Now Available on Amazon

An almond-shaped creature brings peace

to the Intergalactic Federation.

Literature for all ages, 14 to 94.

Paperback: $12.95

Kindle: 4.95

  --30--

Our

Story

by

Lawrence Abby Gauthier

ace reporter

The Westphalia Periodic News

The first chapter of my will-it-ever-be-finished novel is called “The End.”

Endings come to me first. Once I know where the journey ends, the rest is just a matter of pulling my boots up in the morning and going off to work, doing what I know how to do to get there.

Culley Jane and I were settled into our spots on the living room couch in front of the television, one cat on her lap and one cat on mine. We hardly ever watch television, but this night was special — Election Night. We were anxious to know how it would end.

I had the remote clicker and suddenly the NBC newsroom appeared in bright AI color and just as suddenly my mind began to wander... I was back in my truck during my over-the-road trucker days.

I had just come to the end of a cross-country trip hauling a load of California almonds from the San Joaquin Valley to a warehouse in a sprawling shipping port along the Atlantic coast of New Jersey when it struck me. It was so obvious it was laughable. How come I’d never noticed it before, that endings come to me first and then you just go to work?

Once the Teamster dockworkers had finished unloading my 53-foot trailer and had signed the delivery papers, I sent a Qualcom message back to my dispatch office in Lincoln, Nebraska, letting them know I was empty and ready for my next assignment.

Then I pulled away from the docks and parked in a sprawling paved lot the size of a  football field with dozens of other trucks from everywhere in America. A little off in the distance, beyond the warehouses, I could see giant transoceanic freighters exchanging almonds for Belgium beer.

And I waited while waiting to hear back from dispatch in Nebraska assigning me to my next load, where to pick up, where to deliver, date/times — the information I needed before making my next move. And that’s when it struck me, while waiting for an answer, that endings come to me first. Until I knew the ending, I was lost, stranded in New Jersey and didn’t know what to do.

I imagined myself as an electron. As it journeys across a Silicon microchip no bigger that the point of a pin, an electron encounters billions of intersections where it has to decide. Unless it knows where it’s going, when it gets to the first intersection it won’t know whether to turn left or to turn right. Just leaving it up to feelings, it goes in circles before winding up in the ocean.

I felt the cat move and was suddenly back in the NBC Election Night newsroom. It didn’t take long to know the ending so that we could make our next move. Prepare for a window of peace so we don’t find ourselves back in the same hole.

--30--

The announcement that the execution of former Army psychiatrist, Nidal Hasan, would be televised prompted immediate blowback from Republicans and Democrats, who considered televising the execution barbaric.

But, as French novelist Albert Camus argues in his 1957 "Reflections on the Guillotine,” if the state considers the death penalty a deterrent, it should invite as many people as possible to the execution and televise it for all those unable to attend.

Bob Dylan himself wonders why "The executioner's face is always well hidden."

It is the execution itself that's barbaric. Not simply this one, a firing squad gunning down a man in a wheelchair, or the recent botched execution of Christa Pike, but all executions, which are as repulsive as the crimes they purport to punish.

Furthermore, capital punishment is not a deterrent. Camus notes that, as of 1957, 35 nations had abolished the death penalty; none reported an increase in crime.

We do not underscore the sacredness of life or the principle that no one has the right to take the life of another by killing those who do so. We need laws of ethical integrity that do not contradict their principles when they punish their transgressors.

--30--

Intersection

by

Tina Russell

Iron Mountain, MI

Tumbling thoughts are chaotic, fleeting

Deep inside a painful guttural cry

Lost in a swirl of what was

    and what could have been

A soul ripped apart

    by violence and neglect

Wanting to slam doors

Wanting to burn the bridges

Walk away and it hurts no more

There she stands at an intersection

Time flies forward by decades and years

Months and days and years combine

Many lifetimes lived

    in small moments of time

None of them build anything real

Life lived running from the past

No room for mistakes

    but that’s all she makes

Confusion reigns

There she stands at an intersection

Looking back one more time

At pain, at death, and at humiliation

Glancing back at the bruises and scars

    of her past

Tuning out words that made her small

Smiles at old ghosts & demons

    that can’t hurt her anymore

The bridge is old and dry now,

    it’s lost its power

She lights the match

    and sets fire to the past

There she stands at an intersection.

--30--

Letters to the Editor

Dear Westphalia:

Thank you for sharing Matthew Wollum's story, "Once or Twice." (In Archives, 11-5-26)

Matthew's pieces often feel like stepping through a looking glass. They begin in whimsy, wander through absurdity, and somehow arrive at truth. This story amused me from the first line, but what lingered was its tenderness. Behind the playful role reversal is a gentle meditation on partnership, forgiveness, and the enduring hope that love will welcome us home, even after we have behaved badly.

The best writing entertains and enlightens simultaneously. Matthew does both. I was smiling at the humor while quietly recognizing myself in the man standing at the back door, waiting for grace.

Anna Kanski

Denver, CO