2009 Issue
Click on the cover above to read a pdf version, or stop by an MCC Writing Center, Student Services Office, Learning and Tutoring Center, bookstore, or library to pick up a hard copy.
2009 Writing Awards and Selections for Print and Web
For his story “Making Your Mark,” Paul Garth is the winner of The Metropolitan 2009 Prize for Student Writing, a 13.5-credit-hour tuition remission. The first runner-up, Madeline Radcliff is awarded 9 credit hours tuition remission for her play Happy Birthday. The second runner-up, Liz Reynolds, receives 4.5 credit hours tuition remission for her essay “Men I Did Not Marry.”
Making Your Mark by Paul Garth
Happy Birthday by Madeline Radcliff
Men I Did Not Marry by Liz Renner
Passing Time in Los Altos and Rats by Liz Gutekunst
Pedestal by Elizabeth Evenson-Dencklau
Snow Angel by Polly Hidalgo
A Day in the Life by Ian Monaghan
Leo (cover art) by John Simet
Two (cover art) by Bob Orsi
Web Selections
The Stairwell by Polly Hidalgo
Virtual High School: Closing the Gap Between Physical and Virtual Classrooms by Nicole Hall
A Home Away from Home by Melissa Deters
Contributor's Notes
Bob Orsi was born and raised in Omaha. He currently attends Metropolitan Community College and the University of Nebraska at Omaha. He is pursuing a Bachelor of Arts in Studio Arts with a concentration in graphic communication arts. One of his goals is to some day illustrate a children’s book.
Melissa Deters is currently a student at Metropolitan Community College and will transfer to the University of Nebraska at Omaha once she completes her associate’s degree in liberal arts. She is an Omaha native who has always enjoyed writing. Her first piece of creative work, a short story, was published in an Omaha Public Schools’ magazine when she was in the third grade. In her spare time, she enjoys gardening and reading nonfiction books.
Elizabeth Evenson-Dencklau is currently a student at Metropolitan Community College with plans to transfer to the University of Nebraska at Omaha in the fall of 2010. An avid reader, she lives at home with her two cats, Tip Toes and Thackery Binx, and enjoys writing poetry in her spare time.
Paul Garth’s work has been selected and read at various events in the Omaha area. A native of both South Carolina and Nebraska, he currently attends the University of Nebraska at Omaha, and he plans to attend Creighton University for a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. He thanks Steve Lovett, Sana Amoura-Patterson, and Liz Renner for their support.
Liz Gutekunst grew up on the East Coast and spent her wonder years between New York City and the District of Columbia. She is a visual artist and spent the last nine years working as a graphic designer in southern California. She moved to Nebraska to go back to school and has learned something about writing, in the process.
Polly Hidalgo, a Georgia native, moved to Omaha with her husband and nine children in 2005. With six children still at home, she is currently a theatre major at the University of Nebraska at Omaha having completed a liberal arts associate’s degree through Metropolitan Community College last year.
Ian Monaghan has lived in Omaha since he was born. He travels across the country competing in Irish step dance. He has also performed with the Omaha Symphony Orchestra at the Orpheum Theatre. He is currently pursuing an associate’s degree in business management at Metropolitan Community College and plans to one day become an Irish dance teacher and open his own school. He spends his free time taking pictures of things.
Madeline Radcliff is a humanities student of Metropolitan Community College. She had plays featured in the 2008 and 2009 Great Plains Theatre Conference and her play, Mountain Birds, will be produced at the Shelterbelt Theatre this spring, marking her first production. She is an actress, last appearing in Shelterskelter 14 at the Shelterbelt, and a singer wherever the opportunity presents itself. In her spare time, Madeline writes, plinks on the piano and guitar, and tries to make beautiful things as often as possible.
“Men I Did Not Marry (An Ode to Dorothy Parker)” is Liz Renner’s first published work of fiction. An avid reader and fan of any story well-told, Renner enrolled in a creative writing class at Metropolitan Community College out of a desire to participate in the larger literary culture. This story was produced in that class with the help and input of instructor Steve Lovett and fellow students.
John Simet is a former elementary school teacher and a father of three. He discovered his love of photography while taking photos of his children. In 2007, at his wife’s urging, he enrolled in the Commercial Still Photography Program at Metropolitan Community College. Since then he continues to work diligently to make photography his career. John hopes to one day open his own photography studio.
Making Your Mark
Paul Garth
The town that we grew up in was like any other, really. You’d
drive through Nebraska or Iowa or Kansas and see a thousand
just like it, a pretty Main Street surrounded by modest homes
that slowly morphed into smaller, less well-kept homes that
eventually turned into trailers on concrete blocks the further
from Main you went. You could probably pick up Elk Water
and drop it into the middle of some wheat or cornfield, and
the people of the town would continue on as if nothing was
different. Which it wouldn’t be, if you get what I mean. We did
all the normal things that happen in a town like that; church was
pretty important for everyone, as were football games on Friday
nights in the fall. Afterwards, everyone my age went out and got
drunk, and our parents pretended that they didn’t know what
we were doing. The Sheriff might break up a few parties every
now and again, but he did it in such an easygoing, amicable way
that no one ever actually felt like we were in trouble. We had the
occasional scandal, like when Ericka Depont got pregnant with
the band teacher’s kid, or when Alex Simmons and his cousin
Don killed each other in some weird double suicide. The rumor
was they left a note, that they blamed all of us in Elk Water for
what they did. I wasn’t close in years to either of them, so their
deaths didn’t shake me up the way they did a lot of people. But
when I was older, I began to sympathize, and that did shake
me up, the fact that I understood why they had done it. Overall
though, it wasn’t a bad way to grow up, but it gets to you after a
while, before you realize it even. You feel trapped, and you start
to look for ways out without realizing what you’re looking for.
I was eighteen my senior year, a year older than everyone
else because the year before I had been kicked out of school for
getting in a fight. I don’t remember who it was with or what
started it, other than that I used to have an anger problem. I
just remember sitting there in the principal’s office with my dad
to my left and my mom to the right, and being told that I was
expelled for the rest of the year. I remember I could feel my dad’s
anger coming through his skin, and I knew that I would get
my ass kicked when we got home. I ended up working at Jim
Harvinson’s John Deere dealership for the rest of the year, fixing
tractors and doing odd jobs for Jim, before I finally went back to
school the next fall, my dad forcing me by saying things like, “No
son of mine is going to be a high school dropout. You go back,
you get your degree, and then I don’t care if you sell tractors till
Jesus comes back. But you’re not doing anything until you get
that diploma.”
In the fall of my second senior year, on a Friday after school
had let out, my best friend Jacob and I were hanging out behind
the football field. The sky was heavy and gray, and a breeze
was blowing that smelled of the smoke of an old man burning
leaves. We were sitting on the top of some old kegs that had
been left in the field and smoking cigarettes. Both of us were in
contemplative moods, and we talked of things deeper than the
gossip at school. We talked about music and our parents and how
every time fall and winter pulled into Elk Water we felt that we
had died a little inside. I was doing most of the talking. Jacob
hunched over the keg, his elbows on his knees. When I finally
finished my thought, he looked at me and said, “I went to Alex
Simmons’ grave the other day.”
I was shocked, but I tried to play it off like it was no big
deal at all. Jacob and I had known each other long enough and
been close enough that I thought that nothing he said or did
could shock me. “The f*** you do that for?”
“I dunno. We’ve heard stories about this kid since we were
in the sixth grade. About how he didn’t give a shit and just… just
went for it. He made his mark. I guess I just kind of wanted to
see it.”
“That’s a pretty shitty way to make your mark,” I said and
stared ahead at the football team practicing for their game that
night on the field, red jerseys smashing into white jerseys like a
wave.
“I’m not saying it was smart,” Jacob said and flicked his
cigarette into the tall grass. “But we’re still talking about it, aren’t
we?”
The football team lost that night, and afterwards it seemed
that everyone in Elk Water walked out of the field in a mood
that was as black as the De Mars players’ uniforms. Jacob and I
had been wandering around the track the whole game, not really
watching or caring, but even we were affected. “Bullshit,” Jacob
said as we walked to his car, kicking at the grass. We fell into a
silence that was atypical of us, and I stuffed my hands into my
jean pockets and lowered my head.
As we got to the car, we were surprised to see Janice
Hightower leaning against it, her hair tossing in the slow wind. I
had never noticed before, but it occurred to me then that she was
beautiful, and I felt jealousy flame inside me when I saw the eyes
that she looked at Jacob with.
“Hey guys,” she said casually, as if we had planned to meet
her there after the game.
“Shitty night, huh?” Jacob asked. I just waved.
“Jacob, did it ever occur to you that the night is just
starting?”
“I want some beer,” I said out of turn and instantly felt like
an idiot for steamrolling her flirtatiousness with Jacob.
“I’m sure we’ll find something to do tonight,” he said, not
missing a beat. “Get in. Let’s go look for trouble.”
We drove for the better part of an hour, taking the streets
up and down, driving by the houses where there were usually
parties, only to find and see nothing but darkened windows and
leaves blowing across the front yards. It was a lonely night, and
the three of us felt that we might have been the only people in
Elk Water, or maybe even the world. One by one suggestions for
other things to do came up and were shot down. Paul’s Diner, the
rock quarry, going and bugging Burt at the gas station, all shot
down by one or another, as we drove the roads aimlessly.
We were near the outskirts of town, where the fields
butted up against the overgrown lawns and the roads turned
from pavement to dust, when I got a flash of inspiration. “Jacob,
I think that we should go see Alex Simmons’ grave. I think I
want to see it.” I thought that my suggestion would be rejected,
if not by Jacob then definitely by Janice, but I caught him giving
her a glance in the rearview mirror, and it suddenly occurred to
me that he might not share every detail of his life with me, that
maybe he actually had planned to meet her by his car after the
game, that maybe he had told her on the phone about his trip to
the cemetery, that it wasn’t a surprise to her at all. I felt lost and
alone in that moment, and all I wanted to do was to get out of
the car and run.
“Good idea,” he said and we were off with Janice laughing
in the back seat.
No one was sure if the cemetery had a night watchman of
some sort, so we parked about a half mile away and walked along
the shoulder of the road, our jackets wrapped around us to ward
off the wind that had come up in the last hour. We didn’t talk as
we approached the tall, wrought iron gates and climbed them,
even though I felt that I had a million things to say that were
ready to tumble out of my mouth. The tension cleared up as we
made our way closer and closer to the grave, Jacob and Janice
playfully pushing each other and laughing. Behind me, Janice
whispered, “It’s soo spooky, Jacob,” and I saw him grab her hand.
I was in the lead even though I had no idea which direction the
grave was in when I turned around and asked them, “Do you
think it’s true? Do you think they did it because of the town?”
Jacob removed his hand from Janice’s arm and stuffed it
into his jacket. “Probably. I’m kind of surprised it doesn’t happen
more often, really.”
“Don’t be an idiot, Ryan,” Janice said to me. “It doesn’t
matter why they did it. They did it, and now our parents seem to
think that we’re all suicidal, it feels like.”
I nodded and began to walk again, confident that I would
stumble on Alex’s grave if I just walked long enough. The wind
ripped at my ears, and Jacob and Janice fell behind me several
feet, as if they were suddenly uninterested in this whole trip. But
I was interested and growing more so by the second. The legend
of Alex Simmons and his cousin had been a part of my teenage
years, a tall tale planted in my head when I was twelve, and I was
going to stare at his grave, the grave that had caused so many
kids like me to lie awake and be jealous of the fact that they had
found a way out. I thought of my job working on tractors and
of how I was kicked out of school the year before and how that
afternoon I had lied to Jacob and said that it seemed like a shitty
way to make a mark, when really Jacob had been right. They had
made a mark, not on themselves or the town, but on all of us.
“It’s over here,” Janice yelled out from my right, her voice
carried by the wind to me.
I turned on my heels and headed in their direction,
wondering what kind of grave it would be. Would it have a cross
on the top, or would it be just a plain tombstone? What would
the inscription say? Would it have his birthday on it?
The grave sat at the crest of a small hill, and they were
standing in front of it looking down, their hands at their sides.
My idea of the grave had proven to be completely wrong—it
wasn’t a tombstone at all in the way that I thought of them,
but more of a slab of marble laid across the grass, the surface
reflecting moonlight back up at us:
ALEX SIMMONS
JAN 23, 1971 – SEPTEMBER 14, 1987
“BELOVED SON,
FOREVER GONE,
TAKEN INTO
THE ARMS OF GOD”
“F***ing weird.”
They were the only words that I could think to say, and no
one said anything for a long time. I felt my emotions let go, and
hate and desperation and anger and fear welled up inside of me
until I felt myself ready to burst. I looked over, and Jacob had
slipped his hand back into Janice’s, both of them looking at each
other instead of the grave.
“I think I’m going to go and see…” I paused and tried to
think of some other point of interest inside of the cemetery,
but nothing came, and I walked off with the sounds of laughter
in my ears. I walked around the graveyard for what felt like a
long time, feeling the wind on my face and the leaves crackling
beneath my sneakers. A part of me was aware that Jacob and
Janice were probably under a tree in the far corner of the
cemetery, exploring each other’s bodies. I toyed with the thought
in my head; I could picture it even. My blood felt hot beneath my
skin, and from somewhere inside of me, I felt the sudden urge to
leave Elk Water forever immediately. To just take my parents’ car
and head to Omaha or Des Moines or Minneapolis, anywhere
but where I was.
The shed appeared out of nowhere, its green walls hidden
in the shadows of the trees that hung overhead, shaking in the
wind. The only reason that I saw it was the moonlight reflecting
over the metal trim around the frame, flashing across my vision. I
walked to it, drawn, and without thinking, I felt myself pulling at
the door.
It opened in my hands, unexpectedly unlocked, and I
stepped inside.
The inside of the maintenance shed smelled of dirt and
must, the scent of earth and sweat, and even in the low light,
the walls glimmered and glowed with the metal hanging from
the hooks tacked into the wood and framing. Shovels and picks
and spades hung from their wooden shafts, and I put my hands
around the handle of a pick, lifted it in my arms, and played with
the weight. It was heavy but solid, and feeling that rough wood
against my palms filled me with a sense of power that I hadn’t
ever felt before. I tossed the pick from hand to hand, getting a
grasp on the balance of the tool, and then walked back out into
the graveyard, closing the door behind me.
As I walked back across the graveyard, I felt my mind
reeling, as if I had taken drugs or become suddenly drunk; I
thought of the last time that I had been there, two years before,
after Mr. Campbell, our middle school science teacher, died of
a heart attack while mowing his yard on a hot August day. No
other students had come to the funeral, and I felt out of place
and alone there, thinking back to the greatest lesson that Mr.
Campbell had ever taught me, that every action has an equal and
opposite reaction. Mowing the yard on a hot summer day had
caused a reaction, and whatever it was that I was about to do
certainly would have consequences.
There was a part of me that knew what I was planning
all along, there had to have been. But when I was in front of
the grave again, Jacob and Janice long gone, I remember asking
myself what I was doing there with the pick in my hand. I stood
there motionless for what felt like a long time, the head of the
pick resting on the ground and me leaning against the handle,
reading and rereading the epitaph over and over again. “Beloved
son, forever gone, taken into the arms of God.” The pick was no
longer humming in my hands, and as the humming faded, so did
my sense of immediacy. Indecision and weakness overwhelmed
me, and I turned to walk away.
And then, the wind carried noises to me, noises coming
from the grass at the bottom of a hill a few hundred yards away,
quiet moans and pleasurable gruntings. What I had seen in my
mind was right. They were doing it with no consideration of me;
they couldn’t even wait until they dropped me off. I could feel my
hands tingle and hum with the anger, like power lines felled by a
storm. I turned in an instant, the pick sliding in my hands like a
piece of machinery gliding over my head, and I brought it down
with a ground-pounding force into the exact middle of the slab
that was Alex Simmons’ headstone.
The crack of the blow reverberated and hung in the air, the
strike shattering both the marble and the calmness of the night.
I stood kneeling over the gravestone for a moment, my brain
swimming in the boiling blood coursing through my temples. I
listened, straining my ears for any sound, but nothing came, and
I stood up again and stared at the headstone. I had taken a large
chunk out of it, but in many ways, it didn’t seem like enough.
I took a step back, hefting the pick into my hand again, and
wondered if it was all true, if Alex and Don had killed themselves
because our shitty little town had choked the life out of them;
I wondered if it was choking the life out of me, and then I
wondered if the town was as suffocating and miserable as it was
because of the actions of these boys.
I had never seen Alex in my life, that I can remember
anyway, but in that moment, his image was crystal clear in my
head. A boy with short brown hair, a wide-set nose and dark
green eyes that seemed dull and faded. And then that image
turned, the face replaced by gaping black and red with teeth
protruding, and a body in blue jeans slumped against the blood
spattered wall. The pick came down again, and then again.
And then I was in a frenzy. Adrenaline pumped through
my heart, and I became lightheaded and began to sweat fear
and anger; I was striking at his name, striking at that f***ing
thoughtlessly dumb poem, and then I was swinging at my
father, at my principal, at Jacob, at Janice, at Jim, at Don, at Paul
from the diner, at Burt from the gas station, at my teachers,
at my preacher, at my grandmother, at everyone in that f***ing
worthless town that had kept me there, that had given up hope,
that had let their dreams die, that had never thought of their kids
or if this would be a good place to raise them, at the blood that
covered my hands from holding the pick too tight, at the scream
that was coming from my throat high and girlish and terrified,
and then at the hands pulling at my shoulders and the yelling
from behind me screaming for me to stop, and then I collapsed
in a pile of sweat and floppy bones.
I don’t remember walking to the car, or where Jacob got
the tee shirt that he wrapped my hands in, but I do remember
sitting in the back of his car, Janice with her arm around me,
and Jacob casting scared glances from the rearview mirror as he
drove me back home. Finally, when it seemed that the silence
was becoming too much, he asked me, “Jesus Christ, Ryan, what
happened to you back there?”
“I…” I tried to answer, to justify it in some way, but nothing
came, and I looked at him and Janice and said, “F*** Elk Water.”
Next to me, Janice unwrapped her arm from around me and
stared at the head rest of Jacob’s seat, and we were all silent while
they took me home.
When I walked in the door, my father was sitting at the
kitchen table, drinking a beer and reading a World War II history
book. “Hey, Ryan,” he said, not looking up, “Tough loss tonight.
Whatchya been doing?”
I didn’t say anything, just stood in the doorframe to the
kitchen, and when he finally looked up, he wore a look of worry
on his face that showed his true age, and the look of worry
turned into a look of true concern when he saw the bandages
around my palms.
“What the hell happened?”
“I smashed Alex Simmons’ gravestone,” I said and braced
myself for him to jump up from the table and punch me. But
it never came. Instead, he looked at me for a long while before
standing up and going to the refrigerator and pulling out a beer.
He set it on the side of the table across from him and motioned
for me to sit down and join him, sliding the beer across the table.
I sat and cradled the bottle in my wrapped hands for a long
time before I drank. My father sat looking at me quietly, and
when I put the bottle back down again, he laughed a mischievous
laugh.
“Frankly, Ryan, I am pretty goddamned amazed that no
one has done that before. Seemed to me that smashing that poor
kid’s grave should be a rite of passage in this town.”
“It should be,” I said and drank again.
“I’m not too big on the idea of messing with a person’s
grave, Ryan, but in a way I’m proud of you, I think. You didn’t do
it for attention, did you?”
I shook my head. “No, I didn’t know why I was doing it
until I was doing it.”
“It’s pretty hopeless, isn’t it? Having that shit hanging over
you kids on top of everything else.”
I looked at him for a long time. “I have to get out, Dad.”
“I know you do. And you will. You’re a smart boy. And even
though I’ll miss ya, I don’t want you spending forever in this
town.” He shook his head in a sad way, and for the first time I
realized how tender my Dad could be. “That’s why I kicked your
ass when you said you were thinking about not going back to
school, that you were going to maybe work for Jim. I couldn’t see
you make the same mistakes that I did.”
We sat there in the kitchen, letting our words sink into
each other, feeling the bonds of love that stretched across the
table, and I wondered if anything could break them after I had so
plainly admitted to grave desecration, and I realized that nothing
could.
“Anyone know what else you did?”
“Jacob and Janice. But they won’t say anything.”
He nodded. “Good. Now get your hands cleaned and get to
bed. I don’t want your mother to wake up. I don’t know if she’d be
so understanding.”
I stood up from the table and felt a slightly drunk
happiness creep through my limbs, the kind of happiness that
only the first beer with your father can bring. “Good night, Dad.”
“Good night, Ryan,” he said and then opened his book back
up and sat beneath the light at the table, a deep smile on his face.
It was impossible to go to sleep. My knuckles and palms felt
like bells with permanently swinging clappers inside them, my
mind was racing, and for the first time in my life, I noticed things
that I had never noticed before—that my sheets were scratchy
like cotton candy, that the tree outside my window didn’t look
like the witch I thought it had when I was a kid, but a tower or
a skyscraper full of possibility. I lay there for hours, listening to
the pages being turned in my Dad’s book and the sounds of him
sitting in his chair. I heard him go to bed, and I lay thinking over
and over again that I was the only man still awake in the house.
Finally, when the wind stopped blowing and the moon had
dropped and hidden behind the neighbor’s house, I fell asleep.
That night I had a dream that Alex Simmons walked me
through the halls of the high school on my first day of freshman
year, and we skipped all of my classes and just walked around
the building until the 3:10 bell rang and the halls filled up
with students rushing for the remains of the summer air, and
somehow in the rush, we got separated and pulled in different
directions, but as I went my way and he went his, he turned
around and waved at me, and then yelled that he hoped I had a
good year.
Happy Birthday
Madeline Radcliff
An old woman, RUTH, sits on a park bench. She is smiling, holding a
gift in her lap. Birds chirp. She sees a bird in front of her and pulls out
a bag of bread crumbs.
RUTH: Hello, little fellow.
She tosses the bread crumbs. She enjoys watching the bird for a
moment. A young woman, CAROLINE, enters. She watches Ruth for
a moment, unnoticed.
CAROLINE: Hello.
RUTH: Oh heavens! You scared me!
CAROLINE: I’m sorry.
RUTH: Oh, I’m old, dear. Everything seems to startle me
anymore.
CAROLINE: (Pause) Can I sit with you?
RUTH: Oh certainly, sweetheart. I don’t know how long I’ll be
here, though. I’m meeting my granddaughter. It’s her birthday.
Mine, too. We always spend our birthday afternoon together,
here. I’ve always loved this park, but this is like a second home to
that girl.
CAROLINE: How old is she today?
RUTH: Nine.
CAROLINE: Nine. You always meet here?
RUTH: Yes. In fact, it’s always right here. At this very bench. It’s
her favorite spot in the park. She calls it the World’s Eye.
CAROLINE: Why’s that?
RUTH: If you walk up to the edge, right in front of you there, in
between those two skinny trees and look down, you’ll be looking
right at the center of the lake.
CAROLINE: Is that so?
Caroline stands, walks to the edge of the stage, and looks down.
RUTH: She says standing right there, at that very angle, the
whole park is reflected back towards you. The trees, flowers,
people, sky.
CAROLINE: Beautiful. (She backs away.) Like looking into
someone’s eye and seeing yourself.
RUTH: Exactly.
CAROLINE: She seems like a smart nine-year-old.
RUTH: She’s very ahead of her time.
CAROLINE: What’s your name?
RUTH: Ruth.
CAROLINE: Ruth. Nice to meet you.
RUTH: Yes. (Pause) You know, I bought her a journal. She loves
to write, but she’s always writing on loose sheets of paper. It
should all be together. At least that’s what I think.
CAROLINE: That’s a great gift. You know, my grandmother was
the first person to give me a journal. (Pause) I’m a writer now.
I’ve had probably a hundred journals since then, but I still get so
much inspiration from that first one. It’s the best thing I’ll ever
write.
RUTH: You’re a writer?
CAROLINE: Yes. In fact, I just got this, in the mail, this
morning. (She pulls out a letter) From the publishers.
She hands it to Ruth. She reads it silently.
RUTH: Oh! Oh goodness! Congratulations, dear! That’s
wonderful news.
CAROLINE: Thank you.
RUTH: And all because your grandma gave you a journal. I’ll
have to tell my Caroline. She’ll be so excited.
CAROLINE: Her name is Caroline?
RUTH: Yes.
CAROLINE: I (Pause) I wish my grandma were here to read
this.
RUTH: Oh dear, I’m so sorry she’s not.
CAROLINE: Yes. So am I. (She cries.)
RUTH: Oh there, there sweetheart. (She opens her purse and pulls
out a Kleenex. She wipes Caroline’s cheeks.) There we are. Deep
breaths.
CAROLINE: You’re very nice.
RUTH: I don’t try to be. It just comes with age. (Pause) She’s
proud of you. Even though she’s not here to say it herself. She’s a
grandma. She knows and she’s proud.
CAROLINE: You don’t know how much that means.
RUTH: Do you ever feed birds?
CAROLINE: I used to. A long time ago.
Ruth pulls out the bag of crumbs and sets it in between her and
Caroline.
RUTH: There’s something calming about it, I think. Try it.
They both toss crumbs in silence for a moment.
CAROLINE: Ruth?
RUTH: Yes?
CAROLINE: Are you and your granddaughter close?
RUTH: Yes. Very.
CAROLINE: You spend a lot of time together?
RUTH: Yes. Her father…isn’t in the picture and her mother has
a full-time job to support her. She spends most of her afternoons,
after school, with me. Has for most of her life. I know everything
about that girl. Every freckle, every scar. Every…
CAROLINE: Everything?
Ruth looks at Caroline quizzically. Then, she becomes nearly
frightened.
RUTH: What did you say your name was?
CAROLINE: I never told you my name.
RUTH: Do (Pause) Do I know you somehow?
CAROLINE: Do you think you do?
They stare at one another for a long time. Ruth turns away.
RUTH: I’m sorry. I get confused sometimes.
CAROLINE: It’s all right.
RUTH: I—I don’t feel so well all of a sudden.
CAROLINE: Let me help you.
Ruth begins to stand with the help of Caroline. Then, as if a switch
flips, she pulls away from Caroline and is in complete panic.
RUTH: Who are you? Get away from me! When did I get here?
CAROLINE: Calm down. Everything’s all right. I’m just here to
help.
RUTH: Who are you?
Long pause.
CAROLINE: My name is Caroline.
RUTH: Caroline. (She calms) That’s my granddaughter’s name.
I’m meeting her here. It her birthday. Mine, too…we have the
same birthday. We always spend it together.
Long pause. Ruth stands.
RUTH: Maybe I should go home. Maybe she forgot or needs a
ride.
CAROLINE: Where is home?
RUTH: Down in midtown. I’ve lived there for thirty years now.
Since my daughter was only seven.
CAROLINE: Ruth…you don’t live there anymore.
RUTH: Yes I do. How would you know? I know where I live.
CAROLINE: You need to come with me to that building, over
there.
RUTH: That’s a nursing home.
CAROLINE: Yes.
RUTH: Oh. (Pause) Oh my. I can’t seem to make sense of
anything.
CAROLINE: It’s all right, let me walk with you. Your
granddaughter will be there.
RUTH: What if she’s not? And she comes here and I’m not here
waiting. She’ll be so disappointed.
CAROLINE: Trust me. You could never disappoint her. She
loves you.
RUTH: Yes. And I love her. She’s nine today, you know. She calls
this the World’s Eye.
CAROLINE: Yes, yes. She’ll be happy to see you.
RUTH: Well. All right.
CAROLINE: Come on. Let me walk you back. This way. (She
points off stage.)
Ruth exits. Caroline looks at the edge of the stage then back towards
Ruth. She exits.
Men I Did Not Marry (An Ode to Dorothy
Parker)
Liz Renner
Note to editors: Dorothy Parker’s short story “Men I’m Not
Married To” appeared in the June 17, 1922 edition of The
Saturday Evening Post. My submission is intended to be an
homage to Parker and a continuation of the conversation.
No matter where I trek,
No matter how I fare,
In short—even when life’s a wreck,
The men are always there.
At airports or parties, even a 5K race,
The meetings tend to vary,
They pop up every place—
The men I did not marry.
I contemplate as they pass me by;
Internally I declare,
“There but for the grace of God,” I sigh,
“Goes a man whose name I’d share!”
They represent nothing unique,
They do as others do,
They succeed or fail—regardless of my critique,
The men I am not married to.
I’m sure among their friends
Each is, no doubt, a king.
Although we came to different ends
I wouldn’t change a thing.
Yet worry wrinkles not their brows;
No regret over heated words said.
With some I exchanged keys but never vows,
The men I never wed.
If they’d had the chance to tie
The knot with me for life,
They’d no doubt bring me the sun, the moon, the sky—
The men who do not call me “wife.”
MARCO
Marco was a most tortured romantic. He suffered
beautifully; it truly was an art form. He sought out new ways to
take happiness and find the black cloud to picnic underneath.
No love was worthy that hadn’t been tested, pushed, prodded and
analyzed.
Marco lived for ideals with a capital “I.” Ordinary
living was for sell-outs. Recognition of adult responsibilities
meant caving to the conformist platitudes of “reliability” and
“predictability” which led only to one thing—a slow death in
the suburbs. He chased his ideals—coolness, hipness, avantgardeness—to the ends of the earth. He once drove his rickety,
rat-a-tat-tatty Honda motorcycle from Nebraska to Mexico to
test his own self-reliance. My suggestion that he move out of his
parents’ house and try his hand at paying his own rent lacked
the requisite adventure. My common sense suggestion was like a
cold hard slap against the sweet, innocent baby’s bottom that was
his vision of “Independence Quest.” It was quite the buzzkill. So
I kissed him goodbye in my driveway. No girls allowed on this
knight’s journey.
I lost track of Marco over the years, but stumbled upon
him in a university library recently. He had been living the life I
would have guessed—nomadic, bohemian and full of affairs with
women who had long hair and smelled of patchouli. But time
had changed him.
He was back in town studying dentistry. Yes, that’s right. A
dentist. He hadn’t chopped his dreadlocks yet, and I didn’t dare
ask if they posed a health risk in his future field.
“How are your classes? Is the work difficult?” Marco had
been a philosophy major as an undergrad. You know, because he
was deep.
“Oh, the science is fine, but I can’t stand my classmates.
Everyone here is so religious.”
“Well, it is a pretty Catholic city.”
“No. It’s not just Catholics; it’s Christians of all kinds, and
Protestants, Jews, and even Muslim students. I feel oppressed by
the amount of church and temple talk I have to endure everyday.
This is why I hate the U.S. Why I had to get out.”
“Well, religion isn’t exactly an issue confined to the United
States…”
Marco rattled on about how he was and what he thought
of the world. He didn’t like to cook but despised eating in
restaurants (“the waiters hover around, harass you to finish and
then guilt you into a tip”). He didn’t like the movies, and he
hated television. He didn’t like to spend money, which was a
good thing because he asserted that he also didn’t like to work.
He only liked to read and surf but had received a knee injury that
put an end to his beach-bum life.
So this is what became of the windmill-fencing, adventureseeking, tortured romantic. He of many imagined angsts achieved
a wicked end—real angst. Achey and sentenced to dentistry in a
town with no beaches.
TOBY
Over our first drink, Toby enthralled me with stories about
the years he worked for the Honolulu Zoo. He knew more
about turtles than anyone I’d ever met. Over our second drink,
he captivated me with tales about his life as an Air Force pilot
stationed in Europe. By our third drink, we’d made a bet about
the origin of hamsters as house pets.
“I mean, where did they come from?”
“Do you think an archeologist searching ruins somewhere
in Africa looked up one day and saw a pack of hamsters running
free on the Sahara?”
“Probably. I bet they were rolling across a savannah,
hundreds of tiny hamster wheels spinning over dirt mounds and
grass. Lions and gazelles leaping out of the way to avoid being
trampled.”
“Yeah, and the archeologist and his assistant grabbed a
couple and named them ‘Trisket’ and ‘Molly’ and the rest is
history.”
I never saw Toby again, but my curiosity got the best of me.
Now I know that hamsters were discovered by a British zoologist
traveling in Syria.
JEFF
Jeff was very proud of the fact that he almost never
shopped for clothes in the United States. His sweaters were from
Switzerland and his shirts from a company in Australia.
BEN
Ben told me about his battle with a gambling addiction. It
was a fascinating story. I bet myself I wouldn’t go on a second
date with him.
JOE
Everyone told me I had to meet Joe. He was a great catch
and a favorite around his office. Always volunteering for special
causes, readily available for a happy hour or other group outings.
He was a hard worker, and he liked children.
We exchanged a few emails, and he seemed pleasant
enough. He warned me that he was shy and had lately become
discouraged by how many women fled after a first date. He
believed it took time to develop a relationship and that people
needed more than one dinner to decide if they were interested in
each other. I agreed and joked that we should bring our laptops
to dinner. In case we had trouble making conversation we could
email each other, as we seemed to do just fine communicating
that way.
Dinner with Joe resembled something like eating with a shy
and slightly hostile 12-year-old boy; only the conversation wasn’t
as stimulating and involved less eye contact. He pushed around
the food on his plate. He twitched and twittered. He played
obsessively with the impressive collection of rubber wristbands
around both his wrists, showing a particular preference for a
yellow “Live Strong” band.
DANIEL
Daniel wouldn’t start karate lessons until the wart on his
foot healed.
PETER
“You know Peter is a freak, don’t you?” This was the first
question his friends asked me the minute Peter left the room.
Peter and I drove to Lincoln to help them move into their new
house. I agreed to go along because we had been dating for two
months, and I wanted to meet some of his friends. This line of
questioning may have been the reason he kept them from me.
Why I didn’t see that question as a red flag is something I
wonder about to this day. I know I was impressed with his sense
of humor and a fascinating wealth of knowledge about a diverse
array of topics. He was also a great cook, making up ridiculous
dinners out of whatever ingredients were in my refrigerator.
Nevertheless, his friends seemed slightly amused that I
would be tangled up with the likes of him. While Peter had
many good qualities, his tragic flaw was taking a good thing
too far. For example, he could break the ice within moments of
meeting new people. He didn’t so much break the ice as smash it
into a thousand pieces. He loved telling stories and was a natural
actor—standing up in someone’s living room and re-enacting a
scene from work or just as easily a scene from Roman history,
and sometimes just a scene from his last trip to the toilet.
He possessed a dangerous amount of basic knowledge
about almost everything. Enough to jump into a conversation
and impress whomever he had interrupted with an odd tidbit or
a tantalizing factoid. “Are you talking about architecture? I love
Zaha Hadid’s Vitra fire station in Germany.” “Did I hear you say
Hubble telescope? I happen to be a stargazer, myself.” “Did you
drop this quarter? I don’t know if you were aware, but I’m quite
conversant in numismatics, particularly ancient Greek coinage.”
Some subjects didn’t even require actual knowledge. If he
ever stumbled across something that got a laugh, he made a
mental note and trotted it out whenever conversation allowed.
He ran the same lines for all crowds, changing wording slightly
depending on the audience (he wouldn’t swear in front of my
mother or small children). For instance, he dazzled family friends
from Panama with his ability to speak Spanish: “Chica gotta
take a leek-a!” In fact, he dazzled anyone who spoke Spanish,
had been to Mexico, or worked in a Mexican restaurant with
that gem. It is curious that for all his performative tendencies
Peter lacked a true appreciation for his audience. His desire to
entertain was only surpassed by his desire to see people squirm.
If his joke got a laugh, he was pleased, but if a joke offended,
shocked, or embarrassed, he was proud.
JON
Jon was a truck driver who was saving up to buy a cricket
farm. Once he got the farm established, he was going to hire
a cricket farm manager, buy a sailboat, and live at sea off his
earnings.
KIRK
Kirk loved James Taylor and TV shows about paranormal
activities. He debated whether to take his 12-year-old son on
vacation to a tree top village in Oregon or repair his ailing
Saturn.
SALMAN
Salman wore a series of tee shirts that made me want to fall
in love with him. The first one was “I’m for PLoS one.” A shout
out to an interactive, open-access journal for the communication
of all peer-reviewed, scientific and medical research published by
the Public Library of Science (PloS).
I’m a sucker for proud geeks. Men who embrace their big
brains and aren’t afraid to use them. Salman was an astronomer/
physicist. He was clever and jovial. Smart and articulate. He
grew up in Pakistan and had a beautiful accent and a gorgeous
head of hair. He had an amazing ability to take something as
far away and out of reach as the stars and bring them to me
in a way I could comprehend, mostly using references to pop
culture. Although he was a complete gentleman, he never paid
me a single compliment. I kept waiting for one: “You look nice
tonight.” I craved any small acknowledgement and would have
gladly settled for a generic “You have pretty eyes.”
The last time I saw Salman, his tee shirt said, “Who the hell
do I think I am?” I wanted to laugh and punch him.
Passing Time in Los Altos
Liz Gutekunst
The only thing I could say in Spanish
was “No te preocupes”
which meant “don’t worry,” though
I once said I was a “pendejo”
and thought it meant stupid. Oh, no.
I do worry. I don’t speak Spanish.
So the men, delighted, talked at me very fast
at which I smiled and understood nothing.
Though sometimes I would repeat
“No te preocupes.”
Rats
Liz Gutekunst
After Stafford’s “Passing Remark”
I never saw a rat sorry for itself. I never saw
two rats consoling each other for being rats.
Rats live good full rat-lives with other rats. Ratmind
and rat heart plunge them into rat sex with other impassioned
rats.
People say they are poison and ugly and cause disease.
I say people cause disease.
I never caught a cold or syphilis or scabies or manic
depression from a rat.
Pedestal
Elizabeth Evenson-Dencklau
And you weep as you watch
the glass pedestal crumble
along with your hopes,
for it was unable to hold
the weight of your expectations.
Snow Angel
Polly Hidalgo
She tossed herself
backwards into the
fresh snow.
The cold
shock took
her breath
but quickly wore
off. Slowly she began
to move
her arms, in
her voluminous winter coat,
in arcs. Then
her legs, bundled in snow
pants, follow
carefully, very carefully
I watched
her rise, this previously
broken child
and she turned
to look
triumphant over all
her life’s obstacles
at the flawless snow angel
she had made.
A Day In The Life
Ian Monaghan
The sights and sounds of an Irish dance competition rival
that of any major sporting event. Of course, you won’t hear
the dull thud of basketballs on a polished wooden floor or the
echoing crack of a bat in the season opener at Fenway Park. But
these competitions are just as exciting in their own unique way.
The building itself is a large, boxy structure, one of the
great steel-and-concrete castles of the twentieth century. A
spacious desert of parking lots spreads out in front of it, and
four triangular concrete pillars stand like towers at the entrance,
their battlements emblazoned with the name of the arena.
The pediment above the walkway is held aloft by great steel
balustrades and gives the impression of being a sort of elevated
drawbridge.
Inside, there is housed a space like most utilitarian
exhibition halls and convention centers of our day. Catwalks,
harsh lighting, and camera platforms are suspended by steel
girders high above a concrete slab so as not to get in anyone’s
way. Two monolithic, carpeted walls divide the one space into
three and help cut down on the noise of nearly four thousand
people all talking at once.
The first sound to reach your ears is the melody of a
menagerie of instruments. Accordions (and don’t forget the lone
concertina!) blurt out a steely, nasal droning somewhere between
waxed paper on a comb and an air horn. That, combined with the
plaintive yet scratchy strains of violins and the airy whistle of a
flute, fills the space and seeps into its cracks. Over the course of
the day, it becomes a noise, but it is a pleasant noise nonetheless.
Then come the more localized sounds of the dancers
practicing their steps in hallways and corners: a final rehearsal
before they step onto the stage to claim their place among the
winners. On concrete, the sound has a dull, flat quality, not unlike
tapping one’s fingernails on a desk. On the medium of a wooden
stage, however, amplified by airspace from underneath, the dance
becomes the series of resounding cracks and booms of an artillery
brigade. It is an insistent, pulsating sound that draws out the
rhythm in the music, expounding upon it like a seasoned orator,
toying with it the way a cat plays with a mouse. Then it is thrown
to the judges and spectators to do with as they please.
The stages themselves are quite large, at least sixteen square
feet, and get larger for the more experienced dancers. In front
of the stage is a table for the judge. To the side of that, there is a
chair, speaker, and microphone for the musician. There is usually
only one judge, but for the top two levels there are three. Family
members and friends are seated on one side of the stage, while
dancers waiting for their turn sit on the opposite side.
The show that is put on by these dancers, ranging in age
from ten to nineteen, is as much a visual spectacle as it is one of
sound. They perform impressive feats, spinning tightly and flying
across the stage with lightning speed. The jumps and mid-air
spins that they view as a matter of course would be considered by
people unfamiliar with the sport to be near impossible.
All of this is only enhanced by the costumes. Girls wear
knee-length dresses made of thick cloth, with long sleeves and
several large pleats at the bottom. They come in every color of
the rainbow and are embroidered with all manner of decorations.
These range from the obvious Celtic knots to the more eclectic
spiderwebs, seashells, and cloth roses, and, of course, anything
that sparkles or shines.
The typical outfit for boys is a dress shirt, black pants, and
a black vest. However, in the upper levels, black vests are more
the exception than the rule. Many of the shirts are custom-made
and range from black-and-white hound’s tooth to solid colors to
black with white tiger stripes, and most have French cuffs. The
ties feature stripes, polka dots, paisley, and every other design
and color imaginable. But the real tools of this trade are the
shoes. Made of soft black leather, the heels and toes are gilded
in smooth fiberglass. They are the sole implements used to create
the sounds so evocative of this captivating sport.
No matter how many competitions I attend, I always feel
the same excitement and respect for this art form, for that is
what it truly is. The flashing costumes, the music, and most of all,
the extraordinary skill of the dancers—all of these things unite to
create quite a memorable experience. Anyone unacquainted with
this sport should definitely attend one of these competitions.
The Stairwell
by Polly Hidalgo
During her favorite time of day, Emma left the house and headed up the street. It was pre-dawn, and all was still and quiet. Here and there a dog barked once or twice and then silence fell again.
The silence was comforting to Emma, and she embraced it like a long lost child. This was her time, her time for herself. The only time she really took for herself. She walked on. Once at the park, she sauntered through the little wooded areas, frightening the little rabbits and birds in the underbrush. Hidden in the midst of all that, a man watched. “She is still exquisite after all these years,” he thought. He entertained the idea of stepping out of the shadows and speaking to her but smiling to himself, he decided that this was not the place.
As she walked, the world began to awaken around her. Emma stopped briefly on a hill to watch the sun rise. Then she turned around and headed back home. Back to her everyday, normal, (quite boring actually) life. Back to her husband and kids, back to her responsibilities, back to taking out the trash and unloading the dishwasher.
Her morning sabbaticals, as she liked to think of them, helped keep her sane. She often wondered about the roads she had not taken, but in the end she knew, this life was hers. She had made her choices and, as difficult as they may have made her life, she was happy with her choices. She loved her husband, Caleb, and her kids, Ethan and Maddy. She couldn’t imagine her life without them.
Once home, she woke them all up and began getting everything ready for their day: backpacks, lunches, and briefcases. After Caleb was done in the shower, she hopped in, while he dressed. They got the kids off to the bus and then they both left for their respective offices.
Their routines allowed them to occasionally get together for lunch, but not that day. That day, something more unusual happened. Emma, as usual, took the stairs up to her office on the third floor instead of the elevator. Except, she never arrived.
An hour later, someone finally realized that she had never arrived for work that day. Then they started calling. The office manager tried her cell phone and got no answer. They then tried Caleb. He assured them that she had left for work that morning. When she could not be found, the police were called.
The police, in viewing the security films, discovered that she had indeed arrived for work that morning and had taken the stairs. Unfortunately, there were no security cameras in the stairwell. Upon searching the stairwell, they found her.
She had fallen down the stairs, it seemed, and she was lying unconscious on the landing between the first and second floors. Emma was rushed to the hospital, still unconscious, where she lay in intensive care for a week.
Caleb, who had rushed to her work at the news that she was missing, never left her side, except for a few minutes at a time. Emma’s parents took care of Ethan and Maddy so that he didn’t need to leave her.
When Emma finally awoke, Caleb was there. However, there was a problem, a big problem. Emma had no idea who he was. For that matter, she had no idea who she was either. The doctors were, of course, called. And they, of course, ordered tests done, to no avail. They had no idea what was causing her memory lapse.
This was most painful to Caleb, as you can well imagine. His wife had no idea who he was, and was a bit scared of him.
Not to say it wasn’t painful for Emma, too. She had awoken in a strange place, with no idea who she or anyone else was. And a strange man was insisting that they were married and, to her mortification, he said they had children. “How could I have children that I can’t remember?” she asked the doctors. “Sometimes, the trauma to the brain causes it to shut down certain areas that hold memories,” they told her.
“In other words, you have no idea either, right?” Their looks told her the answer.
Caleb consulted with the doctors and their personal physician, Dr. Phillips, and with their approval, brought scrapbooks that Emma had made, with family pictures in them. But, they made no dent. She still had no memory of anyone.
A week later, Emma was released from the hospital. She still had none of her memories, but the doctors and hospital staff were hopeful that if she returned to her normal surroundings, they would begin to come back.
So, she went home. She wandered through their home day after day. She read her books and went through the picture albums day after day, hoping to find something that prompted a memory, to no avail.
“Perhaps you should take her back to her office,” Dr. Phillips suggested to Caleb at one of her appointments. “Go back to your office and back to the stairwell where you fell,” he advised her. She was honestly nervous about going there.
She toured the office, meeting her co-workers like it was the first time she had been there. She even went through her desk to see if something there would help her remember. But nothing helped. As a last resort, Caleb led her to the stairwell.
Once they stepped inside, Emma immediately felt dizzy and nauseous. So much so that she had to sit down. She still remembered nothing, but she felt something from that stairwell.
She willed herself to remember. “Please, please,” she begged herself silently. She felt like there was a memory there, just under the surface, but she couldn’t quite reach it. After several minutes, she tearfully asked Caleb to take her home.
That night, Emma dreamed of the stairwell. Nothing clear, just images almost like they were taken by a camera: stairs, the distinctive numbering on the stairwell landing, the carpet, then suddenly of her lying on the landing.
She awoke with a start. Caleb, who had become a light sleeper since her accident, awoke as the bed jumped suddenly. Emma began to cry, “It’s not fair. I can feel it. I can feel that memory, but I just can’t reach it. Why can’t I reach it?” she sobbed as Caleb tried to comfort her. When she finally fell asleep again, she had the same dream, over and over.
A week or so later, she took the kids to the park. Since it was summer, she decided to spend the summer with them. They went to the zoo, the circus, the park. Anywhere and everywhere the kids wanted to go, she took them. Caleb came too, when he wasn’t at work. They even took the kids to a few baseball games and to the amusement park. She took the summer to get to know her kids and her husband again. As she began to make new memories with them, her other memories slowly began to return, but she didn’t remember anything about the day of the accident or the week she was in the hospital.
The zoo trip suddenly brought to her mind what types of ice cream the kids liked best. And the fact that they always begged for a monkey after a trip to the primate house. “That hasn’t changed,” she laughed as they looked startled then happy when they realized that she remembered. The circus reminded her of Caleb’s love of roasted peanuts. She surprised him by taking him a bag home since he wasn’t able to go that time. Baseball games make her remember Ethan’s first baseball game when he was four. He never wanted to take off that baseball cap, and Caleb had signed him up for T-ball the next day.
The summer had never seemed shorter to Emma, Caleb, and the kids. They were all happy to be together and seemingly, willing to forget what had happened.
When fall came and the kids went back to school, Emma felt like it was time that she returned to work. She started her schedule anew, waking up early to walk before work, and her feet automatically turned her along her usual path. That was promising, she thought. However, at work, she avoided the stairs, choosing to take the elevators with her co-workers instead.
Right after Thanksgiving, Emma stayed late at the office to catch up some work. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately, depending on how you look at it), the office maintenance had turned the elevators off after hours on that day to do maintenance work on the elevators. So Emma had no choice but to use the stairwell which she had been avoiding. Taking a deep breath to steady her nerves, she pulled open the door to the stairs and began to walk down them. About halfway down, she began to see the pictures from her dream in her head, only this time, there was something new: the shadow of a person. Emma gasped as the pictures formed in her head again. She began to feel panicky and rushed down the stairs. At the bottom in the lobby, she stopped to catch her breath.
From the look on her face, the security men thought someone must have been chasing her and rushed to her. “I’m fine. No, really,” she assured them, “It’s just the first time, I’ve used the stairs since…” and her voice trailed away, unwilling to voice “the accident.” She tried to smile reassuringly at them, but failed miserably. They insisted on walking her to her car, which eased her mind a bit.
She told Caleb about the flashes in her head when she got home. He tried to reassure her. But he was just as concerned as she was, but for another reason. After she had gone to bed, he made a phone call. If one didn’t know he was calling the detective, one might have thought he was up to no good himself.
“I think she’s starting to remember,” he told the person on the other end. “Yeah, she said the pictures in her head were the same as her dream, but this time she saw a person’s shadow.” “I don’t know. I’m sure she’ll tell me if she does….All right, I’ll let you know.”
The next few days, Emma avoided the stairs again, but tried to remember more details about the stairs. Try as she might, though, she couldn’t remember any more.
That Friday, as she was going into the office building, a policeman identified himself to her and asked her to come with him. They had some information she might want, he said. He was unwilling to elaborate further in public and asked her to come with him. Curious but with a strange sense of foreboding, she agreed to come with him.
Once they were at the police station, they sat her in a private room, got her some coffee, and then a detective came in. “Emma, I’m James. I was the officer who found you in the stairwell,” he told her. “Would you mind looking at these photographs for me?”
“Sure,” she replied puzzled, “Of what?”
“Well,” he said slowly, “of you.”
“ME? Why’d you take pictures of me?”
“When I found you, you had some bruising and marks that we thought were important.”
Even more confused, Emma took the pictures and looked them over. There were pictures of both of her arms, with bruises on both of them, not just in one place, but on her upper arms as well as her forearms. There were pictures of bruises on her thighs and calves as well. And one picture of her face, with two black eyes.
“I don’t understand. I fell down the stairs, they said. Why wouldn’t I be bruised up?”
“The doctors agreed,” he said gently, “but they thought it would be best if you remembered any events on your own. It would also help us, if you could remember without us telling you what we think happened.”
Emma sat, dumbfounded, just looking at him. After a couple of minutes, she finally spoke, “I’m sorry, but I just don’t understand.”
He glanced up at the two-way mirror in the room. “Perhaps, it would be better, if Dr. Phillips explained.”
About thirty seconds later, Dr. Phillips entered the room. James left the room, leaving the two of them alone. Dr. Phillips knelt down in front of her. “The time has come for you to know the truth, Emma. You did not fall down those stairs. Someone else was on the stairs with you.”
Emma pushed away from him and stood up and began to pace away from him. “You’re…you’re saying…that someone did this…to me…on purpose?” she said with tears beginning to appear in her eyes.
Dr. Phillips stood up, and walked toward her, reaching out and taking her by the upper arms. She pulled away as a shudder ran through her body. “Yes, that’s what I’m telling you. And there’s more that you need to know. And you should sit back down for the rest of it.”
Trembling, Emma sank back down into her chair. He knelt back down in front of her and told her slowly, “You were assaulted in the stairwell that day, Emma. We suspected it from the bruising on you. We did an exam on you when you first came in to the hospital which confirmed it.”
Tears began to fall from her eyes. She sank back into the chair, with her head lowered, and sobbed. She heard the door open and glanced up to see Caleb enter with James right behind him as Dr. Phillips backed away from her.
Caleb crossed the room swiftly to her and held her close. “I’m so sorry, Babe. I wanted to tell you. I didn’t think we should wait, but Dr. Phillips said it was better for you if you remembered on your own. But we couldn’t wait any longer.”
Emma sobbed even harder, clutching Caleb. Dr. Phillips and James left them alone and she cried for nearly an hour. When she calmed down, Caleb sent for James. Upon returning, he had another two more folders with pictures in them. “We didn’t want to show you these out right. We thought you should have time to come to terms with what happened first,” James told her, handing Emma one folder.
These pictures were much more dramatic. There were pictures of her back with what looked like circular cuts. Upon closer inspection, it was clear that they were bite marks. There was also bruising on the back of her neck and it looked like some of her hair had been pulled out by the roots.
Emma began to retch as she looked at these photographs. She was quickly handed a trashcan and James put the pictures away. “I’m sorry, Emma,” he said softly, as Caleb held her hand and held her hair back. After a minute, she wiped her face on a tissue and sat up again. Taking a deep, trembling breath, she asked, “Why?”
When they looked confused, she said, “You said you couldn’t wait any longer for me to remember. Why?”
The two men glanced at each other. Seeing their look, she demanded, “Tell me,” slapping her hands down on the table. This startled them and they both jumped.
James glanced down for a minute at the folders in his hand, and handed her the second one. “Do you recognize anyone in these pictures, besides you and Caleb? Does anyone look familiar?”
Looking through the pictures in this folder, she saw pictures of herself, Caleb, Ethan, and Maddy at all the places they had gone over the summer. She went back to the beginning and began to slowly look at the pictures, going over them thoroughly. She began to realize that there was a man in the background in each of the photos. She didn’t recognize him or remember him being there, but he was in every picture.
She looked up at James and then Caleb. They were both tight-lipped and Caleb had a look she had never seen before. Pure, unadulterated rage, was the only way she could describe that look. She looked back at James, waiting for an explanation.
“Who is he?” she asked pointing at the picture on top.
“We were hoping you could tell us.”
“I have no idea who he is. Why is he in all these pictures?” and turning to Caleb, “Did you know that the police were following us all these times?”
“Yes,” Caleb replied briefly, “There’s been someone watching all of us all the time since the accident.”
Emma was taken aback. She was speechless and didn’t know what to say. Then, suddenly, she realized, “Wait, something’s happened hasn’t it? What’s happened? Where’s Ethan and Maddy?” her voice rose as she stood with panic.
Caleb grabbed her, “It’s ok, Emma, they’re ok. They’re here. They’re fine.” She sank back down into her chair, trembling once more. She began to take deep breaths trying to calm herself down.
“So, what happened? Who is he? And why is he following us?” she asked James.
“His name is Gerard St. John. We don’t know for sure why he’s targeting you. But we suspect that he’s the man who assaulted you.”
Emma had suspected as much, too. She sat back and digested all the information that they had told her over the last couple of hours. Slowly, she processed everything and then asked, “So, you’ve been following this guy, who has been following us? So, why didn’t you arrest him? And what changed? Why did you suddenly bring us in?”
James took a deep breath, “Well, he’s a suspect in your case, but we don’t really have any proof. And he’s only a suspect because he’s been following you. However, we were able to get permission for a phone tap. We believe he may be planning another attack… on you.”
Giving Emma time to process this, he fell silent. She was lost in thought for a minute. “So why can’t you arrest him?”
“Well, like I said, we have no proof. We need your help.”
“Help?” she got a chill. She began to understand. They wanted her to help capture a man that had already assaulted her, nearly killed her, had put her in the hospital for two weeks, and who had, at least temporarily, taken her life from her. At first, she was scared. Then, as she thought about all this man had taken from her, she began to get angry.
“What do you need me to do?”
James looked pleased but Caleb looked worried. “They want you to wear a wire. And take a few risks.”
“With help not far away,” James promised as he crossed the room back to her. “The agents that have been following you will continue to follow you. We’ll put a small camera in your purse or briefcase. And you’d wear a wire. We want to lure him in with a few calculated risks and get him to try something. Then, we can get a warrant and search his place.”
The next day, the hunt began, as Emma liked to think. All week long, she took the risks they asked, not that they were really that risky. Take her normal morning walk alone. Take the stairs at work. Finally, after two weeks, on the next Friday, they asked her to work late and take the stairs again. That was the one that made her most nervous.
About halfway down the stairs, there was the sound of a door closing behind her. Jumping slightly, Emma called out, “Is anyone there?” Getting no answer made the hair on her neck stand up. She started to go on down the stairs. Then she heard the footsteps. Turning again, she tried to remember everything that James had told her.
“Who’s there? I can hear you!” Panic overtook her and she tried to flee. Running down the stairs, she heard the footsteps right behind her. She tried to turn but she only got a glimpse before his fist connected with her face, knocking her down the last few steps to the landing.
Not again she thought. “Why are you doing this?” she managed.
She got no answer but managed to yell for help as his fist connected again. She groaned but managed to stay conscious. Shaking her head to clear it, she fought the panic and tried to remember what Caleb had taught her about self-defense. Seeing his face swim into her sight, she struck back, almost blindly.
Her punch startled him. He wasn’t expecting her to fight back. Feeling her rage growing along with her confidence, she continued to strike him again and again until there were hands pulling her off.
It took three cops to pull her off him. James and Caleb were both there almost immediately. A search warrant was issued and the results were both satisfying and horrifying.
Gerard St. John had indeed been stalking Emma. For years it seemed. There were pictures of her displayed from before she and Caleb were ever married. Pictures from even their wedding.
Gerard at first refused to say why he had become attached to her or when, but the pictures on his walls gave a pretty good timeline. The truth finally came to light in Emma’s own memories. They had originally met when she was in high school working at a small coffee shop. Unbeknownst to her, Gerard had become obsessed with her. He had followed her to college where they met again. Gerard asked Emma out a few times. His attraction to her grew too fast for Emma and she tried to stop seeing him.
The broken jaw and bruises he had given her were the cement on their doomed relationship. That was the first time he had assaulted her. The restraining order that was filed was, like so many are, laughed off. She had tried to move and move and move. Every time, he had found her again.
The last time, a judge had put him in jail and Emma moved again. She had changed her name, and shortly after met Caleb. Never dreaming that Gerard was still obsessed and out of jail, she had started her new life with Caleb.
Later, James met with Emma and Caleb again at the police station. “He has confessed. You were amazingly enough, not his only victim. Although how on earth he had enough time to stalk you and anyone else is beyond me,” James told them. “His obsession grew from the simple fact that you had dark hair and blue eyes. A stunning combination that Gerard believed was exquisite.”
Emma and Caleb went to the sentencing. The judge, after reviewing all the evidence against Gerard, sentenced him to the maximum penalty. If he ever did get out, he was to be strictly monitored, and if he came within a mile of Emma or her family, he would be put back in prison.
Emma and Caleb, with James’ help, packed up Ethan and Maddy and relocated, yet again, to a new city. They found new jobs, and made new friends. And they have new names. “It is hard sometimes, not to call the kids by the names we gave them at birth,” Emma says, “but it is safer for us all.”
Nichole Hall
Instructor: Helen Fountain
English Composition II
17 February 2009
Virtual High School:
Closing the Gap Between Physical and Virtual Classrooms
Today‟s high school administrators and educators have been transplanted into the world
of technology. Because of this, they are hesitant to pursue Virtual High School (VHS) as a tool
for teaching students. Due to the majority of educators‟ lack of motivation to integrate
technology into the classroom and their inadequate computer and internet navigation knowledge,
students are failing to learn important skills that will propel them into college and the workforce.
Technology is the future, and students need to be prepared. The Web-based Education
Commission emphasizes, “The Internet is perhaps the most transformative technology in history,
reshaping business, media, entertainment, and society in astonishing ways. But for all its power,
it is just now being tapped to transform education” (WBEC 1). The future is now!
Virtual High School Overview
According to the VHS: Virtual High School Global Consortium website, “The
mission of Virtual High School is to develop and deliver standards-based, student-centered
online courses to expand students‟ educational opportunities and 21st century skills, and to offer
professional development to teachers to expand the scope and depth of their instructional skills”
(VHSGC). VHS is unique. Students can attend classes that their schedule won‟t allow and/or
their school doesn‟t offer. There are over 200 full-semester and year-long online courses offered
by VHS. These classes are taught by certified teachers and meant to complement the students‟
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general education course work. Examples of VHS class titles are Introduction to Biology,
Literacy Skills for the 21st Century, Music Listening and Critique, and Entrepreneurship: Starting
Your Own Business. Zucker and Kozma tell us that VHS classes are a semester in length and
the class size is generally limited to 20 students (19).
VHS instructors can be teachers who are already employed by schools who are VHS
Global Consortium members. Teachers undertake extensive training to become VHS instructors:
To help assure consistency in the quality of VHS NetCourses, VHS requires
teachers to enroll in the Teachers Learning Conference (TLC), a 26-week online
course worth 12 graduate-level credits that provides professional development in
how to design and teach virtual classes, or the NetCourse Instructional
Methodologies (NIM) course. The latter, which lasts only 15 weeks, is for
teachers who will teach a section of an already-designed course (Zucker, Kozma
23-24).
However, school administrators need to get on board the technology train before they will pay to
send teachers to VHS instructor training courses and increase the use of technology in their
classrooms.
Many educators fear that technology will replace them, which isn‟t true. Technology is
simply a tool that can allow teachers to reach students at an innovative, more effective level. A
VHS Site Coordinator from Georgia states, “My VHS students have learned not only a great deal
about Hispanic culture but also a great deal about using the Internet as a research tool. They
have become responsible for their own learning – independent learners who can take the
technological tools (that will only become more prevalent in the 21st century) and utilize them to
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learn” (VHSGC). Integration of VHS can be translated as a web-enhanced classroom. It isn‟t
meant to take the place of face-to-face learning in the traditional classroom.
VHS is a form of distance education, which has been around since the 1800‟s. Oram
points out how farmers, who couldn‟t leave their fields to attend classes, learned through
distance learning by correspondence courses. Their lessons would arrive in the mail. The
farmers would then complete their homework and mail it back to be graded. The only difference
today is that we can use technology instead of, or to complement, correspondence by mail (Oram
3). Distance education is present in elementary, high school, and college levels. Students are
able to see, hear, and communicate in ways that they can‟t in a traditional classroom. The Webbased Education Commission notes, “The interactivity of this new technology makes it different
from anything that came before. It elicits participation, not passive interest. It gives learners a
place for communication, not isolation” (5).
VHS Global Consortium began in 1996. While being monitored by the State Department
of Education, VHS Global Consortium organizes and provides VHS classes for schools. A
consortium is basically a group of organizations, or schools in this case, pooling their money
together to buy bigger and better items and services than a single organization or school can
afford on its own. VHS Global Consortium has member schools that pool their funds together to
finance the VHS program and teachers. An individual school may have only one student
participating in VHS, but he/she will have online classmates from the neighboring county and/or
country. However, in some cases, an entire online class will be made up of students from the
same school.
As Corry and Tu suggest in their book, Distance Education: What Works Well, “VHS
isn‟t only for public high schools. Charter schools and home-schooled students are eligible to
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become members of the VHS Global Consortium and enroll in VHS classes as well”(4). What
an incredible opportunity for students who are limited to traditional curriculum course offerings.
Home-schooled students generally belong to a group of other home-schooled students in their
area. The group as a whole is able to pool their funds with their local public school and take
advantage of the learning opportunities VHS has to offer them.
Technology Can Contribute to Learning
Educators aren‟t completely convinced that they need to move deeper into the age of
technology. They seem to adhere to the thought process of, if it isn‟t broke, don‟t fix it.
In spite of this, technology is instrumental in students‟ development of increased responsibility
and independent learning. “Distance learning demands that students take extra responsibility and
be extra focused on learning. Of course, it may well be that distance learning is the very thing
some students need to learn to be responsible and focused” (Jones 132). The majority of today‟s
students are using computers in the classroom, but mostly to type papers and perform occasional
research online. Once they discover the World Wide Web and the stores of information it holds,
learning will become an educational, interactive form of entertainment which will lead to
independent learning. Parents will start to see their children wanting to do their homework. As
stated by an eleven-year-old student in Glenview, Illinois, “Reading books is boring and it takes
too long. Searching the Web is faster and more fun because we can get sound recordings, like of
a dolphin‟s sounds, or a video of the discovery of the bow of the Titanic” (Healy 32).
VHS can reduce the amount of peer pressure students feel in the traditional classroom.
For example, the unpopular students won‟t feel as apprehensive when asked to answer a question
in front of their classmates. It‟s a lot less intimidating to communicate your thoughts when the
captain of the cheerleading squad and the quarterback of the football team aren‟t staring right at
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you. After taking this into consideration, educators still may argue that students need face-toface confrontation to develop social skills. It was reported by an editorial in the New York
Times on December 28, 1995, “In New York City, 125 „at-risk‟ students were given home
computers and on-line hookups. Positive outcomes included withdrawn students conversing online, substitution of internet research for television viewing, and higher enrollment in college
preparatory courses” (Healy 249). Once again, VHS does not replace the traditional face-to-face
classroom learning style. It only enhances it. Students will still be interacting with their peers
physically in the traditional classroom.
Students who face adversity because of health complications can benefit immensely from
VHS. Peterson‟s Guide to Online Learning provides this testimony:
I have a good example of the power of online learning for people with disabilities.
A professor of ours was looking at the discussion board for a course on bilingual
education that was almost finished. A student in the class posted a message
saying, „I‟ve been meaning to tell you that I‟m deaf. When I got into this class, I
realized no one knew. This is the first time in my life that I wasn‟t different‟
(Oram 18).
Physically handicapped students, who can‟t attend the traditional classroom very often or at all,
can take VHS courses from their home computer. Even students who are blind can listen to
lectures and sound clips on the internet. Technology can empower those who may often feel
powerless because of a disability. Female students who are facing teen pregnancy can benefit
from VHS. They can take classes online to help with scheduling issues that may arise due to the
strenuous demands of raising a child at a young age. Students who are facing adversity need to
utilize technology to advance their education. When learning is presented in a more convenient,
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entertaining, and hands-on method, students will be more likely to pursue independent and
lifelong learning.
VHS can help students choose a career field. By integrating the use of technology and
the internet into schools, educators are taking responsibility for the education of the world‟s
future leaders. From the first day of preschool to the last day of high school, students are being
prepared to choose a career, attend college and enter the workforce. VHS offers courses that can
introduce students to specific careers. VHS offers career specific courses such as Screenwriting
Fundamentals, Career Awareness for the New Millennium, Pre-veterinary Medicine,
Criminology, Practical Law, and Engineering Principals. By completing these courses, students
will have a clearer picture of the career they are interested in. They may find that they aren‟t
interested in the career after all. Or on the contrary, they may decide that the career is definitely
the right choice for them. This will make college selection easier for students and more than
likely save them money because they will be less likely to switch degree programs after they
enter college.
When students choose to take career-specific classes, they may find themselves spending
time with professionals in their chosen career field. Riley opens our mind to the possibilities of
VHS class locations in his article “Computer Education Is Vital for Students of the Future”:
Schools may emerge in unlikely places – such as office buildings – or more
conventional schools may have branch campuses integrated into businesses,
hospitals, or homes. Secondary schools may forge new links with two-year
colleges and community institutions to ease the transition from school to work.
Individual classes will be integrated into workplaces, providing a vocational
education far richer and more useful than what is offered today (3).
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Giving students the opportunity to enter a business where professionals are doing the job they do
day in and day out will truly give them a taste of what their future could hold. For example, a
student who is enrolled in a Pre-veterinary Medicine class may get the opportunity to watch a
Veterinarian perform surgery in a clinic. If the student finds that she faints at the sight of blood,
she will be happy to know in advance that veterinary medicine is not for her. This kind of
experience is invaluable to students when planning for the future. A substantial amount of time
and money can be wasted by students changing their majors halfway through college because
they all of a sudden realize their chosen profession isn‟t right for them.
Educators are Unsure
Some educators are afraid that technology hasn‟t progressed enough to fully integrate it
into schools. In the past, the internet was slow; schools, teachers, and students had limited
access to computers and the internet; and media, such as video, images, and sound, weren‟t as
advanced as they are today. The drawing below (Table 1.1), which has been adapted from the
Web-based Education Commission, clearly shows how technology is evolving and moving
towards advanced availability in many locations, with higher speeds and better connections (7).
Table 1.1 – Technology Trends
Source: “Web-Based Education Commission”
Moving From:
narrowband
plain, single mode
(e.g., text or speech)
tethered (wired) access
users adapting to
the technology
Moving To:
broadband
multimodal rich
connectivity
untethered (wireless) access
the technology adapting
to the user
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Technology is now changing to accommodate our needs, and the public is always
anxiously awaiting a bigger and better new model of hardware and/or version of software to be
released. People used to dread the thought of technology and learning new skills. Now they
want more, more, more! Computer programmers and web developers are constantly coming out
with tools to aid educators, corporate America, and the general public in their everyday lives.
Unfortunately, educators aren‟t quite convinced that technology belongs so heavily in education.
All benefits of technology aside, it will be more work upfront for educators to hone their
computer skills and integrate more technology into the classroom than continuing to educate
students the traditional way only. Although, Oram helps us to realize that educators are already
implementing different uses of technology into their classrooms. For example, they use software
to create slide shows to be shown on projectors or uploaded to webpages (7). Educators need to
take just one more step and really dive into integrating technology into the classroom.
VHS requires its member schools to invest in technology hardware and software,
instructor training, and VHS Global Consortium membership fees. Administrators argue that
their budget won‟t allow them to integrate VHS into their schools. It‟s understandable that
administrators may feel this way. However, they should exhaust their financial resources before
disregarding the VHS program. Schools can write grants, conduct fundraisers, utilize the
services of their Educational Service Unit, and join consortiums with other schools. Educators
may also find that parents of students are willing to pay a small tuition fee for their children to
enroll in VHS classes when they realize the value of what their money is buying. A small
investment at the high school level could save the parents a lot of money when their children are
in college. Where there‟s a will, there‟s a way. Educators can find the funds to incorporate VHS
into their schools.
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Table 1.2 (shown below), which has been adapted from page 20 of The Virtual High
School: Teaching Generation V, displays a brief overview of the services, requirements, and fees
involved in VHS:
Table 1.2 – Summary of VHS Services, Requirements, and Fees
Source: Zucker, Andrew A., and Robert Kozma. The Virtual High School : Teaching Generation
V.
The fees for VHS member schools are clearly stated in Table 1.2. These figures are for one
school paying by itself. If two schools join together, each school only pays half of the fees
listed. When multiple schools participate in VHS, the fees are reduced further.
Schools have been known to raise money to build buildings and gymnasiums and buy
vehicles and sports equipment. One would think a school could raise enough money to join VHS
Global Consortium and/or buy additional computer hardware and software. These actions
would, in return, give their students a more technologically advanced education to prepare them
for their future.
Why is VHS Important?
In spite of the fees and training involved, schools need to heavily consider integrating
more technology and VHS into their schools. If they don‟t, the world is going to keep advancing
into technology while schools sit and watch. The Web-based Education Commission suggests,
Services
Access to 120-plus course catalog for up to 20 students per semester; VHS central
administration support; license for the teacher to use software tools.
Requirements
Computers with Internet access at school; one teacher to design and teach a course (20% fulltime equivalent); one site coordinator to handle registration, grades, and student participation
issues (20% full-time equivalent). Both the teacher and the site coordinator must take training
provided by VHS.
Fees
$6,000 annually. One-time costs of $3,500 per teacher for an online professional development
course and $1,500 per site coordinator for management training online. Optional: $4,000 and
an additional course offering for an additional 20 student slots.
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“Picture how different the world would be today if corporate America hadn‟t put money into
technology and realized the influence it would have in doing business. It may have taken awhile
to recoup the money they spent, but it has changed the way the world does business (5).
Corporations are spending more money on their employees‟ technology education than
schools are spending on their students. The Web-based Education Commission points out that
approximately $3,500 to $5,500 is invested by large businesses in the United States for every
employee to advance their technology skills and update their equipment where schools are only
investing a few hundred dollars on each pupil (5). Corporate employers are realizing the value
of technical knowledge. If schools aren‟t teaching students the computer skills that these
employers are looking for, where does that leave the students? It leaves them unprepared and at
a disadvantage, especially if they can‟t afford to attend college and are forced to enter the
workforce directly out of high school. Isn‟t high school supposed to prepare students for the
next step in their lives? Their next step after high school is going to be submerged into the
technology driven world they live in, whether it be college or the workforce.
What will happen to education if educators don‟t accept the idea of integrating the use of
technology into their schools? The answer is simple. Students will not have the opportunity to
advance into technology and career focused classes during high school unless they pursue it on
their own without instruction. If educators don‟t take responsibility for preparing students for
the technology saturated world they live in, educators will be harming students ability to achieve
more than they can imagine and for the United States ability to continue to be the world leader.
Paul A. Winters is absolutely correct in his article written for the National Academy of Sciences
when he says:
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If this generation does not possess that courage – if it falters, hesitates, and
ultimately refuses to open the door to the digital era – global competitors will
certainly open the door first, and reap the rewards. And if this transformation is
to come to full bloom, it must take root in the nation‟s schools. For it is in the
nation‟s schools, with their 49 million students and 2.5 million teachers, that the
country‟s future is conceived, created, and secured. And it is in the schools that
the United States will obtain the greatest returns on its investments in technology
– immediate returns in the form of more productive and rewarding teaching and
learning and longer-term benefits of geometric increases in individual and
national productivity (1).
What it all comes down to is the futures of today‟s children are in the hands of today‟s
educators. Will they choose to open doors for the students they serve, or will they close the
doors to opportunity and success? All it takes is an open mind and a passion for education. If
you don‟t open the book, you‟ll never learn what‟s inside.
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Works Cited
Healy, Jane M. Failure to Connect : How Computers Affect Our Children’s Minds–For Better
and Worse. New York: Simon & Schuster, Limited, 1999.
Jones, Steve. The Internet for Educators and Homeschoolers. Minneapolis: E T C Publications,
2000.
National Academy of Sciences. “The Information Revolution Will Transform Education.”
Opposing Viewpoints: The Information Revolution. Ed. Paul A. Winters. San Diego:
Greenhaven Press, 1998. Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center. Gale. Metropolitan
Community College. 24 Dec. 2008.
Noble, David F. “Education Will Not Move Online.” At Issue: The Future of the Internet. Ed.
Tom Head. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2005. Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center.
Gale. Metropolitan Community College. 24 Dec. 2008.
Oram, Fern A., ed. Peterson’s Guide to Online Learning. Princeton: Peterson’s, 2006.
Riley, Richard W. “Computer Education Is Vital for Students of the Future.” Current
Controversies: Computers and Society. Ed. Paul A. Winters. San Diego: Greenhaven
Press, 1997. Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center. Gale. Metropolitan Community
College. 24 Dec. 2008.
“VHS Mission and Beliefs.” Virtual High School Global Consortium. 04 Jan. 2009
<http://www.govhs.org/Pages/WhyVHS-Home>.
“Web-Based Education Commission.” Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center. Detroit: Thomson
Gale, 2005. Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center. Gale. Metropolitan Community
College. 24 Dec. 2008.
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Zucker, Andrew A., and Robert Kozma. The Virtual High School : Teaching Generation V. New
York: Teachers College P, Teachers College, Columbia University, 2003. NetLibrary.
A Home Away from Home
by Melissa Deters
On most days of the week, the Nebraska Humane Society is abuzz with activity. Children and adults alike peer through cages and kennels, admiring and examining the available cats, dogs, rabbits, and the occasional mouse or gerbil. On this particular cold and snowy Monday afternoon, the shelter is quite still, save for the loud noise of the building’s HVAC system. The sound echoes off the clean white walls and floor of the former grocery store-turned-animal shelter. Throughout the building, the smell of bleach and cleanliness is apparent.
Mondays are the only day of the week when the animal shelter does not accept adoption applications. This policy was enacted so the animals could have a day of rest from the incessant poking and prodding of the general public as they browsed for their next possible family addition.
The shelter is, indeed, home to these animals. While the Nebraska Humane Society provides the basic needs of its residents, such as food, bedding, and a warm place to stay, this care does not come without a hefty price tag. “The Nebraska Humane Society has an annual budget of around $8 million a year, $2.8 million of which must be raised by pure donations alone,” says Pam Wiese. “Also, if we had to pay our volunteers for all of the incredible work they do, we would have to raise an extra $1 million.”
I meet Pam Wiese, the Vice President of Marketing and Public Relations for the Nebraska Humane Society, in the large, spacious lobby of the shelter in front of the round customer service counter. Pam is a very thin woman with gaunt features. Her brown hair, tucked behind each ear, is cut to her shoulders. On this day, she wears a yellow and purple fleece pullover embroidered with the Nebraska Humane Society’s logo: a hand. Blue jeans cover her pole-like legs, and white tennis shoes adorn her feet.
Pam tells me she has worked for the shelter for seven years. Prior to joining the shelter, she was a television news anchorwoman for local station KPTM Fox 42 News. “I don’t know if I will ever go back to for-profit work,” Pam comments with a smile as she tucks her hair behind each ear again with a wave of her hand. “I don’t regret coming to the NHS at all.”
I follow Pam through a secured door at the back of the shelter’s lobby away from public view. “This is where all of the action takes place,” she states as we walk down a long, well-lit, winding hallway. “The picture out front is quite different from what goes on back here.”
It is a different picture indeed. The majority of the dog and cat adoption kennels are empty on this day. “The reason for this is winter is traditionally a slow time for strays to be out and about and for animals to mate and reproduce,” Pam explains.
Behind these walls is where the process of adoption really begins. Once an animal is brought to the shelter, it goes through a process (“Cyclical”, Pam calls it) before it is placed up for adoption. All strays are held for six days to see if an owner will come to the shelter to claim the animal; all owner-surrendered animals are held for 24 hours. “This is to allow for a day of remorse in case the owners change their minds,” Pam tells me.
The animals first undergo a health screening and are administered all necessary treatments and vaccinations. They are also spayed and neutered, if necessary. Next, the animal undergoes a behavioral assessment to make certain it is a good candidate for adoption. “We work hard to make sure each animal is adopted out to their forever home,” Pam assures me. “However, sometimes I have to discourage people from surrendering their 16-year old shitzu in a tactful way without telling them upfront that we will kill their dog. We don’t want to adopt out an older animal to a family, only to have it die of kidney failure six months down the road. In those situations, I attempt to persuade the family to make other arrangements for the animal.”
While the Nebraska Humane Society does work hard to care for every animal it receives, it is not a “no-kill” shelter. “We would only euthanize animals which are gravely ill,” Pam mentions. “We would not euthanize an animal simply because it has been up for adoption for a long time.”
We walk past a huge room with a thick glass windowpane located between it and the hallway outside. The room is now dark but, aided by the light of a back room, I am able to view three cold steel surgery tables, each with its own accompanying surgical instruments. “This is where all of the health procedures are performed on the new animals,” Pam explains, referring to the animals which have recently been surrendered by their owners or picked up either by animal control officers or the public as strays. A variety of health procedures are performed by volunteer veterinary staff in this room, including spaying, neutering, and vaccinating.
Adjacent to the dark operating room is a room filled with silver, metal kennels, stacked one on top of the other. Each is filled with either an ailing cat or dog. There is even a small cage on the concrete floor occupied with a large, white and black lop-eared rabbit. “The recovery room,” says Pam. We walk up to a cage containing one of the newest residents recovering from surgery: a small, fuzzy, grey and black tabby kitten. The kitten’s tiny torso has been wrapped in red gauze from its belly up to its small neck. It is voraciously eating a dish of pink-colored, canned cat food and stops only for a second to eye us before returning to its meal.
“What happened to this guy?” asks Pam of one of the veterinary staff members in a voice filled with concern. “Contact dermatitis,” replies the veterinary technician, a young woman dressed in a grey tee shirt and faded blue jeans, her pale blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail. “We had to bandage him so he wouldn’t scratch the skin.” The veterinary technician is seated at a computer, working on another patient’s chart. “These guys do all of the work,” remarks Pam as we both exit the room. She gives the vet tech a pat on the back as she walks by her.
Located a bit farther down the hall is the garage entrance where the animal control officers enter and exit the building. One of the animal control officers, a short, stocky, burly man with a ruddy face and wearing brown pants and a brown coat, is leading a very obese yellow lab to its new temporary home in a holding kennel ahead of us. Pam stops the officer. “Where did you find this guy?” she inquires, bending down to pet the portly pooch.
“Found him on I-80 near 60th street,” remarks the animal control officer, grinning down at the dog.
The yellow lab may as well be several yellow labs combined into one. His body sags nearly all of the way to the linoleum floor. The dog’s front legs have large red and brown abrasions revealing the underlying skin on each foreleg. “Saddle sores, probably from being so heavy,” the animal control officer mentions, as Pam and I both pet the dog on the head. The torso sides of the large lab are stained black from dirt and automobile exhaust. The stray dog’s massive head houses a set of sad-looking brown eyes. The brown eyes of the critter look up at us for reassurance.
“We’ll take good care of you,” Pam consoles the dog as she pets his soft golden head. The animal control officer leads the obese hound off to its new home for the time being. The shelter has just added a new resident to its premises.