editorial

I find it fitting that this is our SEVENTH anniversary issue, and I also find it strangely fitting that it is June and this is Volume 122, seeing that my birthday is June 22nd... So... Don't bother with the candles and all that, I'll just give you an essay that defined some people's situations with working in the corporate world in the United States of America. We hope you like...

- janet kuypers

Welcome to Corporate America

Creativity, Drive, and the Perversion of the Work Ethic

"The course of a career depends on one's own action predominantly, but not exclusively. A career requires a struggle; it involves tension, disappointments, obstacles which are challenging, at times, but are often ugly, painful, senseless - particularly, in an age like the present, when one has to fight too frequently against the dishonesty, the evasions, the irrationality of the people one deals with."
- Ayn Rand, The Ayn Rand Column

I am an Art Director. Impressive title, isn't it? I supervise a staff of designers and production artists who design three monthly trade magazines, a quarterly trade magazine, promotional materials for the magazines and trade shows, and accompanying web sites. I've worked my way up at this company; I started here in a low-end position making less than half of what I make now. Now I do good work, and I get compliments on our product from others regularly. My name is on the masthead of every magazine. I have my own office. I work in downtown Chicago, with a relatively impressive view of the Chicago river and the Mercantile Exchange building. I've worked at this company for four and a half years. I commute on the train. I have a health plan and a 401(K) retirement savings. Occasionally I sit in for the editors and go to special functions and media events and get free food and drink. All in all, I have it pretty good.

Diary Entry, July 1997
I think I'm going to quit my job. I really can't stand it here; even though I'm paid well I'm treated like crap by the owner; he resents me because I asked to be paid what I'm worth. And everyone seems to fight me on any decision to be made, even though everyone will say I am the best here at my job, they'll still argue with me. I have really gotten to the point where I just hate it here, so much that I feel like I almost have to leave.

Oh, I forgot to mention it, though: Corporate America, as represented by the company I'm employed at, is horrendous. And I plan on giving up that office, that view, those media dinners, my name of the masthead, that salary.
You see, it goes like this: I love my work. I enjoy designing magazines. I enjoy working on Macintoshes, retouching photos, playing with typefaces. I don't know why, but I love it. And the thing is, I know I'm good at what I do, and every single person in this company would agree that I'm a good designer, but every person in this company also tries to still tell me what to do, even though I'm the head of this department, even though they repeatedly say I'm good at what I do. This company does not let me just do my job.
Office Memo, January 10, 1997
S., I know we've gone over this before, but I just want to let you know when problems came up. Today C., in front of myself, D. S. and D. E., badgered myself with design questions focusing on two scans (specifically on whether or not they would be outlined). I told her that barring technical difficulties or purely a lack of time they would be done. She insisted on having them done, that these two photos not outlined jeopardized the integrity of the design, that I looked at every scan and personally told her that they would all be outlined (which I did not do). Her tone was more than condescending, it was flat out rude. If I were her secretary I would have been offended. The demands she posed were trivial and out of her jurisdiction, and they were made to not a low-ranking member of the staff, but to the Art Director, in front of her staff. Behavior like that is unprofessional and intolerable.
We have discussed and agreed that her behavior and attitude is a problem in this office. It has caused one designer to quit and it was part of the reason the associate editor quit. I suggest that something be done as soon as possible, before she jeopardizes the job position of the new designer we plan to hire next week.

The people that work here, I've discovered, are not rational. I've done my best over the years to work with them anyway, to meet their demands, to come up with a compromise that will temporarily appease them so that I can do what I'm supposed to do. But the more I've compromised the more I've realized that a compromise between good and evil always ends up with some evil. If you concede a small token to the enemy, they will continue to try to take more from you. And I can no longer let incompetent people destroy a good product.

Office Memo, June 12,1997
For months I have written repeated memos, had regular meetings and expressed an urgent concern about not only the meddling but the design incompetence of C. that has proven to be detrimental to this magazine and to this company. I have demonstrated over and over again that I am a good, quick designer, even when regularly faced with an late, incomplete and inconsistent work from editors. I have documented repeatedly that her interference in the design department has hurt the morale of the design department, has cost hours upon hours of time and additional money to this company and has ultimately sacrificed the design integrity of the magazine.
For a full year I have outlined what a problem this is. You have told me it will get better, that you'd talk to her. Apparently, however, she has not listened to memos or discussions about this problem.
In the beginning of the June issue you told her not to meddle, to let the designers do their job. For once she actually listened, and the result was not only a smoother month in getting work done but a great looking 112-page issue. I have received compliments on the design of the issue. The magazine looks good because she was not actively involved with the design, not in spite of it. This month, however, she apparently forgot what you told her. In our design meeting she picked on almost every subjective matter she could... Why are you listening to her, when she has been told repeatedly that this is out of her jurisdiction, when it has been shown that her input in these matters only hurts the final design of this magazine?
I've had to replace one staff member that quit because of her; I've had to remove one staff member from working on this magazine because they cannot stand working with her. The challenge of working well under difficult circumstances is not the problem; the challenge of working well when inexperienced people are actively trying to stop you from doing a good job is the problem. I can't tell people they should work on this magazine when I can't even think of any reasons why I should continue to.
Something, apparently something drastic, must be done immediately. I genuinely do not know how much longer I can work with the current circumstances. Please let me know as soon as possible if we can implement these changes and if you have any other ideas on how to solve this problem.

I know I sound like I'm overreacting here. But shouting matches are somewhat regular here, as well as multiple rounds of corrections in copy (after having three editors read something 15 times, there shouldn't be any need for more changes, they just cost time and money). Butting in to the production department's jobs is also a regular occurrence here. Having the goals of your department change without you knowing it. Having work redone because people weren't paying attention. Redoing work because someone new saw it and said it needed to change, after 7 other people approved it. Welcome to Corporate America.

Diary Entry, September 9, 1997
I took a sick day today. A well day, so to speak. A mental health day. I didn't think it would be good for me to go to work today. I really hate that place. Everyone hates everyone there, I think. J. told D. he's sending out resumes again. D. says he wants to leave. B. was interviewing a few weeks ago.
Are we not supposed to have balls and ask for things we deserve? Are other people in the office jealous because there are actually some people with some talent in the production department, and they have the power to expose the ignorance of the rest of the staff? I hate the fact that there are so many stupid people that are able to hold a job there. And of course it then becomes my job to cater to them, because they can't figure out what to do. I hate the fact that I have to follow other people's whims. That's precisely what they are - whims. People in that office don't know what they want, and don't trust the production department to do their job. They cost tons of money and tons of time. And the boss blames us for their ignorance.
I know I've said over and over again that I'm afraid of losing my financial security, that I'm afraid I might be making a mistake, that I'm worried about not having a plan, but there is no way whatsoever that I could stay there. It's beginning to get hard to stay there now, and I still have over a month and a half before I quit. Five weeks before I tell them.

The turnover rate in the production design department, according to rough estimates only done in my head, are something like thirty percent annually. When we're talking about a staff of seven, that means having to hire - and train - two or three people a year. If it isn't that bad, why are they all running out of here?

Diary Entry, August 2, 1997
A co-worker quit from the company I work for today. I work in an office with about thirty-five people. Now this co-worker was in charge of our trade shows and quit two days before our annual trade show was about to begin. Apparently she was at a meeting about the trade show and someone else started badgering her and twenty minutes after the meeting she was on the phone with her husband saying, "It's been bad enough that every day after work I cry when I get home, but now I'm on the phone crying while I'm at work." So her husband told her it's okay if she wants to leave, they can work it out. So leave she did. She collected her things, and just... left.
Now I only got to hear about this scene second-hand, I didn't actually see her or even get to say good-bye to her, and that's a real shame because I probably would have shook her hand and thanked her for doing something that just about every person in our office has pretty much dreamt about on a daily basis. I mean, when I heard about what she did I let out a low, sadistic laugh, you know, one of those laughs that comes from really deep down, because we haven't had one of those angry quitting scenes in a while, and believe me, they're always fun to watch. And I laughed like that because I know what she was going through and I know what a relief it must have been for her to do it.

I work in my spare time as the editor of the literary magazine "Children, Churches and Daddies." One of the reasons I do it is simple: I want to put together a good magazine, one people like, on my own terms, and know that it is good. I have been praised for the design of the magazine. Everything about that magazine is a result of my own decisions: what the covers look like, what kind of sections the magazine has, who the contributors are, what the type looks like, what photos are used.
I need "Children, Churches and Daddies" for my own sanity. I need to do the work I love, without anyone telling me how to do it. I don't get that at work, and I know I deserve it. People tell me I'm good, but they still get in my way and obstruct my progress - not at getting ahead at this company, but from producing a good product - the best product - at this company. I love my work. But they haven't let me do it here.

Diary Entry, August 29, 1997
I hate having pride in my work at this place. It is hard when you know you're good at something and everyone tells you you're good and yet no one will let you make decisions. I'm the highest-ranking designer at this company and people outside my department overrule decisions of mine arbitrarily - and regularly. They destroy any consistency or style something may have. And then I have to answer for it, since I'm the head of design. But I'm really not. I'm a slave to the whims of people who don't know anything about my work. It makes me want to leave so badly.
I just hate seeing things that are good get destroyed. It's one of the hardest things for me to witness.
There are two types of people: people who think of work as an extension of themselves, people who are productive, and continually strive to improve, to move forward, and there are people who think of work as some sort of evil necessity to help them exist because no one will give them free money for some reason. So they go through work making a greater effort to not work and act like they are working, they stay in the same job, they gossip, and they make life difficult for productive people.
One of the greatest benefits of Capitalism is that when the most productive people are allowed to work and to excel and to own and fully reap the benefits of their labor, then the standard of living is raised for all. Consider how well off homeless people are in this country as opposed to other countries, for instance. There is such a wealth of goods and services that it trickles down and improves the lives of all. When new technology is created, the ole technology becomes cheaper, and more affordable to the lower classes. Well, my point from all that is that yes, that's one of the greatest things about Capitalism, but I must admit that there are times when on an entirely selfish level it bothers me that people who choose not to create, not to work hard, not to really contribute to society, still get the benefits from intelligent people's work.

There's a group of women that work in another department here at the office. Their pay is equivalent to that of a secretary here at this company, and this company has a surprisingly low pay scale. They punch in on time, they sit in the lunchroom together and gossip while eating their fast food, they take their smoke breaks in the lounge on the 22nd floor, they try to look like they have a lot of work to do so no one bothers them. They're all overweight. They all punch out at 4:30, go home, watch prime time television, and come back the next day and talk about it as if the characters on Melrose Place are friends of theirs. They never try to get a promotion, but they are angry if they don't get a raise. They never ask what needs to be done. They are resistant to change. They don't like people who succeed.
And these people make my blood boil.
It angers me that they are in the same office as me, taking partial credit for the magazine I work on. It angers me because these are the people that are a detriment to progress; that is the only thing they should have credit for.

"The difference between a career person and a job holder is as follows: a career person regards his/her work as constant progress, as a constant upward motion from one achievement to another, higher one, driven by the constant expansion of his/her mind, his/her knowledge, his/her ability, his/her creative ingenuity, never stopping to stagnate on any level. A job holder regards his/her work as a punishment imposed on him/her by the incomprehensible malevolence of reality or of society, which, somehow, does not let him/her exist without effort; so his/her policy is to go through the least amount of motions demanded of him/her by somebody and to stay put in any job or drift off to another, wherever chance, circumstances or relatives might happen to push him/her."
- Ayn Rand, The Ayn Rand Letter, Vol. III, No. 26

So I've made this decision that I don't have to deal with all of this trouble anymore. One coworker told me that people in the industry refer to this company as a slave camp. But it stays in business anyway. So I've made this decision to give up the salary, the schedule, the "plan." You see, I've planned everything in my life. I'm a control freak and need to have everything in order at all times.
And I'm not going to have that kind of security, that kind of stability, that kind of plan anymore. I have a plan to quit my job, to visit Florida for a month and then enjoy my Christmas holiday for once in my adult life (you see, it's crunch time at this company from November 1st to February 1st, so you're putting in 80 hours a week and have no time for the holidays). I plan to tour around the States, some for pleasure, some for writing, some for doing readings at bookstores and coffeehouses and bars and festivals. And then I plan on going to Europe for a few months.
I've never left this continent before, and I'd love the chance. I know some people in different countries in Europe, and figure that if they help me out I can afford to do this, to take almost a year off and travel.
But am I only running away from something?
In all the decisions I've made in my life, I've tried to move toward something, not to run away from something. So what am I looking for?

Diary Entry, August 29, 1997
I feel like I'm making such a large decision in my life now. When I left college, I knew I was only going to be going to school for four years, this was the logical conclusion to my schooling, but it was still a great change to go back home, as an adult, and start to look for a job. Once you're working, though, you make your own schedules. You can stay at the same job for thirty years, you can marry and quit your job and take care of a family, you can get another job. And the thing is, I had no idea how long I was going to be at this job. I thought I'd be here for at least six years; that's when my 401(K) becomes fully vested and I will have made the optimal amount of money in it, then I'd be ready to go, I could quit my job right about when I was probably ready to get married and possibly move to another city. But here I am, quitting a year and a half ahead of my plan, planning to spend a ton of my money on travelling instead of working for the next year.
It's strange. I've always been so insistent that I be financially secure. I've always planned everything. I've always done the most logical thing. Is this logical? I figure that I'm young and I have a savings and I hate my job, this is as good a time as any. If I get married and/or start another job, I might not have this opportunity in my youth again. Right now there's really nothing holding me back. So this is my chance.
But it's not like me. It's not like me to throw away a job that makes me great money. I have perks here. I can work on other projects here. The equipment is excellent. But I'm treated like a second-class citizen here. I have four to six people who answer to me design-wise, but I can't tell them what to do when someone from another department is overriding my decisions all the time. I can hardly be an effective leader when no one allows me to lead.
I've mentally just gotten tired of fighting this place. So I'm here for another two months, I'll try to save all of my money, and then I move on.
And recoup for a year.
I don't know what I'm looking for in Europe. I want to be alone, really. I want to see different sights. I want to see different sights through my own eyes, with my perceptions, with my perspectives. I want to be able to react to the world. Does that make sense?
I want to know I can do this. That I can.

Why I stay at my stupid corporate job:
1. I'm a masochist at heart and this company turns me on.
2. I was raised in a slave camp, and this place lets me drink water while I work.
3. He keeps telling me he'll deny everything in court if I leave him.
4. This company is cheaper than a sedative.
5. My boss makes me homesick for both Mother Russia and my vodka.
6. I don't have the resources to study chimpanzees in their natural habitat; had to find similar test group.
7. I'm hoping the rays emitted from my computer will eventually give me a tan.
8. Staying trapped in my office all day allows me to avoid interaction with all people.
9. I can't think of any faster way to become brain-dead.
10. All the fat people that work here make me feel thin.
11. It's fun to bet on who will quit next.
12. I'd hate to have to spend my days outside in the sun, say, being active or doing different things.
13. The constantly changing whims of my supervisors keeps me on my toes.
14. Because you can't have an abuser without an enabler.
and the bonus...
15. Contrary to popular opinion, my olive complexion does not mean I'm made of money.
Office Memo, April 28, 1997
I thought you said you told C. not to tell designers how to design departments. She did (see attached).
She also told me what to do for some of the show coverage, things that (1) go in conflict with consistency in the magazine, (2) go in conflict with consistency in design of all the show coverage per our meeting Friday, (3) would make the section look cluttered. She didn't cause problems in the meeting Friday; she's causing them on paper now. Why?
Please let her know that these changes are unnecessary. I've outlined it in a memo to her; she should also know, however, that it's not her place to be doing things like this, and she won't listen to me. Thanks.

I've tried to work through this unhealthy environment. I've tried to swallow my pride and just do what they tell me. But I can't do it forever; I have too much pride and I know I should be doing something more. I've tried to fight for what I know is right, and then my supervisors will agree with me, and then one of the supervisors will disagree and no one will want to fight it. Everyone is so afraid to fight for things here, that they just let the cycle continue on and on and on.

Diary Entry, September 15, 1997
Why would you hate someone for paying them something close to what they're worth? He did this to P., the old editor. When P. quit, he needed to replace him with three people, and I'm sure he's paying the new editor more than he was paying P. He shoots himself in the foot that way. He resents people for having pride in themselves. He wants weak people here, so he can pay them next to nothing. And then he treats them like crap for doing sub-standard work.
Then he gets someone on staff who is good, and eventually they stand up for themselves and ask for more money, and he gladly gives it to them, and then he thinks about it for a while, and he thinks, "You know, I used to be able to pay them less money for the same work. They're screwing me." And then he hates them and makes them feel like crap until they quit.
I don't understand how someone who can run a successful business can be so short-sighted.
If this place wasn't so whim-oriented, it would be a lot better. The owner makes changes from one issue to the next, he changes his mind about everything, he doesn't remember what he said, he blatantly lies.
I was told that he has told A. to sit on expense checks and petty cash requests as long as she can, so he can hold off on paying out what his employees have coming to them.

The thing is, work can be something that makes you happy (yes, I've heard that it is possible). I produce the literary magazine "Children, Churches and Daddies" for no money; I typeset it, I design it, I write for it, I scan photos for it, I make all editorial corrections, do spell checks and make sure it gets out on time, and I do it all with more efficiency that a staff of people do here in this office.
Maybe that's another problem. I've think I've learned all I can learn from this place. A career is supposed to be a constant progression of learning and applying what you've learned, but for the past year, or year-and-a-half here, I haven't been learning, I've just been fighting to stay at the same point I've always been at.
And that shouldn't happen. Not from the standpoint of the owner, who wants efficiency and can most easily get it by allowing his staff to produce (a happy employee is a productive employee), and certainly not from my own standpoint. I want to learn, I want to grow. I don't want to have to fight for things I fought for a year and a half ago.

Office Memo, January 13, 1997
Bonuses and Christmas Parties
Most companies have a decent Christmas party as well as bonuses at the end of the year. HOW magazine estimates that the average production/designer received a bonus of nearly $4,000 in the midwest and nearly $6,000 nationally. Folio magazine estimates that production directors, people in positions such as myself and D. S., receive bonuses on average of over $8,000 for trade magazine work.
In 1995 we had the closest thing to a real Christmas party, although we could not invite a guest (like a spouse). This year we received less than a party. For a staff that has been overworked and is looking for some sign of gratitude, no bonus and a lunch instead of a party is insulting.
Current Overtime Compensation
Overtime is supposed to be compensated for by being able to take time off. Usually, however, we only take time off at a ratio of 1:4 or 1:3. If I work 60 hours of overtime in a given month, seldom do I have the opportunity, much less the permission, to take nearly four days off, which would be a 1:2 ratio, much less a week and a half off at a 1:1 ratio. Yet this is supposed to be my compensation for losing half of my spare time. I have had to repeatedly relinquish social and family obligations, as well as eliminate basic money-saving and necessary household chores in my life like grocery shopping because I have simply had no time to do these things that I should be doing. The sheer amount of time I have worked has also made me physically sick, and with more work always piling on, I do not have the chance to take the time off I need to to get some rest and recover from illness.
The Fair Labor Standard Act requires government employees to get 1-1Ú2 hours of comp time for every hour of overtime worked. The average (norm - expected) ratio for any company offering comp time in lieu of wages is a 1:2 ratio. The Federal government is now trying to set up a standard of one hour of comp time for every hour and a half of overtime worked (in lieu of wages). This company's policy puts our comp time drastically below those ratios. Considering that giving an employee comp time off at a 1:2 ratio doesn't cost the employer anything, during less busy times there is no reason why this ratio should not apply to this company.
I have consistently worked far more overtime than a worker should. Consistently I have produced quality work at a much faster rate than the rest of the production/design staff at this company. And consistently I have wondered when I'd get paid for the work I have done, if I would even get compensation for the work I did, or when I would even have a day off. I look around and see the sales staff making three to four times my salary, all while working a normal work week (when not travelling around the globe). I see an editorial staff and a marketing staff that does not put in overtime give me work consistently late, asking me to spend my spare time catching up their mistakes.
I have battled with and created a good product in spite of an inadequate staff, or an incompetent staff, or an uncooperative staff. In short, I feel I don't receive adequate compensation in most every front at this company.

Well, if I have learned anything in the past year, it has been how to deal with the incompetency of an inadequate and uncooperative staff, which is probably a lesson I'd have to learn sooner or later anyway.
At least I haven't given in and joined them with that mentality. Then I would have really lost.
But I know there is more out there, and I know it is time for me to learn something new. It's time for me to shake up my routine.
Change is hard for anyone to look forward to; when you get used to something, it just gets ... comfortable. Change can be scary. I've been at this company longer than I've been in college. The pay is pretty good. It could be worse.
Yes, I suppose it could be worse. But it could definitely be better, and I know that if it's going to get better, I'm going to be the one that will make it that way.

Diary Entry, September 15, 1997
M. just came into my office with the most recent issue. She was so excited about how it looked, and she was going on about how the printer did a good job, and she's so pleased. And she keeps saying things like "Next year will be better," and "We'll have a lot more ads next year," and "We'll have a lot more time to work on it next year," and I keep nodding my head and agreeing with her, but I know the issue she just handed me will be the last issue I do, at least while I'm employed here.

So now I sit here, grinning and bearing it, trying not to tip anyone off, trying not to burn any bridges. Who knows, maybe they will want to freelance out one magazine to me, have me work on it at home, on my own time. Maybe I'll have the best of both worlds for a while.
Maybe it's not like this everywhere. Maybe after travelling, I'll find a company that thinks it's a good idea to pay people what they're worth. Maybe I'll find a place that judges people on merit, and not on how they dress or if they're gay or not or how well they play golf or if they can hold their liquor or how many friends they can make - or should I say fake - with the staff.
Or maybe I'll win the lottery and become independently wealthy. Oh, I guess that means I'll have to play first. Well, I hate throwing away money, and I know I'd have to work anyway, because as I said, I love my job, I do my own work in my spare time just to keep me sane.
Maybe I'll get sick and tired of working for someone else and go for another change altogether and start my own company. One where I produce a product with content I care about, that looks as good as I know it can look.
Anybody need a job in a year or two?

Diary Entry, September 17, 1997
I make it through the day here by thinking about October 17th, the day I put in my two week notice. It's one month from today. Thirty days from now I will be telling the owner and D. S. that I'm putting in my two week notice.
Thirty days from now I'll be telling everyone in production to come into my office, so I can tell them I'm leaving. And D. J. will be pouring champagne for me, and I'll be telling everyone about my travel plans, and I'll be laughing and smiling.
And when S. finds out and comes to me and asks me not to go I'll say too bad, that apparently they can't pay me enough to stay here, and if she asks me why I'm going I'll tell her it's because I can't stand incompetence and idiocy and whim-worshipping and I deserve something better because I'm talented, hard-working and intelligent.
And I bet she won't even get that she is the incompetent, whim-worshipping idiot.
And C. will be glad that I'm leaving, because then she can take over the design of this magazine, even though she's not a designer or an art director but an editor, and a bad one at that.
And I'll look at J., the main saleswoman for this magazine, and I know she'll be thinking two things:
1. if the magazine looks worse it will be even harder to sell, which will make her near-impossible job of selling crap even more impossible, and
2. she'll be jealous, because she wants to get out of here too, because this place places constant barriers in front of any attempts to do your job and she's underpaid and her job depends on there being a good product when editorial can't write to save their lives.
And I'll feel bad for J., and I'll want to tell her to just get out of here, that working at McDonald's has to be better than this place, you'd have to have more pride in your work any place else than here.
***
I keep trying to think that it's not that the weak and stupid are able to beat the intelligent and hard-working and rational. That I'm not leaving because they beat me. That I was wrong. I have to keep reminding myself that it's that the intelligent and rational human does not need to put themselves through this kind of abuse. I have to make a point to actively consciously remind myself of this. There is nothing to gain from battling those who do not listen to reason. Consider trying to have a rational argument with a religious fanatic - they are not coming from a rational base, so the foundation of their argument is not sound, even though they don't question their foundation and accept it as true. And therefore they won't listen to your argument, no matter how much reason and logic you use. They've rejected that line of thinking. They've rejected thinking.
The ignorant are different from the stupid, because being stupid is not a statement on whether you choose to be that way. Being ignorant, the way I see it (I know this is not in the definition), means you choose the option of being an idiot; you ignore the better choices; you choose irrationality over reason. You're stupid because you weren't educated, but you're ignorant because you choose not to be educated, that's the difference that I see between the two, and that's how I use the word ignorant. Being ignorant is detestable. Being ignorant, since it is a choice to avoid rationality, cannot be rationally argued with. Reason won't change their mind.
So if the choices are: 1. fighting a losing battle, not because reason is not on your side, but because you opponent does not recognize reason, or 2. leaving the battleground, so you don't have to bang your head against a wall, then I guess choice number two seems to be most logical.
D. J. refers to working here as "pounding nails into your cock." It's extremely painful and also absolutely pointless.
Kind of crass, but well said.
So I just keep thinking, "Thirty days."

So I now embrace change with open arms, I welcome it into my life, and I keep my eyes focused on the future, to make the best out of what I have and what I've learned in order to face the challenges I give myself in the year - and the lifetime - to come.

news

Press Release Announcing Laurie's New Record Contract
With Nonesuch Records
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LAURIE ANDERSON SIGNS EXCLUSIVE RECORDING AGREEMENT
WITH NONESUCH RECORDS
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First Recording Will Be From Her New Theatrical Work Songs and Stories from Moby Dick
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE April 21, 1999
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(NEW YORK)-Composer and performance artist Laurie Anderson has signed an exclusive worldwide recording agreement with Nonesuch Records. Her first recording for the label, due for release this fall, will feature music from her new theatrical work, Songs and Stories from Moby Dick, based on the famous Herman Melville novel.
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Using Melville's text as a point of departure, Songs and Stories from Moby Dick creates an electronic world of glistening images, unusual vocal styles and daring staging. The work will be performed in Dallas, Philadelphia and Spoleto, S.C. this spring before opening the 1999 Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in October. The production will tour Europe and the US in 1999-2000.
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"I think Nonesuch Records is the ideal home for my recordings and I look forward to working with my friends at the label on Moby Dick as well as projects to follow," said Anderson. " I am particularly happy that Moby Dick will be my first recording for Nonesuch, as writing this work has been a long and fascinating journey for me."
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Robert Hurwitz, President of Nonesuch, and David Bither, Senior Vice President, said, "We have both admired Laurie Anderson's visionary work for a long time, from her earliest recordings and performances of the extraordinary United States to her most recent music. We believe that the Nonesuch family of artists is a natural home for Laurie and we are very happy that this has come to pass."
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Anderson released seven records on Warner Bros. during the past eighteen years including Big Science-which featured her early signature "O Superman"; the four-CD set United States Live, which documented the landmark theatrical work of the same name; and more recent recordings such as Strange Angels (1989) and Bright Red (1994).
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New York-based Nonesuch Records is home to such new music composers and artists as Philip Glass, Steve Reich, John Adams, Henryk Gorecki, and the Kronos Quartet. It is also active in world music (Gipsy Kings; World Circuit Records-home of the Ry Cooder-produced Buena Vista Social Club; Caetano Veloso and Cesaria Evora), musical theatre (Mandy Patinkin, Audra McDonald and Adam Guettel), classical music (Dawn Upshaw
and Richard Goode) and jazz (Bill Frisell). Nonesuch is part of Warner Music International, a Warner Music Group company.
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For additional information:
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Annie Ohayon
Ohayon Media Relations
212-262-4492
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Debbie Ferraro
Nonesuch Records
212-275-4917
Debbie_Ferraro@wmg.com

MAKING MONEY, NOT GIVING IT AWAY, IS A VIRTUE

Bill Gates Should Be Morally Praised, Not for Giving Away His Wealth, but
for Having Produced It

By Andrew Bernstein

There is a grave injustice being committed with respect to the praise Bill
Gates is receiving for his decision to give away his $100 billion fortune
during his lifetime. Gates does not deserve moral credit for giving away his
wealth-but for having produced it in the first place.

According to a spokesman for the Gates foundations, the Microsoft chairman
considers Andrew Carnegie his role model in philanthropy. Gates has
initiated a plan to give computers to 10,000 libraries, many of which are
the same ones built originally by Carnegie.

But men such as Carnegie, Gates and others like them-John D. Rockefeller,
James J. Hill, J. P. Morgan, et al.-are individuals who possess a rare
virtue: the ability to create wealth on an enormous scale. They manufactured
steel, produced oil, built railroads, established banks or designed
software. Business giants like these dramatically solved the problem of
production-the problem that plagued mankind throughout its history, and
that still plagues the impoverished, non-capitalist nations of the world.

This productivity makes human life possible. It cannot be sufficiently
stressed that business production is a life-giving activity. Bill Gates's
fortune represents $100 billion of additional value that did not exist
before-value that has made people $100 billion better off than they would
have been without his efforts.

Bill Gates is a genius in his field. In the amount of firsthand thinking
required, his creativity equals that of such artistic geniuses as
Shakespeare and Michelangelo. The software created by Microsoft enhances the
lives of millions of people who use it, directly or indirectly. Just think
of all the amazing efficiencies you can achieve today with a computer that
would not be possible without the work of Bill Gates. Just think of how the
entire "information revolution"-spurred by innovators like Gates-is
advancing our standard of living.

The point is not merely that wealth must be created before it can be
distributed. There is a fundamental moral issue here: the individual's right
to his own life. That is, Carnegie held that wealthy individuals had a
"divine duty" to give away their money while they still lived. He concluded:
"The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced." But why is it a "disgrace" to
die with the money that one has earned? Why is it a "disgrace" to spend it
on oneself-or to leave it to one's family? Philanthropists like Carnegie
believe that people have a duty to sacrifice themselves for others. But if
so, what has become of the individual's "inalienable right to life, liberty
and the pursuit of happiness"?

The political right of an individual to his own life is an essential
principle of liberty. And it rests on the moral rightness of acting to
sustain one's own life, which includes generating the material wealth life
requires. The only disgrace for a healthy individual is to live a parasitic,
non-productive life-to be a bum or a wastrel or a cheat.

To redistribute wealth from those who have produced it to those who have
not requires only envy and the pointing of a gun-whether by a thief armed
with a weapon or a legislator armed with a bill. It is the creation of
wealth that demands the virtue of honest, independent effort. It is the
creation of wealth that deserves tribute. And those who do it superlatively,
like an Andrew Carnegie or a Bill Gates, should be regarded-by anyone who
holds human life as a value-as moral heroes.

This needs to be emphatically stated in our society, where the
redistributor of wealth is routinely commended, while the creator of that
wealth-and the victim of the redistributors-elicits only indifference or
condemnation. But producing food, automobiles, houses, medicines, etc.-not
giving them away-is what human life depends on. It is the ability to
produce that deserves our attention and our admiration. We must
revolutionize our ethical thinking: it is the wealth-creators, not the
charity-dispensers, who deserve moral praise.

Whatever benefits come from the philanthropy of a Carnegie or a Gates are
marginal. Our focus should be on the primary act of generating wealth. We
must learn the importance of celebrating the virtue of productivity. Our
future as a productive nation requires it.

-

Dr. Bernstein is a senior writer for the Ayn Rand Institute in Marina del
Rey, Calif. The Institute promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of
Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. http://www.aynrand.org

Why Christmas Should Be More Commercial

by Leonard Peikoff

Christmas in America is an exuberant display of human ingenuity, capitalist
productivity, and the enjoyment of life. Yet all of these are castigated as
"materialistic"; the real meaning of the holiday, we are told, is assorted
Nativity tales and altruist injunctions (e.g., love thy neighbor) that no
one takes seriously.

In fact, Christmas as we celebrate it today is a 19th-century American
invention. The freedom and prosperity of post-Civil War America created the
happiest nation in history. The result was the desire to celebrate, to revel
in the goods and pleasures of life on earth. Christmas (which was not a
federal holiday until 1870) became the leading American outlet for this
feeling.

Historically, people have always celebrated the winter solstice as the time
when the days begin to lengthen, indicating the earth's return to life.
Ancient Romans feasted and reveled during the festival of Saturnalia. Early
Christians condemned these Roman celebrations-they were waiting for the end
of the world and had only scorn for earthly pleasures. By the fourth
century, the pagans were worshipping the god of the sun on December 25, and
the Christians came to a decision: if you can't stop 'em, join 'em. They
claimed (contrary to known fact) that the date was Jesus' birthday, and
usurped the solstice holiday for their Church.

Even after the Christians stole Christmas, they were ambivalent about it.
The holiday was inherently a pro-life festival of earthly renewal, but the
Christians preached renunciation, sacrifice, and concern for the next world,
not this one. As Cotton Mather, an 18th-century clergyman, put it: "Can you
in your consciences think that our Holy Savior is honored by mirth? . . .
Shall it be said that at the birth of our Savior . . . we take time . . . to
do actions that have much more of hell than of heaven in them?"

Then came the major developments of 19th-century capitalism:
industrialization, urbanization, the triumph of science-all of it leading to
easy transportation, efficient mail delivery, the widespread publishing of
books and magazines, new inventions making life comfortable and exciting,
and the rise of entrepreneurs who understood that the way to make a profit
was to produce something good and sell it to a mass market.

For the first time, the giving of gifts became a major feature of
Christmas. Early Christians denounced gift-giving as a Roman practice, and
Puritans called it diabolical. But Americans were not to be deterred. Thanks
to capitalism, there was enough wealth to make gifts possible, a great
productive apparatus to advertise them and make them available cheaply, and
a country so content that men wanted to reach out to their friends and
express their enjoyment of life. The whole country took with glee to giving
gifts on an unprecedented scale.

Santa Claus is a thoroughly American invention. There was a St. Nicholas
long ago and a feeble holiday connected with him (on December 5). In 1822,
an American named Clement Clarke Moore wrote a poem about a visit from St.
Nick. It was Moore (and a few other New Yorkers) who invented St. Nick's
physical appearance and personality, came up with the idea that Santa
travels on Christmas Eve in a sleigh pulled by reindeer, comes down the
chimney, stuffs toys in the kids' stockings, then goes back to the North
Pole.

Of course, the Puritans denounced Santa as the Anti-Christ, because he
pushed Jesus to the background. Furthermore, Santa implicitly rejected the
whole Christian ethics. He did not denounce the rich and demand that they
give everything to the poor; on the contrary, he gave gifts to rich and poor
children alike. Nor is Santa a champion of Christian mercy or unconditional
love. On the contrary, he is for justice-Santa gives only to good children,
not to bad ones.

All the best customs of Christmas, from carols to trees to spectacular
decorations, have their root in pagan ideas and practices. These customs
were greatly amplified by American culture, as the product of reason,
science, business, worldliness, and egoism, i.e., the pursuit of happiness.

America's tragedy is that its intellectual leaders have typically tried to
replace happiness with guilt by insisting that the spiritual meaning of
Christmas is religion and self-sacrifice for Tiny Tim or his equivalent. But
the spiritual must start with recognizing reality. Life requires reason,
selfishness, capitalism; that is what Christmas should celebrate-and really,
underneath all the pretense, that is what it does celebrate. It is time to
take the Christ out of Christmas, and turn the holiday into a guiltlessly
egoistic, pro-reason, this-worldly, commercial celebration.

Leonard Peikoff, who founded the Ayn Rand Institute, is the foremost
authority on Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand. http://www.aynrand.org

IT'S MY LIFE! A Doctor Has a Right to His Own Life
By Jonathan Rosman M.D.

When I came to the United States from South Africa as a young doctor 15 years ago, I was excited. I was leaving behind an oppressive, racist regime, and I was entering a country founded on the inviolable rights of an individual to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I did not expect to find a political system trying to enslave me.
Doctors in this country do not seem to have the same rights as other Americans. We are regarded as public servants who are expected to selflessly sacrifice our time and resources to satisfy the needs of our patients-that is, we are expected to be altruists. For example, emergency room specialists and anesthesiologists are already required to do pro bono work, and managed care and Medicare continually try to squeeze more effort out of us under increasingly oppressive bureaucratic oversight, for less and less reward.
Every doctor, like individuals in other jobs, has a right to work for himself and for his own enjoyment, and to make a ton of money at it if he can. As individuals, doctors have a right to offer their patients treatment according to their best judgment, and to charge such fees as they judge their expertise to be worth. Conversely, patients have the right to accept or reject our advice and services, and to shop around for the best deals they can get. Having the right to your life does not guarantee health or medical treatment at the doctors' expense, but it does guarantee that every individual has the freedom to seek whatever treatment he wishes, according to his own judgment and his own means. Individual rights means the freedom to act within one's means; it does not mean an entitlement to the goods and services provided by others.
However, not only have American doctors been stripped of their professional freedom by all the various oversight agencies (which include licensing boards, the Health Care Financing Administration, managed care companies, peer review committees and more), but-more importantly-they have also been morally disarmed. Our intellectuals have taught doctors that need comes before ability, and that healthy and rich doctors have a duty to support sick and poor patients. They have taught doctors that the consumers of medical services (patients) are morally superior to the providers of medical services (doctors), just because the consumers are in need.
Bureaucrats have eagerly latched on to this altruistic idea, and have erected a maze of welfare laws and regulations to satisfy the needs of the poor and the sick, and to "protect" them from "greedy" doctors. Thanks to these controls, it has become very difficult for doctors to think or to act freely on their own judgment. And it is the best doctors, the most dedicated and those least ready to relinquish their independent judgment, who have been the first to leave the practice of medicine when doctors' rights were trampled on. Who will ultimately be left if this trend continues? To quote Dr. Hendricks in Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged, "Let them discover, in their operating rooms and hospital wards, that it is not safe to place their lives in the hands of a man whose life they have throttled. It is not safe, if he is the sort of man who resents it-and still less safe, if he is the sort who doesn't."
To save American medicine, American doctors need to be saved from altruism. To accomplish this, doctors must vigorously challenge the invalid notion of a "right" to health care. Nobody has a right to an antibiotic made by someone else, just as he does not have a right to someone else's car. Nobody has a right to have his gallbladder removed, just as he does not have a right to have his toilet fixed by a plumber. No one has a right to demand that a doctor treat him, but doctors do have rights, just as do auto workers and plumbers, to practice their profession (or trade) free from coercion.
To save themselves, doctors must proclaim openly that they refuse to regard themselves as anyone's servants. They should be left free to enjoy their careers as they see fit. It is important that as doctors we assert our moral right to be free. On the issue of their rights, doctors need to be inflexible and intransigent. They need to declare openly and loudly, "It's my life-hands off!"
Freedom is the dream that as a young doctor I was looking for 15 years ago. It is still possible to realize it today if we doctors defend our moral right to our lives.
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Dr. Rosman, a psychiatrist in private practice in Pasadena, is a senior writer for the Ayn Rand Institute in Marina del Rey, Calif. The Institute promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. http://www.aynrand.org

The following has been produced by the Ayn Rand Institute's MediaLink department. Visit MediaLink at http://www.aynrand.org/medialink/.

Modern Politicians Betray the Founding Fathers

MARINA DEL REY, CA - Presidents Day honors the integrity and principles of presidents, but modern presidents don't deserve such an honor. This is because modern presidents and politicians don't stand for anything, said an Ayn Rand Institute (ARI) spokesman.
"Compare the moderns with the founding fathers," said Edwin Locke, who is also a professor at the University of Maryland at College Park. "The founding fathers asked themselves what was right; the moderns ask themselves only what is expedient and will 'work' for the range of the moment."
Locke said that the most notable moral quality lacking in modern politicians is integrity, noting that President Clinton's impeachment trial was a narrowly focused ploy to get rid of an inconvenient foe.
"The Republicans have offered little protest over actions by Clinton that are far worse than trying to cover up sex with an awestruck intern - such as allowing campaign contributors to buy influence in government, giving key military technology to China, or overseeing the collapse of medicine in America," Locke said. "As with the Republicans, the Democrats don't know what they stand for. They seem willing to defend Clinton to the death simply because he is a Democrat."
Locke blames modern politicians' lack of principles on their acceptance of subjectivism.
"Today's politicians have been taught that nothing is fixed or absolute, that there are no objective truths, that human reason is incapable of knowing anything with certainty, that everything is whatever anyone wants it to be," Locke said.
The very idea of an unyielding, absolute principle is incomprehensible to the moderns, Locke said. And it is their unyielding principles that made George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison great. Ê

Morality Is Missing Key in Hollywood Violence Debate

MARINA DEL REY - Luke Skywalker destroys the Death Star and kills its crew. Woody Harrelson in Natural Born Killers kills innocent people. Is there a moral difference between these two acts? Yes, they are as different as white and black, said a spokesman for the Ayn Rand Institute.
"What Republicans and Democrats, with their cries for Hollywood to censor itself, overlook is that value-laden violence on our theater and TV screens can help children develop a sense of morality," said Chris Wolski. "Missing from the current debate on violence in movies is the moral issue that violence per se is neutral - it can be immoral or it can be moral. The Death Star and the people on board were evil and deserved to die. They got what he deserved; that's the essence of justice."
Wolski, who is also a former communications professor and newspaper editor, said that, conversely, the protagonists of Natural Born Killers, reportedly a favorite film of the Columbine High School murderers, are amoral thugs who find satisfaction in killing, not because they are fighting for a moral principle, but because they are nihilistic savages. He noted that both Star Wars and Natural Born Killers are very violent films when measured in the number of onscreen deaths, but their underlying morality is completely different.
"The current debate over violence in Hollywood focuses solely on concrete acts of violence, not on the types of violence and the moral issues underlying them," said Wolski. "This does not mean that violence should be shown in graphic, gratuitous terms, but rather in the moral context of heroes pursuing values in a purposeful story-line. Natural Born Killers is a nauseating movie because of its amoral worldview, not essentially because of its violence. And you don't teach children morality by banning a Luke Skywalker and a Darth Vader, by throwing out a hero with a villain. That teaches children that there are no moral standards, no justice, no evil and no good."
Wolski said that the lawmakers leading the assault against Hollywood are only offering up their own spiritual poverty when they attack all forms of violence on the screen.
"Moral acts of violence should not be pressured or legislated from the screen in any way," said Wolski. "Values and morality are an important part of screen action. Any child can tell you that." Ê

Multiculturalism Promotes Racism
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MARINA DEL REY, CA - Washington State's Makah Indian tribe is given permission to hunt whales because it is a cultural tradition. Jesse Jackson is urging computer and Wall Street brokerage companies to hire more blacks because they are "underrepresented" in these fields. Warring tribes in Kosovo are fighting each other because they do not belong to the same tribe.
These are only a small sampling of how multiculturalism is Balkanizing American society and the world and contributing to the spread of racism, said the board chairman of the Ayn Rand Institute.
"Multiculturalism is racism in a politically correct guise," said Peter Schwartz. "It holds that an individual's identity and personal worth are determined by ethnic or racial membership and that all cultures are of equal worth, regardless of their moral views. Multiculturalism holds that ethnic identity should be a central factor in educational and social policy decisions."
Schwartz is the editor and contributing author of the recently released Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution (Meridian/Penguin). His essay on multiculturalism, "Multicultural Nihilism," argues that the goal of the multiculturalists is the destruction of all rational values.
Schwartz said that the way to fight multiculturalism is the same way that all racism has been fought - by upholding individualism and rejecting collectivism.
"The multiculturalists are racists," he said. "They want to judge all men and women by their unchosen ancestry, not by their chosen, individual character. These new racists base their morality on that which is outside moral choice: ethnic heritage, skin color, and geography. They are no better than the old-fashioned racists they claim to hate, except they practice a more insidious form of racism."
As part of its efforts to educate the public about the dangers of multiculturalism, the Ayn Rand Institute has set up a multiculturalism Web site at http://multiculturalism.aynrand.org. The site includes editorials by Institute writers on such subjects as why western civilization is the superior culture and why individualism is the only cure for racism. Ê

New Eminent Domain Assaults: Taking Private Property for Political Elite
By Larry Salzman

Amid cheers of a majority of voters, the sanction of its mayor and city council, and the financial backing of leading local businessmen, the city of San Diego is perpetrating a terrible injustice. The victims are a small group of innocent individuals facing the likelihood of being stripped of their homes and businesses.
This violation is being enacted for the alleged "public use" of developing a downtown ballpark. Recently, the San Diego City Council voted to move ahead with the project and officials are now ordering people from their homes. The land taken by the city will go to some of San Diego's most politically connected, who will build the ballpark and a 26-block "entertainment center" where the residents' homes and livelihoods now stand.
San Diego joins a growing trend among U.S. cities using the power of eminent domain - the government's ability to lawfully seize property - to tyrannize politically weak individuals. In a recent well-publicized case, for instance, Donald Trump conspired with Atlantic City officials to level a block of family businesses so that he would have more room next to his casino to park limousines. Just as the ballpark developers did in San Diego, Trump turned to unscrupulous city officials to gain by force what he could not get by private negotiation. Fortunately, these victims were aided by the charity of aggressive lawyers who blocked Trump's gambit.
Although always a violation of property rights, traditionally the eminent domain power was limited to and employed for strictly public purposes such as roads, utilities, and military use. Courts did not allow government to take, for example, a corner mom-and-pop gas station solely to turn it over to McDonalds for redevelopment. In 1983, when the state of Hawaii took vast tracts of land from a small minority of private owners and resold it to the "general public," the U.S. Court of Appeals declared it "a naked attempt" to take private property and correctly identified it as "majoritarian tyranny." Unfortunately, in 1984, the Supreme Court disagreed.
Ever since, emboldened mayors and city councilmen have seized property in greater quantity for increasingly specious purposes. In Texas, the homes of 117 residents were bulldozed to make room for a shopping mall. In Detroit, hundreds of residents and businesspeople lost their homes and businesses so that GM could build a new plant. And elsewhere in San Diego an auto repair shop, hardware store, and carpet business were recently forced to close so that a Price Club could claim their land.
Compounding the injustice, many victims are financially ruined. Although the cities are charged under the Constitution with providing "just compensation" to eminent domain victims, they are not required to offer fair-market value but a bureaucratically determined "fair and reasonable" one. Knowing that they will rarely be second-guessed by the court's new pacifist approach, the cities often make callous, shamefully low offers - sometimes less than 10 percent of appraised value, and the victims' lawyers, where the victims can afford lawyers, can only counsel their clients to take whatever they can get.
What prevents overwhelming public outrage at such injustices? A broad acceptance of the morality of altruism - the view that an individual's moral worth derives solely from service to others. Its corollary, applicable in this case, is that any individual sacrifice or injustice wreaked by the city is inconsequential in comparison to the alleged benefit of a "public use."
Ayn Rand was right when she observed, "since there is no such entity as 'the public,' since the public is merely a number of individuals, the idea that 'the public interest' supersedes private interests and rights can have but one meaning: that the interests and rights of some individuals take precedence over the interests and rights of others."
This is exactly what is happening in San Diego and other American cities. The local government is forcing a politically weak minority of citizens to sacrifice its rights to a well-connected few, in the alleged favor of the majority.
This use of eminent domain flatly contradicts the fundamental principles of this country, which declare that all men are created equal, that every man is an end in himself endowed with inalienable rights, including property rights, that each man be accorded equal protection by the law and that no man be deprived of due process under the law.
We must choose one set of principles or the other - the American tradition, or arbitrary rule by official whim. They cannot coexist. The present use of eminent domain is a menace that must be challenged at every step and, for the sake of all our freedom, should be repealed entirely. It may be too late for too many beleaguered San Diegans, but your property could be next.
Before you decide whether new stadiums and shopping malls are worth the price of liberty, you might ask yourself how you will feel when told that your balcony, your bedroom, and your daughter's tree house must be demolished because they block a field view from the upper deck.
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Larry Salzman, a law student at the University of San Diego, is a senior writer for the Ayn Rand Institute in Marina del Rey, Calif. The Institute promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. http://www.aynrand.org

The Meaning of New Year's Is Happiness
MARINA DEL REY, CA - On Jan. 1, millions of people around the world will show that they take their happiness seriously by making New Year's resolutions, said the communications director for the Ayn Rand Institute.
"New Year's is the most active-minded of the holidays, because it is the one where people evaluate their lives and plan and resolve to take action to better their lives," said Scott A. McConnell. "Every resolution you make on New Year's Day implies that you are in control of your life, that you are not a victim fated by circumstance, controlled by stars, owned by luck.
"You are reasserting yourself as an individual who can make choices to change your life. Making New Year's resolutions emphasizes that people want to be happy. It is happiness that is the motor and purpose of one's life. It is New Year's, more than any other day, that makes the attainment of happiness more real and possible."
Ayn Rand Institute Communications Director Scott A. McConnell is available for interviews

Our Schools vs. Our Children's Minds Today's Students Are Failing Because the Schools No Longer Believe That They Should Encourage Cognitive Development
By Andrew Bernstein

Much has been made lately of the anti-intellectualism that permeates the
American universities. Colleges are being criticized for such "junk courses" as "Vampires: The Undead" (University of Pennsylvania) and "The Biology of ER" (Purdue University). Other prominent schools have courses on juggling, on witchcraft and on UFOs. Increasingly, they are also offering "sensitivity training," "encounter groups" and other forms of emotionalist pap.
But the problem does not begin with the universities. The de-emphasis on serious, intellectual training begins in the elementary schools-and has been going on for decades. American children still are falling short of the education goals set for 2000, and progress in teacher preparation has stalled or worsened, according to the 1999 National Education Goals Report, which was released Dec. 2. We are a country whose high school graduates often cannot read or write or make change. If they lack even such basic mental skills, then it is inevitable that the colleges will lower their standards and offer trashy, mindless courses. The sad fact is that too many of their students are incapable of intellectually demanding work. For a change in education to occur, it is at the elementary level that the process must begin.
More and more, our schools are de-emphasizing "subject-centered" learning and concentrating instead on the student's emotional capacity and social activities. Encouraging "self-expression" is deemed more important than teaching the distinction between objectively right and wrong answers. Many classes present little or no lecturing by the teacher, featuring instead group discussions in which all opinions-no matter how arbitrary-are held to be equally valuable.
Further, the schools often oppose standardized testing, claiming that poor performance will hurt the child's feelings. The importance of grades is similarly dismissed, as an alleged threat to the student's "self-esteem." Classes are rarely organized based on ability. Instead, slow learners are placed with the most intelligent ones, thereby holding back the more gifted and burdening teachers with a one-size-fits-all curriculum.
Why have our schools so tragically abandoned their mission to train the mind? The basic cause is the philosophy of Progressive Education, which pervades today's schools. The Progressive theory, originated by the American philosopher John Dewey, rejects the very idea that the purpose of education is cognitive training. Dewey and his followers believe that schools are places where the child vents his emotions and, above all, is "socialized." "The school is primarily a social institution," writes Dewey. Its primary function is not to teach "science, nor literature, nor history, nor geography," but to focus on "the child's own social activities."
According to the handbook of one Progressive school, its goal is "to maintain a balance between spontaneous behavior and conformity to society's standards." And if the student is a budding Galileo or Darwin, and his behavior consists of defending new truths, should he modify it to meet the ignorant demands of the group? The student-according to the handbook-must learn to "accept modifications of his behavior when the group requires it."
Although Progressive Education has never been accepted in full, its main tenets have been widely incorporated into American schools. Our educators accept the premise that the target of education is not the student's rational mind. Since they believe that their goal is not to teach the young how to think, they see no need to teach intellectually rigorous subjects. Rather, their goal is to guide students toward some happy medium between "self-expression" and obedience to the group-i.e., between mindless emotionalism and equally mindless conformity.
This is why a concern for shielding the student's feelings overrides any concern for cultivating the student's intellect, and why standard lecturing has been replaced by egalitarian class discussions. Continuous exposure to these anti-mind policies is why so many high school graduates are illiterate, and why colleges offer courses about MTV.
Nothing short of an intellectual renaissance can save our schools-a renaissance that will sweep away this pernicious anti-intellectualism, and that will re-emphasize the need to train the child in the use of his most precious possession: his mind.
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Dr. Bernstein is a senior writer for the Ayn Rand Institute in Marina del Rey, Calif. The Institute promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. http://www.aynrand.org

Patients' "Bill of Rights" Is an Assault on Rights
By Robert W. Tracinski

After having passed in the House of Representatives, the "Patients' Bill of Rights" must now be reconciled with its counterpart in the Senate. If this bill passes, it will diminish the freedom of doctors, hospitals, insurance companies-and the very patients it allegedly protects.
The bill is an attempt to grant special privileges to some-to be paid for by trampling on the rights of others. It decrees, for example, that health insurance must provide certain benefits, such as longer hospital stays and coverage for a wider variety of treatments.
But these mandated benefits are not free; someone has to pay for them. Will insurance companies be forced to absorb the extra spending on these benefits? Or will the expense be shared by doctors and hospitals, who will be paid less for their work? Or will the cost be passed on to patients, who will have to pay higher premiums for health insurance, making it too expensive for some of them to afford? The one certainty is that someone will be forced to foot the bill to provide the care mandated by Congress. When it comes to all these "someones"-where is the concern for their rights?
Genuine rights-the kind protected by the original Bill of Rights-guarantee the individual's freedom of action, including the act of trading with others, without being subject to government coercion. But the pseudo-rights being peddled today are actually violations of rights. They are attempts to dole out special government favors, to be given to some by taking away the freedom of others. They are attempts to force people-the people whose abilities have made these medical services possible-to provide their services on terms they would not voluntarily accept.
In fact, this anti-rights approach is exactly what has caused the very problems a patients' "Bill of Rights" pretends to solve. When Medicare was passed in 1965, politicians promised that it would provide the elderly with a "right to health care." But once health-care was "free"-i.e., paid for by someone else-patients (and doctors) had little incentive to control costs. The result was an ever-rising bill for taxpayers. Where was the concern for their rights?
In the 70s and 80s, the government "solved" the problem of escalating costs by imposing comprehensive price controls on doctors and hospitals-while still requiring them to provide exactly the same services. Where was the concern for their rights? In response to this squeeze, health-care providers shifted the costs to private customers, leading to skyrocketing costs for anyone under 65. Where was the concern for their rights?
Rising prices led to rising insurance premiums, and in an attempt to provide affordable coverage, insurers began to institute "managed care" systems. These became notorious for cutting costs by sacrificing quality. As a result of government intervention, the normal free-market link between offering a quality product and enjoying financial success was severed. Instead, in medicine, the worse the service, the better were the profits. While every industry in which the free market prevailed experienced falling prices and ever-improving products-computers are just one obvious example-the opposite took place in medicine. Prices rose while service was cut.
Congress now proposes to address this problem-a problem caused by the government's systematic contempt for rights-by passing a "Patients' Bill of Rights" that would expand this assault on rights. It generated this crisis by granting special privileges to some at the expense of others-and somehow seeks to solve it by granting even more privileges and further violating the rights of those who are expected to pay for it all.
Washington has created a statist system under which there is a perpetual conflict of interest among all the participants in medical care. We do not have such conflicts between buyers and sellers of, say, bread or shoes or homeowners insurance. It is only government controls that have made medicine such a conflict-laden, bureaucrat-driven field.
We can only begin to reverse the damage by upholding genuine rights-the individual right of both patients and health-care providers to be free from government interference. If our politicians really want to fight for rights, let them fight for a free-market in medicine.

_
Robert W. Tracinski is a senior writer for the Ayn Rand Institute in Marina del Rey, Calif. The Institute promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. http://www.aynrand.org

Patients' Bill of Rights: A Threat to Rights

MARINA DEL REY, CA - The "Patients' Bill of Rights" is a fraud, said an Ayn Rand Institute senior writer.
"Instead of promoting rights, as its supporters promise, the bill will actually diminish the freedom of doctors, hospitals, insurance companies and the very patients it claims to protect," said Robert W. Tracinski. "The bill is an attempt to grant special 'privileges' to some which are to be paid for by trampling on the rights of others."
Tracinski observed that:
The government restriction of doctors' freedom to practice medicine is causing many to quit the profession.
The "Patients' Bill of Rights" is a collection of pseudo-rights that actually undermine the rights of all Americans.
The American health crisis was caused by the government granting special privileges to some at the expense of others, not by "greedy" doctors or insurance companies demanding too much money for medical services.
"We can only begin to reverse the government-created damage to our health care system by upholding genuine rights - the individual rights of both patients and doctors to be free from government interference," said Tracinski. "If our politicians really want to fight for rights, let them fight for a free market in medicine."

Paul McCartney Joins PETA's Attack on Human Rights

McCartney should fight against, not join, PETA's fundraising event. By Edwin A. Locke At PETA's fundraising event in Hollywood on Sept. 18, Paul McCartney will present a special award in honor of his late wife, Linda. He should hang his head in shame for supporting the animal rights movement.
Is McCartney so ignorant as not to know the facts behind PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) and its work? For years, PETA has led the assault on man's happiness by opposing the use of animals for food, medical research, and even pets.
Recently, animal rights activists are moving in a new direction. Rather than trashing laboratories, threatening researchers, and releasing experimental animals into the wild to die, they are now going to court. Gorillas, house pets and other animals, they claim, have constitutional rights and need emancipation just as did human slaves in the 19th century.
Where did such a preposterous idea come from? From a total failure to understand the meaning and basis of the concept of rights. Animals have rights, goes one fallacious argument, because they have the ability to feel pain. Whereas animals certainly can feel pain, pain is not the basis for rights. Consider the illogic of such a view. If pain were the basis for rights, then it would be all right to kill somebody as long as you did it while he was unconscious. At the same time it would be wrong to put people through medical procedures that caused pain, even though they consented to it. And we would have to go to court to stop sharks from causing pain to the minnows they eat.
Animals have rights, goes another argument, because animals possess the same capacity for rational thought as humans. There is no scientific evidence for this claim. Consider the most fundamental fact that contradicts it: chimpanzees, the most advanced of the primates, have been on earth for about four million years. During that entire period they have not produced even the rudiments of a primitive culture. If chimpanzees could reason even at a primitive level, this would give them such a competitive advantage in the struggle for survival that the earth would be overrun with chimpanzees. Attempts to teach sign language to chimpanzees revealed that they did not grasp the actual concepts taught at all, rather they used signs virtually at random to signal for things that they wanted. Here is a simple test that would prove once and for all whether chimps really grasp concepts. Place a pile of objects varying in size, shape and color in front of a chimp and sign: Bring me ten green triangles. Such a test would require that chimps count above seven (seven objects can be directly perceived without counting) and that they abstract the attributes of color and shape, as well as of number, from objects. No chimp has ever come close to such a feat.
If chimps cannot reason, then they cannot grasp moral principles. Since rights are moral principles- principles which define and sanction man's freedom of action in society-the concept of rights is totally beyond a chimp's power to grasp and therefore is irrelevant to its life. Animal rights activists claim that even if animals cannot grasp moral principles, and thus cannot respect human rights, that we should protect their alleged rights. What rights?
The real basis of rights is man's possession of a rational faculty. The capacity to reason includes the choice to deliberately focus one's mind and to integrate perceptual data into conceptual knowledge. To survive man must think and must be free to act on the basis of his thinking. The concept of rights protects man's freedom of action in society. It allows him to use to his own rational judgment so as to further his life and well being. The concept of rights says to other men: hands off. It prohibits the initiation of physical force by one man against another and thus protects the freedom of all. Children have rights because they are the developing form of (adult) human beings. Even comatose adults have rights, unless they are totally brain-dead, because they once were fully functioning humans and could become so agai

humor

-

men's jokes:

Why don't women blink during foreplay? They don't have time.
Why does it take 1 million sperm to fertilize one egg? They won't stop to ask directions.
Why did God put men on earth? Because a vibrator can't mow the lawn.
Why don't women have men's brains? Because they don't have penises to keep them in.
How many men does it take to put the toilet seat down? Nobody knows, it hasn't happened yet.

HOW TO IMPRESS A WOMAN
Wine her,
Dine her,
Call her,
Hug her,
Hold her,
Surprise her,
Compliment her,
Smile at her,
Laugh with her,
Cry with her,
Cuddle with her,
Shop with her,
Give her jewelry,
Buy her flowers,
Hold her hand,
Write love letters to her,
Go to the end of the earth and back again for her.

HOW TO IMPRESS A MAN
Show up naked.
Bring beer.

girl jokes:

How do you get a man to stop biting his nails?
Make him wear his shoes. (yes dear, this means you :)

What's the thinnest book in the world?
What men know about women.

How many men does it take to screw in a light bulb?
One. Men will screw anything.

How does a man take a bubble bath?
He eats beans for dinner.

Why don't men eat more M & M's?
They are hard to peel.

Why do women rub their eyes when they wake up?
Because they don't have balls to scratch.

What do you call a man with an IQ of 50?
Gifted.

What is a man's idea of foreplay?
a half hour of begging.

How can you tell if a man is sexually excited?
he's breathing.

What's the difference between government bonds and men?
Bonds mature. (see scotty, i told you this years ago!!!!) LOL

How do you save a man from drowing?
take your foot off his head.

What's the most insensitive part of the penis?
The penis.

Why are blonde jokes so short?
So men can remember them.

What do men and beer bottles have in common?
They're both empty from the neck up.

How can you tell if a man is happy?
Who cares?

How many men does it take to change a roll of toilet paper?
Nobody knows. It has never happened.

Why do men always have stupid looks on their faces?
They're stupid.

How are men and parking spaces alike?
The good ones are always taken and the ones that are left are handicapped.

Fortune Cookies You'll Never See

"Man who drop watch in toilet have shitty time."
"Man trapped in pantry have ass in jam."
"Virgin like balloon . . . one prick, all gone."
"Baseball wrong . . . man with four balls cannot walk!"
"Work to become, not to acquire."
"Baby conceived in automatic car shiftless bastard."
"A bird in hand makes hard to blow nose."
"Find old man in dark, not hard!"
"Man who smoke pot choke on handle."
"Ok for shit to happen . . . will decompose."
"Man who put head on RailRoad track to listen for train likely to end up with splitting headache."
"Sailor who gets discharged from navy leave buddies behind."
"Secretary becomes permanent fixture when screwed on desk."
"Don't drink and park, accidents cause people."
"He who crosses the ocean twice without washing is a dirty doublecrosser."
"Man who tell one to many light bulb jokes soon burn out!"
"It takes many nails to build crib, but one screw to fill it."
"Never raise hands to angry child, it leave groin exposed."
"Woman who cooks carrots and peas in same pot is unsanitary."
"Man who eat many prunes, sit on toilet many moons."
"Confucius say too God damn much!"
"Those who quote me are fools."
"Man who drive like hell bound to get there!"
"Man who keep feet firmly on ground have trouble putting on pants!"
"Man who stand on toilet is high on pot!"
"Man who sit on tack get point!"
"Man who runs behind car gets exhausted!"
"Man who jump off cliff jump to conclusion!"
"War not determine who's right, war determines who's left."
"Woman who goes to man's apartment for snack, gets titbit"
"Man who lay woman on ground, get piece on earth."
"Man who gets kicked in testicles, left holding the bag."
"Man who kisses girl's behind, gets crack in face. "
"Passionate kiss like spider web - lead to undoing of fly. "
"Man with holes in pants pockets, feels cocky all day."
"Man who fight with wife all day, get no piece at night"
"Kotex not best thing on earth, but next to best thing. "
"Man who walk through airport door sideways is going to Bangkok "
"Man who take lady on camping trip, have one intent"

dilbert one-liners:

A magazine recently ran a "Dilbert quotes" contest. They were lookingfor people to submit quotes from their real life Dilbert-type managers. Here are the finalists.
1. As of tomorrow, employees will only be able to access the building using individual security cards. Pictures will be taken next Wednesday and employees will receive their cards in two weeks; (This was the winning quote from Fred Dales at Microsoft Corp in Redmond, WA.)
2. What I need is a list of specific unknown problems we will encounter. (Lykes Lines Shipping)
3. E-mail is not to be used to pass on information or data. It should be used only for company business. (Accounting manager, ElectricBoat Company)
4. This project is so important, we can't let things that are more important interfere with it. (Advertising/Marketing manager, United Parcel Service)
5. Doing it right is no excuse for not meeting the schedule. No one will believe you solved this problem in one day! We've been working on it for months. Now, go act busy for a few weeks and I'll let you know when it's time to tell them. (R&D supervisor, Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing/3M Corp.)
6. My Boss spent the entire weekend retyping a 25-page proposal that only needed corrections. She claims the disk I gave her was damaged and she couldn't edit it. The disk I gave her was write protected. (CIO of Dell Computers)
7. Quote from the Boss: "Teamwork is a lot of people doing what I say." (Marketing executive, Citrix Corporation)
8. My sister passed away and her funeral was scheduled for Monday. When I told my Boss, he said she died so that I would have to miss work on the busiest day of the year. He then asked if we could change
her burial to Friday. He said, "That would be better for me." (Shipping executive, FTD Florists)
9. "We know that communication is a problem, but the company is not going to discuss it with the employees." (Switching supervisor, AT&T Long Lines Division)
10. We recently received a memo from senior management saying: "This is to inform you that a memo will be issued today regarding the subject mentioned above." (Microsoft, Legal Affairs Division)
11. One day my Boss asked me to submit a status report to him concerning a project I was working on. I asked him if tomorrow would be soon enough. He said "If I wanted it tomorrow, I would have waited until tomorrow to ask for it!" (New business manager Hallmark Greeting Cards.)
12. As director of communications, I was asked to prepare a memo reviewing our company's training programs and materials. In the body of the memo, in one of the sentences I mentioned the "pedagogical approach" used by one of the training manuals. The day after I routed the memo to the executive committee, I was called into the HR director's office, and that the executive vice president wanted me out of the building by lunch. When I asked why, I was told that she wouldn't stand for "perverts" (pedophilia?) working in her company. Finally, he showed me her copy of the memo, with her demand that I be fired - and the word "pedagogical" circled in red. The HR manager was fairly reasonable, and once he looked the word up in his dictionary and made a copy of the definition to send back to her, he told me not to worry. He would take care of it. Two days later, a memo to the entire staff came out directing us that no words which could not be found in the local Sunday newspaper could be used in company memos. A month later, I resigned. In accordance with company policy, I created my resignation memo by pasting words together from the Sunday paper. (Taco Bell Corporation)

condom mcdonald's:

In case you missed the article, someone found a condom in a McDonald's hamburger a few weeks ago. Here is David Letterman's top ten McDonald's excuses for the condom in the Big Mac:
10. We were test marketing the new "McRibbed"
9. Condom, Condiment ... What's the damned difference.
8. It still tastes better than the Arch Deluxe
7. It was either there, or in the vanilla shake.
6. Turns out the rumors about Grimace and Mayor McCheese are true.
5. We're experimenting with a new, even happier meal.
4. Employees too embarrassed to ask "Would you like a condom with that?"
3. So what? A regular Big Mac is 60% latex anyway.
2. Drive-thru speaker broken: "Cokes with lots of ice" sounds like "Prophylactic device"
And the number one McDonald's Excuse for the Condom in the Big Mac:
1. When you are serving billions and billions, you can't be too careful.

bumper stickers:

Who lit the fuse on your tampon?
Support Cannibalism-EAT ME!
God is my co-pilot, but the Devil is my bombardier.
I don't have a license to kill. I have a learner's permit.
I wasn't born a bitch. Men like you made me this way.
Keep honking while I reload.
Taxation WITH representation isn't so hot, either!
Who were the beta testers for Preparations A through G?
Madness takes its toll. Please have exact change.
5 days a week my body is a temple. The other two, it's an amusement park.
EARTH FIRST! We'll stripmine the other planets later.
Your child may be an honor student but you're still an idiot.
If you drink, don't park. Accidents cause people.
If you can read this, I can hit my brakes and sue you.
Save the whales! Trade them for valuable prizes.
Whitewater is over when the First Lady sings.
Jack Kevorkian for White House physician.
Just say no! to sex with pro-lifers.
My wife keeps complaining I never listen to her ...or something like that.
Sure you can trust the government! Just ask an Indian!
Alcohol and calculus don't mix. Never drink and derive.
If we are what we eat; I'm cheap, fast, and easy.
Stop repeat offenders. Don't re-elect them!

poetry

Playing

Maura Gage

Playing guitar on the beach,
love was so close in reach,
they decided to run
and swin as everyone else
drank and smoked.
Moonlight glowed appealingly
and all seemed peaceful
as they rocked together
at the edge of water,
pink sun edging the horizon,
and humidity clinging to them,
salt sticky on their skin.

A HOLY VISION

Michael Arthur Finberg
Mfinberg@hotmail.com
HarvestofGems@hotmail.com

Looking back in
silence
the polite
soul of

our age could see
the smoke stacks,
competing
with the

digital screens,
skittering
an engine
chuffing away

towards the Golden
Arches, a little
penal and
gaunt-like

not pure and
not true, the Coke
cans now pulled
out of the

refrigerator
their echo
a muffled ringing
from the sealed tomb.

THERE IS A SILENCE SOMEWHERE

Michael Arthur Finberg
Mfinberg@hotmail.com
HarvestofGems@hotmail.com

If you and I were
like rivers my Darling,
tributaries….flowing,
everywhere converging
gurgling like a silence,
scary and quietly turning.

Inside long and velvet
sheening, more like branches,
mannequins, whose vulnerable
elbows would land like a
bumpy mist….

I see you, my Darling,
as a spider weaving her web,
around me and whose long
and wintry fingers are
longing for these tributaries,
that are so sticky and thin.
I have found that these fingers,
are easily bruised, that their
skeletal stutter is breakable
and easily burned.

Your love also is easily pulled,
and easily raised, so easily lifting
is your love into me, its spreading
moss is a greeting of something, so
tightly pink and pressed like a guest.

I can see my Darling,
your neck’s anxious sighings,
inviting me quickly like these
dripping drips, I can see
these drops exposed because
they are so near, like drip
drops from a leaking roof.

Your dark eyes hear these
plops, whose plopping sings,
of your yearning for me,
whose plippity plops are
searching so knowingly and
plippingly, in a plopping sort
of sadness, in this distance.

There is a silence,
somewhere here in these
trees which mirrors your
measure endlessly, whose
everywhere is here in
these fingers that see
me, speedingly, spreading
us outwardly.

And than like butterflies,
flittering my Dear, your lips
bring in a darkness, whose here
is a when on your face, and
therefore inquiring if these
white mountains could hear
and be us.

The Liar

Heather Dyer

You would wake up
sometimes
in the night
and hear them fighting.

You'd clutch
you Mickey Mouse doll
and the smell
of linen tight
to your chest
and creep downstairs
and sit
and maybe you'd cry.

Then she would come and
float her arms around you and
kiss your hair
"Don't worry, honey. We'll always
stay together."

No wonder he left her.

She lies.

One Summer Night

Heather Dyer

He came home
one summer night-
and the air was thick
and heavy
and I called him "Daddy"
and his breath
was whiskey-death.

He staggered in
and my ribcage tore open.

And as I scuttle
under the piano,
the rug
against my leg
feels like
his beard-stubble
once did on my
lips-

when I still liked to kiss him-

and when he still wanted me to.

Exiled

Holly Day

alone again, wearing the ugly sweater Grandma sent me, the one
with the hippo in the bathing suit embroidered on the front
drinking lemonade by the beach.
What the fuck was she trying to say?

again, the house is thrashed, all our underwear
lurking in obscured corners. Your Hanes
are suffocating my Maidenforms, holding them down
a white shroud on blue ice.

alone again. Even my cats are hiding, somewhere
afraid of me this way, this way without you.
No more beer, I don't want to drink any more fucking beer
but you ate all my food.

Twelve

Chantene

modify you past abduction
not my blemish

i did not choose
to show your apathetic lies

my fear
my nightmare
your aptitude

i think not

your fear
your nightmare
my talent
the neophite you are

sobriquet of grief
nonimal shit
oh, please
tend to my torture
it amuses me
in my monotinous thought
you are nothing to me
but a forfeit onus
i miss you

female

Scott Glass

sometimes when I'm walking a pigeon
will leap from its ledge and flap above
my head like somebody shaking heavy
corduroy coats from a window startling me.

And when I look back she's gone.

< regrettably, it is sometimes the business
of yellow flowers to burn in summer >

ray heinrich
ray@scribbledyne.com

sometimes this is what it means to be a yellow flower
born late
of a cool, wet spring
only to be found by summer

sometimes
to be a yellow flower
means
to burn in summer
desperately
dreaming of spring

when burning in summer
most yellow flowers
desperately
dream of spring
while others
driven mad
will claim to be the sun

ray heinrich
ray@scribbledyne.com

< a difference of oceans >

from the east a sun
and from the west
we can only hope
but meanwhile
i am breathing you
in and out
a synchronization
an amplitude
a frequency
a timbre
so deep in the middle of this
we end up
singing

< the dog >

ray heinrich
ray@scribbledyne.com

the dog
at the window

squirrels again

< "it's not the winter it's just this knee"

ray heinrich
ray@scribbledyne.com

he said

"but with the Advil
it's good for a few miles
and Advil's easy to steal
they're busy
watching the other stuff
always buy something though
that's the trick
always buy something"

Untitled

Rochelle Holt

All love is an enchantment,
and makes a hero of a frog,
or an Empress of a courtesan.
- So Love Returns by Robert Nathan

It's that one understood barely
or maybe nearly or only half-so
the tears of the mandrake,
the bloodroot of a woman
yet the knowledge was like adder
like puffweed blowing in the wind
for to reach your grasp
is to lose a soul
in the climb of the mind
up the ladder of heart
yearning to ensure a firefly
or a buttercup
in water
like a mirror or prism
that will glass-reflect
the hunger of a beggar
the thirst of a greedy ragpicker
who hides bones
in the pockets of Joseph's liquid coat,
buries the colors
of a rainbow
in the folds
of an umbrella
found adrift in the night
like beach wood
like birds' feathers
in the dawn.
For the truth of time
to sift through one's veins
or to flow to the center of the heart,
we must really study
the anatomy of an anemone
or the anonymity of a crab -
walk backwards on sand
with one eye stalking tomorrow
while today washes up
frothy beneath our toes
like a shadow
like a whisper
like the promise of eternity
which is just a dream
nourished by the moon
until the sun wakes the sleeper
to unseize the mist
which "has its own life and venom"
like the fog creeps between the land
and the sea. It's that one understood barely
or maybe nearly or only half-so,
or he or she would let go
and let the creature or illusion vanish
to reappear when it would.
A lover should not seek to fish
for a mermaid,
for love will always find
a way back or to
whatever love
would have a mind to do ...

MEMPHIS

JanosHalma@aol.com

Up from the nigger brown river,
through the cotton faced wide valley,
over the small smoky folded mountains,
into the patioed fringe of the country
the poet comes brawling
into the bars, the low brow sanctuaries
of the quick morning, slow noon,
forever night of his acceptance.

Unspoken "I love you, Memphis," in the
upspoken comfort of Boston and the East:
He wraps himself in linen-garment lies
and tells the hell of his middle-class exile.
Sugar coated stories for the ladies of Los Angeles
who love him rough from the "prairie or wherever,"
raw from the bluff Blues town, river town, Memphis.

To the soft cultured, pliant fad-country people
he must lie, he that is of purer fire,
he that served long years for passing moments
in the East and West, pandering hick hog-swill
about his home away from tidal fringes.
It is merciful to let them think themselves
better, advanced, rather than hanging on
to the edges of the country and its culture.
It is like telling front trench troops
that they are the braver boys.

Children of the wide valley whore,
blast furnace, chaff-raw folk;
sons of Wichita; Chicago; Omaha;
Blues town, river town, Memphis;
we must lie, we of purer fire.

i wanted fish

jeaner@chickmail.com
jeana bonacci

You jumped at me to pull over.
You wanted me to destroy.
I was humping too fast, you killed,
so I slammed on the pen
and turned off the table.
As I crazed outside
I wanted to bang out of the hampster
and die,
die until I squatted gary coleman.
And yet I wanted to throw.
I wanted to throw to the person.
I wanted to jump the stupid horny rocks
cutting into my pot
and slicing my napkin.
I wanted fish to feel horny again.
But you sat in the key,
clueless to the CDs racing
through my mind,
to the nausea, to the fascism.
So I stood outside my car,
feeling the people of my gary coleman
roll past my face in the wind.
It was a funny, insane reminder
that I still had to (verb).

Ode to a Crack Whore

Greg Jerrett
biggus@iastate.edu

You're on the pipe and that's alright,
I think I love you crack whore.
No ordinary hooker you,
Give me some sugar, sweet baboo.
Crabs and scabs and rotten crotch?
The sores on your lips, they bother me not.
At 3 A.M. you're on the street,
Who are you waiting to meet?
Why do I love you, I cannot say?
You are wild, impetuous, free and gay.
You'd do anything for some crack,
Supporting your habit on your back.
I can't change you, no need to try,
You don't care if you die.
Your beauty comes from a different aesthetic.
You smoke and drink and wax prophetic,
About life as you see it, dark and seedy,
Lonely, boring, skanky, and needy.

Spurned and burned, shunned and ignored,
You've left me alone you dirty whore!
What's he have that I don't?
What'll he do that I won't?
He smacks you around and treats you like shit,
I think you deserve whatever you get.
He says he loves you more'n me,
That's not true he's just horny!
And greedy and dirty and stupid, too!
Alterior motives for wanting you.
When you're on the street, fucked up and desperate,
Don't come to me to get you out of it.
Been down that road, once or twice, yes,
Don't have the patience to support your vices.
You are a slut and a loser,
Perpetual victim and user.
If I could have whatever I wanted,
It would be you, forever haunted,
Knowing what you passed by,
Just to get laid and get high,
With the crap of the planet.
Kiss my ass, I hate you Janet!

Untitled

Jamie Kowalczyk

ok, that's my life over there...
on the bathroom mirror.
you see, i'm taking a bath, and there's steam on the mirror.
and my hand is shaking my finger-pen because
i know i want to smudge it,
i want to push the molecules around
and write the story out better, maybe to find
out what the clearer pictures are behind the mist.

it's a strange experience to write on my own reflection, and
place symbols between the two of us.
and when those steam-outlined words overtake the mirror, and
rub away the last vestiges of mask,
well, then i will stand naked and open-

The Way You Tease Me

janet kuypers

What I think I like the most about you
is the way you always leave me wanting more.
When you kiss me, and we start to pull back
I want to cock my head and kiss you again
but I never know if you'll let me.

What I think I like the most about you
is the way you roll your sultry deep voice over me
like a wave of heat on a summer afternoon.
You use a pause to tease me with your words
until sweat dances down my hairline and tickles me neck.

What I think I like the most about you
is the way you slide your arms around my waist
and make me just want to collapse in your grasp
and run my hands up and down your back
until I hear you moan and sigh.

What I think I like the most about you
is the way that absence makes the heart grow fonder
and when we touch you say we should take it slow,
take our time, enjoy every moment
and you know, you couldn't be more right.

What I think I like the most about you
are the things that make me think I have to fight for you
are the things that make me second guess myself
because nothing's ever easy, not you, not me,
not relationships, not sex, not love.

What I think I like the most about you
is the wondering, is the waiting, is the teasing.
That's what I like. This high-charged guessing game.
The flirting. The first touch. The first everything.
Thinking about the possibilities. Yeah. That's what I like.

A beacon alone

janet kuypers

I know I'm meant to be standing alone I've done it all my life and I'm completely used to the feeling and I've been living without anyone for so long and I wanted to let you know that I'm used to that and I can do it on my own and I don't need someone to help me pick up the pieces and I don't need someone to wipe my nose or tell me how and when to brush my teeth and comb my hair and fold my clothes. Have I said this to you before? Probably. Do I think this needs repeating? Usually. Then no one gets what I want and what I do. But this is what I've been used to all my life, this rejection, this feeling like I'm supposed to be this way, this feeling that there's no chance for me. You might think it. The rest of the world does. But let me tell you once, in the easiest way I know how, let me tell you that I am strong and I know what I need and I know what to do and I've been fine on my own all of this time. Maybe I've been just waiting for someone to come along and make it all better for me. Well, maybe that's my job, to do what I've been planning, and someone else will notice that you don't have to do it like everyone else. I don't know if I'm a beacon, but it's nice to think of me that way, whether of not it's accurate. I don't know if I'm a beacon. But for now, it's nice to think of me that way. I wonder when someone will notice my differences. I wonder when someone will think I'm different. I wonder when someone will notice

A Least That's What I Hear

janet kuypers

There are so many things I hve tried to do with my life
and things that I've wanted
and are so many things that I took care of myself

can I even get close to any of one the things I want

I don't know if I can touch them
I don't know if I can make
everything better I don't know if something is
supposed to come along and save the day

There are any disappointments in my life
it's easy to get disappointed about things
when you think about them too much

you can just try to ignore all the bad stuff
or just try to change your whole way of thinking
or you can just try to be okay with all the bad stuff happening
and maybe you can be okay
with just having a little
and just being alone

all I have to say
is that the last option there isn't an easy one
but it might save you at the bottom line

at least that's what I hear

A Lifetime Together

janet kuypers

we were supposed to spend a lifetime together
that's what we talked about

we were supposed to be happy together
we were supposed to travel for our honeymoon
well, you mentioned the place, i said
i wanted to go there for my honeymoon
and you agreed

i can think about all the things you said to me
and i can think about all the lies you told me
they're all beginning to run into one another, you know

i can think about how we would act like a couple
when we were playing poll at the local bar
i think of how we didn't look like tourists

when in a way we were

you got me next to nothing for my birthday that year
well i was there, you had to get me something, you thought

i can think about the flowers you were supposed to get me
how it would have been good to be able to tell my friends
that i'm seeing someone
so they wouldn't think i'd be alone all my life

i can think about how you would shower me with attention
or how you'd tell people about me
she's a great girl, you'd say

i'm sure that's what you'd say

when i was craving someone to care
i wanted you to care
and you let me down

i wanted to feel your hand touch my face
i wanted to get a sign from you

any sign

all I got from you, well, was nothing
i didn't even get a sign

so happy valentine's day, i think
when i think of all the people
who said they cared but didn't

that's all i think of

Fertility Mirage

Joanne Lagattolla

When I decide to shed my old jeans to wear K-mart maternity
clothes,
it wont be for a naked infant.
My baby will wear plaid.
Not bright pink or pale-blue or the assorted off shades, but strong
colors as the most androgenous being tha has ever existed, or will
exist.
My child will think plaid.
And see the world not as separate colors, but blendings of many cultures and beliefs that come together to form the world we live
in.
This adolescent will defend plaid.
And when society tells her to think a certain way, she will know the
importance of simple idleness and nonmaterialistic culture and be
herself.
This adult will buy plaid.
For her children to pass on the concepts for an ideal society by
spreading love and sincerity to future generations of humans.

the truth about the moth and the flame

Lauren Leach

a moth is aware
his being is of air
and light and dust
a luminous dream-
yet he envies the flame
its passion- untamed,
all-consuming,
eternal, it seems-
so he flies in to steal
that spark, the real
heart of fire,
to extinguish its light-
but the flame always parts
willingly with its heart
to whoever inquires,
and the moth's selfish flight
ends in tragedy-
consumed not by passion,
but by his own envy.

untitled

Anthony Lucero

my poem for christmas
is my poem for christmas
it's for no one else but me
merry christmas
anthony

Jussie (real names used to protect the innocent)

Alexandria Madero
pinkmillay@aol.com

My sister sat on a rooftop
and used a razor blade
to define her rage
and left marks
that did not kill
she is still screaming

it is a sinister matter
this cold blade on sweet flesh
pink and young but trembling
while she cut
suffering at the first sign of film-like
blood

streaming down her arms
small drops dangling from
her chipped fingernails
rich and glistening
the sun on
her black-tarred
hastily made bed
where she tried to die

"If I had had a gun
I would be dead now"
she says on a call
from the hospital
where they have put her in a special ward

The sound is eerie and flat
and I can't find my sister anymore
not even in pictures
and I don't know even know where to begin
to look to get okay now

the howling

Erika Mahoney
littlealexis@hotmail.com

I drool the final swig of water
feel it cry it's way down my leg
hiss at it scorching my arm
and reach for the music to pour mom another.
I think of how my fingers run
every time I let the blood think for me.
Then I sing down at my eyes -
playing - wishing the glass of tea -
and think of how these were the toes
that should have wanted you away from me.
But didn't. And I keep screaming
why I wagged your hell, wagged your juice.
I remember how you wagged your way
through me. he said to me
from the inside out, and I kept looking back.
I let her stretch me, and now you've
wagged a hole through me. i played it.
Now I have to scream myself of you,
and my interview is eating between the
tree in the animal nestled in my nose.
But I have to scrape more. The howling
doesn't last as long as the vampire does.

Foot Fall

in rustling autumn woods
the strams babble and chatter
the jays scream in defiance
chipmunks and squirrels scatter
the red maples are ablaze
and thought I step as softly as I can
I still feel I disturb the peace.

by giovanni malito

SOMEONE

Jaime Portell
SwtJaime99@aol.com

There once was a time
when I longed for such a friend
Someone to always be there
Until the road comes to an end.

Someone who overlooks my mistakes
And encourages me throughout life

With their heart and not their eyes
This someone could easily see
The person who I really am inside
Not just who I appear to be.

untitled

Jaime Portell
SwtJaime99@aol.com

Two people together...
United

Holding each other...
Embracing

Whispering sweet nothings...
Intimacy

Feelings so strong...
Intense

Two people together...
Forever

Canadian night, 1989

Nick Posteshev

Late spring on this foggy lake.
Dark flannel wraps the tops of trees, high and low.
White dots of light stud the night,
Silently spreading the weariness of life.
Listen, a moan, suddenly released, surges forth
From the waves,
Its suppression continues.
The sound of the motor at 4 a.m.
Makes one reminisce. Sad is the sound
Of fallen leaves at the window.
Sorrow arrives only
Through the sense of sound.
Has the night sunk in the fog, or has
The fog become the night's overture?
There is still a journey for the sleepless
On the black water.
The beacon has long turned into a distant star
No longer heeding you or I.
When the foghorn draws a deep sigh
In the shadow of crazed waves
I come to know this simple truth with you.
Something may yet replace the bewildered and lost world.
There is a light not always seen
In the middle of the day, there is
A darkness that is not always night.

The Sight of the Merrow

Nick Posteshev

She knows the long hollow
in the silence through the script
in the star-eaten stone and the
incessant altercation of the new-honed light.
She sees beyond the carbon of the heart of it,
diamond and damascene steel,
the crystal riveted into the bone
that has been cut to fit
the socket of the hand.

She sees through oxide and scale,
oakbark and enamel. She knows
the sight of the merrow, things seen
in the sap before it is frozen.
She has seen the blood before the air eats
into its essence, when the light sits
not quite on it but about, without weight.

She's seen the surface that is deeper
than the water, listening to the light
and the undertow's sound.
She knows the word would congeal
around the heart and in that instant
it is brighter than at any time later.

She's seen inside the iridescence
and listened to the clinkstone cut the wind.
She's known the blood's similar surface
in the darkness of the artery,
the insistent oxidation under
the iced-over heaps of decayed leaves
and abandoned timber.

She's seen only the dressed edge
of the air over those stones, and
knows we have been here before,
eating raw sunlight, but have always forgotten.
What was she thinking when even
The boldest wolves retreated to dark, when
Night letters were sent and never arrived?
What children had died and become stars?

in the suburbs you feel

In the suburbs you feel
safe. You walk to Wawa
for 1% milk. Some kids are
in the street playing hockey.
Ove yells, "It's a faggot!" He's

only about 8 years old -
if looks could kill. Once
insode the store, you hear
the bread delivery man
telling a gay joke at the cashier

who brays a laugh. You walk
back home, this time taking
a different street, the long way
around. You get inside
your door, fall on the floor,

try to pull out barbed wire
words, hate hooks. They don't
come out. You watch
the weather station, pour tea,
draw the curtains tight.

by kenneth robo

"playing dress-up"

matt robinson
matt@istar.ca

after morning after morning of scrubbing myself
clean;
those break-of-dawn baptismals,
i become tuxedoed.

all black and white and proper:
fit(ted).
no tattletale
(ambiguous)
grays.
all ironed: straight and creased;
these mock form(alitie)s.

you must (re)present yourself accordingly
at these things:
all black and white and straightened.
everything goes only where it belongs.

Bass-Ackwards

Mather Schneider

I was having a little problem with endings
so I stopped creating beinnings.
The beginning and the end
meet
when there is nothing in the middle,
no substance to get in the way.

Take my advice youngsters and be original,
learn what it means (so you can tell me and I know

you'll tell me). Are we guilty of bad advice
if the advice is not taken? I'm afraid
it's fire and brimstone for the likes of
this cowboy.

I was having a problem with endings, so I threw away
beginnings. I stopped participating in this
sadistic disappointment. As a reflex
survival mechanism my body and mind learned
to find disappointment in itself, simply
in the way I hunch around on

this flat earth. Actually,
this entire world irks me in almost
every way, and this is the truth of it. Perhaps
I exert more energy being irritated
than most people
say I should,
but there is indeed something wrong with us
and if laughter is not on our side
then friends you will one day teach me how

to pity. We work and we work when the laughter
is right here beside the sickness. I rise up
on my toes
and again the world is round. You see it is best

that I forget about beginnings,
and start with a tremdous end.

Happy Hollow Days

I went job hunting yesterday.
Job hunting during the holiday season, what fun.
No money for presents, no cares, just
confusion, wrong moves, strangers,
love is here but it isn't
what it appears to be. Love is just another puppet
held up by the strings of society
and tradition, habit and fear. The structure
of our lives is flawed, ready to
implode. The puppeteer is blind, drunk, rheumatic.

I went to four bars, dropped
off resumes at each one, and was blitzed by six.
I listen and I listen
to my heart, but I cannot understand. Sometimes I think
I can hear the word "kill", other
times I swer it says "make amends". Mostly it
just beats too fast,
tried to hold on.

How can so many people do this
without going insane? I feel like I am climbing up
a rope weighted at the end by a bag of coins,
and some giant child is swinging this rope
reound like a lasso. I am trying to climb
up to his hand, then down to his arm, shirt, leg
to the safety of ground. Nature has invented another
failure.

Even the guy on the corner
holding the cardboard sign up to traffic,
soliciting acid, wears a red hat.
Santa's alcoholic brother-in-law. Santa's
shame.

- Mather Schneider

Untitled

Eric J. Swanger
jivatma@csrlink.net

Words of
1000 paper cuts
Each burning
the fires of hell
Shot like flames
of a dragon
From your scaly mouth

PARENTS

Cheryl A. Townsend

18 years of belt
buckles closed fists and
words other than love
nights of sleepless fear
of whatever rage would
walk through the front door
in the face of a father my
mother deaf dumb and blind
to the bruises and blood as
long as she made it to bingo
for the early bird specials
leaving nothing behind but
the overpowering smell of
her perfume and a need for
a little more

Scotia 10/17

Paul Weinman

She asked me
if I was going
to save
the smell
to hold under
other noses

Schenectady 9/10

Paul Weinman

rolling her nipple
I thought of gum
bubble gum getting
into that hard ball
to flick across
the classroom

MASTURBATION

Cheryl A. Townsend

I want to feel her breasts
as her tongue proves knowledge
is the best teacher
I want a cock up my ass
in my cunt and mouth simultaneously
I want a little boy virgin
to suck my nipples with a revelry
as I raise his cock for part two
I want big macho hands groping
I want soft hands sharing
I want a gang-bang of gender benders
I want anything and everything
strapped or standard
just fill me in every way that you can

INVITATION

Cheryl A. Townsend

She watched him
in envy
it was accessible
no designated place
date or expiration
fast and easy
with quick clean up
and she wanted to feel
one of her very own

prose

exerpts from the manuscript:

blue collar ballet, by c ra mcguirt

LOCKER ROOM CONFIDENTIAL

After one of my early matches at the Nashville National Guard Armory, I was back in the dressing room with some of the other workers, and got to meet one of my childhood rasslin' heroes, Len Rossi.
Len was a major force in Tennessee wrestling during the 60s and 70s. He had to give up the ring some years back, following severe injuries sustained in an auto- mobile accident. At the time I first met him, he and his son Joe, also a wrestler, were running a health food store near Nashville.
On this particular evening, I'd interfered in Joe Rossi's match against Jack The Ripper, and he'd sent me packing with a clothesline and a punch to the face. Our bush-league "federation", the so-called IWA (International Wrestling Alliance), had a Saturday evening TV show at the time, on which Joe and I were leading up to a feud. On the previous week's program, during my interview, I'd insulted Joe Rossi in the usual "bad guy" manner, and had called his father, Len, "a good-for-nothing old has-been who should be run out of the state!"
When I finally met Len Rossi, I shook his hand and told him I was sorry for calling him a has-been. Len, still a trim, well-put-together man in his late middle age, smiled and said: "Well, I am one, aren't I?"
We talked for a few more minutes (I was waiting to get paid, which didn't happen), and Len commented on my match earlier that evening, giving me pointers and advice. It was all helpful, but what really stuck in my mind was this:
"Son," said Len, "When you're out there, you gotta remember what you're trying to do. You're telling those people a story."
That was some of the best advice I ever got on the Art: a wrestling match is a story, as well as a dance.
I don't wrestle any more, at least not in a ring. These days I'm wrestling with words and ideas.
But I am going to tell you a story.
It's a very simple tale. It's not about a guy who made the big time, and got to beat Hulk Hogan for the world title on an overpriced pay-per-view seen by millions of viewers, with thousands of screaming fans watching live and wearing his t-shirt.
It's about an out-of-shape, beer-drinking, cigarette-smoking 31-year-old rasslin' fan who decided to try his hand at becoming a professional wrestler. He wasn't at all prepared for it, at least not physically. Though he'd done a lot of lawn-rasslin' in his childhood, and had spent a brief period of time studying martial arts in his teens, it had been years since this yahoo had done anything physically demanding. His job as a sorely underpaid prep chef for a well-known 3-star restaurant in Nashville's prosperous Belle Meade area took its toll on his feet and back, but provided little cardiovascular conditioning. Neither did his avocation as a writer and poet, which tended to keep him up much too late, sitting on his rapidly-expanding butt, squint- ing at a word processor screen, sucking down suds, and chain-smoking.
This guy was recently divorced following a tumultuous 7-year marriage, and living with his father, a country songwriter, in a small stone house on the bank of the Cumberland River in the Bordeaux section of north Nashville. He and his Dad were taking care of his elderly grandfather, who, bedridden with heart trouble and emphysema, was in the process of slowly and painfully leaving this world.
We're talking about me, of course. And my Grandad Charlie, who had also been a rasslin' fan, mostly of the sort we spoke of previously-the kind who knows that it's all a spectacle, but who still gets excited anyway. Watching the weekly rasslin' show on TV with me when I was a kid, Grandad would spend half the program muttering "What a load of crap!", and the other half cheering the good guys. On many occasions, he took me and my brother to live cards at the Lakeland, Florida National Guard Armory; prior to sex, drugs, and rock "n roll, that had to be the peak experience of my youth.
My grandfather's mother, Mama Mac, had been "taken off" wrestling by her physician, following her first heart attack; she couldn't be trusted not to overexcite herself watching the weekly TV matches. The family managed to keep her away from the tube, but on more than one occasion, I've heard that my great-grandma managed to call a cab and sneak off to the live card. I was very young when she died, and I don't know if it was rasslin' that finally did her in, but on more than one occasion, I've regretted that she never got to see her great-grandson grapple. Then again, given my rulebreaking ways, she probably would've hit me with her purse when I got home...
My father, Glenn, a successful country songwriter, has never been much of a wrestling fan. A former Florida Game Warden who used to wrestle alligators and poachers in the swamps, he came by his nickname, "Gator", honestly (and long before Burt Reynolds). As an authentic Tough Guy, albeit with a blatant sensitive streak, I can understand his disdain for theatrical violence. "I'd make a bad wrestler," my dad once said. "I'd just shoot my opponent in the dressing room."
By the time I ended up living with Gator, I'd become a fairly serious rasslin' fan again. As for many other born-again fans, much of the reason was due to the advent of cable television, and the expansion of Vince McMahon's New York-based WWF. When Hulk Hogan, radiating solar-flare-level charisma, beat The Iron Shiek for the WWF's world title (during the Iranian Hostage Crisis, no less), it marked the beginning of a new era. Especially when the WWF hooked up with MTV and created "The Rock "N Wrestling Connection" featuring Hogan, Cindy Lauper, and Wendi Richter, then went on to inaugarate rasslin's first national pay-per-view extravaganza, "WrestleMania." Pro wrestling was starting to take off, going far beyond the local phenomenon it had always been before the advent of cable. The media wars also began, as the WWF attempted to put all the other federations out of business by buying up their air time. It worked to a large degree, destroying the third-place AWA and many smaller independent promotions, but McMahon ran into an immoveable object when Ted Turner took over the former NWA and created what is now known as World Championship Wrestling (WCW).
In those early days of the Wrestling Renaisssance, I had used my expertise as a Dungeons & Dragons game referee to design and sell a role-playing game based on wrestling. Unfortunately, Steve Jackson Games decided that it was too complicated
to produce, and left it on the shelf, along with my dreams of semi-fame and minor riches.
I then turned to another project, rewriting my first novel-the usual thinly-veiled autobiography every young writer seems determined to produce. It was primarily about my adolescence; I was trying to figure out how I got to be me. Part of that
process involved talking about my parents, and in creating a fictionalized version of my father, I decided to change his background just slightly. My protagonist's dad was also a country songwriter, but instead of having been a Game Warden, I made him a former professional wrestler.
In my book, which was deeply concerned with spiritual matters, I used wrestling as a metaphor for "real life", which, as Zen Buddhism and modern physics both tell us, is simultaneously "actual" and "illusory", depending on our own subjective perceptions. Sometimes the metaphor worked; at times it seemed forced, but I'd definitely come a long way from the "wrestling stories" I wrote in Junor High school, in which my friends and I were invincible masked wrestlers who won "real" matches in between saving the world from master criminals and mad scientists.
At the time I was working on my novel, I had no inside scoop on the rasslin' biz, but as it turned out, I did a fairly good job of faking it. I instinctively knew that wrestling, despite its theatrical base, also had a certain edge of reality. Therefore, the wrestling scenes in my book weren't too bad; they had a ring of truth. But the ring was slightly hollow. After all, I could only guess at the way real wrestlers talked, acted, and performed, because I didn't know any wrestlers.
Maybe all this doesn't seem to have much to do with how I got into the Blue Collar Ballet, but it was definitely part of the process. For a couple of years, sitting there in my livingroom, drinking beer with my friends and watching Hulk Hogan stomp on Roddy Piper, I'd been seriously thinking about getting involved in the "real life" wrestling scene. But not as a wrestler. I honestly felt I didn't have the size, strength, athletic background, or intrinsic toughness required to do that. My aspiration was more modest; I wanted to be an Evil Manager.
I say "Evil Manager" as if "manager" was not synonymous with "evil"; there have been some "good" managers (such as Arnold Skaaland, and the late-80s version of Captain Lou Albano) in the game, but not many. After all, in the "Old School" Wrestling Catechism, a "Good" Guy (what we call a "Babyface", regard- less of his actual looks) wasn't thought to need any outside help. He was expected to stand on his own two All-American feet against nearly impossible odds, with only the intangible emotional support of the fans, and the occasional rescue by his fellow Babyfaces.
Whereas "Bad" Guys (or "Heels", as we call them), thought nothing of enlisting outside help to get a win. They would come to the ring with their friends, tag team partners, scantily clad female "valets" , sleazy "business managers" in cheap, flashy suits, and/or brutal, hulking "bodyguards", all of whom had but one function: interfere and beat the hell out of the opposition when the referee wasn't looking. Which seemed to be most of the time...
The secondary function of an Evil Manager is to promote and support his wrestler during TV interviews, and create as much controversy as possible. The very best EMs, such as Jimmy "The Mouth of the South" Hart, Bobby "The Brain" Heenan (AKA "The Weasel"), and that tennis-racket-wielding mama's boy, Jim Cornette, have been colorful, larger-than-life wrestling characters in their own right.
Evil Wrestling Managers don't get hit too often, nor do they take a lot of falls. Part of the reason for their existence is to inspire long-running, mostly unrequited hatred: the crowd comes to see them get their just desserts for being such lousy, cheating, lying bastards, but they usually take the better part of valor, and run away to fight another day. It's an office that requires a fast mouth, lots of verbal
creativity, and above average acting ability. I was sure that I could do it, but rasslin' is a lot like the music business: you might have talent, but unless you can find someone to get you a gig, your abilities don't amount to a minor hill of very small beans. So I continued my mundane day job as a prep chef and kitchen manager, and worked on stories, songs, and poems with the energy I had left in the evenings, with the idea of getting into wrestling remaining in the back of my mind.
I did have one false start at trying to break into the biz: I met a singer who had friends in the rasslin' world, including my namesake Curt "Mr. Perfect" Hennig. She never got me next to Curt, but she did introduce me to a very large African- American wrestler named Peaches, who was sort of a major minor local hero, and we spent a few evenings partying together. Peaches suggested that I do up a video of my Evil Manager persona and give it to him; he would pass it along to local CWA promoter Eddie Marlin. I contacted my friend Allen Green, a composer, synthesist, and performance artist, and using his video camera, we produced a short videotape showcasing my abilities.
My Manager Persona was "C.R. McKnight", who wore black and carried a sword cane. McKnight was supposed to be a world-travelled intellectual who oozed icy contempt for "all you rednecks out there." I thought the best part of his rap was the following verbal attack:
"What has 48 teeth and an I.Q. of 70? The first three rows of fans at ringside! Ha ha ha ha ha!!"
I took the tape down to Peaches, who was working as a bouncer at a local nightclub, and he promised to pass it on to Eddie Marlin. I never heard a word from Marlin or the CWA; I guess there's only so many openings for an Evil
Manager in any area at any given time, and at that time, in that area, the slimy, ferret-like "Downtown Bruno" (later "Harvey Whippleman" in the WWF) seemed to own the local concession. Either that, or I was nowhere near as effective as I thought I was. In either case, for the moment, I gave up on breaking into the rasslin' biz, and returned to my literary and poetic endeavors.
A little less than a year later, my friend Larry Pacheco, a singer, musician, songwriter, and general all-around music-biz hustler, gave me a call. "Hey, man," he said. "I was down at the Buddy Lee Building on Music Row this morning, and I met this wrestler-actually, he's a manager-named Dr. Squash. We got to talking, and I told him about you...he wants you to give him a call, "cause he's starting a new wrestling federation here in town, and he thinks there might be a place for you."
Like I said, you have to know someone. Or know someone who knows someone. I could say that Larry's call was the spark that ignited my wrestling career, but it actually goes back a little further, and has more to do with Larry's wife, Ruth Hairston, and her love for live poetry.
Just over a year earlier, Ruth, a singer and poet, had been looking for a place to hold poetry readings. She'd found a perfect one in a great little club on the river- front in Nashville called Windows On The Cumberland. I read about it in the paper, and, enjoying the idea of sharing my work with other poets, began coming down to Windows for the monthly open microphone. There, I made friends with the hosts, Ruth and Larry, along with some of the best poets in the area. It was an inspiring and challenging scene for any local poet who wanted to get better at his or her art; I know it improved mine.
After Ruth and Larry got pregnant, and their son, Michael, was born, they no longer had time or energy to run the monthly Windows poetry reading, so D. Phillip Caron and I took over as "temporary" hosts for the next seven years. I guess you could say that my introduction to the rasslin' biz was a direct result of my being a poet, which seems ironic: blank verse to bodyslams. But that's life, especially mine.
I thanked Larry for the call, and dialed the number he'd given me. Things were about to get interesting, and a lot more rapidly than I would have guessed.

by janet kuypers:

paint a suicide picture

to the family of Jocelyn Burn

I found these letters, you see, and I didn't know what else to do with them. I just moved into an apartment on the lower east side, and there was a box of belongings left in a storage space in the back of my pantry. There was mostly old pots and pans in there, so I didn't think anything of it, but then I came across these letters. I assume they are from your sister, because I liked her music (I even saw a show of hers in Phoenix), and the date of the last letter corresponds with the day she passed away.
I didn't know what to do with these letters. They weren't in envelopes, so there was no address, and my landlord refuses to tell me who used to live here. Security purposes, he tells me. They haven't tried to get their belongings back, and I waited a while for them in case they did. I almost wanted to keep them for myself, they just seemed to say so much, I felt like I had almost felt these things. I didn't want to give them up. But I know your family would have wanted to read them. They belong to you.
Let me just tell you to prepare yourself for these letters. They are from the last month of her life. She was going a few shows... I don't know why she felt the way she did. Her band was starting to make it. The radios gave her air play in the last two months. These letters are sad to read.
I don't know who the letters are addressed to. Maybe you do. I wish I did. I suppose it doesn't matter now, though i would like to see the mystery revealed. I'm sure you feel more strongly about this than I do, but I would like to know why.
The fame and love she looked for she received partly because of her death. She is now revered. If only she could feel it.
I hope these letters answer some questions for you, or possibly bring you some peace. They are strong letters. I am sorry for your loss.

Joe Pagliano
New York, New York

¥
September 23
i hate everyone and everything. why can't i find someone that cares about me? even a best friend? even someone who claims to want to spend the rest of their life with me? even if i can't stand them? why do i feel so worthless? why do people stab me in the back? i hate you all. i really hate the fact that you hurt me so much.
i really want to not exist for a while. i'm tired of people hurting me. i'm tired of people.
there are some times when i feel so lonely and unwanted that i want to die. i want it all to end. i just hate having to deal with the people in life that make life difficult.
when i start in this cycle i just know that i fall farther and farther down. who do i blame for this? i want to blame someone, so i can think it isn't my fault. that i don't have a terrible fault that brings all this pain on me.
i really need to get away from here. i need to find someone that cares.
i think i care about myself, but god, i want to know that i am not the only one. i feel so lonely, so betrayed. i have no friends.
everyone is so fucking fake. why can't i count on anyone? why can't i find someone to lean on, just once? Every time i try, every time i start to feel confident about myself, someone has to come along and shatter it all.
i hate feeling like this. i wish i had people i could count on, for once in my life. i hate crying. i hate feeling this way about myself. i hate it.
it's over

October 1
i keep getting screwed over. i'm supposed to do this show. i make plans for it. then i find out though the grapevine that i'm not going. my managers couldn't even tell me. i have to ask and pester and bother in order to find out what i'm doing.
then i'm not going. then four days before the show i find out that i am going, it's back on. how am i supposed to prepare for this?

October 3
i really don't like tom. he doesn't understand that i just want a little attention. he thinks i really like him. i couldn't like that. no, i just want an ego boost if i can't have someone real.

October 4
i just want to feel like i'm alive again. i don't feel that way now, and i don't know how to get that feeling back anymore. i was sitting in the hot tub yesterday evening, and it put me in the best mood ever. i was in a good mood all night, until i realized that i wasn't going to be going out, then i just went to sleep.
I like doing the shows, i guess. i like going to different towns for shows. it was nice for a few hours to be in another city, high up in the air in my hotel room, half dressed, thinking that i owned something. myself, maybe, or maybe just some ideas. for a little while i felt alive. i miss that. i want to feel alive all the time. i want to feel alive.

October 11
i hate feeling lonely. i hate feeling alone. i can't believe a one of the managers wanted to sleep with me last night. a part of me still doesn't want to have to deal with it. i wouldn't want to date him if he was single because not only do i work with him, but i also know what a woman watcher he is. it's not as if i should think it was because i was special, though. i think it was pretty much because i have breasts. what a joke. always me.
i didn't wait for tom to call me back yesterday, and he didn't. i thought at least he would try to screw me. i didn't even get that effort.
and i'm sure todd won't ever want to call me back. i'm just sure of it.
and i'm sure jeff looks like a horror movie creature.
where is my soul mate?

maybe i have no soul. that's why i can find no one.

i think i should just start fucking everything that moves again. at least then i had an ounce of physical satisfaction.
god, and i know my life is a self-fulfilling prophecy. the more depressed i get, the more people don't want to be with me and then the more depressed i get.
why do i have

October 16
all of my true goals are destroyed by other people. i want someone to lean on. i want someone who doesn't make me feel like shit. i want to achieve my goals. i want to be successful. i want to be famous. i want to be rich. i want to make everyone jealous and feel like they are worthless compared to me. i want to feel like i am above everyone else.
everyone hates me. i am so worthless. i hate everyone. i am so worthless. everyone hates me. i am so worthless. i hate everyone. i am so worthless. everyone hates me. i am so worthless. i hate everyone. i am so worthless. everyone hates me. i am so worthless. i hate everyone. i am so worthless. everyone hates me. i am so worthless. i hate everyone. i am so worthless. everyone hates me. i am so worthless. i hate everyone. i am so worthless. everyone hates me. i am so worthless. i hate everyone. i am so worthless. everyone hates me. i am so worthless. i hate everyone. i am so worthless.
people are such liars. i hate them all. why did i let myself get like this? why did i let people do this to me? i've just destroyed my future musically and it was all because of someone else. some one i thought i could count on. someone i thought loved me. some who i thought would always love me.
i was wrong. i was terribly wrong. no one loves me. no one loves me at all. i am not important. i am not important at all. i am worthless. i mean nothing to no one. i am worthless. i could just drop off the face of the earth and it would only matter to the people who had to prepare my remains for the funeral. and to them it would only be another client in their day.
why do i have to be so alone? why do people have to be so fake? aren't i talented? aren't i successful? aren't i funny? aren't i important?
if you're so funny... why are you on your own tonight?
i can't do anything. i can't sing. i can't perform. i'm useless. i'm worthless. i'm nothing. i wish i could be something, but i am only nothing, and i will always be nothing.
i wish i could count on someone. i can count on no one. everyone i thought was important to me, well, i was not important to them. i hate being nothing.
even the people i thought would always love me, well, i should know better, they don't care about me either. every single person i thought was a part of my life, well, i was wrong, they aren't. i mean nothing to them. i always thought i did things to improve myself because i care about myself. i was wrong. i still do things because i care about how other people think of me.
and i have failed.
i have no one. i have no talent. i have nothing - even in myself - to count on. i have no one.
i feel so alone and i feel so incompetent. and i feel as if no one cares.
no one does.

October 18
life is so interesting sometimes. it's amazing how one conversation can change my whole outlook on life. i need to be reminded sometimes of what i am doing, of who i am, of what is deep down inside me. i have to be tested.
i don't know if i will ever get to sing - and be appreciated for it.
i don't know who i want to spend the rest of my life with. who they will be, when it will be, anything.
it is almost nice.
here i am, in another country, sitting once again in some lounge with absolutely no soul, drinking something. i figured i have $27 canadian, oh, probably $30 with my dollar coins, that i won't be able to spend in the states. i could go window shopping, but that would require motion, besides, david might be trying to get a hold of me, and i don't know whether or not i should wait for him.
never have enough time. when i do, i do the same things - drink, and think too much.
amaretto stone sours are particularly good.
and then i will get on the plane and... uh... mark will pick me up (yes, it really did take me that long to think of his name).
david was laughing at how i throw men around. well, none of them are good enough for me to keep.
show went okay tonight. i do like the travel. it makes me feel better for some reason to be alone in another city than in my home town.

October 20
why am i that worthless to you? am i that worthless to you? i guess i am, since you treat me the way that you do.
i came here hoping to get out of my depression. you only succeeded in sinking me deeper. i want to die.
you succeeded in your mission. i hope you're happy. now i know that everyone hates me.
i can't do anything tonight. tonight was supposed to be the beginning of the rest of my life. i was supposed to start anew. you've destroyed that for me.

you've used me, that's all you've done. you've succeeded in making me feel even more worthless than i already did. are you happy? were you looking to destroy me? probably not, you were probably not even thinking about me, giving my a single thought in your head. that's how little i mean to people, and i know it.
don't worry, i guess you're not the only one, but i think you were the straw that broke the camel's back. i wanted to hear it from you because no one else would tell it to me. but you didn't either, and now i know the truth about myself and what people think about me. i guess i should almost thank you, for showing me the light. it is a painful light, but it is the truth nonetheless.
i've always said i wanted the truth out of people, and now i guess i've got it. no one cares for me. i am useless in this world. maybe i'll be more useful in the next. what a fucking joke. if there were a next world.
when i die, i don't want any ceremonies done. i don't want to be filled with any chemicals so my body can be displayed for people who claim to mourn, i don't want to be a part of that modern-day ritual. i want to die, and i want body to decompose that way it normally would so that maybe at least my remains may benefit nature somehow.
i feel like kurt cobain, except i've done nothing that would make me revered. i've done nothing. no one appreciates what i've done in my life. i've overcome so much, and it still isn't enough.

nothing ever works out for me. ever. i'm alone

October 22
my dreams are always just that, dreams. if i ever achieve anything, it is in a half-ass way that proves that i really can't achieve my goals after all. i feel so lonely. lonely even when i am in a crowded room. alone.
i want someone to know me and appreciate me for my talent. i want someone to feel as if they can follow me just because of the work that i do. i want to be accepted and appreciated in that realm. when that doesn't happen, i look for someone that appreciates me in a physical sense. then i find them and i realize that it is only temporary, that no one has any respect for me, that i have still lost. that no one really cares about me. that i am nothing. that i am worthless.
i wanted to think that you would always care for me. i should have known better. i should have known you were just like all of the others, even after all we have been through.
gone through? what the hell have we gone through? you followed me like a puppy dog. you have a small penis. i don't know, i guess other than the harassment i felt from you after we broke up, after the bout with arthritis after dating you again, you haven't brought me much. i want to think that i have happy memories in my life, but i can't think of any. with you or with anyone.
life will go on without me. i just wish a lot of the time that it would end for me sooner than later.
i've always said that i know that i will always lead a long life because i know that with my luck, i'll be forced to live this miserable life for the longest time possible. what i've never said is that that notion really depresses me. there are a lot of times when i just want to die. i just want to disappear and never have to deal with anything - never even have to live - again.
sometimes even breathing seems like a chore.
i wish i could feel alive
writing used to help me, but it doesn't seem to anymore.
i don't even feel like getting drunk now. usually that is my answer for anything. i don't have the answers anymore.

October 23
when someone reads this, i will be gone. i want to die. no one loves me. i am worthless. every time i tried to reach out to someone they always failed me. i'm tired of being there for people when they are never there for me. i'm tired of being strained, i'm tired of being pushed around, i'm tired. don't you understand? i'm tired of crying. i'm tired of hating myself anymore.
i'm never going to make anything of myself. no one will let me. let me die.
i haven't felt like this since my father beat me. now i should be stronger, but i can't fight the whole world.
fuck my dreams. i can't achieve them. fuck the causes. fuck them all. i can't beat everything in this whole world. i give up.
give me some pills.
wait. i have some.
soon it will be over for me. don't let the world remember me. i want to die without a trace, the way i lived. i never found the answers.
why couldn't anyone love me? was i that difficult? why did everyone destroy me? i can't fight you.
why aren't these pills working? i'm so tired.
by the time someone reads this, i will be dead. i will die crying. i will die knowing no one cared.
i wish someone could have loved me, once.

exerpts from the manuscript

i've gotta write a book!
by ira wiggins

...from "I've Got To Write a Book!"
by Ira Wiggins

Doctor's Days and Nights

One afternoon, in the middle of office hours, I was called to make an emergency visit to a near-by farmhouse. The very obese, single, 19-year old daughter was having severe abdominal cramps and the parents feared appendicitis. Examination revealed a full-term pregnancy with the patient in very active labor. Parents and daughter all expressed complete amazement at the diagnosis, but when I delivered the baby in the hospital that evening they seemed convinced. My amusement, Or course, had to be discretely concealed.
*****
Parents of another unmarried teenage daughter, when told the girl was pregnant, said they could in no way understand how this could have happened. On the girl's second pre-natal visit the mother explained to me that they had finally realized the daughter's condition had been caused by "that scratching on the back screen door." The daughter agreed. I hare always regretted not having pushed for a further explanation.
*****
On the other extreme was the lady who visited the office to have her pregnancy cared for. She was very obese, had missed six menstrual periods, had gone through a period of morning nausea and was now feeling daily fetal movement. All very routine. The exam was normal in all respects. The protuberant women was firm and about the size of a six months pregnancy. I was unable to hear any fetal heart tones, but this is not unusual, especially in an obese individual. At subsequent visits I was still unable to detect movement or heart tones, but was reassured by her statement that the baby was "very active". When she was eight months "pregnant" it finally dawned on me: false pregnancy (pseudocyesis). I had never previously seen a case. Diplomacy seemed in order. She was astounded and disbelieving and I had to produce x-ray evidence in order to convince her. In general practice there is, for sure, "never a dull moment". I would try not to get caught napping again.
*****
"When will the baby be born, doctor?" I dreaded the question, whether it was asked months before the due date, on the due date, after the due date or while the patient was in labor.
"When the apple is ripe it will fall," was never truly a very satisfying answer to the expectant parents, however true. I learned by experience to give a date much later than I actually figured, for nothing is more disheartening to the distended mother-to-be than to pass the date and daily be bombarded by friends and neighbors with, "Haven't you gone in yet?" Made her feel like a slackard or traitor to the cause.
Even when the patient was in active labor, "How much longer will it be?" was seldom easy to answer with any amount of accuracy. My greatest miscalculation was with the patient in the labor room of the hospital whom I informed would not have her baby for another two or three hours. Ten minutes later I was visiting another patient on the floor below when the maternity nurse called on the phone to tell me that my patient had strained mightily and, with one great labor pain, had precipitously expelled a screaming, healthy, normal baby into the bed. I think I omitted sending a bill in that case. Of course it was much more common to spend hour upon hour in the delivery room fully scrubbed, gowned, masked and gloved waiting patiently for a stubborn kid to show its red, wrinkled, mucous-streaked and outraged face to the light of day.
After one such delivery, as I was sewing up the episiotomy under local anesthesia, the mother asked, "By the way, doctor, what do you recommend as the best means of conception?" Oh, how I yearned to reply, "Why, the same old-fashioned way, of course." But I wasn't sure she was in the mood for that type of humor, so, after a sly grin at the bemused nurse (she had to know I was grinning under my surgical mask), I gently explained to her some of the available choices for contraception. At that point I was sure she was more interested in means of contraception than in means of conception. I relayed the story to the editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association and it was published under their joke column "Tonics & Sedatives" - the only time I ever had anything of mine published in a medical journal.
*****
Delivering babies can be exciting.
Mrs. K had been under my regular care during her third pregnancy. At 2:00 a.m. her husband made a frantic phone call to me.
"Come out right away, doctor. My wife is on the toilet, in labor and won't get up. I'm afraid she is going to have the baby in the toilet!"
(Oh, well, no one had ever promised me that life would be easy.)
"Look, you must pick her up bodily, put her in your car and head for the hospital. I'll start for the hospital and meet you there."
"I can't, doctor. The car battery is dead and there is no one to stay here with the kids."
"~!@#$%&* &'(*)+=!", I thought.
"I'll be right out," I said.
They lived on the edge of town and I was there in record time to find the situation exactly as he had described it. The cervix was completely dilated and she was going to have a baby in a hurry. He and I carried her quickly out and laid her in the back seat of my car. It was summer and she was bare except for the thin nightie. She and I took off at a high rate of speed, headed for the hospital in Jonesdale five miles away. Visualizing the prospective mess in the back seat of my car I repeatedly admonished her, "Don't push! Breath hard! Pant! Hold your legs together!" Fortunately no one was on the main street of Hillsdale in those early morning hours as I sped down it, ignoring stop lights and leaning on the horn. Her bare feet, I noted, were pressed against the rear window. What a sight if anyone should be looking out their window. The hospital personnel heard us coming and, as we pulled up to the back door next to the emergency room, three attendants met us with a stretcher-cart. We all went directly to the delivery room and, without waiting, were presented with a lovely baby girl. Oh, sure, it had the usual wrinkled, florid, mucous-streaked face, but then aren't all normal babies lovely miracles?
*****
The phone awakened me from a deep sleep. With my one open eye I looked toward the alarm clock: 1:00 a.m. The voice was that of a widow lady living in a small village six miles away,
"Could you please come out to see me, doctor?"
"What seems to be the trouble, Mrs. -----?"
"I just can't sleep, doctor."
"Is there anything special keeping you awake? Pain or discomfort of any kind?"
"No, nothing like that. I just can't seem to get to sleep."
I had been awakened and made a home call earlier that night and choked back the desire to retort, "Good Lord, woman, I'm having the same trouble!" She had already tried a warm bath and drinking warn milk without benefit. Perhaps there was something of importance she wasn't telling me. I went.
There was nothing of significance. All she needed was a mild sedative. This deserves a higher than average fee, I thought, at least something to discourage the frequent repetition of such requests. She must have read my mind, for about that time she sweetly informed me that all of her medical bills were to be sent to the County Welfare Dept. No wonder she did not hesitate to call me in the middle of the night. I suspect she got more sleep the remainder of the night than I did.
I did occasionally decline a home call at night with what I hoped was appropriate advice and "call me back if the situation worsens or if you are still having a problem in the morning." All too often, however, I found that I would then lie awake waiting for the phone to ring and worrying whether the patient really should have been seen. Suppose they were having early symptoms of appendicitis - stroke - heart-attack? Night can be a fear-filled time for patients. And, yes, for doctors too.
*****
Another great fear, in those days, for both patient and doctor was the dreaded "infantile paralysis" - polio. I'm sure it often did not occur to the patient but you may be sure the dread thought always entered the mind of the physician when he examined a patient with headache, aching and fever. And who, with flu, did not have these symptoms? Polio vaccine was not yet on the horizon and treatment of the illness was notoriously ineffective, despite the well-known Sister Kenny treatment with hot packs, gentle massage and mild exercises. Patients frequently ended up with withered and paralyzed or partially paralyzed limbs. Death is not rare. No one knew why some recovered uneventfully and others were seriously affected. The "iron lung" was used in cases of respiratory paralysis. It was estimated that for every case of polio diagnosed by a doctor there were nine other cases so mild as to go undiagnosed, having been shrugged off by the patient as a cold or mild case of the flu.
One of my polio cases was a 24-year old ex-g.i. who had met and married a full-blooded eskimo girl when he was on army duty in the Aleutians. His wife had been under my care for measles, and, having no natural immunity to the disease, had to be hospitalized with extreme fever, hallucinations and a guarded prognosis. She eventually made a full recovery. Later, when he contracted polio he was immediately admitted to the nearby university hospital for care. Unfortunately his was a severe case with serious paralysis and muscle wasting below the waist.
When he was discharged from the hospital a few weeks later his lower limbs were essentially useless and he was told frankly that he would never be able to use them. He would require help getting in and out of bed and, in short, would be an invalid the rest of his life. Frank had other ideas. He set out to be self-sufficient. One day when I called to see him I found him in their tiny apartment practicing getting in and out of bed without help. They had out the mattress on the floor and, with great effort, he was able to get in and out of that low bed with no help. Over a period of weeks he persisted until he was able to do the same with a somewhat higher bed and finally he could single-handedly scale the dizzying heights of a standard size bed. He was innovative in strategically placing chairs where they were most useful to him in his efforts.
Meanwhile he had been able to get in and out of his wheelchair only by the direct lifting efforts of his watchful, patient, loving wife. He made this his next goal - to get in and out of the wheelchair without assistance. By now he had improved the functioning of his legs and had been able to tease a little motion out of the few remaining, wasted muscles. He thrilled with each new ability and spent hours in practicing. His wife was now working in order to sustain the family and he felt he must be able to care for his own needs in her absence.
On his follow-up visits to the University hospital the doctors there were interested in trying to determine what muscles he was using to obtain leg movements. The usual ones were useless.
Two years after the onset of his illness he obtained employment in a factory in Jonesville doing hand work while seated in his wheelchair. A great achievement? You bet! I suspect that most men in his situation would have surrendered to the official prognosis, entered a state of inanimate depression and spent the rest of their lives as public wards, reading, watching TV and justly receiving the sympathy of all. My hat is off to Frank and I feel sorry for those in a similar situation who have not been blessed with his supply of spunk.
*****
We had purchased a new car and were justly proud of it. Prior to making the three-hour trip for a week-end visit to Betty's parents she and I spent half a day washing and simonizing it. A truly gleaming marvel. As we drove we were smug, happy and self-satisfied. The practice was getting well-established and all was well with the world. The last three miles was on gravel road and it was just past dark, Betty was driving. Simultaneously struck by the urge, Betty and I leaned toward each other and sweetly kissed on the lips. As if to say, "Hey, snap out of it, you two," an overhanging branch from a bush on the right side of the road slapped sharply on the windshield. As we snapped to attention we appeared to be heading for the ditch on the right side of the road. Fortunately we were going only about 33 miles per hour. Betty reflexly jerked the wheel to the left. The rear wheels tried to pass the car on the right as we side-slipped on the gravel surface and headed for the opposite ditch. She turned the wheel to the right and the car pointed down the road but its movement was still toward the ditch, we struck a ridge at the top of the slope and started over sideways. The slope was less than 45 degrees and the adjacent field was only about six feet below the level of the road, The car made crunching sounds; some glass canning jars and my house-call bag in the rear seat (in case my in-laws needed any attention) made a loud clatter as we rolled completely over and came to rest on the wheels.
"Wow! Are you alright?"
"Yes. Are you?"
"I think so. Help me find my glasses."
"Wait. Let's check ourselves first."
"I'm all okay."
"Me too. Just sore in spots is all."
"What a kiss!"
The car was dented, scratched and with cracked windows but after be straightened a fender away from the tire it was obviously in driveable condition.
The slope was too steep to drive back up. In the darkness we could see a farm house about 200 yards back from the road on the same side. Thinking to find a gate we drove toward the house but were stopped by a fence. Following the fence away from the road we soon came to a lane which led into an old orchard behind the farmer's house. Once in the orchard we could not find the exit to the road. There were lights in the house so I climbed the fence and knocked on the back door. The elderly man who answered the door appeared a bit feeble and apparently lived alone.
"Yes?"
"I'm sorry to bother you but we have our car in your orchard and don't know how to get it out and back to the road."
He appeared a bit confused - as if in a dream.
"Welllllll... The gate is right there at the south-east corner."
"Thank you, sir." I strode rapidly back to the car before he could recover, found the gate and drove back on the road.
I wonder if the man ever found out how we got into his orchard.
The next day we were stiff and sore and had a few bruises. We have washed and waxed our cars many times since then, but never again have we ever simonized one. - makes 'em too slippery.

1690 Locke Civil Government
Philosophy Monthly, in parts

Chapter VI
Of Paternal Power

52. IT may perhaps be censured an impertinent criticism in a discourse of this nature to find fault with words and names that have obtained in the world. And yet possibly it may not be amiss to offer new ones when the old are apt to lead men into mistakes, as this of paternal power probably has done, which seems so to place the power of parents over their children wholly in the father, as if the mother had no share in it; whereas if we consult reason or revelation, we shall find she has an equal title, which may give one reason to ask whether this might not be more properly called parental power? For whatever obligation Nature and the right of generation lays on children, it must certainly bind them equal to both the concurrent causes of it. And accordingly we see the positive law of God everywhere joins them together without distinction, when it commands the obedience of children: "Honour thy father and thy mother" (Exod. 20. 12); "Whosoever curseth his father or his mother" (Lev. 20. 9); "Ye shall fear every man his mother and his father" (Lev. 19. 3); "Children, obey your parents" (Eph. 6. 1), etc., is the style of the Old and New Testament.
53. Had but this one thing been well considered without looking any deeper into the matter, it might perhaps have kept men from running into those gross mistakes they have made about this power of parents, which however it might without any great harshness bear the name of absolute dominion and regal authority, when under the title of "paternal" power, it seemed appropriated to the father; would yet have sounded but oddly, and in the very name shown the absurdity, if this supposed absolute power over children had been called parental, and thereby discovered that it belonged to the mother too. For it will but very ill serve the turn of those men who contend so much for the absolute power and authority of the fatherhood, as they call it, that the mother should have any share in it. And it would have but ill supported the monarchy they contend for, when by the very name it appeared that that fundamental authority from whence they would derive their government of a single person only was not placed in one, but two persons jointly. But to let this of names pass.
54. Though I have said above (2) "That all men by nature are equal," I cannot be supposed to understand all sorts of "equality." Age or virtue may give men a just precedency. Excellency of parts and merit may place others above the common level. Birth may subject some, and alliance or benefits others, to pay an observance to those to whom Nature, gratitude, or other respects, may have made it due; and yet all this consists with the equality which all men are in respect of jurisdiction or dominion one over another, which was the equality I there spoke of as proper to the business in hand, being that equal right that every man hath to his natural freedom, without being subjected to the will or authority of any other man.
55. Children, I confess, are not born in this full state of equality, though they are born to it. Their parents have a sort of rule and jurisdiction over them when they come into the world, and for some time after, but it is but a temporary one. The bonds of this subjection are like the swaddling clothes they are wrapt up in and supported by in the weakness of their infancy. Age and reason as they grow up loosen them, till at length they drop quite off, and leave a man at his own free disposal.
56. Adam was created a perfect man, his body and mind in full possession of their strength and reason, and so was capable from the first instance of his being to provide for his own support and preservation, and govern his actions according to the dictates of the law of reason God had implanted in him. From him the world is peopled with his descendants, who are all born infants, weak and helpless, without knowledge or understanding. But to supply the defects of this imperfect state till the improvement of growth and age had removed them, Adam and Eve, and after them all parents were, by the law of Nature, under an obligation to preserve, nourish and educate the children they had begotten, not as their own workmanship, but the workmanship of their own Maker, the Almighty, to whom they were to be accountable for them.
57. The law that was to govern Adam was the same that was to govern all his posterity, the law of reason. But his offspring having another way of entrance into the world, different from him, by a natural birth, that produced them ignorant, and without the use of reason, they were not presently under that law. For nobody can be under a law that is not promulgated to him; and this law being promulgated or made known by reason only, he that is not come to the use of his reason cannot be said to be under this law; and Adam's children being not presently as soon as born under this law of reason, were not presently free. For law, in its true notion, is not so much the limitation as the direction of a free and intelligent agent to his proper interest, and prescribes no farther than is for the general good of those under that law. Could they be happier without it, the law, as a useless thing, would of itself vanish; and that ill deserves the name of confinement which hedges us in only from bogs and precipices. So that however it may be mistaken, the end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom. For in all the states of created beings, capable of laws, where there is no law there is no freedom. For liberty is to be free from restraint and violence from others, which cannot be where there is no law; and is not, as we are told, "a liberty for every man to do what he lists." For who could be free, when every other man's humour might domineer over him? But a liberty to dispose and order freely as he lists his person, actions, possessions, and his whole property within the allowance of those laws under which he is, and therein not to be subject to the arbitrary will of another, but freely follow his own.
58. The power, then, that parents have over their children arises from that duty which is incumbent on them, to take care of their offspring during the imperfect state of childhood. To inform the mind, and govern the actions of their yet ignorant nonage, till reason shall take its place and ease them of that trouble, is what the children want, and the parents are bound to. For God having given man an understanding to direct his actions, has allowed him a freedom of will and liberty of acting, as properly belonging thereunto within the bounds of that law he is under. But whilst he is in an estate wherein he has no understanding of his own to direct his will, he is not to have any will of his own to follow. He that understands for him must will for him too; he must prescribe to his will, and regulate his actions, but when he comes to the estate that made his father a free man, the son is a free man too.
59. This holds in all the laws a man is under, whether natural or civil. Is a man under the law of Nature? What made him free of that law? what gave him a free disposing of his property, according to his own will, within the compass of that law? I answer, an estate wherein he might be supposed capable to know that law, that so he might keep his actions within the bounds of it. When he has acquired that state, he is presumed to know how far that law is to be his guide, and how far he may make use of his freedom, and so comes to have it; till then, somebody else must guide him, who is presumed to know how far the law allows a liberty. If such a state of reason, such an age of discretion made him free, the same shall make his son free too. Is a man under the law of England? what made him free of that law- that is, to have the liberty to dispose of his actions and possessions, according to his own will, within the permission of that law? a capacity of knowing that law. Which is supposed, by that law, at the age of twenty-one, and in some cases sooner. If this made the father free, it shall make the son free too. Till then, we see the law allows the son to have no will, but he is to be guided by the will of his father or guardian, who is to understand for him. And if the father die and fail to substitute a deputy in this trust, if he hath not provided a tutor to govern his son during his minority, during his want of understanding, the law takes care to do it: some other must govern him and be a will to him till he hath attained to a state of freedom, and his understanding be fit to take the government of his will. But after that the father and son are equally free, as much as tutor and pupil, after nonage, equally subjects of the same law together, without any dominion left in the father over the life, liberty, or estate of his son, whether they be only in the state and under the law of Nature, or under the positive laws of an established government.
60. But if through defects that may happen out of the ordinary course of Nature, any one comes not to such a degree of reason wherein he might be supposed capable of knowing the law, and so living within the rules of it, he is never capable of being a free man, he is never let loose to the disposure of his own will; because he knows no bounds to it, has not understanding, its proper guide, but is continued under the tuition and government of others all the time his own understanding is incapable of that charge. And so lunatics and idiots are never set free from the government of their parents: "Children who are not as yet come unto those years whereat they may have, and innocents, which are excluded by a natural defect from ever having." Thirdly: "Madmen, which, for the present, cannot possibly have the use of right reason to guide themselves, have, for their guide, the reason that guideth other men which are tutors over them, to seek and procure their good for them," says Hooker (Eccl. Pol., lib. i., s. 7). All which seems no more than that duty which God and Nature has laid on man, as well as other creatures, to preserve their offspring till they can be able to shift for themselves, and will scarce amount to an instance or proof of parents' regal authority.
61. Thus we are born free as we are born rational; not that we have actually the exercise of either: age that brings one, brings with it the other too. And thus we see how natural freedom and subjection to parents may consist together, and are both founded on the same principle. A child is free by his father's title, by his father's understanding, which is to govern him till he hath it of his own. The freedom of a man at years of discretion, and the subjection of a child to his parents, whilst yet short of it, are so consistent and so distinguishable that the most blinded contenders for monarchy, "by right of fatherhood," cannot miss of it; the most obstinate cannot but allow of it. For were their doctrine all true, were the right heir of Adam now known, and, by that title, settled a monarch in his throne, invested with all the absolute unlimited power Sir Robert Filmer talks of, if he should die as soon as his heir were born, must not the child, notwithstanding he were never so free, never so much sovereign, be in subjection to his mother and nurse, to tutors and governors, till age and education brought him reason and ability to govern himself and others? The necessities of his life, the health of his body, and the information of his mind would require him to be directed by the will of others and not his own; and yet will any one think that this restraint and subjection were inconsistent with, or spoiled him of, that liberty or sovereignty he had a right to, or gave away his empire to those who had the government of his nonage? This government over him only prepared him the better and sooner for it. If anybody should ask me when my son is of age to be free, I shall answer, just when his monarch is of age to govern. "But at what time," says the judicious Hooker (Eccl. Pol., lib. i., s. 6), "a man may be said to have attained so far forth the use of reason as sufficeth to make him capable of those laws whereby he is then bound to guide his actions; this is a great deal more easy for sense to discern than for any one, by skill and learning, to determine."
62. Commonwealths themselves take notice of, and allow that there is a time when men are to begin to act like free men, and therefore, till that time, require not oaths of fealty or allegiance, or other public owning of, or submission to, the government of their countries.
63. The freedom then of man, and liberty of acting according to his own will, is grounded on his having reason, which is able to instruct him in that law he is to govern himself by, and make him know how far he is left to the freedom of his own will. To turn him loose to an unrestrained liberty, before he has reason to guide him, is not the allowing him the privilege of his nature to be free, but to thrust him out amongst brutes, and abandon him to a state as wretched and as much beneath that of a man as theirs. This is that which puts the authority into the parents' hands to govern the minority of their children. God hath made it their business to employ this care on their offspring, and hath placed in them suitable inclinations of tenderness and concern to temper this power, to apply it as His wisdom designed it, to the children's good as long as they should need to be under it.
64. But what reason can hence advance this care of the parents due to their offspring into an absolute, arbitrary dominion of the father, whose power reaches no farther than by such a discipline as he finds most effectual to give such strength and health to their bodies, such vigour and rectitude to their minds, as may best fit his children to be most useful to themselves and others, and, if it be necessary to his condition, to make them work when they are able for their own subsistence; but in this power the mother, too, has her share with the father.
65. Nay, this power so little belongs to the father by any peculiar right of Nature, but only as he is guardian of his children, that when he quits his care of them he loses his power over them, which goes along with their nourishment and education, to which it is inseparably annexed, and belongs as much to the foster-father of an exposed child as to the natural father of another. So little power does the bare act of begetting give a man over his issue, if all his care ends there, and this be all the title he hath to the name and authority of a father. And what will become of this paternal power in that part of the world where one woman hath more than one husband at a time? or in those parts of America where, when the husband and wife part, which happens frequently, the children are all left to the mother, follow her, and are wholly under her care and provision? And if the father die whilst the children are young, do they not naturally everywhere owe the same obedience to their mother, during their minority, as to their father, were he alive? And will any one say that the mother hath a legislative power over her children that she can make standing rules which shall be of perpetual obligation, by which they ought to regulate all the concerns of their property, and bound their liberty all the course of their lives, and enforce the observation of them with capital punishments? For this is the proper power of the magistrate, of which the father hath not so much as the shadow. His command over his children is but temporary, and reaches not their life or property. It is but a help to the weakness and imperfection of their nonage, a discipline necessary to their education. And though a father may dispose of his own possessions as he pleases when his children are out of danger of perishing for want, yet his power extends not to the lives or goods which either their own industry, or another's bounty, has made theirs, nor to their liberty neither when they are once arrived to the enfranchisement of the years of discretion. The father's empire then ceases, and he can from thenceforward no more dispose of the liberty of his son than that of any other man. And it must be far from an absolute or perpetual jurisdiction from which a man may withdraw himself, having licence from Divine authority to "leave father and mother and cleave to his wife."
66. But though there be a time when a child comes to be as free from subjection to the will and command of his father as he himself is free from subjection to the will of anybody else, and they are both under no other restraint but that which is common to them both, whether it be the law of Nature or municipal law of their country, yet this freedom exempts not a son from that honour which he ought, by the law of God and Nature, to pay his parents, God having made the parents instruments in His great design of continuing the race of mankind and the occasions of life to their children. As He hath laid on them an obligation to nourish, preserve, and bring up their offspring, so He has laid on the children a perpetual obligation of honouring their parents, which, containing in it an inward esteem and reverence to be shown by all outward expressions, ties up the child from anything that may ever injure or affront, disturb or endanger the happiness or life of those from whom he received his, and engages him in all actions of defence, relief, assistance, and comfort of those by whose means he entered into being and has been made capable of any enjoyments of life. From this obligation no state, no freedom, can absolve children. But this is very far from giving parents a power of command over their children, or an authority to make laws and dispose as they please of their lives or liberties. It is one thing to owe honour, respect, gratitude, and assistance; another to require an absolute obedience and submission. The honour due to parents a monarch on his throne owes his mother, and yet this lessens not his authority nor subjects him to her government.
67. The subjection of a minor places in the father a temporary government which terminates with the minority of the child; and the honour due from a child places in the parents a perpetual right to respect, reverence, support, and compliance, to more or less, as the father's care, cost, and kindness in his education has been more or less, and this ends not with minority, but holds in all parts and conditions of a man's life. The want of distinguishing these two powers which the father hath, in the right of tuition, during minority, and the right of honour all his life, may perhaps have caused a great part of the mistakes about this matter. For, to speak properly of them, the first of these is rather the privilege of children and duty of parents than any prerogative of paternal power. The nourishment and education of their children is a charge so incumbent on parents for their children's good, that nothing can absolve them from taking care of it. And though the power of commanding and chastising them go along with it, yet God hath woven into the principles of human nature such a tenderness for their offspring, that there is little fear that parents should use their power with too much rigour; the excess is seldom on the severe side, the strong bias of nature drawing the other way. And therefore God Almighty, when He would express His gentle dealing with the Israelites, He tells them that though He chastened them, "He chastened them as a man chastens his son" (Deut. 8. 5)- i.e., with tenderness and affection, and kept them under no severer discipline than what was absolutely best for them, and had been less kindness, to have slackened. This is that power to which children are commanded obedience, that the pains and care of their parents may not be increased or ill-rewarded.
68. On the other side, honour and support all that which gratitude requires to return; for the benefits received by and from them is the indispensable duty of the child and the proper privilege of the parents. This is intended for the parents' advantage, as the other is for the child's; though education, the parents' duty, seems to have most power, because the ignorance and infirmities of childhood stand in need of restraint and correction, which is a visible exercise of rule and a kind of dominion. And that duty which is comprehended in the word "honour" requires less obedience, though the obligation be stronger on grown than younger children. For who can think the command, "Children, obey your parents," requires in a man that has children of his own the same submission to his father as it does in his yet young children to him, and that by this precept he were bound to obey all his father's commands, if, out of a conceit of authority, he should have the indiscretion to treat him still as a boy?
69. The first part, then, of paternal power, or rather duty, which is education, belongs so to the father that it terminates at a certain season. When the business of education is over it ceases of itself, and is also alienable before. For a man may put the tuition of his son in other hands; and he that has made his son an apprentice to another has discharged him, during that time, of a great part of his obedience, both to himself and to his mother. But all the duty of honour, the other part, remains nevertheless entire to them; nothing can cancel that. It is so inseparable from them both, that the father's authority cannot dispossess the mother of this right, nor can any man discharge his son from honouring her that bore him. But both these are very far from a power to make laws, and enforcing them with penalties that may reach estate, liberty, limbs, and life. The power of commanding ends with nonage, and though after that honour and respect, support and defence, and whatsoever gratitude can oblige a man to, for the highest benefits he is naturally capable of be always due from a son to his parents, yet all this puts no sceptre into the father's hand, no sovereign power of commanding. He has no dominion over his son's property or actions, nor any right that his will should prescribe to his son's in all things; however, it may become his son in many things, not very inconvenient to him and his family, to pay a deference to it.
70. A man may owe honour and respect to an ancient or wise man, defence to his child or friend, relief and support to the distressed, and gratitude to a benefactor, to such a degree that all he has, all he can do, cannot sufficiently pay it. But all these give no authority, no right of making laws to any one over him from whom they are owing. And it is plain all this is due, not to the bare title of father, not only because as has been said, it is owing to the mother too, but because these obligations to parents, and the degrees of what is required of children, may be varied by the different care and kindness trouble and expense, is often employed upon one child more than another.
71. This shows the reason how it comes to pass that parents in societies, where they themselves are subjects, retain a power over their children and have as much right to their subjection as those who are in the state of Nature, which could not possibly be if all political power were only paternal, and that, in truth, they were one and the same thing; for then, all paternal power being in the prince, the subject could naturally have none of it. But these two powers, political and paternal, are so perfectly distinct and separate, and built upon so different foundations, and given to so different ends, that every subject that is a father has as much a paternal power over his children as the prince has over his. And every prince that has parents owes them as much filial duty and obedience as the meanest of his subjects do to theirs, and can therefore contain not any part or degree of that kind of dominion which a prince or magistrate has over his subject.
72. Though the obligation on the parents to bring up their children, and the obligation on children to honour their parents, contain all the power, on the one hand, and submission on the other, which are proper to this relation, yet there is another power ordinarily in the father, whereby he has a tie on the obedience of his children, which, though it be common to him with other men, yet the occasions of showing it, almost constantly happening to fathers in their private families and in instances of it elsewhere being rare, and less taken notice of, it passes in the world for a part of "paternal jurisdiction." And this is the power men generally have to bestow their estates on those who please them best. The possession of the father being the expectation and inheritance of the children ordinarily, in certain proportions, according to the law and custom of each country, yet it is commonly in the father's power to bestow it with a more sparing or liberal hand, according as the behaviour of this or that child hath comported with his will and humour.
73. This is no small tie to the obedience of children; and there being always annexed to the enjoyment of land a submission to the government of the country of which that land is a part, it has been commonly supposed that a father could oblige his posterity to that government of which he himself was a subject, that his compact held them; whereas, it being only a necessary condition annexed to the land which is under that government, reaches only those who will take it on that condition, and so is no natural tie or engagement, but a voluntary submission; for every man's children being, by Nature, as free as himself or any of his ancestors ever were, may, whilst they are in that freedom, choose what society they will join themselves to, what commonwealth they will put themselves under. But if they will enjoy the inheritance of their ancestors, they must take it on the same terms their ancestors had it, and submit to all the conditions annexed to such a possession. By this power, indeed, fathers oblige their children to obedience to themselves even when they are past minority, and most commonly, too, subject them to this or that political power. But neither of these by any peculiar right of fatherhood, but by the reward they have in their hands to enforce and recompense such a compliance, and is no more power than what a Frenchman has over an Englishman, who, by the hopes of an estate he will leave him, will certainly have a strong tie on his obedience; and if when it is left him, he will enjoy it, he must certainly take it upon the conditions annexed to the possession of land in that country where it lies, whether it be France or England.
74. To conclude, then, though the father's power of commanding extends no farther than the minority of his children, and to a degree only fit for the discipline and government of that age; and though that honour and respect, and all that which the Latins called piety, which they indispensably owe to their parents all their lifetime, and in all estates, with all that support and defence, is due to them, gives the father no power of governing- i.e., making laws and exacting penalties on his children; though by this he has no dominion over the property or actions of his son, yet it is obvious to conceive how easy it was, in the first ages of the world, and in places still where the thinness of people gives families leave to separate into unpossessed quarters, and they have room to remove and plant themselves in yet vacant habitations, for the father of the family to become the prince of it;* he had been a ruler from the beginning of the infancy of his children; and when they were grown up, since without some government it would be hard for them to live together, it was likeliest it should, by the express or tacit consent of the children, be in the father, where it seemed, without any change, barely to continue. And when, indeed, nothing more was required to it than the permitting the father to exercise alone in his family that executive power of the law of Nature which every free man naturally hath, and by that permission resigning up to him a monarchical power whilst they remained in it. But that this was not by any paternal right, but only by the consent of his children, is evident from hence, that nobody doubts but if a stranger, whom chance or business had brought to his family, had there killed any of his children, or committed any other act, he might condemn and put him to death, or otherwise have punished him as well as any of his children. which was impossible he should do by virtue of any paternal authority over one who was not his child, but by virtue of that executive power of the law of Nature which, as a man, he had a right to; and he alone could punish him in his family where the respect of his children had laid by the exercise of such a power, to give way to the dignity and authority they were willing should remain in him above the rest of his family.
* "It is no improbable opinion, therefore, which the arch-philosopher was of, That the chief person in every household was always, as it were, a king; so when numbers of households joined themselves in civil societies together, kings were the first kind of governors among them, which is also, as it seemeth, the reason why the name of fathers continued still in them, who of fathers were made rulers; as also the ancient custom of governors to do as Melchizedec; and being kings, to exercise the office of priests, which fathers did, at the first, grew, perhaps, by the same occasion. Howbeit, this is not the only kind of regimen that has been received in the world. The inconveniencies of one kind have caused sundry others to be devised, so that, in a word, all public regimen, of what kind soever, seemeth evidently to have risen from the deliberate advice, consultation and composition between men, judging it convenient and behoveful, there being no impossibility in Nature, considered by itself, but that man might have lived without any public regimen." Hooker, Eccl. Pol., i. 10.
75. Thus it was easy and almost natural for children, by a tacit and almost natural consent, to make way for the father's authority and government. They had been accustomed in their childhood to follow his direction, and to refer their little differences to him; and when they were men, who was fitter to rule them? Their little properties and less covetousness seldom afforded greater controversies; and when any should arise, where could they have a fitter umpire than he, by whose care they had every one been sustained and brought up. and who had a tenderness for them all? It is no wonder that they made no distinction betwixt minority and full age, nor looked after one-and-twenty, or any other age, that might make them the free disposers of themselves and fortunes, when they could have no desire to be out of their pupilage. The government they had been under during it continued still to be more their protection than restraint; and they could nowhere find a greater security to their peace, liberties, and fortunes than in the rule of a father.
76. Thus the natural fathers of families, by an insensible change, became the politic monarchs of them too; and as they chanced to live long, and leave able and worthy heirs for several successions or otherwise, so they laid the foundations of hereditary or elective kingdoms under several constitutions and manors, according as chance, contrivance, or occasions happened to mould them. But if princes have their titles in the father's right, and it be a sufficient proof of the natural right of fathers to political authority, because they commonly were those in whose hands we find, de facto, the exercise of government, I say, if this argument be good, it will as strongly prove that all princes, nay, princes only, ought to be priests, since it is as certain that in the beginning "the father of the family was priest, as that he was ruler in his own household."

Nick DiSpoldo, Small Press Review (on "Children, Churches and Daddies," April 1997) Kuypers is the widely-published poet of particular perspectives and not a little existential rage, but she does not impose her personal or artistic agenda on her magazine. CC+D is a provocative potpourri of news stories, poetry, humor, art and the "dirty underwear" of politics. One piece in this issue is "Crazy," an interview Kuypers conducted with "Madeline," a murderess who was found insane, and is confined to West Virginia's Arronsville Correctional Center. Madeline, whose elevator definitely doesn't go to the top, killed her boyfriend during sex with an ice pick and a chef's knife, far surpassing the butchery of Elena Bobbitt. Madeline, herself covered with blood, sat beside her lover's remains for three days, talking to herself, and that is how the police found her. For effect, Kuypers publishes Madeline's monologue in different-sized type, and the result is something between a sense of Dali's surrealism and Kafka-like craziness.

Debra Purdy Kong, writer, British Columbia, Canada
I like the magazine a lot. I like the spacious lay-out and the different coloured pages and the variety of writer's styles. Too many literary magazines read as if everyone graduated from the same course. We need to collect more voices like these and send them everywhere.

Ed Hamilton, writer #85 (of children, churches and daddies) turned out well. I really enjoyed the humor section, especially the test score answers. And, the cup-holder story is hilarious. I'm not a big fan of poetry - since much of it is so hard to decipher - but I was impressed by the work here, which tends toward the straightforward and unpretentious. As for the fiction, the piece by Anderson is quite perceptive: I liked the way the self-deluding situation of the character is gradually, subtly revealed. (Kuypers') story is good too: the way it switches narrative perspective via the letter device is a nice touch.

Children, Churches and Daddies.
It speaks for itself.
Write to Scars Publications to submit poetry, prose and artwork to Children, Churches and Daddies literary magazine, or to inquire about having your own chapbook, and maybe a few reviews like these.

Jim Maddocks, GLASGOW, via the Internet I'll be totally honest, of the material in Issue (either 83 or 86 of Children, Churches and Daddies) the only ones I really took to were Kuypers'. TRYING was so simple but most truths are, aren't they?

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what is veganism?
A vegan (VEE-gun) is someone who does not consume any animal products. While vegetarians avoid flesh foods, vegans don't consume dairy or egg products, as well as animal products in clothing and other sources.

why veganism?
This cruelty-free lifestyle provides many benefits, to animals, the environment and to ourselves. The meat and dairy industry abuses billions of animals. Animal agriculture takes an enormous toll on the land. Consumtion of animal products has been linked to heart disease, colon and breast cancer, osteoporosis, diabetes and a host of other conditions.

so what is vegan action?
We can succeed in shifting agriculture away from factory farming, saving millions, or even billions of chickens, cows, pigs, sheep turkeys and other animals from cruelty.
We can free up land to restore to wilderness, pollute less water and air, reduce topsoil reosion, and prevent desertification.
We can improve the health and happiness of millions by preventing numerous occurrences od breast and prostate cancer, osteoporosis, and heart attacks, among other major health problems.

A vegan, cruelty-free lifestyle may be the most important step a person can take towards creatin a more just and compassionate society. Contact us for membership information, t-shirt sales or donations.

vegan action
po box 4353, berkeley, ca 94707-0353
510/704-4444

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C Ra McGuirt, Editor, The Penny Dreadful Review (on Children, Churches and Daddies) CC&D is obviously a labor of love ... I just have to smile when I go through it. (Janet Kuypers) uses her space and her poets to best effect, and the illos attest to her skill as a graphic artist. "I really like ("Writing Your Name"). It's one of those kind of things where your eye isn't exactly pulled along, but falls effortlessly down the poem. I liked "knowledge" for its mix of disgust and acceptance. Janet Kuypers does good little movies, by which I mean her stuff provokes moving imagery for me. Color, no dialogue; the voice of the poem is the narrator over the film.

Children, Churches and Daddies no longer distributes free contributor's copies of issues. In order to receive issues of Children, Churches and Daddies, contact Janet Kuypers at the cc&d e-mail addres. Free electronic subscriptions are available via email. All you need to do is email ccandd@aol.com... and ask to be added to the free cc+d electronic subscription mailing list. And you can still see issues every month at the Children, Churches and Daddies website, located at http://scars.tv

Also, visit our new web sites: the Art Gallery and the Poetry Page.

Mark Blickley, writer The precursor to the magazine title (Children, Churches and Daddies) is very moving. "Scars" is also an excellent prose poem. I never really thought about scars as being a form of nostalgia. But in the poem it also represents courage and warmth. I look forward to finishing her book.

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MIT Vegetarian Support Group (VSG)

functions:
* To show the MIT Food Service that there is a large community of vegetarians at MIT (and other health-conscious people) whom they are alienating with current menus, and to give positive suggestions for change.
* To exchange recipes and names of Boston area veg restaurants
* To provide a resource to people seeking communal vegetarian cooking
* To provide an option for vegetarian freshmen

We also have a discussion group for all issues related to vegetarianism, which currently has about 150 members, many of whom are outside the Boston area. The group is focusing more toward outreach and evolving from what it has been in years past. We welcome new members, as well as the opportunity to inform people about the benefits of vegetarianism, to our health, the environment, animal welfare, and a variety of other issues.

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Gary, Editor, The Road Out of Town (on the Children, Churches and Daddies Web Site) I just checked out the site. It looks great.

Dusty Dog Reviews: These poems document a very complicated internal response to the feminine side of social existence. And as the book proceeds the poems become increasingly psychologically complex and, ultimately, fascinating and genuinely rewarding.

John Sweet, writer (on chapbook designs) Visuals were awesome. They've got a nice enigmatic quality to them. Front cover reminds me of the Roman sculptures of angels from way back when. Loved the staggered tire lettering, too. Way cool. (on "Hope Chest in the Attic") Some excellent writing in "Hope Chest in the Attic." I thought "Children, Churches and Daddies" and "The Room of the Rape" were particularly powerful pieces.

C Ra McGuirt, Editor, The Penny Dreadful Review: CC&D is obviously a labor of love ... I just have to smile when I go through it. (Janet Kuypers) uses her space and her poets to best effect, and the illos attest to her skill as a graphic artist.

Cheryl Townsend, Editor, Impetus (on Children, Churches and Daddies) The new CC&D looks absolutely amazing. It's a wonderful lay-out, looks really professional - all you need is the glossy pages. Truly impressive AND the calendar, too. Can't wait to actually start reading all the stuff inside.. Wanted to just say, it looks good so far!!!

Dusty Dog Reviews: She opens with a poem of her own devising, which has that wintry atmosphere demonstrated in the movie version of Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago. The atmosphere of wintry white and cold, gloriously murderous cold, stark raging cold, numbing and brutalizing cold, appears almost as a character who announces to his audience, "Wisdom occurs only after a laboriously magnificent disappointment." Alas, that our Dusty Dog for mat cannot do justice to Ms. Kuypers' very personal layering of her poem across the page.

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Fithian Press, Santa Barbara, CA
Indeed, there's a healthy balance here between wit and dark vision, romance and reality, just as there's a good balance between words and graphics. The work shows brave self-exploration, and serves as a reminder of mortality and the fragile beauty of friendship.

Mark Blickley, writer
The precursor to the magazine title (Children, Churches and Daddies) is very moving. "Scars" is also an excellent prose poem. I never really thought about scars as being a form of nostalgia. But in the poem it also represents courage and warmth. I look forward to finishing her book.

You Have to be Published to be Appreciated.

Do you want to be heard? Contact Children, Churches and Daddies about book or chapbook publishing. These reviews can be yours. Scars Publications, attention J. Kuypers. We're only an e-mail away. Write to us.

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Brian B. Braddock, Writer (on 1996 Children, Churches and Daddies) I passed on a copy to my brother who is the director of the St. Camillus AIDS programs. We found (Children, Churches and Daddies') obvious dedication along this line admirable.

The Center for Renewable Energy and Sustainable Technology
The Solar Energy Research & Education Foundation (SEREF), a non-profit organization based in Washington, D.C., established on Earth Day 1993 the Center for Renewable Energy and Sustainable Technology (CREST) as its central project. CREST's three principal projects are to provide:
* on-site training and education workshops on the sustainable development interconnections of energy, economics and environment;
* on-line distance learning/training resources on CREST's SOLSTICE computer, available from 144 countries through email and the Internet;
* on-disc training and educational resources through the use of interactive multimedia applications on CD-ROM computer discs - showcasing current achievements and future opportunities in sustainable energy development.
The CREST staff also does "on the road" presentations, demonstrations, and workshops showcasing its activities and available resources.
For More Information Please Contact: Deborah Anderson
dja@crest.org or (202) 289-0061

Brian B. Braddock, Writer (on 1996 Children, Churches and Daddies) I passed on a copy to my brother who is the director of the St. Camillus AIDS programs. We found (Children, Churches and Daddies') obvious dedication along this line admirable.

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Dorrance Publishing Co., Pittsburgh, PA
"Hope Chest in the Attic" captures the complexity of human nature and reveals startling yet profound discernments about the travesties that surge through the course of life. This collection of poetry, prose and artwork reflects sensitivity toward feminist issues concerning abuse, sexism and equality. It also probes the emotional torrent that people may experience as a reaction to the delicate topics of death, love and family.
"Chain Smoking" depicts the emotional distress that afflicted a friend while he struggled to clarify his sexual ambiguity. Not only does this thought-provoking profile address the plight that homosexuals face in a homophobic society, it also characterizes the essence of friendship. "The room of the rape" is a passionate representation of the suffering rape victims experience. Vivid descriptions, rich symbolism, and candid expressions paint a shocking portrait of victory over the gripping fear that consumes the soul after a painful exploitation.

want a review like this? contact scars about getting your own book published.

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Paul Weinman, Writer (on 1996 Children, Churches and Daddies) Wonderful new direction (Children, Churches and Daddies has) taken - great articles, etc. (especially those on AIDS). Great stories - all sorts of hot info!

The magazine Children Churches and Daddies is Copyright © through Scars Publications and Design. The rights of the individual pieces remain with the authors. No material may be reprinted without express permission from the author.

Okay, nilla wafer. Listen up and listen good. How to save your life. Submit, or I'll have to kill you.
Okay, it's this simple: send me published or unpublished poetry, prose or art work (do not send originals), along with a bio, to us - then sit around and wait... Pretty soon you'll hear from the happy people at cc&d that says (a) Your work sucks, or (b) This is fancy crap, and we're gonna print it. It's that simple!

Okay, butt-munch. Tough guy. This is how to win the editors over.
Hope Chest in the Attic is a 200 page, perfect-bound book of 13 years of poetry, prose and art by Janet Kuypers. It's a really classy thing, if you know what I mean. We also have a few extra sopies of the book "Rinse and Repeat", which has all the 1999 issues of cc&d crammed into one book. And you can have either one of these things at just five bucks a pop if you just contact us. It's an offer you can't refuse...

Carlton Press, New York, NY: HOPE CHEST IN THE ATTIC is a collection of well-fashioned, often elegant poems and short prose that deals in many instances, with the most mysterious and awesome of human experiences: love... Janet Kuypers draws from a vast range of experiences and transforms thoughts into lyrical and succinct verse... Recommended as poetic fare that will titillate the palate in its imagery and imaginative creations.
Mark Blickley, writer: The precursor to the magazine title (Children, Churches and Daddies) is very moving. "Scars" is also an excellent prose poem. I never really thought about scars as being a form of nostalgia. But in the poem it also represents courage and warmth. I look forward to finishing the book.

You Have to be Published to be Appreciated.
Do you want to be heard? Contact Children, Churches and Daddies about book and chapbook publishing. These reviews can be yours. Scars Publications, attention J. Kuypers - you can write for yourself or you can write for an audience. It's your call...

Dorrance Publishing Co., Pittsburgh, PA: "Hope Chest in the Attic" captures the complexity of human nature and reveals startling yet profound discernments about the travesties that surge through the course of life. This collection of poetry, prose and artwork reflects sensitivity toward feminist issues concerning abuse, sexism and equality. It also probes the emotional torrent that people may experience as a reaction to the delicate topics of death, love and family. "Chain Smoking" depicts the emotional distress that afflicted a friend while he struggled to clarify his sexual ambiguity. Not only does this thought-provoking profile address the plight that homosexuals face in a homophobic society, it also characterizes the essence of friendship. "The room of the rape" is a passionate representation of the suffering rape victims experience. Vivid descriptions, rich symbolism, and candid expressions paint a shocking portrait of victory over the gripping fear that consumes the soul after a painful exploitation.

Dusty Dog Reviews, CA (on knife): These poems document a very complicated internal response to the feminine side of social existence. And as the book proceeds the poems become increasingly psychologically complex and, ultimately, fascinating and genuinely rewarding. Children, Churches and Daddies. It speaks for itself.

Dusty Dog Reviews (on Without You): She open with a poem of her own devising, which has that wintry atmosphere demonstrated in the movie version of Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago. The atmosphere of wintry white and cold, gloriously murderous cold, stark raging cold, numbing and brutalizing cold, appears almost as a character who announces to his audience, "Wisdom occurs only after a laboriously magnificent disappointment." Alas, that our Dusty Dog for mat cannot do justice to Ms. Kuypers' very personal layering of her poem across the page.
Children, Churches and Daddies. It speaks for itself.

Debra Purdy Kong, writer, British Columbia, Canada (on Children, Churches and Daddies): I like the magazine a lot. I like the spacious lay-out and the different coloured pages and the variety of writer's styles. Too many literary magazines read as if everyone graduated from the same course. We need to collect more voices like these and send them everywhere.
Fithian Press, Santa Barbara, CA: Indeed, there's a healthy balance here between wit and dark vision, romance and reality, just as there's a good balance between words and graphics. The work shows brave self-exploration, and serves as a reminder of mortality and the fragile beauty of friendship.

Published since 1993 No racist, sexist or homophobic material is appreciated; we do accept work of almost any genre of poetry, prose or artwork, though we shy away from concrete poetry and rhyme for rhyme's sake. Do not send originals. Any work sent to Scars Publications on Macintosh disks, text format, will be given special attention over smail-mail submissions. There is no limit to how much you may submit at a time; previously published work accepted.