ABOUT

CONTENTS

EDITORIAL

ARCHIVE

LAGNIAPPE

MAST

SUBMISSIONS

The School
by Kristen Iskandrian

SCIENCE

Pluto, the smallest planet, is not so very different from bedrock, which consists of layers of calcified silt and sediment that over time, erode. Continents drift and techtonics plate and Pangaea and hydrangea. Precipitation and/or atmosphere may or may not create the nimbus clouds and the cumulus clouds and the cumulonimbus clouds which empty their fleecy insides into the oceans, which become the rivers and streams and tributaries and glaciers and eventually, the rain again, which swells the ocean until the moon is crescent-shaped, gibbous, or full. It is then that the wails of the lady on the parapet are heard, her hair like seaweed as it whips ‘round her face and catches the silver off the sea. Mandy rouses her sister and turns up the wick of the lantern. The girls hurry into their socks and shoes and drape themselves in their bedclothes to fend off the attic chill. They hear her steps above them and something else, a creak on the stair—
     I was often asked to repeat the last thing the teacher said. I hid the book about Mandy and the ghost inside the book about the tired and corroded earth, marsupial-like.

“The engineers should know, for each room (a) the number of air changes necessary, (b) the amount of glass area, (c) the exposure to winds, (d) the number of doors, and (e) the materials of construction in roof and walls.” Charles Everand Reeves & Harry Stanley Ganders, School Building Management: The Operation and Care of School Plants (New York, 1928), p. 261.

LUNCH (click for next section)