Public Speaking
“A B S T R A C T: Abstract”, said the lanky kid with the golden thin round glasses at the far end of the second row. The girl next to him rolled her eyes and growled in contempt as if he were unworthy of attention. She was significantly smaller, and her more prominent features were her ears. Pointy red eerie ears. I was sitting in the auditorium watching the Rudolph Hamaca Integration Spelling Contest, among a crowd as varied as the kids competing. If you were on stage as the kids -I am sure- you would see all kinds of shapes and colors sitting on the those uncomfortable brown and purple saggy chairs. One massive ginger woolly man with broad shoulders; an uptight little caucasian lady with plastic rings; a grey ogre with big shiny teeth. A familiar tone echoed in the auditorium while I was still absorbed thinking about the diversity of people in the room. A kid had just failed spelling Rigor. He used the extra U that comes with the British word, and apparently the panel of judges, -student body and teachers- thought of it as incorrect. ‘R I G O U R: Rigour,’ I said to myself.
“Hey mister, what are you doing here?,” asked the boy beside me. I slowly turned to look at him, and as I stared, he must have blinked two hundred times. He had tiny transparent wings on his back, and kept sucking a brownish object he was holding. He was a fly boy of some sort, and the object he was sucking -I could bet- was a sweat potato. “My brother is the one with the big eyes, third left first row,” he said again. “Hey, have you seen those two lions over there by the front? I think they’re mates, got it?” I do not know if it was his tone, the dull-wittedness of his questions, or my defense mechanism to switch off my brain, but by the time I got back to reality, five other kids were out of the competition, including the small girl with pointy ears.
The Dandelion Herald - Education, Arts & Leisure
The Mixed Spelling Bee
The Rudolph Hamaca Integration Spelling Contest, celebrated in the local auditorium in Deep Lake, White Forest District, was an intense competition between twenty finalists. Named after the historical Rudolph Hamaca, an international recognized activist from the South Planes, the contest strives to firmly establish strong values between children of all backgrounds. The final three contestants: Eddie Weever, Joanna Moth and Jamal Crab competed a ferocious battle in the final category: Misspelled Words.
Eddie Weever, a 10th grade student from the Saint Martins School, got the third place after misspelling: Audacious. The competition intensified after four rounds of well spelled words from both final contestants. In the end, Joanna Moth, an 11th grade student from Forest Tech, defeated Jamal Crab, an 11th grade student from The River School, over the word: Hemorrhage.
The panel of judges, presided by White Forest College professor, Markus Owl, awarded the winner, Joanna Moth, a golden trophy with the inscription: “The Rudolph Hamaca Integration Spelling Contest 1st Place,” and a small stained glass sculpture by local artist, Wayne Pygmy.
There were approximately three hundred people in the auditorium. When I left the place -ten minutes after the contest was finished because of the amount of people going to the parking lot- I saw at the entrance hall, waiting in front of the bathrooms, the two lions who were sitting by the front. After a few seconds a kid -a bunny- probably from the 9th grade, came out of the bathroom and they walked to the parking lot like the rest. The two lions had flowing shaggy manes and were holding paws. I watched the three of them, from the entrance door, get on a Subaru sedan and leave. Their tails were tangled while they walked to the car.
The Woodland Times January 20th, 1976
The Meadow Speech
My name is Ralph Hamaca, and I am a citizen like the rest of you. My upbringing was nothing special, as neither the journey that has brought me in front of you today. The only truly exceptional thing is seeing all of us together in the Meadow, trying to achieve a common goal. Thank you for having me.
There are many things left to do, and there are plenty of things left to say about the way we treat each other; the things we have done to harm and alienate ourselves. But I can see the walls of captivity lose a brick every day, because we can be a united front. It is in ourselves to be better. And I believe in you. Now it is time to believe in yourselves.
Our years of separation have brought upon us a dark cloud that blackens our innate values. We cannot see beyond the crops the beauty of the waterfall. Or wondered over the magic of the prism. We have let others guide our lives with greed and mischief, telling us to fear, and to hate. But let me tell you something now, we are not the monsters under your bed. We […]
I turned off my computer at the White Forest Digital Library, and decided to take a stroll. The grasslands of Deep Lake are breathtaking. The pasture goes beyond the horizon, and delimits with extraordinary awe, the side borders of forest. I walked aimlessly until I was in front of the pines. There was a cut trunk and I sat. There is an easiness to our lives that we do no appreciate most of the time. We live now, in a harmonic coexistence that will be studied in years to come. We finished oligarchies, submitted ignorance to the strength of logic, and achieved an almost universal pacifism. There is nothing we can do to prevent the growth of little weeds that bring unbalance to our society, but everything to educate them.
I walked into the forest and the sound of nature filled my head with wonder and ease. The firs, spruces, and pines, served as a light strainer. There is a white layer of flowers covering the forest most of the year. Have you ever seen the transformation of the dandelion? The sprout is dark green and long. When the dandelion is about to show, the mature plant opens up and the yellow flower appears. The head is composed of hundreds of florets. When its life is about to end, the flower closes and disappears into a nub. The nub starts to dry and the head slowly starts to open again. The white seeds start to pop until the last trace of yellow fades away. Finally, the wind blows the dandelion seeds all over the forest, and they germinate.
Text by Alberto Lizárraga