By: Sarah

Title: Elizabeth

It is the summer solstice. Elizabeth and I sit at the shore of Lake Superior. The June sun crested hours ago, but it is still full daylight. I’ve brought a new journal, two cigarettes, a lighter, and a pen. Elizabeth called me to say that we had to celebrate the marking of summer, and I acquiesced despite the fact that I’d rather be at home, alone, like every other Friday when my husband works an overnight shift and I get to watch movies and eat too much ice cream.

Elizabeth studies botany; it’s a hobby for her, but just like her quote-collecting hobby which has yielded dozens of notebooks containing observations, recollections, insights, and simple facts that she’s uprooted from hundreds of poems, journals, articles, and books, she tackles botany with an obsessive attention to detail. She goes to the natural world for replenishment, sustenance, and communion. She makes tinctures and tonics out of the long, skinny stems, flowers, and twigs she pulls while hiking. Northern Michigan is her playpen. Tonight, however, there is no need for alchemy. Instead, we are just supposed to pause and reflect on the natural world.

“Write down what you’re grateful for,” she tells me. “And write down a goal for the next year.”

In silence, we scribble on small sheets of paper. We don’t share our ideas with each other; we burn them after digging a small crater in the sand to catch and conceal the ashes.

“Now, let’s write in our journals.” And we do. For a while. My wrist tires.

In a month, we will hike the Keweenaw Peninsula’s Estivant Pines Sanctuary, one of Michigan’s few remaining old-growth forests. Elizabeth and I will search for the ancient trees, thirteen to fifteen stories tall, that mingle among younger pines. Despite the fact that I spend every summer visiting this part of Michigan, I have never been to the Sanctuary; Elizabeth will bring me there on her second visit to the quiet peninsula. And when she gets a bug bite that swells instantly, and she picks some Plantain to mix with her spit before applying it to the irritated skin, I will be impressed to see the bite go down as we’re walking out of the woods.

We first met as graduate students sneaking outside during Teaching Assistantship training; “I’m not a real smoker,” she said, taking one of my hand-rolled cigarettes out of an Altoid tin, “I just bum them, but I’ll buy you a pack after I’ve bummed a bunch. I promise.” Initially, we misread each other. To me, she was scattered, random, maybe even airheaded. To her, I was practical, responsible, maybe even prudish. Eventually, we’d realize we were the same in most ways that matter. Eventually, she would buy me numerous canisters of American Spirit loose tobacco.

Sometimes she annoyed me. I might be discussing an unsuccessful lesson strategy as we walked across campus, or a disagreement with my husband from the night before, and she’d essentially disappear. Her mind suddenly consumed by a small weed growing among the grasses lining the university sidewalks. Before I could voice my frustration, she’d exclaim, “Pineapple weed! Here, smell this,” plucking the yellow ovular bud from a cluster of stems and pinching it between her fingers.

Other times, she annoyed me because I saw on her a scar—revealed only in the specific illumination of telling moments: midnight after too many pints. But this isn’t about Elizabeth and her multitude of emotional issues or her perceived impossibility of reciprocated love. Nor is it about her literary blog, an accounting of any and all texts that reflect the intolerable importance captured by the silence of a pause in conversation. No, this is about the way she was my friend.

In another year we will be separated. She will work as an adjunct in Western Michigan, and I will move to Minnesota. Far removed from the city on the shore of Lake Superior, we will seriously consider corresponding, sending letters back and forth, but we will not follow through. Instead, we’ll realize that we have the same cell phone provider and that the minutes spent discussing misbehaving students, Margaret Atwood, my new graduate program, her two adjunct positions—those minutes will be free. And so we will talk. I will notice pineapple weed in the grass. Every now and then, I’ll bend over to pick a yellow bud and squeeze it between my thumb and forefinger, bring it to my nose, and smile.

Memento Mori

What struck you as interesting in this story? What "made" the story? Do you know someone who is hard to shop for, crack, etc?

The Lottery

http://www.americanliterature.com/Jackson/SS/TheLottery.html

Were you surprised by the ending of the story? If not, at what point did you know what was going to happen? How does Jackson foreshadow the ending? How does Jackson lull us into thinking that this is just an ordinary story with an ordinary town? In what way does the setting affect the story?
Sorry it's kinda long but I hope you enjoyed it.

What the Doctor Said

I really envy the authors abitlity to tell a complete story in such a simple way. I would really like to hear your point of view on his "to the point" writing. Do you feel it would have been better had there been more dtails like similies or metaphores?
Patricia Hill

ऑस्कर विल्ड Questions

Questions on Oscar Wilde's Ballad of Reading Gaol.
Did you find this interesting? Was the description helpful, or a disadvantage to the plot line? Was the prose helpful, or a disadvantage to the plot line? Would a short story had brought the same breed of emotions out? And what was your overall take on the "mood" of "Reading Gaol?"

"It Couldn't be Done"

This poem is "It Couldn't be Done", by Edgar Guest. What did you think of it? Did you like it, why or why not? Can you relate to the content of the reading, does it make you think of a time in your life when someone told you "It Couldn't be done"? What is the moral of the story?

Shel Silverstein

In the poem Picture Puzzle Piece by Shel Silverstein, what did you find most humorous about his writing, if anything? Did his rhetorical questions leave room for your mind to think about all the possibilites of this one simple puzzle piece? How does this simple idea make you think about all the possibilities in your own life?