21 July 2020

Alisha opened her eyes. She was no longer in the dark, bizarre room, where her mother used to explore the dark secrets of time. But, she found herself in an abandoned, deteriorated compound. The ground seemed stranded.

The fall had quite an immense impact on her. Her vision was not still clear. Her back hurt, and she found it, difficult to sit up. Her watch could not survive the fall. Its dial now had a permanent split. She slipped it into her pocket. She was wearing her favourite sky blue gown, with a mix of white. She could not possibly know that this was no longer trending in fashion.

#fiction #opinion

"No, no, no! You aren't listening to the facts."

"Yes, he's quite right, the fact is that this gentleman is guilty. Plain and simple…"

"We know it's hard for your type to accept such heinousness, but..."

"Yes, who on God's green earth put a woman on a jury to begin with?"

In another life, Elizabeth would have winced at that last comment. Though, her current life had been filled with them-- men who talk loudly and overlap one another with their wagging tongues-- she felt sure that the eleven incredibly diverse specimens of the male species—well, as diverse as a room full of old white men can be, that is to say, very little—which stood around her barking out their opinions would not halt until she gave them what they wanted.

Elizabeth was incredibly used to giving men what they want. She thought to herself that she may as well give in this time, too. The men were not likely to hear her arguments or even shut up long enough to acknowledge them. She could “change her mind,” as she’d so often done in the past during arguments with her father or her husband. She knew that she could just agree with the men now and be home in time for supper.

Thoughts of the young man in question flooded her mind. She saw him sitting, quivering, behind the stand, unable to look at the lawyers or jury—probably for the fear of being labeled too bold for a black boy. Elizabeth had heard the evidence against him. It was purely circumstantial, and she felt sure that if young Arthur had been a white boy of the same age of 14 his innocence would not be in question.

“Miss,” one of the more tolerable men who swarmed about the room appealed to her now, “we would all like to get home for supper just as much as you—”

“Yes, and I’m sure you’ve got some cooking to do for your husband as well.”

The tolerable one spoke again, “The punishment for stealing isn’t too bad in Alabama. If you would just… agree.”

But the boy wasn’t just accused of stealing. That was why he was on trial, yes, but Elizabeth knew there had been a much darker reason for his arrest. Judge Taymour’s wife had been sneaking the boy an apple every Sunday so that he would have food in his belly before church—Elizabeth had witnessed it herself. The boy never stole a thing other than that woman’s affection, and Taymour couldn’t stand a little black boy so close to his wife.

“Miss,” he didn’t know she was married, “all you need to do is say yes. Just a simple yes will do.”

The room filled with silence, drained, for once, of the constant buzzing of men’s mighty voices, and the air was thick with, well, with whatever possessed men to be quiet. They all stood on their toes, staring like predators at the place where poor Elizabeth sat.

“No,” she said.

A loud grumble rolled about the room, and just like that, the buzzing was back. Some threw their meaty arms up impatiently, some plopped into chairs defeatedly, others paced about the room.

Elizabeth allowed the them to accept her answer, wondering if the men would ever accept being told no, and then she spoke,

“I am going to speak now, do you all understand?” Her words broke through the buzzing and hissing of others’ voices, and, perhaps shocked to hear a woman speak with such authority, the men fell silent. She went on, “I have quietly listened to all of you slander a poor, defenseless boy for hours now. Not one of you has mentioned the word ‘evidence’ let alone spoken about Taymour’s relation to the child.”

“Relation, dear?”

Elizabeth looked the man straight in the eyes and replied, “Arthur never committed any crime other than accepting a gift from Harold Taymour’s wife.”

“That is a serious accusation you’re tip-toeing around there, dear.”

Elizabeth snapped back, “No more serious than locking up a 14-year-old boy over an apple, I assure you.” She went on, “I’ve seen with my own eyes Mrs. Taymour handing the boy his Sunday apple and kissing him on the cheek, as a matter—”

“You’ve seen? Woman, may I remind you that a jury is to be completely dethatched from the defendant and free from all partiality toward him. How do you reckon you’ll be able to see through your obvious feelings about the boy and make a fair decision?”

Elizabeth smiled the same smile she always gave her husband when he was being an ass and said, “Well, I ‘reckon’ the same way you pretend your own fear of black skin isn’t what makes the ‘boy’ guilty, Sir.”

The room fell silent again, a different kind of silence from before. The man’s face grew red, either form anger or embarrassment, and Elizabeth stood, now in the middle of eleven men who may never let go of their grandfathers’ ways and said,

“Arthur is alone in this court—one black boy in a sea of white men telling him he’s guilty of accepting kindness from a stranger. Think for one second. Other than the boy on the stand, how many black people were in that courtroom?”

“None.”

“That’s right,” she said, “None. Not even Arthurs own parents showed up to the trial to support him because they knew what might happen to them if they went around offending white men.”

“That’s preposterous. The boy’s only 14. His parents are legally obligated to be in the room when—”

“When little black boys go to prison for touching a white woman’s heart, legality is no longer the issue.”

Elizabeth nodded in agreement.

White ceramic

pressing against our fingertips;

Yellowed teeth,

parted Purple lips;

Bagel breath,

strained eyes,

strained face,

strained smiles

that go nowhere.

Pinky fingers

moving an inch,

candied apple’s

slowing movement

like molasses,

like Red light,

like soflty spoken words.

Quivering Blue

meets wondering Purple

more than halfway;

Forked tongues

not yet sharpened,

not yet deadly,

not deadly enough.

Piss off the Yellow.

To Hell with the Red.

And the cold White freezes

when smooth tongues part

the Purple and the Blue.

The night I finished my cause or effect essay, I went to sleep after reading a chapter of Anthropology and I left my computer open on the desk in my office. I thought everything would be fine I had a few days to submit the assignment and I would have time to make a few changes. My husband didn’t realize he hadn’t shut the door completely after he used the office. He comes home late and studies even later into the night while I sleep. Afterward, my nine-month-old cat Teddy broke into the office and slept on the keyboard. Somehow, which is still a mystery to me, she triggered an upgrade from Windows 8 to Windows 10, which didn’t successfully upgrade the driver packs. In the end, my computer had to be completely reformatted to factory settings. I slipped into an extreme fit of depression that lasted almost a month with some lingering effects.

I use my computer to read my textbooks, watch the news on YouTube, and practice freewriting on my Goodreads.com account which was easily retrieved. Unfortunately, or fortunately, I was able to clean my house for a few extra hours and I slept more due to falling into the emotional “Pit of Despair,” (The Princess Bride, 1984). I found that I was too dependent on my computer. This, in turn, led me to look for different avenues to print out my study guides and handouts; reply to discussion questions; or to take quizzes on Canvas. I still feel inadequate for the loss of the time trying to fix my PC and managing only with a smartphone. I dislike reading on a tiny screen with my poor eyesight. I have my office set up just so and if one thing malfunctions my productivity flatlines. My computer had lost all my files, pictures, games, and programs. I’ve had the computer for about five years with very few problems, so I was devastated by the loss of the pictures which were of my children and recently deceased grandmother. I also lost many poems, short stories, essays, and journal entries that weren’t backed up on an online cloud. All my hard work; gone!

My mother likes to compare me to Henny Penny, the sky is always falling, and I never realize that it was only an acorn. As a result, I show my stress by how clean my house is. If the furniture has been rearranged it means that I’ve been having a complete emotional crisis. Memories and thoughts catch up and then they begin to spiral. This led me to fall behind in my required reading because two of my textbooks were inaccessible. My datebook was the only way that I kept myself on track. When I fall behind my mind tells me that I’m inadequate, I’m not good enough, they were right that I couldn’t go back to school. I stress and procrastinate more. I try my Focus: Pomodoro app but I just couldn’t concentrate. I would fold clothes in the living room and get distracted by the dishes while I was putting dish towels away, then the dryer would beep. I would run from task to task doing a lot yet accomplishing very little. This made me realize that my children aren’t ready to be self-sufficient yet because neither wholly finish their assigned chores or caused more work by leaving their cups, school papers, and snack wrappers in the family room. My children walk next door to do household chores, when they don’t have band practice, for my mother. I’m left in the moral quandary is it enabling bad habits by me doing their chores or asking too much for them to do double of the same chore that they help their grandmother with?

It also wasn’t helpful to bottle up grief, for over a year I had prolonged grieving over my grandmother’s death from Alzheimer's. I was her part-time caretaker in the last few months and was numb when she passed. This semester, my father had quadruple bypass surgery and a separate surgery to implant an internal defribulator. Little did we know he was in the early stages of Alzheimer's; the surgeries progressed the symptoms. This time has been full of unease for my entire family but to me, it seems like a reoccurring nightmare. On my husband’s day off, which are few, he was finally able to fix my computer. Then Murphy's Law decided to apply itself to my life directly, resulting in a tooth breaking off at the gum line and a filling in another tooth came out within days of each other. The following week my car broke down. Leading up to turkey day and no school for a week.

The week of Thanksgiving I got away from it all. I went walking twice to pick up aluminum cans, in all I walked four and a half miles. I took my time the first day, but I started back early on my second walk. I didn’t bother getting the litter on the walks; although, I plan to go again once finals are over. I collected over twenty-two pounds in a little less than six hours. It was a good thing I did this; it was a good way to put my thoughts in order and I was able to do something constructive. I listened to The Federalist Papers by John Jay, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton; going one way and walking back on the opposite side of the road I listened to a humorous book called Kill the Farm Boy by Kevin Hearn and Delilah S. Dawson. The landscape certainly changed in Ohatchee since the last time I beat the streets. In my Human Development course, it calls this mourning, grief work, and acceptance. Later I remembered Terry Pratchett wrote in I Shall Wear Midnight, “She heard him mutter, ‘Can you take away this grief?’ ‘I’m sorry,’ she replied. ‘Everyone asks me. And I would not do so even if I knew how. It belongs to you. Only time and tears take away grief; that is what they are for.’”

When I returned home after the second walk, I had a good cry; put on my favorite anime One Piece; ate the last piece of pumpkin pie; and proceeded to bed. I watched the harrowing adventure of a pirate chasing his dream of being the pirate king, gathering crew members, and facing the underlying social issues of the places his crew visited. The next morning, I woke up feeling not great but better. I ate the frog and finished one assignment at a time. It was enough to focus on just that day and that’s how I’ve had to take things. The AA motto: “One day at a time.” I would only add; a datebook helps. I took the time and filled in all the important dates the first week of class using the syllabi from my instructors.

Coming back to school has taught me new ways to cope with my anxiety and depression, but this course taught me the most. I learned something new in every lesson that I didn’t know before such as learning how to cite a source. Learning the structures of essays will help me move forward in the next writing comp class. The discussion question due dates in my datebook kept me tethered and kept me from throwing my hands up in the air and giving up. Many thanks.

written in November 2019 for EH101 as a reflective essay

#sixthcollegeessay #reflectiveessay #essay

What does a breakfast diner and the Earth have in common? They both rely heavily on plates. The crust of the Earth is ruled by the movements of tectonic plates, meaning they move and shift. They are contained in what is called the lithosphere. National Geographic magazine (2014) teaches, “The movement of the plates creates three types of tectonic boundaries.” They are named; convergent boundaries, divergent boundaries and transform plate boundaries. Additionally, “most geologic activity stems from the interlay of where the plates meet or divide and move at a rate of one to two inches per year.” I will explain these differences, give an example of where these plates meet, and what happens to the surrounding shifting Earth.

The first type is a divergent boundary. These plates pull away from each other afterward magma rises to form new crust. This is a process very few get to witness because most divergent boundaries are on the ocean floors like the Mariana Trench. According to my World Book Encyclopedia, “This process creates about 1 square mile (2.4 square kilometers) of ocean crust a year.” Furthermore, the African Rift is our primary example above ground. In the Olduvai Gorge area, many exciting discoveries were made by Donald Johansson and the Leaky family. You have probably heard of Lucy, which is believed to be an early ancestor to hominids. The Leaky family found even earlier fossils which are called Australopithecus Robustus. The gorge was in a way a time capsule(Haviland, ). In sum, these discoveries were breakthroughs for the scientific community. Which isn’t as interesting as my next point.

Convergent plate boundaries are by far the busiest and have multiple examples. Firstly, it would be the Himalayas. When landmasses on the plates collide, they buckle making mountain systems. This is called continental-continental convergence. Geologists estimate that this occurred around 55 million years ago when India and Asia came together. Next, there are places called subduction zones. Think of a big plate sliding over one another, while the bottom plate is getting recycled into the mantle creating deep ocean trenches. In some areas instead of mountains, deep ocean trenches are formed. Finally, these subduction zones can generate powerful earthquakes and often form a chain of volcanoes on the overriding plate building up until islands such as Japan, Java, or Hawaii exists (USGS, 4). This is called an Oceanic-continental convergence which makes up what is aptly named the Ring of Fire.

The final type transform plate boundaries neither collide nor do they pull apart. They merely slide past one another horizontally. The Bear state California has a perfect example involving the San Andres Fault, where the North American Plate meets the Pacific Plate. This fault is connected to a ridge that runs the span starting at the Gulf of California to a trench off the Northern California coastline. It’s a spectacular sight in the late afternoon but my advice is to wear good boots or shoes when visiting. Hiking here is one of my favorite memories of when I was a teenager going on vacation with my mom and dad. In the 1990s there were hiking trails maintained in several sections of the fault; although, I cannot vouch for them being there today. Since this section of land is on the Pacific Plate it is not a question of if California will separate from the continental U.S. but when? The changes will be slow; however, earthquake activity dictates how quickly the plates will move.

When one considers what happens to the Earth in these places, it’s clear that there are differences between divergent, convergent and transform plate boundaries. Therefore, we humans must adapt to the changing geography without changing a cycle that has been in play since before the early hominids or risk disrupting this delicate balance. It will be exciting to see new islands and mountains be formed albeit slowly. Mother Earth is far from finished sculpting her masterpiece leaving scientists as well as tourists in awe of the world we live in. What secrets will humans uncover in our insatiable curiosity as time passes? What tragedies might occur? Only time and our willingness to adapt will foretell the outcome.

Works Cited

Cloos, Mark. “Plate Tectonics.” The World Book Encyclopedia. 2007 ed. 2007.

Hiviland, William A., Herald E.L. Prins, Dana Walrath, & Bunny McBride. Anthropology: The Human challenge. 14th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Centage Learning. 2014.

National Geographic. “Science Reference: Plate Tectonics.” National Geographic Society, 2019. web,.

17 November 2019. <https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/earth/the-dynamic-earth/plate-tectonics/>

USGS. “Understanding plate motions.” usgs.gov 15 Aug 2014. Web,. 17 November 2017. <Https://pubs.usgs.gov/publications/text/understanding.html>

written in November 2019 in EH101 as a Classification Essay

#fifthcollegeessay #classificationessay #essay

How to Train Your Dragon. The books; even though the movies are wonderful. Sometimes names or the plot is a complete 180 degrees from the film yet it still embodies the spirit and theme. Enciteful with compelling wisdom to teach children lessons about acceptance, resorcefulness, and optimism.