see us through,

To push and pull, To help and mold, Not just do as you’re told. Challenge and grow, Through the ebb and the flow, Step by step, don’t you know. In the darkness and the glow. Give me a paddle and I’ll row Pushing on til the end, Hand in hand, When you need a friend.

“Kazoku,” I whisper.

“Family?” He asks.

“Yeah,” I reply, “just thinking a lot tonight.”

“Seems like the perfect time for a distraction,” he smiles.

I laugh as he helps me put on my shoes. 22:33.42 The whisky has taken full hold of my mind. Everything seems to be flying past as he guides me toward the elevator. My mind is focusing on things in a more specific way than normal. I see the glowing lights of the buttons as we enter the elevator and the blinking numbers as the floors pass by, but I can’t tell what color the walls are. I blink and we are in the hotel lobby. There is a small group of people there. Some are from our cast and we wave as we pass by.

“Don’t say a word,” Alex whispers. “They’ll know you’re trashed.”

“True,” I whisper back, “but they also won’t care! They’ll join us!”

“You’re right. But I could use one night of not getting interrogated about Katie.”

“Fine, fine,” I say, barely listening. I make my wave slightly bigger, more enthusiastic.

Alex did what he could to pull me out the front door of the hotel, but one cast member, Jake, made eye contact with me and I waved at him to follow us out.

“Hey, boys!” He says as the automatic doors slide closed behind him. “What are you up to on this fine night?”

That’s Jake for you. Always happy, always enthusiastic.

“You got a cigarette?” I ask, as we step into the light rain.

“He’s drunk,” Jake says to Alex.

“How’d you guess?”

“Matt only smokes when he’s drunk.” Jake says plainly.

Alex laughs and answers, “We’re going to Lawson to get more whisky and, apparently, cigarettes.”

“Well, don’t worry about the cigarette,” Jake says. A small blue and black box reveals itself from Jake’s pocket: Mevius Frozen menthols.

“Thank God,” I say.

Alex laughs. “Thanking God for the damage you’re about to do to your lungs?”

“Shut up, Mr. Engagement,” I spit back.

“Woah, woah,” Jake says as he helps me light my cigarette, “what is that supposed to mean?”

“Matt, don’t,” Alex says quietly.

“Look, Alex, it isn’t anything to be ashamed of! You like her. That’s the best feeling ever. That is freaking awesome, brother! I’m stuck in a relationship I hate, in love with a girl who isn’t my girlfriend and has a boyfriend, and I don’t have the balls to do what I actually want!” I am yelling now. I lean down and place my hands on my knees.

My breathing is ragged. It is echoing off of the empty street. I take a long drag and hold on to it. I close my eyes.

We feel like we’re floating, But we’re trying to break free. Stuck inside a sheltered coating, Hoping life has a meaning for me. My goals passing uncaptured. I’m patiently waiting for the rapture, When all the questions in my mind will be answered.

“Damn.” Jake says. I breathe smoke out of my nose. It burns as it rises from my lungs.

Alex leans down to me and puts his hand on my back. “Brother.”

22:57.12 Here we are, standing in the middle of the street in Japan. Our dirty laundry hanging out every window; Jake as our only witness.

“I hate this shit,” I whisper. “I just want a few seconds to breathe, goddamn it.” I take another drag.

“Agreed,” Alex whispers.

“Come on,” Jake says, breaking the tension. “I’ll buy you guys your next bottle.”

We all walk quietly to the convenience store, Jake leading, Alex and I, arms around each other, following. I watch the smoke from my Mevius spiral into the night.

There is a ding as the door slides open, and Jake walks in. The store is burning with white light. I see another group from our cast.

“Shit,” I whisper.

“What?” Alex asks quietly.

“Hina is here.” Lavender and vanilla fill my nose as I see her raven curls clashing with the store’s white walls.

“It’s okay,” Alex reassures me. “We will just go in quick and get some Suntory and bolt. Don’t—” He takes his arm off my shoulders.

“What?” I whisper.

“Katie is here too,” he says. “They’re here together.”

I take one last drag beside the ashtray at the door. 23:01.57

I look into Alex’s electric eyes. “Well, it’s unavoidable now.”

“Well it looks like we have some decisions to make,” he smiles as he puts his arm around my shoulders again.

We walk through the sliding doors into the white lights and are greeted by a few of the other cast members. We wave in response, looking around for the alcohol aisle. Jake waves us over to where he is standing.

“Everything okay?” He asks.

“Yeah, yeah,” I respond. I know this is not the best time for Alex and me to be opening our souls.

“Alright,” Jake says, “I know what I would buy, but what do you boys like?”

“Suntory,” Alex says, looking over his shoulder. “The one with the yellow label.”

Jake reaches out and heads to the cashier as we look around, doing what we can to keep our heads down.

“I’m going to get a cup of ramen. I’ll meet you outside.” Alex turns to walk away.

I catch his arm. “Don’t ditch me for an engagement,” I whisper.

He smiles. “No worries.”

I watch him disappear around the corner of the aisle. I look back to the alcohol in front of me. I feel weird. My first drink wasn’t at home, it wasn’t with my high school friends. It was in Japan with people that I have only known for a few years. I still have anxiety about drinking, especially because I signed a contract stating I won’t drink on tour. But it has become common practice among cast members. Even the tour leaders, Company Managers and Stage Managers, take part. It has become a rule enforced only when it is necessary. The actual policy is cast members caught drinking or doing drugs on tour are supposed to be kicked off tour. This never happens. I have been on four tours, and someone is always drinking. No one is ever sent home.

I feel Alex’s hand on my arm. “Find what you were looking for?” I ask.

Why do I smell vanilla?

“Maybe,” she answers.

I feel my breath catch in my throat.

I breathe out slowly, “Maybe I can help,” I can hear myself saying. Shit. Why do I do this?

“I thought you were doing something tonight?” She says it as a question.

“Yeah,” I answer, “we had planned something, but it didn’t really happen the way we wanted it to.” Her hand is still on my arm. She has small hands, slim, and pretty. I can feel the ring on her middle finger. She laughs. It’s music in my ears. “I hope you find something to do!”

“Maybe we can watch that movie,” I say. Don’t do that! Why do you do that?

“I’ll go see if Katie and Alex want to!” She says.

Alex and Katie? That fucking dick. I can’t leave him alone for one second. He didn’t want ramen. Asshole. I look around the store until I see his blonde hair bouncing as he laughs.

Hina takes a few steps and then turns back to me. “You coming?”

Absolutely I am. Of course I am. I will love every second I get to spend with you.

“Yeah,” I answer, keeping my cool, “I’m just going to grab a coffee real quick.”

I turn and walk to the back of the store, taking a few deep breaths as I go. I know coffee isn’t a cure-all when you are drunk, but I am willing to try anything at this point. The nice thing about Japan is they sell hot

coffee in a can like Coke. I reach into the little area marked with “HOT” in white letters on a red background and pull out the first can I can get my hand around.

The black and gold can reads: “Tully’s coffee.” The letters B-L-AC-K are jumping out at me. This might be exactly what I need. I walk to the cashier and pay.

“You ready?” Alex asks.

“I guess,” I say, “I didn’t realize you had a secret agenda.”

“I didn’t! I’m just trying to balance my friends and my engagements.”

I laugh and punch him in the arm.

“Ready?” I look around and see Katie speaking.

“Heck yeah,” Alex answers.

Alex grabs the whisky from Jake and we say our goodbyes as we walk out of the convenience store. 23:18.58 The rain stopped and the clouds are moving away. I breathe in. The air is cool. It refreshes my lungs and my mind.

A breath of freshness can leave us breathless, Or fill our lungs to the fullest. It can help us reassess, Things that need to be addressed.

A breath can be cleansing and even convinces Us to make moves we never imagined; New steps to take, keeping us awake With tragic action filled with passion.

I release the air from my lungs and look around, seeing who is with us. It’s like a double date now. Alex and Katie, Hina and I. This is not how I saw this night going.

I hear the crack of the Suntory bottle. In response, I open my coffee. It has a similar cracking sound, and Alex turns to toast me. I take a long drink and feel warmth spread through my body. I smile, looking up at the sky. The street lights block out the lights of the heavens.

“You ever wonder what it would look like if all of Japan had a blackout?” I ask. The question isn’t aimed at anyone in particular, but Hina is the one who responds.

“Yes,” she says, smiling. I love her smile. “I think the sky would be incredible.”

“Yeah,” Katie says. “I think that it would be beautiful.”

Alex simply nods in agreement.

“Fireworks that never fade,” I say.

The lobby of the hotel feels different as we enter. It is empty. Even the members of our cast wandered back to their rooms. The four of us walk silently to the elevator and ride back up to the top floor of the main building. Instead of taking the normal way back up to our block of rooms, Alex walks down a side hallway.

“I found this while I was wandering earlier,” he says, leading the way.

We all follow him. The silence is a welcome distraction. It seems we are in a new world. The hotel is no longer bustling with people, but deathly silent. Alex leads us up a few steps to a long hallway. 23:33.54

“Matt,” he whispers, “help me open all these windows.”

I walk up to him and notice that one entire side of the hallway is lined with windows that have the shades pulled. We spend the next few minutes pulling all the shades open. The slight shhhht of the blinds being pulled is the only sound echoing in the silence. As Alex and I reach the end of the hallway I feel a small hand grab mine. I can feel the cool metal of the ring on her middle finger.

She pulls me to the middle of the hallway. “Look, you can see some stars from up here.”

She’s right. I can see the slight specks of light winking at us out of the vast black of the night sky. They aren’t the brightest, but I don’t want to be anywhere but here. I look at Hina, her eyes are sparkling in the half light shining through the windows. I take a deep breath of lavender and vanilla and squeeze her hand slightly.

“Beautiful,” I whisper, never taking my eyes off of her. You’re beautiful.

“Come here guys!” She calls the others.

Alex walks up next to me. I can see he has his arm around Katie. They are sharing a smile. He puts his hand on my shoulder. I place my hand on his, and we simply stand, enjoying each other’s company. The world is passing and we are watching it spin. I can feel the connections between us. Hand in hand. Hand to shoulder. Arm to shoulder. We are in this together and that is beautiful. Four friends, messy, crazy, loving friends. I can feel seconds ticking by, but this is far from a waste of time. This is the best way to spend time, with people you adore.

Alex adds some pressure to my shoulder. It is time to go. We make eye contact.

“Ready, brother?” He asks.

“Absolutely.”

We walk the rest of the way to the room, avoiding the main hallways. There is something wonderful about secrecy. We are in it together, and we are the only four that matter. No parents, no company managers, no one but us.

We reach the room and slide the door open. It seems our other roommates have found somewhere else to stay. Alex and I clean up the room a little, while Hina and Katie line up two of the mats next to each other. I pull open my laptop and Alex logs into his Amazon account to find the movie. I walk over and flip the light switch as the movie begins to play.

Hina and Katie are lying comfortably in the middle of the two mats, so Alex and I take our place on either side of them. I am very aware of Hina lying next to me. Her arm is laying softly against mine. I can’t keep my eyes on the movie.

23:54.12 The movie is still playing, but I can hear the others breathing deeply, asleep. Hina has her head resting on my chest. And her arm wrapped around me. I don’t want to move. If I move, the moment will end. Instead, I sit in the moment. I take in everything I can. In the glow of the computer screen I see her slim hand, her raven curls, her triangle of moles just below her eye.

Just do what you want. But…

I feel so anxious. But I have no idea what’s happening. So many options, I’m lost, I’m low, I can’t, Let. Go.

00.00.00…1…2…3…I lean down and kiss the top of her raven curls. She looks up at me, “Close.”

“What?” I whisper.

“Come here,” she says.

I slide myself down until I am lying next to her. Face to face.

“Kiss me,” she whispers.

And I do. I kiss her. And I don’t regret it for a second.

The Race Through Life

by Alicia Aviles

The smell of methanol fuel, the roar of the engine, the checkered flag. That was my whole childhood. I watched my uncle Scott Hartsock race the biggest truck circuit in America, Monster Jam, every weekend going to a new venue or stadium. I remember the tires being taller than me and the sound from the crowds being so loud that I couldn’t hear myself think. I loved the environment; it consumed me, and I knew that someday I would, like Scott, be a wonderful, charismatic person, with a kind heart.

Scott started his career in 1992 with a debut in Naples, Florida. He inevitably rolled the truck but fell in love with the sport. I remember him telling me this story and thinking that maybe he should just give up. But he never gave up on any of his endeavors and this one was no different. I remember that day was the day I knew that anything I was going to do in life I would love with my whole heart like he did.

He paved the way for so many young racers after him and came to be very close with them as well. He would guide them on how to be better racers and he loved seeing them come into their own and become great racers just like he did all those years ago. He had the biggest heart on the circuit.

At one point Scott needed more crew members, but he didn’t really trust anyone who wasn’t family. But against his better judgement he hired a crew chief to help with truck repairs and day to day shop work. His name was Jeff Sinn, and Scott gave him his start in the world of Monster Jam. They toured the country and Jeff learned all the ins and outs of the 12,000-pound wrecking machine, The Gunslinger. Eventually Scott felt confident enough in Jeff’s work that he didn’t even question his judgement. The greatest memory of the road Scott had with Jeff is one Sunday he called up Jeff and said he was late. Jeff sprung out of bed and ran over to the track to find the truck already packed up. Scott then told him it was family day and that he was to be there. He treated Jeff just like his own son. That is the day that Jeff knew he wanted this to be his career. The family aspect did not just ring true on the track but also off the track.

Even after Scott’s passing, Jeff continued his career. He was the crew chief for Cody Saucier in the Monster Energy Monster Truck. He took him to three world championships, and they developed a bond just as

good as the one he had with Scott. He recently moved over to one of the most well-known racing teams in the world. Now he crews for the black and green wrecking machine, Grave Digger--the truck that single handedly started Monster Jam, the driver being the son of the man, the myth, the legend, Dennis Anderson. Adam Anderson knew he had a lot to live up to; Jeff makes sure he has the tools to do so, just as he did for my uncle Scott. Jeff now teaches others how to be an all-around crew chief, and wellrounded team member.

After Scott’s prime, the industry still recognized him as one of the greats. A huge entertainment company, Feld Entertainment, the owners of Monster Jam, would call him up all the time for anything from how to make the tracks better, to what crazy jump they should try next. Scott always cautioned them though. He said that they could make the show as big and as crazy as they wanted but the people come to the shows for the up-close experience and having drivers treat them as they would a friend as opposed to beneath them. As a kid that atmosphere, the one that was completely encompassing my life, was family oriented. Drivers would pick you up and sit you on the wheel of that huge truck, a wheel that, back then, you could probably sit inside, no issue. That is the experience that draws people, not some crazy jump, that just adds to it. As a kid a pretty famous Monster Jam driver, Tom Meents, the driver of Max-D or Maximum Destruction, would lift kids and put them on his shoulders. This made the experience all the more enjoyable and he did it pretty much every time, or at least until I was too big to lift.

One of the best moments in any fan’s life is being encompassed by that experience. What better way to be encompassed than standing in one of those huge BKT tires. Now this isn’t some regular old car tire; it’s a behemoth. I mean it has to be to move that 12,000-pound machine. One of these tires is 66 inches in diameter and 43 inches wide. Without the mechanisms inside the tire, I at 5’6” could stand inside of it, but with the planetary gear, steering knuckle, and rim, this tire weighs about 645 pounds. You heard that right folks-- 645 pounds per tire. Just imagine the pictures to come out of that. The experience was like no other.

Scott was the king of creating this atmosphere. He would take people who had never seen a show and make them instantly fall in love. First with his charismatic attitude and southern charm, then with the sport itself. He showed people that felt as though they were outcasts that this was the place for them and that everyone was welcome. He would give them a big hug and a smile, take all the pictures they wanted and sign all of their memorabilia. Then to solidify that warm fuzzy feeling he would put on amazing show, each time racing like his life depended on it. He knew who it was all for and never lost sight of the big picture.

This attitude and way of thinking led Scott to be one of the most beloved racers on the track all across the world. We were shocked to see the amount of people’s lives he had touched -- the social media posts and compilations from fans over years of photos. Seeing the original truck

merchandise surface as collector’s items. Watching young children grow into adults, but still they never forgot the person who made them love trucks. They now they take their children to truck shows to give them that same feeling, a feeling of excitement but also of care. Not many people can give you both, but he managed to do it with ease. He inspired so many after him to do the same. He taught them who it was all for. To this day I can never thank my family enough for immersing me in this world. Watching huge trucks fly across an arena or do a backflip, well that’s something. But creating an atmosphere like this is worth more than any crazy trick.

So, though Scott’s life was cut short, his checkered flag waved too soon, we carry on. As a family we try to keep his legacy alive through the sport. The sport itself honors him for all of his contribution to its creation. The fans have completely devoted themselves to making sure he will never be forgotten. If this tragedy has taught us anything as a community, it’s that the race through life is never over. It’s going to have twists and turns. It will take you all around the world and back again. You may even roll over a few times, but you always get back up. You try again with the same passion and devotion you began with and never forget who it’s all for. Always be cocked, locked and ready to rock, just like Scott said, because life will not wait for you to be ready. You must actively live in the moment and make the conscious decision to let the race through life take you where it must. At the end of the day, we all end up where we are supposed to be, with the family we want, whether our family of birth or the family we chose.

Bede Art Gallery

Mount Marty University Student Artwork

Donut Teapot Ethan

German Boot Ethan

Rough Around the Edges

Elita Eastman

Untitled

Elita Eastman

Cactus

Mariah Dather

Devil

Lesslie Romo

Heart Piper Dather

Staircase Flower Pot

Lilliane Weber

Grandma’s Cookie Jar Kassidy Schubert

Stone Ocean Kassidy Schubert

Untitled Josiah Gaetani

Untitled Kylee Bulick

Untitled Rex Ryken

Squid

Zaing Nguyen

Untitled Tommy Alitz

Untitled Josiah Gaetani

Untitled Carly Herrboldt

Untitled Rachel Pavelka

Untitled Kylee Bulick

Cowboy Kassidy Schubert

Untitled Kassidy Schubert

Untitled Griffen Wieneke

Societies Future

Emma Brown

Untitled Tommy Alitz

Untitled Sonny Castillo

Untitled

Gabbo Cavallari

Floral Rain Katelyn Chytka

Fawn Zelie Sorensen

3022

John Sarazin

Island Dinosaur

Kyle Richert

Wild

Looking Forward to Freedom

Call Your Mother

Lilies For Mary

Kassidy Schubert

Elita Eastman

Elita Eastman

Elita Eastman

Reflections

BHS

Kieran Luellman

Benjamin Zambele

Elita Eastman

Starry Night

Katelyn Chytka

Italian Castles

Gabbo Cavallari

Untitled

Kalen Piechota

One Of The Many Meridian Bridge Locks

Untitled

Drew Nielsen

Dalyn Norman

Rebecca Clime

Spiral

Moon

Color Moon

Nate Trinidad

Brooke Madson

Brooke Madson

Family

Stars

Wagon Flower

Blake Hodges

Charlie Kelly

Rachel Pavelka

Flying Machine

Payton Gassman

John 8:12

Kassidy Schubert

Horse

Annika Johnson

Yellowstone

Annika Johnson

Phoenix

Reversed in Time

The Rabbit

Heaven & High Water

Kendra Horsley

Kendra Horsley

Kourtney Coney

Adam Yalch

Tree Swing

Cross

Rachel Pavelka

Rachel Pavelka

Tri Paul Paul Sunset

Cane Schmitt

Lotus Flower

Brooke Madson

Callie

Brooke Madson

Sunset

Alison Nelson

4 Directions

Kierra Silk

Self-Portrait

Calli Davis

Bridge Aubrey Twedt Christ

Elita Eastman

Dave Kahle Peace

Ally DeLange

Gone Fishin

Tennant

Empty Bird House

Tyler Linch

Best Friends

Kelsey Heath

Flower Child

Courtney Heath

Happy Daze

Untitled Savannah Chaninard

Untitled Savannah Chaninard

Josie Erickson

Girls Day

A’shin’ee George

Meridian Bridge At A Glance

A’shin’ee George

Grotto

Alison Nelson

Falls

Curve

Kade Stearns

Tianna Bumbaca Kuehl

Book Reviews

The Good Nurse Movie Review

by Joseph Stibral

The 2022 Netflix film, The Good Nurse is based on the true story of the hospital nurse and serial killer, Charlie Cullen, and the good nurse named Amy Loughren who was essential in the eventual conviction of Cullen. The film is expertly made with both the lead actors giving stellar performances in one of the rare true-crime stories that doesn’t seem to glorify the real criminal—at least not as much as other true-crime films do. The film also leaves you wondering who you can really trust.

The narrative of the story follows the protagonist, Amy Loughren (played by Jessica Chastain.) We see things primarily through her perspective: we meet Charlie, a kind and thoughtful young man who just seems like he’s there to help. We feel confused and nervous with Amy as she hears more and more suspicious reports about Charlie. Eventually, we share in her feelings of shock, betrayal, and terror as she grapples with the fact that the man she has grown close with is actually a cold-blooded serial killer. This focus on Amy’s perspective rather than on the murderer’s life and thought-process helped to avoid glamorizing him—the exact type of person who should be the furthest thing from glorified.

The portrayal of Amy Loughren by Jessica Chastain was perfectly executed. It was believable and tragic. Chastain was able to convey the happy, light emotions, such as when she was playing with her daughter or talking with her friend, as well as the heavy ones, such as the cold-sweat terror she felt as she attempted to covertly get Charlie to confess to his crimes as two police officers watched from the truck.

The other notable performance was Eddie Redmayne as the murderer, Charlie Cullen. For the larger portion of his screen time, we see him as a friendly guy who genuinely seems to care for Amy and behaves pretty selflessly around her. It makes it even more unsettling as we learn of his murders and adds depth to the eventual confrontation that Amy has with him. His performance is chilling and believable; when Amy confronts him, he seems to go deathly silent and shuts her up. His body language speaks before he does. At the climax of his inevitable confession, he has an outburst reminiscent of ones I’ve seen from mentally ill patients I’ve worked with—you can tell he feels like an animal backed into a corner.

That sense of being “believable,” that realism, is something that struck me with this film. As a student nurse with clinical experience

myself, watching this movie felt like I was at work in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) all over again. The writers and production team clearly took their time and did their research… and it paid off.

In reflecting upon this film, it seems that two major questions arise. Firstly: Why? Why would a man that seems capable of kindness and normal human emotions possibly kill up to hundreds of patients that he was trained and paid to help heal? Cullen never gave a true reason, but in the movie he simply answered, “...No one stopped me.” That beckons the second question: how could the medical system (at this time) allow for such a thing? After all, none of the hospitals that Cullen worked for had any consequences for their leniency with a murderer working for them until they merely fired him. As a current healthcare worker, it reminds me of the utmost importance in keeping one’s coworkers—and even one’s friends—accountable for their actions.

Overall, I would recommend this movie to anyone who can handle a serious-topic movie. The exceptional acting, tasteful storytelling, and thought-provoking nature of The Good Nurse make it The Good Movie.

Punching the Air Book Review

by Ally DeLange

Punching the Air was published in 2020 and written by Ibi Zboi and Yusef Salaam. This novel is written strictly in poems, making it a very simple but detailed read. I believe writing in these verses helps the reader’s understanding of the themes and captures its character’s subjectivity. The main theme of this novel is the power of faith and art. In the story the main character is Amal, an African American teenager whose skin color does not help him in the court room. Amal is charged for a crime he did not fully commit, and the judge finds him guilty. Amal is sent to a juvenile detention center, and we get to read all the internal and physical struggles young teens face in these facilities.

This book is truly an amazing read because of the way it is written. The novel is a bunch of narrative poems which are often formatted into a deeper meaning. One poem in the novel, called “Guernica,” was formatted very differently than the others. The first line, “It was Friday,” started on the left side of the paper like every other piece of writing. The rest of the poem was about his Friday in the detention center, showering, and his new life routine. These descriptions were all on the right side of the page, completely alone and opposite to where the words “It was Friday” had been written. Another poem, titled “Art School,” starts the same way; the beginning of poem is normal, on the left, then his details about the cells and life is on the right. However, in this poem he gets to go to an art class in the detention center, and when he talks about the class the words shift back to the left, like in a normal poem. The alignment of these words shows the reader the theme of freedom and imprisonment. The details about the juvenile detention center on the right of the page show just how flipped his world and life has become, but once he gets back into art it seems life makes sense again, so the words end back up on the left. Having these small little details that the reader can pick up and use to understand the character’s world and emotions a little more makes the book that much better.

One great aspect of this book is the comparison of the way kids need to be taught. In Amal’s high school he has a teacher, Ms. Rinaldi, who does not understand Amal at all. She calls Amal disruptive for challenging the idea of art history as just white and European. She tells Amal that his art needs to be smaller. Amal is really a kindhearted young teen, but Ms. Rinaldi sees him as angry and doesn’t see his soft, tender art

as reflecting him. However, Amal has a different teacher in prison, Imani. Imani seems to be the only person to really get through to Amal. She is kindhearted and truly cares for the young men in prison. She wants them to face the truth and accept where they are and why they are there. She gives them writing prompts that make them be honest and vulnerable; she teaches them accountability. This is a great message that every teacher and parent needs to realize. Not every kid will be the same and can be taught the same. It takes different approaches and tones to connect with young teens.

Overall, this book was a page turner and had many great lessons within it. It captures the true beauty of what art and writing can do for one’s mental health. It explains the heartbreak and feelings a young kid will have in prison at such a young age. This novel shows how some are charged for the wrong crimes or crimes that they fully didn’t commit. The racist and problematic system we have in our world is far from gone. I would recommend this book to every age group, especially younger teens, because Amal is beyond lost and confused in his emotions, but writing and art help him get his feeling of freedom back.

What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma Book Review

by Kendra Horsley

I am hooked on Stephanie Foo’s book, What My Bones Know, because of her ability to share her story with a true balance of honesty and grace. As I journeyed through her memoir, I found myself engulfed within her words. The experiences she spoke of, despite our significantly different backgrounds, reminded me so much of myself. There is something profound and powerful about an individual having the courage to use their voice in an effort to bring light to what is, seemingly, left in the dark. Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD) is a part of Stephanie Foo’s story, and it is a part of mine.

I, unknowingly, lived with this disorder for a little over a decade. By the time this book was published, I had only been officially diagnosed for close to a year, so when I found it several months later, I was enthralled to learn more from a different perspective. “There is a difference between knowing and understanding,” states Foo, and this sentence alone spoke so much of what I had been experiencing. The body remembers what the mind tries to hide, and not knowing the source of such deep-rooted pain can be debilitating. Stephanie Foo has a way of incorporating emotional and vulnerable work with evidence-based information, leaving her with an ability beyond most.

“I could trust the process more if I understood more about what the process is,” writes Foo. I admire her for the work she has done because I know how frustrating and draining it can be to live with such a complex, often unrecognized, disorder. She embodies so much of what I hope to be: intelligent, courageous, authentic, inspiring, and driven toward giving those who struggle a voice and hope to seek a better tomorrow. “Sometimes it’s a curse, and sometimes it’s a blessing.”

A Crash of Sea and Storm Book Review

by Elizabeth Langerock

A Crash of Sea and Storm is a debut novel written by Taylor Vander Leest. She is a seventeen-year-old author. The book was inspired mainly by How to Train Your Dragon and Red Queen. I absolutely adored this book. It was well written and had an amazing, easy-to-follow plotline. The characters were created well and very lovable. The characters had wonderful chemistry and were easy to relate to. The world building was amazing. I didn’t get lost as the world was created. The details in this novel made me feel as though I was right there with them. Taylor Vander Leest did a wonderful job with the plot, the characters, and the world building. This is one of my favorite novels. It is so beautifully written and wonderfully entertaining. As I was reading A Crash of Sea and Storm, I often forgot that it was written by a seventeen-year-old.

The story is told from the perspective of two characters. One character grew up in a small village, in a world where dragons were the enemy, where competitions were centered around killing dragons, and where she was a celebrated dragon killer. The other grew up on a secluded island where the dragons were his family, where he loved and cherished the dragons, and where he was a dragon rider. The story follows the two main characters as they learn about the other’s way of life and eventually team up to defeat a common enemy.

A Crash of Sea and Storm is a novel that I believe everyone should read. It had my attention from page one and held it the entire time. A Crash of Sea and Storm has a variety of different tropes to enjoy reading. The novel has dragons. Dragons, how cool is that? The female main character has her two witty friends to keep you entertained when they are on the page, while the male main character has a great sense of humor and a dragon for his best friend and brother. All the characters have so much character development it is insane. A Crash of Sea and Storm has everything you could ask for: warring kingdoms, pirates, dragons and dragon riders, loss, terror, romance, challenges, begrudging allies, plot twists, and so much more.

I cannot recommend this book enough. I read this book in one day, and I am not a fast reader. It keeps you constantly needing to turn the page to find out what happened. It has you yelling at your copy because a character did something stupid. It will have you in tears, both good and bad.

What is truly amazing about A Crash of Sea and Storm is that it was written by a seventeen-year-old. This is an astounding feat to me. It baffles my mind that an incredible story such as this could be executed as well as it was by someone who hasn’t even graduated from high school yet. While reading A Crash of Sea and Storm, I found it just as easy to read as any other young adult novel that I have had the pleasure of reading.

As I stated previously, I highly recommend reading A Crash of Sea and Storm. It is wonderfully written, with lovable characters. It has a beautiful and completely engulfing plot. When you pick it up, you won’t be able to put it down. Taylor Vander Leest did an astounding job writing A Crash of Sea and Storm.

Kansas Poems Book Review

by Daniel Roche

Kansas is not a place many people would think of when it comes to beautiful poetry. It is part of the flat, boring stretches of land between the west coast of the United States of America and the east coast. Most people drive through praying that something interesting will happen in order to help them stay awake. It is a broad expanse of open land, cornfields, and small towns, but in Kansas Poems a new perspective is shown.

Brian Daldorph sings a love song to the plains in his book Kansas Poems. Throughout the book there are tributes to places, people, and things that all people can relate to. In one poem, “Roofers,” Daldorph recollects small town working life. He pays tribute to the life that a bluecollar worker goes through when he wakes up in the morning to “haul [his] ass out of bed” (46). This is a feeling that is shared by billions of people all around the world, but it rings especially true with those of us who have worked these blue-collar jobs in the Midwest. He shows that life on the plains may be plain, but it is nowhere near uninteresting. Daldorph shows how there is beauty in this land. In his poem “Kansas Storm,” he says, “White flashes / in our window / light up our bed. Thunder crashes” (60). He shows an experience shared by all. Daldorph goes out of his way to help everyone recognize the beauty that is the Midwest. He has a keen sense of what needs to be written and how it should be presented. He does this in an encapsulating way.

As this poem continues you see the author encapsulate one person. Daldorph takes this person and puts them out in the storm. As he puts it, “You run out into / the wild whirling weather” (60). He places the people of the Midwest in connection with the beauty of nature. Daldorph has the ability to present material in such a way that the reader feels as if they are in his poems. They are living them alongside the writer and the characters themselves.

Throughout the book Daldorph shows the reality of life in Kansas as well as the raw reality of the natural world. Daldorph has spent time in the world that he is writing about, and he has become an incredible observer of the smallest details of each scenario. He shows an intimate knowledge of life in a small town as well as presenting scenarios that will relate to every audience member who picks up his book. Each poem is a world unto itself, and the reader is blessed to be a part of the magic being written.

A Review of a Review

by Danielle Godkin

I chose to reflect upon an essay called “Happiness - A TED Talk: Reflection by Al Tennet.” This entry in a previous issue of Paddlefish caught my attention because of the title. I was curious as to what this review was going to be about. Possibly, what is happiness? Or how to achieve happiness? Turns out, it was a little bit of both.

The review didn’t dive very deep into the contents of the TED talk they were reflecting on. From what the review described, I believe the TED talk aimed at determining if success equated to happiness. Tennet, the person reflecting on the TED talk, then spun the question to ask if having a lot of wealth and possessions means you are happy. Tennet shared his personal experience of growing up in a trailer park. “All my life,” he wrote, “I have never had much.” This reminded me of my personal experience.

Growing up, I had a very different experience. But elements of what Tennet describes are familiar to me. My parents split when I was very young, too young to have any recollection of it. My mom moved to an apartment and my dad to a trailer park. As the years went by, my mom moved from the apartment to a house in the suburbs, to another house in the woods that she now shares with my stepdad. All those years my dad stayed in the trailer park.

If you are a child of divorce, you can probably relate to the sentiment that mom’s house and dad’s house are two very different homes. At my mom’s house my brother and I always had more in comparison to at our dad’s. This was partly due to the fact that our mom is our primary caretaker and partly because our mom has a higher income. As a kid, it never mattered. Some of my fondest memories are from playing in that trailer park. Of course, since it was dad’s house, we were always doing some potentially dangerous activity or getting into something we weren’t supposed to. I remember my favorite thing to do with my brother was catching garter snakes in the backyard. All we needed to have all the fun in the world was a 5-gallon bucket.

My mom, on the other hand, was able to bless us with the most amazing memories from things such as the vacations she would take us on. I was, and still am, beyond thankful for all the experiences I have gotten to have all over the country and even multiple places outside of

it. Before I was the age of 13, I had traveled to more places than I would guess half of the American population has.

That is just one of the very contrasting experiences I had going from household to household. But I would not trade either experience for the world. I would have to agree with Tennet in saying that having a lot of wealth or stuff does not equate to being happy. I think there are certain experiences that wealth can provide to help aid in your happiness, but it is not a defining factor. The chase for materialistic gratification is never ending. Wealth can contribute to a negative mindset if it becomes something that consumes you. Happiness is a mindset, and especially as a child, it is a mindset that is fostered by a loving and supportive family. This is evident in my experience as a child because I came from both sides of the coin, and I was very happy with both. I had the most wonderful family and friends, and I believe this contributed to my happiness more than anything else.

My Thoughts on Inside

by David Phillips

Inside is a special released by musical comedian Bo Burnham in 2021. Inside is amazing because it’s funny, introspective, and memorable, while also being unique compared to other specials, even those Bo himself has released.

Inside takes place in one room in Bo Burnham’s house without any live audience. Every scene in the special was made by Bo himself. Every joke, every song, every visual gag, all of it was made by Bo and only Bo.

The special itself has a very interesting setup; it starts out really funny and slightly lighthearted. All of the jokes and songs are funny at this point and there’s a lot of wonderful bits. Songs like “Content,” “Comedy,” “White Woman’s Instagram,” and “Unpaid Intern” are funny and catchy while having deeper meanings, and bits like the “I’m horny” bit and the brand bit are all really creative and funny as well. The first half of the special is what you’d expect out of Bo Burnham, just more unique because he has no audience to work with and he had to make it work alone.

There aren’t nearly as many funny moments in the second half of the special as there are in the first half. That’s purely intentional, as halfway through the special Bo goes to sleep. I believe that this is the turning point for the tone of the special, as everything after Bo goes to sleep has a bleak, dark tone. When Bo goes to sleep, he basically invites us Inside his mind; we get to see exactly how the pandemic has affected his mental health. Songs like “Welcome to the Internet” and “Shit” may have funny moments, but the former talks about how the internet took over our lives and the latter is blatant confirmation from Bo of how depressed he really is. Songs like “That Funny Feeling,” “All Eyes on Me,” and “Goodbye” are absolutely devastating. “That Funny Feeling” has that somber feeling that the world is ending, but you can’t help but accept it. “All Eyes on Me” has a chilling speech in the middle where Bo talks about his mental health, saying that all the time he spent bettering himself since 2016 just went to waste. In “Goodbye” there is no resolution. Bo’s still in the same situation he was at the beginning of the special, it’s just that now we know about it. Now that we know, he challenges us to tell a joke with nobody laughing in the background.

The amount of introspection in this special is insane. It’s funny at first, but the humor slowly disappears. The level of introspection, however,

only goes up as the special goes on. There’s a reason why I didn’t call Inside a comedy special, because the comedy takes a backseat role compared to how much Bo wants to make you think about Inside. I first watched Inside at the end of October of last year and I’m still talking about it. I think about this special so much because the special itself demands it. Once you watch it, you don’t forget it; it forces you to reflect on its themes and topics while pulling you into the same place Bo Burnham was during the year and a half that he spent making it.

I’m Hooked on MOX, Here’s Why Book Review

by David Phillips

I’m hooked, this is why. Not many people know this, but I’m a huge professional wrestling fan and have been for over a decade and a half. My favorite wrestler of all time is a man named Jon Moxley. On November 2, 2021, Moxley released his first and so far only book, MOX, to critical acclaim. In this book, Moxley talks about his life as a professional wrestler starting from when he was a nobody kid living in Cincinnati, Ohio, to him taking up odd jobs only to get fired because he’d rather wrestle. From performing deathmatches on the independent scene to debuting in Florida Championship Wrestling, from debuting in WWE in November of 2012 to finally wrestling in All Elite Wrestling and New Japan Pro Wrestling in 2019, everything he’s been through has been expertly told in his book. He tells stories about the road trips he’s been on with his friends in between wrestling shows, how he and his wife got together, how to make the perfect sandwich, and how he walked away from millions of dollars.

I will admit that this book is not for everyone, as it does talk a lot about wrestling and what happens behind the scenes. Not everybody is going to understand the lingo or the things that happen backstage, but I would recommend this book to anyone who’s interested if they’re into wrestling. Even if you aren’t a wrestling fan, I think it’s still worth reading MOX just to read a bunch of interesting stories that happened in a man’s life. I honestly can’t get enough of this book. As a wrestling fan, I think it’s one of, if not the best, books about wrestling you can get.

Black Buck Book Review

by Alicia Aviles

Black Buck by Mateo Askaripour is a great book. I really enjoyed the story and all of its underlying themes. These themes include success and self-empowerment, but also racial discrimination. As the story progresses the reader learns that the self-proclaimed narrator, “Buck,” is actually in prison and that this is his cautionary memoir.

In the beginning of the story our narrator is not named “Buck”; he is actually named Darren. He was the valedictorian of his high school but now works at Starbucks on Park Avenue. He is clearly full of potential but doesn’t realize it until he makes a coffee for a CEO, Rhett Daniels. He is the CEO of a powerful sales start up called Sumwun, and Darren gets hired. Sumwun is a startup Tech company in which the only Black salesman is Darren. He is soon renamed “Buck” by his white colleagues and must fight the racial stigma in the workplace.

“Buck” soon realizes that in order to make it in business a Black man has to assume another identity. If Darren would have stayed true to who he really was, he probably would have suffered more hell than he did after assuming this new identity. Sumwun had a common goal and to meet said goal Darren had to conform to what they wanted. How he dressed, talked and acted had to fit within the brand. Buck’s ultimate goal was to change this white startup from the inside out, in the most intelligent way possible.

I believe that the lesson that this book teaches is that you don’t have to burn bridges and be aggressive to change a stigma, whether in the workplace or in the world. Though “Buck” changed, he realized that it wasn’t him and chose to challenge the company’s image. In order to fuel the capitalistic minds of his peers “Buck” was whitewashed; he was used for his white peers’ gain. It became very apparent to me that this whitewashing would not stop and would only get worse. A great example of this is when Clyde, one of Darren’s coworkers, sets him up for a “prank” where white paint was poured on him. This is the type of workplace discrimination throughout the whole story.

As the story goes on and Darren keeps playing the part, he is put on TV for damage control purpose because he is the only Black man in the company. As he continues to cover up the truth of his trials and tribulations, his girlfriend, Soraya, argues he is not the man she fell in love

with and says that she feels she cannot hold him in the same respect. The persecution he had faced in the workplace had now bled into his home life. Yet he still continues with his “success” and falls prey to drugs.

His dealer and friend Brian gets ends up in the hospital. Darren agrees to make a run for him, as he keeps Darren’s successes up by giving him coke. When Darren goes to make the drop, he realizes that it’s a setup. Clyde and his former assistant, Trey, set him up with the Drug Enforcement Administration and he is sent away to serve an 8-year sentence. The same man who was extremely to racist to Darren now got what he wanted and sent him away.

Overall, this book is a complete page turner. It depicts the truths of discrimination and racism in the workplace: That changing yourself to please others tears you apart from who you truly are and from the people who actually care about you and know who you are, and that even falling prey to such “success” in the workplace environment may still not turn out in the end. It is truly what is on the inside that makes you a success, not because of your race but because of the content of your character.

Crave Book Review

by Tianna Bumbaca-Keuhl

I have always been interested in vampire-related films and youngadult fantasy romance novels. I also like book series, I want to keep reading, and when an author can keep my eye on a few books I usually fall in love with them. Considering all of this, I thought the Crave series by Tracy Wolff was perfect for me. I love vampire films but had not read a vampire book series yet, so it was most definitely time to do so. Wolff hit all the right spots in my imagination, and, coincidentally, I can relate to the main character, Grace, in a way I didn’t think I was going to. She moved from sunny California to the cold winter climate of Alaska, and I moved from sunny California to the cold winter climate of South Dakota. Right off the bat, I was intrigued.

Tracy Wolff did an amazing job of intertwining romance while avoiding the sappy common love story, where the damsel in distress turns the bad boy good. Wolff showed women’s power and how young girls can find themselves through self-guidance without needing to be led by the love of a boy. I’m very into supernatural powers and un-human characters, but I also did not want just another Twilight series of vampires and werewolves, with the main character caught in a love triangle between them. Instead, Wolff gave me dragons, witches, and gargoyles, and rather than cheesy and goofy characters, they were strong and powerful. This book could have easily been a cheesy fantasy where all these creatures are walking around talking like everything is normal, but they all have a human form so you can see their character development from the main character’s point of view. We learn what she thinks of these other characters before she finds out who they truly are.

Tracy Wolff also added action and gore into this novel, which can be a risky move because the audience of these types of novels does not always want to read stuff like that. She was very descriptive and intense. I, for one, could appreciate it because it caught me off guard and hooked me even deeper. When Wolff adds gore and death, it allows the book to take twists and turns that you can’t put into other novels because you must walk a straight line in hopes of not turning people off due to sensitivity.

The author said in an interview that she wanted to mash a bunch of young adult series together to make one. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that at first, because original and new are always at the top of the food

chain and repeating stories and common themes are what deter people’s interest. I took the risk anyway and I’m glad I did. Wolff ties in the drama of werewolves and vampires but also holds a successful storyline of a teen girl whose life is flipped upside down. Throughout the book it might seem like the main character’s life is beyond her control, but the character development between the lines shines through.

Overall, the book not only met but exceeded my expectations. Wolff continues to keep digging her nails deeper and deeper into my mind, with her unexpected plots and marvelous imagination. I’m currently working my way through the fourth and final book and hope to finish the series soon enough. As I make my way through each one, Wolff seems to catch me by surprise with every turn of the page, colliding drama with action and heartbreak with triumph, never losing my interest. I catch myself reading faster and faster because I want to see what Wolff is about to reveal on the next page.

Slewfoot: A Tale of Bewitchery Book Review

by Aurora Huntley

In Slewfoot: A Tale of Bewitchery by Brom, what got me hooked was the main character’s attitude and snarky personality. Right away I was introduced to Abitha, a scrawny, pasty-skinned ginger woman with a sharp tongue and an even sharper attitude. I quickly was filled in on the difficult lives of Abitha and her late husband, who she was married to by arrangement. The story starts with the two struggling to keep themselves fed from their small farm during the bitter winter. Every scene that forms in my mind is composed of shades of gray, the chill wind, and the dark forest. You’d think the grim setting of the story would be enough to darken your perspective on the main characters, but it’s the dangerous creature lurking in the darkness that reeled me in, effectively keeping me on the edge of my seat. In a town which requires everyone to participate in the daily worship of God, a devil thirsty for blood stalks its victims under moonlight, followed by vicious, child-faced animals.

Not only is every scene wonderfully detailed, forming a vivid image of each description in my imagination, but every character is given their own quirks and personality. Slewfoot wastes no time laying down the conflict and introducing the villain. The author has a way of making you root for the main character from page one, while also coaxing you into hating the main villain from their first introduction. Not only does the story give you an antagonist to root against, but it also lets you peek at the imminent danger lurking in the shadows. Truly, each page kept my attention and pulled me in, keeping me enthralled with each scene.

In conclusion, Slewfoot is well written with effective dialogue that cues you in on each personality crafted within the pages. The devious slewfoot and its gory cravings leave you on edge, wondering who its next victim is, while coming off as a legitimate threat, rather than some weak problem that can just be shooed away. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone with a craving for gloomy atmosphere and terrifying monsters.

Contributors

Mary Woster Haug is the author of Out of Loneliness: Murder and Memoir and Daughters of the Grasslands. She has been published in several anthologies and literary journals including River Teeth and Passager. She has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Mary is professor emerita in the English Department at South Dakota State University and makes her home in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

William J. Miller earned his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He has been at Mount Marty University for three years where he currently serves as Executive Vice President and Provost. Throughout a 28-year career, his teaching and scholarship have focused on crime and deviance. In his spare time he enjoys spending time with his wife and two daughters, playing poker, and performing magic.

Maria Mazziotti Gillan is the author of twenty-four books. Her latest poetry collection is When the Stars Were Still Visible (2021). She received the American Book Award for the collection All That Lies Between Us. She is the founder and executive director of the Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College in Paterson, New Jersey and editor of the Paterson Literary Review. She is Professor Emerita of English and creative writing at Binghamton University-SUNY.

Brian Daldorph teaches at the University of Kansas. He has taught in England, Senegal, Japan. His most recent books are Words Is a Powerful Thing: Twenty Years of Teaching Creative Writing at Douglas County Jail (University of Kansas P, 2021) and Kansas Poems (Meadowlark P, 2021).

Jordyn Fischer is a junior at Mount Marty University. Her hometown is Beresford, South Dakota but she eventually moved to Wakonda, South Dakota. Jordyn is a distance runner on the cross-country and track team. She is currently an Elementary Education major with a minor in Writing.This is the first time her work has been published. In her free time, she enjoys playing volleyball with her twin sister and spending time with family and friends.

Andrea Garcia is a junior at Mount Marty University. She is majoring in Criminal Justice with hopes of attending law school to become an attorney. She is from Sheldon, Iowa where she volunteered on the local ambulance team for three years. She enjoys traveling and spending time with her friends and family.

Daniel L. Roche is an author and educator. He teaches in Cedar Bluffs, Nebraska, and spends much of his time traveling. He worked with a non-profit performing group teaching singing, acting, and dancing and has spent significant time overseas. He loves connecting with people! His poetry is on Facebook @officialDLRoche and TikTok @dl_poetry.

Madelyn Heckenlaible is a sophomore nursing student at Mount Marty University. She is originally from Menno, South Dakota. Currently, she is in the Mount Marty choir and part of the tennis team. Her hobbies include drawing, painting, reading, writing, singing, and playing piano in her free time.

Lexa Burtzlaff is a Mount Marty University sophomore majoring in Pre-Physical Therapy with minors in Writing and Biology. She is from Whitewood, South Dakota, and participates in track and field at Mount Marty. Lexa enjoys listening to music, being outdoors, and spending time with her friends and family.

Megan Mellem is a freshman at Mount Marty University and is majoring in Criminal Justice and minoring in Political Science. She is originally from Irene, South Dakota, and is part of the Student Government Association on campus.

Christa Lotz is a freshman nursing student at Mount Marty University. She was born in Haiti and spent most of her life growing up there before moving to Yankton. Christa loves hiking in her free time and credits the Haiti mountains for inspiring that passion.

Christian Mickelson is a sophomore English major at Mount Marty University. Christian competes with the university’s men’s basketball team. One day, Christian aspires to teach English and coach basketball. He loves to write and read and is inspired by the powerful emotions created by storytelling. His favorite pastimes include watching films, playing Valorant, hanging out with family, and being with his girlfriend, Lexa Burtzlaff.

Sydney Kotz is a freshman at Mount Marty University and is from Papillion, Nebraska. Sydney is a member of the softball team and is a double major in Accounting and Business Management, with a minor in Writing. She loves to read in her free time, and enjoys spending time with family and friends.

Terry Lafferty is in her tenth year of teaching at Mount Marty. She is West Philadelphia born and raised, same as the Fresh Prince. She teaches the BLI and Scripture courses here. The play of light and color has always been a favorite pastime for her.

Elizabeth Langerock is a sophomore from Canton, South Dakota. She is working towards earning her BSN and a minor in Writing. She works full-time nights in a traumatic brain injury and behavioral unit.

Chesney Olson is a senior from Langford, South Dakota, majoring in Mathematics Secondary. She is involved in the education department and performing arts club on campus and has been an orientation leader, resident assistant, and Welcome Ceremony Speaker. She contributes time to helping community youth by being a mentor for the Big Friend Little Friend program through United Way, serving as a tutor and mentor for area youth, and working as a tutor teacher for the Boys and Girls Club of Yankton. She plans on pursuing further education after graduation in the field of education and social-emotional health. She will begin her career as an educator as a middle/high school math teacher at McCook Central School District in Salem, South Dakota, after completion of her student teaching in the fall of 2023.

Lauren Stiefvater is a sophomore at Mount Marty University double majoring in Math Education and Special Education. She is originally from Salem, South Dakota where she grew up on a farm. Lauren serves the MMU community through her participation as a Mission Scholar, Admissions Ambassador, Student Government Association President and playing the trumpet in band. In her free time, she enjoys spending time with family and friends, baking, and being outdoors. This is her first publication in Paddlefish.

Danielle Godkin is a freshman at Mount Marty University. She is studying pre-pharmacy in hopes of becoming a compounding or hospital pharmacist. She is from Rapid City, South Dakota and in her free time she enjoys spending time with her family and friends and exploring the Black Hills.

Alicia Aviles is a sophomore at Mount Marty University and is from Fort Lauderdale, Florida. She is majoring in Pre-Forensic Science and Biology Pre-Health with a minor in Creative Writing. Currently an archer on the MMU archery team, Alicia spends most of her time at the range but also enjoys traveling and spending time with family and friends. These are her first publications in Paddlefish.

Tianna Bumbaca-Kuehl is a junior at Mount Marty University, who is double majoring in Human Services and Criminal Justice. Tianna is a part of the women’s soccer and track and field teams, as well as the president of the Criminal Justice Honors Society. A resident of the Santa Cruz Mountains in California, she loves traveling and the outdoors. She believes reading and writing are the foundations of positive mental health, and that with a pen and paper, only magic can be formed.

Joseph “Joey” Stibral is a May, ‘23 graduate of Mount Marty University with his Bachelor of Science of Nursing. Originally from Yankton, South Dakota, Joey attended MMU, worked at a nursing home, and was president of both MMU’s Student Nurse Association and Student Government Association for one and two years, respectively. He was also grateful to receive the MMU Mother Jerome Schmitt Scholarship, an honor given to one MMU senior student each year based on an essay and community involvement.

Ally DeLange is a junior at Mount Marty University from Monument, Colorado. She is majoring in English and Writing with a minor in Business and is a part of the volleyball team. Ally loves the mountains and nature and plans on traveling in her future.

Kendra Horsley is a junior at Mount Marty University. She is triple majoring in psychology, human services, and writing. Kendra is also a member of the Mount Marty volleyball team. She loves being an aunt to her sweet nephews, Isaiah and DeAndre. Kendra has a deep passion for her faith and writing, and she hopes to use her voice to help others.

David Phillips is going into his junior year at Mount Marty University. He is an English major and an Art minor and is running on the cross country and track team. He comes from a small town called Crofton, Nebraska and he is a fan of video games, music, pro wrestling, and spending time with the people he cares about. All his life, he’s wanted to tell people stories. This is his first ever publication of his work.

Lauryn Bernt is a sophomore at Mount Marty University pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Nursing and a minor in Business. She is from Boelus, Nebraska. Lauryn is involved in groups such as SGA, SNA, and enjoys participating in theatre and choir. Traveling, hiking, and swimming are some of Lauryn’s favorite hobbies. She also enjoys being a Mount Marty Mission Scholar and helping to spread faith and fellowship on campus and in the community. This is her first publication in Paddlefish

Hailey Crowe is a senior at Mount Marty University at the Watertown campus majoring in Human Services. She is originally from Orcas Island located in Washington state. Hailey has had a passion for horses since she was ten years old. Hailey moved to South Dakota in 2015 with her horse Fancy. Hailey and Fancy have been barrel racing for the last 3 years until Fancy suffered a severe leg injury in 2022. Hailey will continue having horses in her life and is still caring for her horses Fancy and Buddy.

Rita Woodraska is a senior education and English major. She writes about her life and the world as she sees it. She’s been writing since she was a middle schooler and has flourished under the instruction of several talented teachers and writers throughout her academic career. She is moving to Sisseton to teach Junior English.

Aurora “Rory” Huntley is a freshman literature writing Major. This is her first Paddlefish submission.

Brady Klassen is a Secondary Education English major at Mount Marty University. Brady loves writing as a form of expression, allowing him to put thoughts into words. Brady is also a high performance archer, not only competing as a collegiate athlete for Mount Marty, but also representing his home country of Canada on the world stage on numerous occasions. Brady is excited to help high school students fall in love with English in the near future.

Paddlefish

Snagging good literature one line at a time.