It's a sensation

This is interesting. I stole it from Steph's site. It's the latest Arkansas Literary Forum with three non-fiction pieces by Damien Echols, a kid sentenced to death after the West Memphis 3 murders 14 years ago. Man, I was 8-years-old when that happened. I grew up in a town that bordered West Memphis, Arkansas, to the west, and I remember the flood of new students who came to my elementary school, their parents hoping twenty miles and a Mississippi address would save their precious babes from Satan-worshiping goth teenagers on the prowl for small children. It's crazy how sensationalism works in the small town South. Mention the word "Satan" or "Wiccan" (or "Muslim" or "homosexual") and people lose all capacity for reason and throw their good sense out the pick up truck's sliding cab window.

Maybe I'm being too hard on my beloved South. I've never lived anywhere else (though, if you ask me, Knoxville's not the South), so I don't have any experience to offset my opinion of the way the Bible belt tightened its hold on the media and refused to paint those boys, especially Echols, any other way but downright evil, all because they were some underprivileged and confused teenagers who liked to wear black and probably smoke a little dope. If that's grounds for the death penalty, a handful of my buddies from high school should be up for an appeal pretty soon.

What's done is done, I guess, though I hate to take such a lackadaisical stance. Check out Echols's story about living on death row. Not the best writing I've ever read, but interesting nonetheless. While you're at it, check out the stories by the dynamic duo, John and Stephanie Vanderslice. They were my teachers for many, many classes.

Does anyone know (Steph, Monda?) if one has to be a current Arkansas resident to publish in the ALF? If we can get around the residency issue (and the fact that I'm not Arkansan by birth, but by choice), I'm interested in submitting some of my stuff.