Four hours left. I’ve been on-duty for eight and have just finished issuing radars to the road patrols so they can pretend to be doing something during their eight hour shift. I’m a Q-Niner, a TAI, a Traffic Accident Investigator. I’ve been to special schools, I work out of an office, I work without direct […]

The first chapter of The General is Up uses stylization and the third person voice and signals to the reader that this is a story being told to them by someone. The novel opens with a dream; the General is stalked in his sleep by Captain Oma, who the General knows is dead because he […]

“Hey man, why are you pulling over?” Joe asks from the passenger seat of the Ford pick-up as Luke pulls into the emergency lane off Interstate 65 and slows down. Trucks scream by in the dark as heavy snowflakes fill the air. “I gotta pull this barbed wire off,” Luke says. “It’s fucking up the […]

Two weeks into basic training, our platoon drill sergeant picked two privates and assigned them the responsibility of cleaning his office. This was supposed to be a position of honor and trust; after all, they were given the keys to the office. We always laughed at the two trusted privates as they spent their free […]

“In peace, sons bury their fathers; in war, fathers bury their sons.” —Herodotus The American flag flies all day everyday over Fort Knox, Kentucky. On most military installations the flag is raised every morning at reveille and lowered every evening at retreat. So it was strange to me when one night, shortly after having arrived […]

I still feel it today—the quick panic as I travel down the road at night and catch a brief reflection from the median. Pushing the brakes, already too late, I pass a jet black car camouflaged by the night, its headlights on now, as it comes out onto the road and disturbs the darkness with […]

It would seem that Flannery O’Connor and T.C. Boyle have nothing in common. O’Connor was born in Savannah, Georgia, in 1925 and spent all but five of her thirty nine years in Georgia. She wrote about the Deep South during the 1950s and ’60s and her stories are filled with complicated themes and messages that […]

Freedom is a seemingly straight forward word. It conjures up images of people being able to do what they want when they want. When one thinks of freedom, one usually thinks of free elections, a government representative of the people it serves, safety, justice under a set of rules and laws, and freedom of speech. […]

Introduction to Philosophy: Parker Palmer addresses four themes that he finds in the ancient Woodcarver story: motives, skills and gifts, the other, and results. In this brief paper I want you to apply Palmer’s analysis to your own education. Reflect on how you have done your education to this point. What have your motives been? […]

Throughout history writers have used color to symbolize something without actually having to put words to how they feel. Black is symbolic for the unknown or evil, white is for goodness and purity, and red symbolizes passion. Alice Walker uses the color purple the same way, she wants the color to represent something and since […]