Infection...

The computer itself seemed fine, sitting there, its plastic shining darkly in the single halogen beam.  It had been recently Avira’ed and McAffee’ed, and all was well in its software. Its hardware was immaculate. It had not been recently connected to any pathogen-delivering internets, nothing had been downloaded in recent memory.  She had connected her IPod to back up her purchases, and all went wild! Simultaneously, her IPod and laptop experienced a sort of Technicolor meltdown, like a cringe-worthy 70’s disaster flick.  All seemed well for the first half an hour, then little hints of foreboding began to furrow the watcher’s brow. A tiny flicker on the periphery of the screen, a shadow flitting across the address bar like an airplane flown too low blocks out the sun. The space bar is suddenly unwieldy, refusing to bow any longer to the assault of her thumb. On the arm of her chair, connected to the misbehaving workstation by an umbilicus of white cord, the IPod blinks owlishly, then repeats the action impatiently.  Twice more now and she feels the alarm growing exponentially with each LED blip.

These two electronic creatures are her comforts; her music and passwords and games on the IPod, her friends in the West brought closer through the power of Skype on the laptop.  The loss of one or the other would be sad, but the situation is occasionally inescapable. That is why she backs up one with the other; the loss of neither is tragic. The loss of both, however, would be tragic on the level of Lear, Hamlet, on par with the idea of having Newt Gingritch for President.

The laptop screen repeats the blink emitted from the IPod and then appears to shred.  From disparate areas individual LED lines seem to roll back on themselves until the image of Itunes on her screen is tattered and fading swiftly to gray. With shaking fingers, she presses the power button on the IPod and recoils before completing the habitual swipe to the right on the screen. The image there, a battery, appears corroded, oxidized. Then, both screens disappear.  They do not go blank. They simply go, as if something had sucked the plastic whole from the frame. Some hysterical corner of her brain has retreated to the even worse disaster movies of the 60’s and she sees Godzilla, his grin glinting with reflected light from dozens of tiny screens caught in his teeth. She sees her hands pounding on the keyboard, pulling frantically at the power cords and the white cord connecting the two, but she can’t stop herself.  She doesn’t much feel the need, frankly, because she must be experiencing some hallucination, some remnant of a psilocybin dream, or maybe she is actually asleep. 

The keys quickly become fragile, and she witnesses the silicon case of the IPod become ever more rubbery as what is inside it turns to dust. Finally, helplessly, she holds her hands above her head and watches in wretched fascination as both units crumble.  Simultaneously, they seem to heave a sigh. She swears she hears a little, exhausted “huff” rise from the pile of dust and silicon now sinking into the green natty fabric of the recliner’s arm. A laugh trickles from her lips, causing the dust to lift and swirl, which in turn makes her laugh a little harder, until she starts sobbing, grasping one end of the IPod charging cable like the head of a Mamba snake, away from her body, now expecting it to perform some other dark trick.  The entire time her electronics were performing their final functions and decaying, the cord had not moved.  It had also not shredded, or melted, or crumbled like the cold ruins of a house fire. The cord was fine. And obviously horrifically dangerous.

She’d picked it up for very cheap at a flea market; it had been pennies, and since her puppies had eaten her previous charging cord, she simply couldn’t pass it up. She’d gotten way more than she’d paid for.  She’d be paying more, obviously; not only did she now need a new computer and IPod, she needed to replace all the apps, all the music, all her contacts and what writing she’d recently backed up to CD (Thank god!)

She stood, dumping the pile of computer-dust down the front of her jeans and onto the hardwood floor. Still holding the cord at arms-length, she walked into the kitchen and pulled out a ziplock. As the cord slipped into the clear plastic, she sensed more than saw a movement at the bottom of the bag. Something appeared to be trickling out of the cord, though nothing had on the way to the kitchen. The bottom corner of the bag immediately sagged, then appeared to draw in on itself.  As the reaction spread across the bag, she instinctively grabbed the closest object, a canning jar, from the shelf next to the baggies. She slammed the bag an its contents into the jar and swiftly sealed the lid, and then-

Nothing. The bag turned swiftly to dust and then settled at the bottom of the jar and the cord may as well have been a butterfly for that was as evil as it looked. She held the jar up to her eye, peering in at the dust (which became finer as she watched) and the simple, white cord.  She held the jar at an angle, then another, moving the dust around in the bottom, hoping for a revelation. None was forthcoming. It was a cord, manufactured by Apple or one of its subsidiaries. It hadn’t changed though it had managed to turn at least two pieces of electronics and one plastic baggie into the finest silt.  But- she peered out at her armchair- the silicone IPod cover hadn’t been touched, and the glass of the jar remained blemish-free.  She assumed whatever caused the disintegration was not attracted to tin either, though it obviously had no problem with the gold connections on the motherboards and chips. She suddenly wondered about her purse, which had contained the monstrous cord for most of the day.  The array of plastics available for consumption there would be wide and varied; was it hard plastics, such as the fob on her car key? Perhaps petroleum products.  Would she open her chapstick and instead find sneeze-inducing dust? Her purse hadn’t disappeared and her clothes appeared unchanged so the cord didn’t seem to eat natural fabrics. What about aluminum? Obviously food for this thing, since parts of the computer, such as the ports, were composed of it. Her keys were, what? Steel? Maybe they’d survived.  She had to wonder, though, how this plastic cord capped on both ends with aluminum kept from eating its own tail. Maybe the damn thing was simply cursed.  Sent out by some technophobic Gypsy woman to destroy electronics where ever it went, like the evil eye of the old man in Thinner.  

(More later... maybe)

OOOOPS!

I completely forgot about being an Insecure Writer!

Well, alright, I didn't forget that I AM an insecure writer. I simply forgot to post to the insecure writers group, and I do hope that any who choose to visit here will give me a thorough chiding...

In the meanwhile, I've been thinking quite alot about my insecurities as a writer (imagine that). I've been working on a writer's workshop for children and attempting to explain to highschoolers how to get past their own insecurities when dealing with criticism. What came out is elegant, and polished, and likely complete BS. At least, I haven't been able to get it to work for me. So how do I deal with this with kids in a way that is honest?

While I was contemplating this, something fantastic happened. I was sitting, staring at my computer screen, listening with half of half of an ear to TED talks on Hulu. Randomly, Elizabeth Gilbert (Author of Eat, Pray, Love) came on, with a discussion on nurturing creativity.

Oh. My. God.

It basically boils down to this: In the early days, "genius" was considered an outside force, a muse, a genii. If genius came in one story and fled another, it was not necessarily the will of the author, but that of the wild force of creativity. We all have bad days (weeks, years...) The point is to keep going, and just keep working. Let's face it; if we don;t work at all, we never (never never ever!) give that genii a chance to visit.

We cannot berate ourselves for the fickleness of our wild-eyed caseworker.

We need to appreciate it when they can make it, and push through when she gets in our way. This is much the same for that critic (oh yes, for she is not only fickle, she is BITCHY!) We need to be able to set aside that which targets our soul. The writing is not necessarily about us, and if that critic tells us that it is, she simply doesn't want to acknowledge her role in the creative process. She needs more coffee.

Or a gag.

Either way, the critic should be there to serve us, not destroy us. Maybe the critic and the genii are just alternate faces of the same wicked beast. She should never be considered our mistress, however. She could be a companion, an acquaintance, a dear dear friend, a "frenemy" (that term makes me gag, but it may be appropriate here).

Insecure Writer's Support Group

This is completely awesome, especially for those of us who live in an area where in-person writing groups are few, far between, and usually utterly useless. Alex Cavanaugh has started the Insecure Writer's Support Grouphttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

It's been awhile...

A very long while, since I posted here.

Considering, however, that my life seems to be moving once again out of the slow lane (I won't say "into the fast lane", because well... I'm only nudging up to the speed limit- I doubt I'll be exceeding it any time soon) I need to have a space to share the new things I've seen, the new places I've been and a spot where I can solidify my thoughts and perhaps get some feedback.

So... what's going on?

I am now about a year from finishing my Master's degree, though the timing was put off a bit by administrative BS and personal blunders. I'll be finishing in December rather than May 2012. Perhaps by then the economy will be back on a more stable footing? (Hey! A girl can dream!) As part of this, I retook my basic GRE, I'm taking the Praxis tests this month, and I'm taking the Psychology GRE in October. Busy Busy!

I am Vice President of Kappa Delta Pi, Alpha Beta Iota Chapter at BSU. Basically, what this means is I'm getting to put together a writers workshop for teenagers as a fund-raiser, go to the 2011 Convocation in Indianapolis (a new place!) and work my butt off to turn a chapter on the rocks into a chapter with some rocks.

My husband and I are working toward weight loss and stability. Health-wise, it is an important choice for us both. I am hoping, though this process, to alleviate some of the daily pain from the Rheumatoid Arthritis, especially now that I am among the ranks of the un-insured. I can afford most of the medications I take (furosemide, methotrexate, folic acid) but the Enbrel is only available in the $1800 a month form. With less sugar in my diet and more regular exercise, some of the inflammation should go down.

So, I am also going to attempt to post here regularly again as part of my personal, ongoing rehabilitation. Keep your toes crossed for me!

The current discourse on teachers as "lazy" and "overpaid" made me reflect on the course of education in this country over the last thirty years. We are in the midst of another pendulum swing in our educational (and cultural) systems. However, because of the widening gap between the "haves" and the "have nots", the arc of that pendulum is gradually increasing, rather than following the natural progression of physics (and culture) which would pull it toward a central point.

The following paper was written by a thorough intellectual during the debate over Reagan's educational "reforms". I feel his argument is more than appropriate in the current climate. Educators, when seen as professionals, (and given the tools, space and respect accorded to professionals) will be professionals. We go to school for a reason; we wish to help kids. We do not put ourselves through college (in some states a Master's degree is required for certification) in order to gain fame or because we are bored and need a diversion. We go to college to help transform society.


Teachers as
Transformative
Intellectuals

Henry A. Giroux



The call for educational reform has gained the status of a recurring national event, much like the annual Boston Marathon. There have been more than 30 national reports since the beginning of the 20th century, and more than 300 task forces have been developed by the various states to discover how public schools can improve educational quality in the United States.' But unlike many past educational reform movements, the present call for educational change presents both a threat and a challenge to public school teachers that appears unprecedented in our nation's history. The threat comes in the form of a series of educational reforms that display little confidence in the ability of public school teachers to provide intellectual and moral leadership for our nation's youth. For instance, many of the recommendations that have emerged in the current debate either ignore the role teachers play in preparing learners to be active and critical citizens or suggest reforms that ignore the intelligence, judgment and experience that teachers might offer in such a debate. Where teachers do enter the debate, they are the object of educational reforms that reduce them to the status of high level techni¬cians carrying out dictates and objectives decided by "experts" for removed from the everydav realities of classroom life.2 The message appears to be that teachers do not count when it comes to critically examining the nature and process of educational reform.

The political and ideological climate does not took favorable for teachers at the moment. But it does offer them the challenge to join in a public debate with their critics as well as the opportunity to engage in a much needed self critique regarding the nature and purpose of teacher preparation, inservice teacher programs and the dominant forms of classroom teaching. Similarly the debate provides teachers with the opportunity to organize collectively so as to struggle to improve the conditions under which they work and to demonstrate to the public the central role that teachers must play in any viable attempt to reform the public schools.

In order for teachers and others to engage in such a debate, it is necessary that a theoretical perspective be developed that redefines the nature of the educational crisis while simultaneous]y providing the basis for an alternative view of teacher training and work. In short, recognizing that the current crisis in education largely has to do with the developing trend towards the disempowerment of teachers at all levels of education is a necessary theoretical precondition in order for teachers to organize effectively and establish a collective voice in the current debate. Moreover, such a recognition will have to come to grips not only with a growing loss of power among teachers around the basic conditions of their work, but also with a changing public perception of their role as reflective practitioners.

I want to make a small theoretical contribution to this debate and the challenge it calls forth by examining two major problems that need to be addressed in the interest of improving the quality of "teacher work," which includes all the clerical tasks and extra assignments as well as classroom instruction. First, I think it is imperative to examine the ideological and material forces that have contributed to what I want to call the proletarianization of teacher work; that is, the tendency to reduce teachers to the status of specialized technicians within the school bureaucracy, whose function then becomes one of managing and implementing curricula programs rather than developing or critically appropriating curricula to fit specific pedagogical concerns. Second, there is a need to defend schools as institutions essential to maintaining and developing a critical democracy and also to defending teachers as transformative intellectuals who combine scholarly reflection and practice in the service of educating students to be thoughtful, active citizens. In the remainder of this essay, I will develop these points and conclude by examining their implications for providing an alternative view of teacher work.

Toward a Devaluing and
Deskilling of Teacher Work

One of the major threats facing prospective and existing teachers within the public schools is the increasing development of instrumental ideologies that emphasize a technocratic approach to both teacher preparation and classroom pedagogy. At the core of the current emphasis on instrumental and pragmatic factors in school life are a number of important pedagogical assumptions. These include: a call for the separation of conception from execution; the standardization of school knowledge in the interest of managing and controlling it; and the devaluation of critical, intellectual work on the part of teachers and students for the primacy of practical considerations.3 This type of instrumental rationality finds one of its strongest expressions historically in the training of prospective teachers. That teacher training programs in the United States have long been dominated by a behavioristic orientation and emphasis on mastering subject areas and methods of teaching is well documented. The implications of this approach, made clear by Zeichner, are worth repeating:

Underlying this orientation to teacher education is a metaphor of "production," a view of teaching as an "applied science" and a view of the teacher as primarily an "executor" of the laws and principles of effective teaching. Prospective teachers may or may not proceed through the curriculum at their own pace and may participate in varied or standardized learning activities, but that which they are to master is limited in scope (e.g., to a body of professional content knowledge and teaching skills) and is fully determined in advance by others often on the basis of research on teacher effectiveness.. The prospective teacher is viewed primarily as a passive recipient of this professional knowledge and plays little part in determining the substance and direction of his or her preparation program.5

The problems with this approach are evident in John Dewey's argument that teacher training programs that emphasize only technical exper¬ tise do a disservice both to the nature of teaching and to their students.6 Instead of learning of learning to reflect upon the principles that structure classroom life and practice, prospective teachers are taught methodologies that 'appear to deny the very need for critical thinking. The point is that
teacher education programs often lose sight of the need to educate students to examine the underlying nature of school problems. Further, these programs need to substitute for the lan¬guage of management and efficiency a critical analysis of the less obvious conditions that structure the ideological and material practices of schooling.

Instead of learning to raise questions about the principles underlying different classroom methods, research techniques and theories of education, students are often preoccupied with learning the "how to," with "what works," or with mastering the best way to teach a given body of knowledge For example, the mandatory field practice seminars often consist of students' sharing with each other the techniques they have used in managing and controlling classroom discipline, organizing a day's activities and learning how to work within specific time tables. Examining one such program, Jesse Goodman raises some important questions about the incapacitating silences it embodies. He writes:

There was no questioning of feelings, assumptions, or definitions in this discussion. For example, the "need" for external rewards and punishments to "make kids learn" was taken for granted; the educational and ethical implications were not addressed. There was no display of concern for stimulating or nurturing a child's intrinsic desire to learn. Definitions of good kids as "quiet kids," workbook work as "reading," on task time as "learning," and getting through the material on time as "the goal of teaching" all went unchallenged. Feelings of pressure and possible guilt about not keeping to time schedules also went unexplored. The real concern in this discussion was that everyone "shared.

Technocratic and instrumental rationalities are also at work within the teaching field itself, and the), play an increasing role in reducing teacher autonomy with respect to the development and planning of curricula and the judging and implementation of classroom instruction. This is most evident in the proliferation of what has been called "teacher proof" curriculum packages.6 The underlying rationale in man), of these packages reserves for teachers the role of simply carrying out predetermined content and instructional procedures. The method and aim of such packages is to legitimate what I call management Pedagogies. That is, knowledge is broken down into discrete parts, standardized for easier management and consumption, and measured through predefined forms of assessment. Curricula approaches of this sort are management Pedagogies because the central questions regarding learning are reduced to the problem of management, i.e., "how to allocate resources (teachers, students and materials to produce the maximum number of certified ... students within a designated time."' The underlying theoretical assumption that guides this type of pedagogy is that the behavior of teachers
needs to be controlled and made consistent and predictable across different schools and student populations.

What is clear in this approach is that it organizes school life around curricular, instructional and evaluation experts, who do the thinking while teachers are reduced to doing the implementing. The effect is not only to deskill teachers, to remove them from the processes of deliberation and reflection, but also to routinize the nature of learning and classroom pedagogy. Needless to say, the principles underlying management pedagogies are at odds with the prem¬ise that teachers should be actively involved in producing curricula materials suited to the cultural and social contexts in which they teach. More specifically, the narrowing of curricula choices to a back to basics format and the introduction of lock step, time on task pedagogies operate from the theoretically erroneous as. sumption that all students can learn from the same materials, classroom instructional tech. niques and modes of evaluation. The notion that students come from different histories and embody different experiences, linguistic prac. tices, cultures and talents is strategically ignored within the logic and accountability of management pedagogy theory.

In what follows, I want to argue that one way to rethink and restructure the nature of teacher work is to view teachers as transformative intellectuals. The category of intellectual is helpful in a number of ways. First, it provides a theoretical basis for examining teacher work as a form of intellectual labor, as opposed to defining it in purely instrumental or technical terms. Second, it clarifies the kinds of ideological and practical conditions necessary for teachers to function as intellectuals. Third, it helps to make clear the role teachers play in producing and legitimating various political, economic and social interests through the pedagogies they endorse and utilize.

By viewing teachers as intellectuals, we can illuminate the important idea that all human activity involves some form of thinking. In other words, no activity, regardless of how routinized it might become, can be abstracted from the functioning of the mind in some capacity. This is a crucial issue, because by arguing that the use of the mind is a general part of all human activity we dignify the human capacity for integrating thinking, and practice, and in doing so highlight the core of what it means to view teachers as reflective practitioners. Within this discourse, teachers can be seen not merely as "performers professionally equipped to realize effectively any goals that may be set for them. Rather [they should] be viewed as free men and women with a special dedication to the values of the intellect and the enhancement of the critical powers of the young."10

Viewing teachers as intellectuals also provides a strong theoretical critique of technocratic and instrumental ideologies underlying an educational theory that separates the conceptualization, planning and design of curricula from the processes of implementation and execution. It is important to stress that teachers must take active responsibility for raising serious questions about what they teach, how they are to teach, and what the larger goals are for which they are striving. This means that they must take a responsible role in shaping the purposes and conditions of schooling. Such a task is impossible within a division of labor in which teachers have little influence over the ideological and economic conditions of their work. This point has a normative and political dimension that seems especially relevant for teachers. If we believe that the role of teaching cannot be reduced to merely training in the practical skills, but involves, instead, the education of a class of intellectuals vital to the development of a free society, then the category of intellectual becomes a way of linking the purpose of teacher education, public schooling and inservice training to the very principles necessary for developing a democratic order and society.

I have argued that by viewing teachers as intellectuals those persons concerned with education can begin to rethink and reform the traditions and conditions that have prevented schools and teachers from assuming their full potential as active, reflective scholars and practitioners. It is imperative that I qualify this point and extend it further. I believe that it is important not only to view teachers as intellectuals, but also to contextualize in political and normative terms the concrete social functions that teachers perform. In this way we can be more
specific about the different relations that teachers have both to their work and to the dominant society.

A fundamental starting point for interrogating the social function of teachers as intellectuals is to view schools as economic, cultural and social sites that are inextricably tied to the issues of power and control. This means that schools do more than pass on in an objective fashion a common set of values and knowledge. On the contrary, schools are places that represent forms of knowledge, language practices, social relations and values that are representative of a particular selection and exclusion from the wider culture. As such, schools serve to introduce and legitimate particular forms of social life. Rather than being objective institutions removed from the dynamics of politics anti power, schools actually are contested spheres that embody, and express a struggle over what forms of authority, types of knowledge, forms of moral regulation and versions of the past an d future should be legitimated and transmitted to students. This struggle is most visible in the demands, for example, of right wing religious groups currently trying to institute school prayer move certain books from the school library, and include certain forms of religious teachings in the science curricula. Of course, different demands are made by feminists, ecologists, minorities and other interest groups who believe that the schools should teach women's studies, courses on the environment, or black history. In short, schools are not neutral sites, and teachers cannot assume the posture of being neutral either.

In the broadest sense, teachers as intellectuals have to be seen in terms of the ideological and political interests that structure the nature of the discourse, classroom social relations and values that they legitimate in their teaching

With this perspective in mind, I want to conclude that teachers should become transformative intellectuals if they are to subscribe to a view of pedagogy that believes in educating students to be active, critical citizens.

Central to the category of transformative intellectual is the necessity of making the pedagogical more political and the political more pedagogical. Making the pedagogical more political means inserting schooling directly into the political sphere by arguing that schooling represents both a struggle to define meaning and a struggle over power relations. Within this perspective, critical reflection and action become part of a fundamental social project to help students develop a deep and abiding faith in the struggle to overcome economic, political and social injustices, and to further humanize themselves as part of this struggle. In this case, knowledge and power are inextricably linked to the presupposition that to choose life, to recognize the necessity of improving its democratic and qualitative character for all people, is to understand the preconditions necessary to struggle for it.

Making the political more pedagogical means utilizing forms of pedagogy that embody political interests that are emancipator), in nature; that is, using forms of pedagogy that treat students as critical agents; make knowl Problematic; utilize critical and affirming dialogue; and make the case for struggling for a qualitatively better world for all people. In part, this suggests that transformative intellectuals take seriously the need to give students an active voice in their learning experiences. It also means developing a critical vernacular that is attentive to problems experienced at the level of everyday life, particularly as they are related to pedagogical experiences connected to classroom practice. As such, the pedagogical starting point for such intellectuals is not the isolated student but individuals and groups in their various cultural, class, racial, historical and gender settings, along with the particularity of their diverse problems, hopes and dreams.

Transformative intellectuals need to develop a discourse that unites the language of a critique with the language of possibility, so that social educators recognize that they can make changes. In doing so, they must speak out against economic, political and social injustices both within and outside of schools. At the same time, they must work to create the conditions that give students the opportunity to become citizens who have the knowledge and courage to struggle in order to make despair unconvincing and hope practical. As difficult as this task may seem to social educators, it is a struggle worth waging. To do otherwise is to deny social edu-cators the opportunity to assume the role of transformative intellectuals.

1. K. Patricia Cross, "The Rising Tide of School Reform. Reports,' Phi Delta Kappan 66:3 (November 1984 p. 16

2. For a more detailed critique of the reforms, see my book with Stanley Aronowitz Education Under Siege (South Hadley MA Bergin and Garvey Publishers, 1985 also see the incisive comments an the impositional nature of the various reports, in Charles A. Tesconi, Jr., "Additive Reforms and the Retreat from Purpose Educational Studies 15:1 (Spring 1984), 1 11; Terrence E. Deal, "Searching for the Wizard pp. Quest for Excellence in Education," Issues in Education 2:1 (Summer 1984), pp. 56 57 Svi Shapiro, "Choosing Our Educational Legacy: Disempowerment or Emancipation?" Issues in Education 2:1 (Summer 1984 pp. 1] 22.

3. For an exceptional commentary on the need to educate teachers to be intellectuals, *see John Dewey "The Relation of Theory to Practice," in John Dewey, The Middle Works 1899 1924 edited by Jo Ann Boyd ( Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1977 [originally published in 19041. See also, Israel Scheffler "University Scholarship and the Education of Teachers," Teachers College Record 70:1
(1968)

Pp. 1 12; Henry A. Giroux, Ideology Culture and flit, ocess of Schooling (Philadelphia: Temple University
Press, 1981).

4. See for instance, Herbert Kliebard "The Question of Teacher Education," in D. McCarty (ed.) New
Perspectives on Teacher Education (San Francisco: Jossey¬ Bass, 1973).

5. Kenneth M. Zeichner "Alternative Paradigms on Teacher Education," Journal of Teacher Education 34:3 (May June 1963; p. 4.)

6. Dewey, op. cit.

7. Jesse Goodman, "Reflection and Teacher Education: A Case Study and Theoretical Analysis," Interchange 15:3 (1984), 1. 15.

8. Michael Apple, Education and Power (Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, Ltd., 1982).

9. Patrick Shannon, "Mastery Learning in Reading and the Control of Teachers and Students.'' Language
Arts 61:5 (September 1984), p. 488.

10. Israel Scheffler, op. cit., p. 11


Henry A. Giroux is an Associate Professor of Education at
Miami University, Oxford, Ohio. 'Teachers as Transform,
ative Intellectuals,'' by Henry Giroux, Social May
1985 pp. 376 379. copyright 1985 by Social Education

The New Depression

I've been thinking alot about the equivalencies of current times and the Great Depression. The continuing concentration of wealth at the top, the ongoing class warfare, the ever-increasing fear-mongering (propaganda is running wild in the form of Fox News). All of it is pushing the country farther to the right, to the brink of paranoia and a willingness to do anything to save what is "ours" from "them".

"Us" and "them", mind you, are loosely defined and can be user-interpreted by any group to mean anything. The "Conservative mindset" is generally rigid and inclined to fear. Therefore, once a fear-based idea ('they're coming to take our guns and our money', for instance) is successfully implanted, it becomes like a stubborn ketchup stain; forever dying the fabric of existence RED...

Prior to the Great Depression, there were no safety nets, no way for the American Public to feel protected from the slings and arrows of fortune. The country was wild with anticipation about the future, and no one worried too much about the increasing concentration of wealth (ever heard of the Robber Barons?)

Like our modern Corporations (and now Governors), the Robber Barons were anti-union. Workers were not given weekends, or pensions, or the right to overtime should their workload force them to bend to their tasks for more than 8 hours a day or 40 hours a week.

As the country emerged from the mire of the Great Depression, however, Unions gained strength, and the government stepped up, creating the social safety nets and infrastructure programs which built this country to it's high point in the 70's, when the country was riding so high on the adrenaline of its welth that the regularions put in place in the '30's suddenly didn't look so important. We began deregulating, beginning with Nixon. This deregulation continues today, slowly dismantling the means by which America became a superpower. It will continue with the destruction of the Unions. And our govenment is doing nothing to stop it. In fact, they are active particpants.

Noam Chomsky recently stated in an interview

I’m old enough to remember the Depression. My family was mostly unemployed working class. It was objectively worse than now, if you count, you know, objective standards. On the other hand, it was hopeful. There was a sense that something is going to happen. You had a government which was doing things that helped the population, because they were under pressure. In fact, Roosevelt famously talked to the labor leaders and said, "Make me do this. You know, so you go have sit-down strikes and you protest and so on, then we’ll push this legislation through." Well, it happened. So you had WPA. You had—Social Security was coming in. There was a sense that we’re going to get out of this somehow. There was hope for the future. Now there isn’t. The industrial workforce is living in the Depression. Unemployment is at Depression levels.

And the jobs aren’t coming back, because policy is designed, by the man in charge of jobs for the Obama administration and others like him, to send production abroad. It’s cheaper. It’s more profitable for the banks and the management. Or to move from investment in production to investment in finance, which does nothing for the economy, probably harms it, but it is very profitable and has the nice feature that when it crashes, as it’s going to do, the taxpayer will come in and bail you out. It’s a great system. It’s a real racket. We will—the regulations are such so that we can take very risky transactions, make a lot of money, it’s going to crash, but no problem, there’s that nice taxpayer. They will come in and bail us out. We’ll be richer than before. And each time it gets worse than it was the last time. Now, this one is really bad. So whatever the growth figures show, for the population, that’s not happening, except for a small sector. So the numbers could be right, but that’s not what it means for people’s lives.

Life is not about making money for the few. Life is about our freedoms, our inherent human rights. Someone is trying to take those away. Not our rights to guns, or to pay less taxes, or to buy whatever we want (as long as it's cheap and poorly constructed so you have to buy more- and soon! It's your duty as an American!)

The rights they are trying to take away are those most basic ones our forefathers described. The right to liberty, freedom from oppression, and the pursuit of happiness. The right to choose our own religion and the right to our own bodies.

Take from this what you will. From the annals of the American Revolution, however, came this bit of poetry from Phyllis Wheatly

No more, America, in mournful strain,
Of wrongs and grievance unredressed complain;
No longer shall thou dread the iron chain
Which wanton Tyranny, with lawless hand,
Had made, and with it meant t' enslave the land.

Ah, the joys...

A dear freind introduced me to the most amazing concept. Brewing COLD COFFEE. Oh, yes, I know, seems absolutely ridiculous. Cold-brewed coffee?

It is incredibly rich and smooth, and I can make a cup as dark or light as I wish without burning a single drop. The link above will show you how. I used an old plastic Folgers container to brew it (though I dont recommend using Folgers for the process itself- the product is a little bitter). Then I poured it through the filter on my old coffee maker. The result is stored in a pitcher in my fridge and I can have fresh coffee ANYTIME I WANT IT.

What's even better, my husband even likes the coffee, because the resulting brew is so smooth. Enjoy!

Dear body-

We've always had a rather adversarial relationship, you and I. You've hurt me again and again. I've been terribly rough on you. We dont communicate well. Youre rather oblique with your requests, and since I have a hard time understanding them, I generally just give you what I think you may want; something sweet to sweeten you up.

You inevitably pout, because I haven't read your wishes. Your pouting makes me tired and weak. It makes me not want to do anything for you. Why should I, if you can't do me the simple favor of perking up after and lovely sweet snack? Because I don't wish to do anything nice for you, you get tired too, and the cycle continues. A cycle of negative co-dependence, really. We're both awfully passive-aggressive. Which makes this a relationship my therapist would tell me to get out of.

So, can we come to a compromise? We are stuck in this particular relationship. We haven't much choice.

And to be honest, I really wouldn't want it any other way. You are obstinate and damaged and carrying more than a small excess of baggage. But you are also beautiful. You are delicate and sublime and heavy-duty. People should draw charcoal sketches of you just to understand your curves. They should paint you to come to realizations abut your skin. They should sculpt you to test your gravity and feel your strength.

I offer this compromise-

I will listen if you will speak up.

I will respond to your strengths if you will respond to mine.

I will come to understand if you will give me answers.

Yours
Liz

How much is physical?

Is our willingness to believe and assist in abuse allegations predicated on whether or not we view the abused as 1) physically appealing and 2) physically vulnerable?

For instance… in Steig Larsson’s Millenium trilogy, Lisbeth is a chaotic neutral force; she is capable of fighting for her own rights via violence and subversion, but will not injure another unless a direct threat is posed. She is perfectly capable of fighting for her own rights and determining her own future but, because of injustices perpetrated by those who had power over her as a child, including legal authority figures, she is psychologically incapable of dealing with the systems in place.

If another character were substituted, say, one with an identical psychological profile but with less doll-like proportions, would those around her still be as willing to rise to the occasion? Would she be viewed as more or less capable by those around her if she was 5’8” and a standard weight? Or worse, built like her half-brother, Neidermann? A solid woman above 6’? How about less than physically appealing? Overweight? With a huge mole on her neck?

Would her psychological vulnerabilities still be enough for those around her to step in on her behalf (inspiring a national scandal) or would such physical proportions fail to stir such a fervor? Or would her psych profile make people even less curious about this intense girl if her physical appearance were not so appealing? Would her intense self-reliance and intellect just freak people out or would it continue to draw people in? How much, exactly, does the physical appearance of an individual dictate how people view the personality?

Playings the thing

Lights up on DUNCAN, facing the audience, staring intently at something. We can only assume it is a television screen and he is preparing to play a video game because he is holding a controller. In the couch next to him is another controller. The coffee table in front of him is littered with gamer detritus; empty beer and Mountain Dew bottles, a pizza box, an empty cheetos bag… There are similar fragments on the floor around the couch. On two end tables sit laptops, open and on. The tables they sit on are immaculate. REID enters stage left, carrying a huge glass measuring cup with about a cup of water swirling around the bottom. He walks toward the couch and pushes some of the junk off the table to make room for the measuring cup.

REID
Seriously, man. No cups? In the whole house?

DUNCAN
You live here too. You could wash some cups.
Impatiently gesturing at the screen
Hurry up- They’ll all waiting on you.

REID
picking up his controller
Your chore, my friend. You wash them, I put them away.

DUNCAN
gesturing to the measuring cup
Yeah, and then you go and use the biggest item in the whole house for a little sip of water. Why should I have to wash that out?

REID
It’s unsanitary to put it away after its had lips on it.

DUNCAN rolls his eyes and tries to focus on the game; REID joins in. Throughout the next several minutes, DUNCAN appears to get more and more frustrated, and REID seems oblivious to his friend’s frustration.

DUNCAN
You can’t go that way.

REID
Why not? It’ll get me there as well as the other path.

DUNCAN
Your whole party is going the other way. I’m going the other way. You’ll screw everything up.

REID
I swear this way’s quicker.

DUNCAN
No, It’s not.

REID shrugs and sips water from the measuring cup, then dives back into the game.

DUNCAN
REID! WATCH WHAT YOU’RE DOING!

REID
Calm down! I can take him out.

DUNCAN
Check out his level, Reid. There’s no way you’re gonna win that. Then you’ll leave us all stranded. Again.

REID
Watch. Learn. And be impressed.

REID focuses intently for a moment, then jumps up and does a little celebratory dance. DUNCAN picks up a beer bottle and stares down its neck as if wishing brew would appear. He looks unimpressed.

REID
Told you I could do it!

DUNCAN puts down his controller and starts picking up the mess on the coffee table as Reid settles back down.

REID
What are you doing, Dunc? We’ve still got trolls to slay and maidens to woo!

DUNCAN
I’m done man. Give my apologies to the party.

REID
They are not gonna be happy!

Starts playing again, continuing through the next bit of dialogue

DUNCAN
picks up a pizza box and sniffs it
This place is rancid, Reid. We have more important things to do than play a stupid game.

REID
Stupid? Game? What? Did I just hear those words from Duncan the Dragon Slayer Wainer? Mightiest of the MMORPG warriors? Sage Mage of Maidenheald? Oh, how the mighty have fallen!
Feigns flicking away a tearq

DUNCAN
Oh, shut it, Reid. Really. It’s just a game. You may not have a real life outside of it, but I do.

REID
Since when?

DUNCAN
getting angrier as he cleans
Since now.

REID
Oh! Like now, now or three minutes ago now?

DUNCAN storms offstage, carrying handfuls of trash. REID stares after him for a second, shakes his head, and returns to the game. A moment later, DUNCAN returns with a garbage bag and stands in front of the coffee table, effectively blocking REID’s view. REID tries for a moment to ignore him, but…

REID
DUNC! Dude! You’re screwing up the quest!

DUNCAN doesn’t move and REID sets down his controller. We hear a *ping* and REID perks up- he sets down his controller and picks up his laptop.

REID
There she is!

DUNCAN storms out of the room. REID shakes his head and continues his chat. There are rumblings offstage.
DUNCAN Offstage
REID! Seriously? The dishwashers full of clean dishes!


A plastic cup flies on stage, followed by a clean plastic plate and a cookie sheet. REID ignores the noise continues his chat and takes a sip of water out of the measuring cup. DUNCAN comes back onstage, carrying an armful of clean dishes. REID sets his computer aside, closing it as it powers down. DUNCAN approaches REID from the rear and begins dropping plastic cups on him one by one.

DUNCAN
How can I WASH the dishes if you don’t PUT AWAY the dishes?

REID
laughing, playing with the cups as they drop
You do know they’re all gonna have to be washed again, don’t you?
He stacks some of the cups he managed to catch on the now-fairly-clean table and picks up the controller.
Your chore, Not mine. Oh! Cassandra’s coming over in a little bit.
Tries to hand DUNCAN a cup.
Better clean up-

DUNCAN storms around the side of the coffee table and picks up the measuring cup. He looks at the contents for a moment, slowly dumps the water over REIDS head, then places it on REIDS head like a hat and taps it as if he’s happy with his handiwork. Sputtering, REID drops his controller and stands, looking reproachfully at DUNCAN.

REID
Well, THAT wasn’t very nice.

DUNCAN
I’ll tell you what’s not very nice, Reid. Shirking your housework is not very nice.

REID
How was I supposed to know they were clean?

DUNCAN
Leaving your Mountain Dew bottles and cheetos bags everywhere for me to pick up is not very nice.

REID
Hey now! You leave your beer bottles and pizza boxes-

DUNCAN
Stripping down to your underwear and sitting in the livingroom mostly naked when I tell you I might be having company is not very nice-

REID
I TOLD you I’d go into the bedroom when they-

DUNCAN
Picking up speed. REID protests throughout the next monologue but it is incoherent- mostly I-‘s and but-‘s
Parking your car in my space is not very nice. Smoking in the house is not very nice. Don’t lie. I can smell it when I come home from work. Borrowing my shampoo is not very nice. Borrowing my toothbrush? That’s REALLY not very nice. Taking my games out of the XBOX and leaving the disks out to get scratched? Not very nice. Using my computer to download porn? Not very nice. Playing Guitar hero as loud as possible at 4 am when I have to work in the morning? Not very nice. Getting drunk and running over my garden gnome?

REID
Gnomes come and go, but I really don’t see how this applies-

DUNCAN
Not VERY NICE! Paying your rent late this month- most months! Not very nice. Hooking up with Cassandra when you know perfectly well how much I care about her- not very-

REID
Wait!

DUNCAN
NOT VERY NICE!

REID
finally removing the measuring cup from his head
Cassandra? Really? Is that what this is about?

DUNCAN
NO! Leaving your dirty underwear in the bathroom sink-

REID
It IS, isn’t it? You’re totally mad about CASSANDRA! Dude-

DUNCAN
No- that’s not what-
stops protesting, swats a cup off the couch and sits down.
Yeah. Okay. Sorta it is.

REID Laughing
Dude- Really.

DUNCAN
Shut up Reid. It’s not fair. You’re a freaking slob and a jerk but you’re so good at everything- games and getting girls and CASSANDRA-

REID sobering
Duncan, Dude- She’s coming to see you.

DUNCAN
WHAT?

REID
You heard me, Dunc. She’s coming to see YOU dude. She pinged me because she wanted to make sure I’d skedaddle in a bit.

DUNCAN
But she- you-

REID
She’s been crushing on YOU for a while. She’s been asking me what I thought. I told her you got all starry eyed whenever she came online.

DUNCAN
You-

REID grinning
NOW who’s the jerk?

DUNCAN
Reid, I’m- wow.

REID
handing DUNCAN’s controller to him
Yeah. I know.
They play for a moment

DUNCAN
Sorry about the water.

REID
It’s okay. My laptop was closed.

LIGHTS DOWN

The cabin prompt 1/13/11

The cabin stood awkwardly in the field, listing to one side as if whoever had built it had neglected to level the ground beneath. Cam could see from a cursory glance that the joints weren’t properly fitted, there were gaps between the boards. The whole place simply seemed askew. Yet Cam could not wait to carry her boxes up the stairs and settle in. It was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.

In order to finish her dissertation, Cam had realized a few months ago that she needed solitude. It would certainly help to get away from the party atmosphere her friends reveled in. The boxes contained reams of research. Behind her, she heard John wrestling the red portable generator out of the truck bed. With it came ten gallon gas cans, five of them, and bags of groceries which didn’t require refrigeration. A neglected nearby orchard would provide fruit for her. The generator was there simply to power her iBook and desk lamp.

The cabin was rented for a month, with the contingency that she may need to extend her stay. September was barely born, and John said she could have the cabin for the whole winter if need be. He would transport supplies for her and come up once a week to make the place more air tight. When she protested that she may only need the month, he raised a placating hand and said the time was an investment. He may want to retire here some day and couldn’t if the place frothed snow at every joint.

While John set up the generator to the side of the cabin, Cam began hauling boxes and bags up the stairs. Inside, the cabin was hardly airtight, but it was clean and comfortably furnished. Dropping her bag on the dark craftsman sofa, she pulled a box to her and got to work.
*
The orchard was less than a hundred yards to the rear of the cabin. With the advent of fall, the heavy fruit was falling but the trees still carried plenty of edible produce. She carried a boxful of the apples back to the cabin and sat them on the front porch to prevent the heat from the woodstove from prematurely spoiling them. A wooden chair faced the road- a trail, really- and the woods beyond. She sat in the chair, wiping an apple clean with a damp towel, a mug of black coffee on the narrow boards at her feet and contemplated her next chapter.

Across the road, a hulking figure moved through the woods. It was massive, brown, its weight precariously balanced on wiry, bony legs which comprised most of its height. When she moved in John told her about the local moose herd. Apparently if she didn’t approach, they wouldn’t either. She’d taken to calling the one now foraging the woods across from her Jinny. Jinny had a narrower nose than the other moose she’d seen over the last week, and a star of white on one ear. Every so often, Jinny would stand at the edge of the road and stare at the cabin, as if acknowledging Cam. Cam would wave and Jinny would wander off.
*
Cam woke to something heavy brushing the side of the cabin. The wooden box shuddered and slumped around her again. Cam’s heart pounded, more from the abrupt awakening than the fear of something out to harm her. She pulled the heavy down blanket tight around her as she sat up in the bed, listening. The cabin was cold, the world outside as silent as nocturnal woods could be. Ten minutes passed as she contemplated the possibilities. None were particularly frightening. Wild animals could be terrifying, but generally left human habitations alone unless provoked or hungry. Whatever had brushed the outside of her cabin had likely been curious, not dangerous, and wandered off when it smelled human. She settled back down onto the bed, plumping the pillow and curling into her preferred sleeping position on her right side. She tucked the blanket tight around her to maintain her heat and drifted back to sleep.

In the morning, Cam woke with a start. There was an odd smell to the cabin, part wet dog, part wild animal. Now her heart pounded in earnest. She heard a shuffling outside her bedroom door, which she closed during the night to keep in the heat from the small woodstove in the corner. Something snorted at the narrow opening at the bottom and Cam heard the small clatter of a hoof lifted and set gently down.
The door crashed open, hitting the wall next to the bed. It bounced back and there was a crack as it hit something solid. Cam threw the blanket over her head, trying to be invisible, to provide as little threat as possible to whatever was in her room. Even deer could be dangerous if threatened. They could kick and bite, or gore a hazard with antlers. Cam wanted to finish her dissertation, she wanted to someday get married. She wanted to write a book. And right now, she wanted to get the hell out of the woods.

Something snuffled at the blanket. Through the weight of down and dense thread count she could smell something rancid. It wasn’t rancid the way meat does rancid. It was rotten in the way decayed vegetation reek s. And it smelled fermented. Like poorly made apple cider. The snuffling continued for a few moments, whatever the beast was exploring the length of the bed. Something else, heavy and freely moving, kept smacking her under the covers. Huge hooves moved unsteadily across the wooden floor. Finally it settled heavily on the floor at the foot of the bed, jouncing Cam around under the covers when one if it’s harder extremities jostled the bed. She heard her suitcase clatter across the floor. She stayed hidden until she heard the breath of the beast even out as it dropped into a heavy sleep.

The blanket was wet on the outside. Rancid drool practically dripped from it. She moved timidly across the length of the bed and stared at the mountainous moose on her floor. It was Jinny. And she was drunk. One of the huge ears twitched and laid back against the heavy skull as Cam couldn’t help but whisper a Hail Mary. She moved gingerly off the bed. Her slippers were covered in moose drool, so she slipped on her tennis shoes without tying them and moved as silently as possible out into the cabin’s main room.

How she had slept through the chaos caused by Jinny in the cabin was beyond comprehension. Boxes of paperwork were scattered by the stumbling hooves. The table lay on its side, the bowl of fruit now trampled and chewed. Cam felt her heart slapping her ribcage and her lungs lock. The paperwork could be saved and reorganized. But where was her laptop?

Cam had placed it back in the bag as she always did in the evening. The bag was waterproof, and the leaky cabin did not inspire her confidence for laptop safety. The bag had been zipped and left on the table. It should have been large enough to spy even in the chaotic pile of papers.

Cam tried to calm herself and think logically. If it wasn’t under the papers, maybe it hadn’t been trampled. Under the couch? Cam dropped to her knees as quietly as possible and scanned the space beneath. Not there. She stayed down and explored the floor for nearly fifteen minutes before giving up on that idea. Rather than stand, she sat in the middle of the mess, pulling her knees up to her chest and trying not to cry. Two years of hard work, meticulous research and a clinical trial. The data was backed up, but the writing wasn’t. There were nearly 150 pages of writing on the laptop which existed nowhere else except her head.

She heard the bed shudder in the next room as Jinny moved in her drunken stupor, likely kicking it. Wait- Jinny. Something had bounced off the blanket while the moose was busy drooling on it. Cam nearly jumped up. If Jinny had toppled the table with her nose, it was just possible-

She moved back to the bedroom, trying to avoid tripping on the mess and waking the moose. Climbing quietly back onto the bed, she peered down at the inebriated mammal. Wrapped around the cow’s neck was the long strap of the laptop. Her head rested on the body of the case. Cam stared at the case and imagined thick, malodorous slobber dripping through holes in the newly damaged case into her laptop, onto the keyboard, down to the precious hard drive. Can they recover data from that?
Cam jumped as Jinny suddenly lifted her head. The drunk female stared at her, blinking slowly, before letting her head sink leisurely back down onto the case.
*
Cam was on the front porch, in her flannel jammies and wrapped in a thin lap blanket two hours later when John showed up for his weekly supply drop and repair spree. Cam hadn’t had coffee. She hadn’t brushed her hair or teeth. She looked and felt like hell.

“Rough night?” John was a man of few words.

Cam said quietly. “Very. The moose has my laptop.”

John blinked. “The who has your what?”

Cam gestured to the thrashed cabin. She front door was off it’s hinges, and the chaos was visible from the porch. “See for yourself. There is a drunk moose named Jinny in my bedroom with my laptop around her neck, drooling into the hard drive.” Cam blinked, feeling a frustrated tear roll down her face.

John waded carefully into the mess and whistled. He looked back at Cam. “Drunk moose. Hand me an apple.”

The box of apples had been turned on its side and trampled but a few still looked somewhat edible. She tossed one through the door and sank silently back down in the chair.

A few minutes later, John emerged with the drool-sodden case hanging from the strap. He held it out to her. She stood and snatched it from his grasp, placing it gingerly on the uneven boards of the porch before tugging at the zipper. The case, aside from being smelly and beyond damp, seemed unharmed. Her heart lifted as she tenderly pulled the laptop free and pushed the case aside. The laptop appeared fine, but she held her breath as she pressed the power button. John wandered the inside of the cabin while she did a quick inspection of the laptop functions. 150 pages, intact, her studies, intact, her laptop, a constant companion of her school career, intact.

“Is it okay?” John stood in the door, a pile of papers in his hand. He had apparently been attempting a little cleaning.

Cam grinned. “Yes. Thank god. All here. Thank you so much. I didn’t know how to get it away from her-“

John grinned back. “You just have to know how to deal with party animals. Snacks should always be served.”

Camelot Invaded

This is a 10-minute play I wrote for Will Act 4 Food last year. Will Act 4 Food is a locally-produced 24-hour play festival and on top of being REALLY FUN, all the proceeds go to the food bank, so you know you're doing something worthwhile by coming to see my show ;) This year, the festival is on Jan 15 at the Danny Petersen Theatre in the Morrison Center on BSU's campus. Come out and watch my words make asses of themselves!

CAMELOT INVADED

by Elizabeth Puckett

Scene 1
Lights up on a well- appointed living room. An attractively dressed middle-aged woman - Gwen- is fussing over knick-knacks, dusting and straightening while a well-dressed middle-aged man - Art- come out of a back room brandishing a plastic hanger and a plate rack. He places the rack on a side table and carefully arranges the hanger on the rack, then sits, admiring his handiwork

ART
Do you think he'll remember it, Gwen?

GWEN
sliding knick knacks around on the other side table, looking for the 'artful arrangement'- paying little, if any attention to her hanger-obsessed husband
Remember what, Art?

ART
Excalibur

GWEN
What's that dear?

ART
now touching the honored relic
Excalibur-
He brandishes it like a sword
The hanger of all hangers, that brought us together and started this amazing life-
He goes over and hugs her, still holding the hanger with reverence
The hanger my lovely Lady of the Lake brought me, the hanger that ended my quest, that-

GWEN
Grabbing for the hanger
That old thing? Why is that out?

ART
Keeping the hanger out of Gwen's reach
It's a reminder, my love, of the quest-

GWEN
It was a scavenger hunt, Art!


ART
-Of the quest that brought us together.
He moves away from her, and using the hanger as a sword begins fighting invisible enemies, conquering foes, slaying dragons, etc... throughout the next several lines
Of the untold dangers-

GWEN
Scavenger hunt!
she busies herself with straightening once again, hiding the plate rack

ART
The mountains I climbed, the foes I fought, the rivers I forged on my trusty steed-

GWEN
It was a Ford Taurus, and it could barely cross a street, let alone a river.

ART
This hanger, Gwen, my love, my queen, forged this unending romance! This hanger
gave me everything I cherish today.

GWEN
approaches him, leaning in to kiss him, she reaches up and steals the hanger from his grasp
Scavenger!
kisses him again

Hunt! It's just a silly old hanger, Art.
She begins walking out of the room, stops at the doorway and tosses the hanger inside
It may mean alot to you and I, but I doubt very much Lance will remember. And tonight is about Lance, right?
There is a knock at the door
Oh my god! Oh, Art! There he is!
She straightens her hair quickly, throws off the apron she'd been wearing over her dress, and pulls out a lipstick for a quick touch-up at the mirror by the door. Art, meanwhile, has been edging toward the room where the hanger disappeared

ART
Why don’t you go get the door dear? I’ll be out (ducking into the room) in just a second…

From offstage, we hear a booming voice. ART has re-entered, carrying the hanger, and begins searching for the plate rack, which he finds tucked away beneath the couch

LANCE (offstage)
GWEN! Oh my god! You look- you haven’t changed at all! Still gorgeous!

GWEN (offstage)
Lance! Always a flatterer!

LANCE and GWEN enter- a little too close together. LANCE is not shabbily dressed, but his suit looks older and ill-fitting. He looks a little down-on-his-luck. ART is just placing the hanger on the rack as the two enter.

ART
Lance! How good to see you! You’re looking- (He looks his friend up and down) well…

LANCE
Embraces ART in a ‘manly hug’- lots of back patting, etc
You too, old friend!
He gestures around to the setting
This is an amazing place you have here.

ART
Why thank you Lance.
pulling GWEN into his side
It’s our own little kingdom. If the homeowners association would let me put it up, we would have a grand stone entranceway with the word CAMELOT carved into it. Instead I just wrote it in the cement when we poured the back patio.
Gestures to the chair next to the table where ‘excalibur’ resides
Please, please have a seat. You must be tired. (LANCE sits.)



GWEN
(moving off toward the ‘kitchen’)
Yes, Lance, Can I get you anything? Some coffee? Wine? Dinner is almost ready…

LANCE
pausing for a moment as he considers his options- looks ready to say something, changes his mind, and instead
Oh, some wine, please. Maybe a glass of water as well? Do you need any help in the kitchen?

ART
gestures LANCE back into his seat
She can get it Lance. You’ve had a long trip.
sitting on the couch- crossing his ankles to display a lovely pair of Gucci loafers. GWEN disappears into the kitchen
So tell me, Lance, how have you been? Really?

LANCE
Amazing, really. (obviously changing the subject) Those are great shoes Art.

ART
Don’t you just love Gucci?

LANCE
I suppose so. I’ve never actually worn a pair…

ART
Trust me. They’re amazing. And hopefully your new position at my firm will lead to a closet full of Gucci and Armani and-
GWEN re-enters, carrying a tray with three wine glasses and three unopened bottles of water
an amazing, beautiful, perfect wife.

GWEN
Oh, stop.
Handing Lance a little of water, then a glass of wine- on the side facing the audience, we can see their fingers touch and linger just a moment too long while ART is busy drinking from his own glass and once again admiring the hanger. GWEN sits on the couch, at some distance from ART

ART
It all started with this-
he puts down his wine glass and picks up the hanger

LANCE
A hanger? What’s that all about?

ART
You don’t remember?

GWEN
Oh, Art. See? I told you!

ART
The quest? In College? (LANCE looks baffled) You were Lancelot to my Arthur.

GWEN
It was a scavenger hunt, Art.

LANCE
Oh my god! Yes! The quest! Sophomore year! That silly scavenger hunt during rush week at Phi Kap!

ART
jumping up, brandishing the hanger once again
When we charged into the fray and showed those upperclassmen what we were made of!

LANCE
And those stupid hints- what was it? “When you dive, you’ll die-

ART
-if you get ‘hung up’ with the green!” And you solved it! You said-

LANCE
‘Um, I don’t know. Maybe it has something to do with the diving club on the corner”


ART
Charging all over campus all day long that day and it was our last hint, our final chance to win, and my most loyal friend let me go into the place and find

LANCE
Gwen! I remember now! Gwen was the lady of the Lake! And this hanger was

ART AND LANCE
EXCALIBUR!
The two laugh, holding the hanger in between them.

LANCE
Oh, those were good times!

ART
Still standing, places the hanger reverently back on the holder
Yes, they were. It seemed they never stopped, at least for Gwen and I.
ART sits and works on finishing his wine. GWEN seems lost in thought)
It seemed we would always be young and ready for a new quest back then, didn’t it, Lance?

LANCE
Indeed Sire, it did.
he touches the hanger
Seems like your quest finished that day though. You won the maiden and then came the castle. I still feel like my quest is never-ending.

Silence fills the space for a moment. Gwen finishes her wine and clears her throat

GWEN
Art, will you go check the BBQ?

ART
Oh! Yes! I almost forgot!
Stands and heads for the kitchen
We’re having a carnivore’s feast tonight, proud Lancelot!


A door opens and closes, and GWEN and LANCE are alone onstage

GWEN AND LANCE (simultaneously)
I-

GWEN
Oh, go ahead

LANCE
Oh, no, please, ladies first

GWEN
scoots closer to LANCE, picks up ART’s glass and
finishes the wine before continuing
Lance- I- I miss you.
she reaches out and touches his hand, but can’t look him in the eye

LANCE
grasping her hand
Gwen! I’ve missed you too! You have no idea. Thinking of you here, living with him-

GWEN
He’s a good man, Lance.

LANCE
I Know he is, Gwen. But he’s not right for you. He’s never been right for you. I should have been the one to go in after this stupid hanger.

GWEN
No, Lance. (pulling away) It’s good he was the once I met first. You weren’t ready.

LANCE
I’m ready now-

GWEN
Are you Lance? Are you really?

A door opens offstage and we hear ART
ART
I’ll be out here for a few more minutes, my queen! Would you mind getting everyone another round of wine?

GWEN
Sure Art.
The door closes. Gwen reaches again tentatively for LANCE, though her touch seems more comfort than affection
I do love Art, Lance. He’s given me everything I could ever want-

LANCE
And with this new job, I’ll be able to do the same-

GWEN
Art is giving you this job, Lance. Do you really think if he knew how I feel- (she chokes up for a moment) do you really think if he knew the things we’d done together, he would be giving you this opportunity?


LANCE
pulling away
I could do fine without him. I don’t need his job.

GWEN
And what would you do, Lance? You never finished college. You’ve been down on your luck for so long I don’t think you know what good luck means anymore. (LANCE looks stricken). You know I love you, Lance. I always will. But without this position, there’s not much left for you.

LANCE
And what if I had been the one to find this precious Excalibur?
he grabs the hanger and flings it
Would it be me that you were with? Would I be king of Camelot? (he stands)

GWEN
You didn’t and you aren’t, Lance. I care for him, and he’s always been there for you-

LANCE
Has he?


GWEN
I can’t hurt him, Lance, no matter what I feel for you-(She stands) Sometimes love isn’t enough, and that’s all you have going for you.

LANCE
He never would have found you if I hadn’t given him the idea about the diving club-

GWEN
I am married to Art, and that’s the way it will be-

LANCE
Will it?

he grabs her and pulls her to him, sweeping her into a kiss which she resists at first, then slowly melts into, they murmur each other’s names, and in the background, we hear a door open and close and whistling. ART enters, whistling, carrying an open bottle of wine. When he sees his wife and his best friend in a clutch, the wine bottle drops to the floor and LANCE and GWEN, startled, pull apart. There is silence for 30 seconds while ART looks between GWEN and LANCE. Without a word, he walks across the room, picks up the hanger from where it landed and walks toward the front door. Darkness falls across the stage as we hear GWEN and LANCE say “ART-“



In the darkness, we hear a newscaster’s voice

NEWSCASTER
In unrelated news today, a man was killed today at a local diving club. Witnesses say he walked into the club in a suit carrying nothing but a hanger and proceeded to throw the hanger into the water, screaming about Excalibur and the Lady of the Lake. Apparently his shoes were not appropriate for the slick surface because he slipped and hit his head on the side of the pool. Sources say he died instantly.

ANCHORWMAN
How sad Bob

NEWSCASTER
How sad indeed Susan. Sad and strange. Next up- Weather…


THE END

Prompt 1/11/11

You and a friend break into your neighborhood swim club late one night to go for an after-hours dip. While splashing around in the pool, you go into shock when a dead body floats to the top. Worse yet—it's someone you know. Write this scene.

The day had been rough, made worse by the tyrannical heat. Several cool showers had done nothing to alleviate the stickiness of my skin for more than a few minutes at a time. No sooner had I toweled dry than the oily heat crept across my skin, drawing the cool off my body and shredding my nerves. I’d stood staring at the pool house in the concrete valley of the apartment courtyard, but screaming kids would have done nothing for my state of mind.

When Aricella popped through my door at nearly ten that evening, I was finally packing away my laptop. I had a cold glass of wine set out in the hopes of drowning out the darkness of the phrases and images I’d been combing over all day long. My dissertation on the neuropsychology of “thrill killers” was proving more oppressive than the heat. At least the heat went away some times. The pictures proved more permanent.

“What up, chick?” Aricella dropped her bag and slid into the chair opposite me. She picked up my wine glass and sniffed it. Her nose wrinkled. “Vinegar.”

“Better than rotten hops.” I snatched the glass out of her hand and took a sip. It was not vinegar. On the contrary, the Riesling’s flavor was light and sweet. I felt my shoulders drop and my neck relax. Between the overwhelming heat, the ice-cold showers, and the horror of my work, I felt like I hadn’t breathed all day.

Aricella grinned. “Speaking of which, got a beer?” I raised a hand in the general direction of the fridge, closing my eyes to better absorb my first moment of calm all day. She hopped up and sauntered to the fridge. Aricella sauntered everywhere. It never ceased to amaze me how relaxed she always looked. She pulled a longneck out of the refrigerator door and came back to sit across from me. “How goes the fight?”

I shrugged and contemplated the pile of books and loose papers on the floor at my feet. “Alright, I suppose. Some of these people-“ I shook my head. “You have to wonder how they became who they are. “

Ari shook her head too. “Not worth wondering about. They’re psychos. Best thing they could do is die so you could study their brains up close and personal and stop wasting breathable air and drinkable water.” Aricella is a botanist, a journalist, and an avid ecologist. She is not very fond of most of the human race. I’m a lucky exception.She took a pull off her bottle and stared hard at me for a moment. “You look like sheize chicka.”

“Gee, thanks Ari.”

She held up her hands. “No offense. You just need some fun.” The sudden twinkle in her eye said she had a plan. Reaching into her breast pocket, she produced a key.

“What’s that?”

“The key to the pool.” She grinned and set it on the table between us. It gleamed in the warm light from the kitchen. For liability reasons, the pool was locked down at ten P.M. No one was allowed to use the pool. Period.

“How’d you-“

She shook her head at me. “Don’t even ask. I can’t reveal my sources.” She winked and picked up the key again. “Care to join me?”

*

The water was delicious against my skin. To keep down the risk of exposure (and a large fine imposed by the landlord), we kept the lights off. I’d finished the glass of wine before we left the apartment, and poured an additional serving into a red plastic party cup. It sat on the edge of the pool near the steps.

I felt the day finally sloughing off my mind and body. Ari was floating some distance away, and I let the water hold me up while I stared at the vague reflections of moonlight bouncing off the water onto the high metal ceiling.
“This was a good idea.” My voice was alien in the huge, ringing space.

I heard Ari off somewhere to my right. The water moved as she swam over to me. “I thought you might think so.”

She grinned and stood over me, looking down at my face framed by lapping water. She bent and kissed me lightly on the lips, then in one swift, smooth motion pushed me under the water. I’m not sure whether it was the kiss or the dunking that took my breath away. Either way, I wanted to reciprocate. I sprang up and grabbed her. Her eyes were wide as I approached and wrapped my arms around her, preventing her escape. I kissed her before she could try to get away or dunk me again. She did not respond.

I pulled back and looked at her face, but she wasn’t even looking at me. I turned to look behind me, heavy hair standing on end. Had we been caught?

There was someone there with us, but we hadn’t been caught. Floating the water about twenty feet away was an exceptionally pale someone, face up in the water, unmoving. There was something unnatural in the utter stillness of the figure. She was naked, dark hair a floating corona around her head.

It took me a moment to break my paralysis and move toward her. I heard Ari finally pull in a breath and swear loudly. The curse echoed, then there was silence aside from the splash of two bodies moving in separate directions; her for the edge of the pool, me toward the girl in the water.

The girl’s skin was cold, not merely cool as one expects skin to be in cold water. Her eyes were wide, glazed, and she floated just as I had before my dunking. I felt a shudder pass over my skin.

“What the fuck are you doing? Pull her out! You know CPR!” Ari’s voice was high and tight. She was pulling at the pile of clothes on the edge of the pool, trying to find her minuscule red cell phone.

I shook my head, then realized Ari couldn’t see the gesture. I put two fingers to the dead girl’s carotid artery to be certain, and felt nothing. The texture of her neck reminded me of a thick skin on a Jell-O mold; firm and slick and cold. There were bruises under my fingers. “She’s dead Ari.” I backed slowly away. “Call 911. Tell them it’s a murder.”

Opening the box

On the broad wooden table st a box. It was wrapped loosely but prettily in gauzy paper and a heap of ribbons. Attached to the top ribbon, echoing the teal tone of the majority of ribbons, a small card was attached. In florid script in red magic marker, it said “don't open me.”

Whoever had laid this box here obviously knew her nature. Don't open me, indeed! It was like asking her not to think about the tiny pink elephant under her chair. It wasn't going to happen unless she left the building entirely and even then, she would likely make one circuit around the block in her rusty old car and find herself sneaking back into this room to investigate the box.

The wrap, though loose, was complicated. It tangled around her fingers, wrapping itself around her palms, it seemed to be sticking like the tentacles of a baby octopus. The box itself didn't seem to want to be unwrapped. She tore a little harder at the ribbons, puncturing a few in her quest to get to the box itself. The gauzy paper was an illusion as well. It was tough, like cellophane but a small tear did not start a larger one. She sat in the chair at the head of the table, pulling the box and its tangle of wrappings into her lap to get better purchase on the damnable thing. Finally, with a snarling rip, the paper came loose from whatever bound it to the box. She couldn't see any tape, no staples, nothing that should have confounded her as much as it had. When she flung the paper and ribbons away, the floated to the ground as any such material should do.

The box itself was ornate, a complex arrangement of metal and wood. The surface was smooth, it reminded her of a topographical map, of the complex surface of a brain mapped on the inside of a skull, and of the night sky all in one. She knew she could stare at the outside of that box for years and never figure out exactly what it was meant to represent. Maybe that's what its maker's intentions had been.

On the side of the box, a small leather strap was held in place by two plates of metal. She ran her hands over the plates, feeling the cool, rough texture of the hand hammered iron. The mechanism, if there was one, was hidden. Both plates looked identical, the leather strap giving no indication of the direction it should be pulled. It was a box built to hold secrets and keep them well.

At this moment, she really didn't know whether she really intended to open the box or not. Oh, when she'd sat here, pulling exuberantly at the wrapping, she'd had every intention. Now, however, the box seemed more like a legend than a present. She honestly didn't know if she wanted to find whatever would be inside. Pandora's box, wrapped in teal ribbon and tagged with magic marker.

She set the box back on the table, turning it gingerly this way with one finger, then that, watching the play of light on the shining wood and gleaming metal. In the direct light, the metal seemed to be layered- hammered so transparently thin that she could see down into the overlay. It had the effect of a nearly perfect mirror. She could see her eyes peering back at her from the box. They held a confused fear.

Sitting back, she pulled the box one more time into her lap. It fit perfectly, the four edges following the bare outline of her legs. The surface left cold and smooth on her legs, like a pane of glass. She wished it was glass, so she could see what was inside before making the decision to open it.

She spent a few minutes running her palms over the wood and metal, feeling the slight variations in temperature and texture as her fingers moved from metal to glass and back to metal. Everything on the box was so smooth except those catch plates. Their texture brought her fingers back to them again and again.

Finally, she decided to set her apprehensions aside. She was still fearful. Anything in such a beautiful box had to be either very dangerous to her or very meaningful to whomever had left it. Either way, she didn't really need the drama, but she found she intended to open it anyway. Her fingers returned to the hammered iron, and as if the intention itself were enough to open the box where her skills were not, one of the plates slid aside, falling with a solid thunk against the wooden side of the box. At the sound, she pulled her hand back, fully expecting something to spring from the box and take it off. The lid stayed closed, however, and she let her hand creep forward again, find the tiny edge where the box and the top met, and give the nudge that finally opened the box.

Inside was nothing dangerous, and really, nothing that could mean anything to the giver. It was a ring, one she hadn't seen in ages. It was bronze, copper and sterling silver, the colors woven and hammered till each became part of the other. She'd found the ring in a junk sale at a nearby church in college her freshman year. She'd worn it until the day a cat in her clinic scratched her hand too deeply and the scratch got infected. Her hand had swollen, nearly double its size and she'd been forced to remove her jewelry. She thought the ring, one of her favorites despite its simple origin, was still buried somewhere in her jewelry box. Obviously not, as here it was, rattling inside this huge, ornate present. There was nothing else in the box, just that simple ring, no note, nothing to fear, and nothing to tell her where the damn thing had come from.

Reaching to pick it up, she realized her hands were trembling. They shook as they pulled the little tricolored band out and shoved the beautiful box back up on the table. She stood, pulling back from the table and the box, the ring tucked securely in her palm. It felt warm, as warm or warmer than her palm. It also felt so natural, despite the strange origins, that she unconsciously slipped it onto the ring finger of her left hand as she turned away from the box.

And woke up, The ring hanging heavy on her hand.