

Montclair Write Group Sampler 2016

LICENSE NOTES

Published by Strange Worlds Publishing

Copyright 2016 Hank Quense

All Rights Reserved.

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ISBN 9781310046711

Published by Strange Worlds Publishing at Smashwords 2016

First Publication 2016

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword

Acknowledgements

Essays

Fiction

Memoirs

Poetry

Monologues

Author Listings

About This Book

Foreword

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By Hank Quense

The beginnings of the Write Group are lost in the mists of the past and go all the way back into the last millennium. The legends say that in the beginning a small band of plucky writers gathered in the Montclair Library to form a support group and to comment on each others' work.

From this humble start, the Write Group grew. And grew. And grew. Today, it has over four hundred members. Every week, these members get an email that lists the activities scheduled for that coming week. These activities may include poetry meetings, support group meetings, memoir meetings, novel writing meetings, one-act plays and a host of other activities. The total activities each month often exceed thirty.

As the membership grew, naturally some of the members moved out of area and the state and even out the country. These vagabonds stay in touch with the group and sometimes join a meeting via Skype.

The odd thing about the Writing Group is this; there is no one in charge! There is no president or board of directors, or even dues. It just functions really well through the efforts of volunteers such as the eighteen Write Group members who worked on this Sampler and whose efforts made it possible.

Acknowledgments

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This book didn't happen by accident. It required a lot of work by a lot of people performing a lot of tasks. Voluntarily! These volunteers and their assignments are listed below.

Project Director:

Hank Quense

Submissions Managers:

Nancy Taiani:

Niraj Shah

Readers:

Donna O'Donnell Figurski

Rose Blessing

Keith Biesiada:

Mirela Trofin

Dilis Burke

Paula Maliandi

Erin Roll

Nancy Taiani

Joel Foulon

reg e gaines

Ron Bremner

Copy editors:

Martha Moffet

Helen Lippman

Dilis Burke

Barbara Witmer

Formatting & Production:

Hank Quense

Publisher:

Strange Worlds Publishing

The cover was designed by Gary Tenuta, a cover artist who creates all the Strange Worlds Publishing covers. Visit Gary's website by following this link: http://garyvaltenuta.blogspot.com

The autumn leaves painting on the cover is called Autumn Breeze and is an original work by Nancy Taiani. Nancy says the leaves are as diverse as the writing in this edition of the Sampler.

Nancy-Jo Taiani lives in New Jersey with her husband of 38 years. She enjoys painting, writing, gardening, and hiking in the spare time left from advocating for the environment and social justice.

Nancy-Jo's watercolor and acrylic paintings have been exhibited in various venues. Her books, Healing Father John - A Journey of Contrariness, Connection and Change, about her relationship with a charismatic and capricious priest and A Night of Power: A Ramadan Story, an illustrated book to introduce 7 to 10 year-olds to the Muslim holy month, are available on Amazon.com.

Essays

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Red Scare in Newark

By Helen Lippman

Sixty-one years ago, in the spring and summer of 1955, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) held hearings in Newark. Harold Lippman, a Newark physician, former Army captain—and my father's younger brother—was one of more than thirty men and women hauled in for questioning.

Like my uncle's three children, I was a red-diaper baby. My parents belonged to the American Communist Party throughout my childhood, and in 1955, I committed a treasonous act of my own. I was seven.

During a sleepover at my best friend's house, I defied my parents, passing on my rudimentary understanding of what they had taught but forbidden my sister and me to tell: the countries everyone thought were bad were really good because people there shared everything equally. We had no idea why that was deemed by some to be a bad thing. All we knew was that to talk about it could bring us ruin. My indiscretion so terrified me that I never said a word about my family's Communist beliefs for the next twenty years.

I  didn't know about my uncle's brush with HUAC until someone read from a transcript of the hearing at his eighty-seventh birthday party in 2002. McCarthyism and the Red Scare had long since lost their grip on the country, but I was still shocked by the boldness of Harold's testimony nearly half a century earlier.

When told by an HUAC investigator that "we were reliably informed you were the chairman of the doctors' cell of the Communist Party in Newark," he calmly replied, "I didn't say that," then reprimanded his interrogator for posing more than one question at a time.

"Are you withdrawing all other questions?" he demanded when asked whether he was a member of the Communist Party. After multiple reassurances that this was indeed the case, Harold took another tack: "Then I must decline to answer on the grounds that the very existence of this committee is a violation of the fundamental doctrine of separation of powers upon which our democracy is based..."

He went on to assert that HUAC was violating Article III of the Constitution, as well as the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Eighth, Ninth and Tenth Amendments. When he began ticking off the provisions of the First Amendment, the committee chair interjected, "Just say 'the First Amendment.' We know what it contains. We are lawyers, and you are a doctor."

That quieted Harold not at all. He continued his litany of reasons not to respond, including a "fundamental American right" to be left alone. When it became evident that further dialogue would only yield more of the same, the interrogators dismissed him and called the next witness.

My uncle's picture appeared on the front page of The Newark Star-Ledger soon after, along with photos of three Newark teachers who also testified. All three pleaded the Fifth and lost their jobs. Not so for Harold, as there was no one to fire him. He was a self-employed general practitioner with a constantly crowded office on Newark's Elizabeth Avenue, committed to caring for city residents even when they couldn't afford to pay.

Like most Americans subpoenaed by HUAC, Harold was accompanied by and was allowed to confer with an attorney. But the lawyers were forbidden to address the committee and could be cited for contempt of Congress for failure to abide by the House rules. Witnesses who refused to answer questions put before them or to name names faced contempt charges and possible imprisonment as well.

But the infamous blacklist was a far more common and insidious consequence.

Hollywood's blacklist achieved notoriety in 1947, when ten prominent screenwriters and directors were banned from working in the entertainment industry. Within a few years, the names of dozens of actors, writers and musicians were added to the list. The Red Scare continued throughout the 1950s and, although a precise number of those affected is impossible to come by, an estimated ten thousand Americans lost their jobs—and their livelihoods.

After the teachers were fired, Newark's seven thousand city employees were ordered to sign loyalty oaths and fill out questionnaires about present and past affiliations. No sooner had the forms been handed out than the city council did an abrupt about-face. The requirement was tabled, according to The New York Times, because the council member who had initiated it objected to asking staffers about their participation in any of the organizations on the US attorney general's "subversives" list.

Newark academics were targeted, too, as were tenants. The state supreme court upheld a decision by Newark College of Engineering to fire a faculty member who refused to sign a loyalty oath. Rutgers University announced automatic dismissal of any faculty member belonging to the Communist Party and forced out three professors. The Newark Housing Authority threatened to evict two tenants who refused to swear they did not belong to subversive groups.

Harold Lippman, meanwhile, practiced medicine in Newark for decades. Shortly after the birth of his grandchildren, he wrote them a letter describing his experiences in World War II, when he landed at Omaha Beach in Normandy one day after D-Day and served as a medic. He was awarded a Bronze Star, a Presidential Unit Citation and a Combat Medical Badge, among other commendations. When he died in 2005 at eighty-nine, Dr. Lippman received a military burial at Tahoma National Cemetery in Kent, Washington—a fitting farewell for an American who loved his country and worked tirelessly to make it better.

Portrait of the Station, Frankfurt, 2013

By Rose Blessing

The arriving Deutsche Bahn train noses itself into the gleaming gray and white embrace of the Frankfurt airport station platform area with a whoosh and a squeal. Train doors smoothly swish and click themselves open. Passengers wrangle suitcases, backpacks, tickets, coats and children out of the train and then file across wide strips of polished white tiles. Shrieks of braking trains follow the arrivees up the ridged steps of escalators into a cavernous main hall.

An arch of glass and steel hugs this upper level; morning sun peers in. Travelers, some streamlined, some hindered by luggage as heavy as themselves, scurry to and from the corridors that lead to local city trains, the airport or the parking lots. Knots of people fall out to embrace each other, kiss cheeks, shake hands or bow, as nationalities and relationships demand. Cell phones illuminate bent faces.

Elevated squeaks and baritone beats of varying languages, as in a James Bond movie scene, ricochet about the station. Above the clunk-ka-thunk of rolling luggage floats the musical, elaborately enunciated German language, crunched by loudspeakers, reverberating from the curved ceiling and seconded by a British English translation. The posh disembodied voices announce the arrivals, departures and postponements of trains to and from the great cities of Europe—Munich, Paris, Rome, Amsterdam—in matter-of-fact tones, as if such travel were an everyday occurrence.

Awesome Is the New Okay—and Other Obsequious Responses

By Ethel Lee-Miller

Although I appreciate the sleekness, efficiency, and rapid pace of texting, RUOK? ETA5. ATM. LOL, I am still loyal to the old-fashioned method of talking on the phone. The phone is my friend. I use it for actual conversation, to give or get information. If I can't place an order online, or have not received an item, I pick up the phone and call.

And here is where I have discovered that there are qualities I possess that are awesome.

I'm tracking down a missing order from ... well, it doesn't matter from where the item was ordered. What matters now is it's supposed to be at my home and it's not.

I am on the phone with a customer associate whose script allows for some deviation. When Sean tells me his name and that he will help me, he also responds to my, "Hi, Sean, how are you today?" (I want to get results and know building relationships is important).

"I'm cool," he replies. I've got a live one here.

We establish that I'm looking for my promised package and that yes, he can, and WILL help me with that.

"But first," Sean says, "let me just bring this up on my screen. Your name?"

"Ethel ..." I hear the click click clicking of his keyboard.

"Ah, here we are. Address?"

I tell. And he says, "Awesome."

At first I think he has some Tucson living in his life experience, or dreams of escaping another winter of where he is currently hunkered over his desk in Minnesota, or Canada, or New Jersey. But with each subsequent request—phone, order number, size—he tells me, "That's awesome."

Gone is okay, thank you, or got it. It's awesome. Is he of the generation where parents praised every nuance of their child's life with escalating compliments?

"You ate all your dinner. Great!"

"You picked up your clothes. Good work."

"You brushed your teeth. Wonderful."

"You breathed in and out? Awesome!!"

By the time Sean has tracked my order, I am just about ready to believe this product is awesome, he's awesome, and I'm awesome. He promises me it will be at my doorstep tonight at 6 p.m. Great. We bid adieu. And there is an almost instant follow-up email confirming our conversation and resolution to my problem. I can't resist a reply. AWESOME!!!

Not only am I awesome but also I suspect my processing, communication skills, and taste in food are approaching perfect. My husband and I like to eat out a lot. We can cook. And we do cook. We alternate cooking simple, nutritious meals for each other.

Some evenings we agree. "Let's just go out."

We live in Tucson where multiple restaurants are vying to fulfill our appetite wishes. Burgers, wraps, steak, patio dining, pasta, Thai, Italian, Southwest, organic, gluten-free, or carb-laden. We've got it all. Each of these establishments is nearby, quick, not too expensive, and usually employs youngish servers. Almost all employees in Tucson are youngish in comparison to our "maturing" ages.

Lately it seems no matter what we order, we're told that it's "perfect." The first time I heard that my order of pumpkin spice soup was perfect, I thought it was the chef's special. But my scallops, side of broccoli, and house salad were perfect, too. "Perfect" brings my choices, my wants and food desires to a level that makes my taste buds tingle.

But I cannot help leaning towards cynicism at this obsequious treatment. Did the servers all take the same server training course? Were they told, "Ditch that boring 'okay,'" or the more bland response, a simple nod?

Server, if you are really into it, diversify your acknowledgment. Pull up that mental vocabulary file from your high school class or college application. Make my choice "sparkling," "delicious," "inspired." Yes, it's a compliment to my good judgment. But there is also an implied contractual agreement in progress here. The establishment must plan and cook, and you, Server, must place that turkey, cheese, and lettuce wrap in front of me with a flourish. You must live up to this expectation, so that when I take that first bite, I'll close my eyes, lean back in rapture and breathe, "Perfect."

Author Bio

Native New Yorker and retired New Jersey teacher and counselor, Ethel Lee-Miller now resides in Tucson, AZ. Beginning her writing career in New Jersey included being a charter member of The Write Group.

She is the author of Thinking of Miller Place: A Memoir of Summer Comfort, relating her idyllic childhood with her identical twin. A reprint of Thinking of Miller Place includes a new cover, updates on "the Finns," and Reading Group Guide. Seedlings—Stories of Relationships is a humorous, yet finger-on-the-pulse-of-relationships collection of short stories.

Ethel also shares her experiences through public speaking presentations, Odyssey Storytelling, and coaching services for emerging writers.

She is active in the Arizona writing community—as Tucson representative for the International Women's Writing Guild, hosts Writers Lunch and Writers Read, and is founder of The Eastside Writing Room, an interruption-free haven for writers.

www.etheleemiller.com

https://www.facebook.com/etheleemillerauthor?ref=hl

Aaron in Memoriam: From Trashman to Mayor

By Sue Fine

(Excerpt from memoir in progress: Confessions of an Executrix: A Collection of Essays and Letters to My Late Father )

Dear Dad,

Did I ever mention that when I was 13, I realized you were not immortal? Don't worry about answering. I know I never did.

Your mortality. I mentioned it at your memorial service, the one we had over your dead body. I know. You wouldn't have allowed us to have the service.

You'd have said, "Too much fuss, too complicated, I don't want you to do that, OK? OK!"

That last "OK" was always your final word in a conversation when you decided something was out of the question.

Who spoke?

Mark's lover, Philip, was the emcee—Mark whom we knew since I was in high school, before he came out. Mom was the first person he told. I was jealous that he didn't tell me. Our dear Mark was one of so many who fell victim to the AIDS epidemic in the '90s. Knowing Philip has been a link back to Mark, whose absence takes on form in the space between Philip and me like a missing piece of a puzzle.

G erry spoke first. Of course, he arrived on "Gerry Time." I don't know if you or Mom invented that term, but it has stuck with those you left behind. I don't have to remind you that Gerry is someone who needs 25 hours in a day and eight days in a week to accomplish half the good deeds he sets out to do. He was one of your dearest friends. He always offered to help you. He would schedule an hour and a day—for instance, Tuesday at 3 pm—to set up your new flat screen TV, but the Tuesday might become a Thursday and the 3 p.m. an 11. You would say, "Well, Gerry said he'd be here tonight, but of course that's in Gerry time, so who knows."

When it came to the end of your life, though, Gerry was spot-on. He regularly checked in on you. He nudged Dave and me when we needed to get there. Once you had an anxiety attack due to a bad reaction to medication. He sat with you until I arrived. He helped us understand how you might be experiencing things in your last hours when the medications proved inadequate or produced your anxious reactions, so scary to watch.

After you died, he relaxed a little, slipping back into "Gerry Time." He agreed to take on the daunting task of being the first to speak at your service. Family, friends, neighbors and your colleagues filled the 50 rented chairs we set up in the living room facing towards the front entrance hall of your emptied home. Gerry's current wife and his daughter from his previous marriage were there. It was time for the service to begin. The guests waited expectantly.

"Where is Gerry?" I asked his wife.

She shrugged. "He said he was on his way," she said, remaining noncommittal. His daughter's eyes widened.

We were all used to it.

This time, though, Steve outdid Gerry. My husband, Steve. You used to joke with him about your death before it became too close to be funny.

You said, "Steve, I want you to build me a coffin when I die. Nothing fancy, a simple pine box will suffice."

Steve said, "No problem, Aaron. I will."

When Gerry breathlessly arrived at the memorial service, Steve was still in the shower. Steve had worked until the last minute preparing for the service: picking up refreshments, cleaning, setting up flowers in your wheeled cart outside the front door, stowing our noisy dogs in the master bedroom—your bedroom—at the back of the house.

Philip, always prompt, insisted, "We need to begin! People are waiting."

Feeling pressured, I rushed down the hall to the master bathroom.

Poking my head into the steamy room, I said, "Steve, can you shower faster?"

"No," he said.

"Everyone is waiting." I pleaded.

"It's OK," Steve said. "It won't hurt them to wait a little."

While Philip stressed, I blamed myself. I didn't help you die peacefully. Now was I going to screw up your service? It seemed I couldn't please anyone, even where death was concerned. The tension reached a crescendo.

Then Steve emerged, transformed from his sweaty work clothes into his dress suit, and everything fell into place. Like a small misfit band that appeared out of nowhere and marched into a country field in a Fellini film, the service started. Philip introduced himself and thanked everyone for coming. Then he introduced Gerry.

Gerry's tender way of speaking about you cast a spell over the guests. Like a child hearing a favorite bedtime story, I relaxed and allowed myself to take in his words.

There were several comic moments as befits any service you and I might be involved in. First Max, my 70-lb labradoodle, broke out of the master bedroom and tried to join the ceremony. As Gerry spoke, Max's big mole-colored nose poked out from under the brown animal-print bed sheet that covered a table set up off to the side in the front entrance hall. There was a slight commotion as Steve discreetly, gently but firmly pulled Max backwards under the table, the mole nose disappearing beneath the sheet, and returned him to the bedroom. A few people up front witnessed this and laughed. The laughter was soothing. I imagined you laughing, too.

Then, when Gerry got to the part in his speech about hanging out with Mom when she fed the raccoons that lived in the attic, I quickly called out, "Not in this house!"

You see, Dad, the people who bought your house were neighbors. It had been their fairytale dream to someday live there with their four kids and aging parents. We negotiated the deal over the back fence. They generously let us delay the closing so we could have the service at your home. It was one of the last things we did there before the house was no longer yours and one of the few remaining links I had to you in town vanished.

The buyers attended the service. Not for one minute did I want them to think raccoons had been living inside the walls of the house. That was in the house where you lived before, the one at the other end of town. Again there was laughter.

Your business partner, Allan, spoke fondly of you: your astuteness as an attorney, your brilliance as a scholar; your sense of humor, modesty and kindness. He mentioned your stories about being stationed at Moody Field, Georgia, during World War II. I never heard those stories from you, Dad. Now I never will. I'm a little peeved about that. You see, I want to hold onto each kernel of information about you, not just the details, but the way you would have told it, in your elegantly subtle funny way, where the humor would sneak up on me.

I found the Moody Field pictures, Dad. You labeled some on the back, like the one from the New Year's Eve party on which you noted, "Where I discovered Cointreau." You look young and trashed. And you're smiling!

Philip read a poem he wrote called "The Room." It was about our dining room, the place where over the years so many folks, young and old, stopped by to visit, eat, smoke and drink bourbon or coffee and discuss politics or philosophy or watch television. I remember the gigantic conference table. It commanded the room. It was always covered with books and newspapers and tchotchkes. Placemats floated in between the piles of papers and there were coasters.

Mom was adamant about coasters, although sometimes she used ice cream container lids. She was always so thrifty. If it was a dinner affair, the papers would be temporarily relegated to the sidelines and the placemats briefly took priority.

And cats. Cats, cats, cats. Over the years a series of feline dynasties nestled on top of the papers or dashed across the table in the middle of a meal.

We sold that conference table at auction.

I spoke about how you and Mom met. But that's another story. I got through it without breaking down. I think adrenaline carried me.

And Jon spoke, Jon who lived with you for years when he was in college in the '70s after I'd left home. I think he even moved from your old house to your last house. He said you changed his life.

He sang, too.

He said, "First I'm going to sing 'Urge For Going' by Joni Mitchell."

Jon did that for me, Dad. I chose it for Mom.

He added, "I want to apologize to Joni and Tom Rush in advance for my rendition of this song. It's not my genre." He also noted that he had customized the song for you and Mom.

Then he sang a classical piece in his bursting baritone voice. You'd probably never admit it, but I think you might have liked it.

Afterwards, Philip asked guests to speak. They did, telling stories about you and Mom, little time capsules that burst open and released the warm light of memories.

But suddenly a croaking voice of despair rose up from the back of the room. Yes, Dad, it was Dave, your son, my brother. He could barely speak. Choking on his words, he said how much he missed you. We were all with him, struck by the utter loss. Stymied about where to go from there.

And then, as if coming to our rescue, Harry Brown stood up. He was dressed in formal trappings, sporting a fine Western hat.

"I'm Harry Brown, the trash man," he began. "Me and Mr. Fine was friends. When I found stuff I knew he'd like I left it in the back alley in town. When anyone said, 'Why you leaving that thing there?' "I said, 'Why that for Mr. Fine!' "

Everyone laughed. Grief and humor came together in your honor.

I wonder, Dad. Did Harry Brown score that almost life-sized Hannah Montana cardboard cutout for you? Steve urged me to toss it in a dumpster. But I knew better. I stationed Hannah at the front door during the yard sale we had at your house. I got $10 for Hannah.

After the service, a tall man shook my hand. "I'm the mayor," he said. "Your father was quite an original character. He will be missed."

I was touched that he came to the service, not as a politician, but as a man.

A service that the trash man and the mayor attended. That says it all, Dad!

Manage Your Time Terribly and Get More Done

By Brooke Allen

(C) 2014 Originally published by QZ.com:  http://qz.com/172718/if-you-manage-your-time-terribly-youll-get-more-done/

I'm terrible at doing what people tell me I should do, but I still get things done. I'm not sure why this is, but here's my best guess:

I manage my desires more than my time.

In high school, I never seemed to find time to do homework that I didn't want to do. It got so bad that in 1969, my high school calculus teacher, Mr. Foster, told me that if I did a single homework assignment, he'd base my grade on my tests—meaning I'd get an A. But if I continued to do absolutely no homework, he'd base my grade on the homework and give me an F.

I decided that if I was going to do only one homework assignment, I would make it suitable for hanging in a gallery. So I spent a big chunk of my savings to buy a mathematical font attachment for my parents' IBM Selectric, and I typeset my answers. In my dad's sculpture studio, I was able to use fixative to emboss my answer sheet and mount it on a wooden backing that I carved by hand. Mr. Foster was so thrilled that he wore my homework around his neck the entire day. When my other teachers saw it, each demanded one homework assignment from me, too. Damn!

To this day, before doing something I don't want to do, I try to transform it into something I'm eager to do. For more on this, I refer you to that great 20th century philosopher, Mary Poppins, who said, "In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun. You find the fun, and—SNAP—the job's a game!"

Don't do hard, boring useless things.

My friend Ken Caldeira runs a very productive lab at Stanford. He once told me that many academics get bogged down with really hard esoteric problems that nobody cares about, not even the researchers themselves. He told me he only wants projects that are fun and easy and have significant impact.

If someone is paying you to do hard, boring useless things, you need to have a conversation with your boss—or find a new job. If you are a student going into debt to have people give you hard, boring useless assignments, perhaps you'd be better off dropping out.

You don't always need to finish what you start.

Recently a successful businessman told me that he had been diagnosed with ADHD in mid-life. This helped explain why his personal and business life was such a mess. He was always starting things but he never finished them, and that would drive everyone around him nuts.

He told me his therapy began with a year of Ritalin, then a year of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), and finally his business itself became his therapy. He explained that the drug gave him a break from himself and CBT helped him reframe his circumstances. Finally he realized that most people are great at finishing what they start but have a hard time getting started. So now he starts all manner of things and then hands off the projects to other people to finish. They're happy, he's happy, and his business has really taken off.

As his experience exemplifies, the biggest problem with ADHD isn't necessarily that you have it, but that everyone around you hates that you have it. Just think how much better the world would be if schoolmarms would stop guilt-tripping rambunctious students and just let them run things as soon as they're ready.

Clear thinking saves time.

I once asked Dennis Shasha of NYU's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences how he accomplishes so much and still has time to help so many people. He said, "I focus on what I do best—usually thinking through a problem, writing something clearly, or programming in K." I, too, try to think clearly, and for problems that can't be expressed with words I use APL, a programming language that's a forerunner to K.

Making time for people saves you time.

The more you do for others, the more they will do for you. This saves you time. Kind of obvious, if you think about it.

Don't lie.

Living in a fictional world is exhausting and a huge time sink. Don't do it.

Manage people.

If you want your life to be about being of use to other people, only a very limited amount of time management makes sense. That's because other people have needs and present opportunities on their own schedules, not yours. You need to get good at managing these people and the time will take care of itself.

Learn how to say No. This will allow you to say Yes much more often. I once asked a friend to do a favor for me that would have taken him about six hours. In his e-mail turning me down, he said that while many people might say, "I don't have time," that would be false. He has the same amount of time as everyone else, he added, and although it would be possible for him to do what I asked, he chose to spend his time differently from the way I had hoped.

You may not be used to such forthrightness, but if you treat people honestly you'll find that it strengthens your relationships rather than hurting them.

But don't manage other people's time.

When I asked my friend to do something for me, I was trying to tell him what to do with his time. When he said No, he wasn't telling me what to do with my time—only what he did not want to do with his.

And if you're a grownup, stop torturing little ones. My parents let me have a childhood in an age-appropriate way. They forced me to do certain chores, but they didn't make me do much of anything just "for your own good." Summer, for example, was for getting into trouble, getting out of trouble and not telling my parents about it. This was fine with them as long as the lawn got mowed.

The American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) was first released in 1952, the year I was born. The first edition was 130 pages and included 106 mental disorders. By 1994, when my sons were children, the manual had grown to 886 pages and itemized 297 disorders, some of which I see as fancy names for Mark Twain's definition of a boy: "Noise with dirt on it."

A new DSM has just come out, and I suspect that Time-Obsessed Parenting Syndrome is not in it. And it won't be until someone comes up with an expensive drug "cure." There is a simple cure, though: Just stop.

To-do lists are best if you forget where you put them.

The great thing about writing something down is that your subconscious brain will stop obsessing about it, and you can then relax and go to sleep or the movies or whatever. The bad thing about a to-do list is that you might feel compelled to do everything on it. Luckily, I'm great at making lists and then losing them. Yes, a to-do list will help me get to sleep tonight; tomorrow, when I can't find the list, I will only do what I remember to do, which will turn out to be the important things.

Also, keep "did" lists. If you track everything you've already done, the little bit still left to do seems far less daunting.

Practice structured procrastination.

I am writing this story because I should be getting ready for a presentation. But I was sick of thinking about it, so I checked my inbox for something fun to do and found a request from an editor. That's how my life works; nearly everything I've accomplished has been done because I was trying to avoid doing something else.

John Perry, a professor emeritus at Stanford, calls this "structured procrastination," and he has a website (www.structuredprocrastination.com) and a book about it. You should read it someday unless you're behind on a deadline—in which case you should read it right now.

What is time good for anyway?

What are we talking about anyway? We are talking about your time on earth, so before you decide how to manage your time, you need to know what you want your life to be about. You can't have it all and, therefore, if you concentrate on one thing, something else will have to give.

For example, if your life is about checking off chores on a to-do list, you will probably have less time to explore unanticipated opportunities. If you're more of an explorer, you're likely to leave undone the things you were working on when an opportunity for adventure arises.

PATIENCE

By Hank Quense

© 2008

Writing fiction is an activity that demands an extraordinary amount of patience. In fact, I'm convinced that the legendary "patience of a saint" is trivial compared to the patience required to be writer. Patience, unfortunately, is an attribute I am not naturally blessed with. As a consequence, my development as a fiction writer has been accompanied by a parallel development in the amount of patience I exhibit. This patience is required in three separate, but related, areas: in designing a story, in revising the story and in waiting for a reply from a market.

Designing a story:

This first area was the toughest to acquire patience in. When I first started writing, I worked the way many, if not most, inexperienced writers work; as soon as a story idea popped into my head, I started writing the first scene in the new story. Inevitably, the story thudded to a stop after two or three scenes. While I grappled to try to continue the story, I'd get another idea and go off on a different, but no less futile, attempt to write a story. This process led to an alarming inventory of half-written, underdeveloped stories. Over time, I realized that my process needed changing.

In developing a new process, I came to the shocking realization that writing the first draft of a story is the last thing a writer does on the project and that this writing constitutes only a small part of the work involved, on the order of ten to fifteen percent. My new process involves a great deal of patience since it requires that I now first develop the characters, a story ending and a believable path from the story beginning to the end. Only then can I start the fun stuff: writing a first draft. In short, the new process requires that I have the patience to completely design a story prior to writing the first draft. By actual observation, this sometimes can take three years to go from the first idea (always about a character) until I get a satisfactory story design for that character to romp around in. During this time, I usually have a number of variations that are found wanting and end up discarded.

Story revisions:

My lack of patience in revising stories made me waste a lot of time and, I'm sure, annoyed a multitude of editors. Whenever I finished a revision, I always enthusiastically thought it was perfect and I sent it off to a market. The only advantage, a dubious one, of this process is that it led to rapid replies, always a rejection and always a pre-printed form or email.

Gradually, an alternative method took shape. I noticed the rejected stories always had many problems: in the writing style, in the continuity of plot logic and in the characterization and typos to mention a few. Now, I put the just-finished draft away for a time and then read it again. Once the revision is completed, I put it away again. After an interval, I repeat the process. I continue this process until one of two situations occur. The first is that I don't make any additional corrections. The second is a feeling that if I read the story one more time, I'll throw up. When either of these occur, the story is ready to get submitted.

Editorial replies:

When I first started writing, replies came back almost instantaneously. At the time, I didn't realize that the rapidity of the rejection indicated a lousy manuscript. As my skills improved and my experience grew, the response times increased and began to draw comments from the editors. These increases tested my patience and I groused to myself about the inefficiency of the editors. Eventually, I intuited that lengthy intervals meant my story was a contender for a slot in a future edition of the magazine. Alas, from experience, I learned that a lengthy interval could also mean a sick editor, a bankrupt publisher, or a lost submission. All of these things happened to me more than once.

In conclusion:

Now that I've developed patience, my writing processes are much more stable and efficient. Frankly, I miss the antsy feelings I used to get while waiting for an editors reply. I also miss the enthusiasm that filled me as I threw myself into a new, and totally incomplete, story idea. As for revising stories over and over, I can't think of anything else that is quite so dull.

All in all, I find patience isn't as great as it's cracked up to be. While it may indeed be a virtue, it's still pretty boring and a lack of it can make life more interesting.

Progressive Unveiling

By Bing Chang

It is His will. He plans for His truth's progressive unveiling.

It is His design. He allows for man's progressive understanding.

He planted a guiding post of light using His chosen people.

He planted a seed for His only Son in the Hebrew People.

He circumcised them to secure their fidelity to His holiness.

He judged but delivered them from adversities as divine witness.

~

For a period of 400 years from eighth to fourth centuries BCE,

Hebrew prophets from Elijah to Malachi revealed His decrees.

Jeremiah, Isaiah and Daniel unfolded His truth to be fulfilled.

Prophecies of Elisha, Jonah, Amos, Zechariah, His words instilled.

Israelites' faith in God laid the foundation of the monotheism.

Prophets' revelations of God exemplified the essence of Judaism.

~

In this same period, God preconditioned all the gentile civilizations.

Zoroaster, Homer, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle: elite thinkers of conceptions.

Buddha, Jina, Confucius, Meng-Tzu, Mozi, Lao-Tzu: great sages of wisdom.

Worldwide intellectuals flourished and guided leaders of major kingdoms.

God raised the collective human consciousness under His sovereignty.

He infused divine knowledge into intellectuals on the meaning of humanity.

~

Then came the 400 silent years; God let His people grow on their own.

Persian, Greek and Roman empires conquered territories unknown.

Qin and subsequent Han dynasties unified China into a centralized society.

The Mauryan Empire of India enjoyed peaceful and religious sovereignty.

Consolidated civilization heightened consciousness of spiritual revelation.

God primed all cultures to receive His message with a proper condition.

~

Then John the Baptist initiated the sacred advent of the Christ, His Son.

Incarnated Godhead declared God's words and divine wisdom to everyone.

He performed the ultimate sacrifice by defeating death for man's redemption.

He fulfilled all Prophets' foretelling and testified the truth with completion.

Paul's miraculous conversion started evangelization into all gentile nations.

The longest-lasting Roman Empire adopted Christianity as its official election.

~

Now, after another 2,000 silent years, though the Gospel reaches all world corners,

Assorted beliefs abound, false teachings misinform, theologies pursue all manners.

What is a Christian's primary responsibility expecting the Christ's second coming?

Besides staying on track of a Christian living, what mission should he be pursuing?

Would the ecumenical initiative aiming at the church's unity be a most urgent mission?

Would the interfaith dialogue to gain the absolute truth be a most sacred commission?

~

When men's progressive consciousness understands the true meaning of conscience,

Men of all faiths can venerate the same True God and rest secure in His omniscience.

Implied truths hidden in manmade religions can be reconciled with the Scriptures.

God's grace and His universal love will shine in all faiths, all nations and all cultures.

Thousands of children of Israel in white robes will stand before the throne and the Lamb.

A great multitude of all nations and tongues will be saved according to God's program.

Author Bio

Bing Chang was an IT managing director for JPMorgan Chase. Since his retirement, he has been trying to learn how to write poems and prose. He hasn't published anything so far, but is interested in the possibility of sharing my thoughts with readers.

Squeeze, Release and Smile

By Rosanna Cappelluti

At the bottom of my junk drawer lies a yellow stress ball with a smiley face. Its inviting smirk teases to be squeezed yet doing so conjures up contradictory feelings. Why would anyone want to squeeze and potentially harm, a smiley face? Wearing a smile on your face, as I have done, doesn't come without its drawbacks. Though well intentioned, it can sometimes be mistaken for disrespect, despite feelings of anxiousness or embarrassment. Hence, bittersweet memories arise as a result from studying this jovial ball as I: squeeze, release and smile.

I once had a boss who had such intense power struggles that he felt insulted by my constant positive outlook on the tasks at hand. After all, what was so amusing about photocopying? I quit that job after only three days, his fifth employee within two weeks, and only got paid for two because he compared my cheerfulness to a lack of work ethic. I stood up to a bully that day and should have felt proud but instead I felt guilty for putting on a happy front.

Years later, I would be working in yet another hostile environment surrounded by the likes of the aforementioned boss. Feeling unappreciated and stuck, I spiraled into a dark world of anxiety attacks. Emotionally drained, I would come home and take my frustrations out on my loved ones, further alienating myself from the people who brought me the most happiness. Yet most of my coworkers never suspected such havoc occurring within me as I greeted them daily with a good morning grin.

Squeeze, release and smile.

Smiling can also backfire in the dating world. On the hit TV show "The Bachelor" Ben Higgins asks one of his top three ladies, "You smile a lot; is it to hide behind your true feelings?" Used in this context I find that comment offensive because it picks at her appearance as if he had just called her "overweight." Would it have been acceptable for her to reply, "You're gloomy a lot; is it because you feel sorry for yourself?" Both statements are uncouth, yet one would never suspect his comment as such because it is shielded by the word "smile." Ultimately, he sent her home and I believe her laughter was the motive behind his decision.

Similarly, I recall being told that I was "too nice" to date, presumed by the belief that I would never stir the pot or speak up about what I wanted. It's a comment that has forever scarred me because I have seen over the years how it has been accurate in many instances I faced. For example, there was the crush that put his arm around his girlfriend minutes after he had flirted with me; the same crush that took his "friend" to the prom even though he considered me one of his "best" friends. And still another boy I was smitten with who told me he had found his soulmate and waited anxiously for me to give him my blessings. In all these instances I acted blasé while unintentionally giving them free access to play with my heart. However, I also found a prejudice to that comment that touched upon the core of my personality and for that I'm glad I never changed for any boy simply because he was too scared to accept me for the sincere and loyal partner that I always was and continue to be.

Squeeze, release and smile.

I was raised to be kind and thoughtful towards every person I meet and I am proud of my parents for nurturing me with such great values. Now that I am a parent myself, I am even more cognizant of how I behave towards others but try to demonstrate the difference between being compassionate and standing up for myself. For instance, I would encourage my son to be polite and uplifting while delivering a brilliant presentation shortly after a boss had taken his frustrations out on him. But on the other hand, I would dissuade my son from exhibiting an attitude of complete tolerance if a girl should break his heart.

Each one of us deals with emotions differently but don't confuse smiling for weakness. Grinning through an unpleasant situation takes great character and composure and is an admirable quality to possess. I do regret smiling in certain situations that were clearly unfitting: the mean boss, the hostile work environment, the player crushes. But I will never apologize for trying to be the better person because even though there are many ways this gesture can backfire, there is no greater pleasure than to receive a smile by someone from whom you least expect it. In the movie "Under the Tuscan Sun," Frances Mayes (played by Diane Lane) meets her grumpy next door neighbor who never reciprocates her smiles or good mornings; never that is, until one day when he does.

It is moments like those that solidify the importance of cheerfulness and for that reason I will continue to smile despite the days I'm being squeezed.

Fiction

(back to the Table of Contents)

House for Rent

By Nancy-Jo Taiani

(Publishers note: Nancy not only write this story, she did the illustrations. Nancy also did the autumn leaves painting that graces the front cover of the Sampler.)

F   
ound among the trash and treasures when we first took over the summer lake house, was a simple birdhouse with a small round opening. It was easy to miss at first exploration, hidden as it was beneath the work bench. It was covered with dust and its bottom lay apart on the floor.

~

I   
washed it off, fitted the bottom in place, and decided to brighten it up with a coat of paint before welcoming a feathered family. It was late in the day and we were not staying, so I parked the birdhouse on a cement house ledge that held a pillar of the deck inplace, making a mental note to bring paint next time we came.

~

W   
e returned after two weeks, following a spell of wind and rain. I found the birdhouse on the ground at the foot of the pillar. Its bottom and top had come apart in its fall.

~

W   
ith a sigh, I picked up the pieces, and was astonished to find a small,broken nest within the house. Though there were no eggshells, still I felt sad that I had not fastened the house to the pillar. Either the wind, or my neighbor's orange cat, Morris, must have brought it down and shattered the hopes of a bird couple.

I nailed the roof back on, refitted the bottom and put the nest material back in the box. Since some bird was already interested in the home, I decided not to paint it, but considered tying the box to the same pillar. The ledge of the pillar was only a yard above the ground—low enough to attract Morris, perhaps for a second time. So instead, I secured it with wire to a hook on the bottom of the overhanging deck

~

Then I joined my husband by the shore. After a swim I spotted a swallow gracefully swooping over the lake. He was a handsome sparrow-sized bird with a black beak and a white breast. Iridescent feathers on his back broke the sunlight into various shades of blue that blended out to his black wing tips. He landed on a branch of the straggly tree rooted at the water's edge.

~

Looking back at our house, I saw his mate sitting on the pillar's ledge where the birdhouse had been. She sat with head bowed, wings hanging limply at her sides. The male tree swallow, for that's what he was—swooped over to her, chirping, but she remained the picture of dejection. He returned to the tree and called to her again.

Still she did not move.

"Look!" I said to my husband, "She wants the box and her nest. But it wasn't safe there."

"Tell that to her," he said.

~

The male flew toward the house again. This time he passed the birdhouse. He

f   
lew by it again and again. Then, landing on the perch, he tilted his head to look inside.

~

He called to his mate. I was certain he was saying, "Look, Sweetie, here's our home. Come up here and take a look."

Sweetie did not budge.

The tiny male flew back to the tree and made repeated sweeps toward the birdhouse, calling excitedly all the while, "Sweetie! It's our house! It's up here! We can build another nest!"

~

Sweetie turned to look at him. She shrugged her wings but made no move to leave off her mourning.

"I hope she changes her mind," I told my husband. "They're so pretty. I'd love to see them raise a family here."

~

T   
he male continued his swoops and chirpings. I admired his grace and the iridescent flash of his feathers. But the female would not change her mind. With what I interpreted as a last sigh, she lifted off the ledge and flew past us toward the other end of the lake.

The male followed.

They did not return to our house that summer though I did occasionally see the male's graceful acrobatics over the lake.

~

In March, I repainted the birdhouse and added a sign, "For Lease. Cozy,

c   
onvenient, safe from cats. Ready to move in."

Then I again fastened the house to the bottom of the deck. What a thrill it was to find, when we returned after the April rains, that a tree swallow family had taken up my offer.

Floating

By Martha Moffet

The young man, his face and arms dark as toast, leans against the railing of the sixth floor condo and looks out over the empty ocean. It is so hot in South Florida that almost all of the building's residents have fled, flying north, or, he imagines, going abroad. The glass doors to their terraces are shuttered with hurricane panels.

Despite the heat, it is the busiest time of year for the young man's employer. The building's balcony supports are crumbling, and the entire façade facing the ocean may have to be rebuilt. His T-shirt reads "Concrete Art."

The beach is not empty. Two women walk to the edge of the surf and stand ankle-deep where the waves unfurl and empty into a lagoon, its water still as a pond. They talk for a few moments and wade in, through the lagoon and over the sand bar until the water reaches their shoulders. Then they turn and face the beach, their heads rising and falling with the gentle waves. "Old," mutters the young man, turning back to his work.

Jane glances back at him. "He's not paying any attention to us," she says, stripping off her swimsuit and tying the floating straps around her wrist. Marnie barely hears her as she, too, takes off her suit and sinks into the tepid water.

This is an old tradition. Every year she and Jane wait for the snowbirds to leave so they can cast off their clothes and swim free, almost the way they cast off their inhibitions and talk, their private conversations drowning around them.

"Oh, heavenly," Jane sighs, thrashing to celebrate her freedom and creating eddies in a tall wave that lifts them up high. "This is the time of year when the air and the water feel exactly the same."

"Such a bother to suit up, just to walk from the building to the water," Marnie says. She does gentle jumping jacks, feeling colder water bell up to her crotch, then falling into a blissful float beside her companion.

Marnie talks quietly about her latest tests and treatment. Jane nods, asking an occasional question. Then Marnie asks Jane about her children. Rachel, Jane's oldest, lives in California with her screenwriter husband and two children. Jem, her son, lives in Manhattan. He is HIV-positive, but so far has remained healthy, If his wild adolescence had not been past by the time the newer, careful lifestyle—with its emphasis on safe sex—was introduced, Jane thinks he would not have exposed himself so recklessly. Marnie is not so sure.

"It's true that you rarely hear gay men regretting that kind of wild abandon, if they had a time like that in their lives," Jane concedes. It's as if it were their great moment of freedom, and they can't repudiate it."

"Who could?" asks Marnie.

The women keep talking, and the sun advances. The young man shifts to another floor and glances down at them again, this time seeing the bright bathing suits floating behind them like Portuguese men-of-war. "Oh, ladies!" he says aloud, as he tests another concrete support.

The sun is past its meridian now and right in their faces. Jane feels a burn across her forehead. "Have we had enough?" she asks. Marnie turns to reel in her swimsuit and points: "Look! Look out there. The line of the horizon really is a line. It's dark blue, like ink, as if someone took a pen and drew it."

They pull their suits up over knees, buttocks and shoulders, struggling with the wet material, losing some of the easy pleasure of their time in the water. Marnie tugs

her suit out and drops her breasts into the bodice. Suddenly she flashes back to the first time she exposed her breasts to Thomas, Jane's husband. She had told him she wanted a drawing of herself and he turned up at her door with his sketchbook and charcoals. And Jane has never known. Thank goodness, because the two women have ended up becoming best friends.

Jane dips her head back, letting the streaming water comb her hair. She has forgotten what it was she wanted to tell Marnie. Was she going to say that she can't promise to remember to take in Marnie's mail after she leaves for Johns Hopkins, or that she can't be relied on to run her car once a week to keep the battery alive?

Marnie doesn't realize how much she imposes upon friendship, Jane thinks. Any more than she realizes that I have never been jealous. Not when I was a girl and had crushes, nor when I was older and had certified lovers, nor after I married and had a home and family to protect. I can't even imagine what jealousy feels like. Marnie could tell me, perhaps.

The young man on the balcony leans against a rotting cement pillar and watches the women suit up, aggrieved that his attention is going unrewarded. The women allow the waves to carry them to shore, then walk up the beach together. Their voices rise up to his perch. "I have to pack," one says. "I have to make lunch for Thomas," says the other.

"Bor-ing," says the young man.

Beach Story

By Virginia Ashton

Me and Ma live at the beach. Our cottage is up among the rocks with a porch built over the biggest ones the waves can't reach. I like the sound of the waves except when there is a storm. I put my pillow over my head until the thunder stops.

I like the pretty shells and the bits if scratched glass I find on the beach. I was cleaning pieces to carry up in my basket, when I saw a car parked next to the cottage down on the curve. Most of the cottages are way around the curve where the beach is good for swimming.' I don't remember seein' anybody at the cottage on the curve before. It's old and has no paint on the outside. It looks kinda silvery gray in the sunlight. Sometimes the high school kids sit on the porch, but Ma always chases 'em off, if she sees 'em, 'cause the house is old and rickety. I waited for a while, but all I saw was the car.

When I finally saw lady, she was walkin' on the rocks. I didn't go right up to her. It's better not to go right up to 'em at first. Sometimes it scares 'em. They're afraid if ya take too long lookin' at em.' Sometimes I have to watch a long time before I can see what they're doin.' I mean I can see what they're doin,' but I can't tell what it's for. Then, sometimes they get mad and yell. . . ask what are ya starin' at or take their kids down the other end of the beach and like that.

So I didn't go close up at first. I stayed by our porch and watched her for awhile. She was singing "Skip to My Loo." I know the words, too, but I was afraid she'd get mad, so I just hummed along to myself.

Sometimes I hum along to the music in church, but if Aunt Ruth and Amy are with us, and Amy hears me she gets mad and shushes me and then people stare at us and she gets madder, so I don't do it too much, but it's hard not to hum along. It's so pretty. I know all the words by heart, but you're only s'posta sing when they tell ya. Still they keep playing the organ so pretty. . . Sometimes if I hum real soft even Amy doesn't hear me and then I wanna laugh, but I don't cause you're not s'posta to laugh in church.

Anyways, I was standing by the porch quiet like humming softly to myself when she came to my basket and stopped singin.' Then she looked right up at me like my stuff had told her where I was. She didn't say nothin' and I didn't say nothin,' but then I got to thinking she might take my basket, so I came down and told her it was my stuff.

I showed her the glass pieces and the good shells. She just stood there lookin' at my things. Finally, she picked up a piece of blue glass and walked off down the beach. I didn't say nothin' about the glass. I can always find more if I wanna. I thought maybe she needed somethin' pretty to hold on to. She's like a bird. She kind of shakes like the robin we found with the broken wing. She never talked, just the singin, and that stopped when she saw my basket. She must be scared bad to have the shakes like that.

I didn't see her on the beach again for a while. I was letting Big Kitty out one night when I saw her in the water. She was all white. It was her nightgown. I followed Big Kitty down to the beach. Ma don't let me go out far in the water. The waves are strong out there. I could just make her out, her shoulders and the nightgown floating around her. It was kind of funny, so I called "Hey" to her. First, she didn't move. But I kept callin' soft like, "Hey... Hey..." Finally, she turned around. I thought maybe she couldn't see the beach in the dark so I started to wave to her, and she walked back out.

I asked her what she was doin' in the water in her nightgown. She just looked at me and started to shiver. Then, Ma started yellin, for me out the back door, so I went in. When I looked back from the porch, she was still standin' there with her nightgown all stuck to her. Ma said she's crazy and to stay away from her, so I had to go inside.

I said maybe the lady ain't crazy. Maybe she's just sad about something. But, Ma said only a crazy person would go out in the ocean in her nightgown in the dark. She said if ya keep bein' sad and can't get yourself happy that means yer crazy. I wanted to tell Ma she sings pretty, but Ma was getting' mad cuz I was talkin' too much and she wanted to get to bed, so I didn't say no more about it.

~

Today I worked with Doc Simpson. Sometimes when there are lotsa calves birthin' he takes me along to help. Doc says it's a wonder to him how the animals know me. Ma says it's just one dumb animal to another. Doc was giving needles today. I hold the calves for him. They're not so scared when you hold 'em. I hold 'em an talk to 'em an they're not so scared.

I like the babies best. Not when they first come out all wet and bloody, but when they're licked clean and their coats are slick and shiny. Today one of last year's calves came right up to me at Nordstroms. He remembered me helpin' him get born.

Big Kitty knows me real good, too. He's lived with us since he was a little kitten. Big Kitty sleeps at the end of my bed. He waits for me every morning. He likes some of my cereal and milk for breakfast. He won't eat it unless it comes from my dish. Nobody else's, just mine. Big Kitty knows me good.

~

I was washin' a piece of glass in the rock pool, when I felt someone behind me. It was her, sittin' on a rock watchin.' Her hair was all tangled and her skirt was dirty. Ma don't let me go out like that. I have to be neat. But, I didn't say nothin' about it to her. Maybe that's the only clothes she's got. She watched me do the glass and shells 'til Ma came home from work, and I had to help carry in the groceries.

Later, I walked down to her end of the beach to see her house. I looked at it for a long time. It was all closed up like nobody lives there.

I went down the beach to her house again today. It was still all shut up. That's since Monday when Ma goes to work. Now it's Friday. I went up on the porch and listened. Big Kitty was with me, sniffin' around. He pushed the door with his nose and it opened. I was ready to run if she started hollerin' but nothin' happened. So I let the door go wide and then I saw her. She was all curled up in bed with the covers up to her chin. She was shivrin' like she was freezin.'

Doc says animals shiver cuz they're so scared they feel cold all over even when it's hot out. She was just like that. . . So I went round the bed and got in beside her. I was real careful, like with a colt that might kick ya, but she just sighed and leaned against me. Big Kitty jumped up and laid down by her feet, like he does when I'm sick. We stayed that way 'til she fell asleep. I didn't want to wake her, but I knew Ma would skin me if I wasn't home when she got back from work, so finally, I moved off the bed real slow like. She didn't even wake up. When I closed the door she was still sleepin.'

Next day, Ma didn't leave me no time to walk the beach. I had to help bake cookies for the church bake sale. Ma rolls out the dough and I cut with the cookie cutters, a bunny and a duck, for Easter. Ya have to get them close as ya can so ya don't waste the dough.

Anyways, when I got down to the beach again, her house was all opened up. She had opened the shutters and the windows, too. She had pulled the rocker outside and was rockin' on the porch hummin' to herself. I didn't know the song. When she saw me, she stopped. Her eyes got that wild look like she was gonna run, so I stopped, too. I didn't go no closer. I just waited. We were quiet like that just watchin' each other for a long time. It was hot in the sun, but I didn't move. Finally, I smiled at her, and she smiled back at me. I walked up to the first step and put down some cookies. She just kept watchin' me. I smiled again and unwrapped the foil so she could see the cookies. She still didn't move, so I went back home.

When I got to our porch, I looked back. She wasn't sittin' in the rocker no more. She was sitting on the step with the foil in her lap, eating a cookie. I woulda waved to her, but she was busy eatin' and lookin' out at the water.

In Other Words

By Donna O'Donnell Figurski

(Disclaimer: The names in this piece are changed to protect the "infamous.")

"Retelling" means to tell a story again in a new, different, and fresh way. No retelling will ever be exactly like the original. Each teller brings his or her own experience to the story, but the story should resemble the original tale. Sounds easy, huh? Well, try explaining that to six- and seven-year-old first grade students.

My high reading group had already surpassed the goals required of readers for the first grade, so I had to dream up more challenges for them. I wanted to combine their reading and writing abilities with being able to communicate the meaning of a story. Essentially, I wanted them to be able to read a passage, an article, or a book and tell about it in their own words. I gave the students a green "Retelling Notebook," assigned them a story, and explained what I wanted them to do. Two days later, I was excited when I met with the group and opened the first Retelling Notebook. I smiled as I glanced at the pages and pages that Allen had written. Kat's book was overflowing, too. How prolific! Yay! I thought. They are really getting this.

As my eyes moved down the page, I marveled at their sophisticated vocabulary, their correct spelling, and their proper use of quotation marks. (I hadn't even taught that yet. So smart! I thought.) As I continued to read, it dawned. My brow furrowed, and the smile disappeared from my lips. Uh oh! Now I have to teach about plagiarism. I again explained to the children that a retelling is telling something in your own words. I told them that the author had already worked really hard to drag the words from her head. Now they also had to drag words from their brains and tell their version of the story.

All right, so we had a false start. I had to reteach. "Reteach" means to teach the same thing, but in a new, different, and fresh way.

I decided to use the story of Cinderella. Everyone knows that story. So it was the perfect fairytale to demonstrate the skill of retelling. With just the six children sitting around my table, I began the tale. I, of course, was Cinderella. As Cinderella, I introduced my nasty stepmother and my mean stepsisters. But because Cinderella is a nice person, I did not tell my audience that my "steps" were nasty and mean. I simply said that they were my stepmother and my stepsisters and that they were going to the ball—AND that they refused to allow me to go. I repeat—I never said they were mean and nasty.

I proceeded to tell my version of the story. After the stepmother and stepsisters left for the ball, Cinderella began to weep uncontrollably. She was sad beyond hope that she was not able to go to the ball. But just then, her fairy godmother swept in. (I played the part of the fairy godmother, too. Actually, I played most of the parts.) "What is the matter?" the fairy godmother asked Cinderella. Between sobs, Cinderella said that she was too ugly to go to the ball. Cinderella's fairy godmother told her to stop crying. She patted her hand. She told Cinderella that she would go to the ball. That's when I turned into a real, live Cinderella. The rest of the class quickly gathered around the table while holding in their giggles. They did not want to be left out of watching their teacher morph into Cinderella.

"Look!" I cried, as I held out my dress for my fairy godmother to see. "I am a mess. My dress is dirty. It is ripped. And my hair! Just look at my hair!" I dragged my fingers through my "straggly locks." (I pulled out my hair to each side.) "How can I go to the ball like this?" I wailed. "My stepsisters are right—I am a mess!" I repeated. My fairy godmother tsk tsked. "No worries, my dear," she said with a grin. I looked at her as though she had lost her mind. Then she waved her "wand" over my "tattered" dress. I was enveloped in "blue lace and satin." I twirled, and my dress swirled around me. "Glass slippers," as dainty as crystal vases, encased my feet. I pinched myself and yelped. This was not a dream!

Then my fairy godmother pointed her wand at the "pumpkin" (Linney) growing by the door. That pumpkin swelled and ballooned until it was a beautiful coach. The "mouse" (Jute) hiding in the garden turned into a footman, and the "rats" (Charlie, Kat, Halia, and Allen), into four beautiful white horses. I was ready!

My fairy godmother warned me to return home by the strike of twelve. I promised, and then I "climbed into the coach behind the horses" and was off. (The horses, the coach, and I went "galloping" around the classroom.) When we "arrived at the ball," I saw the prince. He was as handsome as my stepsisters had proclaimed. I took his hand (Andy's), and we waltzed around the room, swirling and dipping as I held my pretend gown. (Andy went right into character and played the prince well—hamming it up for his audience of fellow classmates.)

Oh, the night was magical! We "danced under the shining moon," but it was to end too soon. With no warning, the clock began to chime . . . one, two, three. I stared at its hands. Six, seven, eight. I dropped the prince's hand and ran. Eleven . . . twelve o'clock struck. Panic! I dashed down the stairs—not even noticing that my glass slipper fell from my foot. (I kicked my own shoe off, and the kids hooted as I hobbled across the room with one shoe missing.)

As I made my way back home, the prince picked up my glass slipper. Soon he knocked on my door. I held my breath. He tried the slipper on the fat foot of my stepmother. No fit! He tried the slipper on the large smelly feet of my stepsisters. No fit! He tried the slipper on my dainty foot. The slipper fit! You can guess the ending. That summer, the prince and I were married, and we lived happily ever after.

With fresh ideas and a new outlook on retelling a story, the kids set off to rewrite. "Rewrite" means to rework the same words, but in a new, different, and fresh way.

When I next read their work, I was re-excited. "Re-excited" means . . . well, it really means nothing. It's not even a word . . . but you know what I mean. This time their retellings were remarkable.

Author Bio:

Donna O'Donnell Figurski, wife, mother, and granny, is a teacher, playwright, actor, director, picture-book reviewer, radio host for Brain Injury Radio Network, and writer. Donna published four stories with Scholastic's education department. She was a winner in New Jersey's 2013 Essex County Legacies Writing Contest, and she was recognized for her children's book-review column, Teacher's Pets, by the National Association of Education on its Site of the Week. Donna has three stories in a Native America Anthology (in press), and she has published articles in several brain-injury-related magazines on the web. Donna resides in Arizona with her husband and best friend, David.

You can read more of Donna's work at her personal blog (donnaodonnellfigurski.wordpress.com), on her website (donnaodonnellfigurski.com), or at her brain-injury blog (survivingtraumaticbraininjury.com).

Mama's Girl

by Virginia Cornue

Chapter 1—1955 North Carolina

I fell out of the pie apple tree, and all began. Mama wanted enough apples to bake a tart for the Business Girls' Circle meeting at our house on Thursday. "Sissy, run out there to the pie apple tree, and fetch me a pan of the best ones. Mind you don't get any with worms or scale on them." Mama was a teacher. All the ladies in her Circle worked. Back then, we didn't add "outside the home" to prevent any misapprehension that work "inside the home" was inferior because it was unpaid and domestic. Mama and her friends worked as teachers, sales girls, clerks, nurses. At home, they did their duty.

Mama was home from school early that Wednesday polishing furniture and starching and ironing the deeply ruffled organdy curtains for the living room windows. The night before, we had waxed the sitting room and dining room floors. That was so much fun. Mama would spread on the wax, which smelled like honey, and I imagined I was a yellow and black bee zizzing over the floors. I tied rags on my feet and skated around polishing. She dragged me on old worn-out towels for the final finish, and then we rolled on the floor together laughing. Mama made a game of everything.

My mama loved to be different, so she planned to have "Russian" tea, "trash" and apple tart for Circle refreshments. I knew what Russian tea was: Lipton's with sassafras roots, cinnamon sticks, and a dollop of frozen concentrated orange juice. Every spring, we went into the woods and dug sassafras roots from under the slender trunks, just as their mitten leaves were unfurling. We used the dried powdered leaves to thicken gumbo. I loved trash. Mama had gotten the recipe off the back of the Purina Rice Chex box. You mixed a box of rice Chex and a box of wheat Chex with a jar of roasted salted peanuts and some raw cashew nuts we got at the candy counter at Woolworth's. After you mixed up all the cereal and nuts, you drizzled some soy sauce and Worcestershire sauce over everything, tossed it and toasted it. Crunchy, salty and so different from the deviled eggs or yellow cake and white frosting which Mama brought home for me from other Circle meetings. "Finger food," Mama called it. Apple tart, well that was new to me.

Mama cut the flour and Crisco with two silver butter knives as she explained the difference between a pie and tart. "See here, Sissy, a pie is thick and has two crusts. You put the apple slices in any which way. A tart is elegant and thin. You lay the apple slices from the crimped crust towards the center in precise patterns around and round and round in an ever-diminishing spiral." Mama loved words strange to me like "precise," "diminishing" and "spiral." "But the real difference, Sissy, between pie and tart is you bake a tart crust first in a special pan. And before you bake it, you prick it all over with a fork so that it will lie flat and not bulge out of shape."

She tucked a stray hair into the bun at the nape of her neck as she detailed these fine points of baking lore. Everywhere she touched left little fingerprints of flour. She promised I could prick the crust if I hurried back with her white enamel dishpan full of apples.

I just doted on my mama. She could do just about anything that was worth doing in my estimation. She could slip tomato skins faster than anyone I knew. Even Miz Marlow, who always took blue ribbons for her canned tomatoes, ceded the floor to Mama when it came to stripping tomatoes naked. She knew the best picnic spots. She would drive us up back roads till they petered out in the still woods. We ate cold salads and sardines on saltines while resting on cool thick green mats of moss. "See what the forest has given us for a cloth, darling?" She could read clouds. She knew how to fix any lock broken. And she would make the best birthday cake castles—great layered things all shimmery and topped with iced and decorated cardboard throne rooms. Give Mama something to nail, and she'd whip her ball peen out of her big red leather pocketbook stamped to look like alligator skin and hammer away, telling me all the while how to correctly hold a hammer for the best leverage. Mama was a born as well as a certified teacher.

So out I went, taking the back porch stairs in two's, to the pie apple tree. I shinnied up, the little red-rimmed pan tucked under my arm. This was my special dreaming tree. I knew every branch, twig, and knot. I knew just how to swivel around the trunk and grab a second branch, while I put my knee up and over the next higher branch. I beat my own record getting up that tree.

I don't remember falling. I don't remember hitting the ground. I just remember hearing in my head the sound raw chicken meat makes when you tear it off the bone. Then Mama was slapping my face, crying, "She's dead. She's dead." Her face was so smeared with blood and flour she scared me. She looked so wild and torn up. Her apron was half off. Her tidy waved hair was flying like mad crows around her shoulders.

"I'm all right, Mama. I just got the wind knocked out of me. I skinned my knee; it stings." I sucked in my breath to ease the hot pain. I inventoried my parts. "My arm is sore, but I'm really okay, Mama." But she didn't stop crying as she stared over my head; her screams pierced my bones. I couldn't see what she was staring at, because she had me hugged so close, my bloodied nose mashed against her breast. I couldn't see the man who was crossing the yard. The man I would first know as my grandfather. Sometimes, on still days with no wind, and with Sarah and Jenny, my granddaughters, out of the house, I can hear her screams. My bones are like wind tunnels for her screams—making them flow faster and concentrating the sound.

I don't remember what happened next. I just know that a little while later—two hours, two days, two weeks—I was riding with Grandpa in his 1949 robin's egg blue Plymouth. We didn't talk all the way to his farm. I sat with my tan paper suitcase upright on my lap. I grasped its brown handle fiercely. Clutching that handle and sitting straight up was all that kept me tied to this world. Else wise, I would have flown off to the stratosphere of black crows and screams to be with Mama.

It was a long, long time before I found out what made her scream like that and go off with the crows. To tell the truth, maybe I didn't really want to know. Sitting up in Grandpa's Plymouth, I buried Mama's stream of pain deep down. My own pain of losing her and that of mine to come layered over hers. At the farm's mailbox, we turned into the long dirt track that dipped down under cool trees in the creek bottom. Before the track fetched up at the tractor shed by the house, I was myself again. Well, that's what Grandpa said. I did have a bright outside again. And that's where I lived—on my skin.

I didn't know where Mama was. I didn't ask. No one told. In fact we didn't discuss it at all. Now, it sounds weird, unfeeling even, to leave a child alone with grief and terror, but then that's what all the experts advised. Grandpa just didn't talk much—at least in the daytime.

When I stepped out of the car, I could smell the hot sand baking under the tin roof of the tractor shed. I squatted down with a piece of straw to stir a doodle bug hole. "Doodle bug, doodle bug, fly away home, your house is on fire, your children will burn," I chanted while I poked the straw deep into the cone to see if the doodle bug would come skittering out. None came. I sighed in satisfaction. "Your house is on fire. Your children will burn." Dusting off my knees and the scuffed toes of my brown lace-ups, I turned toward the crisp white bungalow, which perched on the crest of the rise surrounded by cotton fields. Blood-red geraniums higher than my head flanked the stone steps. Grandpa took my hand. I clasped tight with the other the handle of my little suitcase. Together we set off across the neat clipped grass.

Author Bio:

Virginia Cornue is the author and co-author of seven fiction and non-fiction books. Her most recent fiction is book three in the Sandra Troux Mystery series, Secrets at Abbott House (2015) co-authored with Linda Lombri under the pen name Crystal Sharpe. Secrets commences and ends in Montclair, NJ. In 2015, she also co-edited with William R. Trotter So Much Blood The Civil War Letters of CSA Private William Wallace Beard 1861-1865, a non-fiction book. She is the former executive director of the National Organization for Women, NYC and the NYC Women's Funding Coalition, as well as Newark Emergency Services for Families. Her 1990s doctoral research investigated social change and gender redefinitions in post-Mao China. Dr. Cornue teaches cultural anthropology and sociology at Bloomfield College, Bloomfield, NJ. She lives in Montclair with her daughter Mei who is an honors student at Brandeis University.

War and Piece

By Renae Madden

Detective Jake DeLaney had seen lots of things in his time. From the deserts of Afghanistan to the Meadowlands of North Jersey, he had witnessed a wide range of human cruelty and kindness. But he had not been prepared for this.

"All right, why don't you tell me what happened? From the beginning."

"She kicked us off our table. Got here first, I admit, and used it to store their board games. Then nobody actually sat at the table. They all sat on the couches and armchairs. When we got here at our usual time, she--" And this time the young woman pointed to an older, smaller woman.

"Do you know her name?"

"Don't want to."

"Fair enough." He took some notes. "Keep going."

"When she declared everything was set, I told her it wasn't. Have you ever tried to type on a coffee table lower than your knees? It's a beautiful piece, great for setting down your coffee and chatting while you lounge, but writing? I can't even use a pen and paper on that thing! God, my wrists ..."

"Miss, if you could stay on topic?"

"Right. I told her it wasn't working. The rest of my writing group seemed to agree with me, so we all just started moving their games to the coffee table where they so graciously said we could sit--"

"On topic. Please."

"Right. It was that guy with The Settlers of Catan who threw the first punch." She jerked her chin towards the more than 6-foot-tall, 200-pounds-plus man the EMTs were tending to on the floor. "Guess he felt we were threatening his resources. After that it was self-defense."

"Right." Detective Delaney looked the young woman up and down, noticing the blood on her temple, and that one of her cheeks was beginning to swell.

"I suppose you gave what you got?"

"Eh, I work at a municipal archive. Nobody but the files will notice this." She motioned to her cheek, perhaps oblivious to the blood.

"And your--" He motioned to the blood at her temple. She tentatively reached to touch her face. When she looked at her hand, her eyebrows shot up, but she shrugged. "Huh, must have been that guy with the Star Munchkin Expansion Pack. Thought I dodged that. Oh, well. Guy's got a good arm."

"Uh-huh." He took more notes and glanced at the woman before taking even more. She was standing up straight and tall, apparently unconcerned with the carnage around her. When he first entered the room he had noticed a pack of cards with blood on one of the corners. So, that was probably her blood. "I can't help but notice, miss, you know the games."

"Of course I do, Detective. I am a nerd."

It was time for his eyebrows to shoot up now. "You are?"

"Yes. When I game, I game." She looked down at her laptop, sitting peacefully closed on the table in dispute. "And when I write, I write."

A River of Pain

By Brian Montalbano

(An excerpt from Into the Lion's Mouth)

Prologue

Leonius opened his eyes. He saw only darkness. He jerked his head left, then right. The darkness surrounded him. He looked ahead once more, desperately seeking any form or shade. Leonius growled when his eyes could not discern anything.

Suddenly, Leonius felt the cool touch of a gentle current sweep across his fingertips. Each finger fluttered at the caress of the water, finally confirming his physical presence. His eyes now adjusting, he looked down to see the insignia of the lion on the chest of his armor. Below that, his legs were standing in a calmly flowing river, which tried to urge him further down its shore.

"What you doing in the water, soldier?" a voice asked.

"I am a prefect," Leonius said without searching from where the voice came.

"You think that makes a difference? Prefect, centurion, legionnaire—all just armor and flesh. Rank means nothing down here."

"Where am I?" Leonius searched his surroundings once more. A man drew near atop a crude vessel—a small boat guided by a single oar.

"You're where every man comes, yet where every man hopes not to be." The man chuckled.

Leonius looked ahead once more.

"No sense looking that way," the man began. "Now's the time for thinking back—about how and why you got here."

"Betrayal."

"That sounds like the beginning of a tantalizing tale. Who was it? Wife? Scorned lover? A child after his inheritance?"

"No," Leonius's voice trailed off. "I...I'm not sure I even know anymore."

"Well there's not much time to become any more sure. You either know or you don't at this point."

"Who are you?" Leonius asked.

"Charon's the name. I'll be your ferryman across the River of Pain this evening...This evening. Ha. That always gets me. Down here, it's always evening."

"Charon?" Leonius's eyes widened. He looked down into the river. "Can this be so? Can my time have already passed? No. I was the most feared general in all the land. How could my thread of life have been cut so prematurely?"

"You're gonna be one of those souls, aren't you? Listen. The end is the wrong place to start—it's always clouded by uncertainty. Where'd it begin, soldier? Ask yourself that."

Leonius remained lost in thought for many moments.

"My brother," Leonius finally stammered. "My brother did this. He's why I'm here. It has to be him. It couldn't have been her..."

"It sounds like you're getting to where you need to," Charon said, "but do ya mind coming onto the ferry as you work through this? I got plenty of souls waiting, and the numbers only keep growing."

Leonius's head shot up. He suddenly understood.

"Raetia. The prophetess...That's where this all began."

~
Chapter 1: The Lion's Den

Leonius drove his gladius through the final invader still clinging to life on the battlefield in the Roman province of Raetia, the land just south of the Danube River.

"No filthy barbarian leaves here with his life," he said, stepping on the man's shoulder to withdraw his sword. While he cleaned his blade, he looked out across the bloodstained earth. Then, he roared with such a great voice as if shouting his victory to the gods on Mount Olympus.

On his journey back toward the encampment, Leonius's soldiers saluted their prefect and offered him praise. Amid the rows upon rows of lamb-hide tents, he saw a spot of white: undoubtedly a senator's toga.

The young general smiled to himself and quickened his steps as he entered the wooden stakes of the palisade.

"Aquilius!" Leonius shouted. He embraced his brother's tall, slender frame with his powerful, brawny arms.

"It's good to see you, brother," Aquilius said. "But our greeting could have waited." Aquilius frowned at his toga now smeared with red.

The two men walked along the main road of the camp toward its forum at the center.

"Bah, you came all the way to Raetia," Leonius answered. "The least you can do is get some blood on you. We have one more battle ahead of us." Leonius put his hand on Aquilius's shoulder. "I would like nothing more than to have my brother protecting my side."

Just then, Vespasian and Aulus, two high-ranking officers, approached. Both men possessed herculean-sized chests; however, the grey hairs that peppered Vespasian's stubble showed his advanced age.

"I'm sure the emperor would be pleased to hear that I allowed both his sons to risk their lives on the front lines," Vespasian said with a hint of both jest and disapproval.

"Do not fear, Vespasian," Aquilius answered. "Those years are far behind me. Now, I look after Leonius in the Senate, to which I should return. The senators' chests will swell with pride upon hearing of your victory and the certain end of this threat."

"Tell 'em of the squealers on the crucifixes too," Aulus grunted with a chuckle.

"Crucifixes?" Aquilius asked.

"Those weaklings screamed 'til their last breath—begged for a sword in their bellies. Ha. That oughta get a good laugh."

"How colorful, Aulus," Vespasian said.

"The leaders of an uprising are crucified to remind others not to stray," Leonius said to Aquilius.

"How brutal. Is sending the barbarians to their deaths not enough?"

"No man, barbarian or Roman, should defy the emperor without facing such punishment."

"And that desire for punishment," Vespasian began, "is why we took the only legions stationed in Italia so far from the capital, despite my protestations."

"Well, on this matter, my brother and I do agree, Vespasian," Aquilius said. "My father shared your caution, but Leonius was certain this task could be done. I cited Leonius's countless victories over four campaigns, and in the end, our emperor was convinced that we should not let the Marcomanni reach the Alps."

"Aha," Vespasian exclaimed. "So the Aurelius brothers joined forces to break the spirit of the mighty tree."

"Tree? Who's talking 'bout trees?" Aulus interjected.

"It was a metaphor, Aulus. The tree signifies Tertius."

"Metaphor or not," Aquilius said, "let's instead say my father's spirit bent. I respect my brother's opinions as prefect and military advisor. If he feels strongly about something, he has my support for any battle."

"And I thought you were the sensible one," Vespasian said.

"He may prefer the halls of the Senate to the chaos of the battlefield," Leonius said, "but he still understands the necessity of the latter."

Suddenly, the centurion Modius led a disheveled woman toward the men.

"This Marcomanni woman stumbled into camp," Modius reported. "She asked specifically to speak to Leonius."

"Tell me, what cause have I to talk to any barbarian?" Leonius sneered. He began to walk around the woman, inspecting her. As he lifted some of her hair with the tip of his sword, clumps of dirt fell from it. "Especially one as unsightly and unkempt as this one. Do your people consider those rags appropriate clothing?"

"She claims the gods have spoken to her about the battle," Modius said.

Leonius scowled at Modius. "Bring her to the general's tent lest her presence unnerve the soldiers."

They all filed north past the altar to the towering tent where Leonius and his centurions handled all military affairs. The tent could hold fifteen men across and twenty-five deep, and housed a single table covered with maps.

Once inside, Leonius returned his attention to the woman. Her foul stench offended his nostrils; however, his curiosity drew him closer.

"Go on. Tell me of your divine conversation."

As she began to speak, the woman's eyes rolled to the back of her head as if in a fit of convulsion. "A mighty oak will fall," she warned, "leaving acorns behind that will compete for the soil in which they lie."

"Excuse me, she-wolf?" Leonius stepped menacingly toward her. "What is this madness you speak? Speak plainly about the coming battle, or I will silence your tongue."

The woman laughed maniacally. "A battle between brothers looms on the horizon," the woman said, "yet you stop your eyes from looking toward it. Blood will be forced to go against blood of its own as the bond of brotherhood falls to-"

Leonius plunged his gladius through the woman's stomach.

"ENOUGH! I have no patience for riddles and lies."

Falling to her knees, the prophetess reached out to cling to Leonius's waist. Gasping for a final breath, she gave one final threat. "So quick to use your claws, you impetuous brute. When the lion uses them against the eagle, the eagle will bite back."

Leonius wrenched himself away from her grasp. With the prophetess teetering on her knees before the young general, he delivered a fatal stab through her throat.

Author Bio:

Brian Montalbano is a Latin teacher with an MA in History and a minor in Classics from Montclair State University. With this background, he intertwined a deep understanding of ancient authors and culture into his historical fiction novel. Brian has had two short stories published in literary magazines: one in No Return, the other in The Bracelet Charm.

A Work in Progress

By Keith Biesiada

Joan was sitting with her needlework when she heard Jed coming down the staircase. He'd be leaving for the office at this time, probably with razor burn on his face. Jed always shaved as if his automobile was parked in a tow-away zone. No doubt he was also wearing his shabbiest attire, just like on any other day. After twenty years of marriage he was still a work in progress. Joan sighed, but maintained concentration on her knitting It would be tragic if she dropped a stitch.

"Are you really going to go out like that?" she said. "You have nice suits in the closet. You look like you're going bowling."

Joan wasn't being critical, but knowing the man better than a ball of yarn, she held every expectation that he would take her encouragement the wrong way.

Jed didn't make a sound. From habit he stood with his hand on the doorknob and his face contorted into a species of scowl. He was capable of remaining thus for a very long time. Joan knew. That is what her husband always did.

"I'm not being critical, you realize. I just don't want you to go out looking like a bum." She stitched and waited for a response. "Well aren't you going to say anything?"

Jed grunted. Then he spoke. "I'm going to work, not to church. I work in a warehouse where I drive a forklift and often get used motor oil on my clothes. After work I am going to a go-go bar to smile at some scantily-clad dancers. I am going to fold a bunch of dollar bills lengthwise and deposit them into the bra or panty of whichever of the girls happens to please me. I am going to drink beer. I am going to drink a lot of beer. Then I am going to get into a fight with one of the other customers. Then I am going to drive home drunk unless I drive into a tree or get pulled over by the police for driving under the influence. I will become belligerent with the officer who will have to subdue me with mace before handcuffing me and afterwards I will spend the night in jail where I will either sleep it off or get into a fight with a cellmate or perhaps both." He paused to catch his breath.

"Do you really think I need to wear a suit for all that?"

Joan went from chain stitching to slip stitching. She said, "If you wear a nice suit to work your boss will eventually notice and eventually you'll be promoted. If you wear a nice suit to the go-go bar these scantily-clad dancers will smile back at you. They may even forego their tip when it is offered by such a splendid-looking gentleman. If you wear a nice suit to the bar you may not get into a fight because the person with whom you've been arguing might think that because you are dressed so splendidly that you probably know karate and if you drive home drunk wearing a nice suit the officer will probably let you off with a warning because you will look so splendid that he might mistake you for somebody important, especially if you have a box of fresh donuts on the passenger seat to offer him some refreshment."

Jed released his grip on the doorknob and let his arm hang limp at his side. That is what he always did when Joan was encouraging him. She continued her knitting. He cleared his throat.

"What if I run into a tree?" he said.

"Then you'll look splendid in your coffin wearing your nice suit."

Joan hummed and focused on the scarf in progress. After a few moments she heard Jed turn toward the staircase leading to their bedroom. She heard his footfalls as he ascended. After a few minutes she heard him return, just as always. She looked up.

"Ahh! Now you look nice. Tuck in your collar, the back of your tie is showing."

Jed made the adjustment. Joan nodded her approval She smiled. When training one's husband it was necessary to nod one's approval and smile at good behavior. Positive reinforcement always worked best.

"Have fun with your forklift, beer and illicit women," she said.

"Yes dear," he said.

Joan reapplied herself to her knitting. Jed opened the door and shut it with scarcely a sound.

"And don't forget the donuts," she shouted through the closed door. It would be tragic if he forgot the donuts. Soon her scarf would be complete and it was going to be a splendid one.

Joan never dropped a stitch.

PRELUDE: A Selection from NOCTURNE,

a novel in progress

by Garlanda Washington

Within every blink swirls the fate of a universe.

Open:

Moon and sun dance in turns

around waves of air

over continents of water

broken by smudges of earth

from an inferno below;

a shifting, layered, spinning organism

breathing instinct, thought,

us,

insisting to the never end on our own existence...

Close:

A league of cellular nations, or not,

pulsates red across eyelids

that sharpen external and announce internal

through remaining four senses into brain

that delivers its observations into mind

that cries its conclusions into soul

whose universe will soon step forth from its secret depth

to erase the superficial, exposed...

Open:

Soon too swift a creature,

the organism without continues its breath,

yet sharpened now by the internal glass,

puzzle pieces built by puzzle pieces

weaving size and substance, energy and heart,

that perceived and still uncaught by the glass,

a universe of nested universes that breathe and collapse...

in the space of a blink.

Blinks upon blinks upon blinks upon blinks...

Needlessly slipping past our notice, seen with crystal clarity beyond comprehension.

But to catch one, to hold it... To discover the completion of understanding one's place and not understanding, navigating through the puzzles without fear of sinking, surrendering completely to the soul of another without drowning, following an instinct to a small town around a building presenting a store window to a woman who is you.

You tempt observation: the loose, embroidered tunic blouse and ankle length skirt flow down slender curves, held down by a shoulder bag slung across your back and hair so translucently white it must be God's gift of silver, falling naturally past the length of your spine.

The window sees a closer truth in your skin, smooth by youth, a deeper brown by the sun. And do you see the window? Such whole pleasantness in your gaze, yet somehow beyond penetration. It beckons without revealing. What are you thinking? Your mood could hold an eternity.

Closeopen.

You, still cocooned in cotton and freedom, yet not quite you: No longer young but younger, the years of your mind have been peeled back.

While your elder looked through this window, your reflection within it has captured you as it had in the dorm room mirror; but there your gaze retaliated, bitterly tried to sear it into and erase it from a memory that by now usually took it for granted. Suddenly you're wearing clothes you would never dare to wear, draping over a thinness from your dreams. You're struck by an attractiveness that runs contrary to your only believed alternative to yourself. You are...lovely. You possess the beauty of acceptance, as if always there, perfectly comfortable with what the fates have delivered you and enhancing those things with the confidence that you don't need anything else. At any given moment, what you are is enough. This expression lives on every part of you, not just your face. But it leaves there first, not only because of this unexpected contentment but because you've now taken in the hair, released as a long, mighty river, but completely polluted by the premature gray you prayed would one day flee your life, marking your conquest of it.

Your rising disgust falters before the realization that your glass specter returns your glare from a window. Outside. Now it is what has replaced your little enclosed space that has you riveted. At least your image is remotely probable; the rest of it is so impossible that disconnection rushes in. Perhaps if you had your elder's sensitivity you would have noticed the elements reshuffling; mere seconds before you had been an element that blended, fused so well into the rest of the world that those closest to your presence were soothed. That one blink shattered it all, leaving in its wake an absence of something not consciously noticed to the point of a physical jolt.

Without knowing why, bystanders turn towards you.

They see a woman in a trance. Questions of concern come your way. A tentative touch—it jerks your face towards theirs, so few, yet for you an eternal ocean of storms. Now the odd shift in sounds drift in, and contact is complete. You feel thinner, the loose hair down your back, your skin tingling from the—spring air?

What has happened now fully burrows into your mind.

no

Uncontrollable denial shakes your head, trembles your body. More people reaching out to you, no, no, no touch—

Bodies talking to their hands? Monster vans? Sacks for clothes? Tone deaf music? A whole world just within the realm of strange, just outside the periphery of normalcy whizzing by, growing aware of your chaotic flight. Stop crashing into people, narrowly skirting traffic. Walk!

So near control when your name looms up from behind and sears your shoulder. A male voice. More? You already feel everything wrong. Don't turn around. Walk. Disappear. You're good at that. Blend in. Lose him. Focus on the only familiar thing in the sky, its round and yellow warmth shining in your eyes.

Your name is gaining. Chasing you— Why? What did you do? Force the voice away, but where the hell are you going? Desperation is clouding your judgment, sailing you again toward some oblivion.

And that voice sticking to you like gum on your shoe. Alone, alone, leave me alone! you wail inside. Your clothing tangles about your limbs, your shoulder bag keeps slamming into your gut, and this hair won't stop whipping around your head like some demonic quicksilver nebula, blinding, blinding, blinding you.

Wait—a hope through the strands: a black ironwork bridge. It has to be a mirage, it's too familiar. The voice is gone, perhaps imagined. Perhaps the hope is real. Slowing to a frantic trot, muffling hysterical sobs, you reach the underbelly, a fugitive craving its grand old shadows. Real. Breathe. A little. While your footsteps echo eerily in the cool dark, conjuring Rod Serling standing in that way of his somewhere amidst the black corners silently laughing at you.

If I can just get a bit further, I can collect my damn mind, loops over and over in your skull. I'll be safe.

You're nearly tackled from behind.

A scream escapes. But not you, wrenching up from your knees in the vise of arms while your name penetrates your ear, a deep, endless loop wrestling your own mental one to victory:

"Stop! It's me, Jenni, it's me! Stop! Listen to me! Listen to me! Jenni! Jenni!"

The voice...is his? You squirm around to face it.

"...V-Vincent...?"

Tall, pale white skin, mousy blond hair, clear blue eyes. Vincent. And yet not quite. What was yesterday a dashingly boyish face, so full of promise and roadblocks, seems today tender concern and a grateful smile beneath closely cropped facial hair too long to be his occasional sloppy stubble.

His bear hug relaxes somewhat. The face says in Vincent's deep Virginian twang: "That's right. It's Vincent. It's me, Vincent."

To stay or to recoil—so many emotions entangled in this person, if it is him. This image is offering you safety...betraying a suppressed urge to calm you with—kisses? You have finally lost it.

"Everything's going to be all right. I know, Jennifer, I know what's happening..."

And you begin to feel a connecting given off by his now more comforting embrace. You sag into it, clinging to his chest, choosing, for now, to believe in the familiar. Closeopencloseopencloseopen...universes spill down your face as he strokes your new tentacles from it. You shut your eyes to the insanity and the embarrassment, but not before seeing one last odd image of Vincent's own welling eyes.

It's going to be okay," he is whispering. "You're safe now. I won't let anyone hurt you. You're safe..."

Author bio

Garlanda Washington is a founding member of the Write Group, at whose Open Mics and other venues she has read from this work.

Who's Behind the Door?

By Marcia Mickley

In fourth grade I read a story "The Lady or the Tiger" about a barbaric king who forced prisoners to decide their own fate by choosing an arena door with rooms containing either a beautiful lady or a hungry tiger. In the story, crowds cheered, getting their entertainment from the spectacle and uncertainty of the prisoner's choice.

Later that month, stopping before I went inside our apartment, I thought about that story, worried about who waited. Forcing myself to go inside, I felt like I was living that tale. Would Mom act like the lady or the tiger, be soft-spoken and loving or would she be out-of-control and ranting? Butterflies flitted in my stomach as I opened the door.

Relief! Mom is warm and loving. We talk about my day and about school. Ten minutes later, without warning, she turned into the fierce hungry tiger, yelling about how bad I am. Why did she switch? I never knew. Mom got vicious, pouncing on my words, saying, "You're a bad daughter because..." I wondered if she, like the king in the story, was getting her entertainment watching me squirm.

In the story the prisoner is all alone, that's how I felt. My father and brothers stayed away from the kitchen and my mother's attention. I thought they enjoyed the focus on me, not them.

By the time I was 12 years old, I was uncertain how I could achieve harmony with her. Mom made rules and punishments and then changed them. When I asked if I could walk to Fordham Road she answered "Of course not." I was confused. She let me walk there yesterday. She screamed about how irresponsible and inconsiderate I was. Then, she became the caring lady again, "Yes. Go! I know it's important to you."

I hardly ever saw the lady during my teenage years. Mom usually acted like the hungry tiger, pacing around the apartment, ready to pounce if I tried to leave her. "You don't appreciate all that I do for you. Why aren't you saying home with your best friend? Me." Saying anything would get me verbally attacked.

I didn't realize that I was learning to distrust. Whenever people were nice I expected them to become nasty. My life felt changeable and inconsistent, like shifting sand. I worked hard at becoming more instinctive and insightful, trying to guess other people's thoughts and motivations from their words and body movements. Guessing wrong about people or situations caused me to mentally beat myself. I'd go home and try extra hard to forecast my mother's mood, hoping for gentleness. I often guessed wrong. How could I be so naïve, expecting Mom to be kind to me?

Living with uncertainty forced me to grow stronger. Learning to be intuitive, picking up unspoken prompts, helped in all aspects of my life; I became more aware, more able to read situations and people. Besides learning to be intuitive, I've had to work on trusting and believing that kindness doesn't always change to cruelty and that loyalty exists.

Even though the lady disappeared when I was a teenager, I still craved love and encouragement, something the tiger didn't give. It's been on-going, trying to become skilled at loving and encouraging myself.

I've acknowledged my own hungry tiger, but learned rein it in. These days I continue to work hard to act like gracious lady.

Memoir

(back to the Table of Contents)

To Love Imperfectly

By Cindy Pereira

For many years I roamed the earth uncertain about whether I could love well enough, strong enough, and wisely enough to parent. You see, the parents I had met (my own and my parents' parents) were so lost in their own opus that parenting seemed an art, and they seemed not to feel artistic enough to even try. I guess they just didn't know how at the time.

I never met anyone like my mother Irene. From the spray that turned her hair into a veritable bomb shelter, to the bright lipstick that mysteriously did not come off when she ate, to the way she covered the scar on her lip with her hand when she smiled or wore gypsy skirts to cover her ankles, and sunglasses (indoors and out) to hide her wrinkles, she was, let's say, unique—and certainly self-conscious.

Our needs were often at odds. I wanted someone to walk me to school, but she hid in the window and watched me walk down the street alone until I disappeared from sight. I wanted three meals a day; she gave me one, and told me to consider myself lucky. I wanted a dad but mine finally gave up on us and new fathers were not easy to come by. I wanted a sleepover but we had but one bed, plus Irene couldn't be seen in curlers and a nightgown by anyone. I wanted to go to high school; she thought education was overrated, particularly if you had to purchase the textbooks.

She had a twisted and relative sense of morality, and there was no keeping up with the latest moral standard. So I didn't like her very much. She was awfully imperfect.

But something happened growing up amidst the moral relativity that made me reclassify virtuous behavior. I stopped seeing things as black and white and I quickly realized we are all far from perfect. I now define virtuous behavior as being the best one can offer the world at a given time.

When I did finally parent, I also learned quickly that hindsight is the nearest to clarity we can hope to achieve, and that our kids believe they have the foresight we invariably lack.

I will not tell you how old Irene was when she died because I am still afraid of what a can of whupass blurting out her age to a crowd might unleash upon me. But she wasn't very old.

In the interest of time I won't even tell you about the hurt she experienced in life because truly you could not even fathom it—anyway, why would you want to imagine a pedophile father who beat her with rose stems and fed her boiled flour for lunch while he allegedly ate steak and raped her brother? I won't describe how hard she sometimes laughed or with what angst she cried when she told these stories.

I will not try to tell you how much she wanted to please the Almighty God, one she seemed to have created in her own image—yes—her own image—but despite being His creator, so to speak, oddly, she was still unable to please Him. I'd better not go into how much she mistrusted everyone, including that very God at times.

I won't tell you how many things my mother feared (from witch doctors to amulets), nor the extent of the loneliness she felt (because she was so self-centered everyone eventually left). For if I told you all that, to be fair, I might also have to consider telling you how she crushed my soul, bruised my skin, and left me to fend for myself more often than not. How she dated a man who pissed on my teddy bears, and drank herself able to stand in line at the welfare office with me, skinny, white, as bait for compassion. I would have to tell you the whole story and there is no time.

There really is no time, nor are there sufficiently eloquent words to lend credence to the picture I would like to paint. That picture would have strokes of fairness and impartiality that I cannot even hope to achieve. It would have explanations and rationalizations, excuses and opinions that would lead to forgiveness or hatred.

I will tell you, however, that she loved Fado music (from Lisbon). My mother sang like the great Portuguese singer Amália Rodrigues. She loved her grandchildren and she loooved seafood. She had to have her food her way, preferably in large quantities, and drank her white wine from a straw. "The Bible said St. Paul drank, Cindy, it's fine as long as you keep it to one or two," she usually said as she served herself a third glass.

She wore blouses with a turned-up collar like Elvis Presley's because "Nobody needs to see moles," and had several red lamps because if there was dust on the furniture it became less noticeable under a dim red light, and if a man caller should come by, that light would certainly be more flattering.

She loved her family as best she knew how, which, honestly, wasn't all that well. She complained about everything and everyone, even about those she loved most, and was convinced they all were out to get her. "They're a bunch of jealous sons of bitches," she said.

I can tell you that she made children laugh and spun wonderful tales on the days when she was neither sad nor angry: so few of those. She made annoying sounds, yodeled and danced. Much as it got on my nerves at the time, I mourn all those songs and dances, now long lost, but for this checkered memory I attempt to recite.

I can tell you she was far more loved than she knew she was, and it seems impossible to me to bear the pain of how much I miss her now.

But I didn't know then how much I would miss her, because when I was young our life was a Latin novella, filled with intrigue, fights, and a series of obstacles that always seemed insurmountable along the way. There were abusive boyfriends, food stamps and alcohol, late nights, music and madness. It is true, I hated to love her and at times ... I just hated. But then for every time she slapped me, abandoned me, or hurt me, there was another time when her incredibly sad brown eyes silently conveyed how deeply she loved me, and sometimes I would spot a single tear that spilled her secret down her face—that she did not know how to love me any better.

I'm no Houdini but I have been searching for the trick to survive, to not be buried alive by the pain of my past. Perhaps it's simple. Stop trying to understand! Perhaps my energy is best used forgiving others and myself, for this life is an open-ended, ambiguous story and we arrive into it as fast as we depart, answers notwithstanding.

I carry my mother in my heart, in my genes, in my fears, in my melancholy, and in my ridiculous sense of humor. I know my mother knew how much I loved her. On the phone with me on the very day she died, she said, crying, "Cindy, you are everything to me, like your father once was—that lousy bastard."

And so, as I walk through what sometimes feels like a tundra of discontent, I stop to appreciate the smallest seed of joy along the way, and I water that seed with all the care, hope and faith I can muster, so that maybe my children will remember our life as at times imperfect, but mostly hopeful and beautiful, and know I behaved as best I could and they were loved as exceptionally, superbly and passionately as ... well ... as I knew how to love them. At the time.

A Long Island Girl

By Heloise Ruskin

I was a Long Island girl. Not much of a setting to produce a different bloom amidst the row upon row of pale daffodils. Yet it happened. In my tale I will try to unravel for you this mystery that unfolded within the confines of a suburban garden.

I, Heloise Sokoloff, was born on Feb. 12, 1943. So I grew up in the post-war 40's and 50's, in the heart of the new washing machines and dryers, the car in every garage, the lawn mowers keeping every blade of grass on every lawn the same length as every other one. My family's house in Cedarhurst was two stories and white stucco like all the others on the straight street. Every house was filled with a family, a father who worked in the City (New York), a mother who drove him to catch the train at 7:30 and picked him up every day at 6 o'clock. One car families, two child families, dog and cat families, fathers in their uniforms of a dark suit, white shirt, navy blue, brown or black tie covered in triangles, or paisleys, and felt hats covering balding heads and pleasant smiles surrounding pleasant teeth.

I don't know if all the mothers worked at the same jobs but I suspect so, the job of shopping almost daily at the grocery store and then beginning in around 1954 at the new, very small by today's standards, super markets. Frozen food was not invented until the early 50's: no frozen broccoli, fish sticks, Swanson frozen dinners from which the children would eat a slice of Turkey with brown gravy, a tablespoon of mashed potatoes, and soggy carrots, all saturated with salt. Moms drove the Chevy, the Buick, the Ford or Dodge to the store for their vegetables and cans, so many and so heavy, of wax beans, corn, tuna, beets, and jars of applesauce.

Then on to the meat market. Seeing the butcher was a chance to have some conversation and it never failed that the butcher Al told every mother, every three days, when she would come in and look through his shiny glass case at all the choices, "Mrs., I have a great cut of prime beef just for you today. I cut it this morning. Chuck roast."

All of the children on the street, Oceanpoint Avenue, were fed the same breakfast: Kellogg's Corn Flakes or Rice Crispies. By the late 40's these had begun to replace oatmeal and cream of wheat. Those were still made for them only by their grandmothers, who usually lived very nearby. They ate their cereal, drank their orange juice and glass of milk, which was no longer delivered to the door. The Moms kissed them goodbye and stood outside while each house on the street disgorged its children for their five-block walk to school.

Now the mothers were alone. But the black phone was always nearby. I know the other mothers led the same lives as mine did because when I was sick one day and got to stay home, I heard Mom on the phone calling other mothers and being called by them on and off all day. And I heard what they talked about.

My Mom called Ruth Hecht and told her that their friend Anna was sick again. "And you know Ruth, if she doesn't lose weight she'll always be sick. "

"That's for sure, I always see a bowl of chocolate covered cherries on her coffee table with plenty of empty wrappers," Ruth wryly replied.

A bit later Mom responded to someone else's call. "No, you really are telling me that Joan wouldn't let the kids see that new Esther Williams movie on Saturday?" Mom asked Denise.

On and on the gossip went and filled the day on and off. It was only broken up when I was home sick, with Mom taking my temperature, bringing me my lunch of peanut butter and grape jelly on Wonder Bread, just like I liked it, and even driving down to the candy store to get me my favorite comic books, Superman and Archie and Veronica. But when I wasn't home, Mom and the others, besides shopping for food and gossiping, talked "business" and met with other Moms who were trying to raise money for Hadassah, or planning a Sisterhood lunch. They were Jewish Mothers like mine. The Catholic Moms—there weren't many Protestants in Cedarhurst—I knew from my friend Ann, were planning prayer meetings, and fund raisers for the needy in the parish.

Then the children came come. At 3:30 all the Moms were waiting. "Here, have a glass of chocolate milk and a cookie." I would gulp it down and run over to my friends, Caroleen's or Harriet's, or to the vacant lot next door to play with the Stein boys, Gerald and David. We kids had a great life after school—school itself was a blur. I guess I learned to read (suggest deleting this sentence). After school, we all did the same things and those things were fun. It was jump rope with the girls, right in the street! The mothers were all home so there were no cars in the street. It was hopscotch on the sidewalks! It was cowboys and Indians imitating The Lone Ranger with the Stein brothers! And it was even what I now know was normal, when we girls couldn't go out in the rain, it was playing "Doctor" when we would say, "and he put the thermometer in her tushy" and feel very naughty, and maybe ashamed of these secrets which we would never tell another girl and of course not our parents.

Was this "playing doctor" my first deviation, my first straying from the straight and narrow? No. There had been another before this with Caroleen. Caroleen's house was a different world from mine. It was not on the straight Oceanpoint Avenue but around the corner on busy West Broadway, with two lanes of cars and a lot of them. Her house was red brick and had bushes in front of the lawn that hid it from the road. It was not open like mine, close to the street and close to the neighbors. And Car's life was not like the others of us. For she didn't have a mother. She had a "housekeeper," Francis, because her mother was dead. I met Caroleen and my mother met Francis because, when I was four, she had me walk up to Car's front door alone. While she waited at the end of the lawn, she had me ring the bell and ask if there was a little girl there for me to play with. Francis invited me right in to play after my mother had walked up to introduce herself. I then played with red-headed Caroleen every day—I had Jet black hair and later we were called Car the little angel, and me the little devil. And that is how my earliest deviations began, with Car to accompany me.

Until I went to school, my mother gave me over to Francis to watch almost every day. Francis was not my babysitter. She wanted me there with Car, in the house. All the jump rope and hopscotch and "doctor" came later. Until then, until the first grade really, I stayed inside at Car's a lot, only sometimes venturing into her backyard. She did not want to go out and play much. And what did we do for all those hours? We played with a house we built with toy bricks and furnished with the first plastic toy furniture that existed and little rubber dolls. This was our own world, cut off from Francis and unknown to Mom. My first deviation was an extension of that world because it was me and Car together. One day, when we were five, we ventured out alone from Car's back yard—I don't know how Francis didn't see us—walking block after block away from Car's house. I did not stay in my prescribed space, I did not do what other children of five do. I stole flowers. I had Car steal them too. We walked into two yards and broke off the flowers from their stems. But this did not feel naughty to me like "playing doctor" later. This felt exhilarating. I was a little girl high on breaking the rules. I did not feel ashamed or guilty. This was a secret pleasure inside me. Yes, this first early exhilarating secret was the beginning of my adventuring into the unknown.

Then after this, and after "playing doctor" came another kind of deviation altogether which was to leave a lasting impact on me and greatly color my adult life up to today. By the time we were eight and in third grade, Car and I, two Jewish children, played on Oceanpoint Avenue with two Catholic kids, Ann and Roger. Their house looked just like mine, but something inside smelled different. It had kind of a smell-less smell. And Ann's mother never kissed me hello.

These kids were different from me. They were Irish and Catholic. I noticed that they never played on the street after school on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Instead I saw them walk quickly down the street toward West Broadway on those days.

One Tuesday, when I asked them, " Where are you going, why are you leaving?" I learned a whole new word, "Catechism class."

"What is that?" I asked Ann.

She became very serious in the midst of our hopscotch. "It is my Catholic school."

I didn't understand. She had a school, my school. "How come you have another school?" I asked her.

Ann explained a little more of this strange puzzle to me. "We go to the church school after regular school to learn about Jesus and Mary to become good Catholics because we don't learn about them in regular school."

I thought about what I already had learned about Jesus. I had once heard my Dad mention a "Catholic" man he sold textiles to. When I had asked him what "Catholic" was, he told me that it was a religion, like being Jewish was, but different.

He said I needed to understand this. "There are many people in this country who are Catholic."

Dad continued, "They believe that God came to earth and became a man who helps anyone who believes God sent him. That man is called Jesus Christ." He didn't explain why this happened or how it happened.

I was in the dark even concerning "God." In Temple Israel Sunday School I learned nothing about who He was. I only learned that a very long time ago, when people had no telephones, radios, cars or the new television which I watched at Car's, this God told a man called Moses to lead the Jewish people, which was me somehow, out of Egypt.

So I had already found out that there was another God and that I was not in this Catholic world that believed in this God-man. I asked Ann if Car and I could go with on Thursday. Playing "house" by third grade had ended and Car had come out of the house.

Ann didn't think about it at all before answering, "Yeah. I'm sure it'll be ok with the Sister. But I won't tell my mother you're going. She always says no to everything."

As I said, this was a different family from my family. My Mom always said yes. But this time I did not ask her. I just knew that this was a path I had better take without my parents knowing.

I knew I shouldn't tell Mom or Dad about this walk I was about to take the next day to meet the Sister and Jesus Christ. I knew Dad wouldn't want me to meet him and be in this school. But now I can call this deviation what it was. It wasn't stealing flowers. It was much bigger than that. This was my first turning toward "the mystery" that I found nowhere in my familiar everyday world. It felt "forbidden" then, at eight. But later, when I sang Protestant hymns in camp at ages eleven, twelve, thirteen; when I saw God take shape in a tree; when I danced with the voodoo priestess in Haiti in my late twenties; when I forded rivers in Haiti to meet voodoo artists in my forties; I knew that it was the mystery beyond my world that I was pursuing and absorbing. Attending Catechism class was my first leap over the bars of my Long Island world.

Playing Host to my Countrymen

By Nimfa Gehman

One of my college professors once said, "Only the rich can afford to indulge in the arts." She was a remnant of the Colonial era—white skin, pointy nose, fake blond hair—more comfortable talking in Spanish and English than in the native Tagalog. Just like her forebears, she tended to look down her long nose at the brown-skinned Filipinos. "Art, for the average Filipino," she theorized, "is not a priority because he is too preoccupied eking out a living."

Her statement must have colored my own judgment, for why else would I feel so skeptical when informed that Arti Santa Rita, a Filipino theater group, is coming to the Big Apple to do a musical entitled Let's Rendezvous in the Past.

Encouraged by its success amongst Filipinos in California, Arti Santa Rita wanted to bring it to the Filipino audience in New York City. Although the group is well-known back home, I wondered if this humble group of artists was ready for the world's center of culture. The fact that the show was done in Pampango, our local dialect, did not help ease my qualms.

My ties to Arti Santa Rita were through Andy Alviz, founder and artistic director. He wrote, directed, and choreographed, composing some of the lyrics of the show. A few years back while I was at a party in Manila, I heard his name mentioned as a brilliant choreographer who worked with Cameron MacIntosh of Miss Saigon fame. I did not know Andy on a personal level. The only thing we had in common was that we had the same great-grandfather. If family lore is to be believed, this great-grandfather, in a sudden twinge of conscience, gave away hectares of family land to his poor tenants. No doubt feeling noble and enlightened, he reasoned that no one man should own so much land. We, the fourth generation who got nothing, thought him a fool for his misguided benevolence.

I kept a low profile when I heard that Arti Santa Rita was looking for host families in the New York/New Jersey area. I had reasons for not wanting to get involved. I was too busy and was worried about taking complete strangers into my home. The group however was having great difficulties finding enough volunteers to host them for an entire week, and so I was conscripted by Andy to host at least a few members of the group.

Among Filipinos, it does not matter how distant your bloodline is—a second cousin is considered an immediate family. As every good Filipino knows, one does not say "No" to a relative, so I reluctantly said "Yes, for Andy's sake."

"No! No! No!" Andy insisted, "You are not doing it for me! You are doing it to help promote your cultural heritage." The man was intent on a mission to promote Filipino culture. I begged to be given only four cast members. I ended up with nine! The truth is, I felt guilty for not wanting to open my home to them. Coming from a nation of migrant workers, it was my obligation to show hospitality to fellow countrymen who needed my help in a foreign land. Duty beckoned, and so I became a reluctant host.

After their successful performances in San Diego, Los Angeles and San Francisco, the crew of Arti Santa Rita arrived at Newark Airport at the ungodly hour of 2 a.m. As I got out of my van, a throng of young men and women surrounded me, vying for my hand for the traditional Filipino blessing, where they take your right hand and place it reverently on their forehead as a sign of respect. This reminded me of my days in the Philippines. But back then, I was the one reaching out for the hands of my elders. This gesture made me feel flattered and respected. It also made me feel old.

I quickly loaded my guests into my van. Upon reaching home, I made them sandwiches and promptly sent them off to bed. This must have been a culture shock for the poor kids. But I figured, they are now in the United States, people here eat sandwiches. Not for me is the seven-course meal that is the Filipino standard when entertaining guests. A good Filipino host will insist on feeding his guests as if there is no tomorrow. But I've been in the U.S. far too long, I don't do that anymore. Nowadays, I entertain on the assumption that guests are on a diet, and that it is obscene to overstuff them with food until they burp, which is the Filipino way of entertaining.

The days that followed saw me making breakfast of rice, eggs, and—by special request—the favorite Spam. The group was on a very tight budget, so I packed them more sandwiches for their daily trips to New York City. In the mornings I'd take them to the bus stop. In the evenings I would be there again to pick them up as they got off the last bus from the city.

I realized two things during this experiment. First, it was hectic running a B&B. Second, I would not have survived being a mother of nine! It gave me a newfound respect for my mother and all my aunts who raised numerous children. In the case of my mother, pregnant for eight years of her married life, her daily existence was defined by piles of laundry, nonstop cooking, and never-ending housecleaning. All these chores my poor mother did before the microwave, the washing machine, the refrigerator, and the vacuum cleaner became standard household equipment. Thank goodness we at least had running water!

Think of the many Filipino women who had to walk to the nearest water pump in the barrio, or those who went down to the river to do their laundry! Theirs was a life of quiet contentment, uncluttered and unhurried in its simplicity. If they were poor, they did not know it. One does not miss what one does not have. There was a certain kind of romance about it all.

"You will never go hungry," Grandpa Angelo told his eleven children, "so long as you are willing to work and live off the bounty of the land." Barrio people raised their own chickens and pigs; for fruits they climbed the fruit-bearing trees that grew in their backyards. Banana trees grew everywhere.

The 1960s in the Philippines was a time when we could count the number of people wanting to go to the United States of America on the fingers of one hand. Migrants were few and far between. In my hometown, it was whispered that one family went to America because they were trying to run away from their creditors. They were the exception, and certainly not envied by the rest of us. Most Filipinos back then never thought of leaving their country. They were home and life was easy. No thanks to Marcos, the economy stagnated and a lot of skilled Filipino workers began to look outside the country for jobs. The only reason the country did not experience a sudden brain drain was because there were a lot of college graduates. The Philippines had more than enough to spare, and skilled workers became the country's primary export.

Going back to my story on Arti Santa Rita, a few Filipino friends and I met for a pre-show dinner in New York City. I informed them that I was so tired from hosting the group, I was sure to fall asleep during the show. I am notorious for sleeping inside theaters. There is something about the soft seats, the cool temperature, and the dimmed lights that I find conducive to snoozing. An actor's worst nightmare, I can sleep through an entire show. I slept straight through an Olympia Dukakis stage play in Montclair, my head nestled comfortably on the shoulder of a perfect stranger who was too polite to nudge me. I also slept through CATS, much to my husband's annoyance because he had paid for expensive tickets to get us front-row seats. Yes, I am a real Philistine when it comes to the arts.

I therefore surprised myself when I stayed awake the entire two hours of Let's Rendezvous in the Past. I was mesmerized watching my guests on stage, much like a mother who was not aware till then that her children were gifted with enormous talents. Graceful dancers, great singers, good actors all—I wanted to hug each one of them. They made me so proud!

Let's Rendezvous in the Past depicted the idyllic life in the pre-Marcos era, before we were labeled a third-world country and a nation of migrant workers. It was about a carefree lifestyle—the town fiestas, the planting of rice, the cock-fighting tournaments. The show also portrayed the bayanihan, when the whole village comes together to build a house for a newly- wed couple.

The show celebrated the Philippines' rich cultural heritage through songs, dances and crisp dialogue that accurately captured local color. Watching it brought me back to those bygone days I left so long ago. Idiomatic expressions I have not heard in years were liberally used for comic effect. It made me appreciate our rich, colorful and descriptive language—so precise in meaning you needed only one word to convey a whole concept or a range of emotions. Let's Rendezvous in the Past brought back to mind our cultural heritage, diluted or forgotten by many years of foreign influence—first by the Spaniards, and then by the Americans.

The show brought me back to a time when the people indulged in their favorite pastime called the tsismisan, otherwise known as gossip, which was nothing more than a healthy interest in a neighbor's personal business. Marcos later banned this popular national habit and issued a proclamation that made gossiping and rumormongering a crime. You see, Filipinos were getting too interested in his wife's personal affairs. It was whispered all over the 7,107 islands that she was accumulating too many shoes—three thousand pairs to be exact!

The people only laughed at the banality of His Excellency's proclamation, and told one another in jest, "The President is right. Dude, it's none of our beeswax what his lovely wife buys during her shopping sprees in New York City!"

Twenty years later, the Filipinos' bountiful tolerance for oppression reached its limits and they toppled Ferdinand E. Marcos, along with his cronies. The people finally decided that enough was enough. They overthrew Marcos's government in a bloodless revolution. The whole world watched, transfixed by the Philippine People Power Movement of 1986.

Marcos died in exile in Hawaii. His beautiful widow had his refrigerated coffin flown back to Manila, to be buried in the Libingan Nang Mga Bayani, a cemetery reserved for the heroes of the country. The people however would have none of it. "Marcos," they said, "is a hero only in his own mind." At that time, power outages were a common occurrence in Manila. Ooooops! This was not good for refrigerated whatnots. It was Karma at work. The family then took Marcos's body to their home province in the Ilocos Region, where he remains in a glass coffin, like Sleeping Beauty.

After the show, I asked the producers why they took on the enormous task of bringing the troupe to the United States. Obviously there was no money in it for them. The expense of transporting some 30 cast members was astronomical. Not only did they have to pay for the plane tickets, they also had to hire an immigration lawyer to help get the entry visas for the United States. It finally dawned on me why they were pressed to look for host families—the group could not afford to stay in hotels. The producers, who were wealthy Filipinos, said they wanted only to give these young men and women the experience of a lifetime, because they were impressed by their talent and dedication.

Mark Joseph joined Arti Santa Rita at the age of 10. He, like the other cast members, joined Arti Santa Rita simply for his love of music. None of them got paid. When they travelled, they carried their own props, no easy thing as anyone who has ever travelled in airplanes can testify. Mickie, who celebrated her 19th birthday with us, was given the task of carrying a water buffalo's head that was made of papier-mâché. She dared not check it at the airport lest it get crushed. Mickie had a powerful voice. She could easily have competed on American Idol. Each member of the crew clung to their costumes and other stage paraphernalia like prized possessions. Andy said they also designed their own costumes, made from cheap curtain materials. "Give these kids a pair of scissors and they can create the most elaborate costumes," he said. Let's Rendezvous in the Past sure was a labor of love for all those who were involved in its production.

These young men and women debunked my college professor's haughty assumption about Filipinos and the arts. Our country does not need any more corrupt politicians. We need more of these young men and women artists. They are representative of what is best about the Philippines.

All too soon it was time for my houseguests to leave. "Please sing us a song before you go," my daughter begged. Toby, Mark, Ariane, Kristine, Princess, Louie, Hancel, Mickie and Cousin Andy gathered around the piano and transformed my living room into a concert hall as their beautiful voices blended in perfect harmony. I was so touched by their sincerity. Unwittingly, these young men and women reminded me of my Filipino roots the minute they asked me to open my home to them. I sure miss the buggers!

Life of a Young Palestinian

Madelyn Hoffman

What a striking duo, the dark-brown-and-black horse with his hooves in at least half a foot of snow and the dark-haired, brown-eyed man sitting on his back. I saw this photo on Murad's Facebook page a few days after my short stay in "al-Khalil" in early December, 2013.

The twenty-four-year-old Palestinian man sat straight and proud on the handsome horse's back. Murad looked relaxed and confident for the first time since I'd met him not even a week earlier on my first trip to the West Bank. In the photo, the street in front of Murad's family's home was covered with snowdrifts deep enough to bury front stoops and reach halfway up heavy wooden doorways. Murad and his cousin's horse, Hafeed Laheeb, the "fire of my grandfather," posed in front of the residence Murad was working on in preparation for that day he would marry and bring home his bride.

I had stood inside the residence pictured in the photo just three days before. There were very dark clouds that day over "al-Khalil." There were heavy rains throughout the afternoon but no hint of the snow to come. Called "Hebron" by the Israelis, Murad's home city, the largest on the West Bank, had been divided by the Israeli authorities into H1 and H2 in 1997. The one hundred seventy thousand residents of H1 remained under the control of the Palestinian Authority. Only thirty thousand Palestinians lived in H2. They lived side-by-side with five Israeli settlements, with a total of five hundred settlers. H2 is controlled by the Israeli military. Murad had taken me on a tour of H2 when the rains stopped and was both proud to show me his "home to be" and dejected because it still wasn't ready to share with a new bride.

He showed me all four rooms in a building right next door to his parents' house. There were three large rooms and one small. One room had a completed tiled floor, but the floors in the other rooms were a mess of concrete rubble. Murad led me to the front of the apartment and showed me the four large rectangular spaces overlooking the city and the winding streets and valley below. Everything looked even more vivid than expected because there were no glass windows occupying those spaces, one more sign of the work (and money) still required to complete this spacious home with the spectacular view.

On this day after the snowstorm, photographed three days after I said good-bye to Hebron, Murad and his horse were high stepping through that snow as if the snow and the street belonged to them.

And in a way, that street did belong to Murad, his family and the Palestinians who had lived in Hebron for decades before the Israeli army took it over. For the past seventeen years, the Israeli army controlled the area—a weaponized army, walking and patrolling Palestinian streets. The soldiers were joined by Israeli settlers who, by law, were allowed to carry guns to "protect themselves" from the Palestinian families simply trying to live their lives, and from Palestinian youths seeking jobs and trying to prepare a living space like Murad's.

Murad's one desire was that the next time he asked the father of the woman he loved for permission to marry her, the father would say "yes." At the time Murad and I walked through the rubble that should have been a floor, his girlfriend's father had already said "no" to him three times because Murad had no job, no money, and his marital home was not yet completed. I felt for Murad every time he told me this story and every time he told me how difficult it was to find a job and how painful it was to remain unemployed.

As I walked on the street with Murad toward his family's home, a few days before the historic snowstorm, a car passed us. Murad said that his cousin was driving that car and told me that his cousin had just finished serving six years in jail.

Murad's face was tightly drawn as he said this and as he showed me the three checkpoints between his residence and the al-Ibrahimi mosque where he went to pray. His face showed no hint of the joy I later saw in the photograph of him riding through the snow-covered street on his cousin's horse. No, when he and I walked together through streets of the old city with the rope netting strung above, it pained him to be my guide. He asked me to look up and tell him what I saw.

What I saw shocked me. I saw netting and empty plastic bottles caught up in the netting. The Palestinians had strung it there in order to protect those walking in the street below from the garbage, sewage and plastic bottles the Israeli settlers on the hill threw over the fence surrounding their illegal settlement.

Murad is tall, perhaps six-foot-one, but while walking with me through the streets of his home town and describing what he and his neighbors dealt with every day, the weight of the occupation and frustration of living under those conditions made him appear shorter. His back may have remained straight, but his stature was affected by what he told me of his life within hours of our having met: "We don't have a centimeter's worth of freedom here."

That's why the expression on his face in the photo of him riding his horse caught my attention. Pictured on his black-and-brown steed, Murad seemed unaffected by his daily troubles. He seemed to forget when he was twelve years old feeling helpless while watching an Israeli soldier beat his cousin to death on that street in front of his parents' home. He seemed to forget that he was also beaten for eight hours later that same day. For a few moments, his love of horses allowed him to forget all the members of his family who lived on that street who either were in jail or had served many years in jail for no reason other than being Palestinian in military-occupied H2.

I commented on Facebook that I had never seen him look as relaxed and happy as he did in all the photos of him on that horse. Murad replied to my comment by saying that he had always loved horses and was devastated when his horse died just two years before. He explained that this was one of the reasons he had gotten a degree in agronomy. He wanted to live and work on a farm, one with horses. He had applied for an internship with the International Fund for Agricultural Development, a special agency of the United Nations, but was rejected, not because his credentials were lacking, but because Palestine wasn't technically a "UN member state."

Murad's reaction to being rejected: "I AM NOT A HUMAN BEING!!!" Then poignant questions: "What am I?" "What is this world?" "Is there no one in this world who can hear me and listen to me?"

Murad's cousin Jamal echoed those sentiments in a conversation I had with him shortly thereafter. "I'm a serious man. There's nothing to smile about anymore. No job means no life."

In February, 2014, I saw a different type of photo on Murad's Facebook page. Two of the three photos posted there by his friend Badia showed Murad was prone and alone on a silver table in a hospital room near Jericho. His long body was stretched out straight, clothed in blue jeans, a white shirt and black shoes. His arms were folded across his chest and his eyes were closed. There were cuts and bruises around his face.

Reports coming out of Jericho spoke of clashes between the Israeli Defense Forces and Palestinians who had set up tents on property the Palestinians believed belonged to them. The Israelis disputed that and desired to take the land. Murad sat in one of those tents and didn't want to move when asked by the Israeli Defense Forces. His body was in the way and now showed signs of his resistance.

My heart sank, and I feared the worst. Oh—for another photograph of Murad on his horse!

Poetry

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What If

by Ronald Douglas Bascombe

©Ronald Douglas Bascombe 1981

What if

we never had to fuss or fret,

if

we never had to fear of crime,

if

we never had to fear of war,

if

we never had to fear at all?

Could

we make things that would last through time,

could

we make this world a better place,

could

we teach our children how to share,

could

we grow into a future race?

If

we thought it was important enough,

if

we dared to have it our own way,

if

we wanted to, I'm sure we could,

if

we wanted to, I'm sure we could,

if we try.

What if we try?

What if

we never had to know of greed,

if

we never knew the feeling, hate,

if

we never knew the vice of lies,

if

we never knew the vice of waste?

Could

we finally know to cherish life,

could

we really know how to love,

could

we only know to speak the truth,

could

we only know to care for us?

If

we thought it was important enough,

if

we dared to have it our own way,

if

we wanted to, I'm sure we could,

if

we wanted to, I'm sure we could,

if we try.

What if we try?

What if

we finally had had enough,

if

we felt the weight of the last straw,

would

we finally stand up for our rights

and

say, "we're not taking anymore"?

could

we make our leaders do our will,

could

we put an end to all this strife,

make

a world that lives in peace,

make

a world that has respect for life?

If

we thought it was important enough,

if

we dared to have it our own way,

if

we wanted to, I'm sure we could,

if

we wanted to, I'm sure we could,

if we try.

What if we try?

What if we try?

Author Bio:

Ronald Douglas Bascombe is a poet/writer who has been writing and performing his poetry for almost 50 years. Born in Harlem, New York, Bascombe developed early efforts at writing when sending letters and poetry home from the Air Force. Once home, he joined a writer's workshop led by Sonia Sanchez at the Countee Cullen Library in Harlem. He performed with the Cosmos Nucleus poetry group and was a contributing writer/journalist for Expansion magazine and Sunday Morning newspaper. He won first prize in poetry in the 1976 National Ossie Davis/Ruby Dee "Write-On" contest sponsored by the National Black Network and performed his children's poetry in the New York Metropolitan area. He has been published under his own name as well as Jayne Lyn Smythe and Oronde Lasana and recently published his first book, "A Life of Love: An Autobiography in Poetry."

Mary Shelley Beside her Mother's Grave

By Carole Stone

Beside your headstone

I read your Rights of Women,

your ideas my flesh, my blood.

Strengthen the female mind

and there will be an end to obedience.

Like you, I abandoned myself to a writer,

my dear Shelley with his images

of light and freedom.

In my novel I create a creature,

unnatural, wild and dark.

They say a woman could not have written

such a tale, that it is a ghost story

I overheard the men telling

the stormy night we matched wits –

Percy and Lord Byron, and Coleridge --

three geniuses and me.

Here is my book, the monster

with the dull yellow eye, the yellow skin

that hardly covers his muscles and arteries;

my shriveled, nameless, infant child.

On This Sad Island

By Laura Freedgood

(After the painting En Estos Tropicos Tristes by Jose Camacho)

Only words cover

the canvas,

tell us a woman waits

for her lover

in the sighs of

a tropical island.

We can imagine how

her head would bend,

the way her dark hair

might flow onto

the hyacinth shawl

draping her breast,

a shadow

of calm

combing her skin.

Etched letters suggest

the hours pressed

to her body,

the heat of the island

she holds

in her hands.

Author Bio:

Laura Freedgood has three chapbooks published: What I Would Paint If I Could (2012), Slant of the Heart (2010), and Weather Report (2007). Her poems appear in numerous journals and anthologies. She has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize, received an Honorable Mention in The 2013 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards, and won a 3-year poetry grant from the City University of New York where she taught as an Assistant Professor until 2010. She is currently a co-guest editor of a special edition of Adanna Literary Journal.

Palabras

By Marco Emiliano Navarro

words complete me. they offer

windows of understanding into a

new world, be it fantasy or reality.

they assist in meshing both so that

we may all just feel a little more sane,

slightly more normal. when those

thoughts allow us to memorialize them

in a manner that unlocks the puzzle of

joint universes, the feeling of joy and

intensity of love is euphoric. a high

beyond orgasmic, the experience

craves to be shared in perpetuity.

Author Bio:

Marco Navarro has been a fan of poetry featuring wordsmithing, urban landscapes, wit, and sarcasm. His works have been published online as well as in print via journals, magazines, and newsletters. His book, Alliterary Sancocho, may be purchase online via Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

The Election Olympics

By Paula R. Zacone

An expiring term of office is approaching, yes this is evident,

As candidates dominate the media in the election of President

During debates and interviews viewers hope

Instead they are dominated by a tug-of-war with a verbal rope.

The threats to national security scare us immensely,

While candidates for President battle intensely.

Hear their exchanges of accusations and verbal abuse

What's the purpose of such slander? What's the use?

With tongues as weapons, the candidates compete

Desperately seeking the opponents' defeat.

Each charges another with distrust and deceit

Insults prevail targeted at the opponents they hope to beat.

Members of both political parties condemn their own members

Reversing earlier praise and hoping no one remembers.

Voters hope to hear how things will improve,

But there appears to be no such emergence from such a disgraceful groove.

We await hearing how to curtail the violence that threatens everyday life.

And how will candidates will reverse the troubles for those who live in strife.

Who has a plan for the preservation of our environment

And has more to offer the office than one's personal financial attainment?

Voters yearn to hear more details of opportunity

And how to bring our nation together in peaceful unity.

Needless are the orations of political propaganda

And the futile war-like spurs that mottle the campaign agenda.

Candidates are convincingly outspoken and bold,

Lacking are messages as polished and profound as many of old.

There is a need for a national leader to solve problems and be admired

But these are hardly the attributes suggested by the accusations that transpired.

Tell less of the rich roads on which you've tread;

Show us your leadership skills instead.

There is no value to us of your plentiful stores in the bank

Who undoes the national debt will become our hero to thank.

Candidates, please take note-

Try poise and diplomacy to win a vote

Address foreign relations, economics, and tax

With less of the bullying stick to the facts.

The campaigns have become a war of body parts.

Hear of the size of hands and ears – but none of hearts.

The quality of hair and lips make news -

Hardly relevant to the criteria by which voters need to choose.

We hear of make-up and painted sun-tans.

So irrelevant to matters of borders and foreign lands.

"He's a con artist" is conveyed in a loud voice

"Never the less, I must support my party's choice".

Voters question and wonder why the mockery

Surrounding Trump, Cruz, Rubio, Sanders, and Hillary.

Being sought are strategies for peace, security, and freedom from crime

Instead of the euphemistic promises heard time after time.

Arising in New Jersey is its biggest mystery...

That is.... where is Governor Chris Christie?

So noticeable is his absence from the Garden State

Admittedly, with aims for his future pockets and plate.

While the victims of Sandy seem to be forgotten,

The Governor dwells on what is democratically rotten.

When questioned about his own ambitions,

He responds with his usual derision

Well, that's water under the bridge, he's likely to iterate

Undoubtedly, not the same bridge uncrossed to retaliate.

Did the candidates ever learn or did they forget....

The role of the United States President?

Each candidate seems to be blind as to what it takes to lead

As impulsive insults displace attention to the national need.

We voters worry for the future of the executive branch

When a popular political warrior gets elected by chance.

Author Bio:

Paula R. Zaccone is a Professor of Education, Health Education Specialist at Seton Hall University, South Orange, NJ Zaccone is the author of numerous rhyming works and specializes in using rhyme with puppets in her creative programs of children's health education. In addition to numerous journal articles, Paula is the author of a health education text for educators.

Eternal Sleep

By Mirela Trofin

I'd like to store sleep

the way I store fat,

on my hips

inner thighs

middle of my back

where my purple bra

digs in.

When my reserves

overflow,

I could barter with others

trading my sleep

for food or love

blue eyes on Wednesdays

theater tickets every other Saturday

rose petal jam on rice pudding

like grandma used to make

on summer holidays.

If ever, my storage places empty

I'd ask God

to trade with me against

my cache of eternal sleep.

What would he ask for?

What could I give?

the 1 that feels like a 0

by Niraj Shah

I remember using

strings and simple tins,

now simpletons

and smart-phones

are wrinkled in.

Moore's law

foresaw

the driving change,

what of forethought

of the dying brain?

More useless

as its used less.

And who would've thought

of virtual exchange?

soon, the age that says,

'remember when',

will refer to the days

where human touch wasn't

a planned event.

Days of the Glass Nylon Saris

Francesca Dharmakan Bremner

(First published in Red Wheelbarrow #8, 2015)

Monsoon drenched

The red earth

Reflects

The moon

Catches

On the spun glass

Of my

Orange sari

Setting it alight.

A moth on a flame.

Sienna, burnt orange ,

parchment white.

Moonriver.

The color of your hunger

On these lazy days

Of scones, clotted cream

Tolstoy and Tagore

On endless verendahs.

Talking of a revolution.

Of a revolution

That came all too soon.

Instagram Photos

by e.b. littlehill

Instagram photos of meals that you ate

I'm the piece of fried chicken you left on your plate

You said you liked breasts but I think that's a lie

Cause I remember you licking the inside of my thigh

You talked a sweet line, got into my soul

Made me believe that our twin flames were whole

I know it's no fantasy I dreamed in my head

I've got screen shots of texts that you sent where you said:

You invade my dreams and Good morning sweet ass

Romantic, yet edgy, just my kind of class

You teased me in sexts, made my body explode

Then left me to wander a cold, empty road

Confusion and doubt were my traveling friends

We lit out together; we started to mend

And then you returned, tempting me with your charms

"Come sit in my lap." You held out your arms

I remembered their strength, how your touch made me feel

So I gave in, once again, to a pleasure surreal

I was destined for heartache; all knew it but me

I trusted your higher self, a self you won't see

I believed in your goodness, I went with my heart

Your kiss made a promise: We never will part

We know how that ended. You finally came clean

"I played with your emotions." A bittersweet scene

It took a long while for that to sink in

I believed in the magic of what might have been

I believe in it still, despite the depiction

That my love can't compete with a plate of fried chicken

Magician

By Leonie Lewis

Stopping colossal damage to my mind

Opening the door before, before I arrive

Whipping out the silk cloth

Covering the pain from a word shot at my heart

Like a bullet from a revolver.

Putting in the fix

So that the sawn off half of my body

Bearing my heart

Will once again rejoin the rest of me

Standing me upright when

The need to lie down is so great.

Bursting that brown paper bag

Filled with the hurt

Revealing it empty of sorrow

Top hat goes on.

Rabbits freed.

Boxed doves flee.

Smile painted on

A face surprised to meet

The magician within me.

Double Exposure

By Raymond Sathyan Dharmakan Bremner

(Ekphrastic poem for the painting "Double Exposure of Trees and Wood", Ananda Lim, artist. From the Write Group 2015 Ekphrasis)

The trees collapse upon my eye

And the sky begins to grey

The hangman behind me utters his cry

And begins the work of the day

As they measure the rope and check its length

As the crowd lets out a roar

I petition my God to give me strength

To fall quietly through the door

Raymond Sathyan Dharmakan Bremner

A Morning Commute

By Thomas D. Praino

The sun glares off dusty windows

as the crowded train sweeps

us in a hypnotic rumble. Outside

the car houses seem to vanish.

Only a coffee ago we awakened to sip

our dissolving lives and slip on

polyester pants or cotton suites.

This morning, some prayers sweeten my trip

Dear Lord serve us croissants to pass the miles.

Trees pass us too, scantly dressed

for the weather. An Oak,

at the second station, nuzzles the edge

of the culvert, atop the iron underpass.

A six-foot jagged crack bolts

the stonewall below it. Slowly—the oak

drifts past us too. A fellow passenger,

peers at market finance and current events

in two-dimensional yesterdays. Buried in the back—

unread—the section that tells of a Larry

now Lawrence, and a shy Larissa, now lark.

I probe through the industrial silence

the conversation-less rattle,

the space incandescent and fluorescent.

I ponder over his printed pages—

tiny constellations set before our rising.

We sit squeezed between leather bag boundaries,

tight-lipped. His wristwatch counts

counter-tempo with the click-clack of the tracks.

On his left hand, a wedding band,

on his right, a college ring.

Outside the window, the world, ritardando

for arrival into the bowels of the station,

performs a coda to cacophony.

An egret on pipe-cleaner legs

spears her reflection in a murky estuary.

She whisper-walks a few steps

then stands in snow-white stillness.

Our train crunches with a spasm. Stops.

Our commute ends. Compressed.

Another Monday.

Passengers pack, bottleneck, we exit.

I stop and turn at the top of the platform.

Travelers slip through open doors

dropping their yesterdays in the trash.

Humanity schools past me

like minnows in a mirror estuary.

I linger and stand like the oak.

The train's metal doors slide closed.

The windows of the vacant railway cars

snap darkness with space for all.

Author Bio: Thomas D. Praino, now retired, is a doctor by vocation and a veterinarian by profession.

Kennett Square Shitake Mushrooms

By Susan Anmuth

Suburban Philadelphia

not the Main Line

more like suburbs surrounding Paris.

How much are they paid?

What are their conditions?

Those workers from neighboring Mexican villages

(is it every spring or every fall)

converging on Kennett Square?

I asked my writing workshop leader

who in her day job writes promotion

for employers like the mushroom owners in Kennett Square.

In fact, for a mushroom owner in Kennett Square.

Marian didn't know.

Why would she know – how then could

she tout the consummate mushrooms of Kennett Square?

Nor do I think about the Kennett Square women and men

who water and dig

fertilize and pick

package and ship,

while my shitake sizzle in EVO and ghee.

I think instead of Julia Child's ignored advice –

For God's sake, don't crowd the mushrooms.

Beta Male

By Carney W. Mimms

The leader calls out

He will not let us stray

As we lope down the path

On the track of our prey

He is the alpha

His are the females

I'm forbidden to mate

With all that entails

They recoil from my scent

They spurn my advances

I'm biding my time

I'll have other chances

When we're back in our den

I try not to skulk

I'm the last to bed down

They all know why I sulk

It's hard out in front

The big one grows weak

I'll be ready to strike

When he's not at his peak

He knows that I'm coming

I sense he's afraid

It must come to a fight

For this pack we have made

When we meet on that day

And he drops by the trail

Twill be better for all

If he lowers his tail

If not I'll show teeth

I'll snarl and I'll bristle

I'll tear at his flesh

Yes, I'm grasping the thistle

I hope he submits

So I won't have to kill

The pack will grow strong

From our contest of will

Every male wolf

Hears what they say

It's lead, follow or get out of the way

Retrograde

By Bee Chiles

Swaddled in your arms,

my eyes damp,

cheeks streaked with

fears finally freed to speech.

Beautiful baritone

kisses every hollow of my ear.

You sing to me.

You sooth me...

'We're alone now.'

Author Bio:

Bee Chiles recently began unveiling her writing after two decades and countless pages of silent expression. Bee's works reflect her fascination with interpersonal relationships, personal development and growth, and experiences of love. Bee shares her stories through essay, spoken word, and poetry.

Monologues

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My Wife Thinks I'm Crazy

By Ralph Badagliacca

[Author note: This is a spoken-word monologue, written as read at the Write Group Showcase. The ellipses represent pauses for dramatic effect.]

My wife thinks I'm crazy. Not the wacky, eccentric kind of crazy... the deeply troubled... really needs help... should probably be institutionalized... type.

She thinks it runs in my family... Whenever any of our children exhibits even the slightest erratic, unpredictable behavior... anything negative... she attributes it to my genes.

It's true my father was depressed a lot of the time. But I explain to her that I've dedicated my life to not being him... that I firmly believe in free will, that I'm certain that nurture trumps nature, that I'm confident we can influence our own destinies... the world bends to a determined consciousness...

Optimistic attitudes like that, she says, are just another sign of your illness.

You see, my wife has a condition of her own... I had to come up with a name for it... she's an alter-hypochondriac... she projects hypochondria onto other people... she practices projectile hypochondria... If you tell her you have a headache she convinces you it's a brain tumor... cough twice and it's tuberculosis... feel a chill... pneumonia.

If I misplace my keys, it's a sign that Alzheimer's disease is just around the corner and, should I protest any of her diagnoses in colorful language, she nods knowingly and makes a comment about Tourette Syndrome.

And it's getting worse, thanks to Google and WebMD and a host of other online services and forums that report symptoms for every disease ever known to man...

If someone tells you something over and over... to reject it out of hand... you have to give it space in your mind, which gives it a certain reality... like my father's depression.

I have this dream that embarrasses me because it's so unoriginal. I arrive home. I open the door, which has three locks and a bar like the NYC apartment where two of our children were born.

Inside there are two men wearing white coats—that's the unoriginal part—one has a scruffy beard; he really needs a shave.

So where do you go, my wife wants to know? Who are these people you meet? She thinks I've made you up. These are imaginary friends, aren't they, she asks me? You've made them up.

The Write Group! Really? What's right about it?

So, here's my question: Are you real? If you are, I need you to bear witness. If I disappear for a number of months in a row, I need you to look for me in the local hospitals... and if you find me, maybe to visit and please bring your sketches and scenes with you—no more than eight minutes each.

And if you're not real... well... I look forward to continuing exactly as we are... The setting hardly matters, does it?

Author Bio:

Raphael Badagliacca is the author of two books: Father's Day: Encounters with Everyday Life (fathersdaybook.com) and The Yogi Poems and Other Celebrations of Local Baseball (yogipoems.com) and seven short plays that have run off-Broadway in NYC. His poetry has appeared in several journals and he has written more than 50 reviews of plays, at least 30 of which can be found at this web address: http://thefrontrowcenter.com/author/raphspacegmail-com/ "My Wife Thinks I'm Crazy" is from an upcoming book of monologues he has performed over the last four years, primarily at Monologues and Madness, in lower Manhattan. One of his recent projects has been the translation of a film about the actor Vincent Schiavelli from Sicilian and Italian into English subtitles.

Author Listings

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Here is a list of authors published in the Sampler in the order of appearance.

Essays

Helen Lippman

Rose Blessing

Ethel Lee-Miller

Sue Fine

Brooke Allen

Hank Quense

Bing Chang

Rosanna Cappelluti

Fiction

Nancy-Jo Taiani

Martha Moffet

Virginia Ashton

Donna O'Donnell Figurski

Virginia Cornue

Renae Madden

Brian Montalbano

Keith Biesiada

Jeneil Stephen

Garlanda Washington

Marcia Mickley

Memoir

Cindy Pereira

Heloise Ruskin

Nimfa Gehman

Madelyn Hoffman

Poetry

Ronald Douglas Bascombe

Carole Stone

Laura Freedgood

Marco Emiliano Navarro

Paula R. Zacone

Mirela Trofin

Niraj Shah

Francesca Dharmakan Bremner

e.b. Littlehill

Raymond Sathyan Dharmakan Bremner

Leonie Lewis

Thomas D. Praino

Susan Anmuth

Carney W. Mimms

Bee Chiles

Monologues

Ralph Badagliacca

About This Book

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This is the second Sampler. The first one, Montclair Write Group Sampler 2014 is a free download from Smashwords. Grab a copy by following this link: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/463737

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his book is published by Strange Worlds Publishing. Usually, Strange Worlds concentrates exclusively on humorous and satiric fantasy and sci-fi novels from the strange mind of Hank Quense. This Sampler and the previous one in 2014 are exceptions.

