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Saguenay Cook Book - 1944
The Saguenay Cook Book
Organization: Women’s Association of the Arvida Community First United Church
Coordinates: The cookbook is housed at Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec
Address: 475, boulevard De Maisonneuve Est, Montréal QC H2L 5C4
Region: Saguenay – Lac-Saint-Jean
Contact: www.banq.qc.ca
Description: Typed cookbook, assembled and printed by the women at the First United Church in Arvida
Made by: Unknown
Materials/Medium: Paper
Colours: Blue, black and white
Provenance: Arvida, Quebec
Size: approx. 21.5 cm x 14 cm
Photos: Courtesy Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec
The Saguenay Churches Cookbook
Janet Torge
The Saguenay Cook Book represents a very unique chapter in the history of English speaking people who have settled in Quebec. To understand its significance, one must go backwards in time to the creation and history of the town of Arvida, Quebec, the birthplace of the cookbook.
The land around Arvida in the Saguenay district was first cleared in the mid 1800s by Simon Ross, an English-speaking fur trader and homesteader. Despite Ross’s background and language, life in the Saguenay region remained rural, francophone and sparsely inhabited for nearly 70 years after Ross arrived.
In the late 1880s, James B. Duke and his brother, Buck, both Americans, formed the Duke Power Company and set about buying rights to various rivers and large lakes in the United States and Canada. They built power stations along these waterways and began to sell hydro-electric power to local companies and factories.
In 1912, Duke bought the rights to the power on the Saguenay River and in 1925, along with William Price III, a controlling owner of Price Lumber, they organized the damming of Lac Saint-Jean to feed their power station at Isle Maligne. This hydro-electric venture created the world’s largest power station and set the stage for the transformation of the Saguenay Valley.
Two years after the creation of the Lac Saint-Jean dam, Arthur Vining Davis, president of Alcoa Aluminum Company, came north to Quebec to construct the first aluminium smelter. Named “ARVIDA,” after Mr. Davis himself, the place became known as “The City built in 135 Days.”In a few months, 270 workers’ houses went up, along with Catholic and Protestant churches, banks and stores. Within a couple of years, there were schools, a hospital and a vibrant English-speaking community.
Many of Arvida’s inhabitants were skilled workers recruited from the United States and other parts of Canada to the smelting plants. The New York Times described the settlement as “a model town for working families” and this reputation also brought in Europeans, trying to establish new lives from the rubble of their wartime experiences under the Nazis.
During World War II, the smelter was expanded for the war effort and the factories along the Saguenay River became the largest aluminium production centre in the Western world. Because these products were so vital to the war, the town was continually guarded during the war by anti-aircraft batteries.
The importance of their work did not mean, however, that the Arvida workers at the aluminium plant led prosperous lives during the war. On July 24, 1941, 700 workers walked off the job at the local Alcan plant. The following day, they were joined by 4,500 other workers from the region, and together both groups occupied the Arvida plant. It was, in fact, an illegal strike because their work was considered essential to the war effort. It took only a couple of days to bring the workers back on the job, and shortly after that they received a salary increase and cost-of-living bonuses. C.D. Howe, then Minister of Munitions and Supplies, told the media the strike was due to enemy sabotage but this theory was later rejected by a royal commission formed to settle the dispute.
It was in this war-time atmosphere that the Saguenay Cook Book was published. Although organized by the women at Arvida’s First United Church, the contributors come from various towns and villages in the Saguenay region, and the family names are a mixture of both English and French origin.
Reading through its pages, one can see the women’s impressive effort to maintain a day-to-day normalcy and good will “in this fifth year of war.” The content is sprinkled with hints on how to manage with the few resources and supplies available at that time:
“Safe Substitutes : 1 square of unsweetened chocolate = 3 Tbsp. of cocoa and 1 Tbsp. Shortening.”
“Penny Stretchers: Eat more of what you pay for. Cook beet tops, cauliflower leaves and stems, tough stalks of celery and outside leaves of lettuce… Waste nothing.”
Many of the recipes seem completely foreign to our modern tastes. They speak to a simplicity of life and ingredients one can only imagine. For example, Bertha M. Rough offers up Liver Cakes:
Put through the meat grinder: ½ lb liver (calf, pork or beef), 1 onion about 1 ½ inch in diameter, 2 or 3 slices cooked bacon (omit this if you have coupon trouble), ½ slice bread to absorb onion and liver juices. To this mixture add: 2 lbs flour, 1 well-beaten egg, salt and pepper. This should make a batter which can be dropped by spoonfuls into a frying pan, like griddle cakes. Remember that liver should not be over-cooked.
This recipe, along with another called “Sausage and Banana Casserole with Rice,” from Mrs. Guy Beaudry, illustrate the valiant efforts of these women to put a good meal on the table with only a few items in the pantry.
At the very end of the cookbook, there is a section, THE HOSTESS, where one gets a glimpse into the lifestyle – both real and imagined – of the good women of the Saguenay in 1944:
The word ‘hostess’ has a new meaning to-day. Practically every homemaker entertains her friends in small or large groups – and charmingly. She does it where necessary with little or no help, but with a simple perfection that is the result of careful planning or of ever-ready hospitable resources; and of never attempting anything too elaborate or difficult. Simplicity is smartest to-day. The great points are to suit your type of party to your type of guests – and to plan only such parties as lie well within your reach as to expense, facilities and the work involved.
Arvida merged with the city of Jonquière in the 1960s.The Arvida First United Church now has a French-speaking Baptist congregation and the Riverside Regional High School and the Riverside Regional Elementary still offer classes in English to over 500 students.
Dwane Wilkin,“Upper Saguenay Heritage Trail”, http://quebecheritageweb.com/attraction/upper-saguenay
Saguenay & Lac St-Jean History, http://www.saguenaylacsaintjean.ca/en/informations/histoire
Duncan C. Campbell, Global Mission: The Story of Alcan. Volume 1: to 1950, 1985.
Ingrid Peritz, "Saguenay 'utopia' dreaming big again", The Globe and Mail, 13 November 2010.
Katherine Knight, Spuds, Spam and Eating for Victory: Rationing in the Second World War, 2011.
Jill Norman, Eating for Victory: Healthy Home Front Cooking on War Rations, 2007.
Dialogue on Aluminium: 110 Years of Aluminium in Canada www.thealuminiumdialog.com/en/aluminium--2/history/110-years-of-history-...
Jonquière, http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/articles/jonquiere
Janet Torge is one of those people who love to mix it up. She’s a TV documentary producer, writer, prenatal teacher, newspaper columnist, researcher, archivist and creator of Radical Resthomes, her housing vision for the future. Follow her exploits at www.torgeahead.com.
Arvida
Industry/
War/
I am the Saguenay Cook Book, created by local women in the region surrounding Arvida, Quebec, in 1944. Faced with war rationing, the women of the Saguenay were still able to produce a cookbook filled with nourishing recipes and wisdom on how to cope in difficult times. Each contributor gave a little of herself when she shared her recipe, and that's icing on the cake... (if you have a ration coupon for it)!
The Saguenay Cook Book was published against the backdrop of World War II and labour disputes with the large aluminium employer of the region. The cookbook speaks to women’s impressive efforts to maintain day-to-day normality and good will in their community as the war dragged on around them. The content of the cookbook is filled with advice on how to manage a pantry, how to host a dinner party and how to use every edible item to produce a good meal for the family.
Le livre de recettes du Saguenay
Datant de 1944, je suis le livre de recettes du Saguenay, œuvre de femmes québécoises vivant dans la région autour d’Arvida. Aux prises avec le rationnement du temps de guerre, les femmes du Saguenay se montraient encore capables de créer un livre de cuisine rempli de repas nourrissants et de sages conseils à suivre en cas de périodes difficiles. Chaque cuisinière ayant donné un peu d’elle-même en partageant sa recette, c’est comme la cerise sur le gâteau… (si vous avez un ticket pour ça)!
Le livre de recettes du Saguenay fut publié avec, en arrière-fond, la Seconde Guerre mondiale ainsi que les conflits qui opposaient les ouvriers et leur employeur, la grosse aluminerie régionale. Le livre de cuisine témoigne éloquemment des efforts impressionnants accomplis par les femmes pour maintenir un semblant de normalité dans la vie de tous les jours et pour faire preuve de bonne volonté alors que les conflits entouraient la communauté. Dans ce livre, on retrouve plein de conseils à propos de la gestion du garde-manger, sur l’art de recevoir à dîner, sur la manière d’apprêter toutes sortes de nourritures afin d’offrir un bon repas à la famille.
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CALL TOLL-FREE 1.800.ATN.5666
Reaching 87+ Million Households Targeting Over 75 of the Top National Cable Networks
ATN INSIGHTS
RFP FORM
Each year we look back at the media landscape of the previous year. We do this to review what happened so we can brief partners on strategies that reflect what’s changed, and what’s new in the Television media landscape. The most significant development for 2018 was, of course, the 2018 mid-term Elections which resulted in a considerable jump in Political advertising activity, compared to the Presidential election of 2016. Our brief communicates these key points:
Total Direct Response Advertising inventory increased 8.4% for the year despite a 7.6% decrease during the fourth quarter
Political advertising was just one of many headwinds facing Spot DRTV advertising this year
A new-generation of DRTV advertisers challenged Cable TV inventory
National DigiNet TV emerged solidly as a vital DRTV media platform
We believe 2019 will be a crucial transition into Advertising Year 2020
We recommend advertisers make the American Target Network® an essential part of their 2019 testing, and their 2020 strategies
We’re now about ten months away from the earliest impact of the 2020 election, the dynamics of which are unknown. It could be a re-election campaign by the incumbent President, or it could be another land rush Primary season by both parties. There could be a well-financed Independent candidate or any combination of the above which might intensify the 2020 campaigns. All this will strongly impact how much affordable, efficient media airtime is available for response, and performance-based advertisers.
Given that, our focus this year is testing, and improving strategies and tactics. DRTV campaigns will have more flexibility and more efficient media rates. Election campaigns and third-party spending will not stress 2019 inventory as they did last year.
1. Total Direct Response Advertising inventory increased 8.4% for the year despite a 7.6% decrease during the fourth quarter
During the first three broadcast Quarters of the year (January through September 2018), DRTV advertising was up 14.1%. During the final Quarter (October through December), DRTV was down 7.6%. Spot TV avails fell 10.6%, primarily because of the elections. Cable TV fell 12.6%, but for other reasons.
Nielsen Ad Intel Competitive Media Reporting shows Television inventory used by Direct Response Product advertisers increased by 364,055 30-second units compared to 2017. Nielsen defines this category, Direct Response Products, as advertising using clear and distinct calls-to-action and response devices (either phone number, or URL, or both).
They measure inventory by 30-second equivalent ad units, which have traditionally been the common stock-keeping unit used by TV Stations, Broadcast and Cable Networks, and local cable Multi-System Operators. [] They also track the total number of commercial units and use that number, in combination with the 30-second measure, to estimate the average length of those commercials. [] We have noticed an industry-wide transition from the traditional 30-second ad to shorter commercials which, in turn, increases the amount of clutter surrounding all TV ads.
2. Political advertising was just one of many headwinds facing Spot DRTV advertising this year
Political campaigns running in the top 50 Spot TV markets took 1,668,311 advertising 30-second units during 2018; 900,812 during the first three quarters, and 955,370 during the fourth. Add in third-party buys supporting ballot issues and campaigns, and the resulting inventory available for advertisers fell by 3.5% or 1,404,861 units throughout the year, and 8.4% during the fourth quarter.
Complicating the situation was significant year-over-year growth of the Truck Dealer Association category (up 52.9%, or by 366,350 30-second units), advertisers like AT&T, Comcast, Spectrum, and Verizon Wireless classified as Internet Service Providers (up 27.9%, or 245,060 units), and Legal Service advertisers (up 5.5%, or 186,191 units). Add to those Truck Manufacturers, Warranty Services, and Auto Insurance category advertisers. All told, ten advertising categories, including Direct Response Products, raised 2018 demand for Spot TV by 3,434,403 30-second units, or 33.2%.
3. A new-generation of DRTV advertisers challenged Cable TV avails
Nielsen tracked 822,229 more 30-second units on Cable for all product categories during 2018. That was an increase of 3.8% for the year. DRTV was the largest single product category on Cable, taking 1,915,921 units, which is a 3.6% increase for the year. Since there were no national offices up for election this year, 2018 related advertising was limited to political action and advocacy groups, and their campaigns used 11.9% fewer 30-second units than during 2017. It was demand growth from four specific product categories that impacted Cable DRTV, especially during the fourth quarter:
The first category is Website advertisers, brands like Ancestry.com, Rover, and Zola.com, who nearly doubled their 2017 demand, by 101,607 30-second units.
The next category is Computer Software, where brands like Intuit, Microsoft, NordVPN, and Stamps.com more than doubled their 2017 activity by taking 100,181 more 30-second units than 2017.
Auto Insurance is the next category, which is home for brands like Allstate, Geico, Liberty Mutual, and Progressive. Their year-over-year increase was more modest, only a 19.2% increase, but that represented 92,026 units.
The final category is Truck Manufacturers, and those advertisers increased their collective demand by 83,458 units, a 21.4% increase over 2017.
What’s interesting about this list is, except for Trucks, we’re seeing significant pressure on Cable DRTV inventory from a new kind of advertiser, who has adapted DRTV strategies and tactics to build consumer-direct brands. By the time the fourth quarter came around these four product categories were joined by Motion Pictures (up 18.7% over 2017) and campaigns for new Pharmaceutical products. This squeezed legacy DRTV advertising inventory levels in the fourth-quarter 12.6% below the same period during 2017.
4. National DigiNet TV emerged solidly as a vital DRTV media platform
In 2009, when the United States adopted the ATSC digital television standard, local TV stations got the ability to transmit contents using the digital sub-channels that came as part of their upgraded licenses. We refer to the networks distributed over those sub-channels as “National DigiNet TV.” []
DigiNet media provided 1,991,460 30-second units to all product categories during 2018. That number was up 379,580 units or 23.5% from 2017. Much of that growth is because both the Comet, and the Heroes and Icons networks achieved minimum reporting standards [] and were available in Ad Intel reporting.
DRTV advertisers used 423,128 30-second units of available inventory (21.2% of total), making DRTV the largest Nielsen-defined product category in 2018 using DigiNet media. That is an 116,998 unit increase over 2017, making DigiNet media the third-largest source of media inventory used by DRTV advertisers. DigiNet inventory ranked behind Spot TV and Cable, but ahead of the combined Spanish Language Spot, Network, and Cable TV group.
5. 2019 will be a crucial transition into Advertising Year 2020
Given these developments, the question about the TV media landscape becomes what will happen in 2019. The obvious answer is that market conditions will cool off. That view may be too simplistic, however. We noted earlier that a new-era of consumer-direct brands is on the rise, mixing their particular kind of rocket science with close attention to media efficiency. They seem to be the new face of Direct Response TV. The scale of many of these brands allows them to pressure stations and networks for large amounts of airtime, making them another factor to monitor.
The State of California will join the early-season Presidential primaries of 2012. That means the Super Tuesday series of March 2020 contests will add four of the twenty-largest media markets into an already crowded field. Because of that, we anticipate a robust first-quarter (January through March 2020), with local stations declaring inventory restrictions as early as January 15, 2020. Primaries for the general election then will follow throughout the year but at lower intensity levels. Preliminary dates for the Democratic National Convention are July 13 through 16, 2020. The Republican convention follows August 24 through 27, 2020. Then, on September 4, 2020, the 60-day political window opens for the General Election on Tuesday, November 3, 2020.
Based on our preliminary estimate, we expect 2020 Spot TV Political advertising activity to increase by 640,000 30-second avails over 2018.
6. We recommends that advertisers make American Target Network® an essential part of their 2019 testing, and their 2020 strategies
American Target Network ® is a proprietary un-wired cable media asset. By combining inventory from broadband Multi-System Operators and Satellite TV providers serving over 90 million subscribing households, American Target Network® aggregates national, or regional campaigns that run on the same networks and programs as traditional national Cable. We insert like traditional cable buys, with network selection driven by target audience demographics and lifestyles. Moreover, American Target Network® delivers impressions at a fraction of the cost of the national feeds.
We think American Target Network ® can be essential for 2019 testing. The network surfaces cost-effective media and creative measurement, thus mitigating downside risk of traditional media experiments.
This document presents a survey marketplace conditions that is not complete without a narrow focus on relevant competitors and consumer markets. Our client briefing schedule is underway. Let us know if you’d like to schedule a time to discuss strategies to adjust to this rapidly changing media landscape.
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Hazing (Special Guest Star: Nick Jonas)
This is the second part of three stories featuring Special Guest Star Nick Jonas. Thanks to Jimmy, ballbusterXXL and a lot of anonymous readers for some pretty awesome suggestions. Today Nick Jonas meets Kev, Ben and Colin to brush up his acting skills for a movie role.
Previous part:
Warning: Can contain traces of cum.
Featured in this story: Ben, Colin and Kev (click for pictures)
“Finally”, Kev grinned, rubbing his hands. “We’ve been waiting for this for quite some time.” The 20 year old jock was shirtless, wearing nothing but a pair of short sweat pants, showing off his muscular, athletic body. He ran his hand through his brown hair and smiled at his buddies. “Right?”
Kev’s roommates Colin and Ben nodded. They were as old as Kev, and they were dressed just like him.
Ben was a little more muscular, and he proudly displayed his bulging biceps, his six-pack abs and his perfect pecs. His black hair was cut short and he had a wide grin on his face.
Colin wasn’t as beefy as Ben or Kev, but he had no reason to complain, either. His sculptured body looked like a greek god’s statue. His curvy blond hair stood on ends and he looked like he had just fallen out of bed.
The three studs smiled at their guest.
Nick Jonas smiled back at them. The handsome singer had started making a name for himself as a serious actor, gaining critical acclaim in a couple of small films. He had enjoyed the experience on the set, and he wanted to pursue his acting career.
When he had asked us to help him broaden his horizons by taking a couple of lessons from our models, I had gladly accepted.
After all, when do you get a chance to get to know a star like Nick Jonas up close?
The four guys were standing in the middle of the studio.
Nick had arrived wearing a smart suit but he had changed into sweat pants just like Kev and his buddies. He looked gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous. His muscular chest, the big bulge in his pants, the stubble on his handsome face.
I was sitting at my desk, trying not to look busy and failing in my attempt to calm the raging boner in my pants by doing the bookkeeping. With Nick Jonas in the room, it was hard to concentrate on anything else.
“Yeah, I’ve been pretty busy”, Nick said. “But now I’m here and I’m eager to learn.”
Kev nodded and put his hands around Nick’s shoulders. “That’s good. We’ve got a lot to teach you, right guys?” He looked at his friends.
“You bet”, Colin chuckled.
“When you’re out of here you’ll be an expert on hazing”, Ben grinned.
Nick laughed. “Awesome.”
“First thing you’ve got to learn”, Kev smiled and looked at him. “Never leave yourself open.”
Nick raised his eyebrows. “Wha---“
Kev interrupted him by a well-placed slap to the nuts, making Nick’s bulge jiggle and eliciting a strained groan as the superstar doubled over, clutching his crotch.
The three jocks burst out laughing, high-fives all around, as Nick looked at them, trying to smile through the pain.
“Okay”, Nick mumbled, coughing. “Got it. Never leave yourself open.”
Ben stood in front of him and smiled as Nick straightened, rubbing his aching nuts. “Lesson number two.” He waited for a moment.
Nick looked at him expectantly.
“Never leave yourself open”, Ben said with a shrug before raising his knee sharply, crunching Nick’s superstar spuds into his body.
Nick let out a surprise yelp as Ben, Colin and Kev roared with laughter.
The famous singer had a hard time staying on his feet but he somehow managed not to collapse. His hands were on his knees and he was doubled over, grunting and groaning in agony.
Ben leaned over and placed his hand on the back of Nick’s head, making him look him straight in the eyes. “Got it?”
Nick nodded, pressing his lips together. “Got it”, he said hoarsely. “Yeah, I got it.”
“Good”, Ben grinned and playfully slapped Nick’s face.
Nick grimaced.
Colin walked up to him. “Lesson number three.” He smiled brightly.
Nick looked up at him and quickly shielded his crotch with his hand.
“Never leave yourself open”, Colin smiled.
Nick’s face broke into a grin and he nodded at his guarded testicles. “Yeah, I got tha---“
Kev’s foot crashed into Nick’s balls from behind, sidestepping the testicular protection and slamming his foot toes-first into Nick’s ballbag.
A loud smack echoed through the room as Nick’s eyes opened wide in surprise. The renewed pain in his precious jewels appeared in his beautiful blue eyes a split-second later.
Nick gasped for breath, a wheezing groan coming from deep inside his throat where his relocated testicles had probably found a nice, new home.
The room was filled with laughter as Ben and Kev and Colin high-fived and cheered, mocking poor Nick who fell to his knees, screaming in pain.
“Never leave yourself open”, Kev grinned, nudging Nick’s shoulder. “Shoulda learned your lesson.”
“Aww, look at his cute face”, Ben chuckled. “He should get an Oscar for that…”
“He should”, Kev grinned. “Because Little Oscar down there is not gonna work for a while…”
They roared with laughter, and even Nick chuckled.
“No kids for you, buddy!” Colin said mock-pity in his voice, ruffling Nick’s hair.
“Damn, you got me good”, Nick groaned and got up, grimacing as he reached inside his pants to rearrange his genitalia.
“That’s what hazing is all about”, Ben grinned.
Kev raised his hand. “Well, that’s not what hazing is about. Hazing is not about randomly hitting people in the nuts---“
“Even though that’s a big part of it”, Colin interrupted him.
“A very big part of it”, Ben nodded.
“Yeah, it is. But hazing is not just about randomly hitting people in the nuts”, Kev repeated, quickly moving on before Colin and Ben had a chance to chime in, “it’s a way of life. A philosophy.”
“Randomly hitting people in the nuts is just a part of it”, Colin said, nodding gravely.
“A very big part of it”, Ben said with a serious expression on his face.
Kev looked at them. Then he brought his fists up, nailing his buddies square in the nuts with a double uppercut that crunched their tender nuts into their bodies, making them groan in pain and double over, cupping their crotches.
“Where was I?” Kev said, turning to Nick.
“Uh, randomly hitting people in the nuts?” Nick offered.
Kev raised his eyebrow and kicked Nick’s throbbing nuts as hard as he could, lifting the handsome stud off the ground. He came crashing down and curled up in a ball, wailing in agony.
“I think I’m gonna go get some ice”, Kev mumbled and disappeared into the kitchen.
When he returned with a pitcher of iced tea and four glasses, Colin, Ben and Nick were nursing their balls, groaning in pain, but at least they were able to stand upright again.
“You wanna learn about hazing”, Kev said after emptying his glass.
“Yeah, I do”, Nick said. He hadn’t taken a sip from his glass yet. Instead he was holding it against the big bulge in his crotch. “I’m gonna do a movie about it.”
“But you already did”, Colin said, scratching his aching balls. “What was it called again?”
“Goat”, Ben said. “I thought it’d be funny but it was crap.”
Nick chuckled. “Well, it wasn’t supposed to be funny.”
“Yeah”, Ben said. “It was crap. I mean, I was waiting for someone to do the goat for ninety fucking minutes.”
Kev chuckled. “The movie wasn’t about doing the goat, it was about a fucking a goat.”
“Whatever”, Ben shrugged.
“How can a movie about fucking a goat not be funny?” Colin chuckled.
“Exactly”, Ben raised his arms in a desperate gesture. “Unbelievable! Total crap.”
Nick looked at him for a moment. “Anyway. I’m gonna do another movie about hazing, and this one’s gonna be a comedy.”
Ben shrugged his shoulders. “I hope it’s not crap.”
“We’re gonna show you some hilarious stuff”, Kev grinned, putting his arm around Nick’s shoulders.
Nick winced, covering his crotch protectively.
“Don’t worry, man”, Kev chuckled. “We’re brothers, right?”
Nick smiled weakly and scratched his neck. “Well, I thought---“
Kev smacked him in the nuts with the palm of his hand, causing Nick to double over and groan in pain.
“Oh man”, Kev sighed as his buddies roared with laughter. “You’ve got a lot to learn.”
While Nick was recovering, Kev turned to Ben. “The paddle, please.”
Ben handed him a large wooden paddle that looked heavy and solid when Kev weighed it in his hands. “Paddling is a very simple way to discipline someone. I’ll show you.” He nodded at Colin. “Drop your pants, bro.”
Colin squirmed. “Oh, man, it that---“
“Drop your pants, bro”, Kev repeated.
Colin sighed. He knew what Kev expected him to do, and he dutifully turned around, bent over and pulled his pants down, revealing his bare ass.
Kev looked at Nick and grinned. “Watch and learn.”
With that he whacked Colin’s butt with the paddle. A loud, resounding THWACK echoed through the room and Colin let out an anguished howl.
“Nice”, Nick grinned. “May I?” He looked at the paddle.
“Sure”, Kev shrugged and gave Nick the paddle.
Colin let out a groan but he bent over again. His butt was turning a bright shade of red.
Nick smacked Colin’s ass with all the force he could muster.
“Very good”, Kev said, nodding, as Colin screamed in pain. “Now do you know what’s even funnier than paddling an ass?”
Nick grinned. “Paddling a pair of nuts.”
Kev laughed. “Attaboy. You’re a fast learner!” He turned to Colin. “Do the goat, bro.”
“No way”, Colin protested. “You said we’d---“
“Do it now!” Kev said sharply.
“Oh, man”, Colin groaned. He tucked his nuts between his thighs and bent over again. The two meaty orbs were exposed right below Colin’s flaming red ass cheeks.
Nick brought the paddle back, his eyes focused on the targets that were wedged between Colin’s thighs. Then he brought the paddle crashing down, hitting both of tender nuggets dead-on and flattening them like pancakes.
Colin stumbled forward, coughing and gasping for breath before letting out an ear-piercing shriek and curling up on the floor.
“That’s how you paddle a pair of nuts!” Ben laughed as he watched his buddy writhe in pain, kicking his legs and screaming like a banshee.
Nick was grinning proudly, a look of deep satisfaction on his face.
“Not bad”, Kev grinned, taking the paddle from Nick. “Now it’s your turn.” He looked at Nick expectantly.
Nick stared at him. “What, you mean…”
“Do the goat”, Kev said patiently. “Come on, turn around, bend over, drop your pants and show us your nuts.” He weighed the paddle in his hands and winked at Nick. “What goes around comes round, bro.”
Nick groaned and complied, revealing his big, flaccid cock and a pair of very impressive balls that hung low in his sack.
His beautiful, juicy balls were made to do the goat, and when he wedged them between his thighs and bent over, I looked at the most perfect goat I had ever seen.
I almost creamed my pants.
Kev was less impressed, apparently. With a swift, hard smack, he smashed Nick’s nuts with the paddle, causing the handsome superstar to join Colin on the ground, cupping his nuts, wailing in agony.
Ben and Kev were laughing their asses off.
“Let me have a go”, Colin croaked, his face a mask of pain.
He got up and grabbed the paddle, waiting patiently until Nick was able to get up, too, and assume the position again.
His nuts were beet red between his tanned thighs, which made the targets even more obvious.
Naturally, Colin had no trouble hitting them both with a well-placed blow of the paddle that pancaked Nick’s nuts once again and made him drop to his knees, throwing his head back, his mouth wide open, squealing in pain.
“And that’s the paddle”, Kev grinned. “What comes after the paddle you may ask. Well…” He looked at Ben. “Teabag him.”
Ben chuckled and reached inside his pants, pulling out his sagging ballsack through the leg opening before rubbing it all over Nick’s face.
“Make him taste your ball sweat”, Colin grinned.
Ben laughed and dunked his balls inside Nick’s mouth.
It was more reflex than malicious intent that made Nick close his mouth. To Ben it made no difference, though, when his balls were crushed between Nick’s teeth.
Ben’s eyes grew as wide as saucers and he let out a wheezing groan when Nick chomped away at his manhood.
“Ooooooooh!” Kev and Colin cringed in sympathy as they watched Nick chew on Ben’s nuts.
With a miserable groan, Nick spat Ben’s nuts out again, allowing him to sink to his knees, staring down at his balls. There were teeth marks on them, and Ben looked like he couldn’t believe his eyes.
“My balls”, he whispered in a toneless voice. “My beautiful balls.”
Nick wiped his mouth with the back of his arm and managed a weak grin. “Not that beautiful anymore, buddy…”
Kev and Colin roared with laughter.
Kev nudged Nick’s shoulder and grinned. “Man, you’re good. Where did you learn that sort of stuff?”
Nick chuckled. “I guess you’ll have to ask my older brothers.” He glanced at Ben and wiped his mouth again. “Their nuts taste better, though...” He grinned proudly when Kev and Colin burst out laughing.
Ben was too preoccupied with his crunched nuts to react to Nick’s insult.
“Okay”, Kev said. “We’ve got sacktaps, the paddle, the goat, and teabagging. I guess that’s Hazing 101.”
Nick grinned. He got up, rubbing his balls. His pants were hanging around his ankles. “I think I’m well prepared for the movie. Thanks a lot.”
“If you need something to put the cherry on the cake”, Kev smiled at him. “Just let me know.”
Nick grimaced, cupping his sore balls. “Thanks, I think I’ve had enough for today.” He paused. “On the other hand: What do you have in mind?”
Kev chuckled. “It’s a little game. But I can’t tell you what it is before you tell me if you’re in.”
Nick hesitated.
“Come on, bro”, Colin chuckled, patting Nick’s shoulder. “Kev’s games are fun.”
“Alright, I’m in”, Nick said with a grin. “I love fun…”
“Great”, Kev said. He looked at Ben. “What about you?”
Ben got up, glaring at Nick. “Sure.”
“The game is called ‘Soggy biscuit’”, Kev grinned. “I’m sure you’re familiar with it.”
“Oh yeah.” Nick let out a laugh, jerking his limp dick a couple of times. “Where’s the biscuit?”
Kev smiled at him. “Well, that’s the thing: We don’t have a biscuit.”
Nick chuckled. “Okay, so what’s gonna be the target?”
“Not what”, Kev smiled. “Who.”
Nick raised his eyebrows.
Kev winked at him. “And the answer is: you.”
Nick's eyes widened. “No way---“
“Way!” Kev grinned and kicked Nick’s nuts with all the force he could muster.
The handsome stud howled in pain and collapsed on the ground.
A couple of minutes later, he was kneeling on the ground, his hands tied behind his back, his head held back by a piece of rope, his mouth held open by a dental gag.
He was surrounded by Kev, Colin and Ben who were feverishly jerking their cocks, laughing and joking about Nick’s predicament.
Nick’s eyes were darting from one fat cock to the next one. The dental gag prevented him from closing his mouth and he let out throaty grunts and miserable moans.
“Aim for his eyes”, Ben grinned. “That’s way more fun than his mouth…”
The three jocks laughed as Nick’s eyes widened with terror and he shook his head frantically.
Kev placed his foot between Nick’s thighs and pressed against Nick’s junk, squashing his flaccid dick and his swollen balls under his sole.
Nick let out a gurgling grunt.
Kev chuckled, leaning forward and adding more weight to Nick’s testicles . “Look, it’s kinda like a kitchen trash can.” His fat, throbbing cock was glistening with precum as he stroked it with both of his hands.
“Well, he is our cum dump”, Ben chimed in.
Colin and Kev laughed.
Kev made Nick grunt and groan and moan in pain by shifting his foot, stepping on his nuts, relieving the pressure, and then stomping down on them again.
Nick’s eyes were wide open, filled with pain and anger, as he waited for the inevitable.
Kev was the first to shoot his load. He let out a guttural groan and squished Nick’s nuts flat under his foot as he released a series of rich, creamy spurts of cream that splattered all over the handsome superstar’s face. Some of Kev’s cum landed right on target, splashing straight into Nick’s gullet and making him gurgle and choke. A big, creamy jet landed square on his face, dribbling to the sides and coating his cheeks. Another jet hit his left eye, making Nick blink and grunt.
“Bull’s eye!” Colin cheered just when his own cock erupted with a rapid-fire salvo of salty spunk. Most of it went into his mouth but a few spurts hit him in the nose, making Nick snort and huff.
“Hey, you missed his right eye”, Kev quipped.
Colin’s orgasm had barely stopped when Ben added his load to the mix.
“I’ll take care of that”, Ben grunted. The muscular hunk released a flood of sperm that all but drowned Nick in cum. Not only did he manage to land a very accurately placed spurt right in Nick’s right eye, he followed it up with another and another before switching to his left eye.
Kev and Colin burst out laughing.
When Ben was finished, Nick’s face was dripping with cum. He looked as if someone had emptied a bucket of creamy white goo over his head.
Cum was pooling in his eyes, it was covering his hair and his face.
“Great work, guys!” Kev chuckled, stomping down on Nick’s nuts one final time.
Nick let out a gurgling grunt, blinking through the sticky veil of spunk.
When the guys had freed the handsome singer after taking a couple of pictures, striking victory poses and smiling into the camera, showing off Nick’s cum-covered face, he curled up in a ball, groaning in pain.
“You’ll be red-eyed for a while”, Kev grinned.
“Yeah, and I don’t think you’ll have sex anytime soon”, Ben chimed in.
“And you might see a couple of pictures posted on Facebook”, Colin added with a smile.
“But look on the bright side: Now you know all about hazing”, Kev declared with a mocking laugh as he ruffled Nick’s cum-stained hair.
Nick just let out a long, deep groan.
“You’re welcome”, Kev chuckled. “Just call us if you need any more lessons…”
- Logan faces off against Nick Jonas in an MMA fight.
Labels: Ben, Colin, Kev, Stories 2017, Story: Special Guest Star: Nick Jonas, Warning: Can contain traces of cum
Buster said...
Um... hot! [looking for cum rag now]
Ha! Thank you! Your comment made my day! :-))
Ballbusting Canucks: Show and tell – part 1 (writt...
Ballbusting Canucks: A letter from Canada (written...
Video links: Boys just wanna have fun (31)
Fight club (Jeremy meets Logan)
Video links: XXX (7)
New poll: How old are you?
Poll results: Favorite method
Brotherly boxing bout: Punching bag (written by ba...
Video links: Sack taps and dick slaps (3)
From the web: Seagull rips off man's testicle as h...
The pervert and the giant (Gareth and Ben meet Kev...
Video links: Comedy gems (14)
Best of the busts: August 2017
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Athletes, Featured
You Can’t Buck with Sean Willingham
Sean Willingham knows his way around an x-ray machine. For the last 16 years, he has been a star on the Professional Bull Riders tour, and he has the scars to prove it. As he enters his 17th, and possibly
Athletes, Featured, Uncategorized
Bode Miller: King of the Mountain
When the greatest American skier of all time says he wants to talk, you listen. I met the two-time World Cup champion and five-time U.S. Olympian at the Bomber Ski boutique on Madison Avenue, where the brand was launching their
Athletes, Boxing, Featured
Regis Prograis: Boxing’s Rising Superstar
Photographs by Chad Griffith Styling by Melina Kemph At 22-0, with 19 knockouts, there aren’t many super lightweight fighters eager to step In the ring with Regis “The Rougarou” Prograis. Now fighting out of Houston, the New Orleans-born prizefighter built a fast
Jared Gordon Fights for His Life
Photographs by Mark Peterson Special thanks to Church Street Boxing Gym “To err is human, to forgive is divine.” – Alexander Pope The last time Jared Gordon died was on Christmas Day of 2015. After his heart was restarted by an Emergency Medical
Athletes, Basketball, Featured
Enes Kanter: Forward Thinking
Photographs by Chad Griffith Styling by Melina Kemph Featured Shirt and Jacket: Bonobos Did you know that you always wanted to become an NBA player? I actually wanted to be a soccer player growing up. Soccer was always the number one sport in Turkey.
Athletes, Featured, Running
Courtney Dauwalter can run farther than you
Photos by Paul Nelson The Moab 240 is more than just an endurance race. It’s a test of how far the human mind can push the body through unconscionable pain. The 238.3 mile course winds through desert, canyons, up and down
Wade Baldwin: Second Chance
Much like the game of basketball itself, an NBA player’s career is all about adjustments. For Portland Trailblazers sophomore Wade Baldwin, adjustments have been a way of life through the course of his young basketball career. After forgoing his Junior and
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Kimmy Fasani’s Steep Climb
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Shawn Porter: Dressed to Kill
There are few prizefighters who have been nicknamed as accurately as “Showtime” Shawn Porter. With his punches in bunches style that challenges CompuBox to keep up with his fists, Porter has always shined brightly in main events. This Saturday, when
Net Gains: beach volleyball star Brooke Sweat
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Scotland's First War Of Independence
The Further Adventures Of Wee Robert Bruce
The Boy And The Well Of Memory»
The Adventures Of Wee Robert Bruce
More Adventures Of Wee Robert Bruce
The Regal Storytellers
Auch Books
SS Crome
This novel is a work of historical fiction by Konstantina Ritsou based on historical facts. For the first time the story of Andrew de Moray, is told. As comrade in arms of Sir William Wallace and co-commander at the Battle of Stirling Bridge, he is an unsung hero of Scotland’s first war of independence. This story does justice to his contribution in the fight from English tyranny and the inspiration he gave to those who carried the torch of freedom, beyond his death.
In this novel the public life of the heroes, Andrew de Moray, William Wallace, Robert de Bruce, and other historical persons, is based, as much as possible, on historical facts. Their private life is historical fiction but still follows, as closely as possible, the stream of history, inspired also by some of the legends of the Scottish people.
About the author Konstantina Ritsou
The author is a medical doctor and worked in the past as a doctor in cytopathology. As a doctor she has worked in Sweden and UK, though mainly in Greece for the last three decades. She also holds a diploma of drama and specializes in acting, translating and directing theatre-mainly classical-including the works of Shakespeare, Molière, etc.
She has directed and translated, in modern Greek, the tragedies Ion, Hippolytus, Alcestis by Euripides, and the Persians by Aeschylus.
In Athens, 2009, Paroussia Publications released her historical novel “The Souls of the Lions seeking for justice” concerning the democracy of the de Witt brothers in Holland, in 17th century, which introduced
the social insurance for the first time. In 2010, again by Paroussia Publications, this afore mentioned novel was published as The Lion Souls in an English translation by the author.
She has performed many roles as an actress, although, of course, she was primarily devoted to her medical science until a serious health threat, an aneurysm, obliged her to retire from medical practice and to close her own theatre. Since then she has devoted most of her time to writing.
You can buy your copy of The Boy And The Well Of Memory here, or for enquiries about additional copies go to the contact page or email us on: sarah.crome@hotmail.co.uk
£9.99 + UK Postage (£2.99)
£9.99 + EU Postage (£4.99)
£9.99 + Rest Of World Postage (£7.99)
Images from the Book Launch....
About | Home | Contact | Our Books | Buy The Books |
Copyright © 2020 Sarah Crome. All Rights Reserved. Sitemap | Privacy Policy | Website: Web Design with Seagull Designs
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Cathy Laudenbach
Hou Leong
What does it mean to be Australian? It seems as if Leong is posing this question to us in this series An Australian. In these photographs he assembles images that symbolise an essentialised…
Dena Lester
Dena Lester’s work blurs the boundaries between photography and painting. By printing photographs on canvas, and manipulating them by hand, Lester seeks to disrupt their immediacy and…
Xiao Xian Liu
"Xiao Xian Liu studies the differences and similarities between the East and the West on issues covering culture, tradition, politics, religion, identity, gender and so on. He is a lens…
Marcia Lochhead
"A fascination with the human body and visual metaphors for bodily fluids have been the prevailing themes underpinning Marcia Lochhead’s work for more than a decade of artistic practice…
Nicola Loder
Nicola Loder explores the unstable qualities of photographs in her work. Like memory, time, vision and ideology, photography is shown to be a slippery thing. In her long-term series, Tourist…
Steven Lojewski
Steven Lojewski’s photographic practice focuses on an exploration of cultural and geographic environments, attempting, through the camera, to make sense of his surroundings. He deals with…
Angela Lynkushka
Angela Lynkushka works in the genre of documentary photography, chronicling contemporary Australian life; recording people in their environment and culture. Her work explores the juncture between…
Peter Lyssiotis
Peter Lyssiotis is a photomonteur. In an era that is dominated increasingly by digital technologies, Lyssiotis continues to use a scalpel, scissors and glue to literally cut up and reconstruct…
Anne Macdonald
“My photographs record the allure of beauty, and the abject associations of aging and decay, in objects reminiscent of the body and mortality. Baroque drapes are symbolic of sensuous entrapment…
Fiona MacDonald
Fiona MacDonald is known for her exquisitely rendered installations of bodies of work that draw on local cultural traditions, social and natural history. Neglected archives and personal collections…
Ruth Maddison
Ruth Maddison’s photography offers intimate and personal glimpses into the daily lives of her subjects. People, their relationships and their communities are continuing preoccupations…
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Arrow S3x01 “The Calm”
News, TV, TV/Movies
By Milo Milton Jefferies
WARNING! MAJOR SPOILERS!
Okay, raise a hand if you didn’t see that ending coming? I’ll get to it in more detail, but wow. Arrow has proved to be capable of many twists in the past and that was just totally unpredictable and reinforced the element that nobody is safe. It was a major death sequence that was handled very well with a great shock impact. But first, let’s deal with the new cast additions, of which there were a lot to a series that’s already pretty packed.
Sara Lance may be back, but don’t expect her to stick around for long…
We got the new Count Vertigo, Peter Stormare, who is already a more preferable option to Seth Gabel’s Count, being his own character as opposed to just a Heath Ledger ripoff. He puts some fun charisma into the role with a much stronger casting choice. And he’s made even more terrifying by the manipulation of the Vertigo drug to show victims their worst fear, which adds another interesting layer of unpredictability that’s handled well by the writers and it was cool to see the Arrow fight off against his own fear, which was essentially becoming Oliver Queen.
The most significant newcomer to the series however was Brandon Routh as Ray Palmer. Like Stormare, he puts a lot of effort into his role with some great chemistry and as he poses a business rival for Oliver it’s clear to see that he almost looks like the Sebastian Blood of this season, someone who Oliver will have to tackle outside of the costume. The high stakes premiere saw Palmer win over the Queen Consolidated Board, and there’s even a fun reference to “Star City”, the home of Oliver in the comics, which is what Starling could become.
Arrow proves that it can balance tragedy and the more light hearted elements well in this series with an excellent display. The majority of the episode features the team working together, Diggle, Roy (whose superhero identity is presumably Arsenal), Felicity and Oliver showcasing them at their very best, with an excellent display of them working together as a team. They believe they have the criminals on the run, until the emergence of a new Vertigo threatens to undo the balance of the relative peace brought to Starling City.
With any episode of Arrow, it’s important not to ignore the flashbacks. After two seasons on the Island a change in tone was needed, and it’s great to see more Amanda Waller showing that we may not quite be done with ARGUS just yet, be it in the past or present. The divergence to Hong Kong was handled very well and it was just the right change at the right time, exploiting a great new dynamic with several directions to go from here.
Now I think we can get to the ending. With the addition of Arsenal and the already packed cast, it’s quickly become apparent that the return of Sara felt unnecessary, but welcomed, given that her character is a personal favourite of mine from this series. As a result, I was annoyed to see her killed off so quickly, but the way it was done was handled pretty well indeed. The major cliffhanger ending will no doubt set the tone for the next few episodes and it proves that the series is going to pull out all the stops in creating something that becomes more and more unpredictable as the show progresses, especially with the fact that Malcolm Merlyn and Ra’s Al Ghul are out there in the shadows, waiting to strike.
There wasn’t really anything too negative about this episode as it balanced the light hearted stuff with the darker elements very well, even featuring a surprise cameo from Grant Gustin’s Barry Allen, to let viewers know where The Flash’s timeline fits in with Arrow. Going forward, it’ll be interesting to see how both series develop, and with an upcoming crossover featuring both characters quite early on, things could get pretty interesting indeed.
In conclusion then, The Calm was an excellent premiere that shows Arrow has continued the form that it’s been in since pretty much the latter stages of season one, demonstrating a great level of consistency. There should be plenty of more awesome stuff on the horizon and next week can’t come quickly enough.
TagsAmanda WallerArrowArsenalBrandon RouthCaity LotzDC ComicsFelicity SmoakGrant GustinGreen ArrowJohn DiggleLaurel Lanceoliver queenPeter StormareRoy HarperSara LanceStephen AmellThe CW
Doctor Who S8x08 “Mummy on the Orient ...
Everyone Deserves To Have A Comic Change ...
Milo Milton Jefferies
Outside of comics, Milo is into books/music/film/games/TV. He is a big fan of shows like The Magicians and Line of Duty, loves Civilization 6 and is a supporter of Arsenal FC. His favourite Marvel film is Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and his favourite post-Nolan DC movie is Wonder Woman.
Justice League #9
Prez #2
Green Lanterns #44
Preview: Justice League 3001 #3
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Mosul is more than a climactic military battle
Robert Burns Oct. 19, 2016 | 12:09 AM
More is riding on the battle for Mosul than the recapture of Daesh’s (ISIS) main stronghold in northern Iraq.
Embattled Trump steps up 'rigged' election claims
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Debate questioner Kenneth Bone becomes internet star
Oct. 10, 2016 | 09:23 PM
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CATHERINE LUCEY Oct. 08, 2016 | 12:09 AM
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Clinton tears into Trump on taxes
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'All My Children' creator Agnes Nixon dies at 93
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Entire Australian state without power after massive storm
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No plans to invite ex-lover of Bill Clinton to debate: Trump campaign
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Obama says Trump should visit to new African-American museum
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Charlotte under emergency state after violence flares anew
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Arkansas college student wins Miss America beauty pageant
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Third Spanish vote in a year would deliver hung parliament: poll
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Movies. Crime fiction. Baseball. Jazz. Cocktails.
DVD: Pulp (1972)
Get Carter isn’t just one of the great gangster movies. It topped at least one critics’ poll of the best British films of all time. A year after Carter’s release, star Michael Caine, writer/director Mike Hodges, and producer Michael Klinger reunited for Pulp. Which, to my knowledge, has never topped a critics’ list of any kind. A bare-bones DVD skulked onto the market last week. And while Pulp suffers in comparison to Carter – name a movie that wouldn’t – it’s still worth watching.
Caine plays an author of paperback thrillers, churning out titles like The Organ-Grinder under an array of pseudonyms (Guy Strange, Dan Wild). He agrees to ghostwrite the autobiography of a faded Hollywood star with alleged Mafia connections and soon finds himself neck-deep in the kind of plot he usually dictates into a tape recorder.
Hodges tries to pull off something difficult here, telling a noir tale while sending up the genre’s conventions. It doesn’t completely work, but there are enough smart moments to keep the action interesting. This is the Michael Caine that Craig Ferguson lovingly satirizes, in full ‘70s glory with wavy hair and thick-framed glasses. And while Mickey Rooney may not be believable as an Italian, he shines as the Cagneyesque actor driven by an aging male’s vanity and a celebrity’s narcissism.
One member of the Carter team not brought back is composer Roy Budd. ‘Carter Takes The Train’ is one of the indisputably great main themes, so much so that it was reprised in the 2000 Sylvester Stallone Carter remake, where it was easily the movie’s best feature. Budd had a nice career doing jazz-inflected scores for Euro thrillers of the ‘70s, many starring Caine (The Black Windmill, The Destructors). I’ve been listening to them a lot lately. Good stuff.
TV: Entourage
Naturally, I love this HBO show. It’s about a kid from Queens named Vince whose effortless talent makes him the center of his universe. Frankly, I deserve royalties.
I was willing to let Turtle’s fetishistic obsession with the Yankees go. There are a handful of Bronx Brombers fans in the Mets’ home borough. But I draw the line at this week’s episode, which featured a gratuitous anti-Mets joke. Vince Chase made a movie called Queens Boulevard, for Christ’s sake. There’s got to be at least one Amazins fan in his posse. If Jeremy Piven weren’t still bringing it as Ari Gold, I’d stop watching in protest. For one week.
Miscellaneous: Links
New York magazine’s new pop culture blog Vulture is fast becoming a regular stop. Roger Ebert shows what he’s made of. And personally, I would have looked for Superman first.
Posted by Vince at 10:42 PM
Labels: DVD, Movies, Noir, TV
Tweets by @vpkeenan
One-half of classic Hollywood mystery writer Renee Patrick (DESIGN FOR DYING, DANGEROUS TO KNOW, SCRIPT FOR SCANDAL). Tippling gadabout. Author of DOWN THE HATCH: ONE MAN'S ONE YEAR ODYSSEY THROUGH CLASSIC COCKTAIL RECIPES AND LORE, available at Amazon. Managing editor of the Film Noir Foundation's NOIR CITY magazine.
vince (at) vincekeenan (dot) com
TV: Neither Freak Nor Geek I knew when I got into...
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DVD: Cue The Queue Time to revive the storied tra...
DVD: Pulp (1972) Get Carter isn’t just one of the...
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Miscellaneous: Links As Dark As They Come L.A.’s ...
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Book: The Wrecking Crew, by Donald Hamilton (1960)...
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Movie: Dressed To Kill (1941) You’d think four Mi...
Donald Hamilton, R.I.P. I suppose it’s only fitti...
Movies: An F in Grindhouse 101 You bet I’m going ...
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Beeps and Beers
Chalgyr’s Game Room Staff
Madden 15 – Xbox One Review
October 20th, 2014 Pierre-Yves Uncategorized comments
by Pierre-Yves
on October 20th, 2014
Current manager and site administrator for Chalgyr's Game Room, I also review titles on the PS4, XB1, PC, Nintendo Switch and the handhelds.
TagsEA Sports, Madden 15, Microsoft Xbox One, XB1, Xbox One Review
Madden, like the sport it emulates, is a cyclical thing. Year after year teams trot out some changes (rosters, game plans or coaches) in hopes of achieving a better result that the prior year. Most of the time the teams are not dramatically different, and in the end fans still watch because each year unfolds differently – oftentimes in unexpected ways. Madden is perhaps a bit more predictable, but the parallels are certainly there. This year’s Madden trots out its best game of football in a few years.
Of course, the key here is that these are steps, not sprints. Thankfully we are not talking about baby steps, because there are some notable improvements. Still, at the end of the day, we have the modes you would expect, the roster updates you would expect and a few new bells and whistles. That is enough for me to enjoy the latest iteration, which I have been playing heavily since its release and am finally going to write about.
First and foremost, I find it amusing that a game featuring Richard Sherman of the vaunted Seahawks pass defense on the cover can have such a questionable pass defense game. Last year’s game was all about the running for me (though this was more true on the PlayStation 3 than the PlayStation 4). This year running is tough. It is also a good deal more realistic. In last year’s Madden 25 on the PS3, on All-Pro difficulty I can run for several hundred yards no problem. On the PS4 version, it was a problem – but All-Pro and Madden difficulty still yielded about 150-250 yards a game on default game clock settings.
I use the Lions – who are first pass and run… well, fourth or fifth, because they pass first, second and third most of the time in real life as well. I routinely rack up a few hundred yards or so a game passing on All-Pro, but am thrilled if I can squeak out a hundred on the ground with my Bush/Bell tandem. The thing is, that feels right. I have a buddy who played the game and lamented these changes, but that is exactly how most Lions games turn out (except I win more).
Some subtle tweaks to the Franchise Mode pay off nicely, however. Practicing is more streamlined (or can be completely skipped and letting the computer do it, so you are not ‘wasting time’), and player points pay out a bit more quickly and easily (again saving time), while simming games is also faster (once more a theme). The draft features storylines like years past, but with randomly generated characters, preventing people from using draft guides in public leagues like in years past. Deciding whether to boost a player’s confidence or their experience also helps balance the present against the future. Again, not a world of differences to be had here, but notable all the same.
So playing as the Lions in my Franchise Mode has been producing the expected results. I have gone through all of the skills training, and played some random online matches, and they are all well and good, but when I am not in Franchise Mode I have been playing Madden Ultimate Team. In the past I did not sink much time into that mode, which is a mix of opening packs of football cards and playing fantasy football. Opening cards grants random players, which then are slotted into your lineup. Win games with this team and earn more coins for more cards. It is a microtransaction machine for EA and I sort of hate it and kind of love it at the same time. The weekly events and challenges keep it fresh, but it is geared to get people to spend money as well. I can best teams early on but the more difficult challenges are either locked out completely (until my team is good enough to reach certain criteria) or just gets pummeled (putting a 61-overall squad against a 92 overall squad on Madden difficulty without being able to use any custom playbooks is challenging to say the least). Still, I find myself going back to the mode every week to see what the new challenges are.
All of these things aside, the gameplay is where Madden is at, and generally speaking it works well. There are some new touches (like the tackling cone which really feels more like a tutorial – tackling feels pretty much the same as always, it just gives you some extra guidance) to go with an impressive graphics engine. By now the Infinity Engine is pretty well-known for some of the crazy things it can bring about, because players are loose-limbed and not forced into canned animations. While the effect is generally more realistic (and entertaining when you pop someone up into the air on a particularly vicious low hit), this does leave the door open for some craziness as well.
The announcing is… largely recycled from last year. I’ve been bemoaning this aspect of madden for about three years now, and there are lines ripped from the last game or two that show up again here. My son walks through the room finishing quotes when he hears one start at times (turns out, I play a lot of Madden. Who knew?). Considering how much better the announcing in FIFA and NHL 15 is, I am hopefully this is an area EA Sports addresses for Madden next year. I know it is time consuming, but in the world of immersion it is really helpful not to hear the same thing each and every game (sometimes multiple times a game).
Madden is one of my ultimate guilty pleasures and there have to be some serious missteps to regret purchasing it most years. This is not one of those years, because the game itself is still the best it has been in a few years now. There is room for improvement sure, but just like I hope my Lions can find their way into (and maybe event through!) the playoffs, I believe Madden will keep taking forwards steps over the next season or two.
Review by Nick
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Clean Up City of St. Augustine, Florida
In secret, behind locked gates, our Nation's Oldest City dumped a landfill in a lake (Old City Reservoir), while emitting sewage in our rivers and salt marsh. Organized citizens exposed and defeated pollution, racism and cronyism. We elected a new Mayor. We're transforming our City -- advanced citizenship. Ask questions. Make disclosures. Demand answers. Be involved. Expect democracy. Report and expose corruption. Smile! Help enact a St. Augustine National Park and Seashore. We shall overcome!
George Gardner's St. Augustine Report/City of St. Augustine re: Saving Tens of Thousands of Dollars By Not Wasting More of Our Money on Flubdubs
Table tabled in debate
Ed Slavin, a frequent speaker at City commission meetings, urged "table the table," and commissioners did just that Monday after discussing commission room designs - and costs.
The existing table has been on loan from Lightner Museum since 1972, and will be moved to the museum's new board room. A replacement table was estimated at $8,500, and room redesigns including a raised platform for commissioners, $20,000 to $25,000.
Facing uncertainty in fundraising for the 450th commemoration, and a smaller city budget for next year, commissioners decided not to tackle the table at this time.
Posted by Ed Slavin at 1:57 PM No comments:
St. Augustine City Commission Votes Against Raising Our Taxes -- Thank You!
City 'holds the line' on millage
Staff says this risks deep cuts, layoffs
Posted: July 25, 2011 - 11:11pm
By PETER GUINTA
peter.guinta@staugustine.com
A St. Augustine City Commission tie vote on the 2012 tentative millage Monday could result in the city retaining its current property tax rate at 7.5 mills next year.
That news may cheer taxpayers, but that level of taxation will hamstring the city's finances, according to Assistant City Manager Tim Burchfield.
If that level is adopted, the city must cut $700,000 more from an already lean budget, he said.
"We're bare bones now. There have been no raises. We're down to salary cuts," he said. "We'll either be forced into layoffs or will lose popular events like our fireworks."
Burchfield had just recommended the tentative millage rate of 8.146 mills, which would have raised an additional $682,000.
"We can balance the budget with 7.5 mills," he said. "But the higher millage would allow us to handle future unbudgeted expenses such as the M&M Market, Galimore pool, Excelsior Building, 450th anniversary and Spanish Quarter."
He said the city's under time pressure to get its recommended millage to the state by Aug. 3.
Later, during budget hearings scheduled for 9 a.m. Aug. 24 and 25, the City Commission may lower the millage rate from 7.5 mills, but cannot raise it.
Mayor Joe Boles made a motion to approve the higher amount, seconded by Commissioner Errol Jones.
However, commissioners Bill Leary and Nancy Sikes-Kline voted against. Vice Mayor Leanna Freeman was absent, so the tie automatically meant the 8.146 millage was defeated.
City Manager John Regan, seeing a stalemate on the board, told them to come up with something.
"We want to walk out of here with a number," he said.
The city's recommended millage would stay the same.
If it had been raised to 8.146 mills, a house worth $100,000 would pay $64 more.
Burchfield said the city's taxable value of $1.116 billion is down from this year's value of $1.213 billion, so there is $100 million less value to tax.
Leary said that with this vote the commission may be tacitly approving the big ticket items.
"I'm not comfortable with that. I voted against the M&M Market and the Spanish Quarter. It's too big a drain. This is just not the time to be doing this. The votes are not here tonight," he said.
Sikes-Kline said a lot of people live paycheck to paycheck.
"There's going to be a tax increase by the county," she said. "We have a balanced budget. We have to hold the line (on raising taxes). We'll just have to keep cutting until we make it work."
She said she believed the other commissioners -- Boles and Jones, apparently -- were using the threat of public safety layoffs to increase taxes.
"I understand you want to close the Spanish Quarter," she said in an emotional blast. "You want to make this (city) a tacky tourist town. I'm really not happy with the way this is happening."
Boles warned Sikes-Kline that once the tentative millage was sent to Tallahassee, "We don't get to do this again. (But) I don't have any problem going into our reserves. I don't see us going out for bonds for a while."
Jones said more money was needed because the city hasn't budgeted street resurfacing, building maintenance, general maintenance or infrastructure improvements since 2007.
"The work you see being done in the city, they're pulling that money from reserves," he said. "We have 31 percent fewer employees since 2007 and our reserves have decreased by 30 percent. (We're supposed to) save that money for a rainy day. Well, it rains every time a water line breaks."
Posted by Ed Slavin at 7:38 AM No comments:
St. Augustine Record Still Mum on National Historical Park and National Seashore, Neglects to Cover Emerging Democracy on City Commission
Real newspapers lead their readers to learn more about their world, from City Hall to the Courthouse to the White House.
Real newspapers lead their communities to change for the better.
Real newspapers expose and fight wrongdoing, remembering that Justice Brandeis said, “sunlight is the best disinfectant.”
Real newspapers “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”
Real newspapers file Open Records and Freedom of Information Act requests. If stymied, they don’t take “no” for an answer – they appeal and sue and work tirelessly, doggedly to inform their readers.
Then there is the St. Augustine Record, which sadly is no longer functioning much like a real newspaper in this down economy. Nearly run into the ground by the Morris family of Augusta, Georgia, the Record has seen declining news room budgets, declining full-time equivalent reporters and declining space for news (the “news hole,” in journalese).
Led down the primrose path by the infamous Morris Communications empire, the WRecKord’s editors and reporters are burned out. Are they bored, or not allowed to report about citizens when we make our government responsive? Why is the Record still seemingly currying favor with government employee apparatchiks, like Paul Williamson and Tim Burchfield? See Peter Guinta’s story, above. When will the Record cover all of the news, including citizen participation?
Last night, senior reporter Peter Guinta put his notebook on the chair beside him, taking nary a note, while the City’s abortive plan to waste money on an $8500 table was debated and trounced – and the City’s effort to raise our taxes failed on a tie 2-2 vote. Guinta’s story read like it was written by Williamson, making it sound like a bad idea that City Commission did not raise our taxes last night.
I asked Commissioners to reject it a proposal for an $8500 table and talk of “reconfiguring” the Commission meeting room at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars. I asked them to “table the table.” They did it. The “table was tabled.” The Record did not report it (see above), although former Mayor George Gardner did so in his City Hall newsletter today, and controversial former Commission candidate (and government contractor) Michael Gold wrote about it on his blog, Historic City News, using “table the table” in his headline. (Credit goes to Gold for opposing the $8500 table ab initio).
The table was a dumb idea – the City could get one free. Lack of imagination in City purchasing officials still persists – they need to sharpen their pencils and stop wasting money on flubdubs.
After a briefing by architect Jerry Dixon, all four City Commissioners present and voting agreed unanimously that there was no rush to spend tens of thousands of dollars – as architect Jerry Dixon suggested – to put City Commissioners on a raised platform, as if they were Spanish royalty, which would have required ramps or lifts for disabled persons.
Dixon seemed out of touch with average citizens as he proposed spending tens of thousands of dollars to make the Commission meeting room less secure, with the Commissioners’ backs literally up against the windows. Dixon acted as if WILLIAM B. HARRISS were still the City Manager, and money could be wasted without Commission and public scrutiny. Those days are over. Democracy has broken out.
But old habits die hard for some officials – City Commissioner Errol Jones thrice said the City’s current table was “very eloquent (sic).” Jones said the word “eloquent” thrice. Jones reportedly has a Master’s Degree and is the former “Dean of Students” (e.g., disciplinarian) at St. Augustine High School. When WILLIAM B. HARRISS was City Manager, Jones often and loudly defended every single controversial former City Manager HARRISS’ works and pomps to the point of insulting neighborhood residents, whether the subject was Amerigas trucks on Leonardi Street, illegal dumping in our Old City Reservoir, or the evisceration of the beautiful former Ponce de Leon Golf Course, which Commissioners annexed and allowed developer Chester Stokes to destroy in the name of mindless real estate speculation.
Commissioner William Leary agreed with Jones that it was an “elegant table” and an “elegant room,” but he and Commissioners Nancy Sikes-Kline said the City need not waste any more money on flubdubs.
Commissioner Nancy Sikes-Kline later said of the elegant (or “eloquent”) St. Augustine City Commission table, in place since 1972, “if only this table could talk.”
The Record failed to appreciate the significance of Monday night’s vote – there is now a functioning democracy on the City Commission. No longer does the City Manager function as a dictator, with absolute power, electing and funding candidates and exercising a Philistine’s veto on projects (as HARRIS did on the Civil Rights Footsoldiers Monument).
No longer does the St. Augustine City Manager violate Sunshine laws, “polling” Commissioners to see how they will vote. You can see the spontaneity at City Commission meetings now.
Watching the St. Augustine City Commission grow into a functioning democracy last night, I was proud of our public officials. Much has changed in a few short years.
The evolving St. Augustine City Commission is something to be proud of, not ashamed of. The situation reminds me of how proud I was to see the Anastasia Mosquito Control Commission grow with new leadership (Jeanne Moeller, John Sundeman, Janice Bequette and Catherine Brandhorst, et al.)
Once citizens become active, speak out and elect candidates, we must keep them honest by attending meetings and speaking out – thanking them when they do a good job and asking them to do better.
Check out former Florida U.S. Senator Bob Graham’s excellent 2010 book “America – the Owner’s Manual – Making Government Work for You.”
As evidence of the sea change in City Hall, Folio Weekly today awarded City Commissioner William Leary a “bouquet” for his work on beautification for the 450th – encouraging people and businesses to do it without government expense.
Foreign-funded developers and their enablers once ruled the roost in St. Augustine City Hall. When WILLIAM HARRISS (a/k/a “WILL HARASS”) was City Manager, our City government did things that would gag a maggot – like destroying a 3000-4000 year old Indian village archeological site next to St. Augustine High School. Why? Controversial New York developer ROBERT MICHAEL GRUBARD asked them to do so. When HARRISS was City Manager, citizens were threatened for participating in their government, and treated with disrespect, ridicule and disdain (as we were so often treated on matters of environmental pollution).
With new City Manager John Regan, there has been a sea change – City Hall is listening to people and working to be a good steward. “It takes a village” – every citizen of St. Augustine deserves credit. We did it. We had what Andrew Young calls “soul force.”
Our ideas have prevailed – the same ideals with which our Founders established this country 235 years ago. We now have a City government that increasingly inspires pride, not embarrassment. Not unlike a possum, we have awakened in a new world.
Congratulations, St. Augustine residents – your government is no longer working against you – it is listening. Peoples’ concerns are being heard and heeded.
We stopped a City tax increase last night. And we “tabled the table.”
Next, there will be budget workshops and hearings. This time, we expect that our questions will be answered.
In 2007, working with the advice of three (3) accountants and many knowledgeable City residents, I propounded some 140 questions on the City’s gold-plated budget. The questions were not answered. The questions were not acknowledged. Some City Commissioners said I asked “too many questions.” The Record ignored the questions, and demanded no answers.
Tatterdemalion City Manager HARRISS never even thanked us for our efforts to build a better budget.
Sadly, WILLIAM B. HARRIS was an habitual violator of the First Amendment and was repeatedly found by federal courts to have violated free speech rights – of artists, entertainers, Gays, Lesbians and others. We’re glad he “retired.”
This time, we expect a new ballgame – our City Hall works for us (and not the way around). Expect City officials to ask questions, and hear answers.
It’s our money.
Now, if only the St. Augustine Record would provide gavel-to-gavel coverage of government meetings, quote citizens who speak, and cover all sides of every issue – that would be greatly appreciated. It is time for the Record to treat its readers as adults to be informed and inspired.
And why is the Record still mum on the proposal for a St. Augustine National Historical Park and National Seashore, which it first reported in June 1939 – 72 years ago --, when it was proposed in Congress by United States Senators Claude Pepper and Charles Andrews and U.S. Rep. Joseph Hendricks, with support of St. Augustine’s then-Mayor Walter Frazier.
For years, the St. Augustine Record has never written a news story about it, and refuses to take an editorial position in favor of it. Why?
I still believe in a place called Hope, and it is called St. Augustine. Expect the unexpected. Controversial Michael Gold has performed a public service by exposing proposed waste (by a City government that once gave his family business no-bid uniform contracts). Thomas Jefferson believed in the perfectability of humankind. Our planet’s major religious traditions teach forgiveness.
Now, in that spirit, it is not too much to expect that the St. Augustine Record can support healing and growth by publicizing and supporting the St. Augustine National Historical Park and National Seashore. www.staugustgreen.com
It is not too much to expect that the Record will report and editorialize on the park, which promises to save our economy, create jobs, celebrate our 450th anniversary and provide lasting environmental protection for future generations, preserving wildlife, marshes, beaches and forests forever?
Is that too much to ask?
What do you reckon?
Summer Breeze:Spotlight on Clean Up City of St. Augustine, Florida
Spotlight on Clean Up City of St. Augustine, Florida
Posted on July 12, 2011 (Edit)
By bhendrick
Clean Up City of St. Augustine is a blog by resident Ed Slavin
If you’re a frequent reader of St. Augustine news in print or online, you may have run across, or be familiar with, a blog called Clean Up City of St. Augustine, Florida. It’s a no-nonsense, bare bones website written by St. Augustine resident Ed Slavin. The blog is dedicated to community activism in the area. Slavin’s been at it (as well as a few other blogs) since 2006 and shows no signs of slowing down.
Slavin, a former lawyer, is a controversial figure in the St. Augustine blog world, as he demands answers for pressing issues that public figures avoid answering (among a slew of other things). The blogger also criticizes questionable platforms put forth by public figures and other bloggers that support them… and endures criticism himself. In one case, Slavin was even arrested for making numerous (perhaps too many?) public records requests… to the sheriff. Civil disobedience?
Slavin’s latest literary kick is over St. Augustine’s 450th anniversary commission. There are also several links to key topics, such as city preservation and the importance of national parks.
Photo source: simoneladybug
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Extinction Rider Puts Us All in Danger
Posted: 7/22/11 05:38 PM ET
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When I began my career almost 30 years ago, peregrine falcons were in dire straits. For decades, these graceful birds of prey had been slowly poisoned by the widespread use of the harmful pesticide DDT, which altered their internal chemistry and made their egg shells thinner. As result, fewer eggs hatched and the population plummeted, wiping out the species across much of the United States.
I spent a summer in college working with the Cornell University Lab of Ornithology in Ithaca, New York, where I had the chance to help make history. I was a member of a team of biologists that was releasing captive-bred peregrine falcon chicks back into the wild. Having disappeared east of the Mississippi by 1970, the species was about to take its first steps on the road to recovery, and I was helping make it happen.
As a young biologist, I would have never dreamed that nearly 20 years later, I would be Director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and part of history again, as I announced the full recovery of the peregrine falcon. That incredible success was a direct result of the Endangered Species Act -- our nation's most forward-thinking and effective wildlife conservation law. Because of dedicated recovery efforts made possible by the act, peregrine falcons were able to fly off the endangered species list. And today, the species is thriving once again.
Unfortunately, it seems like not too many of us remember these triumphant moments. Too many have forgotten how instrumental the Endangered Species Act has been in saving America's imperiled wildlife. Too many are willing to go backwards on our nation's commitment to good stewardship. Too many are ready to give up on preserving the entire web of life for our children and grandchildren.
Next week, the U.S. House of Representatives plans to pass an ill-conceived budget bill for the Interior Department that would paralyze our nation's programs for protecting imperiled plants and animals. A provision included by Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), and approved by the Appropriations Committee on July 12, would block crucial life-saving protections for more than 260 "candidate species" currently awaiting listing decisions under the Endangered Species Act.
Many of these species have already been waiting a decade or longer for protection as they continue their slide toward extinction. The lesser prairie chicken, for example, has been awaiting protection since 1998 when the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service first added it to the candidate list. This colorful bird used to be abundant from southern Kansas to central Texas, but now exists in less than 15 percent of its historic range due to the ongoing destruction of its native habitat.
Other species, such as the wolverine, were only recently added to the candidate list. Scientists estimate there are fewer than 300 wolverines left in the lower 48, living on isolated peaks across the Rocky Mountains. To make matters worse, wolverines are losing habitat quickly as global warming disrupts the annual snowpack that the species depends on for survival.
The Extinction Rider, if passed, would prevent the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service from taking further action to save not only the wolverine and the lesser prairie chicken, but also the Pacific walrus, the red knot shorebird, the New England cottontail rabbit, the Sonoran desert tortoise, and hundreds of other species that need our help to survive.
As a former director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, I know first-hand how difficult it can be to watch these species struggle while the government fails them. During my tenure, Congress passed a moratorium on funding for endangered species similar to the Extinction Rider in the current proposal. The effect of that moratorium was to delay protection and recovery efforts far beyond the immediate fiscal year, because while we were forced to put vital programs on hold, imperiled plants and animals had to fend for themselves. Delaying much-needed protection for these imperiled species did nothing to suspend their slide toward extinction. It only ignored what science was telling us at that time.
The recovery of the peregrine falcon is just one of many great victories that our country has been able to celebrate because of the Endangered Species Act. In its nearly 40 years of existence, fewer than two dozen species have disappeared out of nearly 2,000 that have been protected. Iconic species like the bald eagle, American alligator, Florida panther and gray whale might not exist today if it weren't for dedicated conservation efforts initiated under the act.
But all those victories came after decades of careful planning and hard work. If we cut off funding now for protecting imperiled wildlife, there's no telling how long it will take to get back on track. And for many species on the brink, they don't have much longer to wait.
2007 St. Augustine Record Editorial re: National Park: Gift Idea for St. Augustine's 450th -- when will Record endorse the Park and Seashore?
Support for National Park: Gift ideas few for city's big 4-5-0
Publication Date: 10/06/07
Gift ideas few for city's big 4-5-0
We asked readers last week to suggest the best gift for the city of St. Augustine's 450th birthday in 2015.
We got a few.
Perhaps most people don't think there's any gift to be had when you reach 450.
Here's what readers told us:
Editor: Our Minorcan family has lived here for some 230 years. For our 450th, to save St. Augustine, our city needs a national historical park, seashore and scenic coastal highway to showcase to the world and to preserve forever our precious cultural, environmental and wildlife heritage.
Drayton Manucy
Editor: I support Ed Slavin's Nov. 13, 2006 proposal for a St. Augustine National Historic Park, National Seashore and National Scenic Coastal Highway. This beautiful historic place must be preserved forever (or else our history and heritage and beauty will be destroyed forever). Congress must act swiftly.
David Brian Wallace
Editor: The newly formed Theatre Saint Augustine has planned a meeting for all members of the community to develop thoughts on how the artistic and historic community can work together towards events for the 450th celebration. The possible development of a revised Cross and Sword, Florida's state play, will be a focus of discussion at the St. Johns County Main Public Library, 1960 N. Ponce de Leon Blvd., for Oct. 22, at 6 p.m., For additional information visit www.theatresaintaugustine.com
Kiki Tovey
Theatre Saint Augustine
Those are some good ideas.
We'd add, too, that perhaps city officials should visit Kansas City, Mo., where beautiful fountains and bronze statues of all sizes delight visitors and residents alike.
Some commemorate events, others people. We've got some statues and fountains already but nothing like you will find in KCMO.
The city is proof, you can never have too many fountains or statues.
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/100607/opinions_10062007_037.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
Secretary of the Interior Salazar Comes Close to Endorsing St. Augustine National Historical Park and National Seashore – St. Augustine Record is Mum
Renee Stone, Deputy Chief of Staff to U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar; John Regan, now City Manager, City of St. Augustine; Dana Ste. Claire, Director of Historic Tourism ; Ken Salazar, Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior; Joseph Boles, Mayor of the City of St. Augustine; Bill Leary, now St. Augustine City Commissioner and former employee of the Department of the Interior; and Ray Rivera, Director of External and Intergovernmental Affairs for the U.S. Department of the Interior, photographed March 9, 2010.
Secretary of the Interior Kenneth Salazar and President Barack Obama
Monday, July 18, 2011, was a great day in the history of making St. Augustine a better place. At Flagler College Auditorium, Secretary of the Interior Kenneth Salazar came very close to endorsing a St. Augustine National Historical Park and National Seashore Monday at the inaugural meeting of the St. Augustine 450th Commemoration Commission, enacted thanks to the efforts of U.S. Rep. John Mica and Senator Bill Nelson.
Congressman Mica lobbied hard for funds support for the Castillo San Marco Visitor Center.
On the videotape of the 450th Commission meeting, Secretary Salazar can be heard referring to the “St. Augustine National Parks here” and praised the “leadership of Gordy Wilson,” longtime superintendent of Castillo de San Marcos National Monument and Fort Matanzas National Monument. Yes, St. Augustine currently has only two small national monuments – but we do need a St. Augustine National Historical Park and Seashore and Salazar’s remarks give us great hope for that goal.
Secretary Salazar’s speech was ad lib – the Department of the Interior responded to me by E-mail yesterday that there was no prepared text.
Again, Secretary Salazar referred to the “St. Augustine National Parks here,” telling us that the goal of a St. Augustine National Historical Park and Seashore is within our grasp.
How do we get there? How do we get the park enacted? What do you reckon?
Salazar’s speech suggests some answers.
The Department of the Interior will work “hand in hand” with St. Augustine to celebrate a “national event.” St. Augustine is a “very special place,” Secretary Salazar said. In fact, St. Augustine, Florida is “one of our Creator’s most special places.” We agree. That is the premise of the St. Augustine National Historical Park and National Seashore Act of 2011.
Secretary Salazar said the contributions of St. Augustine and Florida to our history need to be made “known to our Nation and are known to the world.” St. Augustine has “history that we carry in our hearts,” he said. We agree.
Secretary Salazar talked about how much he loves his job and how he gets to “celebrate Yosemite, Acadia and the Everglades” in his job (as opposed to the Transportation Secretary, Ray LaHood, who gets to celebrate roads and bridges)(.
Secretary Salazar talked about the inexorable link between outdoor recreation and tourism and growing the economy – “hopefully we’ll restore this economy to greatness” and “make it happen.”
“Never since the Great Depression has America lived in such an unsettled economy,” Salazar said.
Salazar talked about how important the Everglades are to tourism and the economy, noting it is a World Heritage site.
Could St. Augustine one day become a World Heritage site? Why not?
Salazar talked about how important is “the investment we make” in “one of the Creator’s most important places on this Earth.” He was referring to the Everglades, but in terms of history and the environment, he could easily have been referring to St. Augustine. Salazar said that the Everglades is “important to the economy of Florida – without it, the economy would wither.”
Salazar then praised St. Augustine …. a jewel that tells the story of the founding of America, first city in America,” which “created much of the blueprint of what we now know as America.” “The history of this place… is not very well known throughout the United States … that history is important to tell.”
Drawing affectionate and appreciative laughter from St. Augustine residents, Secretary Salazar told about how Director Eric P. Johnson of the Mission of Nombre de Dios and the Shrine of Our Lady of La Leche (the Catholic shrine) told him Sunday night about how young Eric Johnson corrected his teachers about Plymouth Rock and Jamestown when he was in school, telling them that they were not where America began.
Likewise, Secretary Salazar said, to gentle laughter, that he was among the tens of millions of Americans who were falsely given the impression their ancestors came over on the Mayflower. This was despite the fact that Salazar grew up in a Hispanic community some 265 miles South of Denver. In Salazar’s household, everyone spoke Spanish – his family has been in America for eight generations, and his ancestors helped found Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Secretary of the Interior Kenneth Salazar pointed the way toward a National Civil Rights Museum in St. Augustine said that, “We as a nation have been the beacon for the world in terms of the progress of humanity --- the arc of justice bends toward more perfect humanity, as Dr. King said – what is important for us is as we tell the story …”
Secretary Salazar talked about the strong, inextricable, irrefragable link between economics, tourism and outdoor recreation. He spoke of working with 450th Commission Chairman Jay Kislak and other members of the National Parks Foundation to promote outdoor recreation and economic growth.
Secretary Salazar kvelled that “Outdoor recreation alone creates 6.5 million jobs,” with some $700 billion added to the economy” from outdoor recreation.
Salazar said that St. Augustine presents “a very important mission for me as Secretary of the Interior.”
“As we struggle with the economic crisis of our time, we ought not to forget that we need to keep investing in the conservation agenda,” Salazar said.
Salazar said that prposed 22% cuts in the National Park Service budget set forth in the House of Representatives in Appropriations Committee bill would “set back our efforts significantly.”
Salazar asked everyone to support our National Parks and their “job creation agenda,” which is “so important to all America.”
Salazar said he was “here in St. Augustine in large part due to the efforts of your Mayor,” Joseph Boles, who “came to my office,” saying he “would not be here today” but for Mayor Boles’ “advocacy along with the local leadership here” and Senator Bill Nelson.
Salazar said he looked forward to “working here with you hand-in-hand, celebrating” the 450th anniversary of St. Augustine (2015) and the 500th
Anniversary of Spanish Florida (2013), saying it would be a “wonderful several years,” promising to “work on this agenda. “
Salazar reiterated how America is the “beacon of the world,” with its message of “freedom and democracy,” stating that the job of “telling the stories of America” and of “St. Augustine is incredibly, incredibly important.”
The Record barely reported what the Secretary of the Interior had to say.
Then the Record was mum, and also did not report the fact that, when public questions were allowed, the audience applauded the request to make a presentation to the 450th Commission about the proposed St. Augustine National Historical Park and National Seashore.
George Gardner's St. Augustine Report/City of St. ...
St. Augustine City Commission Votes Against Raisi...
St. Augustine Record Still Mum on National Histori...
Summer Breeze:Spotlight on Clean Up City of St. Au...
Huffington Post: U.S. House of Representatives' Ex...
2007 St. Augustine Record Editorial re: National P...
Secretary of the Interior Salazar Comes Close to E...
"SAVING ST. AUGUSTINE" -- Folio Weekly Backpage Ed...
St. Augustine Underground: St. Augustine Deserves ...
St. Augustine Record Letter: Letter: All-embracing...
DRAFT Revised St. Augustine National Historical Pa...
Wall Street Journal Columnist Strassel Promotes Un...
Associated Press: Secretary of the Interior Kenne...
MORRIS COMMUNICATIONS’ St. Augustine Record Mum Ab...
New York Times: Daniel Somerson's 2002 letter sai...
Environmental Information Network: THE CONTROL GAM...
USDOJ Press Release: Two Arkansas Cousins Plead G...
St. Johns Riverkeeper re: Rep. JOHN LUIGI MICA's L...
The Augusta Chronicle column: Rep JOHN LUIGI MICA'...
Indiana Law Blog: Indiana Has Already Approved Its...
St. Augustine National Historical Park and Nationa...
St. Augustine Record : New panel vows 450th progr...
FOLIO WEEKLY: Jim's Big Swim --3.5 miles across th...
Commissioner Bill Leary's guest column yesterday r...
"What do you want for your birthday?" -- 450th Com...
FOOD FOR THOUGHT -- St. Augustine is "way cool, as...
FOOD FOR THOUGHT: Former UN Ambassador, Congressma...
The whole world is watching St. Augustine, FLorida...
Celebrating Democracy and Preserving Florida Forev...
MAURINE BOLES (MAYOR'S MOTHER) ON SAVING ST. AUGUS...
St/ Augustine Record Letter: All-embracing 'park' ...
St. Augustine Underground -- We Need a St. Augusti...
Inspired by Georgia-Pacific and the KOCH BROTHERS'...
Florida Times Union Letter:
St. Augustine Record's Response to New York Times ...
New York Times page one article on Rep. JOHN LUIGI...
Celebrating the End of the First America Foundatio...
BILLIONAIRE KOCH BROTHERS' "TYRANNY OVER THE MIND"...
St. Petersburg Times Editorial: Florida Public Uni...
The Reid Report re: FSU Economics Department Selli...
Center for Media and Democrcy: PR Watch re: Corrup...
St. Petersburg Times: Academic Freedom at Risk ---...
Copyright © 2006-2020, Ed Slavin
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Off-Topic Discussion Areas
Singing for the Sake of the Song
Pete Townshend....ouch this is bad
Thread: Pete Townshend....ouch this is bad
FreyFollower
Border Rebel
Northern Louisiana
Re: Pete Townshend....ouch this is bad
However he spins it, there's no way he can make his statements OK. If he truly wanted forgiveness, he would actually apologize. Being impatient or unfocused doesn't rationalize it, and simply calling his statements "careless" doesn't begin to cover how insensitive they were.
"Be part of something good--
Leave something good behind."
sodascouts
Where Faulkner collides with Elvis
What an awful thing to say. At least he's back tracked but... wow.
Always in our hearts, Never forgotten
UndertheWire
Stuck on the Border
It doesn't seem so bad to me and his own clarification on Facebook his expressed well. Remember that interviews can be misleading with questions that provoke answers that haven't been properly thought out.
Over the years, I've mention a book called "Roadwork" which was written by an old friend of Pete Townsend, Tom Wright, and has lots of stories about The Who and other bands. What I remember is that the guitars that Townsend "wrecked" during concerts were glued back together and used again. Generally they broke in ways that could be fixed. And, of course, Keith Moon had many other uses for the glue.
As for the child porn incident, I remember his explanation being that it was research to try to understand what had happened to him when he was younger. As "Tommy" is the story of a sexually-abused boy, it's clearly something he sees from the side of the abused.
"Billy, whoever writes the songs, wins."
WalshFan88
Originally Posted by UndertheWire
You would think he would want to distance himself from that "information". So much for PTSD!
Personally, I think you can do "research" on that kind of thing without downloading videos and photos of it actually happening to your computer. I'm sorry, but I don't buy it. I think at the very least he's a creeper.
I do realize that Tommy has that topic as it's theme. I still don't excuse him for downloading the actual footage of it to his computer. Read about it all you want Pete, watch videos talking about the subject - but there was no legitimate excuse for having the actual content on his computer at least in my mind even if it was in his mind to research what happened. You'd think that you'd want to avoid trauma and flashbacks.
-Austin-
Resident Guitar Slinger
Fan Of The Eagles 1972-2016
#NOGLENNNOEAGLES
RIP Glenn Lewis Frey 1948-2016
"People don't run out of ideas, people just run out of time..."
NightMistBlue
Randyland
If you read Roger Daltrey's autobiography (or even better, listen to the audiobook, which he narrates himself), he defends his friend and nemesis so passionately of this charge that I very nearly believe Pete is innocent. "Of COURSE he'd defend Pete!," I can hear you shouting, "that's his tour income and musical legacy on the line as well." And you are correct. But apparently it has been established as fact that Pete never downloaded any images from the web site; he simply entered his credit card info.
It's very unfortunate what Pete said about his departed band mates, and he's apologized to their children. He says regrettable things, and certainly doesn't come across as the most charming guy in the world. It can't be denied that he's a musical genius though, surely one of the best songwriters of the rock era.
I saw The Who (what's left of 'em) for the first time in concert 3 months ago, and they were amazing. I don't know how it's physically possible for a 75-year old man to sing with the power that Roger does, but somehow he does. And Pete is just brilliant as a guitarist, writer and singer.
NMB - In an ideal world I'd love to believe it too. But it seems awfully fishy to me. It seems like a convenient out for him and his legal team. A good lawyer can get you out of what seems a lot. To an extreme example, look at the Caylee Anthony case. And to think of all of what went on behind closed doors with Casey and that attorney makes me sick. He knew she was guilty! Defense lawyers want one thing - make $.
If it is in fact true that he didn't download it, that's good, but still - why put your credit card info on a child porn site for "research"? He says he was trying to expose some bank thing. To me it's a lame excuse. I think he probably quickly backtracked and got caught. How far deep in the well he got before he thought 'oh crap' is minutia. I think he was cleared on charges, but there are a lot of innocent people in jail and a lot of bad people running free. Michael Jackson was another who got off his charges too easy IMO. Vince Neil's negligence (to put it mildly) in the 80s killed another person and was lightly punished. Not very fair.
I've read Roger's book as well. I still think Roger and Pete will stick up for one another. It's like brothers. They hate and love each other. I do think despite their differences they are in many ways inseparable. Just like Mick and Keith and Steven and Joe. They need each other more than they'd admit. Some songwriting partnerships are volatile and the dysfunction of it is what at least partly made/makes it great.
And yes, it's still very icky to me and to me Pete is an insufferable character. Being a songwriting genius doesn't mean it's ok to be a miserable person to everyone around you. He's a malcontent. I could name others (and you can probably guess who), but I won't. That's leaving the creepy stuff out of it. He's just a jerk and while he's brilliant, that doesn't enable him to say those things. Apology my hind end! You mean it, and then quickly backtracked. I'm one who forgives people the first time but repeat offenders are wasting their breath trying to apologize to me for the umpteenth time. Save it for someone else.
I would love to know how they in fact know he didn't download anything. Was the server hosting that stuff checked for download activity on his IP address? Because computers can be cleaned and hard drives destroyed. Forensic computer technicians aren't as good as you'd think they should be. There is some seriously powerful software out there that will wipe a hard drive beyond any recognition (same software and formatting style used when the government gets rid of hard drives/computers), and you can take it a step further and destroy the drive by crushing it (which he didn't likely do that part!). But I'll give him the benefit of the doubt that he didn't download anything. Still, he put his own CC info on that website that was obviously for what it was. What did he think he was going to solve by doing that?! Absolutely nothing.
Leave the criminal detective work to the investigators Pete, stay off the dark web, appreciate what you've been given, be kind, and play your damn guitar. Maybe then you'll be worthy of my respect again.
EagleLady
In The Hotel California
I love The Who but Pete has always came off to me as a standoffish, arrogant person. and You're right Austin, He could've found other ways to explain what happened to him as a boy and not try to obtain child porn.
KingWalsh
Border Desperado
Ya, that is so odd, the whole "internet search".....I feel bad for the trauma he experienced, however he seems so unlikable and it makes it hard for me listen to the Who sometimes for I am torn . He might regret playing with Moon and Entwhistle, but they are regarded as legends. Nobody played like either one of them, many probably listened to the Who for these two giants! It's almost like he's jealous they got the recognition they did. I'm glad he apologized, but I wonder if he would if he didn't get the backlash that he did.
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Crashing the Dance
Best Week Ever: February 11-18
Reduce, reuse, recycle. This week we feature teams that have have been in previous versions of Best Week Ever. As usual, all data is through Sunday's games.
Oklahoma - (was out; now #8 seed)
After losing three straight and making the list on the way down, the Sooners reappear in the field. The latest CTD change helped; their sub-.500/even records against RPI Top 50 and Top 100 teams hurt, but only 14 teams have more wins against RPI Top 50 teams than Oklahoma's 4.
Miami (was out; now #10 seed)
Adding conference RPI and games +/- .500 hurt the Hurricanes last week, but including several new attributes boosted them back in much like it did for Oklahoma. Only 18 teams have more wins over RPI Top 100 teams than Miami's 7.
Syracuse (was out; now #11 seed)
Unlike the other two teams on this list, the Orange did something meaningful on the court to strengthen their profile. Despite losing at South Florida, the win over Georgetown put them back on the right side of the bubble. Their 6 wins over RPI Top 100 and 16-9 record against RPI Top 200 help for now, but as I wrote last week, they have every opportunity to put themselves squarely in the field with their upcoming schedule and no basis for complaint if they don't.
Wake Forest (was not even close; now second team left out)
Though not yet in the field, the Deacs made quite the leap this week. With wins at Florida State and at home over Duke, they sit just outside the bubble. Before starting their current 3 game winning streak, they were barely inside the top 100 in RPI. They now sit at #61 and a week of rest before heading into Chapel Hill. A win there, giving them two top 5 RPI wins, should put them into a good position down the stretch. Quite a season by an inspired team, and they should be even better next year.
Florida (was #9; now out)
I wrote several weeks ago that Florida's 5-1 conference start could show that the first two months of their season was more than smoke and mirrors. I also pointed out that if they stayed near the top of the SEC, the committee would likely overlook their weak non-conference profile. Well, after four losses in their last five games, including one last week to an LSU team that had just fired its coach, they are no longer near the top of the SEC and are now on the wrong side of the CTD bubble. But fret not for the three-peat: the Gators still have several opportunities to right their ship, but can they flip on the switch as last year's team could?
Texas A&M (was #5; now #7)
The Aggies situation is not nearly as dire as Florida's, but they dropped a few seed lines with a loss in their only game last week to Oklahoma State. Their lack of consistency I mentioned several weeks ago hasn't improved (still ranked 278th in consistency), and if they can't take care of business the next few weeks their profile could hinge on a final week showdown against Kansas.
See anything wrong with this post? Have any suggestions? Let me know about it or suggest a change!
Copyright © 2005-2016 Andy Cox. All rights reserved.
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All names: Anderson, Sherwood, 1876-1941
Subject: Person: Niebuhr, Reinhold, 1892-1971
Waldo Frank papers
Frank, Waldo David, 1889-1967
Extent: 63 linear feet (132 boxes, 1 oversized folder)
The papers document the literary career and the personal and professional life of twentieth-century American novelist and writer Waldo David Frank. Comprising correspondence, writings, publicity, writings by others, memorabilia, photographs, scrapbooks, and clippings spanning from 1879 to 1977, the collection contains 132 boxes and 3565 folders. The correspondence documents Frank's personal and professional relationships with writers, editors, artists, friends, and family. Letters from friendships with other writers and artists such as Jean Toomer, Sherwood Anderson, Alfred Stieglitz, Lewis Mumford, Van Wyck Brooks, and Hart Crane document congenial collaborations, sharing of ideas, and disagreements. The writings contain his notebooks, major works, articles, essays, and early writings tracing Frank's works and ideas of society and culture with psychological and social themes of man and his environment. Frank's passion for the culture and study of Spain, Latin America, and Mexico is apparent in correspondence and his research, preserved through notes and photographs of South America and Mexico. Letters and photographs display Frank's relationships with family members, his wives (Margaret Naumburg, Alma Magoon Frank, and Jean Klempner Frank) and his children. The materials in this collection divulge not only the writings of Waldo Frank, but the struggles of the writer and his encounters with himself and society as he seeks his vision of truth in the world. He was courageous in the face of his critics and his political enemies even when experiencing both written and physical attacks. Even though Frank claimed he was an outsider he was embraced by the people and cultures he championed and studied. Although largely forgotten by the end of his lifetime, his correspondence, writings, and ideas remain, providing insight into literary circles, political ideas, and historical events in the United States and Latin America during the early- to mid-twentieth century.
63 linear feet (132 boxes, 1 oversized folder)
Frank, Waldo David, 1889-1967 Aguilar, S. A. de Ediciones. Anderson, Sherwood, 1876-1941 Baekeland, Brooks Barnet, Aimée Barney, Charles G. Bazalgette, Léon, 1873-1928 Benardete, M. J. (Maír José), 1895- Bittner, William, 1921-1977 Bloch, Ernest, 1880-1959 Boni & Liveright. Boussinesq, Hélène Broch, Hermann, 1886-1951 Brooks, Van Wyck, 1886-1963 Brousseau, Jule Caplan, Debrorah Frank, 1931- Carnevali, Emanuel Charles Scribner's Sons. Clurman, Harold, 1901- Copeau, Jacques, 1879-1949 Cornell, Kathryn Snider Cox, Mary Hodge Crane, Hart, 1899-1932 Cuevas de Vera, Tota Cárdenas, Lázaro, 1895-1970 Dahlberg, Edward, 1900-1977 Dana, Marion Duell, Sloan & Pearce. Editorial Losada. Espinoza, Enrique, 1898-1987 Frank, Alma Magoon, 1898- Frank, Helene Rosenberg Frank, Jean Klempner Frank, Julius J., 1852- Frank, Michal, 1931- Frank, Thomas, 1922- Gide, André, 1869-1951 Hart Dávalos, Armando Hartley, Marsden, 1871-1943 Hennecke, Hans Houghton Mifflin Company. Iznaga, Alcides Jewish Agency for Palestine. Klein, George S., (George Stuart), 1917-1971 Klyce, Scudder, 1879-1933 Kurti, Kitty Larrea, Juan Lawrence, D. H. (David Herbert), 1885-1930 League of American Writers. Lecuna, Vicente, 1870-1954 Literary and Theatrical Agency of the syndicate of Czech Authors. Léon-Felipe, 1884-1968 Mallea, Eduardo, 1903-1982 Malraux, André, 1901-1976 Marinello, Juan, 1898-1977 Maritain, Jacques, 1882-1973 Martin, William A. Matthews, E. de P., (Elva de Pue) Maurín, Joaquín, 1897-1973 McCourt, Edna Wahlert McKerr-Kaston, M. H. de Rohan Mishnun-Hardman, Virginia Mistral, Gabriela, 1889-1957 Mumford, Lewis, 1895-1990 Munson, Gorham Bert, 1896-1969 Muste, Abraham John, 1885-1967 Naruse, Seiichi, 1892-1936 Nation. Naumburg, Margaret, b. 1890 New Century Fellowship. New Republic. New York Times Company. Niebuhr, Reinhold, 1892-1971 Norman, Dorothy, 1905-1997 O'Keeffe, Georgia, 1887-1986 Ocampo, Victoria, 1890-1979 Odets, Clifford, 1906-1963 Oko, Adolph S. (Adolph Sigmund), 1883-1944 Oko, Dorothy Kuhn Oliver, Maria Rosa, 1898-1977 Olson, Charles, 1910-1970 Openhym, Wilfred A. Oppenheim, James, 1882-1932 Ornstein, Leo, 1892-2002 Porset, Clara, 1895-1981 Pratt, Julia Follensbee Rees, Richard, 1900- Reyes, Alfonso, 1889-1959 Rolland, Romain, 1866-1944 Rosenfeld, Paul, 1890-1946 Rougemont, Simone de Salvatierra, Manolo A. Sanín, Cano Baldomero, 1861-1957 Scott, Evelyn, 1893-1963 Seidenberg, Roderick, 1889-1974 Smith, Anthony Wayne Staininger, Otto Stieglitz, Alfred, 1864-1946 Sánchez, Luis Alberto, 1900-1994 Tighe, Margot Toomer, Jean, 1894-1967 Whipple, Edward Willingham, John R. Wilson, Edmund, 1895-1972 Young, Ladine, 1906-
Clippings (information artifacts) Contracts Correspondence Diaries Manuscripts, American--20th century Notebooks Photographs Poems Scrapbooks Typescripts
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Like Connections page on Facebook
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Calls for articles
Neal Davison
Weapons, Palgrave Macmillan, London, p.12–13 (2009)
No files have yet been downloaded.
Lentzos, Filippa. "Biology’s Misuse Potential." Connections: The Quarterly Journal 15, no. 2 (2016): 48-64.
"Потенциал для ненадлежащего использования биологии." Connections: The Quarterly Journal 15, no. 2 (2016): 55-74 .
APA style: Davison, N. (2009). Non-Lethal. Weapons. 12–13.
Chicago style: Davison, Neal. Non-Lethal In Weapons. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
IEEE style: Davison, N., "Non-Lethal", Weapons, London, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 12–13, 2009.
The Future of Terrorism: The Practitioners’ View
Countering Radicalism in the North Caucasus
Armenia and the South Caucasus: A New Security Environment
The importance of the Council of Europe’s 24/7 Network of Contact Points on Foreign Terrorist Fighters
The Age of Post-Truth: State Influence and Strategic Communication - Contemporary Security Challenges on Europe’s Eastern Flank
Introduction to Program-based Defense Resource Management (7)
The Art of Shaping Defense Policy: Scope, Components, Relationships (but no Algorithms) (5)
NATO and the South Caucasus: Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia on Different Tracks (5)
Terror-Crime Nexus? Terrorism and Arms, Drug, and Human Trafficking in Georgia (4)
Terrorist Routes in Central Asia: Trafficking Drugs, Humans, and Weapons (4)
© Partnership for Peace Consortium of Defense Academies and Security Studies Institutes, 2012-2019
This site was designed and is maintained by Procon Ltd., Publisher of Connections: The Quarterly Journal
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Chapter 56: At Sea
« Chapter 55: Accountability
Red wakes on the morning of the cruise and quickly staggers into the shower so he can wash the grogginess away. They added an extra hour when setting their alarms to make sure that, short of some city-wide catastrophe, they’d have plenty of extra time to make it, but he doesn’t want to get complacent because of that. He dries his hair as quick as he can, noticing that it’s getting shaggy and making a quick memo to cut it when he returns, then gets dressed and heads down to the Trainer House lobby to meet Leaf, constantly checking the time and traffic on the route there to see how much wiggle room they’ll have before boarding starts.
The elevator doors open, and Red is about to step forward when he looks up from his phone and sees Leaf, causing his forward momentum to halt as his heart thuds in surprise. Instead of her normal travel clothes, she’s dressed in an elegant black dress that leaves her tanned arms and knees bare, and her hair falls in a straight and shining curtain to her upper back.
She turns at the sound of the elevator opening, then frowns. “Really, Red?”
Red twitches, eyes guiltily jumping to her face. “I ah… I was…”
“You’re wearing that? We’re going on a swanky cruise! Don’t you have any dress clothes?”
Red blinks. “Dress clothes! Yes! I thought… that I’d change there…” His cheeks are burning as the elevator doors start to close. “Be right back…”
He rushes back to his room, suddenly glad his mom convinced him to pack a few sets of some nicer clothing. After a few months on the road, the thin material of the button-up shirt and khakis makes him feel vulnerable… particularly once he puts his hat on, then takes it off upon realizing that it looks very out of place. Come to think of it, his white and red hiking shoes clash a bit too, but he doesn’t have anything else.
Red quickly tries combing his hair into something neat, but eventually gives up on it once it’s passable and goes back downstairs with some trepidation. Thankfully Leaf smiles when she sees him. “Much better.” Her eyes flick down to his shoes, but she doesn’t comment, and soon they’re heading out onto the street to find their cab.
To distract himself from looking at her, Red takes his phone back out as they ride and starts checking his sites while he can; internet signal on the ship will be spotty, and he’ll hopefully be too busy to want to surf the net anyway.
What immediately catches his eye is a trend of headlines in his science news sub that follow a certain theme:
Study finds link between psychic ability and pokemon size.
New research on “psychic particle” shows link to gender.
Are psychics from certain regions stronger?
“Leaf, have you seen these?”
She leans over to read from his tilted screen. “Huh. They’re all from the same couple of journals, too. You think they’ve been sitting on this stuff for a while?”
“Maybe…?” Red starts reading the abstracts, his frown growing into a scowl. “I recognize these journals… they’re the ones that just churn out publications. One of them tried to get me to buy in after Pewter!”
“That bad, huh?”
He’s too preoccupied to respond to her tone. “Oh come on, look at this one, Psychic powers may be linked with nose size. Nose size! Off of a single correlation found in drowzee!”
“Do they mention that it’s just drowzee in the article?”
He opens the full text and does a search. “Yeah. Barely though. And people are already talking like it extends to woobats and spoinks.”
“Hmm.” Leaf reaches out and pinches his nose. “Sorry Red, looks like you’re not a natural.”
He bats her hand away. “This is serious, Leaf! They’re citing me!”
“What, all of them?” She looks impressed. “Oh, you poor thing, how horrible.” His scowl completely fails to affect her as she gets on her phone and starts tapping on it. “I’m more interested in how they’re all coming out at once.”
Red goes back to flicking from paper to paper, looking at their methodology. Evaluation of component parts… new interpretive technology… uncategorized matter, as shown by Verres experiments…
It doesn’t take long for Red to figure it out; some of the smaller labs must have gotten together and churned through hundreds of captured pokemon data, applying Pallet’s new scanning tech to categorize it legibly, then used some algorithm to search through the massive amounts of data and spit out correlations that would be publishable. Barely.
“I need to talk to someone about this,” Red says. “See if there’s something I can do…”
“No time,” Leaf says, slapping his arm. “We’re here!”
Red glances out the window just as the buildings on either side of the street fall away to reveal the massive, curving city harbor. Traffic picks up as they approach the docks where the SS Anne is waiting, with an intimidating amount of security already set up for early boarders.
Red and Leaf thank their driver, then take their tickets out as they strap their bags on and make their way toward the line. “So what did Bill say?” Leaf asks.
“About what?” Red asks, mind still on the articles.
“Last minute instructions?”
Red blinks. Right, Bill did say he’d send something like that… “I didn’t see anything…” He checks again, then sends Bill a quick message. He probably should have done that earlier, but he got distracted…
There’s no response by the time they reach the front of the line, and their tickets are closely scrutinized once the cruise agent sees the two of them. Red starts to feel nervous as they speak into their phone briefly, and then he and Leaf are taken out of the line while someone calls Bill to confirm that he gave his tickets to them.
“Still no response,” Red says, checking his phone. “What if he’s in some kind of work frenzy? Or asleep?”
“Just be patient. We’ve got time to work whatever confusion there is out.” Leaf seems utterly calm and unconcerned, and he does his best to mimic her, impressed by her confidence or acting ability. Eventually he decides to cheat a little, and mirrors her mental state. Turns out she’s not acting at all, and soon the nervousness in his stomach fades.
Eventually they’re let on and told to enjoy their stay, much to Red’s relief. Once they’re on board, however, it quickly becomes clear that they’ll continue to draw scrutiny for awhile yet; within the first hour they spy a few attendees in their mid to late 20s, but no one near as young as them, and dozens of others far older. They draw a number of looks as they make their way to their cabins.
“Yeah, arriving in my travel clothes might have been a mistake,” Red mutters as he sees all the people wearing fancy suits and dresses.
Leaf smiles. “Maybe they’ll stare less once we put our bags away.”
It’s a good point; both have their fully loaded travel bags with them, while everyone else’s luggage apparently fits in a container ball or two at their belts. Red sees that most attendants have pokeballs too, though none others have six like he and Leaf.
Their rooms are in the same hallway, with another door dividing them. Red wonders who the neighbor between them is, then enters his door and is taken aback by how fancy it is, even after seeing the other cruise attendees. He has a king sized bed, a huge wall monitor, and his own bathroom. Before Red can check out what looks like a whole separate room, the door opens and Leaf pokes her head in. “We have a living room!”
Red blinks, then follows her to see that the door between them actually leads to a shared common space that’s twice as big as his bedroom and just as luxurious. He walks around the couches to inspect a bar stocked with not just alcohol, but a variety of soft drinks and juices. “Think anyone’s going to come and take the booze, now that they know we’re underage?”
“Psh, whatever. We’re old enough to be trainers, we’re old enough to drink.” Leaf inspects one of the bottles, then puts it back. “That said, I’ve never liked the taste.”
“You’ve had wine?” Red asks, impressed.
“Beer, mostly. Grandpa gave me a sip now and then. He seemed to like the faces I’d make.”
“Well, we can always experiment.” Red takes his phone out to snap a picture to Blue, then changes his mind. He doesn’t want to look like he’s bragging. Instead he checks the headlines again.
“Come on, let’s go explore.”
Red follows her out into the common areas, where a number of guests have already settled in to have snacks, play pool, or just sit and chat. The rear deck has an outdoor swimming pool that’s currently unused, and there’s a fitness center that they can see a single person already making use of, lifting weights at one of the machines.
“Must be getting his daily workout in,” Leaf says. “Think they have pokemon training rooms here?”
Red looks around until he spots someone in the staff uniform and approaches him, glancing at his name tag. “Hey, Paul? Quick question, do you guys have rooms for pokemon training?”
The young man blinks. “No, sir. No pokemon battling is allowed onboard. This is a boat.”
“Not for battling, I mean for just training.”
“And… what would training entail?”
“You know, training.” Red makes a careless gesture. “Like… target practice, or…”
He trails off at the expression on Paul’s face. “Sir… this is a boat.”
Red opens his mouth to say something about how they’re not going to be training a tyranitar or anything, then closes it, recognizing the futility.
“We can run around with them though, right?” Leaf asks, sounding worried. “Just to get some exercise?”
He hesitates. “I think it might be better not to, ma’am. It might upset the other guests.”
“What if I did it early in the morning? Or late at night?”
“I could ask the captain, and leave a message for you with his answer.”
“Please do.” Leaf gives Paul her room number, and watches him head off with a troubled look on her face. “A whole week without being able to take a run with Raff would drive me nuts.”
“I’m sure it’ll be okay,” Red says. “If not, we can just move the couches around to set up an obstacle course in our living room.”
Leaf eyes him uncertainly. “Really?”
“Why not? They gave us all that room, we might as well use it.”
She grins. “Come on, let’s go watch cast off.”
Leaf leans against the railing to watch the people boarding the ship, and Red mimics her. He recognizes a few faces here and there from various tech companies, but most are utter strangers to him, probably the high and mighty among the business world.
Eventually the last few walk up the ramp, and the crew starts the process of unmooring the vessel. The ship shifts beneath his feet as it starts to move away from the pier, and Red looks up at Vermilion City to watch as it starts to slowly shrink.
“It looks so big, from this angle,” Leaf says, voice quiet.
“Yeah.” Red managed to see more of the city than Pewter or Cerulean, but there’s still whole districts and neighborhoods he hasn’t set foot in. “It’ll be weird coming back to a city after leaving it, for once. Want to explore a bit more when we get back?”
“It’s a date.”
Red’s cheeks heat at the choice of words, and he wonders whether it was intentional or not. He’s tempted to use his powers to check, and before he can really reconsider or stop himself his mind brushes hers.
Cheerfulness. Excitement. Impatience. Some other stuff. Nothing like what he’s feeling.
Red withdraws and chides himself for breaching her privacy, minor as it had been. He didn’t even get any kind of answer, really… and what kind of answer was he looking for, exactly?
“We’ve got an hour to schmooze before the welcome speech,” Leaf says, breaking him out of his thoughts. “Want to go check out the breakfast buffet?”
“Sure.” A moment’s indecision, then Red offers her his arm. She takes it with a grin, and his pulse kicks up as they walk toward the nearest dining area. Red knows he’s going to miss Blue and Aiko, but right now he’s absurdly happy that the coming week will just be him and Leaf.
The main dining hall is packed for the welcome speech, which is itself fairly uninteresting to Red. Some talk about the history of the Cruise Convention, thanks to all sorts of people and organizations, blah blah. He perks up a bit when the day’s schedule is finally revealed to the participants, eyes scanning the big screen as he quickly jots down everything mentioned. Without any further instructions from Bill, he just has to make do with what he was told before, and take notes on all the tech he sees… and particularly any on storage technology. He wonders if the inventor even remembered that the cruise was today, or that he sent them.
Eventually the host reminds everyone that recordings are strictly prohibited, and then the lights come on and people start to make their way to various exhibitions.
“See you at dinner!” Leaf says as she springs up. “Unless you want to see the artificial meat replication exhibit too?”
Red considers it, then realizes he just wants to spend more time with Leaf and shakes his head. “I think Bill will be more interested in the simulation stuff.”
“Oh yeah, I was going to check that one out during the third time slot.”
Red checks his notes. “I think I’m going to be at the ‘battle tech demo,’ whatever that is.”
“Ugh. Pass. I guess I’ll see you later!”
“Later!” Red watches her go, then gets up and makes his way to the room where the simulation technology is being showcased. It starts a few minutes after he arrives, and Red quickly jots down the basic premise; the makers are working on something that would allow a trainer to virtually interact with their stored pokemon in real time, rather than just use pre-set programs that borrow their likeness.
“Once your voice and appearance are uploaded, you then provide samples of hair, skin, sweat, and clothing so that your pokemon can ‘smell’ you,” the presenter says as he moves his hands in a petting motion, encased in their shimmering gloves, while on the screen they see him petting his pokemon up close within the artificially rendered battle arena. “For all practical purposes, you’ll be able to train your pokemon in any way you can imagine, short of actual human simulation!”
The following hour is spent going over technology specs and business models and compatibility with various existing software for training. A lot of it goes over Red’s head, but he dutifully writes down as much as seems important, feeling a bit like he’s in one of his nightmares about going to school and finding out there’s a test the next day on material he’s never seen before. Oddly enough he never had nightmares about the test itself, though occasionally he’d get ones where he finds out it was the day before and he missed it.
He wants to ask how the simulation will handle situations that have never occurred before. After some initial stage fright, he forces himself to raise his hand along with everyone else asking about investment opportunities and production plans and visual fidelity. Time runs out before he’s called on, however, and Red drops his hand to applaud along with everyone else. The tech will probably be a big hit among civilians and parents who want their kids to get some practice interacting with pokemon virtually, but he can’t imagine that professional battle trainers or coordinators would be able to push the envelope with it.
As the lights turn on, the presenter starts talking about the demo they’d be offering after dinner to those interested (and able to pay), and Red follows most of the crowd out as he checks the schedule, then heads to another auditorium. This one’s pretty interesting too; the stage has a pokeball mounted on the end of a robotic arm, with a camera and speakers on the end.
“So picture one of these at every corner of your house,” the presenter says as the screen shows them what the camera sees. “Pokemon comes nearby?” A rattata mounts the stage and approaches the arm, which immediately swings around to point the ball at it. Soon there’s a ping, then the arm throws it and captures the tamed rattata. “No problem, right?”
Red can see there’s some interest in the crowd. This tech has been around for awhile, though its reliability is still an issue, and it doesn’t work for pokemon in the air or that come underground, limiting its uses. This one seems more refined and flexible than the others…
The presenter replaces the ball. “What about this one?” The sound of wings comes from behind them, air blowing Red’s hair, and everyone looks up to see a pidgey flying above, no doubt released by one of the assistants. The arm once again homes in on it as it gets close, pings a lock, then throws, quickly, accurately, catching the pidgey mid-air. The people below it flinch as the ball drops, but it suddenly zips back toward the arm as some thin fiber is reeled into the center. There’s applause this time, and the presenter takes the ball off, then turns it to show them the custom shell.
“More accurate, responsive, and reliable than any on the market. But wait, there’s more!”
A third ball is placed on the robotic limb, and another rattata is sent toward the stage. This time the ball doesn’t lock on to catch it; it releases an oddish. “Sleep Powder,” a voice commands from the arm, and the oddish sends some spores at the rattata, who quickly slumps to sleep. The arm withdraws the oddish, and the audience applauds again, louder.
“Did I say every corner of your house?” the presenter asks. “Well now imagine a line of them around every town and city in the region! With seismic sensors and longer arms, our tech will be deployed by private citizens, governments, gyms, and rangers to finally bring us all what we’ve been dreaming of: peace of mind.”
More applause, more questions, more notes, and then it’s off to the third presentation room, which has a pair of rattata facing each other on stage as if ready for a battle, and their trainers each wear some kind of headgear with a screen in front of one eye that reminds Red of Bill’s gear. He quickly finds his seat as the presenter steps to the front of stage.
“Welcome everyone! We at Game Freak are happy to unveil our newest generation of simulation technology; rather than a VR game, we’ve been working on an AR program that will revolutionize pokemon battles the world over. For almost a decade now we’ve seen more and more professional trainers using some form of Heads Up Display to augment the amount of information they have during a battle. But what if we could give more immediate data about the pokemon battles themselves…?”
Red watches as the big screen lights up to show a split of what the two trainers see on their small visors. The clear glass displays a green bar floating beside each of their pokemon, and Red grins as he sees where this is going. Blue is going to FLIP! Sure enough, as soon as one of the rattata is ordered to tackle the other, the hurt pokemon’s bar goes down slightly on both trainers’ screens.
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is not pre-rendered. It’s a live calculation being made based on factors like species, mass estimation, contact type, velocity of contact type…” The rattata that was attacked is ordered to use Double Edge, a far more powerful version of the standard tackle. Red winces slightly at the bone-jarring impact that sends one of the rattata tumbling out of the small arena. Its trainer follows it with her vision, so that they can see its “health” drop quite a lot. Meanwhile, the attacking rattata’s trainer keeps his vision on his own pokemon, whose health has also dropped some smaller amount. Half? A little less? It’s hard to be sure with such a small bar and no numbers.
“Currently, the technology relies on the careful testing and simulating of pre-registered pokemon that have fought dozens of times. Useful for trainers to have a visual representation of how hurt their own pokemon are while training. But that’s just what the launch product will feature.” The presenter paces the stage as the monitor changes from a perspective of the two trainers’ HUD to recorded footage from dozens of other tests. “Imagine what the analysis of millions of hours of battle footage from hundreds of thousands of battles, not just in our labs but also in the wild or gym arenas, will eventually let it do. We predict that within a year of widespread use, our algorithms will be able to provide an estimation of damage for every attack by any pokemon against any pokemon, not just based on how and where it was struck, but by aggregated data from every time that pokemon has been struck by that attack by that opponent in recorded history.”
Red applauds with everyone else, though his gaze stays on the rattata that was tackled out of the arena as its trainer gives it some quick care before returning it to its ball. Watching the pokemon take such a powerful attack just to demonstrate some tech made him feel a pang of something he imagines is close to what Leaf feels when she watches trainer battles. He knows it’s silly, testing the technology would require all sorts of actual pokemon fighting each other, and it’s no less important than the training people put their pokemon through while not being recorded or analyzed.
After a moment he begins to applaud a bit harder, already thinking of all the ways this tech could make pokemon battles safer, and give trainers in the wild an edge in determining not just how close their own pokemon are to serious injury, but how careful to be with an opponent that might die before it’s caught.
The next couple exhibits are less interesting to him, one on travel technology and another on refined compression. Red does his best to follow along for the sake of the note taking, and practically forgets that he’s on a ship until he steps outside of the last one and sees that night has fallen on the ocean around them. He heads toward the dining hall to meet up with Leaf and compare notes. He notices that a lot of the people in the various lounge areas and then the dining hall are on their phones or laptops, and wonders how strict the NDA really is. It’s probably expected that many of them would already start talking with their various teams, as long as the information doesn’t reach the press before the companies are ready to go public.
He half expects Leaf to already be typing up an article about the meat production, but instead he spots her still at the notebook writing stage. It takes Red a few minutes to decide what to eat with all the options that are on display, and he finally decides to grab a little of everything before heading to the empty spot at her table.
“Hey. Pretty exciting stuff, huh?” he asks.
“Exciting, yeah,” she says. “Sorry, in a bit of a flow… talk after?”
Red stifles the little stab of hurt. “Sure.” He frowns at himself. Since when did he start feeling hurt from Leaf being productive? They spent whole weeks barely talking to each other, each lost in their own projects.
Red takes his phone out to work on one of his, but is distracted by the notification of new trending articles. It must be from while they were still in reception range…
He opens it and starts to read. Sure enough, more garbage. Psychic particle correlated with glucose… Psychic ability may be reduced by low melanin… Red blinks. Psychic power found to correlate with amount of gut bacteria?! He had made that exact joke, back in Viridian Forest!
Red feels himself getting angry again. All this “knowledge” is useless; it’s like overlaying a graph of “deaths by wild pokemon per year” and another of “amount of pop music videos created per year.” Whether they’re correlated in a positive or negative direction, the information tells you nothing about any causal link between them.
What’s worse is the imprecision of the headlines. He has to delve into each one’s methodology to figure out what exactly is meant by “psychic ability” each time the phrase is used. In Red’s papers, he was careful both times to specify in the title what was actually tested: strength of fear based mental projection for the spinaraks, and psychokinetic lifting strength for the abra. These headlines are all just treating psychic abilities like one unified thing, even as they specifically draw correlations between the Other category and various other metrics, then take his research about Other being linked to stronger psychokinesis as justification for the importance of their “study!”
The sheer amount of these things that have come out in the past couple of days is itself a problem. He sees comments by people already complaining about how it’s clogging up news feeds. Sites that allow for user voting have thankfully responded swiftly, consolidating them all to mega-threads or downvoting them into oblivion, but that latter just risks a negative response to any future claim of measurable basis for psychic phenomenon!
If someone had asked him yesterday whether he’d ever be upset at his research being cited in dozens of papers, he’d have said the more the merrier. But… not like this. His work is being used to justify all sorts of sensationalized nonsense.
“Red?”
He blinks and looks up. “Huh?”
“I asked if you’re ready to go?”
Red looks around. The dining hall is mostly empty, as is his plate. He barely remembers what he ate. “Yeah, sorry.” He gets up, and she follows. “Did you finish your notes?”
“Yeah. You looked really focused on something, so I didn’t want to bother you.”
He would have preferred the interruption to just getting more and more upset by headlines, but he can’t think of a way to say so. He doesn’t want to bring up the articles again, after she dismissed his anger earlier.
Instead they walk the halls of the ship in silence, until Red forces himself to think of something else. “I just realized, we never signed a non-disclosure agreement or anything when we got on board… are we allowed to talk about this stuff to anyone, or post about it online?” he asks. “Since they don’t want us recording anything…”
Leaf shrugs. “The majority of guests here are potential investors and collaborators. You only make someone sign an NDA if you have leverage over them or want it, which would be pretty counter-productive for the people the companies here want to work with.”
“We’re kind of an exception to that, though, right?”
“True. That might be why we had some trouble getting on board. But they let us on, so I don’t think they’ll have much to complain about if I write about some of the stuff we saw.”
When they get back to their room there’s a note waiting on Leaf’s door. “We can let out ‘small’ pokemon at the pool area, but not in the halls, and not if it would ’cause a disturbance,'” Leaf reads. “Well, that’s something I guess.”
The expression on her face belies her casual tone. It bothers Red that he won’t be able to spend much time with his pokemon for a week, but he knows that Leaf really values the time she spends working out and playing with them. “So, is Plan B a go?”
Leaf’s slow smile brightens the hall. “Really? I thought you were joking about that. We really shouldn’t, they might get upset…”
“So? What are they going to do, kick us off the boat?” Leaf snorts, and he shrugs. “At worst maybe one of the staff finds out and we just put everything back where it was.”
“Alright, twist my arm why don’t you!” They go inside, then take a look around. “Let’s see, if we push all the furniture into the middle we’ll have a decent amount of space to run laps in…”
“Yeah, and we can move those two couches back to back for a three-step obstacle, then stack the cushions for a small wall to climb.”
“Yeah…” She’s quiet for a moment as she looks around the room, and for a moment he’s afraid she’s going to tell him to just forget about it. Then she turns to him with a grin. “Think they’ll give us extra pillows if we ask for them?”
He grins back. “Can’t hurt to ask.”
An hour later, the living room is transformed. To an untrained eye it may just look like they’ve just strewn things about at random, but the end result was each pillow, couch, cushion, leg rest, and garbage bin carefully placed from multiple tests and iterations. There didn’t end up being quite enough space for a satisfying outer track, so instead they set up a pair of parallel courses that go up and down the length of the room twice so that they can swap back and forth as they reach each end.
Red leaps forward with wide side to side movements, bare feet landing on cushions that get progressively higher until he reaches the end, hands reaching up to brush the ceiling, then coming down to balance his landing. Pichu leaps straight from the highest cushions to Red’s shoulder, and he turns and steps to the side to start on the other track, which uses the couches as a three step, followed by the coffee table that he falls onto his belly to crawl under while Pichu leaps off his shoulder and races ahead to his bedroom door, which is propped open so he can jump and grab the top, brace his feet on the handles, and leap back onto the start of the other track, usually just as Leaf and Raff finish it and leap up the couches.
Red starts to work up a sweat after a few iterations, but they’ve found the right rhythm to keep moving at a steady pace. After the training courses at Vermilion Gym, all the running isn’t too strenuous. “So how was the ball-made meat?”
“Good!” Leaf crawls under the table as Raff jumps up to run atop it. “It’s been so long since I had any that it tasted strange, but I think that was just me. The fake oddish tasted better, and the others there seemed to like it!”
“So you’re going to write a piece,” He huffs out a breath as he lands. “On that?”
“Yeah! I already talked to some of the engineers… they’ve been making meat for years now, but it was never economic or tasty enough.”
“Does it come out precooked?”
“They make both! I tried to get some for you, but they said you can get some at lunch tomorrow!”
“Will do!” Red uses his hands to vault over the couch without his feet touching it this time and stumbles, reminding himself to use more force on the next lap. “What about the other exhibits?”
“Nothing too exciting. Some new aerial surveillance and signal relaying drones for better emergency control. Useful for things like the Viridian Fire.”
“Or to start settling more of the wilderness. The automatic pokeballs will help with that too, so that it’s easier to set up defenses.”
“Yeah,” Leaf says, and he hears her slap the ceiling behind him before she asks, “This whole island chain isn’t totally inhabited, right?”
“No. There’s been talk of Kanto and Johto working together to push out past Mount Silver for new settlements, though some are worried they would be too far, and form a new region.”
Red shrugs as he runs. “Some political thing I guess. Never really got it.” He notices that Pichu’s energy is flagging, and unclips his ball. “Pichu, return!” He reclips the ball and unclips another without slowing down, bracing his arm as he points it to the empty space beside the bar area. “Go, Nidoran!” His pokemon materializes, and Red says “Follow!” as he reclips the ball and starts leaping across the pillow path again. “But I don’t think it’ll happen anytime soon. Dad used to say there aren’t enough extra people yet who would want to live on the frontier until it stabilizes. What about around Unova?”
“The frontiers around it have been slowly expanding,” she says. “But there was a big setback a couple years ago. Thundurus hit one of the cities there, forced it to be abandoned, and there were calls to stop trying to push further for a bit.”
“Damn,” he pants. “And what do you think? Should they have?”
“I guess it made sense, at the time.” She leaps over the couches, and takes a deep breath before diving under the table. “But… eventually… I hope… we try again!”
The conversation lulls after that, the sounds of their movements and breaths filling the silence. The room is starting to feel hot and stuffy, and Red suddenly breaks from the course to go open the window, letting in the cool night air and smell of the ocean. He scratches Nidoran behind its ears, then approaches the obstacle course again and waits for Leaf to get to the opposite side before jumping back in. Nidoran has some trouble with the table, electing to run around it instead of trying to go under like Red or over it like Raff, and waits at the other end for Red to come out, somehow managing to look impatient. “Cheater,” Red accuses as he pushes himself back up.
“Do you think our ancestors ever imagined something like this?” Leaf asks eventually. “That we’d grow so much, connect with each other across the globe, start pushing out?”
“Maybe in a different way. Like a single empire sweeping across the island or continent, eradicating pokemon along the way.”
Red can hear the frown in Leaf’s voice. “That’s horrible.”
“Yeah. But much as we might treat them poorly now, people had even worse perspectives on pokemon before we were able to catch them.”
“I know. Grandpa talks about what it was like growing up, and even then it wasn’t so bad as in his grandparents’ days. But people’s minds are changing, same as our tech. So as long as both keep changing…” Leaf runs out of breath, and on his next lap, Red sees that she’s stepped to the side to rest.
He slows to a stop, then goes over to the bar and considers the options there. His hand hovers over the wine, curious, but then he grabs some juice for him and Leaf, as well as water and a bowl. He returns to the couch and hands hers over, then pours some water in the bowl for their pokemon.
“Do you think one drives the other?” he asks as he takes a swallow, enjoying the way the breeze from the window feels on his sweaty face. “Like, people are more accepting of other cultures today than they used to be, but part of that comes from the ability to learn about and talk to people around the world, and travel being so much easier. If the tech for fake pokemon never advanced, would people’s morals have changed eventually?”
“I’m not sure,” she says slowly. “There are other issues where it looks like cultures made moral progress without new tech, like most regions try to rehabilitate criminals rather than just punish them.”
“Unless they’re Renegades.”
“Sure, but even they’re killed more humanely now than they used to be, most of the time. So I want to think attitudes on eating pokemon might have changed on their own, but… morals are kind of a luxury, aren’t they? Like I know that people can only worry about not eating pokemon because they have other things to eat, now. Back then it was all about survival. But maybe they would eventually have realized what they were doing was wrong, but necessary.” She glances at him. “Taking for the sake of argument that eating pokemon is wrong.”
Red shrugs. “I don’t want pokemon to suffer on ranches, I just… don’t really care if they do, I guess.” He frowns. “It sounds bad, when I say it out loud.”
“Mmhm,” Leaf says with a raised brow, sipping her juice.
“They’re just really delicious.”
“Like really-”
“Stop!” she says, pushing his shoulder… but she’s smiling. “You’ll try the fake meat tomorrow?”
“Promise. I’ve got nothing against it.”
“But will you stop eating real meat after?”
Red tries to picture avoiding all meat. The food at Aiko’s was pretty tasty… but… “Is it… going to be available on the market?”
“…How soon?”
“Red!”
“I’m trying to be realistic!” he protests. “I don’t want to give an overconfident promise and then break it.”
“What about what we talked about in Vermilion? Can you at least keep to fish or something? Or just cut out any beef?”
“I think I can do that, yeah.”
Leaf turns to him. “Really?”
She looks so excited that Red smiles, warmth filling his chest. “Yeah. You know what, I’ll try it all. As soon as the cruise is over, I won’t buy any more meat that’s not grown in a ball.”
“Yay!” She wraps an arm around him and hugs him, causing heat to flush through his body and up his face. “You know it’s not actually grown in pokeballs, though, right? It’s just using the same tech.”
“Ah. Makes sense,” he mutters as she releases him, quickly raising his bottle for another drink.
“What about not eating any on the cruise too?”
“Oh come on, they’re already dead!”
“Fine, fine…”
She’s still smiling, and the sight makes Red smile again too. “Fair warning that I might change my mind after I run out of my own stocks.”
“Oh I know. But at least you’ve tried, then. And maybe you can just cut out one type at a time, see what works.”
They sit together in silence for awhile, and Red slowly regains his energy. He takes Pichu out so he can do the same, and watches as his two pokemon explore their surroundings. Now that he’s not following the order to run around with Red, Nidoran looks the most spooked. His nose keeps twitching toward the open window, and Red wonders if he’s ever smelled the ocean before.
“It reminds me of home,” he says suddenly. “The scent.”
“Were you on boats often?”
“No. But on a clear day you could smell the salt in the air from right outside my door.”
“That sounds lovely. I wasn’t there for long enough to notice.”
“We should go back sometime, when we can fly on our own pokemon. I know my mom’s not there anymore, but it’s strange to think that we’re going all over the region, and the place that Blue and I are most familiar with is the one you spent the least time in. Plus Aiko hasn’t been there at all, and she’d probably get a kick out of Pallet Lab’s ranch.”
“That would be cool, yeah. I’d like to see where you and Blue grew up. Maybe someday I can give you guys the tour of Unova.”
Just imagining it makes Red happy, and he smiles at her. “I don’t know if I mentioned it, but… I’m really glad you joined us, Leaf. I can’t really imagine the journey so far without you.”
Leaf’s looks surprised, then pleased. She picks Raff up off the floor and puts him on her lap so she can inspect his fronds, and Red notices that the ivysaur is positioned so that his plant hides her face. “Well. That was sweet. And I feel the same, of course.”
The warmth stays with him for the rest of the night.
Red wakes to the smell of the ocean, eyes opening slowly as he moves one sore limb at a time. Eventually he checks his phone and sees that it’s near noon. All the presentations are between lunch and dinner, so he should probably get up soon.
Instead he browses on his phone for a bit, first checking to see if he has any messages from Bill or Blue, then drawn irresistibly back to see if any new “research” on psychic particle or predictors has been published. There are some, and Red’s remaining sleepiness quickly fades as he searches through the headlines for anything remotely interesting.
Eventually biology forces him out of bed, and from there it’s easier to put the phone away and get dressed. He goes through the transformed living room afterward, and spots the note on Leaf’s door telling him that she’s already out “schmoozing.”
Shaking his head at her energy, he takes a walk around the outside of the ship, curious about what the other guests are doing and trying to avoid the temptation to look online again. He passes by various lounges, indoor and outdoor, and sees a lot of people either on their laptops, or in small groups and talking. Each time he tries to listen in as he walks nearby, it quickly becomes clear that they’re discussing some technology or aspect of business or investment that is way over his head, and he moves on before they can wonder whether he’s eavesdropping, interpreting the looks he gets as more wary or aloof than curious or inviting.
Red starts to feel a bit isolated as he walks from one floor to the next, seeing all the people involved in their interesting conversations that he can’t take part in. Eventually he starts to specifically look for Leaf, until he realizes he can try to use his powers to pick her mind out. He needs to practice anyway, and it’s been awhile since he tried a broad reading of his surroundings.
As he walks through a hallway and extends his senses outward as far as he can, he suddenly staggers and leans against a wall. His range is larger than before, and he senses minds in three dimensions for the first time. It feels like he’s standing in a storm, the mental impressions so spread out that their position is like a whole new level (or dimension, rather) of information for him to process. He doubts he could identify Leaf’s familiar signature even if she happens to be nearby. What jumps to his attention instead is the two psychic minds in the room above him. And a couple to his left… there are six in total… No, seven… nine… twelve… in all directions…
Red’s eyes fly open, withdrawing his senses as he recovers from the strain. After a moment he walks to the nearest room where he sensed psychic minds and looks around at the crowd of people in various types of casually formal attire, trying to spot anyone with more obviously psychic clothing. He sees nothing.
Why are there so many psychics here?
Red starts to wander again, occasionally extending his senses out to find psychics in the same room as him to try and identify them. Their minds quickly vanish however, blocking themselves from his senses, and he eventually gives up, not wanting to be rude even if his curiosity is burning. Also now he has to worry about thinking the wrong thoughts at the wrong time… how could so many rich and important people be okay with this many psychics around? Maybe they don’t know… he should find someone to ask about it…
“Good afternoon, everyone!” Red jumps as the PA system comes on. “This is your five minute reminder that lunch will be starting soon in the dining hall. That’s also where the programs listing this afternoon’s presentations can be found. Please make your way there if you’d like a copy!”
Red watches the mass migration begin, though some people seem content to wait where they are for awhile longer, at least. He considers asking one of them, but decides to find Leaf first, now that he knows she’s likely to head to the lunch room. He should warn her of the psychics’ presence as soon as he can, since he knows how wary she is of them after meeting Giovanni. Red decides to try and maintain his mental shield as best he can. It’s a good way to get some extra psychic practice in, anyway.
He doesn’t see her upon arriving at the dining hall, and goes to wait in line for the buffet, mind holding the default-mental-state shield in place as best he can while looking around. There’s a booth in the corner of the room where the artificial meat creators are offering samples, and he heads over after filling his plate.
“Hello! Interested in getting a taste of the future?”
“Yeah, my friend was raving about you guys last night.”
“You must be Red,” one of them says with a smile. “We told her that you might enjoy them more fresh. What can I get you?”
Red looks at the options. “Ah… pidgey nuggets?” He watches as they carefully serve him three. “You wouldn’t happen to know where Leaf is now, would you?”
“Haven’t seen her yet today, sorry.”
“No problem. And thanks!” He goes to find an empty table so that he’s easy to spot (and not because he doesn’t know anyone here and would feel awkward sitting beside them) and shakes some salt on his mashed potatoes, keeping an eye on the doors as he continues occasionally reinforcing his shield. Someone takes the chair to Red’s left, sitting with a contented sigh before they ask, “Could you pass that when you’re done, please?”
“Sure.” He gives it a couple more shakes, then turns and hands it to the president, founder, and CEO of Silph Corporation holy shit. The old man is wearing a simple button up shirt, suspenders, a red bowtie, and a kindly smile. A cane rests against the table, a white hat beside his plate.
“Thank you,” Mr. Silph says as he takes it from Red’s frozen hand. The Silph president gives it a few shakes over some strawberries on his plate, then places it aside. “Adds a bit of a tangy taste,” he confides upon seeing Red’s still-shocked expression. “You should try it, Mr…”
“Verres. Red Verres.” Red hurriedly wipes his hand and offers it before he thinks of how presumptuous it might be.
“Kazue Silph.” He takes Red’s hand in a firm grasp.
“I know! It’s an honor to meet you! I use your products all the time!” Tone it down, Red.
“Ah, a trainer!” The president’s eyes search Red’s briefly, then he releases his hand to begin eating. Red starts to dig into his food too. “I’d heard there was a young journalist on board, and thought it might be you.”
“Oh, no, that’s my friend Leaf.” He looks around for her again, then turns back to the company president. “She’s a trainer too, though.”
“I see. Well, I suspect she’s finding a lot of material to write on. Quite the interesting exhibits, wouldn’t you say?”
“Oh, yeah. Is Silph going to be presenting something too?”
“No, this year we’re strictly on the hunt.” He smiles. “Which technology are you the most excited for, so far?”
Red considers it a moment, then says, “Probably the remote pokeballs? In the sense that it’s the one that seems like it has a lot of potential to save lives.”
“Yes, that seems likely. Now, what about one that you predict most of your peers will purchase?”
Ah. I’m a one-boy consumer panel. The thought reminds him that he should put his shield back up, and he takes a moment to do so while considering his answer. “Probably the AR visor,” he eventually says. “I don’t see how that won’t be a huge hit, unless it just doesn’t work reliably. I’m tempted to invest in it myself, if I have enough money to matter.”
“Yes, that was my choice as well, assuming something else doesn’t come along that seems more commercially viable. Though these fake meats are intriguing.” He pokes his fork at a thin slice of some steak that Red assumes was ball-grown too. “Have you tried them yet?”
Red shakes his head, then takes a cautious bite of his pidgey nugget, chews, swallows. “It… tastes like pidgey,” he says.
Mr. Silph cuts a piece of his steak and tastes it, brow rising. “And this like tauros.” His jaw works as he chews. “A bit tough. Care to trade some for one of your nuggets?”
“Oh, sure!” They do so, and sit for a moment chewing the pseudo-meats. “A bit dry too, right?” Red asks after a moment. “Or is that from the way it was cooked?”
“No, you’re correct. Perhaps from insufficient fat generated in the meat.” He takes a sip of wine, and Red follows his example with his water. “Well, I’m sure they’ll be able to correct it eventually. In either case, the price of food will soon get much lower.” He eats the last of the steak, with some apparent satisfaction.
“Which means more money for people to spend on Silph products,” Red says, smiling.
Mr. Silph winks and takes another sip. “So, if you’re not here as a journalist or investor, what brought you to the Cruise Convention? It’s not often we have mere trainers here, let alone those so young.”
“Well, I’m actually a Researcher too,” Red says.
“Ah! Verres you said, yes? I thought your name was familiar. Something about psychic pokemon? There are quite a number of papers coming out now that cite you.”
Any pleasure Red might have had at being recognized fades at the reminder. “Yeah.”
“No, nothing.” He makes an effort to look cheerful as he starts eating again. “The accomplishment just feels a little muted, after seeing all the derivative discoveries that came out from a mindless algorithm.”
“Nonsense. As a Researcher, shouldn’t the information be celebrated, regardless of the source?”
Red frowns. “But all of it… or at least, the vast majority of it that I saw, it’s meaningless. They didn’t actually try to test specific hypotheses, they just threw a bunch of data into a computer and picked out the correlations that fell below the .05 or .01 threshold. It’s just… noise, noise that they get attention for without providing any real knowledge. Just look at the news sites, jumping all over every correlation and sensationalizing them!”
The older man snorts. “Believe me, there is no love lost between myself and the press. Incentives, Mr. Verres, are what the world runs on, even more than money. And the incentives of journalism are inherently destructive toward any values of truth or clarity.”
Red feels a bit of indignation at that, considering both his mother’s profession and Leaf’s current activities in the field. The Silph president chews some food while Red tries to think of a polite way to disagree, unable to before the older man continues. “But that’s often the case in a free society. That’s why we must understand the role journalists play, and approach them as warily as one would a combee nest while attempting to extract what honey their industry produces. The same goes for these mass produced studies. The incentives in science are to publish, and so publications are the first metric that matters, and so all else that matters falls under it in importance. True, the majority of them will be ultimately meaningless. But as a matter of efficiency, finding these correlations the way they have seems to have a minimal associated cost. Why not see it as a filter? A filter through which diligent researchers such as yourself may eventually gain some value, as you examine the data and consider new hypotheses?”
Red doesn’t have an immediate answer to that, and takes a moment to think through his objection as he eats. “That sounds good when you phrase it that way,” he eventually admits. “The problem is that it’s sucking the air out of the room. All the researchers that are now trying to pick through the results are wasting time and energy and grant money on things that aren’t directed by any intelligence.”
“That seems like a perfect opportunity for those with intelligence to stand out,” President Silph says, eyeing Red candidly as he eats. “Ignore these publications and continue on with your research as though they had not surfaced. Unless your ambition is already satisfied with what you’ve accomplished?”
“No,” Red says with conviction. “No, I’ve got a lot more work to do.”
“Then take the advice of an elder, not in age, but in facing adversity. Those things that vie for your attention, but do nothing to further your goals, should be cut out from consideration. Talent is easy to find, Mr. Verres. Great success comes first and foremost from the discipline to make productive use of your time.”
“You’re right,” Red says, frowning at his plate. “I know it’s better to focus on my next project than worry about the impact of the last one. Not unless the impact was from a mistake I made.”
“Do you think you made one?”
“Not really…?”
“Then there you have it. Let others chase false gold while you seek your own fortune.”
Red smiles. “Is that a personal motto?”
“I suppose so,” Mr. Silph says as he finishes his wine. “If a man can have more than one, it has a nice ring to it. But my real motto is ‘Every minute should be spent at least as deliberately as every dollar, and every dollar as deliberately as the first you ever made.’ And on that note, I see them putting the afternoon’s schedule out, and so my allotted lunchtime is over. But it was a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Verres.” He wipes his mouth with his napkin, then gets to his feet. “Perhaps we’ll talk again.”
Red hurriedly swallows his mouthful. “The pleasure was mine, Mr. Silph. Thank you for the advice.”
“Advice is also easy to find. Remember: discipline.” He puts his hat on and strides with purpose toward the exit, taking a folded program from the table by it. Red watches him go, then resolves to put his attention for the rest of the meal where it should have been; deciding what he’s going to do when he returns from the cruise.
At first consideration, the question might be what research he’ll conduct next. But in truth, there’s a higher level question he has to answer, a choice centered around what goals he’s going to pursue. Is he a trainer at heart? A researcher? A psychic? Sabrina made it pretty clear that he’d have to stop being a trainer or researcher while studying with her, to have enough time for his lessons. If he decides to put one of those on pause, then becoming her pupil is the right choice. If he decides to just keep practicing his powers on his own for now, he should stay on his journey, where he can make progress in all three.
He takes his notebook out and writes:
Trainer – Increased survival skills, new sources of fortune? protect others
Researcher – Learn secrets of the universe, leverage for fame and fortune, discover origin of species/change the world
Psychic – Lots of mysteries to explore, unique skills and insights, accelerated self growth
Red stares at the words. Taken as they are… he can’t imagine not continuing his research. He spends too much time thinking about things, working to test them, he doesn’t know if he could stop himself from trying even for a few months. And if he’s going to do it anyway, it would be a waste to never try and publish what he finds. And his psychic powers are a force multiplier; the things he gets from developing them are useful to practically everything he can think to do.
It seems the aspect he loses the least in giving up… is his trainer activities. It makes sense. He’s not going for badges, he’s not trying to be a Ranger, and while he does enjoy training his pokemon, and teaching them unique commands or getting them to pull off strategies… it’s not like he’s amazing enough that only he can protect others in ways no one else can.
Red leans back in his chair, gaze unfocused as he feels the decision crystallizing. It’s a little surprising how quickly he decided it, after waffling so much before.
Well, that’s it, then. He’ll tell Sabrina that he’ll become her student.
Which means he should keep practicing his powers. He lets his mental shield slip, then picks his spoon up and tries to feel the shape of it with his powers. His rock is in his bag, and maybe he just has some kind of block against beginner level techniques…
Red’s still trying to sense the shape of the handle past where his fingers are when he spots Leaf walk into the cafeteria, talking to a pair of women with her notebook out. That’s not all I’d be giving up.
The thought comes like a strike to his chest, concentration scattering as he suddenly imagines actually leaving the others in their travels. A hollow sort of fear fills him, a preemptive loneliness that he immediately backs away from.
Leaf spots him and waves, then says goodbye to the other two to get food and join him.
“Hey! How was your morning?”
“Pretty short, but eventful,” he says, amazed at how steady his voice is given the sudden hole between his ribs. He latches onto the imagery and uses his powers to quickly contain it, cut off its effects on him for now, keep hidden the sudden insight at the center of it. “What have you been up to?”
“Interviews!” Leaf puts her notebook on the table and starts to eat. “Lots of them. Everyone here is excited to talk about their work, it’s like trying to drink out of a firehose.”
Red smiles at the mental image, and her excitement. “I’m glad you’re getting a lot of material. Maybe you can solve a mystery for me. Do you know why there are so many psychics here?”
Leaf pauses with her fork halfway to her mouth, then looks around. “How many are there?”
“Right now?” He quickly checks, trying to juggle the two different effects as grief starts to creep through all his use. “Um. Over a dozen in the dining hall.”
She lets out a whistle. “That is a lot. Are they all clustered together? Like maybe they’re from some organization.”
“No, as far as I can tell they only ever group in two or three at most.”
“Are they ever in groups of just psychics, though?”
“I don’t… remember?”
Leaf flips to a new page of her notebook. “Draw it out.”
“From memory?”
“No, where they are right now. Maybe we can get some ideas.”
He picks her pencil out of the spiral slowly. “It’s kind of hard to figure out people’s exact positions…” And he doesn’t know if he can maintain his concentration on the thing he’s containing in his chest that he can’t let out, particularly when the more familiar grief starts to come in force.
Red buys time by drawing a rough approximation of where the tables around them are, then starts to focus on one table at a time, quickly sending his senses out to glimpse the minds at each before drawing circles and stars around where the minds are at each table. Like pings of radar, giving him a quick and fleeting glimpse of sensations that he then tries to remember and draw meaning from, all from minimal use of his powers.
It’s hard, at times, to get a good read on exact position for each mind within a cluster, but he doesn’t worry too much about that. Instead he tries to make sure he only counts the people at each table rather than letting any minds from one blur into another table’s “zone.” He uses visual confirmation when he can to make sure each table has the right amount of people, though the occasional Dark mind throws him for a loop sometimes.
By the time Leaf has finished eating, he’s sketched out about three layers of tables in every direction. The grief is manageable, and his chest-vault is secure. He stares at it while Leaf looks over his shoulder.
“Not clustered, but also never alone,” Leaf points out.
“And symmetrical,” Red says. “Look, every time there are two in one place, there are two non-psychic minds with them. Or three… the individual psychics break the pattern, but even they’re never totally alone.”
“That might be unrealistic to expect, given how outnumbered they are,” Leaf points out.
“Yeah. Feel comfortable asking someone?”
“Sure. Who are you going to talk to?”
“Uh… well, I don’t really know anyone here.”
Leaf raises a brow. “Neither do I, Red. What you do is, you go up to them and introduce yourself—”
He rolls his eyes. “I just feel awkward doing it.”
“You mean you haven’t spoken to anyone else here yet?”
“Of course I have,” he says automatically. “I spoke to… a couple of the people from the ball-meat company—”
“—please don’t call it that—”
“—and,” he says with some pride, “I may have had lunch with President Silph just before you arrived.”
“Really? That’s awesome! What did you want to talk to him about?”
Red opens his mouth, then closes it. “Career advice,” he says at last.
Leaf gives him a level look.
“He was actually very helpful.”
“Uh huh. So what did he want from you?”
“I think he just wanted my demographic more than me. But he was nice enough. Not a fan of journalists though, apparently.”
“Well, that’s no surprise. Most rich and/or famous people aren’t, given how easy it is for some hack to just write whatever they want about them and have thousands of people lap it up without interest in any kind of clarification or rebuttal.”
The bitterness in her tone takes him by surprise. “That’s fair, I guess.”
“Sorry, famous grandpa, remember? Anyway, Silph has more reason than most, lately.” She chews her food, eyeing him speculatively. “Did you tell him your last name? Because he might be a little miffed from the article your mom published.”
Red stares at her. “What article?”
“You don’t read your mom’s articles?”
“Hey, I’ve been busy. Do you read everything your mom puts out?”
“…Fair. Anyway, your mom wrote about some corruption from Silph employees not long ago. Bribing a mayor and stuff.”
“Huh.” Red considers the conversation in light of that. “I did tell him my name, but he didn’t seem to react to it. Not in that way, he actually recognized it from the science side of things.”
“Oh. Well maybe he doesn’t pay much attention to articles about his company. I’m sure there are a lot, and he’s probably busy.”
“He did give that impression, yeah.” Red shrugs. “I’ll ask my mom what she thinks after the cruise.” Maintaining the block around whatever’s in his chest has gotten slightly harder as the grief starts to build up at last. Just the mention of his mother makes him terribly homesick, for no particular reason. He clears his throat. “So what’s on the agenda today?”
“Presentations for some kind of holo-communication device, automated potion dispersal? What does that mean… uh… improved scuba equipment, trainer coordination software…” She starts to take notes of questions she wants to ask of each presenter, forehead creased with concentration as she works.
Red just stares at her, the words fading from his comprehension as he feels a warmth in his chest… She’s really pretty when she’s so focused. Red blinks, a sudden sinking feeling mixing with the warmth as the block around his chest suddenly cracks open, and the insight spills out to suffuse his thoughts.
“Hm?” His gaze snaps to hers.
“You okay? You spaced out a bit there, and looked like you just remembered something too late.”
It takes a moment for Red to shake his head. “Nothing important, just trying to figure out what Bill would want us to attend the most.” Just realizing that I have a crush on you, Leaf, you’re smart and pretty and confident and good, and I like spending time with you, and-
“Right. I guess we’ll just have to split up again to attend as many as we can.”
–and leaving you is going to be the hardest part of going to learn from Sabrina, and I’m just realizing all this as I’m about to leave you, and now I don’t want to. “I guess so, yeah…” The block is completely gone, and now he feels hollow inside, even as he tries to convince himself that it will just be for a few months, maybe a year at most, that she would be fine with Blue and Aiko, that he would still be able to talk to her and occasionally see her… “That’s probably for the best.”
Chapter 57: Autoargumentation »
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Environmental Defense Applauds Flood Reform Bill
June 1, 2001 Enviroshop Editor 2001, 51, Animal Rights & Environment, Environmental Defense, Issue Number, Jun 2001, Year
On May 25th Environmental Defense praised Reps. Ron Kind (D-WI) and Jim Leach
(R-IA) for introducing legislation to boost and prioritize federal funds used to
relocate frequently flooded homes.
The Flood Loss Reduction Act of 2001 would set aside as much as 30% — up
from 20% — of disaster relief funds for relocating flooded homes by the Federal
Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). FEMA pays 75% of the cost of
relocating each home. The bill would also authorize the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers to spend $100 million annually to relocate flood-prone homes before
floods occur.
“People need real choices between returning to the river bottom or moving to
higher ground,” said Environmental Defense attorney Scott Faber. “Federally
subsidized flood control, flood relief, and flood insurance have lured people into
harm’s way; now, Congress has a chance to end the cycle of rebuilding in the
floodplain at taxpayer expense.”
Co-sponsors of the bill include Rep. Ron Kind (D-WI). Rep. James Leach
(R-IA), Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Rep. Thomas M. Barrett (D-WI), Rep.
Darlene Hooley (D-OR), Rep. Lane Evans (D-IL), Rep. Gil Gutknecht
(R-MN), Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), Rep. Bob Etheridge (D-NC), Rep.
Kenny Hulshof (R-MO), Rep. Wayne T. Gilchrest (R-MD), Rep. Leonard L.
Boswell (D-IA), Rep. Betty McCollum (D-MN). Rep. Earl Pomeroy (D-ND),
Tom Petri (R-WI), John Shimkus (R-IL), Bill Luther (D-MN).
Despite more than $30 billion spent on federal levees and dams since the 1930s,
annual average flood losses have climbed to more than $4 billion annually as
development has grown in floodplains. Many communities have begun to reject
structural solutions like levees in favor of relocation, which permanently
eliminates the threat of flood losses and long-term disaster relief costs.
More than 25,000 homes, businesses and farms have been relocated, acquired
or elevated since the disastrous Midwestern floods of 1993, when Congress
first created the post-flood relocation program.
The Flood Loss Reduction Act also directs FEMA and the Corps to develop a
flood loss reduction strategy for the Upper Mississippi River valley, and to
prioritize national flood loss reduction spending.
Help reform flood policy
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