McWay Falls, California // Lara Vezard
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2021, RUSA Allocations Board, Paid for by student fees. Rutgers University. Cover by Alisha Lekh 1
Executive Staff Editor(s)-in-Chief: Miriam Kim, Charlie Pecorella Senior Editor: Alisha Lekh Graphic Designers: Alisha Lekh, Anastasia Codjebas, Lia Hwang Webmaster: Chris Janania Treasurer: Sreeja Pavuluri
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Letter from the Editor You and I—do we know what will happen to us in the next year or two? As we grow closer to the transition of our next stage in life, we become more blinded to the traditional steps walked before us. If we don’t follow the expected path, then how could we even anticipate what we’re working towards the next day? Our plans seem to keep the structure of our goals together, just like the stanzas and paragraphs written in these pages. Life looks stable when it’s made up of expectations resembling bullet point notes on a PowerPoint, or a list of check-boxes in a to-do list. If only we could feel and see the resolution of our story, a final page marking an eternal conclusion to our difficulties. The reality is that we live in a circle of uncertainty. Discoveries surprise us when we’re not ready for them, shifting our view of the world in an instant. One bright Monday morning can lift up our spirits for the week and then end in a soggy Friday with bad news. The good news: from time’s unwanted delivery of events, we’ve gone through them- perhaps not unscathed- and persevered so that we can express our fears, anticipation, loneliness, melancholy, and confusions. You’ll witness all of these feelings (and much more) inside The Anthologist. Our surroundings can be quite stark and cold at times. Perhaps that’s why me and many others go deep into the arts to renew our sentimentalities. I hope that you will also find shelter inside the vulnerability of these creative pieces, each one crafted with genuine emotions. Warm up with us by turning to the next pages. - Miriam Kim
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Table of Contents Farewell, Ambitious Star // Jane McGrath ……………………………….…… 5 Shifting // Deeksha Holla ………………………………………………………5 June Sister // Deeksha Holla ……………………………………………………6 It’s hard to be young and lonely // Charlie Pecorella ………………………….7 The Saint’s Clause // Chana Fisher …………………………………...………..9 In the Minutes After an Injury // Miriam Kim ………………………………...11 Without Him, With Others // Aniza Jahangir ………………………………....12 Velvet Nine P.M. // Allison Gellerstein ……………………………………….14 Jack and Jester // Caitlyn Chui ………………………………………………...16 XoXo // Caitlyn Chui ………………………………………………………….19 The Second Option // Caitlyn Chui …………………………………………...20 Two Tons of Tears for the Kettle // Alisha Lekh ……………………………...22 Shotgun Shells and Orson Welles // Jessica Storch ……………………….….24 Change is a part of our lives // Chris Janania…………………………………30 Photography by Lara Vezard (@lav.pics) & Erin Chang
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Farewell, Ambitious Star //Jane McGrath Breathless, shapeless, without form: that was you. Hear dawn’s echo through universe’s husk, While you yourself, death-still, were only dust; But, finding your rhythm, spin your debut. Without blood, what you create pulses through: With a flame your starter atmospheres gust— Give way to molten metals, a bright crust, Around your heart, which moves, as long as you. Worlds pull at your limbs, final dance begins. Your greatest masterpiece is just in reach— But too hasty burns your restless advance. Gravity’s hands begin to wring you thin, Drags you down and in, through this weary breach, And leaves behind one more hungry expanse.
Shifting //Deeksha Holla I am strung out between My past and current self, Not fully realized nor a bare imitation of the past Maybe the point is to always be In-Between, To always be becoming something Maybe these things manifest in multiple selves Who shift and overlap ceaselessly, never static nor singular You are the culmination of everything you have done and everything you have not; At the summit of your victory lies your solecisms And so, the contours of your life Are etched deep in the space around you; The lining of your being contorting every second In everyone there exists a great Divide and a great Joining You are fracturing and healing from one moment to the next
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June Sister //Deeksha Holla i sometimes mourn that i cannot embrace my sister seven years ago, when she was bright and sweet and loud; her small shoulders under my rested palms, her toothy smile hewn into my ribs. i find myself wanting to hug and kiss and spin her around, and wonder if i ever felt these things so intensely back then i should have kissed her more, and read her more books, made her more pancakes and hot chocolate i look at her current self, unsure of what to do or say with this young-old girl i reach out feebly, with half my want, but i do not think i try enough my june sister, she is the early sun and warm wind, the whisper of ambrosial trees, and yet she slips through my hands, because i do not grasp hard enough
Santa Barbara, California //Lara Vezard 6
It’s hard to be young and lonely //Charlie Pecorella It’s hard to be young and lonely Hard like sticky candies, window-smashers, Swarming with maggot-like lint and downcast lotto shavings Blanketed by loose tissues, Squatting in an elderly woman’s purse. It’s hard to be young and lonely When you no longer take communion for your grandmother A child with his head hung low, dragged a hollow stick along the shore Marking a thick tributary from this woman’s great swells Each breath is a broken-winged butterfly beating against a net The river folded over many times. It’s hard to be young and lonely, Hard to accept gifts wrapped in wax paper skin And chilled by bone, to receive The taste of Robutusin concentrated into tough stone Sputtering over under-the-counter shots And pitiful marbles thrust down your throat.
// Erin Chang
You have been touched by all the hands That have held your pocket change bent on clamour And cricket-bound to leave with you a light chirping tune You, Plugging cork into the mouth of a river and beating butterflies half-to-death.
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// Erin Chang
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The Saint’s Clause //Chana Fisher Standing in a light green building in a dark grey suit, Tom, our protagonist, appears in a hunched position examining his coffee. The great debate of the morning had begun: sugar or no sugar. Please the doctor, or please his own semi-irrational thoughts. The innate desire for the packet of white specks seized Tom to put the sugar into his coffee. Tom sighs, slumps to his desk, and begins his job. Next to Tom sits Jerry and next to Jerry sits Gary and next to Gary sits Owen. For Mr. Owen Wilble, life is the color blue; Mr. Owen Wible travels the skies and seas building fortresses that loom high to the top of his computer screen. But for our friend Tom, there are no hidden castles with hidden mysteries. For our friend Tom, one may argue, life is grey. Now grey is not a disinteresting, non-controversial color; in fact, there are great debates about the spelling of the color. The debates, however, may be passionate for a few seconds before the desire to return to mundane events creeps into the minds of the debaters: this is the life of Tom. When Tom finishes his work, he takes his computer, lightly places the laptop into his bag, grabs the top of his satchel, and begins to leave for the weekend. The right foot trots before the left foot and left foot trots before the right foot. Tom begins to whistle as he examines the cracks on the sidewalk. Too bad, Tom thinks, a person was here one day and may or may not have been passionate about fixing the pavement. The person left one day, and the pavement stood to be walked on without people remembering either the people who produced the cracks, or the people who produced the pavement. Maybe we will remember the owner of the pavement company, but we will not remember the crack producers because we can not remember what we can not see. As Tom contemplated the cracks on the sidewalk, a small man, who Tom could not see, stepped directly on Tom’s right toe. A slight aching pain began to creep up Tom’s leg. Tom stops his contemplation and begins to acknowledge the pain that has risen to his head. Tom glances at the small man with a large frown on his face. “Yo, watch where you're going,” the angry little man shouts. A confused Tom dismissively states, “Um, sir, you are the one that stepped on my toe, but I do apologize for not paying attention to you. I hope that you may forgive me eventually.” Tom then begins to walk away towards his shabby apartment. The small man follows Tom to his shabby apartment. At first, Tom, who is whistling down the block contemplating the soup that he will eat for dinner, does not notice the short stubby man follow Tom's feet step for step. Tom does not notice the man until he feels a short, stubby finger sear directly into the back of his jacket. Tom turns around with a slight angst written on his face and sees a short, stubby man with a short stubby finger pointed in the direction of Tom’s face. “Yo, dude, I am instructed to bring you back to the pole.” In response to the absurd statement, Tom scratches his head and begins to move his legs back and forth at a quick pace. When Tom reaches his apartment, he struggles to grab his key from his pocket, turn the knob of his door, and lock himself in his bathroom. Tom knew the event that was about to occur: when Tom was ten he had a dream that travelled to the North Pole. In Tom’s life, his dreams did not come true: Tom dreamed of being an astrophysicist, of having a loving wife, of playing with a cute, curly brown dog. Tom once pet a cute curly white dog, but left the encounter with a bruised, bloodied hand, and a new mild disdain for pets. Tom, therefore, was scared of the idea of having a dream become reality: Tom was scared to live in a world of exploring his desires. Tom, therefore, sat on the floor of his bathroom, and began to pray. Tom began to pray for a heat wave to cause the man to 9
dehydrate, stop to buy water, and magically melt during the process of drinking his water. Tom began to pray for the normalcy of his mundane life to reoccur. Tom’s neighbor, Shurly, would have said that Tom praying is a funny sight because Tom is indifferent to God; maybe that’s why Tom’s prayers did not come true. As Tom sat mumbling in gibberations to the powers that may or may not be, a knock resounded on his bathroom door. “Yo, dude, uh you left your front door wide open, that’s probably not so safe, so I closed the door and we really have to leave,” said the short, angry man. Tom fainted. Tom awoke in a large room with great heat. Tom was confused. He assumed that he accidentally turned on his thermostat instead of his air conditioner. As Tom began to stand up, he realized that he was not his home, rather he was in a narrow room with large black stripes that appeared to be pillars blocking his path. Tom scratched his head, yawned, and placed his hands in the solid black pillars. “Hello, is anyone there?” Tom called with mild curiosity. “Fuck, dude, you scared me, I thought you would sleep for like another 30 mintues or so, uh man, I was trying to get a solid nap in before I have to go back to work, shit.” “Uh, my dearest apologies, I mean, I am really sorry. I hate to have naps interrupted, but why is it so warm, I thought the North Pole was supposed to be cold, uh, very cold, sir.” “Okay, first, what is up with the sir? What is this, like the year 14000 hundred or something? And no, the North Pole is hot. Like super hot. Like Louisiana in the summer heat, and let me tell you Mardi Gras is in the winter for a reason.” The little man shrugged himself off his tall chair, plopped on the floor, and opened the door. “You know, you're really not good at locks and shit because the door was open. Follow me.” The two men walked through the extreme heat of the room to an even more overbearing amount of heat outside. The pavement was blue, the trees were pink, and the sky was purple, but the heat was red. A flaming heat that seared the eyes of Tom and prevented him from seeing the pretty colors that surrounded his exterior. Tom could not view the beauty of the colors, but he could see the short men and women that trotted up and down the path to and from the different workshops and factories. Tom could only describe the men and women in one manner: angry. An anger as silent and overbearing as the heat gleaned off the faces of the people. “Uh, sir, not sir, why are these little people so angry, is it the heat?” “No, you get used to the heat after a while. The people are angry at the clause.” “Why would anyone be angry at Santa Claus?” The little man raised his eyebrow in a humorous manner. “Santa Clause is not a fucking person. Santa Clause is the Clause that we live by. We all own the factories, we all own the stores, and we all do work. We all produce the toyssome toys we keep, some toys we sell, but the money goes back into the circle, and it makes us all angry. It makes the place hot. You can leave- but we are stuck, stuck by the fucking clause that we did not make. You know, dreams are funny. I can dream, and I can have passions, but the outcome is the same. We all have the same outcomes, the same slightly different lives because of the clause.” “You know I live by a clause too, the Constitution.” “Dude, your clause is not our clause. We are the saints, our lives for others, for the whole, not for ourselves. You chose to be indifferent, but by being saints we don’t have a choice but to serve the people after we're gone in this absurd place. You need to go back home, and live your life for yourself, just you. Don’t be fucking indifferent because you have choices and you need to start making your dreams passionate realities.” 10
Tom woke up freezing on his bathroom floor.
In the Minutes After an Injury //Miriam Kim At first, there will be no realization of self as it alters to nothingness. Then, it emerges, slowly a pressure tightening on the stomach. Still in a daze, recognize the conscious pain seeking your tender awareness. Quick, grab its unyielding hand and as it starts reviving a fragile vitality, never let go. After feeling yourself on the floating concrete where your scarlet lifeline seeps red into the place filling you with vague horror begin to connect your sense of being with the body: your legs, the discolored patch, a pale hand that you can’t see but can be imagined in front of your face. There. Make out the white sky stretched towards emptiness and distinguish two without faces by your side speaking in a voiceless language. A stream continues to trickle from you, lie in the overflowing pool and close your eyes Try not to listen to them, the spasms right above the hip where the flesh contracts in and out. Ignore its quickening rhythm and slow down your lightened breath.
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Without Him, With Others // Aniza Jahangir Sun set rose, do you nibble my skin? Is it body-red, body-stark, body-razor, or a simple resistance, insulin. Kiss kiss and cut cut, the pattern, xoxo, xxx, ooo, drybumpying the lips they're tattering. Oh god oh god, is it getting hot in here? Or is the sky just falling? Give it a week. Package up seven days and all of its hours and all of its hours’ heads and knee caps into the eclipsing part of the garden. The shanties and shacks of poor souls that lived on its skirts were hard enough to hold twenty one years of breakages, but this? Can it be held? Dark blue and black, solidifying, wide, dismembering cubes of tizzying and zippy twitchtwitchbzzzzshake- cold and ever splitting, fragments of moonlight and nonmoonlight. Just in case, to sooth the inevitable immigrant tirade of “i had one quarter in my pocket when i came to this country just to watch soft women cry”, as if, like peaches, all our heads, kneecaps, hard at birth only become softer and more jelly with rotting sweet age. Just in case, install the bars, make them thin but many - think: lungs too lungy to breathe - and attach them to disk shaped plates above and below the week. Tighten the screws, but please, if you can, be mindful of the peonies; yes i know they are greying, but what did you expect? Would this skyfall not eat them too, fleshy pink and organous? Don’t open your mouth to answer, from garden to sky, 343 m/s, your voice won’t get to me until this is all over anyway. Stepping back from sympathying the grotesque buds, how awful to feel ugly, prison looks a fine carousel. The seven days are expanding in nurture and torture and locked in tight even as they molecularize. The days, like the red toothed and unblinking white and brown horses that usually attach to golden rods, so full of menace and god fearing that they form invisible spindles of hopedeath between them, are in between stagnance and escaping speed and rhythm. Spinning spinning spinning. But it all still lives in the hippocampus of the world. Its ancient aliens and its ripe speech, and in the trickles of navels and watermelon juices around sticky amorphousliquid nude bodies from the mouth, eyes, and ears. These seven days will live in all of it. As stunning as it is to see time turn to cubic landfill waste in front of you, inside of you, all around you. As alive making it is to know you are going to die, mildly escaping death’s sun and moon and fruit swallowing void as you tip toe around the garden. Seeing an eternity of ongoing thought continue to rupture itself into greater fits of ambiguity, all the possible scenarios of 168 hours, and every hour’s minutes’ seconds’ milliseconds’ microtime’s microscenarios, it seems like consciousness is its very own state of being, and we were never, I realize now, its body. Intermingling with itself, killing itself, millions of consciousnesses mass suicide before your eyes, and ressurection. I might not believe in a Christ or a god, but I do believe that I know nothing, and is there really a difference? Seven days locked in a cage, spinning with carnival music under a decaying sky. The expanding orb we sit in still goes peach like and rots, and the juices from the universe’s bite, that one that will kill us all and laugh, drips down the innards of the universe, streaking the atmosphere, erasing the blue into black with silver edges. Turning the clouds into smoke women with nectarines for breasts and honeydew for the between thigh spot, hair made of microneedles and everyone’s decaying teeth from childhood. Oh would you please just give it seven days, lock those days away, don’t feel them. Don’t stare too close, they are brighter than the sun. they will burn you, cure you, melt you away, 12
leave you a puddle of universe on the floor. And the peonies may grow over you in the shape of your monument, big enough to lift your liquid high past the streaking decay, but what a risk that is. And yes, the universe is infinite, but what if you grow so high that you are just within reach of a new sun. and as your bloodnothing reaches out to it, there is a sharp razor. And you realize, after everything has died, below, you the sole survivor in a greying flower ladder, that infinity has its edges. There is nowhere to evaporate to. No sky women to steal fruit from. No bodies. And the new sun was nothing but what was locked away in the carousel prison, the consciousness, becoming what you never allowed it.
California Sunset // Lara Vezard
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Velvet Nine P.M. //Allison Gellerstein The shadows of your sparklers still crackle behind my eyes. When we first lit them, they were too intense to stare at for more than a few meager seconds. Then we adjusted to their luster and you delighted in the magic trick of their light dying out. It was the black crushed velvet kind of nine p.m. where the stars seemed like they were rising to meet us. There was an infinite tally of things to go horribly wrong. I worried about your shaggy ponytail and its proximity to the glittering embers and what the odds were of disaster striking at such a picturesque moment. My overthinking tasted tangy and metallic, and it felt like raw, uneven cuticles. You chuckled under your breath and smiled to yourself when you first noticed my white knuckle apprehension that velour night. You tossed your arm around my shoulder, comforting the tension within until it became a loosely knitted afghan. You put away the dangerous toys and we got grass stains from looking up at the stars instead. In the years since we fizzled out, the shadows have befriended the panic that tucks me in on nights when my gears keep tripping over themselves. It’s a pyrotechnic concert of shrill white noise, a siren too far away to find out what went wrong. Mornings after you taste like a lingering melancholia.
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// Erin Chang
The Jack and Jester //Caitlyn Chui A jack of all trades And a master of none: That is what they say To calm the nerves, To ease the fears, To ration why you can’t succeed even in things You love and cry over. You try. You give it your all. And that 70 percent you can reach Through blood and tears Will always be bested By someone born to reach 100. You climb the mountain with a rope and ax. But some people were just made to fly. “But oftentimes better than a master of one,” They counter. Denial is man’s best weapon. For what everyone knows, And what no one is willing to say, Is that it is leagues more difficult To succeed greatly Than it is To fail shortly. A jack of all trades A jester. That’s what she is. She can juggle, And sing, And even tell grandeur stories, And her singular victory will only be In their laughs. She can do this all and her efforts are met With humor. The Kings and Queens may not have the reach of her talent, But that one skill they possess will outshine her Greatest and most versatile accomplishments: She is only a motley jester standing in A royal court. And they were made to rule. 16
But the jester laughs, and the jester dreams: They have dreams too, no? Dreams to have goals, Dreams to become reality, Dreams to have their goals become their reality: Only slightly, never fully, Only partial, never complete. The jester laughs at their small victory in the face Of overwhelming Failure. She will too. The Jack of all trades, The master of none, The jester. And so she will laugh, Fall, Cry alone and away from them, In all the fields she samples, In all the avenues she drives, In dreams she can never fully achieve And in expectations she can never truly fulfill.
California Laguna Beach // Lara Vezard
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California Laguna Beach // Lara Vezard
California Beach // Lara Vezard
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XoXo //Caitlyn Chui Love if it bleeds, Love if it hurts, Love if you can hold onIs it all or none? Love doesn’t know the answer. I sense all these things, And all the things between. She looks at me funny. She talks to me. She calls my name. She looks at me She gazes. I gaze too, wondering if I’m stabbing myself Or star-gazing with her. I watch her mouth, I see words Spew out, the basin of the river Streams open pearls and water: Is it Wordplay Or witchcraft Is it simple banter Or am I Simply losing Sanity? But my bleeding heart tells me neither, Because I only listen to The pounding wake of her Calling my name: Say it again, say it louder. Call me. Clear my doubts. Erase my mind. It eases the shadows and opens a path to You. It beckons me, Signaling a return at the slightest call, As if light summons me And you return me. 19
Love encircles, Love entwines, Am I here to see the end of it To begin again And all its horrors and hopes betweenTell me, Is this my first love Or have I already Loved too much?
The Second Option //Caitlyn Chui All good things in this world Come in twos: Or did he hear it wrong? The spare for the heir, The terrible two’s, The scary seconds-He retraces. Maybe not everything good comes in pairs, But everything that is necessary. Fire and ice. The sun and shadow. Everything else he is. Somebody must hold up the rest, no? As Icarus reached for the sun, Atlas had to hold the Earth. As everyone else runs, He must trail and reach out his hand. There’s a name for thatThe second option. That’s why the first can be relieved, Knowing it has a backup, And why the second has never known relaxation In his Life. When will he ever be needed? When will he ever have use? 20
He dreams about it sometimes: When the sun rises west and sets east, When the moon comes first and the sun lays down-Maybe then he will be it. The one. The first. Because when the first does the impossible, And finds itself lacking in a paradox That the second somehow does better, He will rejoice and find his place as the one. And surely somebody else will come As his second.
California Silhouette // Lara Vezard
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Two Tons of Tears for the Kettle //Alisha Lekh Two tons of tears for the kettle And my mouth has been dry all day I buy tea from a place that only sells tea Leaves dried to ash Hula hoops of stains rung around fake porcelain plastic Two tons of tears for the kettle And all I can think about are hot showers and mangoes I’m thinking of mangoes Mangoes like lightbulbs high up in trees High up in the trees like tangled kites Bright yellow mangoes and chipped teacups painted pink Mangoes like lightbulbs crushed under tires Mangoes bursting in your gapping gap-toothed gash of a mouth Bursting like bulbs of hydrangeas laying in bright bunches Outside your house Mangoes bursting like the great first swell of spring on your porch Dripping juice you could bottle for ninety-nine cents Lines of juice running down your forearms until your whole hands Are so slick and sticky you can’t touch anything because you know your Mother will yell at the mess I’m thinking of rivers in jungles that have no names Of rivers that empty into oceans with no beaches I’m thinking of skimming this surface until it tears And big long lines ripple over and over and over Tracing the lines of your palm under the shadowed Patterns of leaves that bow down Shaking hands with the fishes too sleepy to care Two tons of tears for the kettle There are mangoes floating in the water Mango pits floating in the water around me I think I think I can feel my bones as the kettle calls me to turn it off The kettle leaking steam like a shower Like a shower whose handle is all the way in the red As far as it can go
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// Erin Chang
Shotgun Shells and Orson Welles A small-town story about the biggest Halloween hoax our country has ever seen. //Jessica Storch “They put me in the back seat of our car, next to the milk, bread, shotgun and shells, and we headed out of town.” This was my father’s recounting of his young family’s escape from their small, rural New Jersey hometown. Dad had been just a young boy at the time of the incident. The year was 1938, and our nation was on edge. We had just come out of the Great Depression, only to watch Hitler’s rise to power in Germany. Many Americans feared that the worst could happen at any moment. My grandparents, William and Irene Bathgate, were no exception. While thoughts of a possible worldwide catastrophe were always lingering in the corners of their minds, the predictability of day-to-day living provided them an ample amount of immediate security. Life moved slowly for Pap and Gram at home in Branchville, Sussex County. They were raising their two young children in a small and humble home at the top of Fox Hill Road, a short walk from the center of town. “More often than not, the spoils from a day of Pap’s hunting or fishing were that evening’s dinner. This community has always provided for its sense of country living, with its’ dairy farms, lakes, streams, and meadows,” my father explained to me. He went on to fondly recall a childhood when, “Sunday mornings were for church going, and the afternoons were for porch sitting and waving.” It was during one of those ordinary moments, on Sunday evening, October 30th, 1938, when Pap, Gram and their young children fell victim to one of the most notorious pranks in the history of our country. Finally settling in for a bit of evening respite, they tuned the dial of their Philco tube radio to a live broadcast of the Orson Welles and Mercury Theater production, War of the Worlds. The program had already begun, but the family was eager to spend a few moments being entertained by what remained. Many other Americans, like my grandparents who had tuned in to the show late, missed an introduction that clearly described it as a theatrical performance. Instead of dialing into the intended entertainment, they were shocked by reports of a violent extra-terrestrial takeover, and the result was panic! Modern day listeners most likely would have immediately identified the inconceivable storyline as fiction. Yet, as with so many people of the time, my father’s family was vulnerable due to the precarious state of the world. It was later reported that listeners throughout the entire country feared for their lives as well. “I know what folks these days would think. I’m sure they would get a kick out of the thought of us sitting on the edge of our seats, straining to hear through the static for every bit of information that was reported. But I tell you, you can’t really know what it was like if you weren’t there. Lots of other folks were pretty frenzied as well,” Dad shared with me. Whether or not the broadcast caused a widespread panic has been debated, but many things are for sure. On October 30, 1938, The Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) featured War of the Worlds on their radio theater program. The radio play was performed as a series of interruptions to the live performance of an orchestra at The Meridian Room in the Hotel Park Plaza, New York City. These news bulletins created a sense of true, live coverage. 24
The play was told as if it were breaking news. It claimed to include interviews with college and astronomy professors, a Ph.D. from The National Museum of History in New York, and officers of the state militia. The rising tension from the reports was reinforced with police sirens and frightened eyewitness accounts. Listeners who had turned the program on late had every reason to believe that an alien invasion was taking place. “As the story unfolded, we believed every bit of it. I remember Pap saying that the hair on the back of his neck stood up straight. We all thought that we were done for,” recalled my father. The drama, which was told as real-time, terrifying events of an alien invasion, was set in Grovers Mill, NJ, only 75 miles south of his family’s home. Coincidentally, Grovers Mill, in West Windsor Township, shared significant characteristics with Branchville in the early 1900’s. Both small towns could attribute their sustenance to grist mills and active train lines. Surrounded by abundant farmland, residents of Branchville and Grovers Mill enjoyed the many old-time recreational aspects of their respective town ponds. As the announcer’s intrusions became more frequent, so did the severity of the situation. Welles managed to build suspense at first, with limited and mysterious descriptions of unknown activity on Mars. Then, a “jet of blue flame shot from a gun” and moved toward the Earth. The announcer’s voice trembled, and his pace quickened as a later report informed listeners that a huge flaming object fell on a farm in Grovers Mill. An eyewitness account was then believably told by a voice actor who claimed to have watched the object fall onto his farm. A scene unfolded that included extraterrestrials exiting a metallic cylinder and intending to begin a war with mankind. “There, I can see the thing’s body. It’s large as a bear and glistens like wet leather. But that face, it… Ladies and gentlemen, it’s indescribable. I can hardly force myself to keep looking at it,” reported Carl Phillips from the scene. “I remember watching Gram as she closed her eyes, folded her hands together and started saying a prayer for those poor souls that were under attack,” Dad recounted of those intense moments. He went on to say, “To look back on it, I have nothing but respect and admiration for my parents who were just trying to comprehend the seriousness of the situation and decide what they would need to do to protect us.” The production proceeded with news of Middlesex and Mercer counties being placed under martial law, home evacuations across New Jersey, Red Cross units assigned to emergencies, and Martian cylinders falling all over the United States. A battle between Earth and an invading army from Mars resulted in scenes of human destruction. While the war on the radio was unfolding, my grandparents devised their own preparations to protect their family. “We believed that the aliens would land at Sussex Airport next, just a few miles from our home, and this put the fear of God in us,” Dad recalled. Pap and Gram set an emergency plan for survival into motion in a matter of minutes. “They threw the necessities for survival in the car, packed up us kids, and we headed to Child’s Park, in Dingmans Ferry, PA to wait out the invasion. The plan was to live out of the car until everything was brought back under control.”
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The young family: Dad, Gram, Aunt Ruth Ann, and Pap at home in Branchville, Sussex County
1941 - Dad and his dog Sandy, in front of the Fox Hill home
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Frustrated with the limitations of their party line telephone that prevented them from calling loved ones, the young family drove through Branchville, stopping only to quickly convey their plans to those they passed along their escape route. “We had the car radio tuned to the program for the drive up, and it only confirmed for us that we were doing the right thing. Somewhere on our way to the park, Gram said that she had forgotten to feed the cat and lock the door. Those were the only words that anyone spoke for the entire ride.” Pap drove the family Ford over the winding gravel roads that turned to dirt, crossed over a running stream and finally into the entrance of Child’s Park. Through the dark, the car’s headlights revealed a secluded and rustic camp site, abandoned at the end of summer. “We parked in one of their sites,” my father recounted. “It was just a small clearing with a stone fire pit. Two sides of the perimeter were bordered with dense forest, and Pap told us to stay put in the car and listen to the broadcast. Meanwhile, he went off into the darkness to gather up some kindling for a fire.” Not too long later, Pap came rushing back to the car. He threw open the back door and said that there was a noise in the woods, branches were breaking and sounds getting closer. Just when he was about to say more, he stopped himself, and grabbed his shotgun and box of shells. Then there was a lot of commotion all at once. Dad explained, “I heard something like the pounding of footfalls coming from the woods. The next thing I knew, Gram was turned to face us from her front seat. She said to Pap, ‘Did you hear that? The radio! Did you hear it? We can go home.’ But Pap turned away from us with the gun in his hands. He took a quick step forward, heading back toward the pitch black. It seemed like he was ready to go fight, and that’s when Gram called out to him again, ‘I said it’s okay; it was all an act. Let’s go home!’ I could see Pap steady himself for a moment, like he had to make a quick decision, then he turned around and came back to the car.” Gram had heard the conclusion of the performance. Orson Welles announced to his listeners that War of The Worlds was a radio prank. “We couldn’t soap up your windows and steal all your garden gates by tomorrow night…so we did the next best thing. We annihilated the world before your very ears,” Welles shared with his audience. He went on to say, “…and remember the terrible lesson you learned tonight. That grinning, glowing, globular invader of your living room is an inhabitant of the pumpkin patch, and if your doorbell rings and nobody’s there, that was no Martian… it’s Halloween.” “When Gram told Pap that it had all been a prank, even I could see the relief on her face and the wetness to her eyes. But I think I was just too young to understand Pap’s reaction. Something else had been out there in the woods, and he was ready to battle whatever it was. He kept that shotgun and the box of shells up in the front seat between him and Gram as we drove home,” Dad shared with me. He went on to say that his parents never spoke again of whatever had been lurking in the darkness at Child’s Park, but from time to time they would retell the other events of that evening. By Monday morning, newspaper headlines across the country reported the widespread hysteria that had been caused by Sunday evening’s drama. Was the magnitude of listener reactions really as intense as the newspapers claimed? Maybe we will never have a true picture of just how many Americans feared for their lives that night from a time before cell 27
phones, internet connections, and televisions. But for many, including my own father and his family, the trauma was real. “A lot of people thought it was real, and I suppose that if I had been listening to the radio that night, I would have believed it myself,” recalled Aldo Sayre, of Branchville, who was just a boy at the time. He heard about the broadcast while in town the following day and spoke with several townsfolk who had believed it to be genuine. Mr. Sayre confirmed that the broadcast, “stirred up a lot of people.” “That Monday, life went back to normal,” my father recalls. “Pap went back to work as a mechanic at the Culver and Van Auken Garage on Broad Street, and Gram tended to us kids,” Dad explains. The shotgun and shells were returned to their resting place on top of the old Hoosier cabinet in the kitchen where they could be grabbed up at any moment for hunting rabbits, squirrels, and deer. As for Orson Welles, War of the Worlds launched his acting career as one of Hollywood’s legendary film stars. His many professional accomplishments, including Citizen Kane, have led many to refer to him as a genius. A genius who pulled off one of the most memorable hoaxes in our country’s history. Dad and I recently took a ride up to Child’s Park in Pennsylvania, although it wasn’t the same anymore. The roads that lead there were paved many years ago. Now, they are regulated by an abundance of traffic lights with homes and small businesses built up along the sides. When we thought we had missed a turn, I typed “Child’s Park” into my GPS, and we were directed to back track about two miles. As we pulled into the park’s entrance, we were greeted by two official-looking office buildings and signage that prominently disclosed the park’s rules and regulations. “To state the obvious, the park isn’t the only thing that’s different now,” Dad shared as we meandered through its off-season camping sites. He stopped and turned to me, “I know that to younger generations it seems my parents had been naïve back then and easily fooled. But, there’s this part to my story, Jessie, that I don’t want to get lost,” he explained. “It’s not an event to add to the adventure of it, nor is it another piece of history.” He paused, thoughtful for a moment, then continued, “What needs to come through is the spirit of Gram and Pap. They had knowledge, guts, and faith. There’s just so many intangibles that come to mind when I think of them. Things that were really put to the test in this experience. I hope that important lesson won’t get lost on the modern day reader.” He was right. It was true that on that evening of October 30th, 1938, Pap and Gram faced a real battle. Their challenge was to conquer a dark fear of the unknown with their own grit and fortitude. And in the end, my grandparents had been victorious. Their reward was their loving family and the peace and safety of their humble home at the top of Fox Hill Road.
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Postcard of Branchville’s Town Square 1936/ 1994 - No. 2 in “Then and Now” series 1936 photo courtesy of Harvey W. Herdman 1994 photo courtesy of Joseph Codella
The Culver and Van Auken Garage on the corner of Broad Street and Railroad Avenue, where Pap worked
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Change is a part of our lives //Chris Janania Change is a part of our lives Just as the day comes and goes And this fact scares me sometimes But I’m still hopeful for what it may bring It wasn’t that long ago I was a little kid playing games And now I’m attending my final year of university It wasn’t that long ago I lived a carefree life And now there’s due dates, deadlines, and the future to be concerned Families become more closer as time goes forward Friends share more memories and some partings start forming Our lives are always transitioning to the next big thing As well as it bringing good and bad moments Change is a sign that you are growing Becoming a person that’s you but different Every decision, action, feeling makes up the person you are And these results will be tested over and over again Time always moves forward Showing me in a classroom in high school Change is becoming more noticeable Showing that life is truly about to begin I stand at the bus stop waiting for the bus to arrive Wondering how today is going to go Will this feeling always last? No, but something new will take its place and this will be a memory I’ll look back happily Going to classes in this university Meeting different kinds of people Doing homework until the late night hours Everyday and everyone will be treasured I won’t forget you all as I grow older As I enter a new portion of my life In this world that keeps on traveling in outer space I will still be me but with with some changes
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// Erin Chang
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