​ 
Behold! the pen is poised, the arm is raised, the words begin to flow. He barely pauses as he writes, he never strikes a line. He is William Shakespeare, at it again, writing his new play for the coming season. It is all worked out in his head, the plot, the characters; all that remains is to get it down on parchment. He is always a little excited when he starts something new. He feels the rush, a swelling in the breast. He knows exactly where he is going with this. It is the Jew who makes the play. All the rest is fluff, another afternoon's entertainment.
   We all know the story. The merchant Antonio secures a loan from the Jew Shylock so that his friend Bassanio can properly court the wealthy heiress Portia. Shylock stipulates that if the loan is not repaid within two months Antonio must forfeit a pound of his flesh. Antonio agrees since his ships, laden with cargo, are due back in a month. But when the ships are reported wrecked, Shylock demands his payment. And then the surprise ending.
   What was going on in Shakespeare's head when he sat down to write this play about Shylock the Jew? Was he or wasn't he? That has always been the question. We all want to know what Shakespeare really thought about the Jews.
   There had been precedents of course – Geoffrey Chaucer, for example, in the Prioress's Tale:
                        And as the child gan forby for to pace,
                        This cursed Jew hym hente and heeld hym faste,
                        And kitte his throte, and in a pit hym caste.
 
"Kitte his throte." Well, well. That had been inspired by the Hugh of Lincoln blood libel of 1255 ("slayn also with cursed Jews"). Not to be outdone, Christopher Marlowe had invented the Jew of Malta, a monster murdering everyone in sight, though it is hard to say what Marlowe had in mind, as he despised everyone ("Some Jews are wicked, as all Christians are," says Barabas). There can be no question that Shakespeare was influenced by him, but by the time he sat down to write The Merchant of Venice in around 1596, setting it in his own time, there had hardly been a Jew in England for 300 years. The Normans had brought them in and Edward I had kicked them out. In between there had been a few more blood libels and some massacres as well. These were the Middle Ages after all. Until the Jews had come along the British had mostly hated each other.
   Jewish movement into northern Europe had intensified as trade revived in the 11th and 12th centuries and the European economies expanded. In the south the Jews had been artisans and landowners as well as merchants, but in the north, and in eastern Europe, they came to constitute an urban commercial class whose fortunes were linked to the aristocracy, which granted them privileges and benefited financially from their activity. But while the higher secular and ecclesiastical authorities often had moderate views about the Jews, anti-Jewish feeling came to be deeply ingrained in the populace and was periodically if not continuously inflamed by the local clergy and certain particularly malevolent Church polemicists. Jew hatred had begun to develop in the Church right from the start. However, at the same time as the Church despised the Jews, it tolerated them, seeing them in the Augustinian scheme as being there to serve as object lessons and as witnesses to the truth and triumph of Christianity and themselves destined for salvation at the end of days. In the meanwhile they would live in servitude with a host of disabilities to remind them of their lowly state and errant ways. 
   Persecution of Jews had also intensified in the 11th century, culminating in the massacres in France and Germany in 1096 during the First Crusade, though the Church Militant and the secular authorities opposed the violence. In the 12th century, in an atmosphere of increasing hostility, Jews found themselves being pushed out of trade by resentful burghers and drawn to moneylending as financial needs grew and the Church cracked down on usury among Christians. In the Venice of Shylock too, Jews had been active as moneylenders throughout the 16th century (and confined to a ghetto since 1516), though ironically it was the development of Italy's international banking system that had reduced England's dependence on Jewish moneylenders and facilitated the expulsion of the Jews in 1290.
    But The Merchant of Venice is not all business. Since it qualifies as a comedy in the Shakespearean canon it revolves around a commonplace romantic plot no different from dozens of others that London playgoers would have encountered in the popular theater. The difference is Shakespeare himself, who adds Shylock, without whom the play would have been meaningless, just as Hollywood films are meaningless. Romantic comedies in the Hollywood mold hold the attention for just two hours. Shakespeare has held it for 400 years.
   The first two scenes are all repartee and stage setting. Bassanio complains to Antonio about his courtship problem and Portia complains to her maid Nerissa about her suitor problem with a tart and witty catalogue of their faults:
                        Ner. How like you the young German, the Duke of Saxony's nephew?
                        Por. Very vilely in the morning when he is sober, and most vilely in
                        in the afternoon when he is drunk; when he is best he is little worse
                        than a man, and when he is worst he is little better than a beast.
 
   Portia will in fact emerge as the only character in the play other than Shylock who displays any real individuality. Like all writers, Shakespeare does not invest equal art or effort in all his characters. Most are perfunctory creations, there to swell a progress and start a scene or two.
   But now Shylock makes his appearance, hemming and hawing about lending Bassanio 3000 ducats for which "Antonio shall be bound," and refusing to dine with Antonio to close the deal, for, as he tells Bassanio, "I will buy with you, sell with you, walk with you, and so following, but I will not eat with you, drink with you, nor pray with you."
   This is spot on. Shakespeare knew his Jews, though he may never have met one; but then Shylock gives himself away in an aside as Antonio appears:
                        I hate him for he is a Christian.
                        But more for that, in low simplicity,
                        He lends out money gratis, and brings down
                        The rate of usuance here with us in Venice.
 
   Shylock may hate Antonio because he is a Christian, in and of itself, and because he is ruining the credit market, but he also hates him because "he hates our sacred nation," so it cannot be said that Shylock is not true to himself as a Jew.
   But the thing is this: in the past, Antonio has insulted him, cursed him, spat at him, and now he comes to borrow money for his friend. We can all see why Shylock is out of sorts. And now too Antonio assures him that even if he lets him have the money he will continue to curse him and spit in his face. Shylock, however, is conciliatory – though the bite of sarcasm is always there, as a hedge, I believe, protecting him against rejection – and would let Antonio have the money interest-free if he could earn his friendship, and proposes "in a merry spirit" that they go to a notary and seal the deal against a pound of Antonio's flesh. Antonio is not concerned, as his ships will bring in a profit "thrice three times the value of this bond." Bessanio is against the idea. "O father Abraham," Shylock exclaims, "what these Christians are, whose own hard dealings teach them to suspect the thoughts of others!" For what will he gain if he takes the forfeiture? "I say, to buy his favor I extend this friendship."
   Thus far we may have mixed feelings about Shylock, for he is a little hard to figure. But of course no one in Shakespeare's audience would have found Shylock in the least bit sympathetic, or human. They only knew their Shylocks in the single dimension of their Jewishness and everything it entailed for them. Shakespeare is to be commended then for the fullness of his portrait, the fair representation of the Jew's point of view. I'm not sure if Shakespeare shared Shylock's view of Christianity but it is admirable that he understood that Shylock had such a view. It should also be said that there is something hurt, resentful, victimized about Shylock. Shakespeare grasps this perfectly, and it is doubtful if very many Englishmen of his time could have seen the Jew in the way that Shakespeare sees him. The music of the language aside, Shakespeare's genius lay in his ability to take commonplace themes – greed, jealousy, revenge, in a word the themes of a Harold Robbins novel – and represent them with profound psychological understanding. 
   The second act is played out in nine mostly short scenes. Here one must pause to admire Shakespeare's craft. I confess that I am surprised at how rich the play is. There is a lot going on, so many bodies to move around. Of course, most of it is just plot, but it is elaborate, neatly structured, even interesting.
   Now Shakespeare introduces a second pair of lovers – Shylock's daughter, Jessica,  and Lorenzo, the former vowing to marry the latter and become a Christian, "ashamed to be my father's child." She is ashamed of both his usury and his "manner." That's fair. Wronged or not as a Jew, Shylock is beginning to come across as an unattractive type with all his whining and self-pity, a manner that seems to say, "Aren't you a fine lot of Christian gentlemen beating down the poor Jew." Is Shakespeare himself ambivalent about Shylock? I think not. Jessica is the giveaway. If his own daughter despises him, who wouldn't?
   Now, while Shylock is at Antonio's to settle the loan business and Portia is at Belmont, her estate on the mainland, dealing with another suitor, Jessica elopes with Lorenzo, but not before taking some ducats and jewels from Shylock's hoard. This is a little hard to fathom, turning a heroine into a thief. I am at a loss to understand how Shakespeare rationalized this in his own mind, other than bowing to the need to heat up the plot. In any case, Shylock alerts the Duke to the theft. In the meanwhile Bassanio has gotten his loan and sails to Belmont laden with gifts. The thing with Portia is that in accordance with her father's will she must marry the suitor who guesses which of three caskets contains her portrait. Thus far, to her great relief, everyone has failed.
   There now comes news that one of Antonio's ships has been wrecked. Shylock vows to get his pound of flesh, as vengeance for being disgraced, hindered, thwarted, mocked, simply because he is a Jew, and now we get the famous "Hath not a Jew" speech concerning eyes, hands, organs and all the rest. Is Shakespeare playing the devil's advocate, or does he sympathize with the Jewish condition? It is hard to say, for then we have Antonio arriving and Shylock ranting about his stolen jewels and ducats and wishing his daughter dead, so we cannot really say what Shakespeare wishes us to think.
   Meanwhile, over at Belmont, Bassanio has picked the right casket and wins Portia, who presents him with a ring as a pledge and token of her devotion, which, if lost or given away, would signify for her that he no longer loves her. To keep things symmetrical, Bassanio's friend Gratiano now becomes enamored of Portia's maid Nerissa. Enter Lorenzo with "his infidel," namely Jessica, and now they learn that all of Antonio's ships have been wrecked and he is ruined and the Jew is demanding his pledge and no one can dissuade him from it. Portia sends Bassanio off to Venice to pay the debt, even double and triple the amount, anything to get the Jew off their backs, but not before marrying him, that is, Bassanio, as does Nerissa with Gratiano.
   Shylock has had Antonio arrested. Portia announces that she is retiring to a monastery until Bassanio returns, and asks Lorenzo and Jessica to house sit for her. But the saucy gal has a few tricks up her sleeve.
   Now comes the big courtroom scene, the Duke presiding. Shylock will not relent. Bassanio arrives with 6000 ducats but Shylock rejects the offer. He wants his pound of flesh. At this point Nerissa appears, disguised as a man, albeit a short one, and presents a letter from Bellario, a renowned doctor of law, introducing a young colleague to the Court, who will present an opinion in his stead. And yes, it is Portia posing as that same young colleague under the name of Balthazar. Right from the start she urges mercy on Shylock, but to no avail.
                        Por. The quality of mercy is not strained;
                        It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
                        Upon the place beneath it; it is twice blessed:
                        It blesseth him that gives and him that takes….
                        It is enthroned in the heart of kings.
                        It is an attribute of God himself.
 
Clearly, if there is an overriding theme in the play it is this Christian idea of mercy set against the perceived Jewish idea of justice according to the letter of the law – waved in the Jew's face as it were – with mercy of course getting the upper hand. But now Portia examines the bond and declares that it is valid. Shylock can barely contain himself, still refusing the money, and Antonio is ordered to lay bare his breast, and Shakespeare plays the scene for all it's worth, to the hilt, milking it dry, as the saying goes, and there would have been gasps and hisses in the audience for sure, a veritable ecstasy of Jew hatred. London would be talking about this for weeks.
   And then, like a thunderbolt from heaven:
                        Por. Tarry a little – there is something else.
                        This bond doth give thee here no jot of blood;
                        The words are expressly a pound of flesh:
                        Take then thy bond, take thou thy pound of flesh;
                        But, in the cutting, if thou dost shed
                        One drop of Christian blood, thy lands and goods
                        Are, by the laws of Venice, confiscate
                        Unto the state of Venice.
 
   Well, now, she has got him, and he knows it, there will be no pound of flesh today,  the Jew is foiled, defeated, humiliated, yes he is, and to make a long story short, Antonio is awarded half of Shylock's lands and goods, as the penalty for his "seeking the life" of another citizen "by direct or indirect attempts," and the state the other half. But Antonio has a better idea: to award the goods and lands to Jessica and Lorenzo – half now and half after his death – and furthermore that Shylock be made to become a Christian – and so it is done.
   To put a cap on things, there is one more twist. "Balthazar" refuses payment from Antonio for his services, but offers to take Bassanio's ring as a token. Bassanio is understandably unwilling to part with it, remembering Portia's words. But Balthazar insists and Bassanio relents, and again to maintain the symmetry the disguised Nerissa cajoles Gratiano into giving her his ring too. And now, back at Belmont, some fun with the rings and the girls confessing to their ruse and news that three of Antonio's ships have come in safe and sound and so to bed and all's well that ends well except for the despised Jew.
   The most common error made by those who wish to understand Jew hatred is to see it as a historical and social phenomenon whose causes are to be sought in objective circumstances – economic conditions, for example, or even Jewish crimes. Jew hatred is not that at all. It is a pathological phenomenon and its causes are to be sought in the mind of the Jew hater rather than in historical circumstances or in the real or imagined actions of the Jews. Circumstances, historical or social, may awaken or exacerbate Jew hatred but to do so the hatred must already be there. We kill for this or that immediate reason but we would not kill if we did not have murderous feelings. Antonio may hate moneylenders as usurers but he hates Shylock as a Jew. Jew haters hate Jews first and then find the reasons to. This is the one basic distinction that has to be made to understand the nature of Jew hatred.
   The accusations made against Jews, from Christ killing on down, have therefore been, all through history, not the causes of Jew hatred but the pretexts or rationalizations or vindications for it. Whether such accusations were true or not, whether the Jews really were well poisoners or usurers or Host desecrators or ritual murderers, was entirely irrelevant. The hatred or animosity or aversion felt by Christians toward Jews had nothing to do with what they did.
   Since Jew hatred infested the entire Christian world, it must necessarily have had the same cause everywhere, which, if not the Jews themselves – their crimes or bad character – must lie in the nature of Christianity itself, or in human nature as such, or in a combination of the two. In the time of the early Church, new Christians did not understand that it was the Jews they were meant to hate until the Church told them to. They would have been happy to hate someone else. It is after all a fact that people incited by the Church to hate Jews hated other people as well, with or without the prompting of the Church. The hater looks around for someone to hate. The Church gave him the Jew. Admittedly, he might have found the Jew without the help of the Church, just as he found others to hate, but it is the Church as the prime mover that bears the guilt, and therefore it has to be said, without qualification, that the hatred of Jews that the Church brought into the Christian world is responsible for every act of violence ever directed by a Christian against a Jew.
   In the early Church, Jew hatred always involved two principal elements: resentment and rivalry. Though the Jews were not active proselytizers like the Christians, their religion nonetheless attracted outsiders and was therefore perceived as competing with Christianity in the business of winning souls. How Christianity responds to rivalry can be seen in the religious wars inspired by the emergence of the Protestant faith. Why the Christian responds so violently to rivalry is once again more a matter of pathology than of ideology.
   Nietzsche has described Christianity as the religion of resentment par excellence –  "a resentment experienced by creatures who, deprived as they are of the proper outlet for action, are forced to find their compensation in an imaginary revenge … the vindictive hatred and revengefulness of the weak" (The Genealogy of Morals). Certainly Christianity attracted the downtrodden, the oppressed and the spat upon, and brought with it great hatred of the strong. Paul states this very clearly (1 Corinthians 2:27-28):
But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the        wise; and God has chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty;
And base things of the world, and things which are despised, has God chosen, and things which are not, to bring to naught things that are.
 
   But while this may explain why the Christians hated the Romans, or the rich and the powerful in general, it still does not explain why they hated the Jews or any other spiritual rivals, namely, why they hated those who were as weak as themselves. In fact, even when the Church became strong the resentment did not abate, for, especially in its strength, it continued to attract the weak. Why do the weak hate or resent the weak? Some will say because they remind them of their own condition, causing them to hate in others what they hate in themselves. Some will say in order to elevate themselves over and above these others and have something lower than themselves to despise and against which to measure and affirm themselves. Some will say because the others do not acknowledge their superiority, even challenge it and deride it, thus diminishing those who wish to think highly of themselves. Whatever the cause, it is supremely ironic that Christianity as a religion professing love should have attracted so many followers who were prone to the most vicious kinds of hatred.
   The Christian found his strength and identity in his faith, attaching himself to a community and to a system of values and beliefs that gave him his sense of dignity and worth, so that whatever threatened it threatened him as well. Without this faith he had nothing and was nothing. Without it he became what he had always been. Out of this faith he built a great tower and inhabited it as though he were a tower himself, full of righteous pride. The Jew refused to acknowledge the truth of this faith and thereby shook the foundations of the Christian's idea of himself and undermined the elaborate structure he had erected to sustain himself and magnify his self-esteem. The Jew stood against him stubbornly maintaining that the truth lay elsewhere and thereby enraged him as any creature is enraged when its sustenance is stolen from out of its mouth and the solid ground on which it stands is pulled out from under its feet. The Jew stood against the Christian and would not give him the affirmation that he required to elevate himself above the Jew and the Christian hated him for it.
   That affirmation could only be found among other Christians. When the Christian stood alone he remained weak, undistinguished, but when he joined together with the others and became part of a crowd or mob or community looking down at the miserable Jews, he felt strong, secure, exalted, and together with the others invented all the reasons in the world why he should continue to hate them. The Jew, however, would still not acknowledge the primacy of the Christian faith and this gnawed at the Christian soul, it made the Christian's stomach churn and brought the heat to his face, it reminded him of who and what he was, but he did not understand his own pathology and continued to believe his own lies. Many observers have understood the need of the mediocre to place themselves above a despised group. In conventional sociological terms this is called racism or bigotry. In the Christian world it was known as truth.         
   But Jew hatred has never been confined to the weak. It has also manifested itself among the strong. One would have thought that the strong would not need someone to hate as much as the weak, but the fact is that many strong individuals have hated Jews just as vehemently. That is because Jew hatred does not spring up overnight. The seed is planted very early in the Christian home. Whether it will bear fruit depends on the character of the Christian child. Whether he requires a figure like the Jew to fortify his fragile identity in the same way that his parents, his teachers and the village idiot do is entirely a personal matter that has very little to do with Jews. Whether he can overcome this need is strictly a question of the strength of his character. By the time he reaches maturity it is too late, he has already slipped into the habit and surrendered himself to the reflexes of Jew hatred.
   It hardly needs to be said that after an absence of 300 years the Jew existed for Englishmen and for Shakespeare not as a reality but as an emblematic figure, like the bogeyman. The Jew in his emblematic aspect stood for everything that was un-Christian and therefore negated the faith upon which the Christian's identity was built, negated the Christian himself in effect and the virtues he claimed to possess and which enabled him to hold himself erect regardless of his personal circumstances. But of course this was a monumental piece of hypocrisy, as the English themselves were as far removed from the spirit of Christianity as any people have ever been, barely human in their mobs and cruel beyond measure as lords and ladies. Christianity was therefore an idea that was seldom lived in England, as was the case in the rest of Christendom. But if it was not lived, it was thought, and the thought for most was as good as the act, for most people prefer to be judged by what they profess rather than what they do. The cruel paradox then was that the Jews were hated for not accepting a faith whose spirit the Christians themselves violated every minute of the day. 
   Other than clerics, however, there would have been very few people in England in the year 1600 who hated Jews actively. Out of sight, out of mind, as the saying goes. They only hated Jews when they thought about them, and only the clerics thought about them constantly. But the potential for hatred was there in the idea of the Jew that they bore within them, dormant or not, like a germ. Given the opportunity, when the Jews had resided among them, they had hated them as well as anyone. Shakespeare too, I am convinced, would not have hated Jews, but he would have shared the British aversion to them, though even in the worst of times, being Shakespeare, he would certainly not have attached himself to an English mob engaging in one of its massacres. At the most he would have written a play, which is exactly what he did.   
   In England, where all emotion is filtered and mediated through social conventions, and one's social identity is achieved by conforming to these conventions, Jew hatred among the quasi-civilized, after the Jewish resettlement in the middle of the 17th century, mostly resolved itself into distaste, expressed in the very special way the British have of expressing their disapproval, in the cutting remark that evokes the imaginary British standards that the object of one's scorn fails to live up to. In the pubs and football stadiums the expressions of displeasure are of course a little more vocal.  
   Not all Christians hate Jews of course. In the modern world fewer and fewer do, and while many remain hostile to Jews or have an aversion to them or simply dislike them, many have an entirely neutral attitude or even admire them and the Church itself, it must be said, has ceased to be a hostile influence. However, since 1967, traditional European Jew hatred has been reinforced by Israel hatred, which is a respectable form of Jew hatred in a time when Jew hatred as such has become unfashionable. This is the contribution of the political left and generally goes hand in hand with hatred or resentment of America. Criticism of Israel is by no means the same thing as Jew hatred. One need only look at the venomous language of the anti-Israel blogs to understand the difference. What should be clear is that Israel would not be hated if it wasn't Jewish. If Israel was an Arab country and the Palestinians were indigenous non-Muslim Sudanese, let us say, and you had the same conflict and the same occupation and the same "ethnic cleansing," hardly an eyebrow would be raised. The Six-Day War was a godsend for Jew haters, a fertile breeding ground where an ingrained aversion to Jews could blossom into undisguised enmity. Ironically, Arab or Muslim hatred of Israel, however fanatical, at least has the virtue of being the by-product of a national conflict and is therefore comprehensible in conventional historical terms, unlike such hatred among Israel haters in the West, which is the outgrowth of a scarred and twisted psyche. This is the nature of Jew hatred in our time.
 
 
 

Lois Greene Stone, writer and poet, has been syndicated worldwide. Poetry and personal essays have been included in hard & softcover book anthologies.  Collections of her personal items/ photos/ memorabilia are in major museums including twelve different divisions of The Smithsonian.

​Artificial intelligence.  Intelligence is a genetic gift.  “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” ... would you want to be smart only to have it taken away?  Will stem cell from research become real-life?  Is manipulation or experimentation ‘artificial’?
 
“Alexa, turn on the light” my husband raises his voice and a cylinder in the family room reacts.  It is dusk. She answers, “okay” and a floor lamp’s bulb responds.  I ask ‘her’ about the forecast, to set a timer as I prepare to make dinner; my mate wants the score of the football game currently being played in another state. 
 
Do I want to upgrade to the new blob that can make phone calls and have video chats?  I wonder about this.  I can do Skype on my computer, and Face Time on my tablet, and the digital phone has speed-dials.  Do I want the competing device that allows multiple speakers offering surround sound, yet has the same basic function as Alexa? 
 
I read “1984" with the same attitude as comics that had decoder rings, or a camera hidden in a tie tack.  There were no tie tacks then, only tie bars, and rings were just that, rings.  The idea that someone could watch whatever I was doing was absurd; I closed my bedroom door and the outside vanished.  MY things, my room, my privacy surrounded me.  I listened to the radio’s noise with programs I wanted; my parents and sisters could do the same in their private spaces.  Television altered that as we grouped around a tiny screen seeing only ‘test patterns’ for most of the time as programs were infrequent. 
 
Recording devices were fat reels with thin magnetic tape housed in a suitcase-like box.  It could  capture songs coming from the radio, the family singing or any one of us playing the piano, the audio of a special event as a wedding.  We controlled what it did.
 
We turned on a light, the oven, raised the furnace’s temperature, used a paper dictionary, put a 78 rpm on a spindle and had brief minutes of recorded music before having to turn the shellacked disk over to the other side, dial a telephone.  How much is a recipe’s measurements if cut in half?  Calculations were done with pencil and paper.
 
“Echo, play Frank Sinatra music”, the hockey-puck sized Echo lights up when my husband enters his office room.  Her circular colors indicates her obedience.  She doesn’t require food, or sleep, or positive-strokes to get through the day.  She doesn’t need a flu shot, or shingles vaccine, or to bathe.  She’s an object.  Or is she?  We have to be careful with our words else either of the devices will ‘hear’ and start.  I’ve started a sentence with ‘the economy’ and she turns on just hearing the ‘eco’.  And when my neighbor, Alex, calls, I hesitate to say the human’s name or AI lights up happily thinking ‘she’ has been invited to talk.  Is both our ‘cylinder’ and the ‘dot’ intelligent for real?
 
Are we being secretly recorded then the information stored on a ‘cloud’ like items from our computers?  Do you think “1984" has still avoided our own homes?  Are we safe to have heated discussions about news items, politics, religion, culture or is this seemingly-silent-until-we-activate-her blob really a listening device?  Just in case we really are not alone, when we are near one of our AI machines, and are having a debate or serious conversation, we whisper.
 

Interviewer Carol Smallwood’s recent poetry collections include: In Hubble’s Shadow (Shanti Arts, 2017); (Prisms, Particles, and Refractions Finishing Line Press, 2017).
 
 

​http://thebookendsreview.com/2017/10/18/interview-w-judith-skillman/
 
 
One of the many awards that noted American poet, Judith Skillman has received is from the Academy of American Poets for Storm while Red Town, and Prisoner of the Swifts were Washington State Book Award finalists. Her poems have been included in such journals as Shenandoah, Prairie Schooner, FIELD and her collaborative translations in various journals; she’s in Best Indie Verse of New England.  Her latest full poetry collection is Kafka’s Shadow.  Deerbrook Editions, Cumberland, Maine; 77 pages; $16.95; paperback; 2017. ISBN 978-0-9975051-4-6
https://www.amazon.com/Kafkas-Shadow-Judith-Skillman/dp/0997505141
 
 
Question:
 
How did you decide on Franz Kafka for your new poetry collection?
 
I read “Metamorphosis” again, and was very taken with it. After a span of thirty years since the last reading, the story took on new dimensions. Then I read “The Stoker,” “The Judgment,” and “Letter to His Father,” as these have been reissued in a new edition titled The Sons (Schocken Books, Inc., 1989). After a visit to San Francisco, I wrote “Kafka’s Wound” and continued to find myself thinking and writing about Kafka. It took awhile before I realized the series might become a collection.
 
Question:
 
What are some of the most interesting things about him you discovered?
 
I learned that his relationship with his father was extremely complicated, and that helped my understanding of his work. In addition, he suffered greatly from intense sensitivities as well as, of course, the chronic illness of consumption/tuberculosis. His passion to write, his insomnia, and the hours he kept made me feel some identification with him, and I continued to read more of his letters. In this regard the book Franz Kafka: Letters to Friends, Family, and Editors was invaluable (transl. Richard and Clara Winston, Schocken Books, NY, 1977).
 
 I was surprised to find that Kafka felt such self contempt that he viewed himself as a son who should be sacrificed, as in the Biblical story of Abraham and Isaac. At the point I learned this I’d written a couple poems on that very subject, and experienced the sense of an encounter with the author, apart from space-time.
 
 
Question:
 
The Notes section in the back of Kafka’s Shadow (3 pages) share some of the scholarship necessary for such an ambitious collection. How long did it take to write the book?
 
Kafka’s Shadow took about three years to complete. As mentioned earlier, the book Letters to Friends, Family, and Editors provided inspiration when coupled with his stories and, especially, “Letter to His Father.”  The interest and support of my writing groups and colleagues, in particular Christianne Balk, provided impetus to continue.
 
 
Question:
 
When and how did you begin your interest in translations? What classes did you take in languages?
 
My interest in translation began when I went to the University of Washington in 1994-95, ostensibly to get a PhD in Comparative Literature. That journey didn’t work out, but in the process I fell in love with the theory and art of translation. I have taken French and lived in Paris for three months—just long enough to become a Francophile.
 
Question:
 
You have been nominated for the Pushcart, Best of the Web. Please share how you came to be a poet? What other kinds of writing do you do?
 
I began writing in a journal in high school, but even before that, I had an elementary school teacher who taught poetry. And while my parents were both scientific (PhD’s in physics and math), they were also avid readers and lovers of music and all the arts. They took us to plays and concerts. I think the years of voracious reading likely determined my interest in literature.
 
I have written fiction and non-fiction as well. A ‘how to’: Broken Lines—The Art & Craft of Poetry is the most serious effort I’ve made so far in non-fiction. There are many projects I would like to pursue, but the reality is one has to pick and choose.
 
Question:
 
What poets have influenced you the most?
 
There are so many! In particular I like the associative poets, among them Celan, Vallejo, Transtromer, René Char, and Franz Wright. I taught a “Great American Poets” course for several quarters and fell again for Williams, Bishop, Dickinson, Plath, Stevens, Eliot, Pound, et al. I also feel a great affinity for Jack Gilbert’s work.
 
Roethke, Beth Bentley, Nelson Bentley, Stafford, Wagoner—all the Northwest poets. Milosz, Levine, Edith Sodergran, Adrienne Rich, Cavafy, Lucille Clifton. Wakoski, and all the beat poets. The thing is to continue reading, knowing one will never plumb the extant canon of virtuoso poetry.
 
Question:
 
How do you decide the number of stanzas, length of lines in your poems: what is your progression, steps, in composing?
 
Generally a poem begins as a fragment and then gathers steam. There are times when the form pours out with the poem, (a poem pours out fully formed) but those are rare and far between. I like to follow David Wagoner’s advice—take of your censorial hat when you write, let it sit, and then go back to the piece with your editorial hat.
 
To write anything at all one must be in a receptive frame of mind, and not add judgments as to whether the would be poem is ‘good’ or ‘bad.’ The formal arrangement can come later. Exceptions abound, however. If you want to write a sonnet, villanelle or other set form, then you have to be intentional: count beats and employ rhyme and/or half rhymes.
 
Question:
 
What is your usual writing schedule for the day?
 
I don’t adhere to a strict schedule. There are days when I revise, and days when I explore other forms of art, such as painting. Writing requires wide reading as well—it all takes time—so flexibility is key.
 
Simply maintaining the body, house, and  extended family takes longer as I get older, so there are periods when writing happens only in the mind, with ideas. If that kind of ‘air creativity’ becomes more serious it might take the form of note-taking, marginalia, and/or soft research. When I feel the need to stop what I’m doing and write, I take that seriously.
 
Question:
 
Have you begun working on another collection?
 
Yes! I have a collection seeking a publisher. It has been a finalist at a few contests. Time will tell. Writing poems includes so many aspects; publishing so many facets. I feel lucky and blessed to be have been given the chance to write.
 
 
Fans can visit her on www.judithskillman.com
 
 
 

Clemencio Montecillo Bascar was a former Professor and Vice President for Corporate Affairs of the Western Mindanao State University. He is a recepient of various local, regional, and national awards in songwriting, playwriting, poetry, and public service. Several of his poems had been published in international literary magazines and journals such as, Foliate Oak, BRICKrhetoric, About Place, Torrid Literature, Mused-theBellaOnline Lietrary Review, and The Voices Project. He had written and published by the Western Mindanao State University two books of poetry, namely; "Fragments of the Eucharist" and "Riots of Convictions." In the Philippines, some of his poems appeared in the such magazines as Women's, MOD, and Chick. 
At present, he writes a column in the Zamboanga Today daily newspaper and resides at 659 Gemini Street, Tumaga, Zamboanga City, Philippines. He is married to the former Miss Melinda Climaco dela Cruz and blest with three children, Jane, Lynnette, and Timothy James.   

​"Belligerency is a term used in internatinal law to indicate the status  of two or more entities, generally sovereign states, being engaged in a war. Once the status of belligerency is established between two or more states. their relations are determined and governed by the laws of war."
 
This article is written with utmost neutrality and objectivity and is not intented or meant to side with or favor any group, institution, or individual. It is purely an academic attempt, as an ordinary educator, to explain how and when an armed rebel group attains a status of belligerence, a legal standing under international law equal to the political status as that  of the sovereign state it is rebelling against or at war with. Factual examples are the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), and the Communist Party of the Philippines with the National People's Army as its revolutionary arm (CPP-NPA).
 I do not claim expertise or professional competence in this subject matter for which reason, citations of authorities and experts are creditably made. I wish also to make it absolutely clear to everyone, that this academic discussion, does not bear the slightest advocacy or encouragement for the use of belligerence or other forms of violence as a modality to achieve peace or other political aspirations such as autonomy, liberation, or independence. On the contrary, I have always adhered to my personal conviction that the best methods for civilized countries to attain peace anywhere on earth are diplomacy, legal and judicial processes, and other non-violent initiatives. Proofs of this are the following articles I published both locally and nationally: PEACE AND GUNS DON'T MIX, NEGOTIATED PEACE IS SUSPENDED WAR, AND THE BEST ROADMAP TO PEACE IS PEACE.
 Having been officially recognized by the Republic of the Philippines and the international community as belligerent armed organizations, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), and the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP-NPA), are already states who enjoy the same political status and rights as any independent and sovereign country. While they are still in a state of war against the Republic of the Philippines, by virtue of the existening ceasefire agreements, they  can carry on their  governmental affairs and operations within their respective defined and controlled territorial jurisdictions just like any independent and sovereign state as long as they strictly adhere to and uphold the terms and conditions of the  pacts they forged for the ceasation of hostilities. Being belligerent states, their relations with the Republic of the Philippines are  determined and governed by the applicable international laws of armed conlicts and not by our Basic Law, the Constitution of  of 1987.
 For the educational benefit of those who do not possess the functional understanding and knowledge as to how belliegerent  status is attained by any rebel group,  may I enumerate the following criteria as cited in an article jointly authored by Ewen Allison and Robert Goldman:
1. When it controls a territory in a state against which it is rebelling;
2. When it declares independence and its goal is secession;
3. When it has well-organized armed forces;
4. and most importantly, the government recognizes it as belligerent.
 As expounded by the authors cited above, the overriding justification for the grant of belligerent status to armed groups  rebelling against a state, is to prevent  serious legal and humanitarian consequences.  They explain that without belligerent status, a government would not be bound to treat insurgents according to the law of international armed conflicts, which could result in savage and inhuman incidents.
On account of the fact that in our contemporary times, many sovereign states are hesitant to grant recognition to groups waging liberation or secessionist wars against them for fear that they would lose control of their territories, as a counter mechanism, the international community has arranged for minimum standards of international humanitarian law to be triggered by facts on the ground without waiting for governments to recognize belligerent or a state of belligerency, according to the same authors. They assert that a confrontation is deemed to be an international conflict when the fighting is so intense, organized, and protracted enough to go beyond temporal disturbances and tensons.  Moreover, the conflict must be confined within a state borders and generally not involving foreign parties. The moment the situation on the ground meets these criteria, the parties are expected to conform to a distinct body of international law cryztallized most notably in Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention of 1949 and in addition, Protocol II. The cited authors further explain that these rules apply regardless of the legal standing of the parties at war. "In effect, humantarian law sidesteps the sensitive issue of recognition."
With respect to the MILF, it is my personal opinion that at any point in time, it is at liberty to terminate its peace negotiations with the GPH for the establishment of a New Bangsamoro Juridical Entity (BJE) if all it wants is the status of statehood which has already been attained wihin the areas it exercises effective operational control. As long as it does not violate the existing ceasefire agreements with the Republic of the Philippines, it can continue to exercise the governmental powers, rights, obligations, duties, and perform  all the essential functions and activities needed for its belligerent statehood existence with full guarantee of protection under the pertinent and applicable internatinal laws governing states engaged in war.
 This is actually the present case of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) which still exists and will continue to exist as a belligerent state even  after the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) will be abolished and replaced by the proposed New Bangsamoro Political Entity (BJE) as mutually agreed by the MILF and GPH Peace Panels in pursuit of genuine, lasting, and sustainable peace and the development in Mindanao and Sulu. However, the dissolution or  abolition of the ARMM by act of Philippine Congress does not affect or dissolve the belligerent statehood of the MNLF.
 In my personal point of view, there are five (5) ways by which a belligerent organization can lose its statehood status, namely (1) on its own accord, dissolves itself and renounces its belligerent status (2) voluntarily surrenders to the state with which it is at war and pledges allegiance to its government, constitution, and flag, (3 total military defeat by the state it is at war with, (4) self-destruction due to incapicity to sustain its existence or mass defection of members (combat troops) to other belligerent organizations, and (5) it enters into a treaty or agreement of peace for its incorpation or integration into the body politic of the state it is at war with under certain mutually acceptable and beneficial terms and conditions as what the MILF is currently pursuing with the GPH.
For as long as the MNLF,  MILF, and the CPP-NPA maintain their hard-line position and determination to uphold their bellierent status, they cannot be forced to come under the ambit of the 1987 Philippine Constitution and be subject to its supremacy and applicability.
As diplomatically expressed, the MILF wants a bigger area  of territory for the BJE which includes places  over which it does not have effective operational control, most particularly the territory in Mindanao and Sulu which was constituted  as the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) by virtue of an Organic Law enacted by Philippine Congress for such purpose  to address the revolutionary struggle for self-determination led by the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) under the Chairmanship of Prof. Nur P. Misuari. From my perspective, it might not be wise for Congress to unilaterally abolish the ARMM without the express concurrence or consent of the MNLF. 
The proposed core territory of the BJE could pose a formidable obstacle to overcome by both the GPH and MILF Peace Panels since such territory had been legally set aside specifically for the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) pursuant to the Tripoli Agreement of 1976 under President Ferdinand E. Marcos, the Final Peace Agreement during the Presidency of Fidel Ramos, and finally in actual implementation of Republic Act 9054, the Organc Act in 1989  which lapsed into law on March 31, 2001 without the signature of the former Prsident, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo for the expansion of the present Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM).
 The situation is made more complicated and contentious by the fact that the MNLF has remained a belligerent state up to the present with rights and political status equal to any indepedent and sovereign state.  Adding more intricacies and obstacles to the present on- going peace negotoations between the MILF and the GPH, are the royal heirs, traditional leaders, and adherents of the two ancient Sultanates who by right of blood, ancestry, and ancient statehood still claim to possess de jure sovereignty and proprietary ownership of these two ancient monarchies but have not been principally and officially involved in the Peace Process. And what about the Lumads, where will they be in the future political realities of Mindanao and Sulu who also claim hereditary ownership of their ancestral domains?
Complicating further, is the breakaway faction of the MILF,  the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF) which at present is already attracting considerable attention, recognition, and publicity world-wide as another formidable revolutionary front that the Philippine government has to deal with. In fact, there are already observable indications that they are being given by the GPH the status of another belligerent group consciously or unconsciously. When the GPH formally grants the BIFF the legal standing as another belligerent front, there will be four other states that will be operating in Mindanao and Sulu whose relations with the Republic of the Philippines will be determined and governed by the laws and customs of war and other applicable international laws. This is not to discount the high probability that the BIFF might attain belligerent status automatically when the conditions on the ground set by the international community would be satisfied and compel it to sidestep the "sensitive issue of recognition."
It would be of utmost educational value to the general public if an expert on the subject of belligerence and international laws governing the relations of countries in a state of war, would further elucidate, expound, enrich, or clarify the ambiguities, inadequacies, and shortcomings that this article of mine contain. 
 

Nicole Sparling Barco, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of World Literature
Central Michigan University

​Interweavings, by Carol Smallwood
Shanti Arts Publishing, Brunswick, Maine, 2017
ISBN 978-1-941830-46-8 paperback, $16.95, 162 pages.
https://www.amazon.com/Interweavings-Creative-Nonfiction-Carol-Smallwood-ebook/dp/B06XFP3RTW/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1507324330&sr=1-3&keywords=carol+smallwood
 
 
 
Carol Smallwood’s newest work, Interweavings: Creative Nonfiction, provides an essential perspective of the fabric life, by not only articulating its common threads, but also the spaces between them. Replete with nostalgia, reminiscence, and ritual, Smallwood’s stream-of-consciousness style prose collects lost objects and holds on to forgotten experiences, integrating them into a contemplative still life. For readers, a visit the library, the post office, or the hardware will never be the same, as Smallwood’s seemingly ordinary landscapes are transformed into sacred and meditative spaces. Indeed, Interweavings gives the impression of being suspended in time, of living in between, of a period of transition, of a thin space. A common thread throughout Smallwood’s writing is her attempts to grapple with the experience of having lived in and “being suspended between the prefeminist and postfeminist modern world” (53). Throughout this collection, questions of femininity and feminism are brought to light in relation to gender norms, sexual violence, education, autonomy, aging, and time. Smallwood was “born and raised in the world before Vatican II—in a culture that ran on top-down authority (a term I first heard in another class), before the conflict in Vietnam as well as the civil rights and women’s movements, before the media exposed presidents’ affairs, before men stopped opening doors for women—an era fondly called the good old days” (111), but does not accept that the “good old days” were indiscriminately good. Nonetheless, she finds comfort in secular rituals that embody her ethics, which ultimately reject a postmodern media-driven consumer culture. Like a librarian, Smallwood collects, catalogues, and preserves a cultural and intellectual heritage, and guards her truth.

     
​     John Grisham’s latest book The Rooster Bar is based upon a premise that is just plain ridiculous to me. Four third year law students, with only a semester to go, at a law school named, get this, Foggy Bottom Law School, are drowning in student debt. One of them discovers that the owner of this for profit law school is an evil billionaire capitalist who in fact owns seven other for profit law schools, has controlling interest in a billion dollar international bank that makes student loans, and has made billions through other nefarious but legal schemes.This student realizes that all is hopeless for him and his pals. Each owes about two hundred thousand in student loans and their job prospects are dismal to say the least. Only about half the school’s graduates pass the bar exam and for those who do, job prospects are virtually non existent especially there in Washington D.C. where this story takes place. The big firms don’t hire from Foggy Bottom. Seeing no way out he commits suicide.
     Well the other three are shaken but see that he’s right and that their lives are doomed. They come up with the brilliant idea of dropping out of school and going into business for themselves as lawyers. After all how hard can it be?  So they set up shop, troll the traffic courts and hospitals and begin practicing law without a license but under fake names. They intend to fly under the radar the rest of their lives and not pay back their loans. After all if they get caught it’s only a misdemeanor, right?
      They have some initial success but needless to say everything goes wrong for them from the DUI cases to a multi million dollar medical malpractice case. Everybody and their brother is after them for screwing up this or that. They live a life on the run just that one step ahead. But despite it all they get back at the evil billionaire owner of the profit law schools and stick him for a few million. Unbelievable. I like a little bit of reality to my stories. Something that at least could happen. It’s hard for me to believe these two law students outsmarting a veteran evil genius of the business world just by out bluffing him.
     There is a side story that plods along as our heroes, and yes they're heroes to Grisham, stumble and bumble. One ot the law partner's’ parents smuggled themselves illegally into this country from Senegal. Though the partner is ok as she was born here and thus an American citizen, her parents are doomed to be deported. She goes through a journey of hell with them as they are sent back to Senegal and then again as they navigate their way through the corrupt Senegalese bureaucracy. This was interesting and I did learn  a lot about deportation and Senegal, but the problem with this story is that Grisham wants the reader to feel sorry for these people. Being illegals they got little sympathy from me. .
     The other two partners meanwhile, both white males meet a sexy young prosecutor. This is the obligatory sex scene that’s in all novels today. It doesn’t add to the story and it isn’t even titillating.
     The book’s title The Rooster Bar isn’t even mentioned until about page one hundred  of the three hundred fifty page book. Before I got there I thought it might have something to do like a play on words as an admission to the bar by passing the bar exam or somehow connected to the ‘bar’ as in the legal profession. It didn’t. Bar meant a bar here, a watering hole. It’s mentioned again at the end and quite clumsily at that.
     At the end the three of them get away with enough cash to live comfortably in Senegal. Oh yeah the white boys become Senegalese citizens, under new fake names of course and the female partner does likewise. The bad guys getting away with it is something I could accept  from Elmore Leonard not John Grisham.
     The book though did educate me about the travesty of the student loan program. Stop and think about it for a moment. Who in their right mind would lend a twenty something young person without a job and no collateral a hundred thousand dollars or more. Who? The U.S. government that’s who in its never ending quest to help people everywhere. I went to law school a long time ago 1969-1972. I never had a student loan. I never even knew if they existed then. Never had a scholarship. My summer jobs paid for my tuition and housing for the following year and thus for this reason I could not get into Grisham’s premise. I suppose it is believable for all those out there who suffer under student debt today. And I did learn though the reason why college costs so much today is that the government is paying for it. What the heck let’s jack up the rate of tuition say the colleges and  get the government to loan the student the tuition. Don’t you just love it when a plan comes together.
      Anyway I still couldn’t put the book down. It was a typical Grisham page turner. But as said the ending was disappointing. So in conclusion I repeat. They kind of got away with it and with a lot of money to boot, though exiled to Senegal. Shame on you Mr. Grisham for that, you being a lawyer and all.
 

     I am a big fan of Nelson DeMille having read and liked all his books. But his recent book, The Cuban Affair, fell a little short for me. It’s about a mission impossible covert operation that the macho hero Mac gets drawn into by the lure of big money, a three million dollar fee, and the love of a beautiful woman named Sara. The mission, which he decides to accept of course or there’d be no story, is to go to Cuba and recover sixty million dollars hidden in a cave so the Cuban exiles can use it in their fight against the Castro regime. Our hero is an Iraqi war veteran with proven combat experience and leadership abilities, captain of his own boat on the south Florida coast, and is therefore just the man the Cuban exiles need for the job. And Mac is up for it too since it’s bound to be more exciting than his boring business of renting out his heavily mortgaged boat for fishing or excursion cruises. Besides there’s a payment due on it now which he doesn’t have. Thus this job will not only get him out of debt but have him set for life too.
     So it looked like I was in for another good  action packed adventure novel, which DeMille is good at, but in Cuba this time and not in his usual New York like his other books. And though the setting was different the hero character was not. Our hero Mac is just channeling DeMille’s other hero, wise cracking defrocked New York detective John Corey. In fact there's so much of this Groucho Marx type wisecracking at the beginning of the book that it seemed overdone and even somewhat offensive at times. I just wanted him to stop all that and get on with the story. Finally as the book goes on DeMille draws less and less from his snappy banter repertoire but still throws it in here and there.
     Another problem I had with this book was DeMille's fixation with getting our hero getting laid. At times it seems that’s the sole focus of the story and it definitely puts the affair in The Cuban Affair. But he keeps dinging on it so much that our hero’s maturity level comes across as that of a goofy horny teenager. Furthermore DeMille even makes a point of having Mac’s seventy year old first mate get laid. I know Demille is an old man about my age, seventy that is, but I couldn’t help but think jeez what a dirty old man. On the hand if you like this kind of macho man, love ‘em and leave stuff. This book is for you. To each their own.
    One good point about the book though is that I learned a lot about present day Cuba. For example everyone gets a $20 a month paycheck from the government no matter what kind of work he does, or if he does it at all. The government is the employer of everybody. Therefore graft and bribery runs rampant and everyone spends their life conning and gaming the system. DeMille did a good job in researching all this and he was quite informative about it. He was recently in Cuba himself thanks to the “Cuban Thaw” as he calls it. The pros and cons of which he also discusses in the book.
    Anyway back to the story, Mac and Sara obviously consummate their partnership relationship. There are numerous escapes from the bad guys, aka the Cuban secret police and other Cuban thugs, shoot outs on the high seas with the evil Cuban navy, and other action packed dramatic scenes where one is always trying to figure just out who’s crossing who.
    But alas our hero and heroine do not recover the sixty million dollars. What a bummer. And so for this reason and this reason alone the book let me down. He got the girl, and more than once I might add, (yikes I better watch it here I’m starting to channel DeMille), but not the money. Shame on you Mr. DeMIlle.
    Oh well I’ll still buy his next book. That is if he lives long enough to write one and I live long enough to read it, since we’re both old guys that is..

​

​Lois Greene Stone, writer and poet, has been syndicated worldwide. Poetry and personal essays have been included in hard & softcover book anthologies.  Collections of her personal items/ photos/ memorabilia are in major museums including twelve different divisions of The Smithsonian.

            Torn down?  Really!  How could that be?  The entire undergraduate dorm area, for women only, called ‘south campus’, was new when I was seventeen. My plaid skirt and white buck shoes felt ‘adult’ with the sweater-set. A beanie cap denoted I was a freshman, and I loved wearing that as my Page Boy hair swished along my shoulders when I walked.  Curfews were actually comfortable, and a penalty was inflicted if trying to enter the dorm after 10:30 at night.  We 66 girls rotated ‘desk duty’ monitoring incoming guests, where each girl signed out to be and when she returned and signed in, lateness at curfew, sorting mail, and paging a resident via intercom when any phone calls came in on either the only campus phone (in the lounge) or the only pay phone for long distance.  There were no elevators and I lived, for four years, on the fourth floor!  It was mandatory we all had dinner together, and rotated waitress duty in the dorm’s dining room.  It was the Silent Generation.  Memories are unaware of time; ‘south campus’ was razed for new buildings. 
            After turning his high school tassel, my oldest signed up to live in the co-ed dorm Quad at The University of Pennsylvania  He wanted some noise and activity and spoke of that on the 400 mile trip from our house to Philadelphia where his pre-med studies began.  After he seemed as settled in as we could provide, I went to use the bathroom in the dorm before the trip back, and a young man was at the urinal. Embarrassed, I excused myself and asked, with eyes down, where the girls’ bathroom was; he said this is it.  Co-ed meant co-ed bathrooms as well, I found out.  My mind flashed to the innocence of a panty-raid where the boys could not even enter the dorm but stood beneath windows at ‘south campus’ area waiting for girls to toss a panty or so down to the ground below.  And panties were rather ugly, in those years, yet it was the ‘idea’ of such an event that seemed shocking-fun. 
            The following year, my daughter applied to live in a special dorm of only single rooms; she had to write an essay to be considered. Her acceptance to Penn was quicker than the anxious wait for Stouffer’s (dorm name) ‘yes’.  When we moved her in, I did not check out the bathroom;  I never did comment, to my older son, the preceding year about changes in social customs at his Quad vs my social situation entering a university.  New to a generation is ‘new’ and the enforced dress code of my college undergrad time no longer existed either.  Curfews were horse-and- buggy.
            How she managed to make salads for the dorm’s eating facility, be a receptionist at a close-by hotel, volunteer at the university hospital, and make only A’s amazed me.  Did she ever study on the grass with her blue eyes competing with the sky, and her slim frame pressed against a tree?  She didn’t say. She found a job at the Jersey Shore cutting fish for summer work, and was determined to not only be Summa Cum Laude but Phi Beta Kappa as well.  That happened.  
            “Mom.  Stouffer was torn down.  Was it an old building.  How could that be?” 
            As I’d once witnessed dominoes being toppled with a precision that took a gifted person to create and also understand whatever was needed to make each fall with grace and ease, I ‘saw’ buildings in my mind also dropping.  She didn’t think her dorm nor herself old enough to be in an aging category.  Me, neither, from my own experience.
            My younger son shorted the sibling legacy and chose a school within an hour and a half drive from home.  Having season football tickets, he’s noticed changes so there’s no shock that a tangible part of his college life vanished.
            The ties to graduate school aren’t as tight, perhaps because life takes on a specific goal rather than a transition period.
            I had no answers for my daughter’s bewilderment about time and place.  I am currently noticing how alumni magazines begin the ‘notes’ section with years far past my designated Class-Of number.  When will she become aware of this herself?