Pt 3 BURNED NEWSPAPER ARTICLE THAT NEVER WAS:A TRUE STORY Copyright 2009

Dear MGMers,

The publication of the Sporadic was not the end but the beginning of a conflict that would continue for  awhile.

As she entered her classroom, the day her article was to appear in the campus paper, SL was told that a bonfire had been held. The fuel? The Sporadic.  The right to speak was terminated. Few would learn about revolutionaries on campus. The bearer of the bad news that day was Mr. Swibach, her poly-sci instructor and the campus's SDS sponsor, who entertained every malcontent in the state.

Swibach took malignant delight in reporting the bonfire, enough to suggest that he played a role in it. A narcisisstic superiority veiled his countenance as arrogance found its way into a  smirk. Would she respond? shake? whimper? lose control? He was attempting to find a weak spot into which he could more deeply thrust malevolent barbs. 

If he couldn't make her bleed, he could humiliate the one person whose voice was raised against him. She remained silent, thinking it curious that the long-haired-hippies in the room laughed at Swibach's remarks, just as they did when the Latin revolutionary spoke.  SL noticed that they were enjoying the workover.  "Cowards," she thought.

"I'ts too bad no one got to read your article.  It was pretty good," Swibach was still looking for an opportuntiy to escalate his state of euphoria.  His SDS malfactors laughed on cue. SL turned in her seat, leaned forward and took a long look at her tormentors.  Her daughters used to say that look could terrify. "You think I lost something today. But it was you that lost your right to free speech.  I exercised mine."  Bodies moved uncomfortably in their seats as quiet overtook Swibach and his useful "worms" as he later called them. She had delivered a kind of coup d' e'tat - words failed them.

Suddenly a voice to her right arose.  "Mr. Swibach, if she hadn't been here I would have bought you, but I don't now."  Swibach had won a battle. He obviously played an advisory role in overseeing the destruction  of one issue of the college newspaper, but SL's voice was joined with another and maybe another.  She would never know, but that wasn't the point.  Evil does exist when good men (and women)  do nothing.  SL was determined to do all she could to counter deception.

SL would never did see her special article  published for all to read on campus that year. A few copies of the newspaper were  saved, however.  SDS lackies had broken into the journalism office and took everything after painting epithets on the office door. As if by fate's design, the paper's sponsor, Mr. Weldon, had placed extra copies in his car.  SL would get two of them as a momento of tragic historical touch-point.

One might think that SL would feel the need for vengeance. Not so. She had been formed in the ideals of the Franciscans and hateful thoughts were out.  Instead, revenge was placed in some far off place meant to house deformities temptations.

SL was a realist; she knew her nemesis was a predator and regarded him as a mentally ill product of the drug culture. She didn't hate him, but she would by the grace of God push back or outsmart whenever possible.

SL continued to learn, as she had when she worked in the early days of the civil rights movement, that freedom required vigilance at home and abroad. Soon, she learned that there were more prices to be paid for exercising hers and that the process would be life-long.


Having previouly worked in the Democrat Party, she knew how easily people are corrupted by power, and she was determined not to sacrifice soul to Ego and power. The resistance between the radical Swibach and herself was both temporal and spiritual. She wondered if he realized that.

To be continued.