Disposition
Stories
Object:
Contents
"Disposition" by Keith Hewitt
"Who Is My Neighbor?" by Frank Ramirez
* * * * * * * * *
According to Edmund Burke, "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." But why would a man dare speak truth to power, when power is usually all too willing to flex its muscle? Perhaps because he speaks for an even greater power, as Keith Hewitt's tale, "Disposition," suggests.
Disposition
Keith Hewitt
Amos 7:7-17
"Abner Macht!" the voice bellowed, "Stehen Sie auf!" Get up!
The command was a knife that sliced through the numbness that had begun to fall across Abner Macht like a blanket. The endless shivering had finally stopped as he lay in a naked ball on the cell floor, his head tucked forward and arms clasped around his knees. It had been bad enough that his head banged on the rough concrete, a drumroll of misery, and nothing he had done would stop it… and then the numbness came, and he welcomed its arrival though he knew it was the last stage in freezing to death.
He lay still, eyes clenched shut behind dirty wire rimmed glasses, lips moving in murmured prayer as he ignored the voice, tried to clutch the blanket of nothingness to himself. In the absence of cold, the numbness felt like blessed warmth. He clutched his knees tightly -- though he could not feel them -- and luxuriated in the way that life drained away, making him ever lighter, lighter…
"Stehen Sie auf!" the voice shouted again, and this time there was an explosion of pain as the exclamation point -- a steel toed bomb exploded against his kidneys, pain like shrapnel spread to every cell of his body and the lightness was gone, snatched away with the numbness. He groaned for a moment, rocking back and forth on the wet floor; then slowly -- almost like one of those stop action movies of a plant poking up through soil -- he rolled to his hands and knees and stood up tentatively, one trembling arm reaching out to the cold, solid comfort of the cell wall to steady himself.
He stood, wavering, opened his eyes and looked out at the voice -- a tall, solidly built man in the black uniform of the SS. Abner knew enough not to look him in the eye, instead focused on the silver death's head decoration on the collar of his shirt. The skull caught the light of the single bare bulb, leered at him as though it was privy to some sick joke. He was still staring at it when he felt something thrust against his chest.
Clothes.
He looked down, confirmed what his sense of touch had already told him; automatically, he raised his hands to clutch them -- and the movement sent little bolts of pain up through his elbows and into his shoulders. He stared at them dumbly for a moment, hands clutching and unclutching as though they had never felt rough woolen fabric before, then chanced a look up, into the voice's face.
"Get dressed," it sneered. "The Colonel wishes to see you. Now. Your case is up for disposition."
Abner nodded, quickly pulled on the pants and shirt -- as quickly as he could move, at least. Every motion was a reminder of some indignity that had been committed against him in the last… the last…
How long had it been?
The bulb, safe behind its cage, never went out. There were no windows, and any attempt he had made to measure time between meals or "interrogations" -- really just interminable beatings -- had long since failed, though he had the sense that both events occurred at random intervals. He looked down at his fingernails -- black and broken -- reached up with one hand to feel the beard that had begun to hide the bruises.
Weeks, he guessed. It had to be weeks.
He buttoned the fly of his pants, hoped that they would stay up -- they seemed much too big. With fumbling fingers, he buttoned the front of his shirt. That done, he looked down at his feet. The Colonel had provided clothes, he reasoned, and chanced another look at the voice. "Shoes?" he asked in a raspy voice.
The voice looked down at Abner's feet, splayed on the wet concrete floor; they flexed, toes like little dirty worms squirming in the water. After the briefest pause -- and with no expression on its face -- it raised its boot and stamped down with all its might on Abner's left foot. With barely a split second between, the boot raised and fell again on the right foot. Abner screamed -- an animal sound he could not have prevented even if he had wanted to keep it from tearing out of his throat -- and clutched the wall to keep from falling.
"Don't be silly," the voice said impassively. "You can't wear shoes when your toes are broken."
# # #
Colonel Wagner's office was up three flights of stairs and about forty meters away from the cells in the basement. No doubt well insulated from the screams, Abner thought as he fought to keep himself upright, standing before the Colonel's desk. The man behind the desk would not have wanted to hear them, Abner judged -- he was much too refined to revel in such things.
Instead, Herr Oberst Wagner was the sort of man who would cleanly and methodically put a bullet in the back of your head. Leave it to the others to soften up the prisoners and have their fun. He was above such activity. It would be… uncouth.
"So," Wagner began, looking down at the open file folder in front of him -- purely for effect, he knew every word in it by heart, "We are here to discuss your disposition. It says here that on 30 April, you stood up in your pulpit and said that National Socialism was evil."
And here it comes, Abner thought, and sighed. The sigh hurt his ribs, and in a corner of his mind he wondered how many of them had been broken or cracked. He licked cracked lips, tried to keep from trembling as he forced himself to stand erect. "Not quite, Herr Oberst. I said that evil things were being done in the name of National Socialism."
Wagner's head tilted slightly to one side, and there was a faint, puzzled smile as he said with exaggerated calm, "Really, my dear fellow, is that not the same thing?"
Abner shook his head -- a carefully measured gesture; too much, too fast would take him off his feet as surely as if his legs were taken out from under him. "The Inquisition tortured many innocents and burned them at the stake. These things were done in the name of Christ, but they were a perverted expression of faith. They did not define Christianity, and they cannot be used to say Christianity is evil."
"Reverend Macht, you fence with words -- I suppose it's a skill you learned in seminary. But let us speak the truth now, honestly, man to man. It's just us, here, in this room. You said the Party was evil, and that means you used -- you abused -- your special position as a man of God to preach treason. You have confused your congregation, Reverend, you have misled them and confused them. What you did was plainly wrong."
Abner looked down -- his eyes fell on his feet, already starting to swell and throb. He raised his head, met the Colonel's gaze. "Men have used the cloak of National Socialism to do great evil, Colonel. You know it, and I know it. Whole families -- whole neighborhoods -- are taken away in the night. Trains carry car after car of people off into the darkness, and who knows where they go or what happens to them there. We only know that nobody ever comes back. Nobody ever comes back, or writes, from the great resettlements that they are supposed to have been taken to."
Wagner shrugged, a tiny gesture almost invisible beneath his black tunic. He picked up his ceremonial dagger and held it in one hand, twirled the end of the sheath against his finger. "There's a war on, you know. Communications from such far-off places is bound to be poor."
"Yes, there's a war on. But whatever it is that's happening to those people, it's important enough that our government continues to ship them away, even when those trains could be used to carry materiel to our troops, or supplies to our cities." He paused, continued in a low voice. "And, Colonel, we all know that anyone who dares raise their voice is not tolerated. There is no questioning this government."
A smile flitted across Wagner's face, and one eyebrow twitched up. "Yes, as I suppose you are well aware." He leaned back, still twirling the dagger. "But tell me this, Reverend, who are you to question us? Who are you to say that you know what is best, that you know what is right and wrong?"
Abner shook his head. "It is not I, Colonel. It is God. God knows what you are doing. God knows how you have perverted our national pride, our sense of duty, our very honor -- how you and your kind have taken it in and mangled it to your own ends, then excreted it like so much dung, and forced us to live in it."
Wagner's expression became masklike, and his face lost color. "Be careful, Reverend. Be very, very careful --"
"It is you who must take care, Colonel. You and your kind, for you have brought the judgment of God upon you. The pity is, you have brought it upon the rest of us, as well -- but perhaps we deserve it, for giving you permission."
"Enough, now," Wagner said abruptly, his voice suddenly crisp and businesslike. "I have heard enough." He lay the dagger down, picked up a pen and uncapped it, placed its point in an inkwell, drew ink up into it then twitched it a couple of times to shake off any excess. He began to write in the file, and as he wrote he spoke, not looking at the man in front of him. "Reverend Macht, you are clearly not in your right mind. Under Aktion T4 I could simply have you sent to a hospital and euthanized. I prefer that you have an opportunity to redeem yourself some little bit by performing necessary war work for the Reich. You will be sent to the facility at Todeswald."
He finished writing, signed his name with a flourish and capped the pen, looked up at Abner and smiled coldly. "You shall have a chance to do penance, Reverend. No need to thank me."
He waited. When Abner said nothing, he shrugged and pressed a button on his desk, called for the guards to come take him away. As they came in, Abner stood up straight once more and looked him in the eye. "What you do is evil, and I shall not thank you, Colonel. But for my part, I want you to know that I do forgive you."
Wagner looked at him, puzzled. The guards were there, then, and they paused, waiting to see what Wagner would say -- but after a long silence he just waved them away, and watched wordlessly as Abner was taken off to meet his fate.
I forgive you? What a ridiculous thing for a man like him to say.
And yet…
Keith Hewitt is the author of two volumes of NaTiVity Dramas: Nontraditional Christmas Plays for All Ages (CSS). He is a lay speaker, co-youth leader, and former Sunday school teacher at Wilmot United Methodist Church in Wilmot, Wisconsin. He lives in southeastern Wisconsin with his wife and two children, and works in the IT department at a major public safety testing organization.
Who is my neighbor?
Frank Ramirez
Luke 10:25-37
(Jesus said) "Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?" He said, "The one who showed him mercy."
-- 10:36-37
The Good Samaritan saved the life of a man who was nearly killed by thieves. What would we call saints who not only prayed for those who imprisoned them, but one who saved the life of a man who meant to burn him alive?
That was the experience of the Anabaptists such as the Mennonites, who endured great persecution from both Protestants and Catholics. These Christians insisted on the separation of church and state. In an era where baptism meant entry into citizenship as well as membership in the church, they insisted that Christ's kingdom was more important than worldly kingdoms. These peaceable people refused to use violence (although for centuries other Christians spread false libels about them to that effect) and instead meekly endured horrific torture and executions for their faith. Whether they lived or died, they believed the Spirit would use their martyrdom for the growth of the church.
The experiences of their martyrs were recorded in a massive volume known as the Martyr's Mirror, written by Thieleman van Braght, and illustrated by Jan Lyken. The book described, often in lurid detail, the torments and suffering endured by those who placed the cross before their citizenship and refused to recognize any Lord but Jesus. One common thread was the willingness of those who suffered to pardon and forgive their tormentors in the name of Jesus.
The most famous example is that of Dirk Willems, an Anabaptist who was arrested in 1569 in the Dutch village of Asperen. His crimes included being baptized as an adult and allowing Bible studies to be held in his home. He faced execution at the stake. Willems escaped from prison by tying rags together to form a makeshift rope, after which he lowered himself to the ground and began to run away. A guard noticed his escape and ran after him, with the village's mayor right behind. The spring thaw was barely underway, but Willems managed to run across the ice of a frozen river to freedom. However the guard chasing him fell through the ice and began to drown. He called out to Willems to save him. Some might have thought that the collapse of the ice was God's way of saving Willems from a terrible fate. Might he not, with good conscience, do as the Levite and the Priest in the story of the Good Samaritan, who walked the other way and left a dying man for someone else to care for? But Willems turned back, ignoring the fact that the ice might have collapsed and killed them both, and held out his hand to the guard, who he considered his neighbor, and pulled him to safety. This led to his immediate recapture. The mayor insisted he be burned at the stake. The execution was botched and Willems suffered terribly. The Martyr's Mirror records that the wind carried Willem's cries all the way to the next village, where the townsfolk remembered that they had heard cry out more than seventy times. Willems has been held up by Christians as an example of the way that the love of Jesus trumps even concerns for our own safety. Dirk considered his pursuer as his neighbor, someone loved by Jesus whose life was more important than his own, even though his pursuer earnestly desired his death by torture. His life is held up today by Amish, Mennonites, and other Anabaptists, as a prime example of the sacrificial love of Jesus which seeks the best for those who desire the worst for us.
Frank Ramirez has served as a pastor for nearly 30 years in Church of the Brethren congregations in Los Angeles, California; Elkhart, Indiana; and Everett, Pennsylvania. A graduate of LaVerne College and Bethany Theological Seminary, Ramirez is the author of numerous books, articles, and short stories. His CSS titles include Partners in Healing, He Took a Towel, The Bee Attitudes, and three volumes of Lectionary Worship Aids.
**************
StoryShare, July 11, 2010, issue.
Copyright 2010 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
"Disposition" by Keith Hewitt
"Who Is My Neighbor?" by Frank Ramirez
* * * * * * * * *
According to Edmund Burke, "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." But why would a man dare speak truth to power, when power is usually all too willing to flex its muscle? Perhaps because he speaks for an even greater power, as Keith Hewitt's tale, "Disposition," suggests.
Disposition
Keith Hewitt
Amos 7:7-17
"Abner Macht!" the voice bellowed, "Stehen Sie auf!" Get up!
The command was a knife that sliced through the numbness that had begun to fall across Abner Macht like a blanket. The endless shivering had finally stopped as he lay in a naked ball on the cell floor, his head tucked forward and arms clasped around his knees. It had been bad enough that his head banged on the rough concrete, a drumroll of misery, and nothing he had done would stop it… and then the numbness came, and he welcomed its arrival though he knew it was the last stage in freezing to death.
He lay still, eyes clenched shut behind dirty wire rimmed glasses, lips moving in murmured prayer as he ignored the voice, tried to clutch the blanket of nothingness to himself. In the absence of cold, the numbness felt like blessed warmth. He clutched his knees tightly -- though he could not feel them -- and luxuriated in the way that life drained away, making him ever lighter, lighter…
"Stehen Sie auf!" the voice shouted again, and this time there was an explosion of pain as the exclamation point -- a steel toed bomb exploded against his kidneys, pain like shrapnel spread to every cell of his body and the lightness was gone, snatched away with the numbness. He groaned for a moment, rocking back and forth on the wet floor; then slowly -- almost like one of those stop action movies of a plant poking up through soil -- he rolled to his hands and knees and stood up tentatively, one trembling arm reaching out to the cold, solid comfort of the cell wall to steady himself.
He stood, wavering, opened his eyes and looked out at the voice -- a tall, solidly built man in the black uniform of the SS. Abner knew enough not to look him in the eye, instead focused on the silver death's head decoration on the collar of his shirt. The skull caught the light of the single bare bulb, leered at him as though it was privy to some sick joke. He was still staring at it when he felt something thrust against his chest.
Clothes.
He looked down, confirmed what his sense of touch had already told him; automatically, he raised his hands to clutch them -- and the movement sent little bolts of pain up through his elbows and into his shoulders. He stared at them dumbly for a moment, hands clutching and unclutching as though they had never felt rough woolen fabric before, then chanced a look up, into the voice's face.
"Get dressed," it sneered. "The Colonel wishes to see you. Now. Your case is up for disposition."
Abner nodded, quickly pulled on the pants and shirt -- as quickly as he could move, at least. Every motion was a reminder of some indignity that had been committed against him in the last… the last…
How long had it been?
The bulb, safe behind its cage, never went out. There were no windows, and any attempt he had made to measure time between meals or "interrogations" -- really just interminable beatings -- had long since failed, though he had the sense that both events occurred at random intervals. He looked down at his fingernails -- black and broken -- reached up with one hand to feel the beard that had begun to hide the bruises.
Weeks, he guessed. It had to be weeks.
He buttoned the fly of his pants, hoped that they would stay up -- they seemed much too big. With fumbling fingers, he buttoned the front of his shirt. That done, he looked down at his feet. The Colonel had provided clothes, he reasoned, and chanced another look at the voice. "Shoes?" he asked in a raspy voice.
The voice looked down at Abner's feet, splayed on the wet concrete floor; they flexed, toes like little dirty worms squirming in the water. After the briefest pause -- and with no expression on its face -- it raised its boot and stamped down with all its might on Abner's left foot. With barely a split second between, the boot raised and fell again on the right foot. Abner screamed -- an animal sound he could not have prevented even if he had wanted to keep it from tearing out of his throat -- and clutched the wall to keep from falling.
"Don't be silly," the voice said impassively. "You can't wear shoes when your toes are broken."
# # #
Colonel Wagner's office was up three flights of stairs and about forty meters away from the cells in the basement. No doubt well insulated from the screams, Abner thought as he fought to keep himself upright, standing before the Colonel's desk. The man behind the desk would not have wanted to hear them, Abner judged -- he was much too refined to revel in such things.
Instead, Herr Oberst Wagner was the sort of man who would cleanly and methodically put a bullet in the back of your head. Leave it to the others to soften up the prisoners and have their fun. He was above such activity. It would be… uncouth.
"So," Wagner began, looking down at the open file folder in front of him -- purely for effect, he knew every word in it by heart, "We are here to discuss your disposition. It says here that on 30 April, you stood up in your pulpit and said that National Socialism was evil."
And here it comes, Abner thought, and sighed. The sigh hurt his ribs, and in a corner of his mind he wondered how many of them had been broken or cracked. He licked cracked lips, tried to keep from trembling as he forced himself to stand erect. "Not quite, Herr Oberst. I said that evil things were being done in the name of National Socialism."
Wagner's head tilted slightly to one side, and there was a faint, puzzled smile as he said with exaggerated calm, "Really, my dear fellow, is that not the same thing?"
Abner shook his head -- a carefully measured gesture; too much, too fast would take him off his feet as surely as if his legs were taken out from under him. "The Inquisition tortured many innocents and burned them at the stake. These things were done in the name of Christ, but they were a perverted expression of faith. They did not define Christianity, and they cannot be used to say Christianity is evil."
"Reverend Macht, you fence with words -- I suppose it's a skill you learned in seminary. But let us speak the truth now, honestly, man to man. It's just us, here, in this room. You said the Party was evil, and that means you used -- you abused -- your special position as a man of God to preach treason. You have confused your congregation, Reverend, you have misled them and confused them. What you did was plainly wrong."
Abner looked down -- his eyes fell on his feet, already starting to swell and throb. He raised his head, met the Colonel's gaze. "Men have used the cloak of National Socialism to do great evil, Colonel. You know it, and I know it. Whole families -- whole neighborhoods -- are taken away in the night. Trains carry car after car of people off into the darkness, and who knows where they go or what happens to them there. We only know that nobody ever comes back. Nobody ever comes back, or writes, from the great resettlements that they are supposed to have been taken to."
Wagner shrugged, a tiny gesture almost invisible beneath his black tunic. He picked up his ceremonial dagger and held it in one hand, twirled the end of the sheath against his finger. "There's a war on, you know. Communications from such far-off places is bound to be poor."
"Yes, there's a war on. But whatever it is that's happening to those people, it's important enough that our government continues to ship them away, even when those trains could be used to carry materiel to our troops, or supplies to our cities." He paused, continued in a low voice. "And, Colonel, we all know that anyone who dares raise their voice is not tolerated. There is no questioning this government."
A smile flitted across Wagner's face, and one eyebrow twitched up. "Yes, as I suppose you are well aware." He leaned back, still twirling the dagger. "But tell me this, Reverend, who are you to question us? Who are you to say that you know what is best, that you know what is right and wrong?"
Abner shook his head. "It is not I, Colonel. It is God. God knows what you are doing. God knows how you have perverted our national pride, our sense of duty, our very honor -- how you and your kind have taken it in and mangled it to your own ends, then excreted it like so much dung, and forced us to live in it."
Wagner's expression became masklike, and his face lost color. "Be careful, Reverend. Be very, very careful --"
"It is you who must take care, Colonel. You and your kind, for you have brought the judgment of God upon you. The pity is, you have brought it upon the rest of us, as well -- but perhaps we deserve it, for giving you permission."
"Enough, now," Wagner said abruptly, his voice suddenly crisp and businesslike. "I have heard enough." He lay the dagger down, picked up a pen and uncapped it, placed its point in an inkwell, drew ink up into it then twitched it a couple of times to shake off any excess. He began to write in the file, and as he wrote he spoke, not looking at the man in front of him. "Reverend Macht, you are clearly not in your right mind. Under Aktion T4 I could simply have you sent to a hospital and euthanized. I prefer that you have an opportunity to redeem yourself some little bit by performing necessary war work for the Reich. You will be sent to the facility at Todeswald."
He finished writing, signed his name with a flourish and capped the pen, looked up at Abner and smiled coldly. "You shall have a chance to do penance, Reverend. No need to thank me."
He waited. When Abner said nothing, he shrugged and pressed a button on his desk, called for the guards to come take him away. As they came in, Abner stood up straight once more and looked him in the eye. "What you do is evil, and I shall not thank you, Colonel. But for my part, I want you to know that I do forgive you."
Wagner looked at him, puzzled. The guards were there, then, and they paused, waiting to see what Wagner would say -- but after a long silence he just waved them away, and watched wordlessly as Abner was taken off to meet his fate.
I forgive you? What a ridiculous thing for a man like him to say.
And yet…
Keith Hewitt is the author of two volumes of NaTiVity Dramas: Nontraditional Christmas Plays for All Ages (CSS). He is a lay speaker, co-youth leader, and former Sunday school teacher at Wilmot United Methodist Church in Wilmot, Wisconsin. He lives in southeastern Wisconsin with his wife and two children, and works in the IT department at a major public safety testing organization.
Who is my neighbor?
Frank Ramirez
Luke 10:25-37
(Jesus said) "Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?" He said, "The one who showed him mercy."
-- 10:36-37
The Good Samaritan saved the life of a man who was nearly killed by thieves. What would we call saints who not only prayed for those who imprisoned them, but one who saved the life of a man who meant to burn him alive?
That was the experience of the Anabaptists such as the Mennonites, who endured great persecution from both Protestants and Catholics. These Christians insisted on the separation of church and state. In an era where baptism meant entry into citizenship as well as membership in the church, they insisted that Christ's kingdom was more important than worldly kingdoms. These peaceable people refused to use violence (although for centuries other Christians spread false libels about them to that effect) and instead meekly endured horrific torture and executions for their faith. Whether they lived or died, they believed the Spirit would use their martyrdom for the growth of the church.
The experiences of their martyrs were recorded in a massive volume known as the Martyr's Mirror, written by Thieleman van Braght, and illustrated by Jan Lyken. The book described, often in lurid detail, the torments and suffering endured by those who placed the cross before their citizenship and refused to recognize any Lord but Jesus. One common thread was the willingness of those who suffered to pardon and forgive their tormentors in the name of Jesus.
The most famous example is that of Dirk Willems, an Anabaptist who was arrested in 1569 in the Dutch village of Asperen. His crimes included being baptized as an adult and allowing Bible studies to be held in his home. He faced execution at the stake. Willems escaped from prison by tying rags together to form a makeshift rope, after which he lowered himself to the ground and began to run away. A guard noticed his escape and ran after him, with the village's mayor right behind. The spring thaw was barely underway, but Willems managed to run across the ice of a frozen river to freedom. However the guard chasing him fell through the ice and began to drown. He called out to Willems to save him. Some might have thought that the collapse of the ice was God's way of saving Willems from a terrible fate. Might he not, with good conscience, do as the Levite and the Priest in the story of the Good Samaritan, who walked the other way and left a dying man for someone else to care for? But Willems turned back, ignoring the fact that the ice might have collapsed and killed them both, and held out his hand to the guard, who he considered his neighbor, and pulled him to safety. This led to his immediate recapture. The mayor insisted he be burned at the stake. The execution was botched and Willems suffered terribly. The Martyr's Mirror records that the wind carried Willem's cries all the way to the next village, where the townsfolk remembered that they had heard cry out more than seventy times. Willems has been held up by Christians as an example of the way that the love of Jesus trumps even concerns for our own safety. Dirk considered his pursuer as his neighbor, someone loved by Jesus whose life was more important than his own, even though his pursuer earnestly desired his death by torture. His life is held up today by Amish, Mennonites, and other Anabaptists, as a prime example of the sacrificial love of Jesus which seeks the best for those who desire the worst for us.
Frank Ramirez has served as a pastor for nearly 30 years in Church of the Brethren congregations in Los Angeles, California; Elkhart, Indiana; and Everett, Pennsylvania. A graduate of LaVerne College and Bethany Theological Seminary, Ramirez is the author of numerous books, articles, and short stories. His CSS titles include Partners in Healing, He Took a Towel, The Bee Attitudes, and three volumes of Lectionary Worship Aids.
**************
StoryShare, July 11, 2010, issue.
Copyright 2010 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
