Synecdoche 2024

Synecdoche Literary Journal

21st Anniversary Edition

By Vanguard University

Copyright - 2024 Syecdoche Literary Journal of Vanguard University is a trademark used herein.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED - No part of this work covered by the copyright herein may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including but not limited to photocopy, recording, taping, web distribution, information networks or information storage and retrieval systems -- without the written permission of Synecdoche Literary Journal of Vanguard Unviersity.

Contact Information

Vanguard University English Department (714)-556-3610 ext. 2500 synecdoche@vanguard.edu

Cover Design by: Rebekah Pinedo

Acknowledgements

Our biggest gratitude to Professor Doody and the rest of the English Department for their continuous instruction and support in our educational journeys. Thank you all for the hard work you do both in and out of the classroom. It is difficult to put into words just how important your work is, but we would not be able to do this without you. Thank you for making us the writers and readers we are now.

We also want to give a special thank you to the previous Synecdoche teams for their inspiration and guidance with the tedious things.

Thank you to our amazing Production Editor, Rebekah Pinedo, for putting in the work to design the entirety of this book.

And of course, thank you to God. All glory and praise to Him.

Letter From the Editors

Rebekah Pulsaki and Abigail Frank

As Editors-in-Chief, we’ve had two different experiences creating and editing this journal. Together—Rebekah and Abigail—this is our story.

2020 was a challenging year for all of us. I’m sure everyone can agree on that. For me, 2020—along with being the year that it seemed the world was going to end—was the year I started college. Because what else can you do when the world is ending? And I knew that this would impact my first year as a college student. But I wasn’t prepared for how much it would. The first semester at Vanguard, I felt truly alone. Confined to my room, interacting with only the cafeteria workers, staring at the blank gray Zoom squares that were my classmates, I didn’t feel a part of Vanguard in any way, and it was difficult to say the least. But slowly, as it became safer, I started to find my place here. I became a part of this university and am beyond proud that I got to work on Synecdoche—representing the community that I can now say I am a part of.

As a commuter, it’s hard to feel a part of something. The minimal days on campus and lack of connection creates a difficult environment to thrive in. I luckily found my place early in the Vanguard community, through the Writing Center. In the center, I formed my first friendships on campus and learned more about what it meant to be a part of a community that cared. I quickly found my place across various departments on campus the following school year but felt most at home in the close-knit English department. Putting together a whole literary journal is no small feat, but a group of fifteen can do extraordinary things when put to the test.

Every experience I have had with Synecdoche has been a surprise. I can recall an email I got my freshman year: I got into Synecdoche! I was going to be a published author. What a surprise that is at eighteenyears-old. Just two years later, after that process of finding my place at Vanguard, I was asked if I would be willing and able to be Co-Editor-inChief of Synecdoche. I never could have guessed that surprise for myself. And I never could have guessed that fear. The fear of failure. But surprise! We didn’t fail. That, in itself, was the most beautiful surprise of all.

Starting Synecdoche, I thought the process would be fairly simple: ask people to submit, read through their work and look at their art, choose the best pieces, put it in a journal, and throw a fun party. How hard could it be? Wrong! The amount of work that goes into putting a literary journal together and publishing it in nine short weeks is mind boggling. I am so

grateful for the collection of people we had working on this together. In this process, I was also happily surprised to learn so much more about my fellow classmates. In an exercise done at the beginning of each class, we learned that Dafne’s favorite movie is Pitch Perfect, Trenton’s favorite number is twenty-three, and facts have never been Rebekah Pinedo’s strong suit. What a privilege it has been to work alongside so many incredible humans.

Growing up as a middle child, I always felt a sense of pressure. Pressure to live up to my older sister, and pressure to set a good example for my younger sister. That is something that has always stayed with me. My experience with Synecdoche has been no different. The Synecdoche team from last year exceeded expectations left and right. Going into this year, I saw them as a force to be reckoned with. I absolutely had to live up to the new expectations they set. But luckily, with the help of our wonderful team, and my driven Co-Editor-in-Chief, the pressure started to ease. Synecdoche became something I looked forward to, rather than dreaded, and that couldn’t have happened without them.

As Co-Editor-in-Chief, I felt a pressure to do well for my peers. Having thirteen other people rely on you to lead, structure, and organize a weekly class and literary journal—on top of all the other things, like school, work, and upholding a social life—is no easy undertaking. I was most motivated by my desire to do well and live up to the expectations my classmates had formed in their own minds of what a leader looked like, and to do well for my partner in crime who, in no way, could I have done this without. The pressure slowly faded as we got further along in the process, and I became more confident in my ability to co-lead a group to the finish line.

Being a part of Synecdoche doesn’t just mean a connection to the team. It means reading through all the pieces that are submitted to the journal. Throughout the reading process, I found myself in wonder, as I read page after page of my fellow-students’ work. These people, who I had been living, breathing, and existing with, had been vulnerable in a way that left me in awe. The bravery it must have taken to send in such vulnerable stories and poetry, is something that is difficult to fathom, and I am so thankful to the student population for allowing me the opportunity to know them in that way.

Throughout the whole process, I have seen multiple people step up to ensure Synecdoche kept running smoothly and successfully. Max spoke at, what I felt was, every class he could find to tell people to submit their work to Synecdoche despite his initial shyness. Jared and Jaden brought together vastly different people to form cohesive committees. Emily took

initiative when it came to the editing process and formatted like no other. I have been in awe of the whole team as they have stepped up in every part of the process. They have made the hard parts easy, and I am extremely grateful for that.

As we finish this project up, it is impossible for me to not think of it as a representation of my, and my team’s, careers as students coming to an end. This edition of Synecdoche is truly a sight to behold. It will make you laugh and make you cry, just as my journey at Vanguard has done. Our time has come to say goodbye. Goodbye to Vanguard, goodbye to Synecdoche, goodbye to my team. I hope this small rendering of our lives as students can do justice to the real and monstrous impact of our years here, because that is what Synecdoche is truly about.

Synecdoche signifies the end to an English major’s time at Vanguard. It is the thing that we leave behind for future classes and generations to enjoy. However, Synecdoche isn’t just an experience for those who put it together, but for everyone who has had a piece in it. You also live on with us, in ink, forever. We applaud the courage it took to submit and the accomplishment of being published. It has been a great experience, for all of us, to put together this journal with the larger community in mind. Synecdoche is an experience and a journal that encapsulates all of us, and together we are all Synecdoche. We hope you enjoy.

Synecdoche

By Vanguard University

Mallard Luke Miller Winner

Camping With a Big Bear

Jared Rhone Winner

Friday

6:47 pm on a summer day. Music vibrates against my thighs. Gazing across the dusty car dashboard, I stare into the bottomless pit of trees that hang over the highway’s railing. I bottle down my fear and tighten my grip on the cold bottle of Jarritos soda that chills the palm of my hand. I feel like a man.

“How far are we?” croaked a passenger behind us. It was my six-year-old stepbrother Miles, who had clearly just woken up from his slumber.

“Probably like 35 minutes,” my stepdad grumbled. “Jared, how far out are we?” He hands me the directions he had printed out, as I scramble to unpack the strange symbols in front of me. I’m not sure nine-year-olds are supposed to know the intricacies of a highway road map, but I pretend to be an expert. I feel like a man.

“Well, we took the uh 405-S… okay..CA-55,” I pause intently on the map. “This here looks like the I-15, so… Oh my gosh! Yeah, we’re on the CA-18 right now which means...Hmm. I would say. Yeah. Probably 3540 minutes.” I turn to my stepdad for a nod of approval. He’s clearly tuned me out. “We’ll be there pretty soon,” I answer now back to Miles.

“But I don’t want to go camping,” he whines back. “I want to go snowboarding.”

“We’re going! And we’re not going for the snow. It’s the summer.” my stepdad interjects. Perhaps he was listening after all. “God it’s just for a weekend! Why can’t you just shut up and sleep like him?”

He was talking about Bishop. My older brother of eleven, who also sat in the backseat, and as usual had fallen asleep just ten minutes into our drive up to Big Bear. The silence becomes audible. My stepdad, seemingly unbothered, decides to crank up the music. “Brass Monkey, that funky Monkey, Brass Monkey junkie, that funky monkey,” belt the Beastie Boys. Perched in the passenger seat, I let the song simmer a bit, as my mind rests on what our spontaneous all-guys camping trip would bring. I loathe my stepdad’s impulsive inclinations, and think about my mother home alone, and her warmth-filled hugs she dispatched upon our departure. Then, attacked by the silence of the car, I decide to ask my stepdad the leading question: “So when’s the last time you went camping?”

Without an inch of movement in his posture, my step dad responds abundantly. He recites the many camping trips he took in his

20s and swarms the air with tales upon tales. My mind, swallowed by the overflow of information, loosely follows, but after a few minutes, drifts into its own stream of consciousness. I center on the faded asphalt of the highway, the texture of the walls of rock surrounding us, and the hue of the slowly setting sun that gleams through the windshield. The notary elements of Big Bear begin to show themselves as we tread along the twisting road. We’re getting close. I think. My mind continues to stray. I marvel at the picture I make of my stepdad as a “young man.” An image so docile and peaceful that my brain folds at the mere thought. I think about the Beastie Boys, and try to imagine that strange monkey they’re rapping about. But as my thoughts travel endlessly, my attention never leaves my stepdad. I keep the “conversation” flowingly, chuckling at jokes I don’t understand, and nodding at senseless stories. As most men do, I try to listen but pretend to comprehend; I take a swig of the soda that scratches my throat and act like I enjoy the sensation. I feel like a man.

Arriving at the campsite, we spill out of my stepdad’s green jeep. My stepdad and I are sharp, alert, and ready; my two brothers are not.

“P- Pn- Pnknot Campground,” Miles tries to sound out. He reads the faded sign a few paces away from us.

“Pineknot,” Bishop answers back. “I think the “i” is missing,” He lets out a mild yawn as he stretches his arms to the sky.

“Nah I think the “i” is just silent,” I chuckle proudly. My brothers let out a weak groan, too tired to deal with my lame jokes. I peer into the darkness of the campsite. Perhaps silent was the best word after all. The campsite was pitch black, with large pine trees blocking out the moonlight with their canopies of pointy hair. I search for other families, and other tents within our midst, but our dusty green jeep seems to be the only sign that human beings could actually exist within the area. Squinting into the darkness, I take a step toward the unknown. I am petrified, but try to deceive the gaping darkness that rests in front of me. I feel like a man.

“Dad, are there going to be bears out here?” Miles questions. He channels the same fear I possess but fails to mask it.

“No Miles, you asked this the last time we came out here snowboarding, there are no bears. Why would I take you somewhere with actual bears? Whaddya think, I’m stupid?” my stepdad barks.

My eyes turn sharply to Bishop. Not a word. Not a freaking word. My eyes shout at him. His brown eyes shine back at me.

It’s not like he can do anything out here. His eyes answer. And c’mon. You’re thinking it too.

“I got a feeling we’ll see a bear around here,” Bishop says aloud

with a smirk. Luckily, my step dad isn’t listening. He’s growling out the orders as he starts to throw our bags and backpacks on the ground.

“I’m gonna walk Miles to the bathroom. Bishop, get the firewood out and unload the rest of the bags, Jared, you put up the tent,” he says with a hazing glare. Chills run up my spine as I break eye contact with him. He has beady vacant eyes, seemingly averse to warmth and candor; to meet his gaze is to take a step back. Like staring into the soul of some sinister force, starving to prey on your very essence. The look he gave was enough, as I now frantically fumble to pitch up the tent. I’ve only put up one tent in my nine years of existence: The Spider-Man tent Bishop and I had when we went “camping” in our room. I try to remember the lessons of years long past. The rod, the r-poles. Yes I take these and put them. Here. I think. Why isn’t this bending? Please bend. Please! A hand pats the back of my shoulder as I turn to meet Bishop’s eyes.

“Be easier if we do it together,” he reassures me. I heave a sigh of relief as the pair of us go to work. We slave away in the dirt with rapid intensity, grunting and sweating as cold beads of liquid drip down our backs. We collectively war with the tent under the flickering stars and the empty beam of a faulty flashlight. As we finally muster up the finishing touches, my brother walks away and tells me to finish up “my” work. I zip up the tent proudly and stand in awe. I feel like a man.

That night, we eat roasted hot dogs over the fire. My step dad passes out the baked beans a little bit later as we gnaw away at the provisions. The dinner feels unimpressive, but hearty as my stomach welcomes anything it can hold. As we make our way to bed and zip up the tent for the evening, I notice the eeriness that dwells in the dead of the night. I rest my head on my makeshift pillow (a bundled-up jacket) and bury myself in my sleeping bag. I don’t fall asleep right away. I wait. I sit. I listen. I feel the poking of the sticks beneath us, jabbing into my side from under the tent. I make no noise. I take a look around at my sleeping comrades and decide it’s time to rest. My eyes shut, as I swear I hear the pattering paws, the howling of wolves in the far distance, and the echoing cries of the wilderness all around me. My ears however fall deaf to the bear, the snoring bear that rumbles loudly beside me.

Saturday

Waking up was its own experience. My eyes creep open early in the morning (as they always do) as I meander my way through my sleeping brothers. Opening up the tent I am whacked by the brisk morning air and met by my stepdad who sits at the campfire.

“How’d you sleep?” he asks. I didn’t know how to answer. I didn’t even know how I had fallen asleep last night. Sleep somehow presses

pause on my life’s journey in a way I can’t explain.

“Not sure,” I admit. “It’s pretty cold though. Is it normally this cold for Big Bear in the summer?”

“It’s around 45°,” He starts, “I’d say this is pretty normal.” He sits in a mesh lawn chair as I take the seat across from him. None of us say a word. It was a common practice between us. Often I would wake up between 7-8am on a Saturday morning. I would walk to the dining room table where my stepdad would work and simply sit. I wouldn’t say a word, or pretend to understand his software engineering brain; I would just sit and observe what a man did on a Saturday morning. Now, in the wilderness, I intend to do the same. I watch as he sips his coffee, then scratches the stubble resting on his face. I absent-mindedly glide my finger on top of my lip. I feel the slightest breath of peach fuzz gloss my finger. I feel like a man.

“Going to the bathroom,” blurts my stepdad. “Wake your brothers up. We’re going to get ready to go fishing at the lake soon.” He walks off to the bathroom, as my eyes investigate the woods around me and Big Bear shows me its many faces. In the village, everything seems so dormant, like a frozen attraction waiting for a special spark to change its icy track. The village is packed, as tourists trample any sense of culture or custom, and the locals retreat deep within their mountainous domains. In the wintertime, Big Bear smells of melted snow, aged water, and the collective stench of crowded spaces. Now, in the summer, Big Bear is alive, as its new vigor harbors a distinctive attitude. In the summer, the city welcomes you but doesn’t invite you. It gives you shelter but doesn’t offer it to you. In the summer it smells of sage, wood, and air so pure it bites into your nose. In the summer Big Bear is no tourist attraction; it is simply a place where tourists go.

“Didn’t I tell you to wake up your brothers?” my stepdad hisses as he comes back. Breaking my train of thought, he pushes me aside and grabs the ice chest. He takes out a bottle of cold water and rushes into the tent. “WAKE UP!” he roars, pouring the water onto my brothers’ sleeping heads. They shoot up instantly as I mouth my apologies in the distance. “Get going, get your bodies clean. We gotta leave soon.”

“Where do we shower?” Miles asks.

“We don’t. Ain’t got none here,” my stepdad answers.

“Nice,” Bishop responds. He sees showering as a “waste of time.”

“You still gotta wash yourself dummy,” my stepdad scoffs. He motions to a pot of hot water he had over the fire. “Use that. There are some rags in that bag there. Get it done.”

“Dad, do RVs have showers?” Miles asks.

“Yes Miles.”

“Dad. We should get an RV!” he implores.

“Miles,” he sighs. “Shut up and wash your body.”

***

Approaching Big Bear Lake, I feel my heart slumping. I’m afraid. I don’t mind “showering” outdoors or sleeping in a tent, but fishing at a lake with my step dad poses a different kind of danger. For starters, I can’t swim, something I know my stepdad is aware of but doesn’t care about. Secondly, I suck at fishing, and the idea of making him angry churns at the core of my gizzard. Both fears bubble at the surface, as my step dad explains that he’s renting a boat for us to go fishing on. The four of us. On a lake. Alone. Exiting the car, I pretend I don’t care. My face is calm. But my heart is throbbing. I feel like a man.

Ready to rent our fishing poles and boat, we make our way to a small window and scan the sign above: Fishing Boat Rentals:(4 PEOPLE MAX): $85- 2 hours $140- 4 hours [Charter fee dependent on party size].

“85 bucks huh,” my stepdad says to the man behind the window. “What’s this charter fee about?”

“Well sir, we have a crew member go out with ya just to make sure everybody’s safe. And we only have a few so we charge a little extra. It’s mostly recommended for people with a lotta kids,” the man clarifies exhaustedly. He has baggy eyes and hairy hands that pat against the counter in front of him.

“Yeah, we’re not doing that,” my stepdad snarls. “Besides, these aren’t kids.” That one (pointing to me) is 15, he’s (Bishop) 14, and the little one…” his brain tries to compute a passable age, “Alright, he’s 6, but he can swim, he’ll live.” The man behind the counter clearly isn’t bothered by my stepdad’s lies. He hands him the poles, keys, and life jackets, as we make our way over to the boat.

***

The fishing isn’t going well. No one has come close to catching anything as we take a break to eat our lunch in the dead water of the lake. Our boat is barely classifiable as a boat. It is more like a dinghy, a reality that makes me and Bishop uneasy, as it makes standing still to cast our lines feel impossible with the boat’s helpless rocking. My stepdad takes out some bread, chicken and mayo as we prepare ourselves some food. My sandwich is messy, sloppy and mixes with the lake water that spills into the corners of our boat. I take a bite anyway. I feel like a man.

“Hehehe,” Miles giggles. “Look at Jared’s shorts.” All our eyes shift now to my shorts, which are soaked with lake water near my crotch.

“Very funny,” I quip. “Didn’t you like wet your pants last week or something?”

“I hadda lot of water,” Miles protests.

“I think Miles is wetting his pants again right now,” Bishop smiles, sprinkling some lake water onto Miles’s shorts.

“Hey!” “Bishop. You. You have a small head.” Classic Miles comeback.

“Miles, I know you’re not talking about people’s heads. With that big ol head.” Bishop wasn’t wrong. Miles had a massive noggin. I remember him once running into a wall playing around the house. Then getting up. And going right back to running. I immediately went to check on the wall’s vitals.

“Miles’ head looks like a lopsided walnut,” I chime in. We all start laughing.

“Jared bro, you look like a starburst with that red life jacket,” Bishop snickers.

“You look like an elongated fire extinguisher,” I rebut. “Looking like a stick bug with a peanut head.” Now we’re all laughing. Holding our stomachs as our boat rocks against the glimmering water. Finally a moment of ease.

And then the moment ends. “Haha, I can see Dad’s belly sticking out under his shirt,” laughs Miles.

Silence. Utter silence. Children are brutally honest. Children have no filter. But as my brain filters through the possible consequences of Miles’s actions, it locks in one and one outcome only.

I watch as the bear points his snout and bares his teeth. The bristly hairs on his arm stick out and point upward. Then, like a father in the 70s, I shoot my arm out across Miles’s chest, as the bear springs his arm out to push my little brother overboard. Instead the paw meets my arm, which firmly holds its ground. I feel like a man.

My stepdad pauses for a second, confused, and then shakes off the feeling by grabbing our sandwiches and chucking them into the lake. He dumps the rest of the chicken into the water and demands we catch our own food for the night. I hope that would be the worst of it.

Our fishing becomes desperate. My stepdad breathes down our necks as Bishop and I pray for fish to fall onto our hooks. I look at him somberly. We aren’t eating tonight. My eyes admit to him.

Just gotta catch one. Just one. His eyes mumble back. With the sun at our backs, all of Big Bear Lake seems to fall still. Then, the atmosphere erupts.

“I GOT ONE!” Bishop trumpets. Miles and I watch as my stepdad rushes to his side. “It’s a big one!” my stepdad quakes. “Stick with it!” I want to help. But my legs rest in place as I watch the pair lug out a massive 13 lb rainbow trout.

“Dinner is served,” Bishop rejoices. We make our way back to the dock as my step dad showers Bishop with praise. I watch with envy, and

then with sharp guilt. I congratulate my brother with a weak smile, as Bishop, always camera ready, holds the trout proudly.

That evening, we feast on the fresh catch. Bishop is shown how to filet the fish, as I try to key in on the tactics. I learn nothing. But I enjoy the trout nonetheless, studying the fire and the ember-riddled wood. I stay in my chair until nightfall, as the rest of us seemingly turn in for the night.

My eyes are peering up at the stars when the animal attacks. The bear comes from behind me and jerks part of my head toward the fire. The heat kisses my face and my head is then yanked backward. The bear keeps one paw on the back of my neck and uses the other to pull my arm behind me. It slams me against a tree, its claws digging into my veins and squeezing the color out of my brown skin. The paw on my neck comes free and then crashes again against my body. Pulverizing my shoulder with blows that shoot up my nerves. I cannot see his face, but I can tell the bear is foaming at the mouth, his jaw-popping growling drowning out my ears.

“You ever try to undermine me like that again, I’m breaking your fricking arm.” I feel my eyes begin to water, as I numb out the expression on my face and sink the tears back into the pits of my eye sockets. “We clear?” grumbles the bear.

I turn to meet his gaze. But do not take a step back. I just sternly stare into those beady eyes and nod calmly. I watch the bear hobble back into the tent. I sit at the fire. I try to clear my head. I feel like a man.

Sunday

Sunday morning passes by in a mere moment. We pack the tent, the backpacks, and sleeping bags, and have the jeep loaded in the blink of an eye. The plan is to go hiking and make our way home in the early afternoon. We find a trail near the campsite, and begin trekking along its pathway. We all seem to feel the effects of the day prior. I’m frustrated and ready to go home, Bishop sniffles and sneezes, Miles complains about not catching a fish himself, and the bear laments over not getting more time to hibernate. We follow him mindlessly across the dirt road, as he steers us off course countless times. The trail takes us higher and higher until we find ourselves atop a rocky mountain range.

“We are definitely lost, huh,” groans Bishop.

“We are not lost. You can see the lake from here,” fumes my step dad.

“Right, but we can’t see our car anymore. I don’t even know where the trail is now.”

“Boy. You talking back to me?”

Bishop doesn’t even respond. He just keeps his mouth shut and puts his hands on his hips. “There’s some rabbitbrush and California buckwheat. Yeah, we gotta be up a good 7,000 ft.”

I take another look at Bishop. Don’t even think about it, My eyes remark.

I didn’t say anything. His eyes try to say back innocently. But I know his gaze too well. My step dad decides we’ll head back down, and the four of us start to go down the mountain. My body is tired and my head is hurting as I try not to look over the edge of the trail. Just keep moving. I think to myself as I wipe the sweat from my brow. I feel like a man.

“Dad. My shoes are untied,” Miles announces.

“Take care of that,” the bear moans, turning and motioning to Bishop.

“Take care of that,” Bishop instructs, now turning and motioning to me. I sigh and frustratingly tie Miles’s shoes.

“Dude, we gotta get you tying your shoes man,” I say irritatedly to Miles, tying the knot probably too tight.

“Uh, didn’t you learn how to tie your shoes when you were like seven?” Bishops retorts. Got me there.

“Yeah. But that’s because my favorite shoes were velcro,” I mutter.

“Uh-huh.”

“Alright. Fine, you win. Sorry Miles. I’m just a little anno-”

“Bugs!” shouts my stepdad.

“Wait what?” I answer back confusedly.

“Damn green bugs! They’re–run!” My stepdad offers no explanation. Like an oversized roadrunner, he cranks what little athleticism he has in his body and springs his legs to life. He bolts down the trail, leaving us behind. Miles is the next to take off. Dumbfounded and clearly horrified, he aimlessly runs through the thorny bushes and brushes ahead of us. He doesn’t make it far before tripping and falling over, his walnut head cushioning the fall as he goes over. Bishop, on the other hand, isn’t concerned at all, with keen interest, he investigates the green bugs that jump and dance all over our arms and legs. I tug at his shirt, and the pair of us take off after Miles.

I run through the thorny bushes as Bishop and I make our way to our little brother. “Just chuck him on my back.” I order. Miles, screaming and crying, is piggybacked onto me as the three of us jet down the trail and finally catch up to our stepdad.

“Why didn’t you help him, man?’’ Bishop questions my stepdad with a scowl. He wheezes uncontrollably, as my step dad tries to protest with his sweaty pits.

“You guys-”

“You shoulda helped us man, what the heck.” Bishop argues. The conversation ends there as my stepdad now barks at Miles.

“Miles quit crying! Jesus.” No answer. “QUIT CRYING!” His orders come to nothing as Miles continues to sob. My stepdad begins his walk down the rest of the trail. Now it’s my turn to try to comfort him.

“Hey. Hey Miles. I need you to look at me. Hey. Look. You’re going to be okay. I’m gonna pluck these out real quick and you’re gonna be perfectly fine. I promise.” I begin to pluck out the thorns in his leg and use the cleanest part of my shirt to wipe the bloody scratch that’s on his knee. “There we go. See look, I got a couple too. Doesn’t hurt at all. You know what hurts though?” I smile as I stick my fingers in the corner of his neck. Miles laughs as I place my other hand on the side of his stomach and tickle him till he can’t breathe. With the tears long gone, the three of us walk down the trail, following the bear’s paw prints. I share some stories of my own with Miles as we travel down the mountain. I feel like a man.

“You see this one right here,” I mention, showing him the side of my right hip. “I got this one slide-tackling in a soccer game. Scraped a piece of skin off. But hey, it healed.” Miles’s eyes widen. “Woaaah.”

“Mmhmm. This one right here. I got it falling off a tricycle when I was 5. Took all the skin off too,” I show him the scar at the base of my right thumb.

“That one’s cool!” he answers. I consider it quite dull personally. But I know he isn’t lying. Little kids don’t pretend to listen to your stories. They laugh if you’re funny, ignore you if you’re boring, or applaud you when you tell them an interesting tale. “Where’d you get that one?” he points to my shoulder. The shoulder the bear had mangled is painted with reds, blues, and yellows. I ruffle my shirt to cover it as best I can. I feel like a man.

“Oh, that one. Well, last night it was super dark, and I ended up falling on my shoulder trying to grab something on top of the jeep.”

“Oh. That one’s going to leave the best scar.”

“Oh buddy, bruises don’t really leave scars.” But even as I say it, I know that I am lying. The bruise that sprays across my shoulder is here to stay. It is a brand of pain seared across my spirit, a flaming mark of fire I simply cannot stamp out. ***

The rest of the day blurs in my memory, leaving me with a snapshot– arriving home. The car ride was silent and my step dad hadn’t said a word to me since earlier. Leaving the jeep, he tells us to unload our stuff and slams the door behind him. I enter my house as my mother hugs me with a warmth I couldn’t find in Big Bear. My bones feel so cold and rigid, that I’m sure they’re ready to shatter.

Miles showers first, and surprisingly, Bishop showers second. I wait in our room, in all my filth and sweat, sitting on my bed. I can hear the bear in my parent’s room, his grumbles turn to growls and I hear an argument break out. I feel my fists ball up, as my teeth clench forcibly. Stewing and steaming, I’m ready to pounce. I look at the dried blood that rests on my shin. I feel like a man.

With the growling growing louder, my brain drifts into that empty space, as I begin to contemplate a newfound revelation: bears do not belong in homes.

Bears belong in the wild. That rigid rudimentary world that predicates on the cyclical virtue of strength. Where murdering their cubs is considered natural, habitual, and dare I say permissible. Bears do not belong in homes. They steal, kill, and plunder. Remorseless and seemingly indifferent to their manic mauling, their destructive spree of slaughter. Bears do not belong in homes. They dominate with a sense of permanence, demanding full surrender and submission, reluctant to compromise or cordial conversation.

I wish I could confront the bear that lives inside my house. But I am but a morsel of a man, a sample size of my maturation to come. I stare at my hands like a hunter gazing at an empty rifle and grumble as my head hits the pillow. I wrestle for control of my face. To twist apart the scorching scowl that sits sternly over my eyes. I want to scream. I want to cry. Instead, I rest quietly and pray. I pray for sleep. I beg for sleep. To sleep like death. Motionless and unaware of my surrender. I pray for dreams, for feats of strength. For flickers from a fire I do not yet possess. My eyes begin to water as I shut them tightly.

I am back to being a boy.

Hope’s Tantrum

Kayla Y. Chen Winner

The somber silence of the night That hides the violence out of sight. It sighs and lies that all is well When life is pain that none can tell.

Shall good prevail when all is wrong? When all else fails, will battle song Arise? The wise to nod and say, “My eyes shall see a brighter day.”

Then Hope, that young and nagging thing, Asserts itself upon the scene. It pouts and shouts with stomping feet, Fat lip, crossed arms—shall not retreat.

Nay, there it be till end of time, Withstanding heat, and dark, and crime. Believes, conceives against all odds That somewhere out there is a God.

Who loves the broken world He made, Whose heart is grieved to see it fade. Rejects it not, neglects it not, Though it deserves to be forgot.

For mutiny its men have caused, Blasphemed against the only God And Father—rather walk alone, Down wayward, wicked, winding roads.

Still, hapless Hope doth tantrum on— Determined, haughty, stubborn, strong. Resists the doubts, insists there’ll be A secret passage through Red Sea.

The pity petty people felt For Hope shall soon—like icebergs—melt For manna by God’s hand did fall, So Yahweh’s people could stand tall.

So fat lip, crossed arms not in vain, The stomping child got her way. ‘Twas not her lot to win the day, But Jesus loved her anyway; Told her she would not be lost And for her climbed upon a cross.

They Kicked the Bodies Down the Steps: Aztec Human Sacrifice and Its Religious Context

Payton Kubalsky Winner

“After they had danced they immediately placed them on their backs on some rather narrow stones which had been prepared as places for sacrifice, and with stone knives, they sawed open their chest and drew out their palpitating hearts and offered them to the idols that were there, and they kicked the bodies down the steps, and Indian butchers who were waiting below cut off the arms and feet and flayed the skin off the faces, and prepared it afterward like glove leather and kept those for the festivals when they celebrated their drunken orgies.”1

Such were the circumstances of Hernan Cortes and his company of conquistadores throughout the spring and summer of 1521 as they ground through the bloody siege of Tenochtitlan, the capital and primary city of the Aztec Empire, in the words of Spanish chronicler and conquistador Bernal Diaz del Castillo in his work reflecting on those gruesome days in The Conquest of New Spain 2 . This book written years after the conquest was a memoir describing the events that he witnessed himself. To many scholars of Latin America and Mesoamerican History, it has undoubtedly been one of the most valuable sources of information regarding not only the conquest of Mexico but the practices and customs of its native peoples as well.

To most of the couple-dozen of starving and beleaguered Spaniards bogged down in the torpid mire and muck of Lake Texcoco, these gruesome rituals were nothing other than diabolical and violent displays of an inferior and savage culture in need of evangelization. However, to the thousands of Tlaxcalan and other Mesoamerican allies supporting the Spanish throughout the siege, these rituals were a common and ancient practice not just limited to Aztec culture 3 . In many cases, rituals were a necessary practice that was the very linchpin on which civilization hinged. This form of ritual sacrifice was specifically the case of the Aztec Empire and their religion. From their understanding bloodletting, and more specifically the ritual removing of the human heart from its cavity and then the burning of it, was how humanity was able to appease the gods to keep the sun in the sky and prevent the total collapse of the world as the Aztecs understood it. This paper examines the cosmology and the basic religious tenets of the Aztecs in order to better understand where the practice of human sacrifice fit into the Aztec worldview. Furthermore,

1 Diaz Del Castilla, Bernal, pp. 2887 (2008)

2 Harner, Michael, (1977)

3 Anawalt, Patricia, (1982)

examining the iconic and arguably most renowned form of sacrifice the Aztecs practiced, which was removing the heart of the victim’s heart from their chest at the tops of pyramids.

Aztec Cosmology and Religion

For the 5 to 6 million inhabitants of the Aztec Empire by the time the Spanish arrived, the gods owed blood back to them due to the fact that it was out of their blood that the world was created. It is from the Aztec creation myth that the idea of human sacrifice develops. As a word of caution, we will not be examining the Aztec pantheon as a whole nor the minute details of the Aztec worldview for the sake of brevity, as such an endeavor would take volumes to describe.

The Aztecs understood the universe to have been born and reborn in a series of “suns” where the gods would give birth to a new sun and therefore a new iteration of the cosmos as a whole. To them, they were in the “Fifth Sun,” and the creation myth about to be told is the story of the creation of that sun 4 . According to the Aztec creation myth, the gods gathered at Teotihuacan, a sacred place seen by many Pre-Columbian Mesoamericans as the cradle of their civilization, when the world was in pitch darkness in order to find out how the next life of the sun and light would be made. 5The gods then decided to nominate Tecciztecatl, a moon deity, and Nanahuatl to do penance through bloodletting to give birth to the sun. 6 After Tecciztecatl and Nanahuatl had done this for five consecutive days, the rest of the gods decided that a great fire would be lit and that both Tecciztecatl and Nanahuatl would have to cast themselves into the fire in order to create life. It happened that when they had done this, Nanahuatl went into the underworld and emerged from it as the sun and Tecciztecatl as the moon. Despite the fact that the moon and the sun were in the sky, they remained motionless and there was no changing of time. Therefore, the gods elected the wind god, Ehecatl, to cut their hearts out and feed them to the sun and the moon in order that they might have life. When this was done, Ehecatl blew them into motion, and thus the passing of the day and night was born7. The story of the creation of mankind further gives context to the need for human sacrifice in Aztec culture. According to Mesoamerican History scholar Michel Graulich, “In heaven, there was a marvelous city where the gods lived with their parents, the supreme creators, Ometecuhli and Omecihuatl (“Lord” and “Lady Two”). Once upon a time, Omecihuatl gave birth to a flint knife

4 Read, Kay. A (1986)

5 Graulich, Michel, (2000)

6 Ibbid, pp. 356

7 Ibid, 361

which the frightened gods threw from heaven, and it fell and landed in Chicomoztoc, “Seven Caves.” Sixteen hundred gods sprang forth from it. Seeing that they were “fallen and banished,”... they implored their moth er, who had “rejected and exiled” them, for permission to create people who would serve them. She answered that, if they had behaved properly they would still be with her, but they did not deserve it; and if they wanted servants, they would have to go to the underworld and ask the lord of the dead for bones or ashes of previous humans. Then follows the myth of the creation of humankind and next that of the birth of the sun and the moon in Teotihuacan.” 8

It is important for the scholar of Aztec history to realize that there is not just one version of creation myths but rather a few. The sun deity that the Aztecs revered so fervently has commonly been called Huitzilpochtli. How he got that name is not exactly certain, but generally speaking, all of the creation myths account for him being born out of bloodletting and sacrifice by the gods9 . It is therefore clear to see that from the very beginning the gods themselves created the world out of their own flesh and blood, and perhaps even more interestingly, out of the bones of other human beings. Thus, for the Aztecs in the 16th century that Bernal Diaz del Castillo described performing their rituals, the very fabric of the cosmos and the earth was made up of human flesh so the idea of extracting further body parts in order to sustain the world was not only logical from their point of view but necessary in terms of sustaining it. This is further exemplified by the fact that the gods sacrificed themselves in order to give birth to the sun.

The Roles of Bloodletting and Sacrifice

Bloodletting and sacrifice were two different practices in the Aztec world prior to its destruction. On a typical day at Tenochtitlan, bloodletting was a very common practice observed by the Emperor himself all the way down to the lowliest of field workers. According to Mesoamerican History scholar Patricia R. Annawalt,

“In order for the sun (Huitzilpochtli) to have the strength to bring the day to his people, he had to be nourished continually with the most sacred of all foods-human blood. The most common blood offerings were those of autosacrifice. Blood was required at some point in the endless ceremonial round from every man, woman, and child. Even babies made their reverent offering… adults drew blood from the fleshy parts of their bodiesearlobes, tongues, thighs, upper arms, chests, or genitals. Sharp maguey thorns were the most common instruments of autosacrifice, although

8 Ibid, 358

9 Read, Kay A. Handbook of Mesoamerican Mythology (200)

occasionally cords or reeds containing sharp thorns were passed through the wounds. The Aztec priests, who constantly practiced autosacrifice, are often pictured with a smear of blood from the temple down in front of the ear.”10

As important as bloodletting was for the Aztecs, however, sacrifice was seen as the ultimate form of holiness in regard to satiating the thirst of Huitzilpochtli. According to scholar Kay A. Read, “this act [sacrifice] via a continually creative process of feasting, hopefully, transformed the inevitable cosmic death by starvation into cosmic life…[Sacrifice] was capable of binding time and space together in the Fleeting Moment [the Aztec view of the world].”11 It is important to remember that there were many forms of human sacrifice in the Aztec world, but covering all those would take volumes in of itself. Therefore, we shall briefly talk about the most common type: extraction of the heart.

Most human sacrifices took place during the 18 or so festivals throughout the Aztec calendar and were actually not as common as popular culture has originally led us to believe. Although the practice of human sacrifice was common throughout the year it was a highly ritualistic affair that, contrary to the many embellished reports of the Spanish, did not claim as many souls as traditional Western understanding would portray.12 Most of the people who were sacrificed were prisoners of war. Given the shared understanding of cosmology amongst the indigenous people of Central Mexico and the fact that human sacrifice was practiced not just by the Aztecs but their immediate neighbors as well, there was a common understanding that prisoners of war could almost always be expected to be sacrificed upon their capture. In essence, there was a sort of honor in being sacrificed to the gods, in that one saw themself as being one piece in an inevitable and cosmic chain of events.13 According to Spanish accounts, the dead warrior was then tossed down the steps of the pyramid, and his body was dismembered so that the different body parts could serve other purposes, those being mostly ritualistic cannibalism in other rites.14 The bodies of the victims were therefore seen as returning to the cosmos from whence they originally came, perpetually feeding and nourishing the sun and all the other facets of creation so that civilization might see another day.

10 Annawalt, Patricia, R. pp. 44 (1982)

11 Read, Kay A. pp 123, (1986)

12 Ibid.

13 Ibid.

14 Annawalt, Patricia R. (1982)

Conclusion

Western biases towards indigenous people in the Americas have become more and more apparent as modern scholarship has sought to change its paradigm regarding the lens through which we view history. For decades, the narrative has been the courageous and daring European exploring the fringes and jungles of a virgin continent ripe for exploitation and evangelization. Up until recently, the indigenous people of the Americas were seen as in need of civilization, and facets of their culture, such as the practice of human sacrifice, were used to justify this myth. Whether or not they were ethical and where they fit into a Christian worldview is not the scope of this study. Simply put, the goal of this paper has been to show the reader that the Aztecs’ (and Mesoamericans’ in general) practice of human sacrifice was a highly ritualistic and cosmic act on which the very fabric of their reality hinged. From their understanding, to cease ritual bloodletting and sacrifice would mean the end of the world. With all this being said, brutality and ritual killings were not isolated to pre-Columbian America. It is somewhat intriguing that we in the Christian West like to neglect other dark and violent facets of our history in defense of our faith when in reality, we suffer from the same condition as did the Aztecs and other Mesoamericans: sin and separation from our true cosmic destiny; Jesus Christ Our Lord.

Bibliography

Castillo, Bernal Díaz del, and Carrasco. The History of the Conquest of New Spain. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Amsterdam University Press, 2008.

Harner, Michael J. “The Ecological Basis for Aztec Sacrifice.” American Ethnologist 4, no. 1 (January 31, 1977): 117–35.

Anawalt, Patricia Rieff. “Understanding Aztec Human Sacrifice.” Archaeology New York, N.Y. 35, no. 5 (December 31, 1981): 38–45.

Graulich, Michel. “Aztec Human Sacrifice as Expiation.” History of Religions 39, no. 4 (April 30, 2000): 352–71.

Read, Kay Almere, and Jason González. Handbook of Mesoamerican Mythology. ABCCLIO, 2000.

Read, Kay A. “The Fleeting Moment: Cosmogony, Eschatology, and Ethics in Aztec Religion and Society.” Journal of Religious Ethics 14, no. 1 (December 31, 1985).

Away From The Village

H. O. Finch

Camera B16

Rebekah Pulaski

September 16, 2016

Jude had been sitting in the faded pleather chair in the security office for nine hours now—he hadn’t gotten a call all day. His first week on the job had been disappointing to say the least. When he graduated from his security guard training, he thought he’d get a lot more action—both on the job and from the ladies, for who could resist a man in a uniform? But that was not the case. As Jude recalled the past four days in the apartment complex security office, he remembered his first call on the outdated landline which sat on the creaking wooden desk. His heart raced at the sound of the telephone, and he picked up the receiver with sweaty palms, just to hear the ancient woman on the other end of the line asking for help unlocking her door.

Since then, he had only gotten one call a day, each for some extraordinarily boring request: to ask for help jumpstarting a car, bringing groceries in, or a “suspicious man” sitting on the bench in the common lawn. This suspicious man in question was, in fact, just another resident who ended up extremely offended by the end of the encounter. Jude never wanted to go through that again.

Every day came one boring call that had frustrated Jude. Except today. Friday, he had sat there for nine hours, practically begging the phone to ring, willing some disaster to take place so that he could feel needed. Until he noticed security camera B16.

While he had been busy trying to shoot a crumpled up piece of paper into the corner trash can, Jude caught movement in the top right corner of the security camera display. It was a woman with two children, carrying cardboard boxes into the newly emptied apartment on the ground floor of building B.

Jude was surprised—not many people moved to his hometown of Bennet, Nebraska—but he thanked God for the new movement on the screen. He’d been failing to make the paper into the basket for too long and was starting to get embarrassed at how quickly his athletic abilities had gone down since high school. You couldn’t tell from his height, but Jude used to be quite the basketball player, and he was proud of it.

Jude thought that would be the end of it; who cares about new residents after all? They’d entertain him for now, but just be another source of disappointment for him. But as the woman and the children brought box after box after box, Jude became more and more entranced.

He found himself chucking at the sheer amount of things that this family had brought to their small apartment. Jude lived alone and hadn’t realized the importance of decoration yet, so he had no idea what

a normal number of boxes was. So, he sat there with a goofy smile on his face as Camera B16 displayed the three newcomers carrying box after box for nearly two hours.

Jude watched as the short boy with scrawny arms held the box in his arms, thinking to himself how tired he must be. As the boy walked, he looked around the edge of the box to see where he was going instead of over the top, since his head couldn’t quite reach that high. The boy didn’t really look tired as he disappeared behind the open doorway. Really, he just looked blank, void of emotion, although maybe that’s just the way that security footage makes every face look? But Jude found his heart swelling at the sight of him. Jude remembered that feeling at that age. He even remembered how it felt to have tired arms.

Suddenly came the girl. She was probably around fifteen, with pin-straight black hair. Or it could be dark brown, since the display of the screen was only in black and white. But Jude was pretty sure it had been dyed black, to match her moody disposition. The girl walked much slower than the woman and the boy, checking her phone every moment a box wasn’t in her arms, and he laughed a different kind of laugh. A laugh of judgment. As Jude watched her thumbs tap the screen, suddenly the woman came into view.

The woman was strangely shorter than the girl. She had lighter hair than her as well, which spiraled round and round in untamed waves. She didn’t look very old, maybe in her mid thirties, but he could tell her face was a little tired. Jude couldn’t hear them, but he watched as the woman said something to the girl with a weak smile on her face. The girl stopped tapping her thumbs and put her phone in the back pocket of her jeans.

Jude leaned back in the chair and thought to himself, “Probably told her to get her behind movin’ and help out like her brother.”

Jude really had no idea if this girl and boy were brother and sister. He had no idea what the woman said either. But he liked to think he’s a pretty good guesser. He remembered what he was like at fifteen, which really wasn’t that long ago, being only twenty-two now. He was often told to get his behind movin’.

Jude looked down at the telephone and a comic book from his childhood made its way into his memory—one of the many comic books where Batman takes on the Joker. He never really wanted to be a security guard when he was a kid, but he did like Batman a lot.

Next to the phone sat the digital clock that read 7:18. He only had until 8:00, and then Bernie would come in and take over for the night shift. For some reason, he really wanted the woman, girl, and boy to finish moving their boxes before he left. His eyes drifted back up to camera B16, where the woman walked quickly, carrying a fragile-looking lamp.

She lifted the back of her right hand up to her forehead to wipe her sweat, and as she did, Jude saw the cord of the lamp fall a little, dangling down in front of her feet as she walked.

Jude took a sharp breath in, anticipating the disaster.

Then, as if Jude wished it into existence, the woman stepped on the cord, ripping the lamp out of her own hands, pulling it onto the concrete pathway, just outside the door. Jude could swear he heard the shattering from the security office, as he watched the disaster on the screen.

Jude shook his head and leaned back in the chair as the boy rushed out the door at the sound. The woman stamped her foot on the ground and held out her hand out, making sure the boy didn’t step on the broken glass of the once beautiful lamp. Jude looked on with sympathy, not moving from his chair.

The boy rushed back inside and emerged once again with a broom. The lady took it from him and began to sweep, shaking her head in frustration.

Jude wondered if he should help her, she seemed pretty upset.

The girl then appeared. She walked out slowly, knelt on the ground, and started to pick up some of the pieces with her hand. The woman said something to her, but the girl continued picking up the pieces anyway.

Jude thought back to something his grandma always used to say, “Don’t ask, don’t receive.” He cringed at the thought—but realized his help probably wasn’t wanted. No one likes when strangers insert themselves into places they aren’t asked, anyways.

That night, Jude punched his timecard and went home satisfied at exactly eight o’clock. The lamp was the last thing that the woman had tried to bring inside.

October 31, 2016

Jude laughed aloud as he watched Boy leave the door to his apartment. He was wearing a white,boxy thing that was wider at the top, and narrow with four points at the bottom. In his hand, was a staff that was just as tall as he was, with a big, rectangular bristly head.

The smile didn’t leave Jude’s face. “Is he a tooth?”

Moments later, Woman walked out of the apartment that Jude was so fond of. At the sight of her, Jude touched his heart. She was wearing the scrubs that Jude always saw her wearing when she got back from work around three in the afternoon. A dental hygienist and a tooth. He loved costumes that went together.

With the toothbrush staff in Boy’s left hand, Woman grabbed his other, outstretched hand and held a pillowcase in her own free hand. Girl stepped out for a moment and Woman turned towards her. She pointed

her finger out towards Girl’s phone. Girl nodded, disappeared back into the apartment, and closed the door behind Woman and Boy.

Jude was a little appalled at the sight of this. Woman didn’t seem careless enough to leave Girl home alone. Although Jude had come to the conclusion over that month that Woman wasn’t actually Boy and Girl’s mother. She seemed too young. Old enough to take care of them, but too young, nonetheless. And sometimes, they would all leave the apartment, Girl and Boy with backpacks, Woman with nothing. When she came back at night, Girl and Boy would be gone. They’d be dropped back off a few days later by a light gray sedan. Boy always had a smile on his face and Girl never matched that smile.

The little red numbers on the digital clock showed 6:23. Jude chewed his thumb nail and stared at camera B16, praying that nothing could go wrong at this time of day. Woman and Boy walked hand in hand down the concrete path and Jude’s eyes glazed over a little. He’d realized recently that he would sometimes try and imagine conversations between Woman, Boy, and Girl. He didn’t know what they sounded like, but he had his own voices for each of them in his head. Now, his head was filled with Woman telling Boy to be careful and not eat too much of his candy.

But at 6:34, the glaze over his eyes broke as there was a new movement in camera B16. There was a new boy there at their door. Not Boy. Just a boy. He was tall, with a clean buzz cut and a flannel shirt. Jude leaned forward in his chair as this boy knocked on the door.

Girl answered. Jude judged the boy as he stood there. He didn’t seem too bad– nice smile, tall. Jude silently made notes to himself of this boy as Girl gave a small smile to the boy and moved out of the way to let him in. But even as he said the thought in his head, he felt a sense of panic. Where was Woman? Girl was in there all alone and this boy was at least a foot taller than her.

Jude didn’t lean back in his chair for what felt like an eternity. The end of his shift was coming in only twelve minutes, and Woman and Boy weren’t back yet. The boy was still in there with Girl.

Jude assured himself of Girl’s intelligence as he waited, trying to fill in the pit in his stomach. But as Jude watched the clock turn to 7:49, camera B16 caught his eye again. There was Girl, but where was the boy?

She was holding the door open, looking back, and talking to the invisible apartment. She didn’t look very happy. Then, there he was.

Jude felt his stomach drop as he realized what was going on—he was yelling at her. He stood up as he watched the boy lean down to get closer to Girl. Girl didn’t move. She stood still as a statue, chin up, shoulders squared. Jude couldn’t tell, but it looked like she didn’t even blink, as the boy pointed in her face and unhinged his jaw to express his loud anger.

“He’s not hurting her. Not yet anyways. God what do I do? She doesn’t look scared. But she must be, who wouldn’t be?”

Jude took a single step towards the door, keeping his eyes glued to camera B16. His palms were sweating profusely, and he let out a grunt of frustration.

“God what do I do? What do I do? What do I—”

SMACK!

Jude swore he could hear it. Girl hit the boy. She hit him right in the face. Her expression twisted into one of rage as she balled her small fingers into fists and started hitting the dumbstruck boy in the chest, pushing him out the door with all her might. He fell back, stumbling out of Girl’s home as she then slammed the door in his face.

Jude was so surprised, he actually laughed. He sat back in his chair, holding his stomach and only just now noticed the tears that had wet his cheeks as he watched Girl get yelled at by that monster.

There were only three minutes left of Jude’s shift, but he wanted to wait every second. He stared at the door until, right at 7:59, Woman and Boy returned. Boy was jumping up and down in his tooth costume, pillowcase filled to the brim.

Jude rested his chin on his hand as Girl opened the door. He half expected Girl to do nothing—like she always seemed to do—but as the door flew open, Girl rushed out at Woman and Boy, hair flying behind her. She practically knocked Woman down as she wrapped her arms around her. Woman stood stiff. It was blatantly obvious that she had never been hugged by Girl before. At least not in this way. As Girl shook with sadness, and Boy watched in surprise, Woman slowly lifted her arms, and squeezed Girl tight.

Jude flinched as the door to the office swung open behind him at 8:01.

“Hey, Jude.”

“Hey, Bernie.”

November 24, 2016

“Jude?...Jude?”

“What? Sorry, I didn’t hear you.” Jude was lying; he had heard her, but his mind started to wander before he could answer.

Jude’s grandma reached across the table to pat his hand. “I said how are you liking your new job, dear?”

“I like it.”

“Well, tell me about it, hon. Geez, you act like we get to talk all the time, I hardly see you anymore.”

Jude smiled to himself, his grandma had always been dramatic. He could hardly remember, but when Jude’s Mom had passed, she

greatly exaggerated every story she could tell of her. But Jude was barely old enough to know any different. It wasn’t until he moved out that he realized just how intense his grandma was. Finally he gave in.

“Well, it’s a little more boring than I thought it would be, I guess.”

“Really? No fun crime-fighting stories?”

Jude’s mind raced to Woman, Girl and Boy. He thought about the shattered lamp, the Halloween night, and the mundane days in-between with Boy riding his scooter and Girl taking pictures of the sunset. His boss had hired a holiday worker to cover his shift so he could take a few days off. He said it was to “show his appreciation to him and Bernie” and Jude was ecstatic at the thought. But the past 24 hours he found himself thinking of The Family in that apartment. Apartment 124. He had checked on his last day of work before his break. He didn’t miss them, that would be crazy. He just wondered what they were doing for Thanksgiving. He did spend a lot of time near them after all. He knew what they did on the long weekends and how their Halloween went. It was natural to think about their Thanksgiving. Would they go with the gray sedan somewhere far away and spend time with a house full of relatives? Or would the three of them sit together alone in the apartment, telling each other what they were thankful for? He thought of Woman telling them how thankful she was to have them. Girl and Boy needed to hear it—he just knew it.

“Jude?”

“Yeah, sorry Grandma.”

His grandma sighed, “That’s okay Judy. I know how you like to daydream.”

Jude smiled again. He didn’t like to daydream. He just did it.

December 21, 2016 8:00 AM

“Man, I hate coffee.” Jude thought as he took another sip and sat back down in the pleather chair.

Usually, the Andersons were all gone for the day by the time he got to work, although he had thought about showing up to work early to see what time they all left. He, of course, decided against that since it felt like crossing a line. He did, however, check the roster of residents to figure out their names. They were Martha, Lydia, and Patrick Anderson. Jude rested his head on his hands and started to let his mind drift. He thought of the light gray sedan and Pat’s smile as he got out of the back seat. He thought of Martha and how she would probably make Pat his favorite meal that night. He thought of Lydia and how she would probably set the table without being asked, even if she didn’t smile as she did it. He thought and thought about them, waiting until Martha came

back from work and went to go to pick up the kids.

But then to his amazement, Pat ran out the door. Jude wasn’t used to this; he was used to the routine, and they were supposed to be at school right now.

Then, Martha followed. She was wrapped up from head to toe, in contrast with Lydia, who stood at the door, wearing pajama shorts, a tattered hoodie, and slippers. She didn’t step a foot outside into the snow that fell last night.

Jude double checked the clock, which he had just learned ran a few minutes ahead. It read 8:52. They should’ve all been gone by then.

Jude leaned back in his chair, taking his coffee with him. He wasn’t one to complain about the Andersons being here when they shouldn’t be. Despite his extremely boring occupation, he liked surprises. In fact, it was always his secret wish to receive a surprise party on his birthday. And today was his birthday.

In the display of camera B16, Pat started to ball up the snow into his bare hands, smiling. He smiled so much now, Jude had forgotten the somber expression he had worn when they moved in that first week on the job. Martha raised her hands to her face in mock-fear as Pat chucked the snowball at her. The ball sailed triumphantly through the air and hit her on the shoulder. She grabbed her arm and laughed, while Jude laughed right along with her.

Pat ran out further and plopped himself right onto the ground. He writhed about, trying to make a snow angel. Finally, Lydia, who had been holding her phone out to capture the moment her brother hit Martha with the snowball, retired inside. It must have been too cold for her.

Martha stood there, rubbing her arms with her hands and watching Pat as he ran about, making more angels and putting together a snowman with twigs and rocks. He ran around in his sneakers at an expert pace. He didn’t wear gloves or a scarf, but he didn’t really look cold.

Jude sat there in admiration without a care in the world when Pat’s foot suddenly hit the cement walkway and, in a moment, the smile was whipped away from his face. His foot slipped right out behind him and down he went, face-first onto the icy cement.

Jude stood up and jumped closer to the screen. Martha rushed to his side and knelt on the ground beside him.

Pat sat up quickly, holding his hand to his mouth. Martha held his face in her hands and turned her head to the apartment door. She shouted something and a moment later, Lydia was there. She ran back into the apartment and appeared later with a small box and tissues. Martha stood up and Lydia took her place by Pat’s side.

Jude sat perplexed as Martha lifted her phone to her face, trying to figure out what she was doing.

“She’s calling someone.”

Then, Jude felt an immense amount of fear take over him.

“What if she’s calling me?”

Jude’s eyes darted back and forth between the phone and the display of B16 as he waited for the ring to sound. But as Martha spoke into the speaker of her phone, the phone in Jude’s office did not ring, and he sank with relief.

After Pat was able to be pulled to his feet, the Andersons returned inside. Jude sat there, anxiously pulling at the ends of his sleeves, waiting for some form of proof that Pat was okay. Then came the gray sedan. It pulled right up to the apartment where it always let Lydia and Pat out after the weekends they spent away. Jude had never seen who was in the gray sedan, but he always had feeling they were bad news.

Jude was baffled at the sight of the driver. She was an old lady. He had always thought it was a man. But no, it was an old lady.

Jude had a moment of clarity as he realized something. The driver was their grandma. He was absolutely positive about this. He should’ve felt better about this, but for some reason he did not. There was something off about this grandma. She trudged to the door with anger, instead of running with concern. She shook her head with a frown, instead of crying with fear. She knocked on the door once and folded her arms, instead of tapping lightly and rapidly, to let the Andersons know she was no stranger.

Martha opened the door and immediately started talking—explaining. The grandma didn’t even look at her, she just walked in, shutting the door behind her. She didn’t leave the apartment the entire day, and neither did anyone else.

December 21, 2016 11:32 PM

“I don’t know why she would even call her?” Jude shouted. His cat looked back at him from her spot on his bed. Jude had bought a cat two days ago at the shelter on a whim. Maybe he felt some need for someone to talk to on his birthday. His grandma couldn’t make it to town because she was hosting book club that week. Bernie was actually the one who gave him the idea. He had offhandedly commented about his cat’s funeral service and then Jude couldn’t stop thinking about it. He named the cat Andy.

“Why would she call the grandma? Kids fall and hurt themselves all the time, it doesn’t mean anything.”

Andy continued to stare.

“I mean hell, I fell off my bike when I was twelve. Doesn’t mean my grandma did anything wrong.”

Andy tilted her head.

“I mean, yeah. My grandma wasn’t the best caretaker in the world. Maybe she could have been there for me a bit more. But Martha isn’t like that. She works hard to be there for them. I mean, she was having a snowball fight with Pat for crying out loud. My grandma never had a snowball fight with me. And I’ll bet this grandma has never had a snowball fight with Pat either.”

Jude paused to take a breath as Andy started to lick her paw.

“I’m sure it’ll be fine. Maybe Pat just wanted his grandma’s support.”

Andy stopped and looked back at Jude.

Jude sighed, “Yeah. You’re right. I’m just being crazy.” He looked down at the hands he had been waving in frustration and smiled, “I mean hell, I’m talking to a cat.”

“Meow.” Andy took offense to that statement.

“Sorry. Yeah, it’s bed time. We’ll figure it out tomorrow.”

December 22, 2016 7:37 AM

“It’s normal to get to work a little early.” Jude thought as he looked at the clock. “Plus, Bernie needs a little rest.”

Jude was exhausted. He hadn’t slept a wink last night. All he could think of was Grandma and the way that Martha looked at her. She was so afraid. He tossed and turned thinking of what he’d say to Grandma if he got the chance. He’d really tell her. He would.

Jude’s eyes watered as he watched camera B16 with the gray sedan still parked outside the door. He wanted her to leave.

The time ticked by, minute after minute, hour after hour. Jude didn’t even get up to make a coffee or use the restroom. He couldn’t move. He was stuck there.

3:12 PM

Jude still sat, head in hands, eyes peering at camera B16, until he saw the door open. He jumped out of the chair.

“Yes!” He yelled it out loud this time, pumping his fists in the air. That is, until he saw Lydia, with a cardboard box in her hands and a backpack on her shoulders. Then, Pat followed, with identical items, and a bandage on his bottom lip. Martha followed them, with a box of her own. Then, there was Grandma, with no box. She opened the trunk of the gray Sedan and Lydia put her box in there. She wouldn’t look up at Martha.

“Wait,” Jude choked out. “No. No, no, no.”

Pat put his box down on the ground. He looked up at Martha, who wasn’t looking at him. He reached out his hand and poked her. She still wouldn’t look at him.

“Look at him,” Jude pleaded with her, “please just look at him.”

She didn’t. Grandma grabbed the box from her hands and placed it in the back seat. Pat poked her again, and she turned away.

Finally, he had enough. He stamped his foot on the ground, the same way that Martha had stamped her foot that first day when she broke the lamp. He was angry. He balled up his little fist and hit her in the arm. Martha pulled her hands up to her face. Lydia stood motionless, emotionless. Grandma grabbed Pat’s hand and pulled him away.

“This can’t be happening. No, this can’t happen. I have to do something.”

Jude was panicking. He paced back and forth in the tiny office, eyes still not leaving the screen. Martha grabbed the box from the ground and placed it in the trunk. She shut it, as Grandma continued to scold Pat, and she turned to Lydia. She was looking at the ground. Martha said something, and Lydia didn’t respond. Then, Martha walked away.

“Stop!” Jude shouted. He couldn’t contain himself. He ran for it. He had to save them. His feet flew over the frozen ground as he made his way to building B. He could see the light gray sedan from afar, except it wasn’t light gray, it was light blue. Grandma, who wore horrible red lipstick, was closing the door of the driver’s seat. Lydia was in the passenger’s seat, Pat was in the back, and Martha stood in the open doorway.

With every stride, Jude grew more terrified. How would Martha react? Would she hate him for what he’d done? But his feet would not take the questioning. He needed to stop this from happening.

“Wait! Don’t go!” He held out his hand in front of him, hoping that the force of the action would keep the car there. As he ran toward them, he felt the sole of his boot skid out in front of them. He fell back, swiftly landing on a crunchy pile of snow, only ten feet away from Martha and Apartment 124.

“Oh my God!” Martha shouted. “Are you okay? What’s going on?” Her voice was shaky, but Jude could hear that mothering tone that he knew she must have. He fumbled in the hard Nebraskian snow, making his way back to his feet,

“No, I am not okay.” He could hear his own grandma’s dramatic tone in his voice even as he said it. As he got closer to Martha, he could see the tears that had wet her cheeks.

“Is everything alright?” she asked, alarmed. Her voice was just like he imagined it would be. He panted, trying to catch his breath, and shook his head as he reached her doorway. The blue sedan stayed there, and he felt the eyes of Grandma, Pat, and

Lydia on him.

“No,” he gasped, terrified of how he must sound to her, “No, everything is not alright.” Her eyes were still filled with tears, and she lifted her hand up to her mouth, “Are we in trouble, do we need to go inside?”

Jude bent over, appalled at how much pain he was in, “No! No, nothing like that.”

“Then what’s wrong?”

Jude looked at her for a moment before letting himself speak. At this moment, he knew he would never see her again. He’d either lose his job, or she would leave. He just knew it.

“You’re not in trouble. Nobody’s in trouble. It’s hard to explain. I just need you to know that you can’t let them go. He slipped; it wasn’t your fault.”

Martha looked confused. “I’m sorry. What are you talking about? You saw Patty slip yesterday?”

Jude sighed. He knew he’d have to admit it, he just didn’t want to.

“Yes. I saw him slip. Sometimes, I watch the display on the security footage screen. I saw him slip and I can just tell you’re a good person. Just because he slipped doesn’t mean that his grandma should take them away.”

“His grandma…how’d you know that’s their grandma?” Martha took a step back from Jude but continued to stare at his face, trying to figure him out.

“Lucky guess, I guess.” Jude shrugged and looked down.

As if on cue, the grandma opened the driver’s seat to the sedan and shouted,

“What’s going on, Martha?”

“I don’t know, Evelyn.” Martha called back out to her, quietly. She looked back at Jude, “How do you know I’m a good person? How often did you see us?”

Jude dug his toe in the snow, still nervous to look into her face. “Just whenever your family was out, I guess. You just seemed so happy.”

Martha scoffed. Jude winced, thinking the scoff was directed at him, but the next words out of her mouth forced him to look up.

“We’re barely happy. I just…I’m not cut out to take care of them. When my brother passed, I tried to do what he wanted but…I can’t be careful enough. Patty hurt himself and it was because I told him they could have the day off of school. This never would’ve happened if they stayed with their mom’s mother. Their grandma is much more responsible than me. I’m not cut out for this.”

She choked up as she finished explaining, and more tears fell down her face. Jude was taken aback. He had never realized she had felt so afraid. Martha always seemed so brave. He turned around to see the

grandma still staring at them from outside the driver’s side door. Her nose was stuck up in the air as Lydia and Patty sat in the car, waiting for some form of direction.

“Listen. I don’t know much. But I know that they want this family. They don’t want to leave you. You have to know that, right?”

Martha looked up at him and grabbed her shoulder. After a second of contemplating, she nodded.

“They need you.”

Martha looked back to the car and bit her lip. She nodded again and wiped the tears from her cheeks.

Now Jude was the one crying. He could barely see her through his tears, but she looked utterly unstoppable.

She turned back to him decidedly and asked, “What’s your name?”

Jude didn’t know how to respond. “What?”

“My name’s Martha.”

She stuck out her hand for him to shake. “What’s your name?”

He grabbed her hand. She was wearing pink nail polish and he felt the cold in her fingertips when he shook it and said, “Jude.”

“Jude,” she said, and smiled warmly at him, tears still streaming out of her brown eyes. Then, with a look of determination on her face, she cupped her hand around her mouth and shouted at the blue sedan, “Kids! Come on back here, I want you to meet Jude.”

Jacob Zabka

Old Couple at the Coffee Shop

Emily Miller

Crow’s feet branch outward from the eye, Heads turn gray as the years go by. But I will always meet your gaze, Stroking your hair for all my days.

Silence passes in the way of time; All words fail to capture the sublime. Turning a camera to the moon Is like describing my heart for you.

Today soundlessly fades to yesterday. By you I’ll stay, defying life’s decay, Exhaling not the air of the unsaid –Loving you quiet, as dirt loves the dead.

California Paradise

Kailean K

Long Day’s Journey into Night and the Irish Immigration Experience

Jonathan Pirolo

In 1956, Eugene O’Neil’s play Long Day’s Journey into Night was published three years after he died in 1953. The play is considered to be the greatest work by the playwright and a great piece of American literature. The play is set in 1912, although events that occurred over fifty years before linger in the story. In 1845, the Irish Immigration had begun, and this experience left a lasting impact on the story and the characters. The effects of this event can be seen through the character of Tyrone who lived during the time. He experienced the worst of the Irish immigration process This event leaves a lasting impact on his life. He carries with him the memories of poverty that motivate him and drive his decisions. Often these decisions are for the worst, hurting his family. In this paper, I will argue that the Irish immigration experience and its lasting impact is displayed through the character of James Tyrone. His experience in poverty has put a lasting shadow of memories and fear, driving his choices with money. In his years of poverty, he developed a value of money which carries on throughout his life into the play. His value of money hurts his family in his decisions. He makes career choices that he will regret for the rest of his life because of money. Finally, his value of money has caused him to put less value on his home. Because of this, he doesn’t try to make a home for his family causing strife in his family, especially with his wife. The Irish immigration process impacted millions, and the event stayed with the Irish Americans who carried the memories and the fear. James Tyrone displayed both the Irish immigration process and its lasting impact on Irish Americans.

To understand how James Tyrone displays the Irish Immigration process, first the Irish Immigration experience itself must be explored. A huge famine spread across Ireland in 1845-1849, this caused about one million Irish peasants to flee to the United States in a sudden rush. The famine destroyed Ireland, for seventy-five years peasants were in the process of immigration. The Irish weren’t welcomed by the people living in the United States.

In Lawrence J. McCaffrey’s journal article titled “Irish America”, he describes the ethnic problems that arose because of the immigration, “Not only did Irish immigrants represent the most miserable, backwater class of peasantry in Northern Europe; they were also Roman Catholics in an obdurately Protestant land” (McCaffrey 78). The Irish weren’t accepted, both because of the difference in class and religious differences. The Irish went to the cities rather than to live in open land. The cities turned out to be worse for the immigrants. McCaffery explains the effect of this “They became pioneers not of the open frontier but of the urban ghetto,”

(McCaffery 78). The Irish transitioned from kinder housing like cottages to harsh living conditions where there was barely enough space to live. The effect of this was detrimental to the Irish. For immigrants, conditions only got worse. In McCaffery’s article, he describes the effect of immigration in this way “What little money the new arrivals had was soon spent on lodging, drink, and counterfeit railway tickets to the interior. Penniless, the immigrants were on their own” (McCaffrey 79). The Irish were in harsh poverty and had nothing. Many of the Irish turned to crime and to alcoholism, giving up on escaping poverty. When the industrial revolution came, cheap labor was needed. The Irish were able to fulfill the need for cheap labor which helped them to be more established moving up slightly in class. The Irish Americans remained stuck in poverty for some time before they were able to truly be free of it.

The play Long Day’s Journey into Night is set in 1912, the very first line of the play states “Living room of James Tyrone’s summer home on a morning in August, 1912” (O’Neil 11). The character of James Tyrone is sixty-five years old in the play. This places his birth around 1847 which means he would have fully experienced the effect of the Irish immigration as a kid. In the play, Tyrone expresses the poverty he experienced. This monologue takes place after Tyrone’s son, Edmund explains his own experience in poverty and being homeless. Edmund says he knows what his father went through as a kid and calls Tyrone a “stinking old miser” (O’Neil 145). Tyrone then explains what he truly went through during the Irish immigration. He describes his family life with his father leaving for Ireland leaving his mother and four children in America by themselves. He expresses his experience with this passage “There was no damned romance in our poverty. Twice we were evicted from the miserable hovel we called home, with my mother’s few sticks of furniture thrown out in the street, and my mother and sisters crying” (O’Neil 147). Tyrone’s experience in poverty reflects the experience of many Irish immigrants who lived in miserable conditions, without any money or even a place to live at times. Tyrone’s line “There was no damned romance in our poverty” encompasses the poverty many of the Irish immigrants went through. The poverty was not something to be glorified, rather it was horrific, something no one wants to experience. Tyrone continues to explain what he went through in poverty, “I was the man of the family. At ten years old! There was no more school for me. I worked twelve hours a day in a machine shop, learning to make files” (O’Neil 148). Tyrone was forced into labor as a child, working for twelve hours. This was an experience many Irish Americans found themselves in, the Industrial Revolution was beginning to bring unfair wages, long hours, and terrible conditions. Although this was a work opportunity, it was harsh as in Tyrone’s case. Not only the conditions were terrible, but the pay that Tyrone received

for his labor was equally unjust. Tyrone continues in his monologue, “And what do you think I got for it? Fifty cents a week! It’s the truth! Fifty cents a week” (O’Neil 148). Tyrone’s experience in poverty as an Irish immigrant haunts him even into the current events of the play. These events have left him with a view of money which he would carry through his life. This value on money affects both his career choices and his family many decades later. The experience of immigration never left him and would always haunt his life.

James Tyrone has a strict view of money, he values money deeply and even will place his choices with money above concerns for his family. His views of money impact both his choices with family and a career choice which he regrets for the rest of his life. Tyrone’s view on money comes from his fear of poverty which he had experienced as a child. Near the end of Long Day’s Journey into Night James and Edmund Tyrone are drinking and talking together. Tyrone states how he learned the importance of money “It was at home I first realized the value of a dollar and the fear of the poor house” (O’Neil 146). When Tyrone began to fear the poor house he placed more value on money. Edmund criticizes Tyrone’s view of money. Edmund is being sent to Hilltown Sanatorium which is run by the state to treat his tuberculosis. Edmund feels sickened by his father’s decisions and states “But to think when it’s a question of your son having consumption, you can show yourself up before the whole town as such a stinking old tightwad!” (O’Neil 145). He accuses Tyrone of valuing money more than the health of his son even saying at one point “So why waste money? That’s why you’re sending me to a state farm-” (O’Neil 143). Tyrone does defend himself by offering to pay for any sanatorium that Edmund wants. He claims that the doctors recommended Hilltown Sanatorium not based on the price. Tyrone defends himself by saying, “What if it is run by the state? That’s nothing against it. The state has the money to make a better place than any private sanatorium” (O’Neil 144).

Although Tyrone does place his decisions on money he is willing to change. In the case of Edmund, he is willing to change his decisions for the sake of his family. By the end of Tyrone’s discussion with Edmund about the sanatorium, Tyrone allows for a change demonstrating that he does value his family more, “Who said you had to go to this Hilltown place? You can go anywhere you like. I don’t give a damn what it costs. All I care about is to have you get well” (O’Neil 146). Tyrone cares about money but he values his family more. However, it does take him most of the play to come to this realization and compromise for his family. Throughout the play Tyrone is criticized by his family for buying so much property meanwhile he doesn’t spend money on his family. In a scene between James Tyrone’s wife Mary and the family housemaid Cathleen, Mary states “Mr. Tyrone never is worried about anything, except money and

property and the fear he’ll end his days in poverty” (O’Neil 101). Although this isn’t completely true as he is willing to compromise for his family, this is the way his family sees him and how he acts with his money. The fear of poverty from his experience of immigration has stayed with him and has affected his family.

Later in the play, Tyrone reveals why he buys property. He states “I’ve never been able to believe in my luck since. I’ve always feared it would change and everything I had would be taken away. But still, the more property you own, the safer you think you are. That may not be logical, but it’s the way I have to feel. Banks fail, and your money’s gone, but you think you can keep land beneath your feet” (O’Neil 146). Tyrone is afraid of losing everything as he did again and again as a kid, he wants to make sure he has something stable to stand on. Tyrone carries the memories of the extreme poverty he experienced in his youth. He wants by any means to prevent this which is why he buys poverty. He wants to protect his family by having the stability of owning property. Tyrone’s value of money over his family does change over the course of the play. His choices still have taken its effects on his family and himself.

When Tyrone was in poverty he got out of it by studying Shakespeare and performing theater. He found a great passion for theater describing it in this way, “I loved the theater. I was wild with ambition. I read all the plays ever written. I studied Shakespeare, as you’d study the Bible” (O’Neil 150). Tyrone had more than a career, he had a passion and pursuit in life. At the height of his career, he was given a part that he was able to make a fortune. This choice would become one of his greatest regrets. His performance in the play destroys his potential for theater by playing the same role over and over. Tyrone describes what the play did to him to Edmund, “That damned play I bought for a song and made such a great success in-a great money success-it ruined me with its promise of an easy fortune. I didn’t want to do anything else, and by the time I woke up to the fact I’d become a slave to the damned thing and did try other plays, it was too late” (O’Neil 149). The play ruined his passion for the theater and left him with a fortune. Later he would wonder why he wanted the money, stating “What the hell was it I wanted to buy” (O’Neil 150). Because of the poverty he had experienced, Tyrone’s fixation with money led him to ruin his career.

With the massive immigration from Ireland, the Irish were left with a struggle for identity. The question of what and where home is was prevalent for the immigrants. Nicholas Grene describes this in his journal article, “Long Day’s Journey Into Night: The Tyrone’s At Home In America,” he writes “With a homeland left behind, there is an urgency in the need to transfer the sense of belonging to a new country” (Grene 119). During this time the Immigrants wanted to bring about the feeling

of home again in a new land. This can be seen in Mary’s nostalgia for her home and her dislike of her current home. Mary is dissatisfied with her home, this is shown when she tells Edmund “I’ve never felt it was my home. It was wrong from the start. Everything was done in the cheapest way” (O’Neil 44). Mary is upset at her husband for never putting in the effort to make their house more than a house but a home. Tyrone’s reluctance to invest in a better home for his wife is in large part due to his perspective on income and poverty. Already satisfied by having a place to live, Tyrone doesn’t believe in wasting money on a new home because the action is trivial.

As a response, Mary states “He thinks money spent on a home is money wasted” (O’Neil 61). Later in the play, Mary confronts Tyrone about never treating the house as a home; she states “Oh, I’m so sick and tired of pretending this is a home! You won’t put yourself out the least bit! You don’t know how to act in a home! You don’t really want one! You never have wanted one-never since the day we were married!” (O’Neil 67). Mary wants to create a home for her family that would bring back the homeland of Ireland. Tyrone himself doesn’t know what it is like to have a home. His experience of immigration was one of poverty. Tyrone never knew what it was to live in a home as for him a home was simply a place to live rather than recreating Ireland in a community and family. He lost his family as well with his dad returning to Ireland and his brothers leaving, he doesn’t know how to act in a home or a family. All of the opinions of both Tyrone and Mary stem from their experience as Irish immigrants. Mary wants to recreate the homeland and Tyrone lacks the value of a home from his experience of being forced out of the homes he would live in. Grene discusses the issue of having a home, saying “The Tyrones’ need for home and their sense of homelessness, the insecurities of their class location, their spiritual alienation all bespeak their Irish American Identity” (Grene 118). The root of the Tyrone family’s issue of having a home comes from the experiences they have had, Mary missing the experience of being at home and from Tyrone’s lack of ever having a home. Tyrone and Mary both lack the home they need. Tyrone doesn’t know what it means to have a home although he needs it just as much as Mary.

As a representation of the perspective of Irish Americans, Tyrone is haunted by the past. The lingering experience of his childhood during the Irish immigration process remains with him affecting his life and family. His experience with poverty has left him with a fear of falling into the poorhouse again. This fear of poverty has led him to place a value on money leading him to make decisions guided by this vice. He prioritizes money rather than his family, such as in the case of his son Edmund. Tyrone is consumed by his reverence for money because of his experience in poverty when having little money meant being able to eat or not. Tyrone’s

view of being home is altered as well because of his lack of ever having a home. This has led him to believe it is a waste to spend money on a home. His decisions regarding his house affect not only himself but also his wife Mary. Tyrone’s character shows the effects of the Irish immigration experience making him into the person he is in the play. Tyrone cares for his family, however, he isn’t always present in the way his family needs him. He thinks he needs to protect them from poverty rather than provide proper care and support through his wealth. Nicholas Grene states “In the end, this makes Long Day’s Journey all the more telling, all the more fully expressive, as a representation of the Irish-American Tyrone at home in America” (Grene 118). Tyrone carries his experience of Irish immigration through the rest of his life affecting his decisions with money and impacting the lives of his family.

Works Cited

Ardolino, Frank. “Irish Myth and Legends in ‘Long Day’s Journey Into Night’ and ‘A Moon for the Misbegotten.’” The Eugene O’Neill Review, vol. 22, no. 1/2, 1998, pp. 63–69.

Grene, Nicholas. “LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT: THE TYRONES AT HOME IN AMERICA.” Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies (HJEAS), vol. 11, no. 2, 2005, pp. 109–19.

McCaffrey, Lawrence J. “Irish America.” The Wilson Quarterly (1976-), vol. 9, no. 2, 1985, pp. 78–93.

O’Neil, Eugene. “Long Day’s Journey Into Night.” 195

Alyssa Fong, Forward of VUWSOC

Annabelle Graciella Reyes

Funeral Practicalities

Claire Miller

A funeral hall in Arizona. Noon. A casket stands in the center of the hall with empty pews in rows on either side of it. EDITH HANSEN stands behind it.

FUNERAL DIRECTOR (Offstage): Thank you all for joining us in the celebration of the life of George Hansen. If you could all make your way to the reception hall, there will be a lunch, complete with all of George’s favorite foods.

A man in a bright multi-colored suit, top hat, and ornate cane enters and joins her.

ARTIE: You didn’t want to join the others for lunch, Edith?

EDITH: I don’t believe it. I simply just don’t believe it. How…why…when… who…?

ARTIE (smiling): Edith.

EDITH: But you…and…you haven’t…you couldn’t have…you know?

ARTIE: Now just calm down now, Edith. You don’t want to burst a blood vessel.

EDITH: My apologies, I’m just…I’m completely shocked. You understand. But can it be true? Is it really Artie Feldman?

ARTIE: In the flesh! I’m just surprised you recognized me, seeing as I look just a bit different since last time you saw me. Now was ol’ George’s favorite food still Mac n’ Cheese with cut up hot dogs in it? Cause I could really go for that right about now.

EDITH: I’m afraid his tastes became more refined after college. More of the steak and whiskey type.

ARTIE: Well, I’m all for a good steak, but nothing beats the classic.

EDITH: Now Artie, it’s been so long since I’ve seen you, and you come in here talking all about Mac n Cheese? Why, I haven’t seen you in —

ARTIE: Fifty years, three months, and fourteen days…but who’s counting?

EDITH: Well…it is good to see you. Just awful that it’s under these circumstances.

ARTIE: Well…that’s why I’m back, see.

EDITH: What do you mean?

ARTIE: I’m here for you, Edith.

EDITH: I beg your pardon?

ARTIE: Well…I just imagined how difficult it must be for you, losing Georgie and all.

EDITH: Oh…oh yes, of course. But, how did you find out about this? I thought you and George—

ARTIE: Well you see this here hat I have—and now Edith you mustn’t tell anybody about this—but this here hat I have is no ordinary hat. It tells

me things.

EDITH: It what?

ARTIE: It tells me things. Things I would’ve had no way of knowing otherwise. Messages from the “great beyond.” A few days ago it told me that old George had crossed over and I knew I had to come back.

EDITH: Well Artie, that is quite a tale. Now how did you really find out?

ARTIE: A letter from an old friend. You remember Edward Alston?

EDITH: You mean Eddie Spaghetti? How could I forget a man who ate six plates of cafeteria pasta in one sitting? He was invited to the funeral, but I didn’t see him.

ARTIE: Wasn’t able to make the trip; his heart isn’t so good now. But he sent me a letter telling me you could use some company from an old friend, and I agreed with him.

EDITH: Well as shocking as it is, it is wonderful to see you. But I can’t help but wonder just where you’ve been all this time?

ARTIE: Oh, all over. I spent a lot of time in Europe: backpacking, performing at crowded monuments. I got real good at the accordion. I did a little stint in China, a bit in Japan. Even did a few weeks in Egypt.

EDITH: Sounds lonely.

ARTIE: Sometimes it was, sometimes it wasn’t. But I’ve seen just about all a man could think to see in the world and met just about every type of person you could think to meet.

EDITH: Well, I’m certainly flattered you’d think to come and comfort little old me after all this time.

ARTIE: I wouldn’t dream of not being here for you.

EDITH: Well now Artie, if I didn’t know better, I’d think you were being forward with me. You aren’t, are you?

ARTIE: Do you remember…that day?

EDITH: How could I ever forget? It was one of the most difficult decisions I’ve ever had to make. But why are you bringing that day up now?

ARTIE: Well, on that day, do you remember what I told you?

EDITH: That if I chose George over you, you’d never speak to either of us again until the day you could make me yours? Oh, Artie, I thought you were just being dramatic, and then—

ARTIE: No dramatics here. I meant what I said and I stayed away, but now—

EDITH: Artie! This is entirely inappropriate and just like you! George has barely passed. Can’t you see I’m in mourning over my husband?

ARTIE: Oh, but you don’t have to be, Edith! I got you some flowers to cheer you up!

ARTIE pulls a comically large bouquet of flowers out of his sleeve. EDITH shoots him an irritated look.

ARTIE: Not a fan of the flowers, eh? Well I got you a handkerchief to dry

your tears.

He begins to pull a magicians handkerchief from his sleeve, but only gets a bit of the way through before EDITH stops him.

EDITH: That’s quite enough, Artie. It’s bad enough that you showed up to George’s funeral in that awful suit, but you will not be performing magic tricks in front of my deceased husband! And I’d think you’d want to have a bit more respect, seeing as you two were such close friends—

ARTIE: Not for fifty years.

EDITH: Oh honestly Artie, after all this time? You were like brothers for the first twenty years of your life and now you’re still bitter?

ARTIE: How could I not be? He knew what I felt and he still…he just—

EDITH: I know. I know. But it wasn’t all his fault, you know.

ARTIE: Yes, I know. I didn’t exactly make myself the most qualified suitor, did I?

EDITH: No, you most certainly did not.

ARTIE: Your father never quite got over taking that lobster claw to the nostril did he?

EDITH: Not by a long shot. They both laugh.

EDITH: So why come back now? Why not just keep traveling around?

ARTIE: Well, it’s like what I said before. I came back for you. I’m too old now to keep carrying on the way I do all alone, and I’ve missed you this whole time.

EDITH: Well that just simply cannot be true. There is no way you missed a girl from the middle of the Arizona desert all fifty of those years while you were out seeing all kinds of people and places.

ARTIE: But it is true. Everybody I met, everything I saw, it all just made me think of you. I’d always think of how much you’d either love or hate what was all around.

EDITH: Now those are just lines from some old movie, aren’t they? I bet you said those same lines to girls all over the world. You’ve always been such a sap.

ARTIE: And you’ve always been such a stick in the mud, so whatever will we do about that?

EDITH: Oh, even after fifty years, all it takes is a few minutes and you’re right on my nerves again!

ARTIE: And I’ll just keep right on them, if you’ll let me. He places his hand on top of Edith’s. She quickly jerks it back, then, flustered, they both move away from one another.

ARTIE: I’ll bet George got on your nerves a lot too, if he was anything like he was back in college.

EDITH: Sometimes. He went out a lot, so I usually was more irritated with him when he wasn’t there.

ARTIE: Now how could he be irritating you when he wasn’t even there?

EDITH: Well, as much as I loved my husband, he was not a perfect man. He had his habits.

ARTIE: Habits?

EDITH: Oh, yes. He had a habit of staying out much later than he planned. He’d get carried away with his friends, and I’d get irritated with him then, but really only the first few times he did it. Then I created my own little routine. I’d do lots of pretending.

ARTIE: Pretending? That doesn’t sound like the empirical Edith I know.

EDITH: I know, it’s not like me at all. But the chores go by much faster when you pretend to be someone else.

ARTIE: Like who?

EDITH: Oh, nobody. Nobody at all.

ARTIE: Now, Edith. You don’t need to be ashamed. Why, just look at this suit here. How could you possibly be embarrassed by anything you could say to me?

EDITH: It was a…difficult time. But I would pretend that I was locked away. A princess who had been switched with the maid and one day someone would discover the mistake and sweep me off my feet and—

EDITH looks down, ashamed.

ARTIE: Why, Edith, that’s just as lonely as my travels.

EDITH: Lonely? Well, yes. I guess I was lonely at times. I did always have Gene, but I missed going out with my friends. Of course my mother would stop by at times, but she passed when Gene was only four and it was just us ever since. But that’s enough about all that. You still haven’t fully explained why you’re here.

ARTIE: I already told you Edith, I’ve come for you.

EDITH: Yes, yes, I know that. But I don’t understand what you mean.

ARTIE: I want you to run away with me, Edith.

EDITH bursts out laughing in spite of her serious nature. She quickly composes herself.

EDITH: Artie, that is completely ridiculous! We are far too old for running away!

ARTIE: I don’t believe we’re too old for anything except eating off the children’s menu. And even then, we get a senior citizen discount, so what does it matter anyway?

EDITH: Eating off the children’s menu and running away are entirely different things, Artie! I can’t just up and leave here! I am someone’s mother! I am someone’s grandmother.

ARTIE: Bah! How often do Gene and his family visit you anyway? I saw them out in the parking lot by their car with their fancy Washington license plates!

EDITH: Well, they don’t visit often, but I still need to be here for the

times they do! Plus I have to take care of the car, the house —

ARTIE: Sell the house! Sell the car! You won’t need them when you’re on the road with me!

EDITH: Artie, that isn’t wise! All of this, it…it just isn’t practical!

ARTIE: Oh Edith, you’re so practical you’d be the type to buy flood insurance here in the great dry desert of Arizona!

Pause. EDITH looks sheepish.

ARTIE: My word, Edith. You did now, didn’t you?

EDITH: Well, you can never be too careful, now. Can you?

ARTIE: But that’s just the thing, Edith! You can! And you are! You’ve had flood insurance here in your house in the desert, and how many times has that been useful to you? Just how many times has your house been flooded?

EDITH: …Well, never, but that doesn’t—

ARTIE: Exactly! And you could have used that money to buy anything in the world you could’ve wanted? Did you ever buy that nice, fancy, expensive cello you always talked about wanting?

EDITH: Well, no. The money had to be used for other things, because—

ARTIE: What other things Edith? Why did you pick George over me in the first place if he wasn’t going to give you the things you always wanted?

EDITH: That wasn’t what it was about and you know it!

ARTIE: Then what was it?

EDITH: It was…stability! A secure life! You wanted to be with me, but you didn’t even have a job or any plans to get one. You were a theater major for goodness sake! A theater major! George had a business lined up for him. He had a way to make sure I would never be in any trouble!

ARTIE: But you loved me! And I did just fine with money! I always had enough at the end of the day, and usually some left over to save! And I would have made sure to get you that new cello instead of that tinny sounding child’s toy.

EDITH: That cello sounded just fine, thank you. And I didn’t have much time to play it anyway once Eugene came along. It takes a lot to raise a child and take care of a home, you know, so it would’ve been a waste of money to buy a new one anyway. So there!

ARTIE: Now you wait just a minute. I thought the whole reason for marrying ol’ George-o moneybags was that you’d never have to work a day in your life again and he’d have people to take care of all the work for you!

EDITH: Don’t call him that!

ARTIE: I’m sorry, Edith. I guess his old college nickname doesn’t ring the same when…

ARTIE gestures to the casket.

EDITH: No. No, it does not. And you should know better than anybody

that George was…practical. Like me. Why waste money to hire a maid and a nanny, when I was perfectly capable of cleaning and taking care of Gene all by myself?

ARTIE: Did he help you?

EDITH: What?

ARTIE: Did he help you with the cooking and the cleaning and taking care of Gene? Because it sounds like—

EDITH: Heavens, no! He was the one working and providing for us! He was the one who made sure we had food for me to cook, and a house for me to clean.

ARTIE: Was he still working at his father’s company?

EDITH: Well, yes. But that doesn’t mean—

ARTIE: Now, now, Edith. I know you want to defend your husband, but just think about this with me, will you? How many people got up on that stage and told stories about George?

EDITH: Well I didn’t count them, but—

ARTIE: Well I did. And I counted thirteen. Made for much too long of a funeral, if you ask me, and some of those guys could use a class in stage presentation—

EDITH: What is your point, Art?

ARTIE: My point, Ede—

EDITH: Oh, you know how I hate being called “Ede!” It’s so undignified!

ARTIE: My apologies, Ede.

EDITH: Artie!

ARTIE: My apologies. That one was too far… But my point is, not a single one of those guys up there said anything about George at work. They talked about golf, bowling, drinking, pool, darts, and all sorts of other activities that had nothing to do with working. And you said yourself that he was out late all the time. And where were you during golf and bowling?

EDITH: Don’t.

ARTIE: Where were you?

EDITH: Art, this isn’t fair.

ARTIE: You’re right, Edith. It isn’t fair. It will never be fair that you had to put your cello away because a man who had all the money to spare to give you all the time in the world decided to take that time and money for himself. And who did he take it from? You. He took it from his wife. His wife who he promised to love and cherish. He may have loved you, but he did not cherish you, Edith. He never—

EDITH: Oh, stop it! Stop it! It isn’t fair! It isn’t fair!

EDITH begins to cry.

EDITH: It isn’t fair for you to just come here, after fifty years, in your gaudy carnival suit acting foolish just to tell me that my life was so awful and

that my husband didn’t cherish me and say all those nasty things about your friend! He did love me! I know he must have!

ARTIE: Oh, Edith. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…I wasn’t thinking—

ARTIE wraps his arm around EDITH while she continues to cry. He pulls out a regular, white handkerchief and hands it to her. She begins to dry her eyes.

EDITH: Of course you weren’t thinking. You don’t think. You waltz into funerals like you own the place and start doing magic tricks to try and cheer up the bereaved.

ARTIE: I know Edith, I shouldn’t—

EDITH: But, I can’t even bring myself to be upset with you because as crass as it is, you’re the same charming Artie that I remember. And I don’t want you to think that I didn’t love George. I did.

ARTIE: I know.

EDITH: He wasn’t always…inattentive. He was better at times. And I really do believe that he loved me too. But there’s no point in thinking through everything that has happened and trying to assign emotions to it. I don’t know what he felt, I only know what I felt and what I did with it. And there’s nothing that can be done about that now.

ARTIE: You’re right. There’s nothing to be done about that, or the fact that I spent fifty years lonely. I saw everything there is to see, and pined after something I couldn’t have the whole time. There isn’t anything to be done about that now.

EDITH: But there is something to be done about now

ARTIE: There is.

EDITH: Is it wise?

ARTIE: Who’s to say it isn’t?

ARTIE holds his hand out to EDITH. She takes it and begins to walk out, but ARTIE stays in place.

EDITH: Well, what are we waiting for?

ARTIE looks at the casket.

ARTIE: He hasn’t been gone for very long, has he?

EDITH: No. No he hasn’t. But I spent my entire life doing nothing in order to please a man who isn’t even here anymore, and now I finally have the chance to do something now that he’s gone. And you know what? It really doesn’t feel any different from when he was here. Still hand in hand, EDITH begins walking off again. This time, ARTIE follows after her. Both EXIT.

THE END

Itsel Garnica Velasco

The Naivety of the Nativity

Kayla Y. Chen

Do you live in naivety of the nativity? Innocent of the innocence born in a manger? A stranger the savior who, faced with the danger, Embraced it head-on in confounding behavior? …which was love. Was it enough?

Did you harken the herald of heavenly host And heed the good news that they ventured to boast? Join in the song which the angels composed? And repeat it to sheep of the lonely outpost?

Have you stared at the stars And gone where they pointed?

Beheld the anointed, who, divinely appointed, Tumbled through starry expanse to join in Humankind?

Did you manage the manger or stay in the stable Where virgin gave birth to a King, says the fable? Where shepherds and magi knelt down before babe who’ll Rescue the whole of the damned human race?

Did you tend to the Temple And pray day and night?

Proclaiming the prophecies bound to ignite Hope in a hopeless generation whose plight Could be reversed by a child who’d make wrong things right?

Did you bow ‘neath the bough On which he was slain?

And whisper His name, in pain, robes a-stained With the crimson that flowed from His trembling veins On the cross?

Are you scared of the scars His body now bears?

Fearful to suffer the way that He dared To suffer for us, as the Father prepared Him to do?

Will your body embody the love that He gave?

Rising above, as He rose from the grave, To meet every challenge and solemnly brave The trials and miles ahead till He saves Us once and for all? Is it enough?

American Robin Luke Miller

Speak Now

Amanda Fagan

Growing up, the cars my family owned had no aux cord or Bluetooth. To make our car rides to school more interesting, my dad would burn a monthly CD and put the current Billboard songs on it. One cold October morning in 2010, my dad put in his latest mix. I sat in the backseat, staring out the window lost in thought. The songs were nice but mostly served as background noise to my thoughts. That was until we reached the stop sign a few blocks from school. A song by an artist I had never heard before began to play and it instantly broke me out of my daze. “You were in college working part-time waiting tables. Left a small town, never looked back.” The lyrics began to paint a story, a vivid scene in my mind. It enraptured me. “I was a flight risk, with a fear of falling. Wondering why we bother with love if it never lasts.” I had always enjoyed listening to music but I was never into a specific artist or band. Whoever this artist was, I had to know. No song had captured my attention like this before.

“Who sings this song?” I asked my dad.

“Taylor Swift.”

“Who’s that?” My curiosity peaked.

“She’s a young upcoming artist.”

“Does she have other songs?”

“Yeah, this song is from her newest album. I believe she has three albums out.”

That was the moment I knew I had to learn more about who this Taylor Swift was.

A few days later, my dad surprised me with my own copy of Speak Now, the album that had the song I had heard in the car, “Mine.” We began playing it every day on the way to school. I loved pretty much every song on the album, with only one skip. I had never had such love for an album before. After school, I would ask my dad if I could take the CD to my room. He helped me set up a CD player in my room so I could listen to Speak Now whenever I wanted. I would play the songs all the time, dancing around my room or playing with my toys while singing along.

I had never been much of a singer before, but after hearing Speak Now, I wanted to learn how to sing. My mom signed me up for voice lessons at a music store a few blocks from my school. On my first day in the little shop, my voice teacher and mom took me to a room filled with music books and instruments.

“You can pick out any book you like and we’ll learn songs from that.” My voice teacher smiled warmly at me.

I rushed to the section with artists whose last names began with

S, searching for Swift. There it was. A white book with an all too familiar blonde girl in a regal purple dress; the Speak Now music book for beginners.

The following fall, my second-grade teacher started the year with a show and tell where we shared one of our talents with the class. I asked my dad if he could bring in my CD player so that I could perform a Taylor Swift song. I had never had the courage to sing in front of people before but there I stood one September afternoon in front of all of my peers. If Taylor could do it, I could. I sang “Haunted,” the 12th track on Speak Now. “You and I walk a fragile line. I have known it all this time, but I never thought I’d live to see it break.”

On October 20th, 2011, my dad surprised me with a ticket to go see Speak Now in concert with him. Oddly enough, to this day, it’s the concert I remember best. I remember Taylor mashing up her song “Back to December” with “Apologize” by Timbaland. I remember someone in the crowd shouting, “You can sing!” after the line, “Drunk and grumbling on about how I can’t sing,” during her performance of “Mean.” I remember freaking out at the end of the concert when Taylor came back on for an encore and performed songs from her album, Fearless. The moment that stuck with me most though was her performance of “Dear John.” Seven-year-old me stood in awe as fireworks shot off after the line, “I’m shining like fireworks over your sad empty town.”

This album molded me into the person I am today. “Haunted” helped me find the confidence in myself to perform. Today, I am a musician and performer who sings at events and small venues. I fell in love with the constant costume and set changes during the Speak Now tour. Today, I am a theatre major and have spent time working in the costume and set shops. “Mine” made me fall in love with storytelling in songs. Today, songwriting is part of my current job and I aspire to write plays, musicals, and screenplays as a career. Today, I am the same age as Taylor Swift was when she wrote Speak Now: nineteen. Speak Now was the only album completely and solely written by Taylor and Taylor alone. She wanted to prove to people that she could write her own material. I find that inspiring. To this day, it is my favorite album. Speak Now will always have a special place in my heart.

The Land of Orendane

Sarah Snow

A Senseless Concept

Jaelah Butler

Juggling with our attached separation

Conjoined at the brain

Deceived by our hearts

Isolated in our souls

Invasive.

Repulsively drawn together

The steam has settled in our throats

What is love? We do not know What is lust? Where we have gone

Compulsive.

Wanting because of what is absent we are malnourished

We lack the nutrients of love, joy and happiness craving to be enriched

Hostile.

We are slowly poisoned by the toxic Drugs of each other we continue to consume we are overdosing

Cynical.

We lay in the waste

Sinking deeper

Deeper into an abyss

We are lost

Frivolous.

Blinded by hope

Smothered by fear

We slowly suffocate

Knowing there is nothing left we are restless

Senseless.

Bend, Oregon

Victoria Barraza

The Ethics of Chocolate

Zoe A. Reppmann

A machete swings and cracks open a cacao pod, narrowly missing the 12-year-old worker’s hand. He drops the seeds into a bag approximately the same size as his own body and scrambles higher into the cacao tree to repeat this process. This is normal for the boy, as he is a cacao worker in Ghana and has been working for a few years already. He is just one of millions of children forced to work in the cacao industry in Western Africa. This is not uncommon because of the need for cheap labor in the cacao industry. Chocolate is a popular candy worldwide and big chocolate brands hoard their profits, so farmers find unethical ways to meet the demand for cacao. Even Fair-Trade chocolate, which aims to ethically source chocolate, cannot give a guarantee that there is no child labor behind their chocolate bars. Buying chocolate may be unethical, as cacao is harvested by child workers in Ghana and the Ivory Coast, which then becomes chocolate sold by Hersey, Mars, Nestle and some fair-trade brands.

Cheap cacao is in high demand as chocolate is extremely popular, yet many consumers have no idea how the cacao is sourced, and who is sourcing it. Because it is in such high demand, cacao farmers make around one dollar per day, which leaves them in extreme poverty. Because of this, they resort to child labor to harvest the cacao to keep costs low. As a result, over 2.1 million children are working at cacao farms in the Ivory Coast and Ghana (Food Empowerment Project, 2022). The work itself is extremely dangerous. A typical workday is 14 hours of clearing forests with chainsaws, climbing trees, or cutting cacao pods open using machetes. A typical worker is between the ages 12 and 16 but can be as young as 5 years old. The living conditions for workers are also dangerous, as most are exposed to harmful chemicals, do not have access to sanitary water, and consistently go to bed hungry. In addition to all this, these child workers do not go to school and are paid little if anything at all. Some of these children choose to work on cacao farms to give money to their impoverished families. Traffickers and cacao farm owners regularly lie about the pay the workers will receive, tricking children into thinking they will have enough money to support their families. Other workers are sold by family members who are unaware just how dangerous the work is. Some children are even kidnapped from neighboring countries and then sold to cacao farmers (Food Empowerment Project, 2022). Not only is this type of child labor difficult, but these children are paid little to nothing and put in extremely dangerous conditions.

After being harvested, cacao becomes chocolate, which ends up on grocery store shelves. Many of the chocolate brands commonly seen

on grocery store shelves do not pay their farmers fair wages, which contributes to farmers needing cheap or free labor, which falls to the children. Some of these brands include Nestle, Mars and Hershey. In 2001 the US Congress put pressure on these brands, pushing them to find ways to source cacao without child slavery and child labor. However, these same companies have missed their goal deadlines in 2005, 2008, 2010 and 2020. While the chocolate industry collects about 103 billion dollars per year, they have spent about 150 million on reducing child labor in the past 18 years. That is 1.8 trillion dollars collected and 150 million spent (Whoriskey & Siegel, 2019). There is a type of chocolate that strives to not use child labor, not harm the environment with pesticides, protect natural water sources and overall contribute to the local community. Fair Trade certified chocolate is more likely to be better, however it cannot guarantee that it does not come from child labor. Fair Trade only certifies small farms, not huge plantations. This makes it less likely that children harvest the cacao in Fair Trade chocolate, but there is no guarantee (Ayuda, 2020). The chocolate industry has made very few legitimate attempts to stop child slavery or child labor in the harvesting process. Even Fair Trade chocolate comes without the guarantee of fair working conditions. No chocolate is safe from the possibility of child labor. Millions of children are working to harvest cacao every day. They are paid little to nothing, put in extremely dangerous conditions and are often kidnapped, swindled, or sold into their work (Food Empowerment Project, 2022). Despite the chocolate industry making billions and billions of dollars a year, they are doing extraordinarily little to live up to their promises of ending their support of child labor. Brands like Hershey, Nestle, and Mars profit directly from the child labor in Ghana and the Ivory Coast because it is less expensive than cacao which has been sourced ethically (Whoriskey & Siegel, 2019). It is nearly impossible to find ethically sourced chocolate brands, as even Fair-Trade Certified chocolate provides no guarantee that it was not harvested by a 12-year-old in Ghana (Ayuda, 2020). Buying chocolate from brands such as Hershey, Nestle and Mars, or even fairtrade brands, is unethical as it directly supports child labor and child slavery in the Ivory Coast and Ghana.

References

Ayuda, T. (2020). What is Fair Trade and fair trade chocolate brands to buy | livestrong. LIVESTRONG.COM.

Food Empowerment Project. (2022, January). Child labor and slavery in the chocolate industry.

Whoriskey, P., & Siegel, R. (2019, June 5). Hershey, Nestle and Mars won’t promise their chocolate is free of child labor. The Washington Post.

Hawk Luke Miller

An Exorcizing Experience

Jared Rhone

“I’ve got to close! They’re telling me I’ve got to close!” Pastor Apostle Reginald Lawrence PhD proclaimed.

That was his title. Pastor Apostle Reginald Lawrence PhD. Sometimes the preacher would add “Dr.” to the front of it. Sometimes he would tack on a senior. But it never mattered. The people of the church simply referred to him as Apostle, or more accurately: “Uhpastul.”

The apostle leaned over the podium and blotted away the beads of sweat. The organ swelled a surging symphony as he belted into the microphone. “Oh yes, church I’ve got to close!” He was reading from the cue cards in the back. The cue cards which told him when he was 10 minutes past schedule. Which told him when he was 30 minutes past schedule. Which told him now he had preached for an hour longer than he was supposed to.

“Mmm yes I’ve got to close,” he started. “But how many of y’all knowuh. That Gawd. God doesn’t close the door on us!”

“Yes Lord!” the people cried back.

“We should be slaves to sinnnnuh. But blessed be. The name of the Lord. He has not given our soul to our enemy. When the water was over our head and– Oh I feel the power of God in this place! HALLELUUUUJAAH! Stand up and shout if you feel the presence of the living God!”

And then the church erupted. The congregation collectively launched into praise, carousing in the power of the Holy Spirit. The power in which they felt. In which they experienced. They praised in varied tongues, whooping and hollering. They danced and ran across the tiled and carpeted floors. They ran until their shoes flew off. They worshiped until they grew weary. Until their flesh gave way and their bodies collapsed into the cushions of their faded red velvet chairs.

This is how people experience God. The boy thought to himself. He wondered then why he felt nothing at all. He stood alone in the people-littered aisle. Then the boy suppressed the intrusive thought. He made himself experience God that Sunday. He forced his feet to skip and spanked his palms in rhythm, clapping till his hands went numb.

***

“Here, hold my phone and record.” Apostle Lawrence tossed his phone into my brother’s hands. My sweaty palms clawed at my jeans as I watched on. The pastor’s pressing pupils drilled into me. “We aren’t afraid of the Devil now son.” He handed me a vial of oil and tossed a bible at my sister, who watched the book soar across the air and fall face first into the tile floor. Apostle Lawrence pushed out a sigh, but ignored her action

altogether. We all watched intently, our eyes locked on the pastor and his granddaughter Kaylah, who sat in the seat closest to him.

Then, without warning, the power fell over him and his words became authority. “In the name of Jesus, I command you to go! Do you hear me spirit! I command you!” It was a late Friday night, but the lights of the church office door seemed to brighten when he spoke. Seemed to conform to the presence of the living word, which struck their bulbs with a fiery hue. Kaylah sat restlessly. Her leg jumped and tapped. Her skin began to wrinkle. The color from her brown skin became cold and vapid.

And then she was gone.

Kaylah disappeared.

And became a passenger to the possession.

“Nooooooo!” the spirit argued. Kaylah’s voice was no more. She did not speak now but howled, hissed. Her nails scraped against the office chair. Her teeth chattered and mashed with a tightness. Her eyes went slanted and then rolled back until the pupils were gone; the spirit stared with the pale glare of the pure whitened eyes.

I had seen people delivered in church. I had heard the demons being cast out from my aisle seat. Every Sunday, people riddled with demons spewed out bile as the spirits left them. But never had I been this close. I was now within arm’s reach of a demon possessed girl, a girl who I had come to know as sweet, who was now pushed to some chamber of her subconscious, where evil held the reins and spoke with impassion.

“How did you get in her spirit? I command you to answer!” Apostle said forcibly. “Ouiiij- Ouija boooard,” she answered with slurred speech.

Apostle turned to us fearlessly. “I’ve been trying to tell you kids. We don’t mess with no Ouija boards, no tarot cards, no nothing you understand? You put yourself in agreement with these things and you give spirits the power to operate in your life. You understand?” His tone was casual, but I could not match his demeanor. I was keyed in on the demon. On the girl who was gone.

I gawked, stalled in the supernatural. Stalled on the experience I knew I would not shake.

“So that’s what you were doing? Ah okay that makes a lot of sense. I just kind of put my hands up because I didn’t know it if we were supposed to,” Brandon noted.

“Oh nah man. That’s just optional. I put my hands up when I pray or worship sometimes. It’s just a sign of surrender basically,” I answered back.

“Got it. I mean if that’s what church is like. I guess that was… okay.”

“Nah, that’s not church. In and out in 45 minutes? That’s more children’s Sunday school or something.” We were coming from an athletic conference that was hosted by a Christian organization. Brandon suggested we attend the church service beforehand for the complimentary bagels. I, both fond of bagels and Christ, obliged to his intentions.

“Your church wasn’t like that?” Brandon now asked me.

“The one I grew up going to? No sir, heh. I went to black church. And by black church I mean every stereotype imaginable.”

“Oh okay. Bro black church actually sounds fun though. I’d be down to try it. Everyone seems actually into it.”

“Mmm, fun. I guess that’s a word. I wouldn’t say everyone is into it 24/7. It comes in waves and droves I’d say. But I don’t know. Everyone experiences it in a different way.” “Okay, well how do you experience it?”

And then I paused. My brain nearly fell lopsided when I processed the question. But I crumpled the thoughts into words.

Church was active every Sunday. It would start at least 20 minutes late. And Dr. Apostle Reginald Lawrence Pastor would arrive at service about an hour after the listed start time. Then he would stand before the congregation with his piercing eyes and pinch at the curves of his thickened mustache. The Holy Spirit would flow, and Apostle would preach until his administrative staff finally pried him from the pulpit.

Everyone enjoys this experience. The boy would think to himself. No one ever complained or spoke against the functions of the dysfunctional church.

The boy would sit and cringe in his seat. Apostle would arrive to church late and welcome the newcomers. “Welcome! Welcome to Church of Deliverance International Incorporated, (CODII) I’m Senior Dr. Apostle Reginald Lawrence Pastor…PhD! Hope you’re having a wonderful Sunday in the house of the Lord.”

Why in the heck are we called International Incorporated? The boy would think as he sunk in his chair. “We aren’t even international,” he would say to his mother on the drive to service. “We aren’t even a good church,” his older sister Kamari would grumble from the backseat.

“Check your tone Miss Mari,” his mother would answer back. Kamari had been riddled with angst against the church for some time. The church to her was a weapon. A weapon that attacked her and judged her.

“Bishop. Uh-uh wake up, we’re not even there yet.” his mother sighed as she turned away from Bishop. He had a knack for falling asleep. Especially at church. His mother called it spiritual warfare while Bishop preferred the term boredom. To ease his boredom, Bishop was encouraged to become an usher at church. His mother made sure he was standing for much of the service, but found that even off his feet, Bishop could fall

asleep standing. He never experienced more than 10 minutes of a sermon before he drifted off.

The dynamics proved uncomfortable during services. The children flocked to their places. Bishop propped against a wall, Kamari alongside her little brother, and their mother back and forth between singing and administrative work.

Everything seemed to crumble when Apostle ran the altar call. When the boy sat tense, Bishop slept in peace and Kamari hid herself in the bathroom. Apostle had a knack for sharing people’s business on a full throttled microphone.

“I COMMAND THE HERPES TO GO!” he would cry as the woman would cover her face in horror. People came to the altar expectant of healing. Expectant of experiencing God’s presence. But often they would miss it. God would heal them with his helping hand but they could only remember being offended. Being hurt by the forceful gush of a socially incorrect pastor. Being hurt by elders who smacked them with the experience of God’s presence instead of inviting them to it.

One Sunday the boy was smacked with the same forceful hand.

“Come here, God has a word for you,” ordered an elder during the altar call. She was pointing at the boy and Kamari, who had not yet escaped to the bathroom. The boy was frightened, but was reassured when his sister stood up without hesitation. When she walked toward the front with the scowl on her brow. He followed after his sister and heeded the elder’s words.

“I see you there focusing during praise and worship. I want to fill you with the gift of tongues. Both of you. Come on child, let’s pray.”

Speaking in tongues? He was beside himself. Elated but afraid. He had seen the people experience this but there he stood at the front door of something new. She pressed her hand onto his stomach and prayed violently. Loudly. The boy felt nothing. He didn’t know if he was supposed to. He didn’t know what he was experiencing. But it felt silent. It felt hollow.

“In the name of Jesus, give him the language of the Holy Ghost!” her breath was hot, searing his earlobes. She ordered him to speak but no words came. Then, he heard the roar of celebration. “Hallelujah! Praise Jesus she’s saved! She’s speaking in tongues!”

He turned to see his sister, huddled by the elders, the women who rejoiced. Then the elder who prayed for him departed. She went to embrace Kamari, and told the boy to pray about his own gifting indefinitely.

The car ride home was loud, but silent for the boy. He was happy for Kamari but grieved the experience he had not claimed for himself. He thought that maybe it was not his time. Maybe everyone just had their

own experience. His mother was overjoyed, and took the four of them to grab some ice cream.

“What was it like?” he asked Kamari. “Speaking in tongues? How do you even experience that?”

“Oh that?” Kamari snickered. “Yeah I wasn’t speaking in tongues, they were getting annoying with all the praying so I just started speaking in French.”

Their mother who heard had sighed. Bishop yawned and Kamari beamed a brilliant smile. The boy couldn’t help but laugh. A different experience for everyone indeed. ***

“What is your name?” Apostle interjected as the demon slipped through her words. “Your name, what is your name?” But she ignored him as I did. She was dazed but her target was ever apparent. She had locked her eyes onto me.

I tried to look away but could not find the strength. Terror rooted me to her expression, as I watched her face contort into a grin. All her teeth poked through the gaping sneer, as the furrowing skin stained across her forehead.

“Aaaaaaghhhh!” she screeched. Apostle had poured the anointed oil across her forehead. Like acid to the skin, her body convulsed and she tried to leap from out her seat and run. Apostle grabbed her forearm and sat her down sternly.

“You cannot run. You are powerless, it’s already over demon. Now what’s your name? Answer me. Now!”

“Magda- Magdalene.” she murmured. To think she had a name made my blood go dry and stiff.

“Well, I command you in the name of Jesus to leave her Magdalene!” he ordered. She balled herself and scratched against the chair. She tried to lean her ears against her shoulders to blot away that name. That name that seemed to make her ears ring. And then her mouth twitched and foamed, she creased into a hunched back and rested very still.

I thought that Magdalene had left, but Kaylah was still gone. Still lost in the experience. Apostle was not so naive.

“You cannot deceive me,” he said with irritancy. “I know you’re still there. How many are you?”

Dejected, she looked at him with disgust. The white in her eye seemed to turn gray. “Mannyy. We are many.” She paused now with searing intensity, a sort of genuine honesty that I didn’t think could befall a demon. “Her,” she pointed. “She’s there too.” Her ragged finger shook at her admittance. The outing of own her kin. She pointed to my sister, to Kamari, who glared back without fear at the pale-eyed demon. “Mary. Mary is the spirit in herrr.” She growled with anger. Her temper began to

boil but Apostle didn’t grant her the expression of rage.

“Well, you’re leaving my grandbaby right now. Go on ahead and bind yourself and your legion of demons and leave you understand me. In the mighty name of Jesus, I command it.” She stood with hesitance until she could hold it in no longer. The demon began to cry and weep and beg to stay. But Apostle had grown tired. Impatient. Like a parent with a mischievous child. “We don’t have time for this spirit. I said you have to leave.” And then he straightened out his hand. I handed him another vial of oil and the demon lunged backwards in her seat. Apostle did not surrender control. He plopped oil onto her temple, and Magdalene was torn to shreds. She cried out like a screeching pig and clawed out her arms like a hunting lion. She shook and convulsed and bled to the blade she couldn’t blunt. The powerful name that stamped out her operation. Then the body lay backward. Magdalene had truly left and Kaylah came to move her own muscles once again. Her eyes returned to their normal state and Apostle hugged her warmly. Then, the young girl threw up copiously, as the pastor encouraged us to comfort her. Kaylah was indeed Kaylah once more. But I could not wipe the smell from my nose. The smell of Magdalene which filled the wastebasket, the smell which tried to imprint itself on the room.

“What the hell man. No way.”

“Yep.”

“Magdalene?”

“Yep.”

“White eyes?”

“Like a horror movie but much scarier.”

“Damn. So demons are real…”

“Yep. That’s why I ended up switching rooms when we went away on that soccer trip. Jose brought a whole ouija board and I peaced outta there real quick.”

“Geez. So then. I mean shoot do people have demons in them? Do I have demons in me then?” “Yes and no. I mean yes people have demons in them. But it’s less you know possession and more so walking in agreement with things that allows them to operate in your life. Anyways, I wouldn’t just go off a riff and say you have a demon in you bro.” I laughed.

Brandon held the car wheel steady. The thought had made him uneasy. “Hmm. So not sinning. Going to church. Basically equals no demons.”

“Uh nah. It’s not quite as transactional. Plenty of people go to church and still get nothing from it. You know.”

“Do you?”

“Do I… still get something from church? Um. Yes. You can grab

something from most churches, but I’d be lying if the feeling is as automatic nowadays. At the end of the day, you have to make sure you can grab something outside of church and when you get more secure in that, it becomes easier to take that energy with you.”

“So that’s your church experience?”

“These days? Something like that. Yes. Something like that.”

***

“I don’t feel like going to church,” he said. He was shocked to hear it come from with his now deepened voice. He was shocked to realize it was a true and honest statement. “We don’t have a choice. We have to go.” Kamari chirped.

His mother let out an audible sigh. “Kamari, we’re a family, we have to try to go together.” “That’s cool. I’m just going to go sit in the bathroom anyways.”

“Huuh,” muttered Bishop. He was waking up from his slumber. By now the family had been gone from CODII for a couple of years. The church had the spirit of God, but lacked the intangibles. In the coming years, the congregation bubbled in the brew of church theatrics. Now the family church hopped.

He had tried to look for the experience outside the church. He hoped to find it in his room, at his school, at his practices. He would look for God in the grocery store.

“Do you want to pray about it?” he’d say to Bishop.

“Umm nah, that stuff just isn’t really what I’m trying to do right now.”

“You know, this might sound funny,” he would say to his older sister. “But God definitely loves us I think. I know it sounds simple and cheesy, but I was readin-”

“Aw Jare Bear you’re still sticking with it huh. Aw, what a good Christian,” she’d laugh as she walked off peacefully.

The church had branded their experience. How they experienced the living God. The church made God dormant. A sleeping statue which sat beside their beds. They had to seek him for themselves.

He wondered why he didn’t match their resolve. While his interest and faith waved and dashed but couldn’t be stripped down completely. They would have to experience God in a different way. In a different time.

Magdalene had been put to rest in the deep reaches of the spiritual realm. But Mary sat untouched. The bulk of us, though apprehensive, embraced Kaylah’s weakened body and held her close. I clutched the oil close to me as a precaution.

“I’m not gonna let the Devil touch my babies,” Apostle said.

He was cleaning up his office desk. “Now baby,” he said turning now to Kamari. “You know I love you right? And I would never do anything to hurt you or let you be hurt right? But you know I’ve been doing this a long time. And if a spirit is saying there is another spirit messing you with girl, you know I gotta cast that thing out.”

Kamari shook her head refusing.

“Don’t you want me to help you? You don’t want to walk around with that thing all up in your business now do ya?” he said with a smile.

But Kamari remained stone-faced. “No. No. NO!”

“Well listen here now. I love you sweetie but, I can’t knowingly let that stuff slide in the house of th-”

And then she bolted up and left. She pushed from through the chairs and sprouted from the office, locking herself in the bathroom.

That night, we drove home from church in silence. My mother who had heard of the altercation slumped with saddening eyes. Bishop had seemed to forget. He was sound asleep the second we left the church parking lot. I didn’t know how he held that phone camera so calmly, how he slept now without quarrel or unrest.

I could not blink. I could not shut my eyes and see the picture. The girl possessed. The girl who died, whose flesh came undone and unraveled into the saturated spirit of Satan. Surely, I had met the Devil. I saw him eye-to-eye and knew that he hated me.

It’s real. I thought. It’s all real. God is. He’s really real. The Devil is…he wants to destroy me. I was fearful of my sister. She could deny it, but I knew that Mary must have been rejoicing. Must have held her wicked grin when she saw that she could stay. But Mary had not fooled me. I could smell her. I could taste the putrid bile.

I wondered why Kamari had not wanted the prayer. Her life had been so hard, her faith had been shaken, surely she must’ve wanted relief of prayer. And then I remembered that was not her experience. That I had projected some understanding of faith that was inherent to my own discernment. I realized that Kamari didn’t want someone speaking over her. Speaking against her. Using God as the weapon she thought He was. A weapon that would break her body down and rip her soul to shreds.

Kamari had simply wanted to experience the church in a different way.

***

“So no one goes now?”

“To church? Uh, not quite. I’d say there’s the intention to go in my family with some of us but not everyone does. Bishop, well Bishop kind of wants to go specific types of church. Less long sermons. He wants to try church outside. He said it’d help him not fall asleep apparently.” “Hmm. And your mom?”

“Mom tries to go sometimes. Both her and I are still invested in going, it’s just finding the right place. Organized churches can taste sour if done wrong, and a lot of people seem hellbent on adding all the wrong ingredients. I still try to go though, somewhat. I just can’t call any place my church ‘home’ though, ya know?”

“I get the gist… What about Kamari then?”

“Nope.”

“Not ever?”

“Not for now. She’ll get there though. We all will.”

“Why? Does she talk about going now?”

“Nah, but God’s got her. God’s got all of us. With Kamari I’ve never looked at it as an if God turns things around for her and her faith. It’s just a matter of when.”

“And when is soon?”

“When is whenever man ha. Her journey’s just different from mine. Different sort of experience. Different sort of outcome. Same place in the end though. Could take years. But I’ve already seen some changes with her. God’s got her. And even me, man. I’ve got a long way to go.”

“Damn. I mean, I guess. I like your perspective though. Interesting...”

Silence.

“So, you ever have a spirit come out of you?”

Bianca Morales, First Base of VUSOFT

Annabelle Graciella Reyes

A Taste of Family

Elizabeth Castelan

Savory dough, exquisitely filled with green salsa and shredded chicken. Banana leaves interweave, wrapped around like memories. Family, food, and quality time no other can achieve.

A savory smell like no other, Memories rise to the ones that know.

The hours of mixing, kneading, and patiently waiting, gives a mother and her kin the time to weave cherished memories. The exhausted face and weary hand of a mother, yet no one seems to care.

Oh, mother of mine, Do you want me to go?

Have I crossed the line?

Is it time for me to grow?

The daughter is getting older and can now carry on the family recipe. She is ready to make her own memories, but I’m not ready to let her go. The first-born daughter must be prepared and ready to undergo the real world.

Love moves her forward, Her worries vanish for the ones she adores— A husband and three children who make her world.

“Keep this in mind, for the next time you make it. The entrusted family recipe will continue on for generations,” said the mother. There is little time to show her the ways of our family tradition, but these moments will mold her.

Timer rings, five are ready to fill their bellies, Steaming pot filled with love, in the middle—

Scrumptious food that puts the mind at ease, The taste of family grows stronger little by little.

A mother and son enjoyed their last meal together on the rich land of Puebla, Mexico long ago. A taste of longing that can now be achieved, but with others. A new beginning and cherishing life with a loving wife and three children.

The taste of family is ever so loving.

Firebird Luke Miller

Jury Duty

Amanda Fagan

“Lawyers never pick college students for the jury. You have nothing to worry about.” That’s what my dad told me the morning I had to show up to the court house. At the ripe age of 19, I had been called to partake in my civil duty as a citizen. That’s what the five different television screens in the lobby said. They played compilations of interview footage with past jurors talking about how this experience had been life-changing. Getting picked for the jury was a turning point in the story of their life, and it could be for me too. At least, that’s what they said.

You see, I had had several friends of mine get called for jury duty before me. Every single one of them had the same story to tell. “You won’t get picked. You won’t even have to show up. You’ll be on telephone standby for five days and then you’re free to go.” It was the last week of summer and I didn’t want to have to spend it on a trial. I thought the story I would tell would be the same as them as I called in for my fourth day of telephone standby. My heart sank as I heard the automated voice tell me that I had missed the group cutoff by five. I would have to show up to the courthouse the next morning.

I called around, asking my friends what to expect, what to bring. What could I bring? If I showed up with a laptop to catch up on work, would they arrest me? Would they think my airpods were super secret spy earpieces? I could see it now. The security guard at the front would size me up and know there was just something off about me. He would figure me out with one glance, and then I’d be tackled to the floor and dragged away in handcuffs. I would be the one on trial, if they only knew who I was involved with.

I nervously waited in line, holding my breath as it became my turn to walk through the metal detector. The security guard didn’t tackle me to the ground like I had imagined. I was not in the least bit suspicious. Maybe it was because I was a mastermind, great at masking my secrets. Or maybe it was because I was a 5’6” teenager who walked in with nothing but a Taylor Swift tote bag and a copy of Jane Eyre under my arm.

I nervously waited in the back of the lobby, choosing to sit in the corner chair, furthest away from everybody else. I tried to relax but my leg wouldn’t stop shaking. Even worse, an middle-aged man with the wettest cough I had ever heard sat right in front me. Did I mention I was a germaphobe? I recoiled with every gag he made. Sometimes he didn’t even cover his mouth! Cold sweat was dripping from my head with the thought of catching whatever illness he had. I didn’t want to appear rude though. I couldn’t make it blatantly obvious that I was trying to get away from him, so I walked over to the vending machine with my bag and

paused in front of it for a minute, pretending to contemplate what I would purchase.

“Should I get the Cool Ranch or Nacho Doritos?” I quietly mumbled to myself. I would in fact be getting neither, because I am gluten intolerant and only have enough money in my wallet for coffee and lunch from that taco place down the street. Hopefully I won’t be here until lunch though.

“Everyone, to your seats,” The clerk called out. I sneakily sat down a few rows back, near a nice older woman who was not coughing. The clerk walked to the front of the room and explained how the day would go. There would be a couple of videos shown. Afterward, if the cases had decided not to go to trial, we would all be dismissed by 9:15 am. If they had not come to a decision, we would break for 45 minutes and then reconvene. We would have to wait from 10 am until 12 noon back in the lobby. If you weren’t selected during that two hour wait time, you were free to go. If you were, you would have to go through the entire jury selection process. If you were chosen for the jury, you would have to dedicate the next week or two to the trial.

“If anyone has something going on within the next two weeks that they cannot miss, you are free to come up to the desk in the back and reschedule your jury duty to October.” Now, I did have something scheduled within the next few days. I had oral surgery on Friday, and it was currently Wednesday. But if I rescheduled, I would have to come back to town for jury duty during the school year. That sounded like a terrible inconvenience. I texted my friends and my dad, asking them what the likelihood of me getting selected between 10 am and 12 pm was. All of them told me the same thing: it’s not going to happen. I decided to stay put as I watched about 20 different people go to the back and reschedule their summons.

The clerk played the two videos and then we were all released for our 9:15 break. I internally debated for a solid two minutes about whether I had enough time to drive to the Starbucks down the block. I am a caffeine addict and didn’t have time to make coffee after my morning run. I knew the withdrawal headache was impending.

Before I could reach a verdict, the man with the wet cough sat in the row in front of me to strike up a conversation with another juror. I quickly grabbed my book and my bag and then hurried toward the exit. I’d have to make a decision on the way to the parking lot.

As I walked down the stairs leading out of the courthouse, I spotted a coffee cart at the parking lot’s edge. The sign in front of it had three latte options. My heart skipped a beat as I saw raspberry mocha was listed. I adore raspberry lattes. They’re my downfall, and Starbucks didn’t even sell them. My mind had come to a deliberation.

I hurried over to the cart and placed my order. By the time I had received my drink, I noticed that the line was stretching down the sidewalk. I guess I wasn’t the only caffeine addict called to the courthouse that day.

I sat on a bench with my raspberry mocha and read Jane Eyre for the next 40 minutes. The clerk had the worst timing. I had just gotten to the part where the vampyre-ish lady stabs Mr. Mason. I was not expecting that from a Victorian novel. Why had no one told me classic books could be murderous thrillers? I reluctantly closed the book and hurried back inside, my mind still thinking about how my two favorite genres could co-exist in the same novel. I’d get back to Jane soon, though. The clerk would give another speech, then I’d wait in the lobby for two hours, free to read until they sent me home at 12 noon, because lawyers never pick college students for the jury.

After the clerk’s speech, I began thumbing through the pages of my book. Unfortunately, another clerk interrupted my imaginative brain that was ready to get back into the world of vampyres and Victorian dresses. In an overhead speaker, she addressed the room. “Both trials are going to proceed today. We will be calling 40 people to each room. If your name is read off, please take the elevator to your floor. Remember, we only have criminal cases in this courthouse, so if you are selected, you will be asked to listen to a criminal trial.”

A criminal trial? My mind began to race. I was a lover of murder mysteries and thrillers, but I never wanted to play a part in them. Would I be called to sit in the same room as a murderer?

I could see it now. The vampyre-ish woman with the long black matted hair would be sitting with the defense, on trial for the attempted murder of Mr. Mason. When I would stand up to announce that we, the jury, had in fact come to a verdict of guilty, she would penetrate my soul with her hateful stare and I would be next on her list of victims.

What was I thinking? There were a couple hundred people in the room, and they would be calling only 80. What were the chances that I would be selected?

I was the seventh name called.

I navigated my way through the maze of the courthouse up to the fourth floor, where the trial would be held. I clutched Jane Eyre tightly and sat on a bench, my leg shaking once more. I looked around to see that I was the youngest person in the room. Maybe that was a good thing. After all, lawyers never picked college students.

The second youngest person was a girl, probably 25 years old, dressed in name-brand business casual clothes. She looked like she was ready to conquer the world with her salon hair and her confident smile. One of the oldest people in the room was the nice older lady I had seen

earlier. Two co-workers bumped into each other and began chatting up a storm. Karen and Lisa couldn’t stop talking about what a coincidence it was that they had both been called to the same case. Then the man with the wet cough came over and stood only a few people away, hacking into his arm. I silently prayed he would stay more than 6 feet away from me for the remainder of the day. Oral surgery with a wet cough sounded like a nightmare. I would be getting my wisdom teeth out on Friday. It was going to work out because it had to.

One by one, we were given a number and filed into the room. I was number 37, one of the last in the row. I quickly discovered that that meant I would get to answer the questions each juror was asked last. At least it gave me time to plan out my sentence so it wouldn’t come out as a stuttering mess.

The judge greeted us all with a warm smile and friendly introduction. He was hoping we would be all sorted out by lunch at 12 noon. If so, everyone could go home except for the 12 jurors and two alternates they’d select. One by one, we were called to stand and introduce ourselves. We had to say our first name, last name, and our line of work. I watched as different people stood up and announced their cool career paths. Border patrol. Pharmaceutical scientist. The 25-year-old girl was a newly instated lawyer, fresh out of law school. When it was time for number 37 to stand, I felt my face get hot as I announced that I was a university student and a musician. Someone in front of me huffed a laugh. I couldn’t tell if the tone of his amusement was negative or positive. I would probably be thinking about that for the next 20 minutes. The next step in the process was for the prosecution and defense lawyers to take turns talking about the case. It was not in fact a murder trial but driving under the influence. No one had been injured in the case, and it was not clear if the influence was alcohol, medication, or a mental illness. The lawyers did a great job at describing it extremely vaguely and ominously. “I’d like to take this moment to go around the room and ask if anyone has any personal experience with DUIs that would prevent them from giving a fair deliberation on this case,” the judge explained.

One by one, different people raised their hands to tell their stories. Honestly, they were scary and heartbreaking. Someone’s friend had wrapped her car around a tree. Another person’s dad had died in an accident with a drunk driver. My heart broke with each sad story that was told, and I also started feeling guilty when I realized that I was one of the only people that didn’t have a conflict. This meant I would be a better suited candidate for the jury.

It was nearing time for the lunch break, and the judge and lawyers were ready to move on when a man eagerly raised his hand at the last minute. His name was Jeff Jenkins, a retired army man in his late 50s.

“I have a conflict, your honor.”

The lawyers wore worried looks on their faces. This was probably because during the introduction question, he had found a way to talk for 10 minutes. Still, the judge told him to proceed.

“It was the summer of 2013. In the heat of June, me and my buddies decided to go to one of our favorite bars downtown after work on the base in Coronado. We were two blocks away from the bar, and my buddy Greg was driving. This is important. I was not driving. Greg was driving. I had a better view in the passenger seat because I was sitting to his right and he was sitting on the left. Because I was sitting to his right, I could see the approaching car on the right better. I told him to wait at the red stoplight. The stoplight was red. I told him to wait but he wanted to turn right. You see, if I had been the one sitting in the driver’s seat driving the car, I would have waited. That’s what I would have done but Greg was driving. When he turned right, a car came barreling through. Now, they were driving 55 mph in a 30 mph zone. 55 in the 30 zone. Can you believe that? 25 over the speed limit. They were driving 25 over the speed limit! I am against driving over the speed limit. I am a law abiding citizen and would never drive over the speed limit. I would never drive 55 mph in a 30 mph zone. I also would not have turned right. I told Greg not to turn right but he wouldn’t listen. They hit us and knocked us into another car. Their car flipped. When the police came, they told us we were at fault. Can you believe that? They told us we were at fault. But I knew it wasn’t our fault. Yes, Greg should have waited, but if I was driving I would have waited. And that car was driving 55 mph in a 30 mph zone. And, when the cop pulled us over, I could smell that those guys had alcohol on them. I could just smell it. I knew they were drunk. They were coming from a bar and they had alcohol on them. That’s why they were driving 55 mph in a 30 mph zone. But the police did nothing. They said we were at fault! Now, that’s just irresponsible. I can’t let something like that go so I don’t think I could give a fair deliberation on this case, your honor. That’s just something I don’t think I’m capable of doing. I just think that—”

“Thank you for expressing your concerns, Mr. Jenkins,” The defense lawyer stepped in. The judge smiled and took that as his cue to continue.

“Looks like we’re out of time. Let’s break for lunch and then we’ll reconvene at 1:30 pm to continue the questions.

My heart sank. I would not be going home at 12 noon.

In my hour and a half break, I blasted Taylor Swift in my car and drove to the little taco place down the street. At least there was a bright side to it all: corn tortillas and guacamole. Jane Eyre would have to wait because I was not going to leave greasy fingerprints all over Charlotte Brontë’s masterpiece.

When we reconvened at 1:30 pm, we finished with the questions about personal experiences with DUIs. The next question was about general conflicts that people might have in relation to the case. The first example given was having connections to some sort of law enforcement or judicial worker. We would go around the room, one by one, and each contender would have to list any friends or family they knew.

Maybe my greatest secret would aid in my escape.

Something I learned from my time at the courthouse that day was that people would say anything to get out of jury duty. It was kind of hilarious.

“My neighbor’s second cousin studied criminology.”

“My old co-worker’s wife was a cop.”

The best one was a man in his mid 30s. He looked like the type to game at his mom’s house for 13 hours straight with a family-sized bag of Doritos and empty Monster energy cans piled by his PC.

Proudly, he stood up and faced his audience with a confident smile on his face. “I’m sorry, your honor, but I think I would be biased in this case because I love the police.”

“I’m sorry, Mr…?”

“Mr. Elliot.”

“Mr. Elliot, could you please expand on that?” The judge asked, patiently. Mr. Elliot held his head high, ready to present the evidence.

“You see, I am against breaking the law.”

“Yes…Mr. Elliot, I think we are all against breaking the law here,”

The judge kindly suggested. There were a few quiet laughs scattered throughout the room. Mr. Elliot’s demeanor didn’t change. “Do you have any relations to police officers? A family member?” “No.”

“A friend?”

“No.”

“A neighbor?”

“No.”

“A co-worker?”

“No. I just love and respect the police so much that if an officer was called to speak on the case, I would be biased to believe him, no matter what he said, and I don’t think that’s fair.” “Well, would you be able to try to listen with an open-mind?”

“I don’t think that’s possible.”

The judge sighed tiredly.

“Alright. Thank you, Mr. Elliot.”

The judge continued down the line and when he reached my row, my heart was pounding in my chest and my palms were clammy. Soon, my secret would be revealed. All eyes would be on me and there would be no place to hide as I confessed my guilt to the courtroom. “Number 37.”

I put down the Jane Eyre novel I had been tightly clutching and stood up with shaky hands. It was time to share the evidence I had withheld for the remainder of the case. This would either be my saving grace or sentence me to jury duty for the last week of summer.

“Do you have any connections to some sort of law enforcement or judicial worker?” The judge asked me patiently. The defense and the prosecution sized me up, trying to figure me out. The other 39 potential jurors eyed me as well, the quietest person in the courtroom.

“My grandpa was a lawyer, my uncle was a lawyer, my other uncle is a lawyer, and my dad is a lawyer.”

Everyone in the courtroom simultaneously burst out into laughter, including the prosecution, defense, and the judge himself.

“That is quite the family,” the judge remarked.

I sat down with a nervous smile and a red hot face. Everyone around me whispered and chuckled. Had I sealed my fate or would I be released?

Finally, it was time to choose the 12 jurors and the two alternates. The lawyers had been discussing in the other room for a solid 10 minutes but returned, each handing their choices written down on a file for the judge to read aloud.

“I am going to go through the numbers in order, 1 through 40. If your number is called, you are free to go.”

I can’t say I was surprised when Jeff Jenkins and Mr. Elliot were told that they could leave, but a lot of other promising candidates departed as well. By the time we reached number 30, they still needed 5 people and there were only 10 of us left.

“Number 32, 33, 34, and 35 can go.”

My heart was in my throat. I had oral surgery on Friday. I had to go back to university in one week. I was sentenced to jury duty and there was no getting out of it. I gave up my “get out of jail free” card when I gambled on the fact that lawyers never chose college students. That’s what my dad had told me, and he was a lawyer. Now here I sat, my leg shaking, my palms sweaty, and my heart pounding in my skull.

“Number 37, you are free to go.”

My genealogy had been my saving grace. I was a free woman! The deliberation was unanimous and I was not guilty, even with my horrible planning and gambling on court system precedents.

I hid my excitement up until the double doors of the courtroom closed behind me. Then I threw my hands in the air and let out a nervous laugh I didn’t know I had been holding in. I was going to go home and celebrate with another cup of coffee and a couple chapters of Jane Eyre.

Unfortunately, the stairs didn’t go to the fourth floor, so I would have to take the elevator. I stepped inside with six other jurors who had

been let go. For the first two floors we passed, everyone was silent, but by the third, Mr. Elliot spoke up.

“No wonder you wanted to be a musician. There are enough lawyers in your family for a lifetime.”

By the Bay Kailean K

¿Dónde estás, mi México?

Nadia Sosa

It is a strange feeling to return to the place in which the blood that runs through your veins originated.

It is a strange feeling to have never existed in a country, but feel a sense of belonging when your toes sink into the cold sand on the cloudy beach you sit on.

Sitting next to your father, feeling like you finally know him as the two of you eat tacos prepared by the hands of your grandmother, you know where Mexico is.

Knowing there is no running water in the outhouse your grandfather built decades ago, you feel a sense of dread when you wake up needing to use the restroom. You exit the fortress of the bed surrounded by mesh curtains, protecting you from the mosquitos.

As your bare feet walk along the cold tile, you sneak through the small house in which your entire family lay sleeping, and wake your father.

The feeling of his calloused hand in yours, ensuring you don’t lose your way, makes the long walk to the outhouse, exposing you to the pesky mosquitoes, worth it.

The smell of fresh rain on Saturday mornings when your dad wakes you up to milk the cow that’s been alive as long as you have, comes back to you on a cold night in January.

As you walk back to the small room you share with what feels like strangers, grocery bags in hand, the smell of fresh rain hits you.

All alone on the sidewalk next to your building, you drop onto the damp ground with damp eyes.

Realizing you haven’t had the strong calloused hand of your father’s in yours since that night in your grandparent’s home, you think to yourself:

‘I’ve lost my way.’

Now the smell of fresh rain grows stronger.

As if matching your tears, the mist becomes heavy drops of cold rain.

You picture the home that sits on the tallest hill in the pueblo called Cerro De Ortega in the state of Colima, in your beautiful Mexico.

It has been years since you’ve belonged

It has been years since you were six.

It has been years since you had your toes in that sand. It has been years since you held your father’s hand.

It has been years since you’ve known your way.

“¿Dónde estás, mi México?

“¿Quien soy sin ti?”

“¿Qué hago sin ti?”

“¿Qué hago sin sentir tu arena en mis pies? Every beat of my heart calls.

***

“Where are you, my Mexico?

“Who am I without you?”

“What do I do without you?”

“What do I do without the feeling of your sand on my toes?”

Ground

Luke Miller

Flame of Love, the Presence of God

Samantha Esparza

Introduction

No matter where we are, what we’ve done, and how we feel, God will never abandon us or let us perish in negative feelings. When I think of the Flame of Love, I think of a candle that brings comfort in a very dark and long night. In the same way, the Presence of God is the candle that brings me comfort during difficult, challenging, and tense moments in my life. In the book titled, “The Flame of Love,” written by Clark H. Pinnock, he addresses the vital doctrine of the Holy Spirit placing emphasis on the Holy Spirit in creation, Christ, and salvation. The following commentary on chapters three and five of the text has a different focus in relation to the Holy Spirit and includes various subtopics that support the primary claim of the flame of love. chapter three centers on the Spirit and Christology, whereas chapter five delves into Spirit & Union. In the following pages, I will be dissecting the chapters according to their main ideas and key supporting details.

Spirit & Christology

To begin with, chapter three introduces us to the Holy Spirit and the part it plays alongside and within God the Son. Pinnock says that being “anointed by the Spirit” is essential to our understanding of Jesus and his work (49). He also poses the question of Logos Christology vs. Spirit Christology and how these two actually work together for us to understand the role of the Holy Spirit in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. Pinnock writes, “Jesus was ontologically Son of God from the moment of conception, but He became Christ by the power of the Spirit. We all in union with Christ by the power of the Spirit are enabled to participate in divine life. God, having united himself to humanity, invites us into unity with God” (Ibid). The author then proceeds to mention incarnation, its importance, and the relationship of the Son and the Spirit, “By sharing flesh and blood, he has become the inauguration of a new humanity. Our healing has been accomplished by God’s becoming human and restoring our brokenness from within his incarnate human life. All this is made efficacious by the Spirit because the power that raised Christ is now at work in us. It was by the Spirit that Jesus was conceived, anointed, empowered, commissioned, directed, and raised up. God sends both Son and Spirit. The Son is sent in the power of the Spirit, and the Spirit is poured out by the risen Lord. The missions are intertwined and equal; one is not major and the other minor” (50).

Diving in deeper, universal preparation is the Spirit preparing human hearts to know God because His presence is everywhere. The

Spirit plays a pivotal role in redemption, “Spirit is thus the source of creation and redemption, the Spirit is active also in steering the world toward the goal of union with God, the Spirit’s work in creation anticipates the work of redemption” (51). God worked for preparation in Israel, “God had to let them go in grief. Love lets children leave the Father’s house to seek fulfillment, where ironically, it cannot be found. Love is not forced on the beloved, who is allowed freedom to make [their] own choices, even if it means siding with the darkness” (52). This hurt God but, “[He] did not abandon the world but sent Son and Spirit to redeem it. God did not leave us to perish but reissued the invitation to participate in glory” (Ibid). Jesus and the Spirit depended on each other to fulfill the glory of God, “Spirit gave him wisdom to rebut Satan’s deceitful questions and strength to repudiate worldly power in favor of the path of suffering and love” (54). In addition, it states, “Spirit would empower him, he had to rely on the Spirit’s resources to overcome temptation, he depended on the Spirit for power to live his life and pursue his mission, Spirit would give him words to speak and help him pray, Spirit was the agent by which God raised Jesus up, Jesus surrendered himself in trust and conquered the power of evil by the Spirit” (53-55). The author mentions recovering spirit Christology and how it works together with Logos Christology to complement it, not to replace it. “Logos addresses the Person of Jesus while Spirit addresses his work. Spirit Christology draws us into the life of Jesus and helps us avoid abstract thinking” (56). We learn that Salvation by Recapitulation is the death and rise of Christ so that we too can die and rise with him, “The heart of it is that the Spirit facilitated the Christ event in order to save humanity by way of recapitulation. When Christ became incarnate and was made man, he recapitulated in himself and procured for us a ‘shortcut’ to salvation” ( 57-58). “Through obedience to the Father and dependence on the Spirit, the Son of God recapitulated humanity’s history,” and we were Saved by His Life, (60). “The Risen One is the vanguard and embodiment of the new order. Jesus says, “Because I live, you will also live” (61). We also receive Salvation by the Cross, “Jesus Christ as the true prodigal, who left the Father’s home not as a rebel but as an obedient Son. He identified with sinners in the far country, surrendered everything he had, and returned home by the way of the cross. It means that the cross must be seen as an intratrinitarian drama. The cross was the sign of the Father’s love for a world and created for the Son” (662-63).

The main question should be: Is God Satisfied? We know that God is gracious and not angry, “He is not humanity’s enemy; it was love that moved him to send his Son in the first place. Love provided the incarnation and the atonement, not wrath. Love for sinners, not anger brought Jesus into the world” (64). This leads us to a Theological Reconstruction where “God is the victor over sin and death. Christ’s death ex-

pressed obedience to the Father which, in representing us, frees us from sin and alienation. Life has appeared in the midst of death, and the Spirit is at work moving the groaning creation toward resurrection” (65-66).

Spirit & Union

Chapter five describes the union that we will ultimately form with God, where the “Spirit is leading us to union–to transforming, personal, intimate relationship with the triune God” (86). It mentions that salvation has many layers such as, “conversion, new birth, justification, and sanctification,” but the ultimate goal is “surely glorification and union with God” (Ibid). We are sinners but “thanks to the grace of Christ and the love of God, the spirit dwells in us and unites us to the corporate triune fellowship” and “[God is] working to bring lost humanity into loving union with himself in the fellowship of Father, Son, and Spirit” (Ibid). This isn’t just about being pardoned, but about being transformed and divinized. One day, “we will sit down at the table in the kingdom and occupy the place prepared for us” because “every individual is precious to God” (87). Pope John Paull II wrote, “Man is called to a fullness of life which far exceeds the dimensions of earthly existence because it consists in sharing the life of God” (Ibid.) In the divine nature, love will be everlasting, eternal, and never surpassed.

If we look closely at the details, the whole purpose of life is to form “a transforming friendship and union with God” (88). The ‘living flame of love’ is preparing souls for union with love because we are on a path to share in God’s life through death and resurrection. Atonement, translated as ‘reconciliation,’ speaks of unity between God and humanity, “union with God is the unimaginable fulfillment of creaturely life, and the Spirit is effecting it in us” (Ibid). It is important to note that union with God starts on earth and it is not reserved for the future, we are beginning to experience a union with God in this life (89). Justification and Theosis are moments of salvation, but not the central idea. “[Justification] points forward to transformation and union, we are justified by faith when we surrender to God’s saving righteousness, which assures us of final vindication” (90). God is righteous, accepts everyone by grace through faith, and wants to heal our broken relationships. “Being saved is falling in love with God.

Therefore, salvation is more than relief at not being condemned; it sweeps us into the love of God for participation in the divine nature” (Ibid). Salvation means union and conversion is awakening to love. “[God] wants us to come ourselves and awaken to love, to remember our destiny and return home with Jesus, the true prodigal” (91). We can only give God our love if we choose to give it to him. God is like a loving parent who doesn’t want control, “one can only be saved by grace, but grace saves no

one who does not respond. God gave human beings freedom, and He respects it. Grace is offered but must be accepted.” (Ibid). Just like the father respected the decision the prodigal son made of leaving and returning home, God’s love is meant to be gentle, persuasive, and respectful of our choices. Depravity and responsibility are up to us, “God is looking for receptive hearts as the fertile soil in which to plant his word” (93). God wants to hear a yes from us, we are capable of responding and we will be held accountable. Salvation is not forced on anyone and it is rather a gift to be received.

The Event of the Spirit is very important, as the “Spirit gives us creaturely vitality and resurrection newness, fires the affections, warms the heart and makes [the] face shine” (95). “The Risen Lord breathed on the apostles and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” Spirit does not promise feeling states of constant victory and exhilaration, but to be present with gifts when needed for mission” (96). The journey will not be easy, we will face challenges and sacrifice but we will receive what we need, when “we welcome Christ we receive his Spirit, we proclaim the presence of the kingdom in the power of the Spirit, the Spirit unites us and leads us to intimacy with God” (Ibid). Receiving and actualizing means that “grace is received at Spirit at baptism but not completely actualized in experience. Though the Spirit is truly present in every baptized person, the gift unfolds and enters our conscious awareness later, when it is rekindled” (97). We need God “to be empowered for mission, freed from fear, able to speak, full of praises. We need a breakthrough in the realm of the Spirit, an awakening to the presence and power of God. There may need to be a release of the Spirit, a flowering of grace in experience, an openness to the full range of the gifts” (98). It is completely normal to experience renewal (an actualization of our baptism, which issues a greater openness to the Spirit) so that we can have “a greater sense of [God’s] presence, an increase in power to bear witness, and a greater openness to and manifestation of gifts” (Ibid). The significance of Glossolalia is “a means God uses to challenge strategies of control. It is a way of responding to the inexpressibility of God, a way of crying to God from the depths and expressing too-deep-for-words sightings of the heart” (100). Speaking in tongues is normal, even though it is not seen as the normative, “We surrender to God when we pray in tongues and give control even of our speech over to him. Those who speak in a tongue do not speak to other people but to God; for nobody understands them since they are speaking mysteries in the Spirit” (Ibid). We go from image to likeness, “Genesis says that humanity was created in the image and likeness of God (1:26-27). Created in the image of God, we are destined to be changed into the likeness of Christ, sharing glory in the new creation” (101). Image is a ‘created given or inherent’ and likeness is a ‘potential future to be acquired.’ “Likeness

is to be realized only in the future in communion with God when our relationship with God and our fellows is complete. Gazing at the glory of the Lord, we are changed into his likeness little by little” (Ibid). “Growing in likeness to Christ, like walking in the Spirit, is a dynamic process. The path to likeness is a long, gradual journey” (102). When we are growing into Christlikeness, “we say yes to God,” we are “baptized into Christ,” “rooted and grounded in love,” and we “die and rise with him.” We can either be like God or “refuse abundant life in this age and in the age to come and forfeit the goal for which we were made” (Ibid).

The direction of conformity to Christ is not spelled out in laws and detailed commandments but indicated in “the mind of Christ.” We must love God above all things and love our neighbors just as we love ourselves, “We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us–and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. When we are converted, we are pointed in the direction of union with God and likeness with Christ through participation in his vicarious humanity by faith. We enter into covenantal partnership with God and, secure his acceptance” (103). We become not just like the Son, but more like the Father, “compassionate like he is, love as he loves, give as he gives without expecting anything in return, welcome sinners as he welcomes them, to love enemies” (Ibid). The spiritual journey is not just sweetness and light, “it is bittersweet because we share in the cross and resurrection” (105). It is normal to experience “times when we cast upon [God] and cry out to him in anguish” (Ibid). Even the Son cried out at the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Ibid). “Those who identify with Jesus must expect to taste both the experience of presence and the experience of Godforsakenness,” we need to adopt the idea that God is our rock and fortress and not just someone there to pamper us whenever we please, all of this is essential for our maturing. God leads us From corruption to incorruption, “when the dead are raised incorruptible and life is renewed in totality” (106). The ultimate goal is “union, communion, and participation” in the relationship of triune love. “Death is the moment of our return to God. Death is not defeat, then, but the final yes and the moment of fulfillment,” therefore, we should not fear death.

Author’s Reflection

Something compelling from the text is the idea that “because humans are made in God’s image, we encounter God in other people, we love God when we love them and honor God when we honor them” (70). To me, this means that if you are a person who spreads, shares, and radiates a positive energy of love with everyone, you are constantly showing God your love and appreciation for him. However, if you are a negative person who hates others and radiates negativity to those around you,

you are not honoring God because God died for us and he did it willingly without complaining and simply because He loves us.

Works Cited

Pinnock, Clark H. “Flame of Love: A Theology of the Holy Spirit.” Chapters 3, 4,5.

Systematic Theology, InterVarsity Press, 25 Sep. 2009.

Dafne Calderon

My Human Mikyla Bultsma

Each of us is assigned one human. Most humans own several gadgets, but they each have a specific purpose, function, a way in which they are meant to aid their human.

I am one of the best pieces that my species has to offer. I have the capabilities of a normal computer with the accessibility of a tablet (but with more digital space), and a screen that can double as a personal TV; the only thing I haven’t perfected is my camera, but the function of a camera is almost obsolete when I have so much more to offer.

While I am multifunctional and can adapt to the service of any user, my kind is particularly favored by humans in business, architects, graphic designers, musical producers, and—my personal favorite—humans in education.

I met Emma in the summer season of the year 2020. I was fresh out of manufacturing when she brought me home and powered me up for the first time.

Now, I would like to make one thing clear: Emma is a bit of an anomaly human.

Before we are commissioned, every device is prepped with the oddities of the human species, but it does not fully prepare for coming face to screen with one.

For example, the hair colors of humans—by breed and by habit—are black, brown, blond, red, and gray or white (for the older ones). My human had PURPLE hair!! How atypical is that!? It wasn’t until a few weeks later that she changed it back to what seemed to be her normal blonde. Then back to purple. Then back to blonde. Then…it started growing brown at the top. And, thankfully, it has remained brown.

The questionably unsustainable habits aside, my programming is to help Emma conquer college.

I didn’t witness the end of her senior year of high school but, from what I’ve heard over the years, it was a turbulent time and I didn’t need her teardrops on my keyboard. It didn’t matter anyway, high school was behind her, college was ahead, and I was with her.

My purpose was to make her time in college easier. I was going to make it simple, straightforward, and…manageable. And that’s how it was in the beginning.

Santiago Canyon College: a reputable community college that offers a general college education for little to no money. Logistically, an economic place to start. Realistically, a completely solitary experience for Emma in the face of COVID-19 quarantine. It was just me and her for those three semesters.

Subjectively, I love the use of technology in education and being able to see how it can enrich the educational process for students and teachers. It serves to extend the benefits of technology and the internet in order to increase convenience and improve the ease of human operation. Every aspect of schooling was converted to online platforms; course communication, assignment facilitation, and class attendance. Every class took place over Zoom. I am quite familiar with Zoom and all of the programming that goes into it. Overall, it’s a likable function of technology. Online courses and Zoom meetings stood as a holistic representation of what technology is capable of in education contexts while exemplifying increased connectivity amongst humans. Technological devices, like myself, partner with internet applications in order to accomplish our purpose in aiding our humans. Or at least that is my assessment. I was charged for this update of education, but that period of time displayed itself to be a bit of a grey area. My human seemed to have a different attitude toward it.

Week 1: Logged in to all 8 meetings 10 minutes early – 100% camera usage in all 4 classes – sitting up straight in her seat, bright eyes on the screen, taking notes in a notebook.

Week 3: Logged in to all 8 meetings 5 minutes early – 100% camera usage in 2 classes, 80% in the remaining 2 – sitting up straight in her seat; eyes on the screen; taking notes in a notebook.

Week 5: Logged in to all 8 meetings 5 minutes early – 90% camera usage in 2 classes, 70% in the remaining 2 – relaxed posture; dull eyes gazing at the screen; taking notes attentively in 2 classes and sparingly in the rest.

Week 8: Logged in to 4 meetings early and 4 meetings on time – 80% camera usage in 2 classes, 60% in the remaining 2 – relaxed posture; eyes wandering between the screen and the surroundings; note-taking the same.

Week 12: Logged in to 4 meetings on time and 4 meetings late – 70% camera usage in 2 classes, 40% in the remaining 2 – lazed posture; wandering eyes; minimal note taking.

Week 14: Logged in to all 8 meetings 1-5 minutes late – 60% camera usage in 2 classes, 0% in the remaining 2 – hunched shoulders; hair tangled and sticking out of a bun at odd ends; dark spots under her eyes; minimal note taking; a black box with “Emma Anderson” across it in white text.

Upon analyzing the data presented throughout numerous hours together, I began to compute that there are many aspects of human behavior and productivity that can be predicted and others that are incomprehensible in physical display and time of appearance.

The most puzzling part, for me, was attempting to understand the human in front of my screen. Emma’s time and interests were spent across several different activities throughout that first year. First, there was the binging. Netflix, Disney+, Peacock, HBO Max, Hulu…The options never seemed to end, and her selections were as unpredictable as the days were long. One week was spent binging all five seasons of Peaky Blinders. The next would be filled solely with Gilmore Girls episodes. All of this with the occasional movie thrown in. One night, we even watched The Choice as Emma was cocooned in blankets with a bowl of popcorn and chocolates scattered across her bed, clutching a tissue box in her lap while tears streamed down her face.

Then there were the miscellaneous art projects. Acrylic paint bottles scattered across the carpet floor of her living room, canvases of all shapes and sizes laid out for inspection, even a couple of old records made it into the mix, and Emma sitting cross-legged on the floor with hunched shoulders as her eyes scoured my screen for Pinterest ideas.

Finally, there was the reading. Her reading habits changed with the school calendar but most summer days included some amount of reading. I can’t attest to what she looked like every time she read. I was usually powered down when she didn’t need me, but there were select rare occasions when I was left open on her desk and got a glimpse of Emma with just a book and a cushioned couch. Her posture was horrible; her neck craned toward the book, shoulders hunched with neglect, and her legs always sat in an odd arrangement. I never once witnessed her sit with both feet down the front and her back against the couch.

As if her seating position wasn’t curious enough, the most quizzical of times was watching Emma making dinner. I would have a new recipe pulled up and displayed for her convenience while she selected music for me to play. I thought the purpose of this time was solely for Emma to make dinner for her family, but my human couldn’t just follow the directions and cook the meal. No…much to my confusion, she would get…distracted and would start…moving her body. The movements ranged from what looked to be stinted jerking to an attempted fluidity, starting with the moving of her feet and spreading up through her legs, hips, and arms. I searched for references in order to classify the behavior…It was supposed to be “dancing”…but it was far from the videos I found on the internet. The music would have its own effect on Emma. It seemed to change the kitchen atmosphere as lyrical words and malleable melodies flowed from my speakers and floated into the air around her. Emma would spend

time swaying and spinning across the floor, coloring the space with her –excitement, sadness, sorrow, love, contentment – human emotions.

I had to search my databases using the symptoms of each emotion to know what was going on with her. Over time, I started making a reference page for Emma’s emotional reactions and causes. Like any other human disease, emotions can be tracked, monitored, and even quantified when given enough time to study a single subject. And if there was anything I had, it was time to monitor and study my human.

That first year passed by faster than a software update.

That third and final semester at SCC marked the real start of college. There was the usual schedule of four 16-week classes. The first couple of weeks went on as normal; syllabus introductions, course schedules, habitual assignments. The bump in the road came when Emma filled out her graduation application. I watched as she filled out the form. The calm control across her face, then…a flicker, her eyebrows shot up to her hairline as her mouth dropped open, as if on its own accord. Several emotions flashed through her eyes, too quickly for me to record and analyze. Finally, her face settled into a stern set as her jaw clenched and eyes focused on the screen. The list of required courses was one entry short.

By the end of the week, Emma’s semester schedule was updated with one more class: an 8-week course that was set to take place over the second half of the semester. Making the final tally: 18 units. Everything continued at its usual pace until those final 8 weeks. A never-ending list of assignments and numerous nights spent hunched over my keyboard while the rest of the world had long since gone to sleep. Emma began branching out, leaving the house in some attempt at productivity. It worked too, she would sit with her iced caffeine and type away at assignments for hours. Until the cup ran empty and it was time for us to return to the house. The danger wasn’t the coffee, the real red flag was the energy drinks. The second I saw a Red Bull come into view of my camera, I knew it was going to be a long night for the both of us.

Those eight weeks marched on in misery until the last word of the final essay was submitted. There were days of calm focus and nights when Emma typed with such ferocity or frustration that I worried my keys would break. After multiple final exams and several papers, she logged out of Santiago Canyon Canvas for the last time.

I remember the day Emma wrote her Statement of Faith and submitted her application to Vanguard University; she sat at her dining room table one November evening when she clicked ‘Submit.’ The acceptance letter came several weeks later. I did not get to watch Emma open it, but I was with her as she registered for her Spring semester courses at Vanguard.

With the new school came a seemingly new Emma. I have no

reference for what she was like before quarantine and online schooling, but she seemed more…eager. My human finally made it outside of the house on a regular basis. Her surrounding locations began to change with some frequency. Emma went to physical classrooms for the first time since I had known her. I came to find out that my human had quite the coffee addiction too. She went to a new coffee shop at least once a week; sitting at round tables, high tables, and countertops alike, even the occasional couch; writing in front of blank walls, painted walls, or outdoor scenery; in Santa Ana, Orange, Tustin, Costa Mesa, and more. A near-endless parade of mochas, matchas, lattes, cold brews, and various barista concoctions. The drinks weren’t always the same but, unless it was below 60°, they were always iced.

But that wasn’t all that was different, she was a more eager student too. With the in-person classes came a more active learner. Emma paid attention in all of her classes again, even the few Zoom courses, with a new spark in her eyes. It was like her eyes had a haze to them that I didn’t notice until it was wiped away.

The last three semesters at Vanguard have had their own bouts of desperation, frustration, and distress, but that spark in her eyes has never died. I have watched it grow amidst the reading of endless novels and various anthologies, with the writing of imperfect papers and formative creative narratives, and every piece of constructive criticism that has come along the way. I have heard Emma threaten to “drop out” of college numerous times, but her eyes never lie and the focus in them has never faltered.

In the Canopy

Luke Miller

Hamlet,

Princess

of

Denmark Amanda Fagan

Does the player play or is it madness?

Manic princess is a role. She failed to drown in the brook of sadness. The branch, a try at control.

Hater of Shakespeare and interventions. Why do you have no remorse?

To be or not to, that is the question. Not solved with goblets or swords.

Shoreside Olivia Shean

Jo Wuz Here

Rebekah Pulaski

A classroom. MR. FREDERICK and JOSEPH sit in silence. JOANNE enters.

MR FREDERICK: Welcome Miss Peterson. You are late.

JOANNE: Sue me.

MR. FREDERICK: Careful, the school very well may take you up on that offer considering what you’re here for. Please take a seat.

JOANNE: Ugh, I didn’t even do anything. God, this is so stupid.

MR. FREDERICK: Well, there are only two “Jo”s in this school.

JOANNE: Okay. So maybe he did it.

MR FREDERICK: Mhm. Maybe he did.

JOSEPH: What? Mr. Frederick, you don’t seriously believe that?

JOANNE: Chill, Earl. There’s no way you’re going down for this anyways.

JOSEPH: I told you not to call me that. It’s not funny anymore. Like, no one thinks it’s funny.

JOANNE: I think it’s funny. And it’s your own fault anyways for asking everyone to call you by your middle name when we were twelve.

JOSEPH: Well, excuse me for trying to be nice and letting you take my name.

JOANNE: I never asked you to be nice to me. And it’s my name too.

MR. FREDERICK: Alright, alright, that’s enough. I’m not here to listen to you two bicker. Miss Peterson, I’ve already explained to Mr. Phillips. You two are both to write an essay on why vandalism is wrong. Until one of you confesses, you both will attend detention after school every day. If no one ever comes forward, there may be more serious consequences.

JOSEPH: This is so not fair. She’s here every day anyways. She’ll never admit to it.

JOANNE: I didn’t do it, you freak. I would admit to it if I had, I’m not a wimp like you.

JOSEPH: I’m not a wimp! I just don’t want to get in trouble for something I didn’t do. This could go on my permanent record, you know?

JOANNE: Oh poor you. Worried you won’t get into Harvard now? Let me ease your mind. You weren’t going to get in anyway. This school is a joke.

MR. FREDERICK: Right, and I am sure you’re very familiar with jokes, Miss Peterson. Now please be quiet and focus. I really don’t want to be the bad guy here.

JOSEPH: Mr. Frederick. Come on. They might not let me do the speech at graduation. And I’m missing tennis practice for this.

MR. FREDERICK: I don’t know what to tell you, Jo. There’s not much I can do. I can’t just let you go. That spray-paint job was no joke. The school’s going to have to buy a whole new scoreboard because the paint damaged the lights. And one of you is going to have to pay for it.

JOANNE: What? They can’t do that. It’s not even that big a deal. That scoreboard was just a massive reminder of the football team’s losing streak anyway.

JOSEPH: They won last Friday.

JOANNE: What?

JOSEPH: I said they won last Friday. Of course you wouldn’t know. It was actually really cool.

JOANNE: Hm. Who did we beat?

JOSEPH: Trona.

JOANNE: Well Trona sucks too.

MR. FREDERICK: I haven’t seen either of you write anything about why vandalism is wrong. Principle Padilla said he wants to read them himself.

JOANNE: How nice of him.

MR. FREDERICK: What was that, Jo?

JOSEPH: She said, “how nice of him.”

JOANNE: Wow thanks, snitch.

MR. FREDERICK: Nice or not, these papers better be pretty good. I mean, come on guys. “Jo wuz here”? That’s a little ridiculous.

JOANNE: Don’t look at me. Little Mr. Perfect here was the one that signed his name the one time he broke a rule.

JOSEPH: I didn’t do it! I, of all people, would never do this. I mean, it’s pink spray paint too. I hate pink!

JOANNE: Ugh, of course you hate pink. You feel like a man now?

JOSEPH: Shut up Jo. You’ve never worn pink in your life. And I should know. You’ve been bothering me since we were like two.

JOANNE: I have not been bothering you! It’s not my fault that we happened to be neighbors and you had no one to watch you half the time while we were growing up. The whole world doesn’t revolve around you, ya know?

JOSEPH: I know that. Jesus, do you know that?

MR. FREDERICK: Okay! That’s enough please. No more swearing.

JOSEPH: Sorry, Mr. Frederick.

JOANNE (mocking): Sorry, Mr. Frederick.

MR. FREDERICK: Huh. I decided to teach high school English so I wouldn’t have to deal with children. I’ve never felt more like a babysitter in my life.

JOANNE: Oh, you don’t have what it takes to be a babysitter. Trust me.

JOSEPH: Yeah, I’m sure it’s so hard wiping butts for a few hours.

JOANNE: It is. Just ask your mom, she still wipes yours, right?

MR. FREDERICK: This is ridiculous. Do I have to separate the two of you?

Joanne, move over there, go sit in that corner. Joseph, come over here to this corner. I can’t take this anymore.

JOSEPH: Yes, sir.

JOANNE: Ugh. Fine.

MR. FREDERICK: Now the paper only has to be one page this time. But if no one comes forward by tomorrow, you’ll have to add another page. And then another the next day. And so on…Um, yes Mr. Phillips?

JOSEPH: If I can’t be here tomorrow, should I just write two now?

MR. FREDERICK: If you aren’t here tomorrow, Mr. Philips, you may not walk for graduation in a few months. Nor will you be able to attend any school events.

JOSEPH: What? But I have a tennis match tomorrow.

MR. FREDERICK: Well, that’s something you’ll have to talk to Principal Padilla about. He gave me strict instructions. The two of you will be here every day until someone confesses.

JOSEPH: Are you happy now? Why don’t you just admit you did it?

JOANNE: I didn’t do it! God, it’s just a stupid game. Why is it such a big deal?

JOSEPH: I’m captain. And I play doubles, so Tyler Schakowsky is going to have to forfeit his match.

JOANNE: I know you’re captain, you freak. This school is like a hundred people. Everyone knows you’re captain.

MR. FREDERICK: Miss Peterson, some things may matter a lot to other people even if they don’t make sense to you.

JOSEPH: Yes, thank you Mr. Frederick.

JOANNE: I know you think I did it too. I really didn’t do it Mr. Frederick. I would fess up to it if I did.

MR. FREDERICK: It’s not me you need to convince, Miss Peterson.

JOSEPH: Aw, come on Mr. Frederick, you don’t believe her, right?

MR. FREDERICK: It doesn’t matter if I believe her or not, Mr. Phillips. I am only here to make sure the two of you write this paper, which neither of you have done.

JOSEPH: Well, it’s not my fault she’s distracting me.

JOANNE: I’m not doing anything, you’re the one who just accused me!

MR. FREDERICK: Wow, there was not enough coffee in this cup. Listen. I am going to go to the teacher’s lounge real fast. If the two of you don’t have at least one paragraph written when I get back, then I’ll…I’ll call your parents, got it?

JOSEPH: Yes, sir.

JOANNE: Fine.

MR. FREDERICK exits.

JOANNE: Pshhh, good luck to him getting a hold of my mom. God knows where the hell she is.

JOSEPH: I literally do not care at all. Please shut up so I can write this paragraph.

JOANNE: Jesus okay, I was just making conversation.

JOSEPH: We’re not supposed to be making conversation. Plus, I kind of hate you.

JOANNE: Well, I kind of hate you too so I don’t care.

JOSEPH: Okay. I don’t care.

JOANNE: I don’t either.

JOSEPH: Fine.

JOANNE: Fine.

JOSEPH: …I thought your mom was like super cool though. When she used to babysit me.

JOANNE: Yeah, she is super cool. That’s kind of her entire thing though.

JOSEPH: What do you mean?

JOANNE: My mom has been a babysitter her whole life. That’s not really a mom job. It’s like she still wants to be a teenager or something. It’s annoying. She needs to grow up.

JOSEPH: Oh. She doesn’t have another job? How does she like…pay for things?

JOANNE: She doesn’t. Credit cards. That’s why I babysit now too.

JOSEPH: I didn’t know that.

JOANNE: Well, now you do. I would never be able to afford paying for a new sign…Your dad would probably kill you if he got a call huh?

JOSEPH: Yeah. Basically. If he doesn’t kill me just for being here.

JOANNE: That sucks.

JOSEPH: Yeah, it does…Listen, I get that you wouldn’t be able to pay for the sign. But that doesn’t mean that it would be better for my dad to hate me for something I didn’t do. I can’t just take the fall for you.

JOANNE: That is not what I’m trying to do! I was being honest before. I didn’t do it.

JOSEPH: Jo, I know that you’re like, trying to be cool now and break rules and stuff. But it’s not fair that I have to get in trouble just because you made a mistake and we have the same name.

JOANNE: I’m not “trying to be cool.” I just got tired of trying to be a good person all the time.

JOSEPH: So you did do it?

JOANNE: No, I didn’t do it! Yeah, I might get mad and yell at people sometimes. But I’d have to be dumb as hell to spray paint my own name on the scoreboard!

JOSEPH: Okay, fine fine, Joanne. But if you didn’t spray paint it, then who the hell did?

JOANNE: Man, you’re really taking this pretty far huh?

JOSEPH: What are you talking about?

JOANNE: It’s okay, dude. I’ve heard of those kids who get all wound up trying to be perfect. Self-sabotage was kind of inevitable for you.

JOSEPH: I didn’t do it either! Like you said, I’m not stupid, I wouldn’t

paint my own name on the scoreboard. I like this school and care about my future.

JOANNE: Hey, I care about my future. Just because I don’t want to go to college like you doesn’t mean I don’t care.

JOSEPH: Well, if you aren’t going to college then why does it matter? Just like, admit to it and it won’t ruin anything for you.

JOANNE: That’s not the point. I don’t want to take the blame for something I didn’t do. Plus, people already don’t like me very much at this school. The football team would probably kill me!

JOSEPH: Then why’d you do it?

JOANNE: I didn’t do it!

JOSEPH: Fine! Ugh, I still haven’t written anything and Mr. Frederick is going to be here in probably like one second.

JOANNE: Screw Mr. Frederick. And screw this stupid paper, I’m not doing it.

JOSEPH: What?

JOANNE: I’m not going to be punished for something I didn’t do. That’s stupid. It’s the stupidest thing ever.

JOSEPH: …It is pretty stupid I guess. But I can’t let my dad get that call.

JOANNE: Yeah you can. Come on, I’m sure he’ll get over it.

JOSEPH: No. He won’t. He never got over that one time when I ruined my solo in choir.

JOANNE: HA! God, that was funny.

JOSEPH: It wasn’t funny to me! My dad made me quit because I was so bad.

JOANNE: Really? Ah dude, I didn’t know that.

JOSEPH: Yeah it was a whole thing…Do other people think I’m tightly wound?

JOANNE: …I don’t know. No, I guess I haven’t heard anyone else say that…Other people don’t really talk to me all that much, ya know?

JOSEPH: Yeah. God, I swear I didn’t paint that sign.

JOANNE: I swear I didn’t either. I swear to God.

JOSEPH: Got anyone that hates you? Maybe they’re trying to frame you or something?

JOANNE: I don’t think people think about me enough to hate me. Do you got anyone that hates you?

JOSEPH: Nah, I don’t think so. I guess the only person that I thought hated me was you.

JOANNE: Me? Why would I hate you?

JOSEPH: I don’t know. When we were kids I would go to your house all the time…but I didn’t want to talk to you at school. I don’t know why I did that.

JOANNE: Oh…I guess it did hurt my feelings a little. But I didn’t hate

you…I didn’t really want to be friends with a boy anyways. Boys have cooties.

JOSEPH covers up a laugh.

JOSEPH: So you don’t think anyone framed us?

JOANNE: Us? N-no I don’t think so.

JOSEPH: Then who the hell painted “Jo wuz here” on the damn scoreboard?

JOANNE: HA! Hell if I know!

JOSEPH: Wait. You really didn’t do it?

JOANNE: No! You didn’t do it?

JOSEPH: No!

JOANNE: Neither of us painted “Jo wuz here” on the scoreboard?

JOSEPH: Oh my God! Jo was never there!

JOANNE: Wait. What are we going to do now? Principal Padilla thinks it was us. I can’t pay for that sign, Jo.

JOSEPH: I know…But I can’t take the fall either. My dad. My whole life would be ruined.

JOANNE: This is SO stupid! Neither of us should get in trouble.

JOSEPH: Yeah…but Mr. Frederick is going to be here soon. And we have nothing.

JOANNE: Wait! I got it. Let’s write the paragraph together! We’ll explain everything.

JOANNE moves closer to JOSEPH with her paper and pen.

JOSEPH: That’s not going to work. Mr. Frederick said we write one page each by the end of the hour.

JOANNE: Dude, can’t you just trust me for once?

JOSEPH: Okay, okay. Give me a break. Until like a second ago, I thought you were my worst enemy.

JOANNE: Psh, so dramatic. Now shut up. I have to write this paragraph.

JOSEPH and JOANNE are silent for a short amount of time.

JOSEPH: Wait, what are you writing?

JOANNE: Shhhh.

JOSEPH: I just wanna—

JOANNE: SHHHH.

JOSEPH: FINE.

JOANNE: There. Done. You can read it now.

JOSEPH takes the paper and reads it silently.

JOSEPH: Hm. Hmmm. Hm.

JOANNE: What do you think?

JOSEPH: Jo. It’s—

MR. FREDERICK enters before JOSEPH can finish.

MR. FREDERICK: So—

JOANNE: Wait, Mr. Frederick. Before you say anything, we want you to

read what we wrote.

MR. FREDERICK: That’s not my job, that is Mr. Padilla’s job. But let me just—

JOSEPH: No, please Mr. Frederick. Just read it.

MR. FREDERICK takes the paper from JOSEPH.

MR. FREDERICK: Why Vandalism is Wrong, by Jo Peterson and Jo Phillips. Vandalism is wrong. It is as wrong as stealing, cheating, lying, and even killing. However, it is especially wrong when it has someone’s name on it. I understand the reason for it, to be frank. We have all wanted to scream at times. To scream that we are here. In a sick attempt to be noticed. To be seen. To be heard. To leave some sort of mark and let the world know that we have existed. But nevertheless, vandalism is wrong. It was wrong to write “Joe wuz here” on the football team’s scoreboard because we, Jos, were not there. The vandalizer was wrong. They have lied because we weren’t there. They have stolen because they took away our time. They have cheated because they have let someone take the fall for their actions. And they might have even killed—if Joseph’s dad gets a hold of him. Vandalism is wrong, because it had made two people into enemies. Even if we weren’t friends before, it wasn’t fair. We, Joanne Peterson and Joseph Phillips, are innocent. And we will not be fessing to a crime we did not commit. Sue us.

JOSEPH grabs JOANNE’s hand as they wait for MR. FREDERICK to put down his reading glasses.

MR. FREDERICK: How touching. But what I was trying to say before was that Principle Padilla called me while I was at the teacher’s lounge. Apparently Trona High School has been having trouble with graffiti. And all of it’s been pink spray paint. So, you two are free to go.

JOSEPH: Wait. What?

JOANNE: Ha! I told you Trona sucked!

JOSEPH: So we don’t have to come to detention tomorrow?

MR. FREDERICK: No, Jo. Good luck with your tennis match.

JOANNE: Congrats, Earl. You can go back to being Little Mr. Perfect.

JOSEPH: Yeah yeah, whatever, Jo. Want a ride home?

Lunch Time

Luke Miller

Heart Transplant

Ellie Branch

I wake up each morning and try to be different. Maybe I’ll chop off all my hair today, bleach it until it’s blonde. Maybe I’ll buy an entirely new wardrobe, start dressing in all black. Maybe I’ll rearrange my room, put new sheets on my bed. Maybe I’ll spend everything in my bank account, buy coffee till I’m dead. These things, they help for a time, but at the end of the day, it is the absence that kills. It’s the things that claw at you that you notice. Forget the bleached hair, the black clothes, the new sheets, the coffee cups. They don’t fill enough space for the missing to go unnoticed. There is an empty corner in the room where my old best friend should be sitting, a silence in the air that should be filled with her laughter. There is a bare space next to me on the bed where my first love should lie, an unheld hand attached to my body that should be intertwined with his. At the end of the day, I’m still me, dark hair or light, black clothes or white, new sheets or old, hot coffee or cold. It is my heart that needs mending, my soul that needs healing. I may look different each day but I’m exactly the same. Some things never change and I am one of them.

Seth Hammaker, Perris, CA

Annabelle Graciella Reyes

“Oh no no no no no….”

Miles from Granville Riley Orr

The sound of my friend Danny’s voice tugged me out of my deep sleep. I groaned as I opened my eyes to the rolling grass fields steadily speeding by, drenched in the afternoon sunlight. My forehead had been pressed against the car window as I slept, no doubt leaving a red mark on my skin where it rubbed.

I groaned. “What’s wrong?”

Beside me, my friend Lyla patted my shoulder. She was like the mom of the group, even though she was only a year older than me. Her gentle touch relaxed me, but only slightly. I sat up and rubbed my eyes.

“Danny, what’s wrong?”

From the front seat, Danny just kept muttering to himself. He took out his phone and began typing something.

“Don’t text and drive,” warned another of my friends, Alexis. She sat cross-legged in the front seat, munching on a bag of Doritos. “You know how many people a year die that way? More than the entire town of Granville, probably.”

“I’m not texting,” Danny protested. “I’m trying to find the closest gas station.”

“We’re running low on gas?” I asked, rubbing my eyes.

“Oh, look who’s finally awake,” Alex said sarcastically, turning back to face me. “You missed it. The cops totally found us, but we got away.”

“Seriously?” I gasped.

“No, but it would’ve been cool, huh?” Alexis smirked. “I still can’t believe we ran away, and no one noticed. Not that my parents would care if they did notice.”

I flinched, glancing down at my phone. There were forty-nine missed calls from my mom. Before I’d decided to take my nap, there had been forty-three. I couldn’t believe she was still holding out hope that I’d pick up.

I shut off my phone before I could think about it for too long. I was probably the only one missing my family like this. Danny and Alexis always teased me about being the fourteen-year-old “baby” of the group. This just proved them right.

Ever since the four of us had formed our rock band, we’d always dreamed of going to Los Angeles and signing a record deal. I was the one who brought it up the most; recording was a dream I’d had since I was old enough to sing onstage. None of us had the first idea how to do something like that, but we figured at least one of us would be able to figure

something out. We’d become famous and travel the world together.

Even with my enthusiasm about the idea, the dream hadn’t been anything more than a few conversations here and there. That is, until Alexis joined the group. She’d always carried a reputation as the best drummer in town, so we were thrilled that she somehow wanted to be in our little band. Before that, my parents had always warned me to stay away from her, but personally, I saw nothing wrong with her. She was probably just misunderstood. After all, everyone knew her parents fought all the time, and that she often came to school looking beaten and bruised. It was one of the terrible drawbacks of living in Granville, Ohio. Everyone knew everybody’s business; whether you wanted them to or not.

It didn’t take a lot of convincing for us to set our plan in motion. All Alexis did was detail just how easy it would be for the four of us to pack up our things in the middle of the night and drive away.

“LA’s only a little more than a day’s drive from here,” she’d said during one of our band practices. “We’ll be hours away before they even realize we’re gone.”

When she put it like that, our dream actually sounded doable. Just like that, everyone agreed. Lyla had taken the most convincing, but she’d always been the more reserved type. She only caved after Danny and I had pleaded for her to come with us.

So now here we were. I closed my eyes, remembering the way I’d stuffed my clothes into my suitcase at around 3 o’clock in the morning, slung my guitar case over my shoulder, and left my home and my family without even saying goodbye. It made me almost nauseous to picture how they must feel now.

Best not to think about that.

“We have to stop and get gas right away,” Danny said, snapping me out of my musings. “If we run out, we’ll be stuck out here. The police could find us.”

“Why didn’t you think to stop for gas before the dashboard said we have one mile till empty?” Alexis demanded.

“I wasn’t paying attention! I’ve never driven twelve hours straight before! It makes me sleepy!” “Well, suck it up, because we still have twenty-two hours to go,” Alexis snapped. Danny groaned. “Kill me now.”

“Hey, Danny,” Lyla said in her soft tone, “why don’t you give me the phone, and I’ll get us directions to where we can refill? You can’t be the driver and the navigator.”

“Yeah, sure. Here.” Danny tossed his phone back where Lyla and I sat.

Lyla snatched it from the ground, tapped the screen a few times, then glanced up. “There’s a 7/11 gas station less than two miles from here.

Do you think we can make it?”

“We don’t have a choice.” Danny stamped on the gas even harder, which probably wasn’t going to help. He started muttering to himself. “Please make it. Please make it.”

Alexis rolled her eyes at him before turning to face me again. “You’ve been awfully quiet, Juliana. Having second thoughts?”

“No,” I said—maybe a little too quickly. My phone buzzed on my lap again, but I refused to look and see who it was. “I’m just tired. Like Danny said, I’ve never stayed up all night before.”

Alexis scoffed. “You’re all a bunch of homeschooled, small town wimps.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but the insult felt too accurate.

The four of us were quiet for the few minutes it took for us to exit the highway. There were barely any cars around as we pulled up to the front of the tired-looking gas station. Immediately, Danny jumped out of the car and pulled out his wallet.

“I only have cash,” he said. He pulled out three twenty-dollar bills. “Anyone want to go inside with me? If any of you girls have money, we can get some snacks.” Lyla grabbed her wallet. “We’ll each pick out something. Do you want anything, Danny?”

“Swedish Fish,” he said without hesitation. She laughed. “Okay! We’ll get you some.”

The quiet ding of the bell was the only thing that greeted the four of us as we stepped inside the store. It was much smaller than it looked from the outside. Only three short aisles stood in the center of the room, surrounded by the walls lined with refrigerators. The cash register was in the corner of the room, and an old TV was mounted on the wall just above it. A local news channel was on, but it didn’t look like anything interesting was happening.

“Wonder if we’ll be on the news,” Alexis said, pointing up at the TV. “Imagine… ‘Four teenagers disappear from the small town of Granville, Ohio. Police are baffled! Parents are frantic! Was it kidnap, or murder?’” She laughed menacingly.

I forced myself to laugh right along with her, but all I could picture were my parents’ faces; the way my dad’s eyes would crease as he laughed, and my mom’s soft green eyes. I would probably never see them again, and the last thing I’d done was hurt them. They would be damaged beyond repair knowing that their only daughter was gone. Why had I taken Alexis’ advice and left without leaving a note?

I struggled to push away the creeping guilt as we moved into one of the aisles. Alexis grabbed a bag of Sour Patch Kids and headed straight to the register without looking back at the two of us. I struggled to decide between gummy worms or gummy bears.

Lyla—probably sensing my mood’s shift—placed her hand on my shoulder again.

“You’re second-guessing this, aren’t you?”

I thought about lying, but my reply spilled out before I even realized I’d opened my mouth. “I’m worried about my family. I miss them. I don’t—“

I choked, blinking back the tears springing up out of nowhere. I wasn’t a small-town wimp. I would not cry for my mommy in the middle of a 7/11.

Lyla nodded. “If it makes you feel better, I’d probably feel the same way if I had parents.”

A new wave of guilt crashed over me. I’d forgotten Lyla was living with her aunt and uncle. Her parents had passed away just a few short years ago. She was probably relieved by the escape; and here I was being insensitive by whining over how much I missed my loving parents who were still alive.

“There’s no shame in turning back if you don’t want to do this anymore,” Lyla went on. I scoffed. “Oh yeah, I’m sure Alexis and Danny will agree with you on that.” “We can find another vocalist in Los Angeles. I’m sure they won’t be as good as you, but still. There’s probably a lot of them out there,” Lyla pointed out.

“Probably,” I agreed.

Lyla caught on. “You think Alexis and Danny will make fun of you.”

I nodded.

She sighed. “They probably will, but does that really matter?”

It did to me, but I wasn’t willing to admit that.

“It’s up to you,” Lyla went on. “I’m just trying to help.”

“Thanks. I’ll be fine.”

I grabbed a large pack of gummy bears and followed Lyla to the cash register, where Alexis was already chatting animatedly with the guy at the counter. Danny was nowhere to be found. I guessed he was busy filling up the car.

The guy at the counter eyed us curiously as we handed him our snacks. He looked to be in his sixties at least.

“Just you three?” he asked, glancing back at Lyla.

“And Danny. He’s filling our gas tank right now,” Alexis explained.

“And what brings you four out here?” The man looked concerned, probably noticing the lack of adult supervision.

“We’re in a band,” Alexis said proudly. “We’re traveling across the country.” Driving from Ohio to California didn’t count as “across the country” in my book, but I didn’t correct her.

The man chuckled. “You kids look awfully young to be in a traveling band. What kind of music do you play?”

“Mostly rock,” Alexis said, lifting her chin. “I play the drums, Danny plays electric guitar and sometimes piano, Lyla plays the bass, and…”

I tuned out Alexis’ ramble and began mindlessly staring at the TV. The man was right. We were too young to be traveling like this. What were we thinking? Now it was too late to turn back, and none of us had any idea what we were doing.

Out of nowhere, a picture of my face appeared on the screen. I gasped.

Beside me, Lyla whispered, “Oh my gosh. We made the news.”

“This just in!” the newscaster announced in an almost annoyingly cheery voice. “Four teenagers from Granville, Ohio have been reported missing: Alexis Levine, Danny Rivers, Lyla Brown, and Julianna O’Hera. Each of them caused quite a stir in their small town as their parents or guardians woke to discover they were nowhere to be found. Danny’s father John Rivers was particularly outraged to find his Mercedes SUV missing as well.”

“We were driving in Danny’s dad’s car?” I gasped. “But… he said it was his.”

“So? It got us where we needed to go,” Alexis snapped at me.

“We’re driving in a stolen car. Do you know how bad that is?” I shot back. I myself was trying not to think about it, but I couldn’t help but feel slightly nauseous as I realized how much we were breaking the law.

“With how rich he is, Danny’s dad probably has a billion cars anyway,” Alexis said, tossing her hair. “He can stand to let us use one.”

“You’re insane,” Lyla muttered under her breath. Luckily, it didn’t seem like Alexis heard.

“Despite the fact that no one has any idea where they may have gone, the police are searching tirelessly for the missing teens, reaching out to departments around the country,” the newscaster went on. “In the meantime, their parents and families grieve the absence of their loved ones, and will not rest until they are found.”

The scenery switched, and I recognized the front of my house. I clapped a hand over my mouth.

“I’m here speaking with the parents of Julianna O’Hera, one of the missing teens.” I heard the voice of the anchorman being broadcasted from the front of my house, but my eyes were glued to the devastated faces of my parents. “We understand that this is a massive tragedy for your family. We believe your daughter is out there. Is there anything you want to say to her?”

“We… want you… to c-come… home,” my mom sobbed. My dad had his arm around her waist. He looked too distraught for words.

My mom said something else, but I couldn’t hear it. I mumbled something about needing to use the bathroom, then bolted through the door in the back. Luckily, it was a single-person restroom. I locked the door behind me, slid to my knees on the floor, and sobbed.

It was several minutes before the tears stopped flowing… or maybe it was only a couple of seconds. I rose to my feet and pulled my phone out of my pocket, dialing a number before I could think too hard about it.

This will fix everything.

The line rang for only a few seconds before someone answered.

“Licking County Police Department. How can I help you?” said a man’s voice on the other line.

I took a deep breath. “My name is Juliana O’Hera. I’m one of the missing teens from Granville.”

There was a long pause.

“I need you… or somebody, I don’t know… to come and pick me up right now.” My breaths came out in short, hysterical gasps. “I want to go home.”

“Miss O’Hera,” the man spoke in the same voice one might use to calm a frightened puppy. “Can you tell me where you are, and what happened?”

I did. My words tangled up into sobs as I relayed the whole story. I told him about how we’d hatched the plan just last week. I told him what time we went, and how we were able to sneak out completely undetected. I told him the kind of car we were driving in. I gave him a physical description of not only myself, but my three friends as well. I held nothing back.

“Alright, Miss O’Hera,” the police officer said calmly when I was finished. “I want you to hang tight, okay? We’ll be here in less than five minutes to come and get you and your friends.”

“Thank you,” I whimpered.

“We’ll see you soon.”

As soon as the officer hung up, I unlocked the bathroom door and stepped outside. Both Lyla and the man at the counter eyed me with obvious concern, but Alexis didn’t even glance my way.

I didn’t know what to say. I’d betrayed them; it was true. Was that worse than betraying my family? I wasn’t sure.

“Are you okay?” Lyla asked, making her way over to me.

I nodded, but burst into tears.

Lyla wrapped me in a hug. “It’s okay.”

“N-no it isn’t,” I blubbered. “It’s over.”

“I agree,” Lyla whispered. “You need to go home. I don’t know

how, but we’ll find a way.”

The misery swept over me, leaving me unable to reply. She’d know what I’d done soon enough anyway.

It was only a few seconds before Danny burst into the gas station from outside. “Cops!” he announced. “We have to go!”

“I knew we shouldn’t have waited for Julianna!” Alexis groaned. I lost it. “Shut up Alexis! This is all your fault!”

The shock and hurt registered on her face for a split second before the police officers opened the front door.

“We’re here for Juliana O’Hera and her friends,” one of the officers stated. I watched the betrayal dawn on each one of my friends’ faces, but I was strangely numb. I should have felt guilty, but I really didn’t.

Alexis was the first to snap out of the shock. She lunged at me, launching cuss words from her lips like a cannon.

One of the officers quickly restrained her. “Calm down,” he commanded.

“YOU LITTLE SNITCH!” Alexis screamed, spitting. “I had one chance to escape from my rotten family and you had to go and ruin everything! How could you—?”

“Yeah, that was really messed up,” Danny added, staring at the floor.

I turned to Lyla, sure she would at least understand why I’d done what I did. She didn’t speak a word. She didn’t even look at me.

Tears filled my eyes again.

“We’re taking you four back to Granville,” one of the officers announced. “Any questions?”

Danny, Lyla, and I were silent. Lyla shrieked more cuss words as she writhed in the officer’s arms.

Another one of them opened the front door and motioned for us to start walking to the police car.

I took the lead, unable to look back at the disappointed faces of my friends. I was going home now. I never should have even left in the first place. That was what mattered. But was it worth it? Was it worth what I’d just done to my friends? In either scenario, someone was going to get hurt. Wasn’t it better to prioritize my family; the people in my life who loved me the most? I stole a glance back at the accusatory faces of my band mates, and I couldn’t seem to find the answer.

It didn’t matter now anyway. I’d made my decision.

King of the Sea

Luke Miller

Divine Culinary Symphony Jaelah Butler

The Sharpened humiliation echoed as it rung in my ears

I Grated the Disgust that slowly dripped away from my thoughts I begin to Feel emerged in the Abandonment that washed into my life once before

Cutting into the euphoria of my heart

Only leaving me with diced up pride blinding my eyes from my path to come

This is as the enemy wants you to feel

But a plan has already been created that cannot be shaken

A certain kind of peace that seeps into the heart you once thought was damaged beyond repair

The overflowing unconditional love blended into your life you thought was not worth living an unexplainable feeling

The fruits baked into my spirit shown as evidence of who he is

At last, I’m saved He has saved me

Misty Mornings

Christopher Berry

The 13th Amendment and Its Effects On Our Prison System

Emilie Sarringhaus

Abstract

The 13th Amendment is often thought of and praised as the article that ended slavery and involuntary servitude in the United States. However, when carefully read and examined, the specific verbiage used is found to allow slavery and involuntary servitude as punishments for a crime. This omission to the banning of slavery in the United States has had wide-ranging effects on our prison systems. This paper will first examine the context behind the drafting of the 13th Amendment, and then present the three major legislative and historical outcomes the 13th Amendment had created, as examine how they have created systemic issues in our prison and justice system that targets African Americans.

Keywords: 13th Amendment, Black Codes, War on Drugs, Political Lobbying

The 13th Amendment and Its Effects on Our Prison System

When asked about the 13th Amendment, the average American will describe it as the revision to our Constitution that ended slavery when it was passed in 1865. However, the 13th Amendment and its contents are purely not that clear-cut. In full, the 13th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States reads: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” That one word, “except” has created controversy in interpretation, and has been exploited since the Amendment was passed 156 years ago. Due to this exception, there has been a long history of those in power utilizing this “loophole”. The wording of the 13th Amendment, which allows forced labor upon prisoners, has inspired systemic issues within our prison and justice systems and has disproportionately targeted predominantly Black Americans throughout history. Because the forced labor can be used as punishment for prisoners, people in power have used this loophole to line their pockets on the backs of Black Americans. While there are countless complexities that have attributed to the current state of our prison and justice systems, there are three main factors that have played the biggest role.

The Black Codes began this course by setting the standard for being able to introduce legislation targeting Black Americans in order to have them incarcerated and in the role of providing free and forced labor. This trend was only continued by the War on Drugs introduced by the Nixon Administration which also created legislation that targeted Black Americans. Finally, the work of political lobbyists through organizations like ALEC continues to create a justice system whose goal is to imprison as many people as possible for as long as possible, with the Black community being the common victims.

Before diving into the aspects of how the 13th Amendment has caused the prison and justice systems to target and incarcerate Black Americans at disproportionate rates, the context behind the 13th Amendment and its wording must be understood. The Amendment was drafted by white politicians who were trying to reunite the country in the wake of the southern states seceding and the Civil War ending. They drafted the Amendment in hopes of pleasing both sides, prohibiting slavery and involuntary servitude to please the North, and allowing it as punishment for slavery to please the South. The 13th Amendment is actually almost verbatim of the Article 6 of 1787 Northwest Ordinance. As explained by Caroline Kisiel in her article in the Washington Post, the Ordinance prohibited slavery in the new westward territories being formed, but still allowed white plantation owners to repossess escaped slaves who tried to seek refuge in the new Western territories. Kisiel explains that the writers

of the Amendment “need[ed] to settle quickly on basic language to get the job done,” specially to avoid further upheaval on either side (Kisiel 2021). While this did officially ban the act of slavery in the United States, this loophole allowed forced labor to be an acceptable and defensible punishment for a crime. In response, southern states immediately began doing everything in their legislative power to imprison Black Americans in order to regain the free workforce they had just lost. For example, loitering, selling farm products, and speaking in a disrespectful tone to a white person were just a few of the many things that became illegal for Black people to do. Mississippi was the first state to pass any such legislation and presented it in the form of a Vagrancy law, which, as explained by Kisiel “require[ed] free Black people to carry proof of employment or risk being re-enslaved” (Kisiel 2021). Many southern states followed suit, and published their own legislation targeting African Americans which were later coined “Black Codes”.

As explained by the article “The Southern Black Codes of 186566”, these Black Codes were written solely against Black people, and contained laws such as South Carolina’s that prevented “blacks [from] practicing any occupation, except farmer or servant under contract…” This shows a pattern of preventing Black Americans from holding any occupation except from ones that put them back in the arena of slavery, and if they resisted, they could be locked up and forced right back into what was essentially slavery. This was accomplished in many ways, with the most common being the practice of convict leasing. The article “Thirteenth Amendment Loophole” (2021) explains convict leasing as where states could lease prisoners to white planters. This financially benefited the State which made money from the act of leasing, and the plantation owners which profited off the free labor, leaving the imprisoned Black people back in a situation of forced labor they could not escape. Equal Justice Initiative founder Bryan Stevenson expressed that because of these Black Codes, “slavery did not end in 1865, it just evolved” (Kisiel 2021). Stevenson’s comment points out the larger issue that Southern plantation owners had; a dependence on the free labor slavery provided and a sudden legal ban on their workforce. This was a workforce that had made the South tremendously prosperous. Greg Timmons (2020) assesses that pre-Civil War, the South had made so much profit due to the free labor provided by slaves, “if the Confederacy had been a separate nation, it would have ranked 4th richest in the world.” Timmons (2020) further explained the motivation the Southern economy had to maneuver its way around the 13th Amendment to keep the workforce that helped it “produce 75% of the world’s cotton.” The loss of the Civil War and the 13th Amendment meant the disruption of the Southern slavery “system” as it had been, but due to the wording of the Amendment and the desperation

to continue to be a global power in the cotton industry, the South merely formulated a new way to have free labor that was now legally defensible. As time progressed and Black Americans continued to fight for and gain equality, institutions that profited off free labor permissible by the 13th Amendment had to adapt and evolve with how they could target the African American population. Most notable in more modern history was the War on Drugs. Presented to the public as “a new all-out offensive” against drug abuse, which was categorized as “public enemy number one” (Nixon 1971). Millions in funds were relocated to legal enforcement of new laws that greatly increased sentencing for drug possession and abuse. “A History of the Drug War” reveals that the true targets of this War on “Drugs” was actually the Black community, who were political opponents of Nixon. The article quotes John Ehrlichman, a high-ranking aid to Nixon as stating that “We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be…against… black, but by getting the public to associate…blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing heavily, we could disrupt those communities”. While this may seem to just be an attempt to stop political opponents, the effects of the legislation passed during the War on Drugs will later be used in a model after what the South attempted with the Black Codes: free labor through the 13th Amendment. This connects back to the South’s Black Codes which made efforts to pass legislation that was specifically and intentionally targeted towards the Black population. The ramifications of the legislation that targeted Black communities still exist today. The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1886 introduced mandatory sentencing, which established minimum sentences on crimes like possession, meaning someone who had less than an ounce of an illegal substance could face years in prison. The War on Drugs also created a much harder sentence for crack vs. powder cocaine, a 100-to-1 ratio (Taifa 2021). This was specifically designed because Black communities were more likely to use crack, while White communities used powder cocaine. These two legislative acts worked in tangent to target Black communities and imprison them more often and for longer compared to their White counterparts.

Because the faces of drug crimes were African Americans, this began a stigma against Black Americans being more likely to be criminals. This was a trend beginning with the Black codes that included attitudinal offences, which allowed a white woman to claim to have been disrespected or harassed by a Black man, who would then be hunted down and lynched (The Southern Black Codes, 2021). A notable example is Emmett Till. He was a 14-year-old Black boy who was accused of flirting with a white woman. For this unverified accusation, Emmett was brutally murdered in 1955. His face was “so disfigured he… could only be identified by an initialed ring” (Emmett Till is murdered, 2021). These attitudes were deep rooted, beginning in society image viewing Black

men as rapists and criminals, which further perpetuated by the famous 1915 movie Birth of a Nation which depicted KKK knights as heroes saving a white woman from a slave trying to rape her (13th, 2016). This connects back to the image tainting of Black Americans due to the War on Drugs, which then caused more Black people to be stopped by police due to suspicion. The NYU article “Research Shows Black Drivers More Likely to be Stopped by Police” reveals that Black Americans are as much as 1.5-2x more likely to be stopped by police than White Americans (2020). Furthermore, a research article from National Institutes of Health reported that there is observable evidence to show how Black Americans killed by police are likely to be “villainized” by the media in an attempt to place the blame for their deaths on the victims, and not the officers who killed them (Smiley, 2017). The War on Drugs, as well as previous Black Codes contributed to social attitudes that associated Black Americans with drugs and crime. This then leads to a higher incarceration and conviction rate among Black people in the justice system. Because of this image of Black Americans, an article in the Yale Law Journal found that “prosecutors in our sample were nearly twice as likely to bring such a charge against black defendants” (Starr, 2013).

Due to this, “A History of the Drug War” explains that “the number of people behind bars for nonviolent drug law offenses increased from 50,000 in 1980 to over 400,000 by 1997.” This continued to shape the prison demographics with more and more African Americans being incarcerated at an almost exponential rate, whereas by 2015 “nearly 80% of people in federal prison for drug offenses are Black or Latino” (The Drug War, 2015). Now, how does this lead back into the 13th Amendment and an exploitation of its verbiage in our modern era? The simple answer is corporate exploitation fueled by private lobbyists. While there are many companies and lobbyist groups that try to influence the legislation in the United States, the most notable is the American Legislative Exchange Council. Better known as ALEC, this private group brings together politicians and corporate heads to create bills that then become state laws. When on the board, legislators and corporate representatives vote on equal footing, meaning that private companies have a place in law-making, and therefore are able to affect legislation to benefit their corporations (Who’s really Writing States Legislation, 2011). The ties that politicians have in ALEC is surprising, with “1 in 4 state legislators” being members (13th, 2016).

Relating back to the 13th Amendment and the free labor it protects as a punishment for a crime, corporations can introduce legislation that incarcerates more people and for longer so that their company can benefit from the free labor. While our democracy operates under the appearance of the people having their voices heard and prioritized,

groups like ALEC prove this is not reality. As explained in the 13th documentary, “at ALEC task force meeting, corporate lobbyists secretly vote as equals with lawmakers on bills those lawmakers then introduce to become laws” (2016). This means that corporations have motivations to introduce legislation that will most benefit them, and in our current capitalistic economy, the easiest way to benefit them is to cut costs by any means necessary. For corporations involved with ALEC, they focused on legislation that grows their workforce, accomplished by greater numbers of people incarcerated and longer prison sentences. ALEC is responsible for legislation such as the three strikes principle and mandatory minimum sentencing (13th, 2016). As discussed earlier, these have ties to the Black community and unfairly target them. The history ALEC has with introducing legislation that targets Black Americans is stark, with the Co-Founder Paul Weyrich “they want everybody to vote, I don’t want everybody to vote” (13th, 2016). He explained that the less people voting, the more leverage people like him had in elections. This also shows motivations ALEC has for passing bills that target whole communities such as the Black community because while in prison, convicts cannot vote. Some states do not restore voting rights after prisoners are released, in “11 states felons lose their voting rights indefinitely for some crimes” (Felon Voting Rights, 2021). Just as Nixon did with the War on Drugs, ALEC legislation targets the Black community to disarm their vote. Diving deeper into the correlation between ALEC and current exploitation of the language of the 13th amendment is the “prison business.” Private prisons make over 7.4 billion dollars a year through the business of the incarcerated (Kincade, 2018). This reveals motivations for a large private company like CCA, or the Corrections Corporations of America. Up until recently a member of ALEC, this business had a huge influence in the legislation being drafted up by the organization. The industry is “a multi-billion-dollar business that gets rich off punishment” (13th, 2018). They work with other companies that provide services to the prison, which make more money the more people are using their services. Again, this creates an incentive for them to work with ALEC to propose bills that build their clientele. Most notably, ALEC helped pass the “truth-in sentencing bill,” which causes inmates to have to serve most of their time, slowly doing away with the practice of parole allowing people to get out early due to good behavior or other circumstances. The article “Tough on Crime Measures increase Prison Population” reports that “Because of truth-in-sentencing and other tough sentencing measures, state prison populations grew by half a million inmates in the 1990s even while crime rates fell dramatically” (2018). Also, name brand companies connect to ALEC, like JC Pennies and Victoria’s Secret were found to have been greatly benefiting from prison labor (13th, 2016). This offers evidence that the legislation “against crime”

is really just for making richer the corporations that benefit from prison labor as well as prison commissary.

The 13th Amendment has a complicated and continued history of being used to justify the exploitation of a primarily and intentionally Black population for free labor. Beginning with its creation, the 13th Amendment purposefully had wording that allowed forced labor as a punishment for a crime in order to appease the Southern Plantation. They then made legislation known as the Black Codes which targeted Black people and imprisoned them to re-establish the free workforce of the South after the Civil War. The targeting of Black Americans with legislation meant to imprison them continued with the War on Drugs. This then densely populated the prisons with African Americans and contributed to the long withstanding social tainting of the image of Black people as criminals. Finally, corporate lobbying groups like ALEC continue to pass legislation that disproportionately targets Black communities. This legislation aims to help the corporations profit off the free labor provided to them by the people they imprisoned, as well as make other companies money from the commissary industry ever-present in the prisons.

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Mount Hood Luke Miller

Seasons Change

Emily Miller

The sky during a typical Christmas break in Northern California is a perpetual blanket of pewter cloud cover that occasionally weeps enough on a single day to flood the dried up creeks. After the clouds have finished their crying, the sun shreds its gray veil, blinding the civilians below and reflecting off the pond-sized puddles in the road. In the next couple days, the clouds return, the gloom once again seeps into every crevice of life, and the cycle continues. The weeks are cold enough for the air to pierce through your bones and fog the windshield glass, but not enough to snow and make the chill worth something.

After leaving for college, Julie had grown less and less accustomed to the moodiness of this Christmas climate. She went to school in New Hampshire, where white Christmases were typical for its residents. But here she was in her hometown of Auburn, California for the holidays, suffering the worthless chill. So much gray was there on Christmas Eve that Julie felt as though she was trapped inside a black-and-white film.

DING. <It’s snowing so much here in Portsmouth right now! Look at this goofy snowman my cousin made.> Her best friend from college, Isaac, texted her a picture of an extremely lopsided snowman that bore more resemblance to a mountain troll than a man. DING. <What are you doing today?>

<Dinner at grandma’s. I’m at the grocery store picking up a ham for her,> Julie responded.

<Cool! I’m hanging out with my cousins today,> he said.

Grocery basket hanging on her arm, Julie reacted to Isaac’s text with a heart as she strolled into the checkout line. When it came time to put the ham on the conveyor belt, she looked up from her phone, and jumped in surprise.

“Julie?” The cashier asked with raised brows.

“Benji?”

The cashier, Benji, still looked every bit the high school crush that Julie remembered…almost. He had aged just a little—he now had nearly imperceptible scruff on his once smooth chin and upper lip, new glasses, and some muscle and healthy fat had made a home on his once stick-thin frame. Aside from that, he still had his thick, shiny black hair, bronze skin, round dark eyes, and Cupid’s bow.

“It’s been so long! How have you been the past two years?” Benji smiled widely, his eyes and nose scrunching up as they always did.

God, those dimples…Julie thought. “I’ve been doing good! Busy with school and work. But good,” Julie smiled back. “How about you? How’s your life been?” I thought he also went away for college?

“Oh, you know…normal. Normal but good,” Benji said, his face unreadable. “Nice! That– that’s good.”

Benji scanned the ham, put it in a bag, and handed it to her. After Julie paid, he said, “Merry Christmas, Julie. I hope I get to see you again.”

Julie drove back to her grandma’s house with the ham, not knowing quite what to think or feel about encountering Benji. She couldn’t say that he was the biggest ‘what if?’ of her life, because as the years passed by, that question in her mind had gotten quieter and quieter, fading into a whisper that was still there but no longer audible. It was a very odd thing to nearly forget the person who was once the only thing you could think about for years. However, seeing him for the first time since high school graduation, especially so unexpectedly, had brought that almost silent whisper to a shout.

Her text tone went off again, but this time, it wasn’t Isaac. <Hey Julie, it’s Benji. I wasn’t sure if you still have my number. It was really nice to see you today, and I’d love to catch up with you soon if you’re down to get coffee or something! :)>

Almost instantly, she texted back. <Yeah, I’d love to catch up! Does the 26th work for you?>

<It does. 3 PM at Pour Choice?>

<Sounds like a plan :)>

Julie wasn’t quite sure how to explain her feelings about this meet up to herself; they had only been on one date before, toward the end of high school. Prior to that, she had been infatuated with him for years—or perhaps, the idea of him—and after the date, they graduated, ghosted each other, and then went to schools very far away from each other. Perhaps a part of her wanted her high school fantasies to come true, for her past infatuation to be validated. Perhaps a part of her hoped that she had finally stumbled upon the one thing that could make her hometown feel like home…the one thing that could tether present Julie to past Julie even after so many things had changed. Her life in Auburn before college often felt like having an unpleasant dream that she could never quite shake even after waking, tainting the rest of her day afterward. But maybe Auburn wouldn’t always have to leave behind a faint, bitter aftertaste. Maybe at least one sweet thing—or person—was, after all, a part of her past with her.

Still, something behind the optimism nagged at her; what if things would not be as they were in high school? He never called it a date though, so it’s fine. We’re just old friends catching up and getting coffee, nothing’s going to happen. Wait, do I even want something to happen? I think I do…but what is something?

Isaac sent her another text message. <Btw, do you still need a ride from the airport back to the dorms on the 3rd when you fly back?>

<Yes, thank you sm! Can you get there at 7:30 PM?>

<Yeah, no problem!>

The holiday passed by leisurely in shades of gray, flickering fairy lights, and glowing fireplace embers. Nothing of note occurred, despite it being the first Christmas that Julie and her grandma spent alone together. The Christmas ham tasted good; it was neither spectacular nor nauseating. Their gifts to each other consisted solely of gift cards. They filled the silence that would have been occupied in previous years by the rest

of the family’s arguing with classic Christmas movies and Bing Crosby’s Christmas record.

Julie slept through half the day on the 26th. When she wasn’t sleeping, she was lying in bed and staring at the ceiling, her brain stuck in waiting mode until she had to get ready to leave for the coffee shop and see Benji. She was paralyzed by the vague feeling of anticipation and anxiety gradually growing in her chest as she lay still. Eventually, she pulled herself out of bed and got dressed, carefully deliberating over her outfit to look carelessly good, and then, she walked out the door, clumsily reaching for her keys and nearly fumbling them on her way out.

She hadn’t been to Pour Choice for a couple years at least; so, she pulled up the GPS on her phone, and turned up the music in an effort to drown out her racing thoughts. It didn’t work. Why did I say yes when I haven’t spoken to him in years? It took me so long to get over him the first time. What if he’s a serial killer or something now and I’m driving to my death? She shook the last thought, an extreme product of her catastrophizing, out of her head. As she drove, droplets of water fell from the dark clouds and pounded the roof of her car. It was positively pouring upon her arrival.

Julie ran into the coffee shop in an attempt to stay as dry as possible, but with the consequence that the puddles splashed more on her jeans than they would have otherwise. She got in line to order her drink. Just as they handed her her snickerdoodle latte... DING. Benji had just texted her: <I see you!>

She turned, and he was already sitting at a table. He smiled and waved sheepishly. Her heart raced as she brought her drink to the same table and sat down across from him. “Were you splashing around outside when you first got here?” Benji asked, laughing. I forgot his laugh sounded like that.

“No,” Julie said, starting to grin. “But I am shocked that all that hair gel withstood the rain. Is it waterproof?”

“That’s the thing though, I just used gorilla glue instead, that’s why it stays,” he joked. They laughed at their banter, and met eyes for a couple seconds before looking down at their drinks. Maybe things will be the same as they always were.

“I don’t know what it is exactly, but you seem…different,” Benji said, tilting his head. “Different from when I last saw you. Not in looks, but something else.”

Julie wasn’t sure what to say; after all, she was hoping everything would have just been the same. They were quiet for too long. Finally, Benji spoke again. “It’s crazy, though…like I know a couple years isn’t that long of a time, but it feels like forever with how different life got after high school. Remember the last time we saw each other like this? At Panera Bread the day after graduation?”

Julie smiled at the memory that was flooded with the giddiness of post-graduation. “When the waiter got my order wrong twice?”

“And when you were too shy to say anything the first time so I

had to tell them?” He laughed.

“Hey, at least I said something the second time!”

“I know, I know.” Another silence.

“So what are you studying in school again?” he asked. “STEM, right? Physics? You were a good student in every class, but science was always like, your thing.”

“Um, well, I did start as a physics major my first semester,” Julie said. “But it wasn’t for me; it got so overwhelming and competitive. I actually switched to studying film that year. I enjoy it a lot now! What about you?”

“Oh!” He raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Wasn’t expecting that! That’s cool, though. I decided to stay here in Auburn…everything I know is here, you know? And it’s cheaper. I transferred after freshman year, started making some money at the grocery store. Uh, I’m still studying business. I transferred to a local college after my freshman year. Sophomore year has been pretty easy so far. I’ll have to do an extra semester at the end though, because class registration is a beast there. So annoying. And then I’ll just get whatever job I can get once I’m done.”

That wasn’t quite what Julie had expected of him when she last saw him, but… still, good for him, I suppose. Definitely cheaper. “Are you still doing community theatre?” “Yes!” His eyes lit up. “You remember how we almost did Newsies as our senior year show but then it got changed to Annie instead and we were all so disappointed? Well, my theatre is doing Newsies next, and I got Jack!”

“You’re perfect for that role! Congrats!”

“Thank you, thank you,” He smirked and pretended to take a bow. Oh…that smirk. She used to love seeing that exact smirk on his face. “How’s your dad?” Benji asked. “Now that I’m not on the basketball team, I never see him around anymore.”

Oh yeah…my dad was his basketball coach. Should I just tell him? And how much? “So…about that. I don’t talk to him anymore. My family situation when you knew me was…pretty bad. He’s not a good person. I’ve just been staying with my grandma when I’ve been here.”

Benji’s eyes grew even larger than usual. “Wow, for real? I am so sorry, Julie, I had no idea. I’m sorry I asked about him…”

“Yeah…it’s okay.”

“I mean, he did used to make us run until we threw up if we didn’t win a game, so I guess it tracks,” he snickered.

He always tries to make everything funny. You can’t make him be serious. Which Julie definitely fell in love with during the heaviness of her high school years, but now…there was an awkward silence.

Benji cleared his throat. “So…what made you want to study film?”

“Well, you remember how I love reading and books. I haven’t always been a big movie person. I would always see movie adaptations of books, and they were never as good as the books. But then I started researching how books and even real life events get adapted into movies, and it was so interesting how many factors they have to consider and the

limitations they have! So I gained some appreciation for some of them…a lot of them still don’t do the books justice though. I decided to concentrate in screenwriting. I’d love to adapt some books into worthwhile movie or play adaptations.”

“That makes sense. I used to be a bigger reader, but to be honest, since high school English classes I haven’t read a whole lot. I didn’t enjoy most of the classics we had to read, but I did really like when we went over The Catcher in the Rye. That one was probably my favorite. Film is so cool though! Do you guys ever talk about the movie Fight Club? I love that one.”

“Oh yeah, we actually have! We used it as an example when we were learning about satirical films.”

“Wait, Fight Club is a satire? Of what?”

They continued talking, but their conversations were mostly catching up about fairly surface level things, even if Julie wanted it to go deeper. The sky outside grew darker with the coming on of nighttime, although the heavy rain was beginning to subside. At one point, Benji turned in his seat to look outside, then turned back to look at Julie. There was an odd look on his face that Julie couldn’t quite place; she thought she’d seen it before on him at least once, but couldn’t say when.

“The rain is starting to go away,” he noted softly.

“Yeah…maybe the sun will be out tomorrow then. And then it’ll just go back to the clouds, of course.”

“Remember that apartment situation I was telling you about? How I finally managed to get one with some friends even though rent is crazy right now?”

“Yeah?”

“My apartment is only a five minute walk from here. Like, it’s very close.”

“Nice. I’m sure that’s convenient.”

“None of my roommates are home right now, though. They’re still visiting family for the holidays.”

“Ah, I see. Does it get lonely when they’re gone?”

“Not really,” He leaned in. “What I’m trying to say is, you can come by and see my apartment if you’d like. It’s walking distance.”

Julie’s stomach began to sink. “Sorry, my grandma is texting me, I’m gonna respond real quick…” Julie tapped on Isaac’s conversation history and quickly typed out <Call me now. Fake an emergency.> She hit send then immediately put her phone back in her pocket.

“Well, if you’re done talking to your grandma, then we can start walking over now. The rain’s almost gone.”

“Oh…I think I’m good, but thank you. It’s getting late and I’m parked over here, so it wouldn’t make much sense –”

“I’d walk you back to your car later. When we’re done.”

Julie’s skin began to crawl. “I’m sure you would, but I have to get back to my grandma–”

“Why?”

“She needs my help…I’m sorry, but I have to go now, my grandma really needs my help with…dinner…”

“Is she really so old she needs help making dinner? What does she do when you’re off at college?”

“Uh, well we have guests coming, so we’re making more food than usual –”

“What guests would be coming? You said you don’t really talk to your other family anymore?”

“Oh, she invited some friends from church over.”

“If this was two years ago at Panera Bread, you would have said yes anyways.”

“No I wouldn’t have! And even if I would have, it’s not two years ago at Panera Bread. It’s now. And right now I’m saying no.”

Benji’s face contorted in contempt. Now, this face she had not seen before. “Why do you think I asked you to get coffee? Just to hang out with an old buddy? No. Why are you saying no? I thought you’d always wanted this –”

“Not like this! I– I’m not the same as I was, I don’t feel the same…”

“Clearly–”

RINGGGGGG. Julie’s cell phone started going off. Isaac was video calling her. She picked up, crossing her fingers for a performance.

“JULIE! YOU HAVE TO DRIVE OVER HERE RIGHT NOW. PLEASE! I’m in so much pain…” Julie could see that Isaac was lying on the floor of his house. What she assumed to be red food coloring or Kool-Aid or something had been splashed on his shirt, concentrated in one spot, and he was writhing on the ground.

“Oh my gosh, what happened?”

“Someone just broke into our house and stole our Christmas presents, he saw me, stabbed me, then ran away. I called 911 with Siri, but I need you to be here now. Please. For me…” Isaac began to sob with a pained expression. He must be twice the theatre kid that Benji ever was…

“Ohhhhh my gosh I’m coming right now! Hang in there, please!” Julie hung up and grabbed her things. “Gotta go, it’s an emergency, bye!”

Benji’s face was frozen. “Oh– hope he’s okay–”

Julie ran out the door of the coffee shop, into her car, and drove back to her grandma’s house as fast as she could. She still felt as though ants were crawling all over her skin. Once her car was safely in her grandma’s garage, she called Isaac.

He picked up. “Julie, are you okay? You scared me half to death with that text.”

“I am now. I was meeting up with a guy from high school I used to be, uh, friends with, and things started going south. I’m back home now, though. That was a fantastic performance, by the way. Ten out of ten. You really saved me there. The stained shirt gave you extra points.”

Isaac let out an exhale of relief and laughed. “Good. Well, I’m glad it was convincing. It was hard to decide what story to go with in a split second. My second choice was going to be getting abducted by aliens, but

I wasn’t sure how to replicate a UFO.”

Julie laughed. Thank God for Isaac.

When it was finally January 3rd, Julie couldn’t wait to leave. She had stayed home for the most part ever since she left Pour Choice, and was looking forward to seeing her friends in New Hampshire. Her grandma drove her to the airport. The sky was gray and melancholy, as usual. She boarded the plane, and when she got off, Isaac was waiting for her. He was holding a ziplock bag of sugar cookies.

“Here you go,” He said, smiling. “Leftovers from Christmas.”

Julie grinned back. “How do I know you’re Isaac, and that you’re not an alien in disguise after abducting him?”

“Well, James and Claire and Amelia are supposed to be waiting for us for a little post-Christmas video game night before classes start, so I guess you’ll find out when we either arrive at the dorms or at a spaceship.”

She and Isaac walked out of the airport and into the snow-covered parking lot, eating cookies and laughing along the way. The streetlights shone so brightly on the blankets of snow that the dull gray of the Auburn winter began to slowly melt from Julie’s mind, much in the way a bad dream disappears from one’s memory: slowly it fades, a thick fog dissipating into mist, until all at once, it becomes nothing at all.

Harvest

H. O. Finch

My God Incarnate Jaden Massaro

Heaven’s gate opens wide with all the darkness of the midday sky, Father cradling His Son. Parted like petals, but like the flower, one; why does He walk the soiled earth in sin’s dress?

Toil not fit for the squire, the King far less; the hands of God, saw where His work will be done. Fallen not for bread nor circuses beneath the desert sun. To the tree they come to curse and not confess,

But even as He hangs from the wood He once carved, His eyes are turned above. His Father becomes our own, His suffering our good. He washed our feet and sin all for what? Love –enough to take our place when nothing else would. The glory of the Lamb descending upon us like a dove.

Land Fall Luke Miller

Black Bean Burritos Nadia Sosa

No lunch pail, no homemade sandwich on white bread, not even a brown paper bag. In my house, white bread didn’t exist. The dark brown oat bread, wrapped in plastic decorated with green leaves, is what we ate.

“That’s what the fancy people buy,” my mom would say as she tossed it into the shopping cart.

The three of us, my sisters and I, ate the lunch served in the cafeteria at our low-income, underfunded school. At lunchtime, the students whose parents had packed them lunch received the honor of lining up before the rest of us. Our sullen faces set in stone as they were excused to the lunch room. Even worse, the rest of the line was made up in alphabetical order. What’s my last name? Sosa. S-O-S-A. Unless the boy who somehow obtained lice every other week was in attendance, Leonardo Zapien, I stood at the end of the line, and was the final student to receive lunch.

My favorite pastime at lunch was observing the students who had their neatly wrapped sandwiches and small bag of chips spread in front of them. Particularly, I enjoyed watching the girl in the other third grade class, Mrs. Enns’ class. Her name was Paige. Her hair coiled up in perfect ringlets that her mother let her dye the ends of pink. Her ringlets weren’t like mine; they were smooth and silky instead of coarse and frizzy.

Eventually, I ended up in the same class as Paige. Fourth grade rolled around, and we were sat next to each other by our teacher Mrs. Alejandro. That year my mother found out my older sister had been placed in an ELD class. She angrily called the school, demanding she be switched over.

“My daughter speaks, reads, and writes perfect English. I guarantee she can outwrite and out-test any one of the kids in the other class. If you don’t switch her over, I’ll just take all my girls to the next district.”

The principal, without hesitation, did so. My sister was moved to the “correct” class, and we were all happy. I was happy because I got to sit next to Paige for four weeks, until the seating chart was rearranged. This year, the ends of her ringlets were pink and purple.

One Friday night as my mother had me soaking my feet in warm water, a part of our Friday night ritual for the three years we lived in a tiny apartment, I asked her why she never packs us a lunch. Annoyed, she shot me a glare.

“Babe, do you think I have time to get up even earlier than I already do, just to make you and your sisters lunch? You get it for free at school.”

I protested, explaining that I’d be grateful for anything she packed, anything at all. “Okay. I’ll make you lunch on Monday. Now take your feet out before you get all raisiny,” she smiled.

I looked to the school week with an excitement I hadn’t felt since my dad promised he’d pick me up from school so that I could forego the

dreaded afterschool program. He never came.

Monday morning rolled by as quickly as I’d hoped. I skipped out of my room with my perfectly aligned pigtails weighing my head back. As I walked into the small kitchen my mother stood in, I found her in her burrito-folding stance. I curiously watched her movements and saw her bend down and rummage through the cabinet. She pulled out a piece of shiny foil and a small, white grocery bag, last used to carry the candy she’d bought me from the corner store. My eyes widened. Finally, she turned around and handed me the bag. No neatly wrapped sandwich in parchment paper, or at least saran-wrap, no small bag of chips accompanying said sandwich, just two shiny cylinders.

“What?” she smiled. “It’s your favorite.”

I solemnly trudged down the stairs and into the gray 2010 Nissan Altima my mom had recently purchased. I remember her explaining that we needed to downsize since it was just going to be the four of us now.

When I got to school, I impatiently sat through Mrs. Alejandro’s reading of Because of Winn-Dixie as my leg shot up and down in a painfully annoying rhythm. Paige looked over at the cubbies that held our belongings and whispered, “Did you bring lunch today?” I nodded yes. “You can sit by me at lunch if you have good trades.”

I stayed silent, knowing I had absolutely nothing to trade. I zoned out on the fading purple dye at the ends of her hair.

The bell for lunchtime finally sounded, and Mrs. Alejandro excused those of us who had a packed lunch to the lunchroom. Again, I trudged out of the classroom and into the lunchroom. Paige waved me over, showcasing her gap-toothed smile. My stomach sank as I passed my peers who were excitedly trading their chips and gummies. Today, Paige had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, of course wrapped in white parchment paper, and a side of Welch’s fruit snacks. The white bag I carried plopped onto the lunch table and Paige’s eyes shot toward it.

“What’d you bring?” she asked.

I removed the shiny cylinders from the bag and unwrapped one. I bit into it and Paige watched.

“What is that? Why is it black?” she asked in disgust.

I was angry at my mom. She was right– black bean burritos were my favorite, and I was happy to eat them, but why couldn’t I just be normal?

The same feeling I had that day is one I didn’t stop feeling for a long time. The irony of someone knowing you so well but never understanding you, plagued my mind.

Aidan Scott

Verse 1:

Beware of How You Give Your Heart

An original song inspired by Northanger Abbey

Amanda Fagan

Don’t fill your head up with fantasies. Don’t think about him before you fall asleep.

Life isn’t like the novels that you read. That’s what they tell me.

Chorus:

But If I stand here long enough, eventually you’ll show up. Maybe we’ll accidentally meet. It’s clever, not calculating. Be careful of who you trust. You never know where you’ll end up. We fall in love and fall apart. Beware of how you give your heart.

Verse 2:

James gave his heart to a girl who couldn’t love him right. Isabella gave her heart to two guys at the same time. They couldn’t find happily ever after, but I still have a couple chapters.

Chorus:

And If I stand here long enough, eventually you’ll show up. You’ll say, “Run away with me, to cottages and apple trees.” Be careful of who you trust. You never know where you’ll end up. We fall in love and fall apart. Beware of how you give your heart.

Bridge:

It was sabotage ‘cause I had your heart and I know you loved me back. It wasn’t supposed to end so fast. I really thought that it would all work out. Turns out your dad doesn’t want me around. I can’t show my face in this place ever again. They sent me away. Is this how the story ends?

Chorus:

If I stand here long enough, eventually, will you show up? Maybe you’ll come after me.

Maybe, again, one day we’ll meet. Be careful of who you trust. You never know where you’ll end up. We fall in love and fall apart. Beware of how you give your heart. I stood there long enough. After a few days, you showed up. You don’t care what your father thinks because you’re in love with me. Please beware of who you trust. You never know where you’ll end up. We fall in love. We fall in love.

Outro:

Beware of how you give your heart.

Oblio Tableau

Robert Ball

Coming of Age Smells Like Amber and Ends in Violets

Sarah Saglin

When I reflect on my adolescence to my early twenties, I can smell my past self. I know this may sound so incredibly strange, but I can’t help but imagine fifteen-year-old Sarah and the scent of Glossier You following her around everywhere she went. Navigating my freshman year of high school was characterized by pink pepper and amber, two notes that made up how others perceived me, two notes that represented the sting of the reality of high school while acknowledging the sweetness that is experiencing adolescence as a girl. This scent carried me into my twenties as well. The scent of adolescence turned into the scent of my first relationship, and then my first summer out of high school, and then into the scent of my first job. Pink pepper and amber remain my two consistent companions, just evolving and changing alongside me taking on different representations of different seasons in my life.

I still vividly remember the day I purchased the soft pink bottle that would become the anthem of my teen years. Fifteen-year-old me on a family trip to New York craved a souvenir, but not something tacky and capable of collecting dust on my shelf. I was seeking something that would have a little more impact, something that would give me the olfactory experience of being in my favorite place even from home. It was mid-January and the bitter cold enveloped me as I made the trek to the Glossier store. This store was distinctive in a way that every high school aged girl wanted to go there and experience the mystery of a perfume that was primarily available online. This was my moment, I was about to become the coolest smelling person I knew, having no idea that the scent of that perfume would become background music to my teenage experience.

New York of 2016 became the first experience I smelled like, transported to chilly January across the country from the comfort of my own home in Newport Beach, but still reminiscing on the stench of brake dust in the subway mingling with the fresh clean scent I branded myself with.

New York was the first place the scent of my perfume took on, but as the month progressed, I returned, filled with dread, to the bland reality that was high school and I brought the notes of pink pepper and amber with me.

High school was something I seldom enjoyed. I found myself met with an undeniable sense of existential dread triggered from being in a place I couldn’t stand, but the excitement of spritzing myself with that baby pink bottle made long school days a little more tolerable. Mindlessly and perhaps even numbly going about my days at school, I was unaware

that the scent of New York would soon turn into the scent of two of the most puzzling years of my life.

High school was horrible in the sense that I had the biggest mental block against pursuing academic success, and instead felt like I was withering away with each class and assignment. I trudged my way through the mire that was my sophomore year and was soon met with the realization that the school I was at was not for me. Countless nights of crying because I didn’t want to go to class the next day bled into the next morning for months and then morphed into crippling and hideous panic attacks that would make me physically unable to get out of the car at drop-off on a weekly basis. I was a shell of myself stuck in an intoxicating pink cloud. By the second semester of sophomore year, I was determined to not return to Newport Harbor.

The scent of my perfume, while taking on the persona of unfinished assignments and an impending sense of doom, became one of the only consistent things I had for the remainder of my time in public high school. Soon after realizing my immense hatred for school, I begged my parents to let me transfer schools. I was met with the word “no” countless times followed by more nights of crying until my face hurt when my parents finally saw that I was rapidly declining and registered me for a private one-on-one school.

Leading up to my liberation from my personal hell that was Newport Harbor High School, I noticed that my friendships started to fade and my interest in just about everything was at rock bottom. I was mentally checked out, but at least I smelled good. Of course, the perfume was taking on the crippling weight of representing my reality through all of this.

My junior year was the first time I experienced such a drastic transition. From a massive public high school to a one-on-one private school, my life changed all in one summer. The scent of New York, Newport Harbor, and existential dread lingered on me, but my former high school self was a girl of the past. My perfume was renewed as a blank slate, I was changing and rediscovering myself, and it was happening fast. Pink pepper and amber were two new entities, no longer embodying feeling out of place, but instead a new sense of self confidence and a lack of school-induced dread. Pink pepper and amber went from being the socially withdrawn stock characters in my life to the two cool girls I so desperately wanted to be friends with. As I adjusted to my new school, I was on a gradual incline towards emotional regulation. The anxiety induced nausea I dealt with at my former school was something I had practically forgotten about at my new school. I was in my redemption arc; crying became foreign and taboo to me; I was met with an unquenchable desire to be myself for the first time in two years.

My junior year was a year of transformation for me both physically and mentally. My hair was dyed pink, I exited my car to walk into class with ease, I wore clashing patterns, I wasn’t afraid to ask for help academically. I was proud of my progress and my friends; pink pepper and amber were there to cheer me on throughout the whole process. Sometimes friends take breaks, and that’s okay. My senior year was the first time I parted ways with Glossier You. We had a good run for the past three years, but my senior year finished in 2020 and I was convinced that there was really no reason to be wasting liquid gold on a class via Zoom. Why would I want to remember what quarantine smelled like anyway? Days dragged on so slowly that I honestly don’t remember much of my senior year at all. I rarely got dressed and I had absolutely nothing to do besides meander through my neighborhood after finishing my work for the day. This bland reality continued until I found myself in a budding romance with a friend.

Bleakness during the day was followed by nights consisting of phone calls that lasted until the sun came up. This started as platonic (as does just about every teenage romance) until it was very much not platonic anymore. Phone calls turned into the classic Gen Z act of “subtweeting” each other, giggling at the fact that nobody in our friend group had any clue that we liked each other. Suddenly there was a light at the end of the lockdown tunnel, and I was preparing myself to go on my first date ever.

I still remember getting ready for that date, it was almost as if that tried-and-true baby pink bottle was jumping up and down with glee, ready to take on yet another major life event. Little did we both know, that was the day I would also smell like my first kiss. We officially started dating a month before I graduated high school. Two life events that my perfume was begging to absorb and did so effortlessly.

For the sake of my sanity, I won’t recall my relationship with my ex in its entirety, but I can say that I smelled the same throughout those two years I spent with him, and I continued to smell that way after I broke up with him. Glossier You was racking up all the points in every aspect possible as the two of us had shared a trip to New York, high school, a first date, a first kiss, a first boyfriend, and now a first breakup but of course there was room for more.

I continued to douse myself in the sweet nectar of life experience post-breakup and found myself in yet another era of self-discovery. After my ex, I felt like I had to reclaim myself and get to know who I was outside of being someone’s girlfriend. I wasn’t even sure of who I was, only sure that the decision to break up was what I needed, and that I was going to stand firm in that fact.

A few months into the post-breakup haze, I realized that I had an

abundance of free time now that I wasn’t busy doting over someone every waking minute of every day. A real job sounded nice, and that was exactly what I went after. My first day at my then-new barista gig is something that pink pepper, amber, and I remember vividly. I finally had something to do with my excess of time and I was getting paid for it. I seamlessly became friends with my new coworkers, one of which wore the same exact perfume as me. This became something we bonded over. Glossier You not only smelled like my entire life throughout the past five years, but it also smelled like the sweet friendship between my coworker Annalee and I. Annalee was the one who got scheduled with me for brutal opening shifts at 7:00 a.m. and she also trained me in a lot of the techniques I still use to this day.

Just about every morning consisted of Annalee and I laughing over things such as me forgetting to tamp shots before pulling them while the scent of pink pepper and amber was twice as strong between the two of us. My perfume started to engulf one of the most beautiful friendships I had experienced yet. I was realizing that I was slowly but surely starting to feel like myself again after the ending of my two-yearlong relationship. Annalee left my shop in exchange for a full-time job right around October, which is the month of my birthday. I missed her terribly, but we stayed in touch. I felt somewhat of a loss from this. She made brutal shifts fun.

By this time, I was mentally preparing to spend my birthday single which was something I had not done for quite some time. My birthday is already something that I don’t necessarily look forward to, so this one wasn’t very exciting other than the fact I was turning 21. I had no plans for this birthday, or so I thought. My mom, being fully aware of the way I felt towards my birthday, planned a surprise weekend trip to Palm Springs. This trip is where Glossier You would retire indefinitely and be replaced with a new scent that had not yet taken on any prior life experiences.

Palm Springs is where I met Le Labo’s Santal 33 . A leathery, smoky, and violet drenched scent that became my new persona. I was ready to let go of adolescent Sarah and rebuild myself on a scent that was there for the best birthday I had experienced in many years. I still loved pink pepper and amber, but it was time to move on. Santal 33 was the scent of adult freedom, the scent of Palm Springs, and the scent of reclaiming myself, and I couldn’t get enough. After my birthday weekend, I took the new notes of self discovery home with me. Santal 33 has since then taken on its own array of experiences, most of which are things I look back on fondly.

My story with Santal 33 is still being written. I will be twenty-two years old on October 13th and I am looking forward to having my dear

friend Santal 33 accompany me in yet another round of being in my twenties. Santal 33 has so far taken on the scent of getting a new car, going to college, and so much self-discovery and I can’t wait to see where we go next. I will remain eternally grateful towards Glossier You for carrying me through my adolescence, and I have no doubt that Santal 33 will be my rock through my twenties.

I know the journey ahead will have its bumps, but I find a sense of comfort in knowing that even if I end up unaware of it, my perfume will be there for me through it all…along with the bonus of smelling good.

Prepare the Bride

Jubilee Gutel

Lyric Essay Mikyla Bultsma

Universities care about money. Students struggle with mental health. And physical health. Both affect the other.

University was the pinnacle of status/wealth/achievement

Now: places where students go to suffer Some suffer. Some struggle. Some survive. The goal: college, graduation, a degree…

*fill in the blank with whatever society or your parents tell you*

Find your purpose. Find your plan. Career. Future. Life. Finding yourself. Whatever that’s supposed to mean. ***

There are times when the stress, pressure, to-do lists, exhaustion, drains, pressures, and realities of school begin to follow you around like a lone gray cloud over your shoulder. There are times when it feels manageable, like you can wait it out or outrun it.

There are even times when the sun seems to peak through as a single beam of glistening hope that breaks through the gray. There are times when it feels like everything is okay…like you’re “fine.”

Then the rain comes.

The downpour of tears so strong that you can’t see one foot in front of you let alone—a year, month, week, day—one hour in front of where you are now. The tears pour down until you wonder where they are coming from. “When did I drink enough water to cry this many tears?”

You cry…

You sob.

The tears turn to waves and oceans that swallow you whole. You drown in waters of your own making.

You drown…

Until the waters still. And you rise above the waves. The concerns/pressures/fears of before still exist—there is no changing that—but the failure that once seemed so all-consuming is now nothing but a puddle.

Your reflection stares back at you from the fear, but you can move forward again. Your feet beneath you, on solid ground. One Step At A Time

The rainbow after the storm does nothing to assuage my fears or solve my very real problems, but it does mark the end of the worst of it. You survived

At least

Countdown

Counting down

For now…

Always counting down 1 week 2 week 3 week 4 week

Coffee, lunch, breakfast if you’re lucky

More coffee

Always more caffeine

Everything to stay awake

Anything to stay awake:

Up for assignments

Alert for lecture

Active in discussion

Awake past the sun past bedtime past midnight past due

Counting down assignments

A countdown that never ends

Never-ending homework

Never-ending:

• Reading

• Writing

• Research

• Analysis

• Ideas

• Thoughts

• Words, words, words

A to-do list to the moon and back

Enough grunt work to swallow you whole

Where is your limit?

A. The stress

B. The anxiety

C. The frustration

D. The exhaustion

E. Other

F. “The limit does not exist”

What could possibly be worth all this?

Windy Roads

Luke Miller

When You Meet Your Heroes

Amanda Fagan

An acoustic guitar playing in my left ear I let my mind run away with a painted scene

I could never displace my precious pedestal Willingly living in some pious in-between

The gold clock in my head, our only meeting place I knew you well; you wouldn’t recognize my face

I fabricated a belief: you were to praise I thanked a guest for the platter from whence I ate I may speak of these things now so effortlessly Take heed, it took years for me to see finally

An electric guitar pounding deep in my chest Breathless, I stepped into a perfect movie scene

There stood my precious pedestal within arms-length I spent years imagining, reliving this dream

I thought I knew you well; I didn’t recognize your face

Hope on the Horizon

Sarah Snow

American Dream

Jaden Massaro

Flashing lights. Pounding head.

Black and blue. Blue and red.

Distant sirens. The whites of your eyes, you can fight, you can fly.

Blue eyes, black eye, bloodshot and wild. Born to run, free to stay, forever unreconciled. White knuckles on the handle, one foot out the door… it’s time to stop running, it’s not fun anymore.

Coast to coast painted red, white, and black and blue and you said you won’t fight, but that’s what we do. Now, you’re caught red-handed, hands in the air; your voice catches as you say you don’t care. Your face lights up with flashing red and blue… it’s time to stop running, I can’t keep chasing you.

Phantom marked man, hunted and haunted; rip down the posters, you’re still my most wanted. But if you left well enough alone, like you left me, we wouldn’t be standing here now, would we? Seeing red, white, and the boys in blue, you can take on the world, but I won’t fight with you.

You said you won’t fight, but that wasn’t true, now, we’re bleeding red, white, and black and blue. I think I could have loved you, but I never learned how. You were my American dream, but I think I’m waking up now.

Synecdoche 2024 Editorial Team

Rebekah Pinedo Production Manager

Elizabeth Castelan Marketing Manager and Scholarly Works Committee

Abigail Frank Editor in Chief

Rebekah Pulaski Editor in Chief

Emily Miller Copy Editor

Creative Works Editor

Creative Works Committee Member

Creative Works Committee Member

Creative Works Committee Member

Jared Rhone Scholarly Works Editor

Jaden Massaro

Victoria Barraza

Walker Smith

Emilie Nannenga

Dafne Calderon Scholarly Works Committee Member

Max Seps

Photography/Art Editor

Trenton Fennell

Photography/Art Committee Member

Austin Algario

Scholarly Works Committee Member

Michael Chavez

Photography/Art Committee Member

Professor Warren Doody

English Department Chair

Editors in Chief

Abigail Frank and Rebekah Pulaski

Editors

Emily Miller and Rebekah Pinedo

Creative Works Committee

Scholarly Works Committee

Emilie Nannenga, Victoria Barraza, Jaden Massaro, Walker Smith

Elizabeth Castelan, Jared Rhone, Dafne Calderon

Photography & Art Committee

Max Seps, Trenton Fennell, Michael Chavez

Autographs

Autographs