VOL. IX No. 2
Winter 1987
0(ty
A Potpourri of the Arts
Untitled
All of the big ideas
come down to this...
a rose colored morning,
the hill behind my house
dark against that bright sky.
Whatever brought me here is forgotten...
where I go, no longer important
Nothing profound will come,
no new insight
no answers at all.
What I thought would be death
is, after all,
tis rosey birth
on a November morning in Oregon.
by Claudia O'Driscoll
As I sit here in the school cafeteria smoking a cigarette and drink
ing a cup of coffee, my mind wanders back thirty years ago when I
was the age of the young men and women hurrying about the cam
pus from one class to another.
I remember my first job when I was fourteen years old, and work
ing for a furniture company, twelve hours a day, seven days a week,
for twenty-eight dollars a week. Now, thirty years later, you can't get
a work permit at the age of fourteen. But, in my opinion, that is good,
for there is a time for being an adult with adult responsibilities, and
fourteen is not the time.
I remember when you put a quarter in a cigarette machine and
received the pack of cigarettes of your choice and four pennies
change tucked in the side of the package. That same pack of cigaret
tes will now cost you $1.25, and you can forget about any change.
Furthermore, I remember buying gasoline for nineteen cents a gallon
and my windshield washed free. Today the only thing nineteen cents
will buy you is an insult
There has been, and rightfully so, many contrasts in the last thirty
years, or in any thirty year span: girls looking like boys with their very
short hair-dos, torn jeans with the zippers in the front, and boys look
ing like girls with their long hair and earrings. Sometimes, you just
don't know whether to kiss them or kick them.
As I look back to my teens I see where my generation had some
pretty weird ideas too. Things like boys wearing the scarves of the girl
they were going with around their necks, cowboy style. The girls wore
dog collars around their left ankle, if they were going with someone,
and around their right ankle if they were available.
All freshmen high school boys went through an initiation ritual,
that was, to be stripped of all their clothing, have their bodies
covered with lipstick stripes, and then to be thrown into the lake. But
at least the ritual was considerate, for the ice was broken before you
were thrown into the lake. This ritual takes place every year during
the winter month of December.
Holding doors open at the stores, opening car doors, and giv
ing up your seat on the bus, so that a woman might have it, are
all things I do not see happening any more as it did when I was a
youth.
Ten thousand dollars a year wages was to be considered a very
good wage. Today, it is considered to be on the poverty level,
and thirty thousand dollars a year is not an uncommon wage. In
fact, you are not considered a success in New York unless you
make three times your age in thousands, per year, as income.
Some things do not change though, like the reproduction of
life. However, as I sit here drinking this cup of coffee that I paid
thirty-five cents for, I can't help but think about how I could
drink coffee all day for a single dime, thirty years ago.
The "GOOD OLD DAYS?" Not really, just days of the past, just
as it will be, — thirty years from now.
by Joe A. Smith
A Literary Supplement to The Print
“Mapping Our lives”
The roads we journey
Long and short
Also vary by surface
Paved or dirt
Though we may race or
Stumble and fall
The decision of direction
Is ours last of all
Sometimes misguided or
Just lose our way
We wander still forward
Leaving trust to our feet
To carry us on until
The trails again meet
Some roads are windy, rocky and
Cause us to walk
While others flatten to let us
Race without stop.
When connected together,
These roads map our lives
From the moment we crawl
To the moment we die.
At times we take out our maps
To retrace our steps.
Wishing, if only we could
journey back
Try it again with only smooth
roads
Erase bad choices and windy
trails that we strode
But to choose only the roads
with fewerbends
Is to discover a map that sooner
will end
by Julia Singer