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Home Championship ‘External advisor’ –Spanish side’s director part of Birmingham City’s sports structure
‘External advisor’ –Spanish side’s director part of Birmingham City’s sports structure
By Naveen Ullal -
In October 2017, Birmingham City joined hands with Spanish side UE Cornellà and this ‘special link-up’ was done to ‘aid player and coach development’.
Cornellà are currently in the Segunda División B, in the shadow of Barcelona and Espanyol in Catalonia.
AS on Wednesday explain the lower division Spanish side’s ‘grassroots football’ is attracting attention from within their country and also internationally.
Over the past few years, several youngsters have come up through their ranks and made a name for themselves in other leagues. The newspaper even suggests Cornellà has the best academy in Spain.
It’s claimed Cornellà’s ‘successful model’ caught Birmingham City’s attention a few years back, which is why they entered into a partnership. This was done with an intention to strengthen both club’s academies and ‘it is being achieved’.
AS state the deal also allows the Championship side into the ‘shareholding of Cornellà’.
They even compare it with the partnership Manchester City have with Girona [share same owners], and the Citizens have allowed some of their players to join the latter on loan deals.
The report then points out there have been ‘more deals’ with Cornellà and Birmingham in recent years and that’s because of the former’s sporting director, Andrés Manzano, has also become part of the English side’s sports structure ‘as an external advisor’.
AS add this is a sign the Spanish club’s model ‘captivated’ Birmingham City.
Marca also cover the partnership between the two clubs and have gathered comments made by Cornellá technical secretary Juan Giménez.
Regarding the agreement Cornellá have with Birmingham, Giménez said: “On the pitch, it does not have much impact, but for grassroots football it is important.”
“We secure player transfers and we ensure that there are footballers who can have their chance in one of the most powerful leagues in Europe.
“Grassroots football is our hallmark. We have about a thousand children in grassroots football and teams in all the lower categories.”
Previous articleWest Brom player will be ‘satisfied’ if he can get move elsewhere for minutes
Next articleLiverpool have ‘knocked on the door’ for high-profile signing – Sensational claim from Spain
Naveen Ullal
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Senate Intelligence Panel Subpoenas Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn
The statements from Yates, an Obama administration holdover, offered by far the most detailed account of the chain of ...
Saturday, 13 May, 2017
Trump awaits highest level face-to-face contact with Russia
President Donald Trump on Wednesday welcomed Vladimir Putin's top diplomat to the White House for Trump's highest leve...
Trump says meeting with Russia's Lavrov was "very, very good"
Mr. Trump said. "We're right now talking about Russian Federation and various other matters". He and Lavrov said they ...
Nigeria hopes to free more Chibok girls
One girl who wanted to see her family was able to do so. She said "I am happy where I am". Alhassan said the girls wer...
Russian blogger convicted for playing 'Pokemon Go' in church
A court in Yekaterinburg today gave the 22-year-old blogger a three-and-a-half year suspended prison sentence for "incit...
Abe, Moon discuss North Korea, 'comfort women' issue
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - South Korea's new President Moon Jae-in told his Chinese counterpart that he plans to send a s...
« Forward
State of the State Ks
Copyright © 2021. All Rights Reserved - State of the State Ks
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This Week's Column
Max's Notes
Web Design by Max
Church Website Max
MDH Ministry
Psalm 63:1 a
The Upward Look
© Copyright 2011, Max D. Hutto,
“(A Psalm of David, when he was in the wilderness of Judah.) O God, Thou art my God; I shall seek Thee earnestly; My soul thirsts for Thee, my flesh yearns for Thee, In a dry and weary land where there is no water.” Psalm 63:1 NASB
The title of this Psalm tells us it was written by David when he was in the wilderness of Judah. With armed men pursuing him, David was running for his life. This Psalm could have been written during the many times Saul pursued David, or during the revolt of Absalom. David was in the wilderness away from the temple of God. He was desperate, disillusioned, and discouraged, yet in the midst of this turmoil, He turns to God, seeking Him with all his might.
Lord Jesus, when it feels like I am in the wilderness, with many uncertainties ahead of me, may I always seek You. When difficult and seemingly impossible times arrive, I will trust in You, for You still are God!
Email List: This Week's Article!
Would you like to receive this weekly devotional article via email?
Click here to join the weekly email list.
* Bible Copyright Credits
NASB © The Bible quotes marked NASB are from the New American Standard Bible,
© Copyright 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation, La Habra, CA. (used with permission)
CSB © The Bible quotes marked CSB are from the Christian Standard Bible,
© Copyright 2017 by Holman Bible Publishers (used with permission).
HCSB © The Bible quotes marked HCSB are from the Holman Christian Standard Bible,
NIV © The Bible quotes marked NIV are from the New International Version,
© Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, by The International Bible Society. (used with permission)
KJV The Bible quotes marked KJV are from the King James Version of the Bible and are in the Public Domain.
Max D. Hutto, The Upward Look - All Rights Reserved.
- www.upwardlook.org - Minden, Louisiana, USA -
Church Website Max - Max D Hutto - Upward Look
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DTS License No. 4686
info@quantumaviation.aero
Cargo Affliates
Karachi Cargo Services
A new budget XTRA Airways is coming
Maldivian signs service agreements with De Havilland Canada
Delta commits $1 billion to become first carbon neutral airline globally
The former chief financial officer (CFO) of United Airlines and co-founder of Allegiant Air, Andrew Levy, led a group that acquired XTRA Airways’ AOC in August 2018. He is planning to redesign the carrier into a basic transportation, low-cost scheduled airline.
XTRA had sold most of its fleet to Swift Air (retaining a Boeing 737-400 for its certificate) and now operates under the name of Houston Air Holdings based in Houston. The new reborn airline reportedly raised $125 million in funding for the new venture. It expects to launch scheduled passenger operations in late 2020. Charter operations will likely commence this summer.
The new XTRA Airways (a new name is likely) will soon take delivery of a 189-seat Boeing 737-800 leased from Generic Electric. A new livery (and name?) is expected with this arrival.
The new budget, no-frills airline will operate to mid and large size airports from secondary airports.
Delta reports a GAAP pre-tax loss of $2.1 billion in the fourth quarter
As a part of Omar group of companies, Quantum Aviation is a prestigious aviation and travel management company that specializes in Business, Leisure, MICE, Group and FIT Travel.
Quantum Aviation
C-42, Off Shahra-e-Faisal
Mehmood Hussain Road.
Karachi, 75400
© Copyright 2017 - 2020 | Quantum Aviation | All Rights Reserved | Web Developed By Webtors
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Van de Walle, J. and Aksouh, F. and Behrens, T. and Bildstein, V. and Blazhev, A. and Cederkäll, J. and Clément, E. and Cocolios, T. and Davinson, T. and Delahaye, P. and Eberth, J. and Ekström, A. and Fedorov, D. and Fedosseev, V. and Fraile, L. and Franchoo, S. and Gernhauser, R. and Georgiev, G. and Habs, D. and Heyde, K. and Huber, G. and Huyse, M. and Ibrahim, F. and Ivanov, O. and Iwanicki, J. and Jolie, J. and Kester, O. and Köster, U. and Kröll, T. and Krücken, R. and Lauer, M. and Lisetskiy, A. and Lutter, R. and Marsh, B. and Mayet, P. and Niedermaier, O. and Pantea, M. and Raabe, R. and Reiter, P. and Sawicka, M. and Scheit, H. and Schrieder, G. and Schwalm, D. and Seliverstov, M. and Sieber, T. and Sletten, G. and Smirnova, N. and Stanoiu, M. and Stefanescu, I. and Thomas, J.-C. and Valiente-Dobón, J. and Duppen, P. and Verney, D. and Voulot, D. and Warr, N. and Weisshaar, D. and Wenander, F. and Wolf, B. and Zielińska, M. (2009):
Low-energy Coulomb excitation of neutron-rich zinc isotopes.
In: Physical Review C, 79 (1), ISSN 0556-2813,
Stefanescu, I. and Georgiev, G. and Ames, F. and Äystö, J. and Balabanski, D. and Bollen, G. and Butler, P. and Cederkäll, J. and Champault, N. and Davinson, T. and Maesschalck, A. and Delahaye, P. and Eberth, J. and Fedorov, D. and Fedosseev, V. and Fraile, L. and Franchoo, S. and Gladnishki, K. and Habs, D. and Heyde, K. and Huyse, M. and Ivanov, O. and Iwanicki, J. and Jolie, J. and Jonson, B. and Kröll, Th. and Krücken, R. and Kester, O. and Köster, U. and Lagoyannis, A. and Liljeby, L. and Bianco, G. and Marsh, B. and Niedermaier, O. and Nilsson, T. and Oinonen, M. and Pascovici, G. and Reiter, P. and Saltarelli, A. and Scheit, H. and Schwalm, D. and Sieber, T. and Smirnova, N. and Walle, J. and Duppen, P. and Zemlyanoi, S. and Warr, N. and Weisshaar, D. and Wenander, F. (2007):
Coulomb Excitation of Cu68,70: First Use of Postaccelerated Isomeric Beams.
In: Physical Review Letters, 98 (12), ISSN 0031-9007,
Van de Walle, J. and Aksouh, F. and Ames, F. and Behrens, T. and Bildstein, V. and Blazhev, A. and Cederkäll, J. and Clément, E. and Cocolios, T. and Davinson, T. and Delahaye, P. and Eberth, J. and Ekström, A. and Fedorov, D. and Fedosseev, V. and Fraile, L. and Franchoo, S. and Gernhauser, R. and Georgiev, G. and Habs, D. and Heyde, K. and Huber, G. and Huyse, M. and Ibrahim, F. and Ivanov, O. and Iwanicki, J. and Jolie, J. and Kester, O. and Köster, U. and Kröll, T. and Krücken, R. and Lauer, M. and Lisetskiy, A. and Lutter, R. and Marsh, B. and Mayet, P. and Niedermaier, O. and Nilsson, T. and Pantea, M. and Perru, O. and Raabe, R. and Reiter, P. and Sawicka, M. and Scheit, H. and Schrieder, G. and Schwalm, D. and Seliverstov, M. and Sieber, T. and Sletten, G. and Smirnova, N. and Stanoiu, M. and Stefanescu, I. and Thomas, J.-C. and Valiente-Dobón, J. and Van Duppen, P. and Verney, D. and Voulot, D. and Warr, N. and Weisshaar, D. and Wenander, F. and Wolf, B. and Zielińska, M. (2007):
Coulomb Excitation of Neutron-Rich Zn Isotopes: First Observation of the 21+ State in Zn80.
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Disclaimer: Some of the following memes and phrases were exclusively created and used by the WotW community. Many others were created elsewhere out in the GoT and ASoIaF fandom and their specific origin is not known to WotW staff.
Always Support the Bottom = Originated when HBO was still in the early stages of production and GoT had not yet aired. HBO used to make riddles and puzzles for the fans to solve to pass the time waiting for Season 1. The fans analyzed these things obsessively, looking for every little bit of information about the soon to air show. One of the things HBO gave to the fans, in particular a scroll sent to WinterPhil, had barely readable letters on the back.
After a fairly long time of racking their brains and some Photoshop wizardry they made out the words “Always Support the Bottom”. What could it mean? Was it a reference to Fleabottom? As it turned out it meant nothing at all. The document had been treated to look older, and what ever substance they used for it, had been stored in a container with the words “Always Support the Bottom” at, well, the bottom.
Since then “Always Support the Bottom” has become a symbol for the dedication of the fandom. Using this phrase means “Let’s stand together on this. We have been through much and will stay loyal to each other.” Loyal fans helping out the community are called “bottom supporters”. A more detailed explanation can be found here.
Aragorn’s tax policy – GRRM’s books frequently deal with themes that are not traditionally included in the fantasy genre such as the effect of financing on armed conflict and the difficulties of ruling kingdoms without the support of bankers. This phrase was taken from a Rolling Stone interview in which GRRM questioned why Tolkien never addressed the difficulties of actually ruling a kingdom by quipping, “What was Aragorn’s tax policy?”
Asoiaf = A Song of Ice and Fire. Abbreviation of the book series on which GoT is based. Also used as the name of another fan site and wiki for the books.
Asoiaf Book Acronyms = The following is a list of frequently used abbreviations for the book titles.
AGoT = “A Game Of Thrones,” first novel in the series.
ACoK = “A Clash Of Kings,” the second novel in the series.
ASoS = “A Storm Of Swords,” the third novel in the series.
AFfC = “A Feast For Crows,” the fourth novel in the series.
ADwD = “A Dance With Dragons,” the fifth novel in the series.
TWoW = “The Winds Of Winter,” the sixth novel in the series (unpublished as of this writing in January 2015).
ADoS = “A Dream Of Spring,” the seventh and expected final novel in the series (unpublished as of this writing in January 2015).
BCog = Acronym for Brian Cogman, a Writer and now Assistant Producer for GoT. Also used for his on-again/off-again Twitter account. BCog is also an occasional guest of GOO.
Canon = Used to indicate that something was/is accurate to the original story in the books. Usually refers to the show being in line with the books. However, something can also be specified as “show canon” meaning something that is now part of the show story that is not part of the book story.
Chair = One of the first scandals or “gates” was one about a chair, so someone coined “Chair” as a bastard name for House Gatewatch.
D&D = Abbreviation for David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, Executive Producers for GoT
Gate = As in scandal, not really created by this community obviously, but has been used in various contexts of the show. Some of the most well-known “gates” include the following:
Nose-gate: “Jaime’s nose is too big!”
Snow-gate: “OMG, the snow looks fake!”
Eyebrow-gate: “OMG, Dany’s eyebrows are too dark!”
Chair-gate: “OMG, the chair is from the wrong historical period!”
See House Gatewatch for more information.
GRRM = George R. R. Martin. Abbreviation for author of the series of books that GoT is based upon.
GOO = Game of Owns. A GoT podcast that recaps and reviews episodes during the season and analyzes book chapters in between. Show hosts are Kate, Eric, Micah and Zack.
Hodor = Besides the one and only vocabulary word for the character Hodor, it is often the first thing the first commenter of every post says. WotW commenters often compete to see who can be the first one to say it.
Honeypot theory = A theory that posits Lady Talisa was a Lannister Spy, i.e., a honeypot. A honeypot is a term that means a spy that uses sex to blackmail or kill agents. Many fans believed this theory because of Talisa’s occasionally suspicious behavior, like writing letters in a language no one could read and then hiding the letters when people approached. A fan produced video that explains the theory in more detail can be found here.
House Gatewatch = Referring to the site as the watcher and creator of all Game of Thrones scandals or “gates”.
Coat of Arms for House Gatewatch
*Coat of Arms created by KG, commenter.
Indigo = From “The Great Indigo Debate”. Axechucker (aka, AxeyFabulous, FaBio, FaB, Kenny) declared that Indigo should not be part of the rainbow spectrum, that there should only be six colors. Axechucker asked Sophie Turner if she was willing to take a stand with him on this position but she refused. However, several other cast members took an opposing stance and defended Indigo’s status (including Lena Heady, Emilia Clarke, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, and others). Axechucker then interviewed and won John Bradley to his side to oppose the inclusion of Indigo. In response, Aimee Richardson and some of her family and friends vociferously opposed Axechucker’s idea sending out pro-Indigo messages via Twitter. Richardson was so enthusiastic about the debate that she showed up to a TitanCon interview with Axechucker and Hear Marko Roar wearing a pro-Indigo t-shirt and Indigo colored shoes. In a conciliatory gesture, however, she also brought an anti-Indigo shirt for Axechucker. Since Aimee ‘Indigo Is the Way To Go’ Richardson has been recast in Season 5 the meme will probably only be preserved here–unless there is some reason to revive the debate.
Iron Price – In terms of the WotW community this phrase is often used to refer to the phenomena of “show piracy,” wherein hundreds of thousands of faithful viewers obtain the show via illegal means instead of subscribing to HBO.
In Nina Gold we trust = Referring to Nina Gold, GoT casting director. This phrase is used whenever there is some controversy about casting and the commenter wishes to eschew the argument indicating a belief that Nina Gold has always chosen the right person for the job and will continue to do so.
It is known = In the Asoiaf books from which it originated it is a Dothraki phrase that WotW commenters often use. Daenerys’ handmaidens would use it when they heard her say something that contradicts their commonly accepted reality. They would respond with what they think is the truth and follow that with “It is known.” There is an implied “you should already know this” vibe in it. For example:
“Dragon gone Khaleesi.” (Irri)
“Everywhere? Even in the East?” (Dany)
“No Dragon. Brave men kill them. It is known.” (Irri)
“It is known.” (Doreah)
Jojenpaste = The theory that the Children of the Forest engage in blood magic and upon Jojen’s death, used his remains to create a paste that they then fed to Bran.
Kuuh! Kuuh! Kuuh! = The sound that Tyrion made as he described his cousin killing beetles. Used within the community to indicate literal smashing but also figurative smashing as when D&D and/or GRRM dashes fan expectations and hopes.
Little birds = In the Asoiaf books Varys uses this phrase to refer to his many spies, which often included children. On WotW it is used to refer to the various contacts in and around the industry and online that feed the site news regarding GoT.
Littlefinger’s Jet Pack = A sarcastic reference to the fact that Littlefinger, on the show, seems to be able to travel great distances in extremely short periods of time in contradiction to what appears to be the natural progression of time for other characters.
Lord/Lady Gatewatch = Referring to the main force behind the site, WinterPhil (who is not now associated with the WotW community). The closest person to this would probably be Sue the Fury.
Nodor = An expression of discontent that Hodor will not make an appearance in an episode.
#NOONEUNDERSTAAANDS = Twitter hash tag created by @AngryGoTFan to indicate anger and despair at changes made in GoT from the Asoiaf books. WotW commenters and book fans also use it as a sign of sarcasm and humor.
Only Cat = What Littlefinger says to Lysa Arryn as he pushes her out of the Moon Door, “I have loved only one woman in my life. Only Cat.”, which is book canon. On the show, Littlefinger says “Your sister” instead. This phrase can also refer to the online controversy that arose as a result of this change.
PW = Acronym for the Purple Wedding, which occurred in episode two of season 4 entitled “The Lion and the Rose.” Also used to characterize something as being violent and tumultuous but resulting in a positive outcome.
RW = Acronym for the infamous Red Wedding, which occurred in ninth episode of the third season entitled “The Rains of Castamere.” Also used to characterize something as being horrific, violent and bloody.
SanSan = the combination of the names of Sansa Stark and Sandor Clegane, used by shippers who wish these two characters to be together romantically
Sexposition = the practice of providing exposition against a backdrop of sex or nudity
Sullied = GoT watchers who have read the Asoiaf books. Most of the WotW staff are Sullied.
The Watchers = Four of the community’s original contributors. The four founders of WotW include: Sue the Fury, Hear Marko Roar, Axechucker, and Oz of Thrones.
Unsullied = GoT watchers who have not read the Asoiaf books. Oz of Thrones and Zack (of GOO fame) remain the only two Unsullied viewers on the WotW staff.
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Attendance Protocol | Campus Safety | Learning Plans | Parent Town Hall FAQ
Plan 1: Campus Learning | Plan 2: Hybrid Learning | Plan 3: Virtual Learning
Digital Platforms | Task-Force Members | Health Check-In Forms | Downloadable Plan
A video message from our Administration
Campus Preparations for Fall 2020
St. Teresa’s Academy has been eagerly preparing the campus for the return of students in the fall of 2020. Multiple leadership groups and committees have collaborated to address new ways of learning and working at the Academy. The groups worked to analyze the following key issues:
Identifying important issues related to safe classroom learning
Determining best technology support and practices
Reviewing scheduling and continuity plans
Discussing cultural competency and equity needs
Assessing lunch and social interactions
Improving health and well-being services
Establishing guidelines and protocols for business operations
Determining campus ministry operations
Facilitating and maintaining critical sanitizing needs
Developing and strengthening campus safety operations
Aligning all efforts with the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet mission-based values
In addition, we have consulted with and continue to study guidance from the following resources:
Kansas Department of Health and Environment
Local architects and risk management advisors
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
The Missouri School Board Association (MSBA)
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP)
The National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS)
The Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM)
Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)
School leaders in the Kansas City Independent School Heads Association (KCISHA)
IMMUNOCOMPROMISED AND/OR HEALTH RISK STUDENTS
Parents are asked to update their daughter’s health information by logging into Powerschool and/or contacting STA’s school nurse, Angela Sweeny at asweeny@stteresasacademy.org. Administration, the school nurse, parents and the student will unite to determine appropriate academic accommodations for students identified as being high risk for the COVID-19 virus.
Today’s students face a great deal of uncertainty and stress, and St. Teresa’s is ready to help. Students may have a variety of concerns about issues such as the COVID-19 crisis, racial injustice, depression, broken friendships, and more. The physical, psychological, and emotional health of the STA student body is important. Whether on campus or not, comprehensive school programming plans and personal counseling services are available for all students. The Student Life section of the STA website has detailed information. Parents are encouraged to partner with the Academy as an essential part of the equation in helping your daughter. Daily prayer and a commitment to the spiritual life of students is an integral part of STA’s mission. The St. Teresa’s Academy Campus Ministry department is vital in helping students. A vibrant campus ministry, whether on-campus, in hybrid mode, or through virtual platforms, will be maintained to ensure that there is time for prayer and spiritual growth. In life, there will always be challenges, and the young women at STA will be helped to understand that the Lord will give them the needed strength to face all trials.
The STA community relies on its members to abide by safety and health guidelines to maintain a healthy school environment. Some important guidelines include:
MOBILE APP HEALTH CHECK-IN
All students will be required daily to fill out the online COVID-19 Health Check-in form, which can be found on the STA Mobile Up app. The questionnaire includes seven questions, one being your daughter’s daily temperature reading. The form is to be submitted each day by 8:00 a.m. or prior to any student entering campus. This information will be monitored each morning by the school nurse in an effort to provide all students with a safe and healthy learning atmosphere.
SOCIAL DISTANCING IN SPACES
Classroom seating is adhering to the 6 feet social distancing guidelines; hence, classes with larger enrollments are being placed in auxiliary learning spaces, such as the Commons, Fahey Learning Center, Auditorium, Windmoor Center, and Chapel. Traffic patterns and signage will be in place to provide the best possible solution to social distancing while moving between classes.
USE OF MASKS IN PUBLIC GATHERING SPACES
The coronavirus is spread primarily through person-to-person contact through respiratory droplets from coughing, sneezing, or talking. Face coverings and masks will protect people from infection.
SANITIZING AND CLEANING MEASURES
All classrooms will have a sanitizer unit, disinfectant bottle, and paper towels. Per the recommendations from the CDC, handwashing is one of the best means of protection from getting sick. STA’s campus disinfection protocols have been increased to ensure a healthy environment.
The St. Teresa’s Academy administration and faculty are faithful to the STA mission and are committed to delivering a premier, college-preparatory education to students. Plans are ready to adapt to changing circumstances should they arise. Three learning plans have been developed that will be followed based on the conditions at any given time. The goal of each option is that students’ educational experiences will continue with little to no interruptions. The plans include:
Campus Learning | Hybrid Learning | Virtual Learning
Plan 1: Campus Learning
St. Teresa’s Academy administration is planning for on-campus school operations in the fall of 2020. Guidelines will be followed that are consistent with the Center for Disease Control (CDC), as well as local, state, and federal authorities. In all campus spaces, protocols have been established to keep individuals at least six feet apart. All community members will be required to wear masks in shared public campus spaces.
COVID-19 exposure and infection information must be reported to the St. Teresa’s Academy school nurse, Angela Sweeny, at asweeny@stteresasacademy.org, or (816) 501-0148.
ADJUSTED CLASS SCHEDULE
Students’ class schedules and student class sizes have been adjusted to support health, wellness, and social distancing. The following outlines the schedule for a regular school day.
ZERO HOUR: MONDAY- FRIDAY, 7:30 - 8:30 A.M.
Zero hour will remain for each of the three modes of learning (Campus, Hybrid, and Virtual) to further support STA’s mission to empower young women and solidify the STA sisterhood.
Zero Hour may be used for a variety of student engagement opportunities, including:
Club/Class Officer Meetings
Student Leadership Meetings
Athletic/Sports Practices
Club/Class Meetings
Counselor Programs/Meetings
Advisory Breakfast Gatherings
Math Mentoring
Student Success Center Services
Prayer and Spiritual Formation
BEFORE/AFTER SCHOOL PROGRAM
Before school supervision is available starting at 6:30 a.m. After school is available until 5:00 p.m. Students that need to arrive prior to the start of school or remain on campus past the dismissal bell are welcome to check in at the Fahey Learning Center. Adult supervision is provided for no fee.
Due to COVID-19, all students must fill out the online student Health Check-in form prior to entering campus.
Schedule Information: From Monday through Friday, students are scheduled to be on campus beginning at 8:30 a.m. and finishing at 3:15 p.m. (traditional calendar plan).
Athletics will be offered in accordance with MSHAA guidelines and requirements.
Campus Ministry, Fahey Learning Center, Star Shop, College Counseling, Math Hub, and the Student Success Center will be open for regular access and services.
GUIDELINES FOR CAMPUS USE
Below are highlights of campus requirements and steps that have been taken to ensure the community’s health and safety.
Prior to campus arrival, complete the STA Mobile App Health Check-in.
If ill, students, faculty, staff, and community members must stay home.
Designated key fobs must be used to allow for touchless entry to buildings.
Follow marked pathways and signages to reduce congestion.
Seating in classrooms will be configured to allow for individuals to remain at least 6 feet apart.
Wear face masks in classrooms, hallways, and all common spaces, including restrooms.
Abide by social distancing practices.
Use stairways, instead of the elevator, whenever possible.
Thoroughly wash hands multiple times a day.
Dining services and the lunch program will be held in classroom advisory groups or outdoor spaces.
Field trips, assemblies, and other large gatherings will be cancelled or limited.
Congestion in the health office will be reduced.
The water fountains will be adjusted, if necessary, to ensure their use is safe.
Air vents will be cleaned regularly. A biochemist will inspect filters and systems.
Nonessential visitors will be limited, and all those who enter campus spaces will be required to wear masks.
Bringing in students from other schools for special programs (e.g., music, robotics, academic clubs) will be limited.
Plan 2: Hybrid Learning
Given the unpredictability of the COVID-19 pandemic, should the campus population need to be reduced, preparations are ready. Hybrid learning schedules have been developed that create a lower school and upper school framework for students.
Lower school is defined as freshmen and sophomores, while Upper school is comprised of juniors and seniors. Students with overlapping courses will be given the option to attend the class on campus or virtually.
HYBRID SCHEDULE
Below is more information and a sample hybrid schedule. In this example, Days 1 and 3 (highlighted and described as “On”) will be held on the STA campus. Day 2 will be conducted following the same schedule, using live streaming video through Microsoft Teams. Day 4 is an online learning day and the student is required to check for assignments. Classes not represented on the student’s hybrid schedule still require the student to check daily the One Note/Microsoft Teams pages for posted assignments.
Day 5 (not shown) will be used for student engagement opportunities, both on and off campus. This framework will promote socialization, spiritual growth, and community building.
Last year during virtual learning, one of the special ways students were supported was through the Virtual Angels program. Through this program, caring STA adults reached out to each student to help gauge their well-being.
HYBRID ADVISORY LUNCH GATHERINGS
On campus students ONLY (half of the advisory)
Upper School & Lower School advisory lunches alternating daily
Midday check in daily required
Lunch daily with advisory required for those on campus
Attendance taken during advisory for those on campus
30 minutes in
Advisory Buddy System- assigned staff members will be paired with teacher advisors to assist with advisory lunch coverage.
CLUBS AND EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITIES
Clubs and extracurricular activities will remain a focus for the student body. Performances are scheduled for each semester. Activities may include, but are not limited to:
Virtual and on-campus clubs
Affinity group meetings
Class meetings
Meetings with teachers/counselors
Access to the Student Success Center
CLASS SEMINARS
A seminar period has been scheduled for all classes, ie. Tuesdays - Freshmen/Sophomores, and Thursdays - Juniors/Seniors. These class periods will be instrumental in unifying students, extending social emotional health services and programs, helping freshmen transition to high school, and building sisterhood.
Plan 3: Virtual Learning
In-person instruction will be provided as much as possible; however, should circumstances warrant campus closure and suspension of campus activities, virtual learning will be offered. The health of the STA community will constantly be assessed, and local and regional COVID-19 infection cases will be monitored.
Should there be a high quantity of active COVID-19 cases confirmed on campus and/or high exposure cases confirmed in Kansas City, classes would pivot to the virtual learning program. The time spent in virtual learning could be two to five days or longer, if needed.
Virtual Learning Days Advisory Gatherings
All students attend Advisory gatherings 2 days week
Attendance taken during advisory gathering
30 minutes in length
All students must attend advisory gathering
Days of week to be determined by advisors
VIRTUAL CLASS SCHEDULE
A sample Lower and Upper school schedule follows. The courses listed will be held using live streaming video through Microsoft Teams each day. Days when the course is not listed would indicate periods during the day where the student is to complete lessons.
Day 5 (not shown) will be used for student engagement opportunities. See the above statements under Hybrid Learning.
St. Teresa’s Academy teachers are equipped with tools to transition seamlessly between Campus (faceto-face), Hybrid, and Virtual learning. Given the uncertainty of COVID-19, extreme measures have been taken to ensure the premier education at STA. Consistency is the key to success across disciplines to encourage flexibility, structure, self-regulation, and accountability between students and teachers. The STA staff and faculty are dedicated to providing a safe and open environment for students to discuss their questions, concerns, and celebrate being together again.
Microsoft Teams will be the central hub of activity with St. Teresa’s. Using this platform, your daughter will have access to shared files, and will be able to complete assignments, participate in virtual classes, and communicate with faculty, staff, and other students.
Using the Microsoft Teams platform, teachers and students can communicate one-on-one or in groups.
Teachers can send messages and announcements to individual students or whole classes at once. Individual users can create private chats with other users.
With the Channels feature, teachers can create sub-categories within each team for assignment sections, groups, break-out rooms, and focused topics.
Teachers will be able to conduct live streaming video classes and meetings using built-in video technology called Teams. Live streaming or recording of classes will provide students that are both on and off campus access to the instructor’s lessons.
Students may participate in live streaming video discussions with Flipgrid, which is also integrated into the platform.
Teachers can use OneNote Class Notebooks to share notes and files and give feedback to individual students. Notebooks can also be shared between faculty members to collect and curate resources, collaborate and develop new documents, and share professional development materials.
OneNote Class Notebooks have a personal workspace for every student, a content library for handouts, and a collaboration space for lessons and creative activities. Assignments and courses may be organized in each student’s own digital notebook. OneNote integrates with Microsoft Teams, making it just a click away for students and instructors.
Go Beyond Text OneNote can be used to collect and organize a wide range of content, whereas paper notebooks can really only cope with text, drawings and paste-in pictures. OneNote can go further, allowing students to clip content from websites, add audio notes, and link to videos.
No More Lost Notebooks Paper notebooks not only get bulky once expanded into several volumes, but are also prone to 14 loss and damage. OneNote notebooks are stored in the cloud (in OneDrive) and automatically saved and synchronized, so students can access them on any web-enabled device. Not only can they read or edit notes on the go, but they can work on notes at home then find them waiting when they log in on campus.
No More Hunting through Notebooks OneNote uses a structure of notebooks, sections, and notes so it is easy to create an organization that works for each student. Instead of spending hours leafing through paper notes, students can use the search function to find an elusive entry.
Share Notes for Group Work Another useful feature of OneNote is the ability to share notes or notebooks with other people. This could be great for collecting material for a group project.
This technology tool allows teachers to generate online assessments that can be delivered remotely to students. With the Dugga app integration in Microsoft Teams, it is now possible to schedule a test for a class directly from Teams and to add individual students to a test. Additional benefits include:
Create lessons, assignments and conduct different tests and exams.
Use essay and auto-correcting question types, such as single-choice questions and multiple choice questions.
Enables teachers to use the assessment module for the implementation of marking and grading with rubrics.
Edpuzzle is an invaluable flipped classroom tool. Instructors can live-embed Edpuzzle with OneNote to narrate videos, track class comprehension, and engage students in interactive, self-paced learning. Edpuzzle can provide students with a more individualized instructional approach to learning. Formative assessment data received while students view instructional content helps teachers have better conversations with them about their learning.
Movavi Academic provides teachers with a powerful tool for making comprehensive educational videos. STA instructors will enrich the entire learning experience and take the classroom experience to the next level using video editing software.
Google Drive offers a word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation tools, along with a number of other Google applications. Add in the ability for multiple users to simultaneously edit documents, and you have a real tool for collaboration. Each user can see the colored and labeled cursor of every other user while they work on an essay, a spreadsheet, or a class presentation. Projects ripe for Google Drive might include writing workshops, group projects, class discussions, and peer review. It’s also ideal for teachers to use to give feedback to their students.
Microsoft Teams users can now share and collaborate on files saved in 3rd party storage locations, including Google Drive.
Campus Reopening Planning Task-Force Members
Dr. Siabhan May-Washington, President
Barbara McCormick, Principal for Academic Affairs
Dr. Elizabeth Baker, Principal for Student Affairs
Megan Schaefer, Director of Development & Marketing
Kathy Rohr, Director of Finance
Patty Thompson, Director of Human Resources
Jo Weller, Former Director of Curriculum and Instruction
Dr. Mandi Sonnenburg, Director of STEAM Projects and Education
Laura Foley, Board Member
Joe Massman, Board Member
Dr. Marion Spence Pierson, STA Medical Director
Becky Flores, Director of Campus Operations
Angela Sweeny, School Nurse
Ty Abney, Director of Athletics
Debi Hudson, Director of College Counseling
Gil Mont, Operations Manager
Kelly McKee, Director of Recruitment and Enrollment
Bri Walker, Director of Equity and Inclusive Education
Andrea Arredondo, Director of Campus Ministry
Matt Stewart, Technology Coordinator
Jeff Zimmerman, Technology Administrator
Robert Wynn, Security Operations
Laura Snapp, Executive Assistant to the President
Health Check-In Forms
Employee Health Check-In Form
Downloadable Plan
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Available languages: Original English
ID: High Commissioner report on Yemen - 34th Meeting, 39th Regular Session Human Rights Council
26 Sep 2018 - Interactive dialogue on:
- The report of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights on the situation of human rights in Yemen A/HRC/39/43
Item 10: - Technical assistance and capacity-building
- 34th Plenary Meeting
39th Regular Session of the Human Rights Council.
HRC extranet (information on daily updates, draft documentation, copies of oral statements etc.)
Ms. Kate Gilmore, Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights
Chairperson of the Group of Eminent International and Regional Experts, Mr. Kamel Jendoubi
H.E. Mr. Mohamed Asker, Minister for Human Rights of Yemen
European Union, Mr. Carl Hallergard
Bahrain (on behalf of a Group of Countries), Mr. Yusuf Abdulkarim Bucheeri
Netherlands (on behalf of a Group of Countries), Ms. Monique T.G. Van Daalen
Kuwait, Mr. Jamal M.I. Alghunaim
Qatar, Mr. Talal Abdulaziz Al-Naama
Slovenia, Mr. Tomaz Mencin
Germany, Mr. Michael Von Ungern-Sternberg
Libya, Mr. Basem Eldallal
Cuba, Mr. Jairo Rodriguez Hernandez
France, Mr. François Gave
Switzerland, Mr. Valentin Zellweger
UN-Women, Ms. Christine Loew
Saudi Arabia, Mr. Abdulaziz Alwasil
Japan, Mr. Ken Okaniwa
United Arab Emirates, Mr. Obaid Salem Saeed Al Zaabi
Syrian Arab Republic, Mr. Hussam Edin Aala
Croatia, Ms. Katarina Perocevic
Czech Republic, Mr. Michal Dvorak
China, Mr. Chen Cheng
Egypt, Mr. Alaa Youssef
Australia, Ms. Katie Mead
Sudan, Mr. Ahmed Abdellatif
Iran (Islamic Republic of), Mr. Mohsen Ghanei
Bahrain, Mr. Husain Makhlooq
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Mr. Julian Braithwaite
Iceland, Ms. Edda Björk Ragnarsdóttir
Norway, Mr. Sean Lobo
Slovakia, Mr. Daniel Oudrus
New Zealand, Ms. Jillian Dempster
Jordan, Mr. Akram Harahsheh
Nigeria, Mr. Audu Ayinla Kadiri
Kyrgyzstan, Mr. Daniiar Mukashev
Ukraine, Ms. Dina Martina
Cooperation Council of the Arab States of the Gulf, Mr. Hamad Rasheed Al Marri
Iraqi Development Organization, Mr. Mohammad Alwazir
Association of World Citizens, Ms. Wesam Ba Sondowah
Baha'i International Community, Ms. Diane Alai
IUS PRIMI VIRI International Association, Mr. Yousuf Aburas
Save the Children International (Joint Statement), Ms. Davinia Ovett Bondi
Lawyers' Rights Watch Canada, Ms. Catherine Morris
Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, Mr. Abdulrasheed Alfaqih
Institut International pour les Droits et le Développement, Mr. Riyadh Atwan
Defence for Children International, Ms. Helen Griffiths
Ms. Kate Gilmore, Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights (Final Remarks)
Chairperson of the Group of Eminent International and Regional Experts, Mr. Kamel Jendoubi (Final Remarks)
Mr. Charles Garraway, Member of the Group of Eminent International and Regional Experts (Final Remarks)
Ms. Melissa Parke, Member of the Group of Eminent International and Regional Experts (Final Remarks)
Open Video Chapters
Ms. Kate Gilmore, Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights (Introduction) 00:04:37
Mr. Kamel Jendoubi, Chairperson of the Group of Eminent International and Regional Experts (Introduction) 00:10:13
H.E. Mr. Mohamed Asker, Minister for Human Rights of Yemen (Introduction) 00:23:23
European Union, Mr. Carl Hallergard 00:29:12
Bahrain (on behalf of a Group of Countries), Mr. Yusuf Abdulkarim Bucheeri 00:31:28
Netherlands (on behalf of a Group of Countries), Ms. Monique T.G. Van Daalen 00:34:03
Kuwait, Mr. Jamal M.I. Alghunaim 00:36:08
Qatar, Mr. Talal Abdulaziz Al-Naama 00:38:24
Slovenia, Mr. Tomaz Mencin 00:40:17
Germany, Mr. Michael Von Ungern-Sternberg 00:42:16
Libya, Mr. Basem Eldallal 00:44:21
Cuba, Mr. Jairo Rodriguez Hernandez 00:45:15
France, Mr. François Gave 00:45:37
Switzerland, Mr. Valentin Zellweger 00:47:21
UN-Women, Ms. Christine Loew 00:49:21
Saudi Arabia, Mr. Abdulaziz Alwasil 00:51:12
Japan, Mr. Ken Okaniwa 00:53:27
United Arab Emirates, Mr. Obaid Salem Saeed Al Zaabi 00:55:40
Syrian Arab Republic, Mr. Hussam Edin Aala 00:57:54
Croatia, Ms. Katarina Perocevic 01:00:03
Czech Republic, Mr. Michal Dvorak 01:01:51
China, Mr. Chen Cheng 01:03:56
Egypt, Mr. Alaa Youssef 01:05:27
Australia, Ms. Katie Mead 01:07:31
Sudan, Mr. Ahmed Abdellatif 01:09:16
Iran (Islamic Republic of), Mr. Mohsen Ghanei 01:10:37
Bahrain, Mr. Husain Makhlooq 01:12:41
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Mr. Julian Braithwaite 01:14:54
Iceland, Ms. Edda Björk Ragnarsdóttir 01:16:52
Norway, Mr. Sean Lobo 01:18:50
Slovakia, Mr. Daniel Oudrus 01:20:42
New Zealand, Ms. Jillian Dempster 01:22:39
Jordan, Mr. Akram Harahsheh 01:24:37
Nigeria, Mr. Audu Ayinla Kadiri 01:26:14
Kyrgyzstan, Mr. Daniiar Mukashev 01:28:14
Ukraine, Ms. Dina Martina 01:29:15
Cooperation Council of the Arab States of the Gulf, Mr. Hamad Rasheed Al Marri 01:31:10
Iraqi Development Organization, Mr. Mohammad Alwazir 01:33:27
Association of World Citizens, Ms. Wesam Ba Sondowah 01:35:37
Baha'i International Community, Ms. Diane Alai 01:37:11
IUS PRIMI VIRI International Association, Mr. Yousuf Aburas 01:39:06
Save the Children International (Joint Statement), Ms. Davinia Ovett Bondi 01:41:00
Lawyers' Rights Watch Canada, Ms. Catherine Morris 01:42:56
Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, Mr. Abdulrasheed Alfaqih 01:45:04
Institut International pour les Droits et le Développement, Mr. Riyadh Atwan 01:46:59
Defence for Children International, Ms. Helen Griffiths 01:48:31
Ms. Kate Gilmore, Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights (Final Remarks) 01:50:45
Mr. Kamel Jendoubi, Chairperson of the Group of Eminent International and Regional Experts (Final Remarks) 01:52:33
Mr. Charles Garraway, Member of the Group of Eminent International and Regional Experts (Final Remarks) 01:53:34
Ms. Melissa Parke, Member of the Group of Eminent International and Regional Experts (Final Remarks) 01:57:57
01:35:29 36 Chapters
ID: High Commissioner report on Yemen - 5th Meeting, 42nd Regular Session Human...
00:45:19 7 Chapters
ID: High Commissioner Update on Libya - 34th Meeting, 39th Regular Session...
ID: High Commissioner Report on Democratic Republic of the Congo - 32nd...
ID: High Commissioner Update on Ukraine - 33rd Meeting, 39th Regular Session...
English 8 Mar 2017
Annual report by High Commissioner for Human Rights - 22nd Meeting, 34th...
ID: High Commissioner Report on Burundi (Cont'd) - 39th Meeting 32nd Regular...
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1st Plenary Meeting of General Assembly: 1st Session - Part …00:11:03
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contact@aemjournal.org
Study of Oblique Propagating Whistler Mode Waves in Presence of Parallel DC Electric Field in Magnetosphere of Saturn
DOI https://doi.org/10.7716/aem.v6i2.466
R. Kaur
R. S. Pandey
In this paper whistler mode waves have been investigated in magnetosphere of Saturn. The derivation for perturbed distribution function, dispersion relation and growth rate have been determined by using the method of characteristic and kinetic approach. Analytical expressions for growth rate and real frequency of whistlers propagating oblique to magnetic field direction are attained. Calculations have been performed at 6 radial distances in plasma sheet region of Saturn’s magnetosphere as per data provided by Cassini. Work has been extended for bi-Maxwellian as well as Loss-cone distribution function. Parametric analysis show that temperature anisotropy, increase in number density, energy density and angle of propagation increases the growth rate of whistler waves along with significant shift in wave number. In case of Loss-cone distribution, increase in growth rate of whistlers is significantly more than for bi-Maxwellian distribution function. Generation of second harmonics can also be seen in the graphs plotted. It is concluded that parallel DC field stabilizes the wave and temperature anisotropy, angle of propagation, number density and energy density of electrons enhances the growth rate. Thus the results are of importance in analyzing observed VLF emissions over wide spectrum of frequency range in Saturnian magnetosphere. The analytical model developed can also be used to study various types of instabilities in planetary magnetospheres.
Kaur, R., & Pandey, R. S. (2017). Study of Oblique Propagating Whistler Mode Waves in Presence of Parallel DC Electric Field in Magnetosphere of Saturn. Advanced Electromagnetics, 6(2), 26-32. https://doi.org/10.7716/aem.v6i2.466
Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
Gurnett D. A., Kurth W. S. and Scarf F. L. 1981. Plasma Waves near Saturn: Initial results from Voyager 1. Science 212 (4491): 235.
Scarf F. L., Gurnett D. A., Kurth W. S. and Poynter R. L. 1982. Voyager2 Plasma Wave Observations at Saturn. Science 215: 587
Krimigis S.M., Carbary J.F., Keath E.P., Armstrong T.P., Lanzerotti L.J., Gloeckler G. 1983. General characteristics of hot plasma and energetic particles in the Saturnian magnetosphere: Results from the Voyager spacecraft. J. Geophys. Res. 88: 8871
Gurnett D. A., et al. 2004. The Cassini radio and plasma wave investigation. Space Sci. Rev. 114: 395
Gurnett, D. A., et al. 2005. Radio and plasma wave observations at Saturn from Cassini’s approach and first orbit. Science 307: 1255
Storey L.R.O. 1953. An investigation of whistling atmospherics, Philos. Trans. R. Soc. London, Ser. A 246: 113
Akalin, F., Gurnett D. A., Averkamp T. F., Persoon A. M., Santolik O., Kurth W. S., and Hospodarsky G. B. 32 2006. First whistler observed in the magnetosphere of Saturn. Geophys. Res. Lett. 33: L20107
Scarf F.L., Gurnett D.A and Kurth W.S. 1979. Jupiter plasma wave observations: An initial Voyager 1 overview, Science 204: 991
Kurth W.S., Strayer B.D., Gurnett D.A. and Scarf F.L. 1985. A summary of whistlers observed by Voyager 1 at Jupiter, Icarus 61: 497
Gurnett, D.A., Kurth, W.S., Scarf, F.L., Poynter, R.L. 1986. First plasma wave observations at Uranus. Science 233: 106
Pandey R.S. and Kaur R. 2014. Study of Whistler Mode Wave by Injection of Relativistic Hot Electron Beam in the Magnetosphere of Uranus. Progress in Electromagnetic Research M, Vol. 35: 77
Gurnett D.A., Kurth W.S., Cairns I.H. and Granroth L.J. 1990. Whistlers in Neptune’s magnetosphere: Evidence of atmospheric lightening, J. Geophys. Res. 95: 20967
Marklund et al. 2001. Temporal evolution of the electric field accelerating electrons away from the auroral ionosphere. Nature 414: 724-727.
Hull A.J., Scudder J.D., Fitzenreiter R.J., Ogilvie K.W., Newbury J.A. and Russell C.T. 2000. Electron temperature and de Hoffmann-Teller potential change across the Earth's bow shock: New results from ISEE 1. J. Geophys. Res., 105(A9): 20957
Ergun et al. 2001. Direct observation of localized parallel electric fields in a space plasma. Phys. Rev. Lett. 87: 45003
Crary F.J. 2005. Solar wind dynamic pressure and electric field as the main factors controlling Saturn’s aurorae. Nature 433: 720
Horne et al. 2005. Wave acceleration of electrons in the Van Allen radiation belts. Nature 437: 227
Misra K.D. and Pandey R.S. 1995. Generation of whistler emissions by injection of hot electrons in the presence of perpendicular AC electric field. J. Geophys. Res. 100 A(10): 19405
Dory R.A., Guest G. E. and Harris E. G. 1965. Unstable Electrostatic Plasma Waves Propagating Perpendicular to a Magnetic Field. Phys. Rev. Lett. 14: 131
Sazhin S. S. 1988. Oblique whistler Mode Growth and Damping in a Hot Anisotropic Plasma. Planet Space Science, 36: 663
Juhl B. and Treumann R.A. 1985. VLF emission stimulated by parallel electric fields. Journal of Plasma Physics 34(1): 47
Pandey R.S. and Kaur R. 2015. Oblique Electromagnetic Electron Cyclotron Waves for Kappa Distribution with A.C Field in Planetary Magnetospheres. Advances in Space Research 56: 714
Misra R. and Tiwari M.S. 2006. Effect of parallel electric field on electrostatic ion-cyclotron instability in anisotropic plasma in the presence of ion beam and general distribution function—Particle aspect analysis, Planetary and Space Science 54(2): 188.
Pandey R.S. and Kaur R. 2015b. Theoretical study of Electromagnetic Electron Cyclotron Waves in the Presence of AC Field in Uranian Magnetosphere. New Astronomy 40: 41
Pandey R.S., Rajbir Kaur, S. Kumar and B.S. Tomar. 2014. Study of Electromagnetic Electron-Cyclotron Waves with Kappa Distribution Function in the Magnetosphere’, Journal of Advanced Physics. 3(4) 334
Pandey R.S. and Kaur R. 2016. Analytical Study of Whistler Mode waves in Presence of Parallel DC Electric Field for Relativistic Plasma in the Magnetosphere of Uranus. Advances in Space Research, Vol. 58: 1417
R. Kaur, R. S. Pandey, Study of Electron Beam on Electron Cyclotron Waves with AC Field in the Magnetosphere of Uranus , Advanced Electromagnetics: Vol 6 No 4 (2017)
META CONFERENCE
AES SYMPOSIUM
Isolation Enhancement Using a Hybrid Technique in an Eight-Element UWB MIMO Antenna Design
Power Spectra of Ionospheric Scintillations
A Compact Triple Band Antenna for Military Satellite Communication, Radar and Fifth Generation Applications
Losses Approximation for Soft Magnetic Composites Based on a Homogenized Equivalent Conductivity
A Graphical User Interface for Scattering Analysis of Electromagnetic Waves Incident on Planar Layered Media
@aes-conference#aes2021 #antenna #electromagnetics #metamaterials
AES2021 International Conference on Antennas and Electromagnetic Systems is pleased to announce a line-up of world-class plenary speakers for its eight edition.
— AES Conference (@aes-conference) November 12, 2020
Copyright 2012-2020 by Advanced Electromagnetics. All rights reserved.
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the Amsterdam NT Weblog
ANTW is a weblog maintained by the Amsterdam Centre for New Testament Studies (ACNTS). Contributors are the staff of the New Testament department of the Faculty of Theology at VU University Amsterdam. Interests of the weblog include Biblical Exegesis and Theology, Textual Criticism and Bible Software.
3. How to Track Down a Conjecture - A Note on Method
This is the third instalment of a series on conjectures in the Nestle editions. See the sidebar for other posts.
In a comment on my posting on 1 Thes 2:16, Peter Head asks whether there are any short-cuts in tracking down the source of a given conjecture in the NA apparatus, compared to the following steps:
1. get a basic idea of the era of the person;
2. check the older detailed commentaries that are likely to discuss this sort of thing;
3. locate the original source in a good library.
The discussion is important enough to be given a separate posting. The general problem is the following. The Nestle editions indicate numerous conjectures in their critical apparatus, but the information consists of only two elements: a reading and a name. How does one proceed to find out which author is meant, and what the original source for the conjecture is (assuming that the author proposed it in a written source)?
Well, I agree with Peter’s method, but I do have some preferences and some short-cuts. Most of the following, by the way, applies just as well to conjectures that did not make it into the Nestle apparatus, but which are mentioned without proper references in commentaries and articles.
To begin with, I already have a detailed list of any conjecture’s first appearance in any Nestle edition, which gives me a first terminus ante quem. Besides, in many cases it is not very hard to guess the author (‘Erasmus’; but try e.g. John 20:17 ‘Lepsius’/‘Lipsius’ or 2 Tim 3:10 ‘v. Wyss'), and for many authors, the source is not hard to guess. In the case of Erasmus, for instance, his Annotationes are the obvious place to go, and there indeed his opinion on Col 1:15 (see NA25) and Jas 4:2 is found.
The key term for the most important short-cut is ‘collections’. It may be true that especially older German commentaries (KEK (Meyer), KNT (Zahn), HNT (Holtzmann)) discuss many conjectures, but one fares much better with special sources of collected conjectures.
The first collection to mention is Wettstein. If the conjecture occurs in Wettstein’s 1750-1751 edition (or in the list found in the 1730 Prolegomena), the possible period becomes much shorter, of course, and in most cases, the author can be identified with confidence. The second collection is from the same century, namely Bowyer’s Critical Conjectures (various editions up to 1812), as important as Wettstein, with even the advantage that Bowyer regularly gives a - rudimentary - reference (he actually gives one if he happens to have one).
The other collections are found in the second half of the nineteenth century. Monographs, dissertations, and articles by scholars in the ‘Dutch School’ are very useful. First came the general books by van Manen and van de Sande Bakhuyzen. Later, dissertations by Franssen, van de Beke Callenfels, de Koe and Baljon gave more detailed discussions of conjectures on individual books of the NT. Together with a series of articles by Baljon, these detailed discussions eventually formed a collection covering the entire NT (except Acts and Revelation).
Needless to say, one would have to have some command of the beautiful Dutch language in order to use these sources (just as Latin for Wettstein and English (and German!) for Bowyer). And we all know that references in those times were not always very clear, but in many cases they are just sufficient to track down the source.
For 1 Thes 2:16, for instance, I now notice that I could have used one of the articles by Baljon (or van Manen’s book) as well, but I had already noted Lünemann’s reference in my files.
A good library is indeed essential, or actually several good ones. Luckily, the Netherlands is a small country. The Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung turned out to be available in microform at the Nijmegen Radboud University. Sometimes nowadays one can be even more lucky and find books and articles on Google Books or archive.org, to name just the two most important sites. The future may be bright for this type of research.
Now that the short-cuts are discussed, the necessary roundabout routes should be mentioned as well. The most important problem is that the information on conjectures and their authors in the Nestle editions is not always reliable. Conjectures can have earlier authors (but how could one possibly know that?), they can have been withdrawn, or proposed quite differently by the authors that are mentioned, etc. Besides that, the Nestle editions often mention only one conjecture for a given textual problem, whereas the nature of conjectural emendation (and the scholars’ indépendance d'esprit) more often than not leads to several efforts worthy of attention. Historical research of NT conjectural emendation is intricate, to say the least.
In the end, one of the remarkable results in tracking down conjectures is that most riddles remain for the period after, say, 1890. More recent books and articles are of course easier to find, but the manner in which the conjectures found their way into the Nestle apparatus can at times be very obscure. I sometimes speculate about someone simply writing a letter to Eberhard Nestle, or to Paul Wilhelm Schmiedel who then informed Nestle. In any case, there is still a lot of work to be done here.
Posted by Jan Krans-Plaisier at 5:20 pm 5 comments:
Labels: Baljon, Bowyer, conjectural emendation, Eberhard Nestle, Nestle-Aland, Peter Head, Schmiedel, Wettstein
2. Did God’s Wrath Come? - Ritschl on 1 Thes 2:16
This is the second instalment of a series on conjectures in the Nestle editions. See the sidebar for other posts.
In 1 Thes 2:14-16 we find Paul uttering very harsh words against ‘the Jews’. He writes about ‘... the Jews, 15 who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets, and drove us out, and displease God and oppose all men 16 by hindering us from speaking to the Gentiles that they may be saved – so as always to fill up the measure of their sins. But God’s wrath has come upon them at last!’ (RSV).
An important part of the historical exegesis of these verses is the assumption made by various commentators, or by historians of early Christianity, that the transmitted text contains an interpolation. Their proposals vary from the end of verse 16 only, to 1 Thes 2:15-16, or even 1 Thes 2:13-16 entirely (if for a moment we exclude those who suggest that the entire epistle is not Pauline).
At 1 Thes 2:16 NA27 mentions two conjectures. The second one, by ‘Rodrigues’, will be discussed at another occasion. The first one concerns the omission of ἔφθασεν δὲ ἐπ᾽ αὐτοὺς ἡ ὀργὴ εἰς τέλος in verse 16b, and was proposed, according to Nestle-Aland, by ‘Ritschl’. But which Ritschl is it? The famous theologian Albrecht Ritschl (1822-1889), his son Otto Ritschl (1860-1944), also theologian, or the classical scholar Friedrich Ritschl (1806-1876)? And where did this Ritschl propose the conjecture? Such questions on authors and sources are frequent indeed for anyone interested in the conjectures mentioned in the Nestle editions.
In this case, the author of the conjecture turns out to be Albrecht Ritschl, and its source is his review of Baur’s Paulus (1845)1, in Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung 1847. The extended review is found in no. 124 (June), cc. 985-990; no. 125 (June), 993-100 (the entire issue); no. 126 (June), cc. 1001-1008 (the entire issue); and no. 127 (June), cc. 1015-1016; the conjecture itself occurs on c. 1000.2
Some background is necessary to understand what is going on. Well, Ritschl, in general, finds Baur’s approach to the history of the earliest Christians far too schematic. Baur, says he, has a fixed view of Paul’s opposition against Jewish Christians, and does not distinguish sufficiently between Jews and Jewish Christians. Moreover, in the case of 1 Thessalonians, he denies Paul a really apocalyptic mind-set. Baur declares letters or parts of letters authentic or inauthentic with these criteria only in mind. One by one, Ritschl addresses Baur’s arguments against the authenticity of 1 Thessalonians, such as those derived from 1 Thes 2:15-16:
Dass die folgenden Aeusserungen des Paulus gegen die Juden (V. 15. 16) nicht aus der Apostelgeschichte entnommen sein können, wie der Hr. Vf. [Baur] meint, ist erwähnt, und bei der nachgewiesenen Verschiedenartigkeit der Beurtheilung, welche die Judenchristen von Paulus erfahren, können wir uns über den Ausbruch seines Eifers gegen die Juden nicht wundern, wenn wir bedenken, dass gleichzeitige Erfahrungen in Corinth ihm diese Vorwürfe entlocken konnten. Für den von Hrn. Dr. Bauer [sic] beanstandeten Ausdruck λαλῆσαι ἵνα σωθῶσιν finden sich nicht nur in der Apostelgeschichte, sondern auch 2. Cor. 2, 17; 4, 13; Col. 4, 4 Parallelen.3
There remains one problem, that is, one difficulty felt by Ritschl himself, and in this context his conjecture can be found:
Die einzige Stelle, welche nach meiner Meinung gegen den Ursprung des Briefs Verdacht erwecken könnte, sind die Schlussworte dieses Absatzes, ἔφθασε δὲ ἐπ᾽ αὐτοὺς ἡ ὀργὴ εἰς τέλος, welche kaum eine andre natürliche Erklärung zu finden scheinen, als durch ihre Beziehung auf die Zerstörung Jerusalems. Allein weil von diesem Punkte aus der ganze Brief nicht verstanden werden kann, so will ich lieber annehmen, dass die Worte Glossen seyen, als dass ich ihnen ein Gewicht in der Bestimmung der Abfassungszeit gegenüber allen sonstigen Merkmalen der Echtheit im Briefe einräume.
So here it is. The method in this case is clear: there is no reason to assume that the epistle itself was not dictated by Paul, except for one obvious anachronism: 2:16b assumes the destruction of Jerusalem, and can for that simple reason not be Pauline. In this respect, and in this respect only, Baur’s observations were correct.4 The simple solution is the assumption of a gloss, which of course depends on the combination of Pauline authorship at the one hand, and the interpretation of 2:16b as alluding to 70 CE. Note also that Ritschl sees no problems in Paul’s other words in 2:15-16. The general context has to be kept in mind: Ritschl’s defence, against Baur, of the epistle as authentically Pauline.
To my knowing, Ritschl did not repeat his conjecture at a later occasion. Once, decades later, he discussed the same words, but, without any reference to his former conjecture, explained them as entirely Pauline.5
The conjecture has an impressive reception history,6 and in my view deserves serious attention. But that is not the scope of this posting.
1. Ferdinand Christian Baur, Paulus, der Apostel Jesu Christi. Sein Leben und Wirken, seine Briefe und seine Lehre. Ein Beitrag zu einer kritischen Geschichte des Urchristenthums, Stuttgart, Becher & Müller, 11845.
2. The source was found thanks to references in Lünemann’s commentary (KEK 10, 21859, p. 68, referring to ‘Hall. A. Lit. Z. 1847. Nr. 126’) and in Schmiedel’s commentary (HNT 2, 21893, p. 21, referring to ‘Halle’sche allg. Lit.-Ztg. 1847 I 1000’).
3. Ritschl’s reacts to Baur’s ideas on these verses as found in Baur, Paulus, pp. 482-483.
4. Baur, Paulus, p. 483: ‘Und wovon kann, nachdem die Juden fortgehend das Maaß ihrer Sünden voll gemacht haben, ἔφθασε δὲ ἐπ᾽ αὐτοὺς ἡ ὀργὴ εἰς τέλος natürlicher verstanden werden, als von dem durch die Zerstörung Jerusalems über sie gekommenen Strafgericht?’
5. See Albrecht Ritschl, Die christliche Lehre von der Rechtfertigung und Versöhnung, vol. 2, Der biblische Stoff der Lehre, Bonn, Adolph Marcus, 21882, p. 142. Ritschl now sees ἡ ὀργὴ εἰς τέλος as a prophetic utterance imitating some typical Old Testament prophecies. His conclusion, however, remains somewhat forced: ‘Hiedurch ist erklärt, warum Paulus sich ein Urtheil dieses Inhaltes [‘such a judgement’] für die Gegenwart gestattet, und zugleich ist der eschatologische Sinn des göttlichen Zornes bewahrt.’
6. 1 Thes 2:16c is of course the object of an extensive article by Tjitze Baarda (in Dutch), ‘Maar de toorn is over hen gekomen’, in T. Baarda e.a., Paulus en de andere joden. Exegetische bijdragen en discussie, Delft, Meinema, 1984, pp. 15-74. Baarda mentions James Moffatt, Rudolf Knopf, James Parkes and John W. Bailey as supporters of Ritschl’s conjecture. On pp. 22-30 Baarda discusses all kinds of interpolation proposals, far more than those recorded in the Nestle apparatus, and rejects them all. For Ritschl’s conjecture, Baarda refers to various sources that mention the Allgemeine Literaturzeitung, but in the end (p. 62 n. 47 to p. 23) echos van Manen’s words: ‘Ik kon het blad zelf niet inzien’ (‘I was not able to consult the journal itself’).
Labels: Baur, conjectural emendation, conjecture, Nestle-Aland, Ritschl
1. Seven or Eight Beatitudes: Wellhausen on Mt 5:5
This is the first of a series of short posts on conjectural emendations found in the Nestle editions (mostly in the apparatus only). In each post, I will give the source of the conjecture, and a short evaluation. Some other aspects can be discussed as well, such as its transmission history, within the Nestle editions or elsewhere.
Needless to say, comments, suggestions and questions to the series are welcome.
See the sidebar for other posts in the series.
In its apparatus NA27 mentions a conjecture on Mt 5:5: the omission of the entire verse is proposed by Wellhausen.
Why would Wellhausen want to rob us of the Beatitude of the meek (μακάριοι οἱ πραεῖς, ὅτι αὐτοὶ κληρονομήσουσιν τὴν γῆν)? In order to understand what Wellhausen intended with his conjecture, one has to know where he proposed it. In this case, the source is not hard to find: Julius Wellhausen, Das Evangelium Matthaei übersetzt und erklärt, Berlin, Reimer, 1904. There, on p. 15, he writes:
5,10 wäre die achte Seligpreisung. Mt vermehrt aber die drei Seligpreisungen bei Lc nicht deshalb, um sie auf acht, sondern um sie auf sieben zu bringen; ebenso wie er es bei den Bitten des Vaterunsers macht. Er hat auch sieben Gleichnisse in Kap. 13 und sieben Weherufe in Kap. 23. Eingeschoben ist nun nicht der allerdings inhaltlich leicht wiegende Vers 10; denn er soll den Übergang zu den beiden volgenden Versen machen. Sondern vielmehr Vers 4, denn er ist mit Haut und Haar (τὴν γῆν) aus Ps. 37,11 übernommen, und er hat in den Hss. eine schwankende Stellung – was öfters ein Zeichen der Interpolation ist.
It is clear from this citation that verse 4, in Wellhausen’s text, is the Beatitude of the meek, verse 5 in the modern critical text. Wellhausen follows the numbering of the Vulgate, in which verses 4 and 5 are transposed. This already shows the ‘schwankende Stellung’ mentioned by Wellhausen. The verses are also found transposed in D (05) and 33 (see NA27).
The reasoning that leads to the conjecture is typical. Wellhausen detects a rule according to which Matthew prefers the number seven in literary composition. This rule is then made so important that it leads to emendation of places where it is not found to be confirmed. Wellhausen’s sample, however, seems to be rather small. One may therefore ask how firm his rule was in the first place, if emendation has to be applied to make it work.
Moreover, the conjecture suggests that the Beatitudes in their current form do not betray a balanced composition, an idea that does not hold water when careful exegesis is done.
In conclusion: Wellhausen’s conjecture is completely unnecessary, and should not even have been mentioned in the Nestle editions. Its only interesting aspect is to remind us that Matthew does not hesitate to recast a line from the Psalms in order to compose the Beatitudes. It reflects a time in which scholars tended to find glosses at the most unexpected places (which of course does not mean that interpolations never occurred ...).
One more aspect of the conjecture deserves some attention: in NA26 it was indicated as to be applied to verse 6. It is hard to see why such an error was made. Perhaps the above-mentioned frequent transposition of verses 4 and 5 played a role. Interestingly, we have here one of the few cases in which NA26 introduced a fresh conjecture in its apparatus, compared to NA25.
The error has been corrected in NA27, though initially not in its Introduction, in which Wellhausen’s conjecture is used as an example (pp. 12*.54*).
Finally, Bowyer (Critical Conjectures, 41812, p. 62) records (Johannes) Piscator’s opinion, according to which verses 5 and 6 should be inverted.
Posted by Jan Krans-Plaisier at 12:52 pm 3 comments:
Labels: Beatitudes, conjectural emendation, conjecture, Nestle-Aland, Wellhausen
Jan Krans
Bert Jan Lietaert Peerbolte
Arie Zwiep
Martin de Boer
Martin de Boer (© Jelly Reinders)
Bart Kamphuis
Peter-Ben Smit
Jan Krans-Plaisier
Silvia Castelli
Vrije Universiteit, Faculty of Theology
Amsterdam Centre for NT Studies
Bert Jan Lietaert Peerbolte, homepage
Arie Zwiep, homepage
Erasmus' NT editions online
Beza's NT editions online
Direct access to Tischendorf at Ebind
Direct access to Codex Bezae at Ebind
Conjectures in the Nestle Editions
A Note on Research Method; Mt 5:5 (Wellhausen); Jn 19:29 (Camerarius); Jn 20:17 (Lepsius); Gal 1:10 (Cramer); Gal 2;1 (Grotius); 1 Thes 2:16 (Ritschl).
NT Gateway Weblog (Mark Goodacre)
Hypotyposeis (Stephen Carlson)
NT Today (Matthijs den Dulk)
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Chevelon Pueblo (USA): study ancient peoples through their kitchens
Emily Hedges / University of Arizona
Source - http://www.wildcat.arizona.edu/article/2015/12/ua-anthropologists-study-ancient-peoples-through-their-kitchens
Archaeologists at the UA School of Anthropology and the Arizona State Museum are cooking up something big for their next project. Researchers are using utility-ware pottery and cookware to learn more about migration patterns at the Homol’ovi Hopi pueblo sites.
The Homol’ovi Research Program began in 1985 as a collaboration between the UA School of Anthropology and the Arizona State Museum. Originally, the project involved working on Hopi pueblos at Homol’ovi State Park near Winslow, Arizona. The project later shifted to focus on the Chevelon Pueblo, the third largest pueblo of the Homol’ovi villages, which are believed to have been occupied from about 1280 to 1380.
Topographic Map of Chevelon Ruin
Chevelon Ruin - 200 Room Block
According to UA anthropology Professor E. Charles Adams, the UA School of Anthropology is currently working on Rock Art Ranch, a petroglyph site located near Homol’ovi. The UA School of Anthropology hosts an archaeology field school at Rock Art Ranch every summer that is open to undergraduates and graduate students. The field school teaches students archaeological excavation techniques including survey techniques, excavation procedures and artifact identification and analysis.
“I really like the social part of it,” Adams said. “The thing I most enjoy about it is being out ... with a whole group of people and getting to know each other and then being able to work together collaboratively to accomplish really great things like, you know, doing excavations and surveys.”
One of the problems encountered at the Homol’ovi site is looting of artifacts, according to Adams. Pottery hunters, whether intentionally or unintentionally, will remove artifacts from archaeological sites without documentation.
When it comes to archaeology, “context is really everything,” Claire Barker, an anthropology graduate student and research assistant, said. Without context, it is difficult for an archaeologist to analyze an artifact and determine its significance.
“Archaeology done properly is not exciting and it’s not sexy. I mean, people don’t care and that’s unfortunate,” she said. “I think that there’s a lack of understanding, and if people really knew, less people would do it.”
Barker uses utility-ware pottery from the Homol’ovi site to study social identity. According to Barker, studying utility ware is a more stable way to look at social identity.
“Your cooking pots — like what you actually cook with — are not something that you really think of as part of who you are, but that’s also fundamental to who you are,” Barker said.
In a time before pre-made pots and pans, prehistoric peoples used different pottery recipes to make their own cooking ware, according to Barker. Generally, people of the same family groups used similar recipes.
“So by looking at these recipes ... you can look at relationships between people, and you can see uniformity or diversity,” Barker said.
One of the questions Barker said she seeks to answer with her research is: where did people move to Homol’ovi from? By looking at the composition of the pottery, researchers can determine whether it was locally produced or not. Barker uses the composition of utility-ware recipes from local groups of immigrants to see how many immigrants there were, where they migrated from and if they maintained a diversity of traditions after the migration.
“The moment you get into a new social climate, there may be pressure to adjust the way you decorate pottery,” Barker said. “But this stuff, the frying pan you use, is still probably not going to change.”
According to Barker, after she has finished analyzing the pottery, she will use the statistics from the analysis to look at diversity between sites and see if there is a disjunction between the decorated pottery and utility-ware pottery analyses.
“That’s when things get really interesting,” she said.
Meanwhile, Barker will be working on her new Blockbuster hit: “Indiana Jones Discusses Archaeological Context.”
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Hitler the Atheist?
by NonStampCollector
Tags: Christian, Humor, Youtube
RJ November 11, 2010 at 12:39 PM
azryan November 11, 2010 at 6:15 PM
Needs editing and refinement. The part where they just laugh and show hitler quotes to prove he was catholic or just christian moves too quickly to read. The part where they show anti-christian quotes from hitler is glossed over, when it needs to be addressed honestly.
From all I've read it seems clear that we just don't know if he was was atheist or catholic or if he just used whatever to manipulate shit for his own whims.
The clip runs a little long too. Part of the draw is the running joke of how 'obvious' hitler was atheist while actually showing he wasn't. But that joke drags on too long isn't funny or clever by the end. Shortening it will fix that and sharpen the point.
The section where he starts reading all the things rationalist don't believe in gets too messy as well. Especially when he starts overlapping the audio.
I REALLY like the idea of this video and think a lot of it worked well, but it really does need work to make it as great as it could be.
Please redo it Non-Stamp Collector. Maybe make it a shorter 'quiz show' joke section and then add a more serious look at the evidence after it. Then some people could just look at one or the other or both -for diff. audiences.
xmaseveeve November 11, 2010 at 7:48 PM
Absoluely brilliant and perfect as it is.
Mindprowler November 11, 2010 at 8:20 PM
One of my favorite religious debater claims.
Mein Kampf is an arsenal of religious Hitler quotes.
One of my favorites from a speech of his:
"I believe today that I am acting in the sense of the Almighty Creator. By warding off the Jews I am fighting for the Lord's work."
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FRANKLYWNOW - Plans for a New Housing Project in Endicott are in a Holding Pat
Plans for a New Housing Project in Endicott are in a Holding Pattern
Thursday, February 19, 2015 10:56 PM EST
The plans to build a rental housing project in Endicott for people 55 and older are in a holding pattern.
The developer of the 8.5 million dollar Skye View Heights Project is looking to build over 50 units in the village.
The developer is seeking about 2 million dollars in tax incentives. Today the Broome County Industrial Development Agency held a meeting to discuss the issues related to the project. Endicott Mayor John Bertoni says he's behind the project.
"We tried pointing out the history of Endicott and the need for upgraded housing and a project like this," said John Bertoni, Endicott Mayor.
The IDA's Board of Director's are scheduled to meet next Thursday and vote on the exemptions.
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Get And of Clay Are We Created from Amazon.com
Order our And of Clay Are We Created Study Guide
Critical Overview
+Essays
Critical Essay #1
Topics for Further Study
The Japanese Lover
In the Midst of Winter
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Isabel Allende Writing Styles in And of Clay Are We Created
This Study Guide consists of approximately 39 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of And of Clay Are We Created.
Point of View and Narration
Point of view is handled in an unusual way in "And of Clay Are We Created." The narrator tells most of the story in the first person, and yet most readers would say that she operates only on the edges of the action—she is an observer more than she is an actor. While it is common for a narrator to relate events she has witnessed, rather than participated in, it is unusual to have a narrator who reports what she has seen on television. On the one hand, the narrator shares with millions of others the experience of watching Azucena and Rolf Carlé on television; on the other hand, she has intimate knowledge of Carlé and access to unedited transmissions, and these set her apart from the other viewers. The television screen brings her closer to the reporter and the...
More summaries and resources for teaching or studying And of Clay Are We Created.
And of Clay Are We Created from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.
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UH Society of Petroleum Engineers wins Student Chapter Excellence Award
By Raven Wuebker September 4, 2020
The UH Society of Petroleum Engineers was acknowledged in the top 20 percent of student chapters for the first time since the chapter’s start in 2014. | File Photo
For the first time since the organization was formed in 2014, the UH Society of Petroleum Engineers received a Student Chapter Excellence Award.
The award recognizes the top 20 percent of qualified student chapters and is the second highest honor organization chapters can receive.
“The award is so much more than a reward. To me, it represents an encouragement, a new achievement for our University of Houston SPE Chapter that should be the minimum for us henceforth,” SPE president Lotanna Ohazuruike said.
The UH SPE chapter was one of approximately 411 student chapters that apply for the award annually. In order to receive the award, the organization submitted an annual report.
“We all feel very proud because it is our first award since the organization’s establishment. It motivates us even more to achieve higher goals for our chapter,” former SPE president Makpal Sariyeva said.
Applicants’ annual reports are scored in categories such as industry engagements, operations, planning, community involvement, professional development and innovation.
The award has been the hard work of the team since the beginning of the organization and it has been some time for all leaders to work toward this common goal, Sariyeva said.
“When I started out as president, our board’s main goal was to expand our voices, get new student members enrolled, along with sending a delegation to international sections,” Sariyeva said in a news release.
“Our university chapter was established in 2014. It’s still very new, so it took some time to reach our goals.”
“We were definitely confident that we were going to get recognition for our hard work in the form of an award such as this,” Sariveya added. “Our board and our members worked hard to attain these accolades.”
Along with the Student Chapter Excellence Award, the UH SPE has also held 86 events and won six other awards.
This includes earning first place in undergraduate and graduate divisions of the SPE-CGS Regional Student Paper Contest and having a team of chapter members place third in the Petrobowl, a fast pace quiz challenge.
Members also qualified for Phase 2 in the Drillbotics competition, where students design and build a small drilling rig. Members have also won the three top spots in the SPE-Gulf Coast Section’s poster competition.
“For our chapter, this (is) the reward for the hard work that was done over the year and is also a motivation and a challenge to overcome for the 2020-2021 board,” former SPE secretary Tchemongo Berte said.
Tags: petroleum engineering, Society of Petroleum Engineers, Student Chapter Excellence Award
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Board index » Willow and Tara - Truly and Forever » Different Colored Pens
Citanul
Post subject: Time and Time Again
Posted: Sat Jun 14, 2014 3:01 am
6. Sassy Eggs
Hello all. This fic is a little different from the norm. To put it simply there are four storylines running alongside each other and characters from one may not have the same names in all the others. To cut down on confusion I added this note, table of contents and character list to this first post.
Buffyverse:
Chapter 1: Awakening
Chapter 2: Reunited
Chapter 3: 1632 Rovello Drive
Chapter 4: LA
Chapter 5: The Law Firm
Chapter 6: Karaoke Tuesday
Chapter 7: Pylea
Chapter 8: Boston Herpetology Expedition
Chapter 9: Halloween
Chapter 10: The Lies We Tell and the Games We Play
Chapter 11: Lives Saved, Spent, Bargained and Brokered
Chapter 12: Lines
Chapter 13: Deconstructing Ted
Chapter 14: Hats & Toys
Chapter 15: Judgment
Chapter 16: Lunacy
Chapter 17: My Funny Valentine Link is glitched so this goes to the post right before the chapter.
Chapter 18: Xander's Fancy New Hat
Chapter 19: The Junior Partner
Chapter 20: Fish Shtick This one glitched even more so it leads to two posts before the chapter.
Chapter 21: Becoming
Dark Age Chronicles:
Dark Age Chronicles: The Warlord and the Librarian
Dark Age Chronicles: Of Caravans and Mine Shafts
Dark Age Chronicles: Good Things Come In Threes
Dark Age Chronicles: Slayer
Dark Age Chronicles: Machinations Revealed
Dark Age Chronicles: Her Story
Dark Age Chronicles: The Kingdom
Marvels:
Marvels: When Wanda met Carol
Marvels: Team Dynamics
Marvels: The Morning Aftermath
Marvels: Distance
Marvels: Generated Intuitive Logistics Engine Source
Marvels: Bringing Home Mrs. Qadir
Marvels: Mind Walking Faith
Sirens:
Sirens: Scheduled Meetings
Sirens: The Bat
Sirens: Jungle Love
Sirens: Justice
Sirens: Doom
Sirens: The Corps
Primers: Character lists for the two more extraneous story lines. Spoilerific. I recommend reading through the first arc first.
Primer: Marvels
Willow = Wanda Maximoff = Scarlet Witch
Tara = Carol Danvers = Ms. Marvel
Buffy = Jennifer Walters = She-Hulk
Faith = Faith = X-23
Xander = Pietro Maximoff = Quicksilver
Anya = Jessica Drew = Spider-Woman
Giles = Vision = G.I.L.E.S. = Generated Intuitive Logistics Engine Source = Grumpy Intellectual Librarian Englishman Simulation
Other Avengers: Plus the actors you may have seen portray them.
Steve Rogers: Captain America #Murica! = Chris Evans.
Tony Stark: Iron Man = Robert Downey Jr.
Bruce Banner: Hulk = Mark “The kids are all right.” Ruffalo
Thor: Thor! = Chris “Oh my god, look at his big strong arms!” Hemsworth = Did you guys see the scene in Thor 2 where he gave himself a sponge bath in the middle of his living room? I mean hot damn! And this is coming from a straight guy. The first time I saw that movie I leaned over to my sister and whispered “This scene is for the ladies.”
Natasha Romanoff: Black Widow = Scarlet Johansson = The typical straight guy equivalent of everything I just said about Chris Hemsworth. Seriously though she is really pretty.
Clint Barton: Hawkeye = Jeremy Renner = For those with more rugged and brooding tastes.
Sam Wilson: Falcon = Anthony “I really liked his debut in Captain America 2” Mackie
James Rupert "Rhodey" Rhodes: War Machine = Terrance Howard and then Don Cheadle when they realized they offered Mr. Howard way too much money for what would be a minor role in a ten to fifty part on going series.
Barbara "Bobbi" Morse: Mockingbird. Think of a blonde, less Russian version of Black Widow. You may recognize the character from Agents of Shield.
Janet Van Dyne: Wasp
Hank Pym: Yellowjacket. The father of Ultron. Was the first Ant-Man but I liked the idea that the current Ant-Man is a thief who hangs out with Iron Fist and Luke Cage. His wiki page also induces headaches. He and Janet went on a second Honey Moon. Not sure when that will end. If I ever pull out Ant-Man I’m pretty sure he’ll look like Paul Rudd.
T’Challa: Black Panther. He's the king of Wakanda and Storm’s husband. They cast Chadwick Boseman for the upcoming films.
X-Men who are also Avengers:
Blue Hank: Hank McCoy = Beast.
Storm: Ororo Munroe
Logan: Wolverine - X-23’s “Father”
School staff / adults of varying ages:
Professor Charles Xavier: The Professor
Logan: Wolverine
Ororo Munroe: Storm
Hank McCoy: Beast
Piotr: Colossus
= Pete/Peter – The youngest of the “adults” at age 20.
Remy LeBeau: Gambit
Kurt Wagner: Nightcrawler, no not Jake Gyllenhaal
Lockheed : Kitty’s tiny purple alien dragon pet/familiar/sidekick.
Students: All in their mid to late teens.
Kitty Pryde: Shadowcat, but I don’t even think anyone ever calls her that. – Just turned 16.
Bobby Drake: Iceman
Sooraya Qadir: Dust
Alisa Tager: Cipher
Clarice Ferguson: Blink
Alex Summers: Havok
Jamie Madrox: Multiple Man
Primer: Sirens
Willow = Dr. Harleen Quinzel = Harley Quinn = the blonde/blue eyes
Tara = Dr. Pamela Isley = Poison Ivy = the redhead/green eyes
Xander = Bruce Wayne = Batman
Anya = Selina Kyle = Catwoman
Buffy = Death of the Endless = From Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series and a few of her own trade paperback story arcs.
League members: With their roster number.
Superman: Zero One - Clark Kent
Batman: Zero Two - Bruce Wyane
Wonder Woman: Zero Three - Diana
Flash: Zero Four -
Aquaman: Zero Five
Martian Manhunter: Zero Six - J’onn
I’m only using his name because typing out Martian Manhunter each and every time is silly.
Hal Jordan – Green Lantern: Zero Seven
Green Arrow: Zero Eight
Black Canary: Zero Nine
Zatara / Dr. Fate: One Zero
Red Tornado: One One
John Stewart – Green Lantern: One Two
The Atom: One Three
Captain Marvel: One Four
Cyborg: One Five
Captain Atom: One Six
Zatanna: One Seven
Catwoman: One Eight
Guy Gardner – Green Lantern: One Nine
Kyle Rayner – Green Lantern: Two Zero
Legion members: . Extra spoilerific.
Vandal Savage -
Lex Luthor -
Ra’s al Ghul -
Joker -
Circe = Amy –
Solomon Grundy -
Killer Frost -
Cheetah -
Deathstroke -
Black Manta -
Klarion… Bum, Bum, Bum… The Witch Boy!
Plus his cat Teekl = Andrew -
Green, Blue, Violet, Red and Yellow Lantern Corps:
Far too numerous to count or list. Don’t worry about it. The only ones getting recurring speaking lines are probably:
Carol Ferris = Leader of the Star Sapphires
Kilowog = Green Lantern Drill Sergeant
Time and Time Again.
Author: Citanul
Feedback: Be kind, rewind?
Spoilers: Just about all of them. Go watch the show.
Rating: NC-17 I hope.
Pairings: W/T, B/F
Summary: A story of reincarnation and interdimensional travel made possible through the power of love. What misfortunes will our two favorite love birds be able to prevent with the aid of experience from countless past lives.
Author’s Note: This is something of an Easter egg for a much larger project that’ll come about once I get my act together. The prologue takes place in a completely original world with no connection to the “Whedonverse” except for the occasional homage. Don’t worry. I promise this is still a Willow/Tara love story.
Chapter one kicks off near the start of season two.
Like all great stories this one begins at the end.
The ancient woman ascended the steps to the offices of Flagstone Enterprises hand in hand with the love of her many lives. They had one bit of wisdom to impart on a friend before old age claimed them and they bid this world farewell. As with all endings there was a great sadness in her heart, but it was tempered by even greater hope for the new beginning that lay just around the corner for both women.
Entering the building and turning down the corridors toward the Botanical Research Lab she turned to her love. “We’re almost there baby. She just needs to know that there’s always hope. Miranda has lost so much but so did we so very long ago. The fist time I lost you it destroyed me, but our friends helped me survive until I could find you again. I’ll always find you baby. Except of course for the times when you find me, but I’m not keeping score! What matters is that we find each other.”
Turning towards her babbling love blue eyes met green. “I know sweetie. We’ll help her. We owe her and the old gang that much.”
A slight smirk spread beneath green eyes. “Well, not the “old” old gang. We haven’t seen their faces in a half dozen worlds.”
The blue eyed elder laughed and gave a soft smile. “No sweetie I suppose not. Goddess, I miss them so much. The friends we made here were amazing, but our first gang will always hold a place in our hearts.”
The babbler returned the smile and said “I have a good feeling that we’ll see them in the next life. First things first though.” Turning as one they both entered the lab.
“Well Miranda I’ve gotta say I love what you’ve done with this place.” The green eyed elder called out.
The “lab”, as it were, was really more of a giant green house. At an arms length from the doors the term lab ceased to apply, and what could only be called a jungle took over. Moving cautiously the two women made their way through dense foliage seeking out their friend. After minutes of tedious exploration they came to a clearing containing a lone form.
They paused upon seeing the green lump before the blue eyed lady let out a sigh. “Miranda, I’ve said it before and I won’t get the chance to say it again. You can’t hide away in here wallowing in grief.”
In a whirl of motion and fury the form stood glaring at them, and with it a shudder went through all the plants in the green house lab that took up several dozen acres of real estate in the corporate headquarters. “And just what the fuck would you know of it Macduff? You haven’t lost what I lost and you haven’t been through half what I’ve had to suffer.”
Both of the silver haired elders looked at the young spitfire. Her crimson hair was cut short in the back. Two red locks framed her emerald face and flowed down to her clavicle. Her skin, two shades lighter than grass in spring, darkened to a deep jade tone with her fury. Macduff caught her love’s eyes and they both burst out laughing under Miranda’s glare.
“Sweetie, believe it or not both of us have been where you are more times than we care for.”
“She’s right Randi. The first time I lost her it just about killed me.” The green eyed elder said as the surrounding foliage began to rustle.
Miranda was incredulous. How could they stand there and tell her either of them knew what it was like to lose the love of your life? The old married couple was standing together right in front of her holding hands. She had watched them moon over each other for decades. They were always together, always wrapped up in each other, always the perfect picture of true love. She, more than most, could recognize what they shared because she shared the same with her lost love. Her Sal.
“Don’t lie to me Lennox! The love of your life is right there at your side. You got to live together, build a life together and grow old together. Sal and I were robbed of that because I’m too much of a freak to die. It’s been almost a hundred years since we met and I haven’t aged a day. I watched her wither away while my youth mocked her every time she looked at me.”
Lennox had had enough. “Damn it Miranda, Sal didn’t care about that! No matter how old she looked all she had to do was gaze into your eyes and she was wonderful. We know what you’re going through because we went through much worse centuries ago!”
Miranda couldn’t believe it. “What do you mean? I’ve been watching you age for decades. You can’t be that old.”
Lennox sighed. “It’s a very long story that begins with who we were long before we had the names Lennox and Macduff. Funny side note, we got those names from Bartleby. The first time he saw us in the shop we were giggling behind a shelf of anti virus software. After finding out I was a computer buff and she got her rocks off to classic literature he gave us those names, all the while laughing to himself about Shakespeare jokes from old Disney cartoons.”
“Sweetie.” Macduff chimed in.
“Oh right, sorry baby, anyway when we first met it was on a world drastically different from this one.”
“Wait you’re both aliens? Why would the Keeper and Bartleby let you in the shop? They went through so much trouble fighting off every alien to pass through the solar system.”
“Honey of course we aren’t aliens. We’re from a parallel dimension.” The woman Miranda had always known as Macduff reassured.
“And on the world we came from we only had two years together before an asshole and a stray bullet took her from me.” Lennox proclaimed trying to take back the conversation as time was still a factor. “I spent the rest of my life suffering and barely holding on for the sake of our other friends. I wasted a few years on some awful relationships before I figured out a way we could be together again. I used magic to…”
“Wait, magic isn’t real.” Miranda interrupted.
“No, not in this world but in our first world it is very real and we were two of the most powerful witches in existence.”
“You were powerful sweetie. I was no where near your league.”
“Baby no, I was an out of control junkie who used my magic like a sledge hammer made of C4. You not only had control and precision, but I would never have gotten past floating pencils without your guidance.” Lennox rebutted. “The point is magic is real in some dimensions. I came up with a spell that made it so when I died most of my essence would move on to the afterlife to hopefully join with her, but a large part of my soul would travel to another dimension where she was still safe and merge my memories and experience with a younger version of me so I could find my soulmate and save her. Once I came to on a new world I found my girl, got her to love me and did another spell to give her all the memories of the version of her from my world.”
“Since then we have lived countless lives together, on many worlds. We’re always finding each other, saving each other, growing old together and moving on to new worlds. We experience the joys of life over and over!” Macduff gushed with a cheery smile.
Miranda sat down stunned. All movement from the surrounding plant life ceased. “I don’t know whether I’m more amazed or horrified. So you just what? Steal the lives your doppelgangers would have lived?”
Macduff’s eyebrows shot up. “Horrified? Randi, no we aren’t stealing anything.”
“It’s not like we’re body snatchers that come along and kill their hosts. We get as normal a childhood as we can. When one of us is threatened she gets memories of past lives and the skills and experience needed to defend herself. Then an urge to find each other hits and once we share a kiss the rest of the knowledge comes pouring in, but we’re still the same person we were before. We just get caught up on past lives.” Lennox rambled.
“Then why do you go by nicknames Bartleby pulled out of his ass? Why have you been using so many pronouns instead of telling me what your real names once were?” Miranda exclaimed.
Lennox let out a mournful sigh. “Because the people we were on this world had no one worth telling our names to until we met Bartleby. Besides, it’s not like we’re some demons walking around in the bodies of the girls who were born in this world. We have the life experiences and emotions from all those past lives, but the souls originally born into these bodies never leave the driver’s seat. What’s really funny is I can’t even recall the name of the first copy of me to cast the dimension spell. We don’t always get the same names or even the same faces from one reincarnation to the next.”
“Wow.” Miranda muttered.
Lennox felt a twinge in her connection to Macduff and knew they had to say what the initially came to say fast. “The point is Randi, that there is always hope. You said yourself you haven’t aged in decades. That means you are uniquely capable of finding ways to bring her back. Whether by cloning, genetic reincarnation or dimensional hop scotch it doesn’t matter. If you really are gonna live forever you’ll find a way to be with her again. You just need to hold onto hope and live a life that’ll make Sal proud.”
All through this last babble the two old women drifted towards the base of a tree. Sitting down they had just enough strength to wrap their arms around each other and turn once more to the young girl with dazzling red hair and striking emerald skin. They both whispered in unison “Goodbye Randi.” before turning to face each other, sharing one last kiss.
And just like that their journey came to an end and yet another beginning.
Miranda sat there in shock, tears rolling down her thin green cheeks. Her mentors were gone for good but they left her with the one thing she needed most. What she lacked ever since the ravages of time, the sting of betrayal and more than enough personal failures to go around had destroyed her once close circle of friends. Friends who made up the first real family Miranda ever had. For the first time in forever she had hope. She just had to pray it lasted forever this time.
I know some of the stuff in here may have skirted the rules about "spoiling" Seeing Red and that the names may be a deal breaker for some, but this is all building up to bigger pay offs. Next chapter kicks off firmly in the Buffyverse.
Last edited by Citanul on Fri Nov 09, 2018 1:31 pm, edited 14 times in total.
Post subject: Re: Time and Time Again (6/22/14)
Disclaimer: You all know I don’t own the rights to characters you’ve seen on TV.
Author's Note: Okay, if you're still with me after that prologue thank you. What follows is the first chapter in the main storyline that will take up 50% of the updates. It may be on the short side, but I believe it sets a certain tone.
The sun rose over the small town in the backwoods of Alabama. Birds sang. Dew dripped from grass and flowers. It was indeed a grand beginning to a beautiful day.
Yet gazing out upon this idyllic setting brought no hope or vigor to one young woman. No matter how wondrous the joys of life seemed it all tasted like ash in the mouth of one Tara Maclay. She had been up and toiling away hours before the sunrise graced her family’s farm.
Really more like her father’s farm. He and her brother Donnie were never shy about mentioning just who the property belonged to and who should just count themselves lucky to be afforded the privilege of working their fingers to the bone to keep the whole operation running.
‘Operation?’ That thought struck her as she prepared breakfast for the family of four. When had she ever used that word to describe anything? It was a word she normally reserved for the official goings-on of people she would never interact with. It belonged alongside the likes of “recon” and “unit.” Substantial words used by “cool monster fighters.”
Like the men she would no doubt have to hide from for the rest of her life. Perhaps men masquerading as college students so no one would notice the military built a multibillion-dollar subterranean base under a college.
“Okay, where the hell did that come from?” Tara muttered to herself. For days she had been coming up with the most bizarre stray thoughts. Thoughts she would have been more concerned with if they hadn’t been overshadowed by the wonderful dreams she had every night for the last week. Dreams occupied by a gorgeous redhead who somehow knew exactly how to make every inch of Tara’s form writhe with pleasure.
In truth, the overtly sexual dreams of the pleasing redhead were the highlight of her meager existence. Though they always seemed to end with the redhead telling her to head west, or that the time for them to meet was coming almost as fast as she was herself.
Tara had known of her sexuality for years. She had also known that if her father and brother ever found out she could probably expect her suffering to increase tenfold. They would surely force her into “quelling” sessions along with her poor mother.
Ah yes, the family curse. Quelling her demon always seemed to take so much life out of Jennifer Maclay. Hence the reason Tara had been up for hours before dawn. Her mother was just barely recovered from yesterday’s session. While the menfolk were still sleeping off the bender they went on immediately after.
Of course, none of that changed the fact that breakfast still had to be on the table before daddy dearest came downstairs. It most certainly didn’t lessen the workload Tara would be expected to shoulder all by her lonesome.
All of this went through Tara’s mind just before her father thundered into the kitchen. “Why in tarnation is my breakfast not on the table, girl!”
Tara flinched. “I-I-It’s ju-ju-just about r-ready s-s-s-sir. The eggs ju-ju-just n-n-n-need one m-m-more m-minute.” She could tell the man was still inebriated from the previous night. She knew today would only get worse.
“Honey, what’s going on?” Tara’s mother said meekly as she entered the kitchen.
Mr. Maclay roared back. “Your daughter is shirking her chores and has the gall to sass me about it! Well, I’ll tell you, woman! This disrespect ends now! Girl, get in the cellar! It’s high time we begin quelling your demon!”
For a moment Tara resigned herself to her mother’s fate. Then something wonderful happened. Tara was suddenly overcome with strange and wondrous visions racing through her mind. Just as her brother shambled into the room to see what all the fuss was about, a bright light shone forth from Tara’s eyes. Jennifer was shocked while Donnie was merely bewildered. As for Mr. Maclay cold fury set in his face.
“Whatever devilry you’re up to, girl, it ends now or heaven help me I’ll.”
“No, you won’t.” Tara cut him off. “You won’t be doing anything to me or mom ever again.” With a wave of her hand, Tara thrust the man who gave her nothing her whole life but torment, against the ceiling. As Mr. Maclay’s head contacted the hard surface there was a crack as a puff of plaster and drywall dust came fluttering down. Donnie seemed to finally grasp what was going on and decided to act.
“Alright bitch, you asked for this!” He was able to take one step into the room before he noticed he was hovering in the air. It didn’t last long though as Donnie soon found himself slammed into the refrigerator and overcome with a strange sensation that he figured was a few of his ribs cracking.
Jennifer was scared of what this new development would mean for the whole family. “Tara, Sweetie? It’s okay. You just have to fight the demon. This isn’t what magic is for.”
“Oh, Mama,” Tara said with a sigh. “It is so far from okay. It’s time you stopped living down to his expectations and stopped buying his lies.”
“What… what do you mean?” Jennifer was almost too afraid to ask.
“There is no demon lurking in the women of our family.” Tara waved at the man on the ceiling. “It was all a lie that coward up there made up to keep you under his thumb.”
“Oh Goddess no, that can’t be.” Jennifer squeaked out.
“It’s true, Mom. Everything he ever did to us was out of malice and spite. Well, it ends now.” Tara said not taking her eyes off her mother.
“How, how could he do this? What are we going to do?” At Jennifer’s stunned inquiry Mr. Maclay seemed to get a second wind.
“You’ll do what’s good for you and get me down from here so I can teach that girl some respect!” He roared impotently.
“Mom, I’m leaving. I’m p-packing my things and w-w-walking out that door in the next few minutes.” Tara informed her still shocked mother. “I-I-It’s my hope that y-you’ll come with me.”
“Where will we go? Our lives are here.” Jennifer replied weakly.
“No!” Tara shot back. She couldn’t afford to let her mother waver on this much longer. “His life is here. You haven’t had a life of your own since he came into it and I’ve been barely scraping by as his slave. I won’t say where in front of them but there’s a place out east we’ll go. There’s people there who will be our friends.” ‘East, that was a good lie.’ Tara thought to herself. No way was she mentioning Sunnydale or even California in “his” presence. Let him waste years running up and down the east coast if he tried to hunt them down and drag them back to this hellhole. “More importantly, there’s a special someone there I want you to meet.”
Jennifer looked pensive. “Tara, sweetie what brought this on? How do you know these things and how have you kept him up there this whole time?”
Tara smiled her particular lopsided half-smile. She waved her hand and all of her and her mother’s possessions in the house disappeared. Every article of clothing, every picture that held meaning to the two women, every spellbook, herb, crystal, candle, and other bit of magic bric-a-brac hidden in the trunks in their attic vanished. Even the trunks themselves along with Jennifer’s wedding dress and grandma’s doll’s eye crystal. Tara had packed up everything they cared about, including a nest egg of stray small bills she had been squirreling away for years, with a wave of her hand. With the “packing” done she turned to her mother and said with a smile.
Jennifer could only nod her head, numbed by all that had transpired. As the two women turned to leave the house that could never really be called a home Mr. Maclay had one last outburst. “Woman, if you know what’s good for you you’ll drag her to the cellar and come help me down! I’m warning you.”
Jennifer only half-turned to face him and with a slight smile said “Goodbye, Donald. I hope you can learn to move on.” And with that, both women walked out of the house for the last time.
Donnie, for once in his life having the good sense to stay down, finally stirred. He had noticed a slight slurring in his father’s voice for the latter half of the argument and had the impression his old man might have suffered a concussion when his head hit the ceiling with every intention of continuing through the floor upstairs. Something tugged at the back of his mind. They had missed some detail in the brouhaha. He sniffed the air and upon realizing what was amiss let out a low chuckle that ached his ribs.
His father snarled at his attitude “What the hell do you find so funny, boy!”
With a smile, Donnie replied, “Well, Pa, that would be breakfast.” Both men glanced towards the stove Tara had toiled over at their behest for years. The dawning realization was cut short as Mr. Maclay came crashing down to earth.
“Damn it, boy! That bitch just shattered my nose! Drive me to the hospital.” Mr. Maclay groaned out.
Donnie, finally getting to his feet, trying not to put pressure on his ribs ambled to the window. “Can’t. It looks like ‘that bitch’ stole the truck.” Donnie was glad his back was to the old man as his smirk would have only made the day that much worse.
“Well call the police damn it. They’ll get what’s coming to them if it’s the last thing I do.”
Donnie shuffled over to the phone, picking it up but then slowly putting it right back down. “Looks like ‘that bitch’ also cut the phone line.” At this point, Donnie was starting to feel a tiny glimmer of respect for his doormat of a sister. Of course, it wouldn’t last but it did cross his mind. “Stay there, Dad. I’ll get gauze for your nose and bandages for my ribs.” With that Donnie limped off towards the bathroom.
Mr. Maclay, having been thoroughly bested, managed to pick himself up off the floor. He spared a glance at the stovetop again to see what had incited laughter in their darkest hour only to scowl when he was confronted with yet another dark revelation.
The eggs were well and truly burnt.
Have I hooked anyone yet? In the next entry we find out where Tara learned to be ruthless. Thanks for reading.
Last edited by Citanul on Thu Jun 11, 2020 9:28 am, edited 5 times in total.
Post subject: Re: Time and Time Again
Author's Note: Here comes the first entry in one of several story arcs that cover what our two heroines went through in their past lives. Enjoy.
It was a bright and sunny day in the quaint medieval kingdom. Willow Rosenberg was beginning to hate bright and sunny days. A day like this one only a week ago saw her parents dragged from their manor. They were chained and carted off by slavers before most of the servants had any idea what was going on.
In fact, the only reason she hadn’t joined them was some stray thought in the back of her mind told her to retreat to the hidden passages and storerooms in the walls of her father’s library as soon as she heard the large number of horses outside.
There she was forced to watch as Warren Mears, a minor baron from across the river that marked the border between kingdoms, declared the Rosenberg manor and great library was annexed by his overlord “Adam the Scarred.”
Old Adam was widely known as a very ugly man. A man whose horrible external visage was only overshadowed by the hideous the beast he was on the inside. Unfortunately, he was not much better than the man whose kingdom the Rosenberg Estates actually resided in. No, they could expect no aid from “The Dread Warlord Maclay.”
No, the Dread Lord had no love for Willow’s family and hated the idea of “book learn’n.” Any action he took to “defend” his territory would most likely end with every building burned to the ground and the entire area soaked in the blood of both his enemies and his vassals. It had been a small miracle his forces hadn’t set fire to the library years ago.
Willow had managed to escape the initial raid by Warren and his men. She then abandoned the clothing of a young noblewoman in favor of baggy clothing fit for a much heavier male servant. Cutting off much of her well known red locks and donning a frumpy cap allowed her to blend in with the family’s loyal servants and bide her time. A week later she still had yet to formulate an actual plan to deal with Mears. Then all hoped was dashed in the form of Adam’s arrival early this morning.
Adam the Scarred and a number of his soldiers had shown up and seemed to take great exception to some action of Warren’s that deviated from the original war plan. They had arranged the servants, and the disguised Lady Willow, out in front of the manor and Willow was sure either her home or her vassals would be put to the flame. Perhaps both would meet their end. Hope was in dreadfully short supply.
That was until the bottom of the world fell out. A rumble of thunder could be heard in the distance. Then lightning struck the ground between the Rosenberg Manor’s residents and the despots from the neighboring land. A blinding flash of light overtook the entire estate. As the light receded a figure clad in the blackest plate armor Willow had ever seen stood before them. His hand resting casually on the pommel of a massive greatsword, whose blade was buried in the ground at the imposing figure’s feet. His back to Willow and her servants the figure glared at Adam and Warren from behind a closed visor. Not even a hint of his eyes could be seen but the armored figure still exuded an aura of cold menace and dread. In that moment all hope was finally lost. For the Dread Warlord had come a calling.
Taking a brief moment’s glance confirmed Willow’s fears. The dozens of men following Adam the Scarred were now surrounded by over a hundred men clad in similar armor to the Dread Lord. The primary distinction being that every man’s face was clearly visible except for the Lord himself. Her focus quickly returned to the warlord’s once she heard a deep, haunting voice issue forth from the dark armor.
“What has transpired here?” The figure clad in shining black armor said.
Adam’s hand grasped his sword. “Your kingdom will soon fall to me, Warlord Maclay.” He declared. Adam’s sword was halfway out of its scabbard when he suddenly found its blade sundered in twain. None had even seen the dark figure move but it was undeniable that he cut not only the sword but the distance between himself and his opponents in half.
“I believe you have me confused with someone. I am not The Dread Warlord Maclay.” The dark figure said calmly. “I despised him, which would be the primary reason I killed him weeks ago.”
“Then who?” Adam was able to stammer before a resounding cry rose up from all of the soldiers loyal to this new player on the kingdom’s stage.
“All hail the Witch King!” Roared the dark figure’s army.
Willow had a small glimmer of hope at this new development. Under both Maclay and Adam magic was outlawed. She had to hide what was perhaps her strongest natural talent for her entire life. Hence the secret passageways in her father’s library. If this new Lord was openly claiming to have enough magic to be a witch or at least a leader of witches and had used some spell to appear on the scene in a flash of lightning along with his army, it meant things would change. Maybe not necessarily for the better but they would at least be different.
The Witch King began again. “Now I believe I asked what transpired here.”
Adam seemed undeterred by his unarmed state. “I am annexing this territory and have claimed this library an affront to my kingdom. Withdraw or I shall.” His words were cut short as in one quick blur of movement he suddenly found himself in pieces. The Witch King’s sword cut him cleanly in two from his groin to the top of his head.
“And just like that, Adam the Scarred is no more.” The Witch King mused. “Now, Warren! What transpired here?”
Warren balked at the sight of his slain lord and the sheer amount of gore he found himself covered in. “I-I-I-I was just following orders.”
“Strike one, Warren. Now tell me what happened to the owners of this great library.” The Witch King casually admonished.
“Sold!” Warren yelped. “Slavers.”
“Which company?” The dark figure seethed clearly losing patience for the vile man.
“Southern Claw guild.” Warren squeaked out as the Witch King’s massive blade twitched.
“Strike two.” The ominous lord growled. “Last chance; tell me where their daughter is.”
Warren, showing an abysmal lack of common sense, had the nerve to smirk. “Well, that’s actually a good question. I’ve been looking for her for a week now. I was planning on throwing a little private celebration once I finally found her.”
The Witch King was visibly shaking with rage during this statement. “Strike three.” He murmured as his greatsword sliced through Warren’s arms and legs in a series of quick, decisive blows. Warren, or what was left of the minor baron, lay on the grounds of willow’s family home bleeding and moaning in pain. The Witch King strolled up to Warren’s prone form and casually drove his blade through the despot’s head and into the earth beneath.
Upon seeing one of the Witch King’s men approach his lord Willow glanced at the rest of the men present. One glimpse was all it took to see that all the men loyal to Adam and Warren were dead. The Witch King’s men, by contrast, stood completely unscathed.
Returning her attention to the figure clad in gleaming black armor Willow gazed in shock as a conspiracy of ravens suddenly blinked into existence.
The Witch King addressed the unkindness. “Go forth. Scour the kingdom and the lands formerly under that pig Adam’s rule. Find any and all slave caravans. Mark them.” Turning back to the soldier at his side the kingdoms new ruler issued orders. “Station a garrison here. Set patrols to watch the border. Once the ravens report in send out squads to kill the slavers and free all the slaves. Getting the Rosenbergs back unscathed is the top priority. Secondary objectives are the destruction of Southern Claw, and putting down any of Adam’s hold out forces.”
The ravens circling the Witch King took off in all directions with such speed that their departure kicked up a dust storm. The soldier ran off to relay orders to all the men present, while the new warlord strode with confidence towards Willow and her vassals.
“Good people, would I be correct in assuming you all served the Rosenberg family and would willingly do so once more?” The Witch King asked in that same deep, resonant voice, but with so much more kindness than was afforded the two invading despots.
Marcie, one of Willow’s father’s servant girls assigned to the kitchens, spoke up while standing far enough away from Willow to hopefully draw attention away. “Yes, milord. We served happily for years and want nothing more than the return of our rightful masters.” The young noblewoman was deeply touched by Marcie’s brave act considering they had no idea how violently this new intruder would react.
The Witch King let out a mournful sigh. “The sad fact of the matter is this location is no longer safe. This region may be consumed by war once our neighbors learn of their lord’s death at my hand. It is my wish to safeguard the treasure of the Rosenberg Library.”
Taking a long hard look at the assembled servants the Witch King’s gaze finally came to rest on Willow. With a few bold steps forward the armored figure stood right in front of the young redhead. One of his gauntleted hands came up to slowly remove the frumpy cap from Willow’s head. He let out a relieved sigh as Willow froze. Resting the raised hand gently against her cheek and taking the young woman’s hands in his other gauntleted palm he asked her in a voice much softer than any she had heard from him thus far. “Lady Willow, I know you have gone through a horrible ordeal. Please, while we search for your parents, have your servants help my men prepare to move the contents of your library and everything of value to your family that those pigs didn’t destroy. W-we can all return to my fortress. Y-Your p-people will have the run of the p-place and I can e-even hire them on at a fair wage. You of course will be my honored guest and may spend y-your time however you see f-fit. I have a fairly large library collection myself. Though, as I j-just recently took the citadel over i-i-it’s a bit understaffed. It could do with the oversight of a good librarian.”
Willow couldn’t help a strange feeling that she should place all her trust in this person. It was a ridiculous feeling as all she had to go on was one violent, blood-soaked encounter that only proved he was a better warrior than the monsters that tried to destroy her. What raised more questions was the sudden stutter. Where had that come from? It seemed to surface only once her hat was taken. Then again she looked at her options. This fighter was going to search for her parents and wouldn’t let the despots on the other side of the border stop him. If she said no to him now what were her chances of survival? What of her parents’ chances of being found for that matter? She closed her eyes briefly then looked up at the visor of his helmet.
“Okay, sounds swell. Let’s get packing.” She said with forced cheer.
Willow couldn’t hold back a shocked gasp as the Witch King squealed in delight and wrapped his arms around her tenderly. “Thank you.” He whispered in her ear. Only this time Willow thought for sure the voice she heard was a woman’s.
Hours later Willow was once again wrapped in the heavily armored embrace of her would-be savior.
It had been a simple matter of loading up all of the books, her family’s possession, the contents of her hidden labs, and just about everything that wasn’t nailed down. A soldier who turned out to be a quartermaster stepped forward with a number of empty supply wagons and crates. Just about everything except for the most fragile of relics was moved with simple levitation magicks. The soldiers were even on their best behavior it seemed. Every man addressed Willow and her servants as though they were dignitaries of high import.
What probably helped was the fact that the same quartermaster was in charge of setting up the manor to house and sustain a garrison’s worth of men. No, Willow would not want to be sticking around once they set up shop. Even if she could still masquerade as a servant boy she had no desire to be surrounded by so many men.
Willow had been afforded the opportunity to wash off the soot that made up half her disguise, and don garments befitting minor nobility. She was just finishing up when Marcie knocked informing her that the only rooms left to pack were her chambers. Willow strode through the hidden door and into her inner sanctum, her lab. With a wave of her hand, every loose object in the room picked itself up and ambled over to her large trunk. Floor to ceiling shelves that covered every wall in the lab found themselves emptied into the trunk that never seemed to want for lack of storage space. Her workbench and drafting tables even folded themselves up and settled into the large travel accessory.
The trunk once full stood on the curled claw feet at its corners and strode out into the main room of her chambers. There she repeated the hand motion and another trunk found itself being filled with the contents of her private rooms. Once done, it was a simple matter of opening the door as soldiers came to cart away both trunks. What surprised Willow most was how every one of the Witch King’s soldiers addressed her with respect befitting royalty. Dwelling on just what this man really had in store for her resulted in a cold sense of dread setting up shop in her lower abdomen. The kind of shop that sold novelty finger puppets and ceramic unicorns to the fear and anxiety renting a loft in her stomach.
After sending a quick prayer for her wellbeing up to the Goddess Willow quickly went outside to be greeted with their mode of transit. What shocked her most was that the Witch King was waiting for her with the largest horse the redhead had ever seen. A truly massive and imposing beast whose midnight black fur shone under the noonday sun. “There were a f-f-few m-mix-ups with horses for the w-wagon c-caravan and patrols. S-s-so you’ll be riding back to the castle with me.” He said with far too much cheer in his oddly feminine voice.
Willow blanched and started to back into a pillar adorning the manor’s front porch and entryway. She began to panic and her breathing alternated between a wheeze and a series of hiccups. The owner of the massive warhorse was on her in seconds. “Hey, it’s okay. You’re safe. Nothing bad is going to happen to you as long as I’m here.”
The young librarian was immediately comforted by the gentle embrace of the mysterious armored figure. “I’m sorry. You must think I’m crazy. I had a bad experience with a pony as a child. I almost lost an arm.”
The Witch King was quick to reassure the startled redhead. “Hey, no one thinks you’re crazy. To come through all you have you must be incredibly strong. Please ride with me. I promise safety and fun.”
Willow wasn’t sure how but she felt a sense of calm and relief while the armored man held her in his arms. Her earlier sense of dread was forgotten as she gazed up at the Witch King’s dark helmet. “Okay, but only if you promise to hold me close.”
She could hear the smile in the dark figure’s voice. “Always.”
And so it was that their journey across the kingdom began. Willow was certain they used some form of magic to speed things along. One reason was that the massive horse whose back she was perched on seemed to be running at a breakneck pace. Yet the ride itself was as smooth as if they were standing still. What was even more telling was the fact that they had passed landmarks Willow knew to be several days’ journey from her home in a matter of minutes. So it wasn’t much of a surprise when they had reached the Witch King’s stronghold in less than two hours.
What was a surprise was the sheer amount of construction work being done. It was as if the current resident held nothing but contempt for the whole castle. So they had decided to demolish most of the inside while building up and out so that no trace of the original structure could be seen from the surrounding countryside. Which, if what the figure holding Willow in his arms had said about the fate of the castle’s former master was true, was probably the intent of the current owner all along.
Willow’s thoughts were racing as they rode right through the gates and up to the main entrance to the keep. Willow was suddenly pulled back to the events at hand when she felt the armored figure release his grip on her as he dismounted. He then waited patiently for her to slide off the massive horse into his waiting arms. The redheaded bookworm eased towards her would-be savior then shrieked as she tumbled gracelessly into the strong arms she couldn’t help but take comfort in.
“I’m usually less of a spaz.” The petite redhead muttered. Somehow she doubted the warlord holding her was convinced.
“Don’t worry about it, My Lady.” Willow didn’t know what threw her off balance more. The fact the Witch King was already carrying her into his castle as if she, and not her father’s library, was his prize all along. Or the fact his specific choice of words held an overtly possessive tone. Or, perhaps most surprising, the fact his deep resonant baritone was completely absent and in its place was the soft, breathy voice of a woman. A voice Willow knew in her heart she could and would happily lose herself in and never look back.
Willow thought she knew what to brace herself for. Clearly, she was to be this tyrant’s next conquest. Which made the realization that he carried her, not into his private bed chambers, but instead into the most opulent library she had ever seen all the more shocking. “I’m sorry for rushing this but I just had to get you home. Sweetie, this will all make sense once I get out of this helmet.” Her ‘captor’ said with that beautiful feminine voice.
“What! Why are you doing this?” Willow demanded as the Witch King put her down. Fear already creeping into her voice.
As Willow began casting her eyes around the room for an escape route while trying to ready a magic defense the Witch King slowly removed the helmet. Willow stood transfixed by the vision of beauty before her. Radiant honey blonde hair cascaded over the shoulders of the pitch-black armor. Dazzling blue eyes gazed longingly into Willow’s green orbs. An adorable nose set perfectly over plump luscious lips forming a smile that seemed to curve off to one side in a way that made the young redhead’s heart stop. All these qualities came together to form the most gorgeous woman Willow had ever seen.
As they took in the sight of each other thoughts and images swam through the mind of the green-eyed girl. “Baby?” she whispered as tears ran down her cheeks.
“It’s me, Willow.” The blond reassured her love, a slight tremor in her voice. “It’s Tara. I found you, Sweetie, and I’m all yours.”
Willow rushed into the arms of her everything. With a light glowing in both their eyes, their lips crashed together. Light continued to suffuse the library as the two fractured pieces of the same soul merged.
As the passion of their kiss escalated the visions slowed to a trickle. Knowledge of their past lives was secondary to the fact they were together once more. This savage world, straight out of the works of Chaucer, couldn’t imagine the changes they would bring to it. They had power and knowledge beyond the comprehension of most of the denizens here, but more importantly, they had each other, they had love, and they remembered everything.
Willow broke the kiss for a brief moment. “Okay, not to be a buzzkill, but we have to at least invent indoor plumbing and the steam engine before we’re done here.”
Tara smiled back at her gorgeous brainy bookworm. “And about a few hundred other things.” She quipped. “We’ll do it all sweetie. Together we can do anything.”
Willow couldn’t contain her grin. “Together with my knight in shining armor.”
Last edited by Citanul on Thu Jun 11, 2020 2:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.
DaddyCatALSO
Posted: Thu Jun 26, 2014 11:13 am
10. Troll Hammer
Location: Easton PA
Hmm, so this isn't their first life. Are they incarnatiing from now/2002 into the past? Or a lost high-tehc past into the Middle Ages? Or from today/2002 into a post-apoclayptic Iron Age future? Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.................................
I've seen riencarnation plot devices used in so many horror, fantasy, and magic relaist movies and books, usually dislike them but this has shall we say possibilities. :-)
Snapshots:http://thekittenboard.com/board/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=10210 a Love Story
Kim: (breaks off the kissing) I l... (Sue stops her with a hand)
Sue: We don't talk about things like that right after, you know that, no saying those things in The Moment.
Kim: (moves the hand aside) Screw The Moment. I *love* you.
DaddyCatALSO:
Sorry for not responding sooner but writing and polishing chapter 2 got away from me and there was a pretty bad power outage.
Hmm, so this isn't their first life. Are they incarnatiing from now/2002 into the past? Or a lost high-tehc past into the Middle Ages? Or from today/2002 into a post-apoclayptic Iron Age future?
I was pretty sure I mentioned "other worlds" enough times but I'm new at this. To be very clear and for the record they are not reincarnating across time periods but instead across a finite number of parallel universes in an infinitely diverse multiverse.
So to answer your questions about time frames every entry and chapter I post here takes place in the late 90's to early 00's. The variable is the dimension they take place in. One may be a decade or two ahead of or behind "us" as far as the technology goes. Others may be so primitive that humanity never left the stone age. One may be so advanced it makes cyberpunk look like steampunk. Two I plan to write about are blatant ripoffs of established franchises.
What ties all the different worlds together is Tara & Willow as they go from one to the next spending one lifetime in a world before their "mortal coil" sends them on to the next.
Their first life was the TV show.
I hope that answers everything. I'm afraid if I go on I'll spoil the plot twists and payoffs I have planned.
With that out of the way please enjoy Chapter 2: Reunited.
Rating: NC-17 I definitely went for it in this chapter so if you can't deal skip the first section and start after the line of ***'s
Author’s Note: Okay this is a long one but I'm hopeful future entries and chapters will meet and exceed it's size. Also this is the first love scene I've written. If I've disgraced the art please feel free to tell me. Please enjoy.
The woman’s breath caught in her throat as the goddess with honey blonde hair worked her divine tongue from her ear lobe, down over her pulse point, to the smooth line of her clavicle and across her chest. Then the woman’s shortness of breath turned into a series of gasps and moans of pure pleasure. The gorgeous blonde started her return trip along the woman’s other side, not with her tongue but with her teeth. Lightly nipping all the way across the collar bone, up to the neck, and then ending at the ear. The burst of ecstasy this brought the woman writhing beneath the curvaceous blonde paled compared to what she hoped was coming next. For she knew her mystery lover enjoyed nothing more than taking her sweet time, and their evening had just begun.
As dark blonde locks encircled the face of the lithe woman beneath, dazzling blue oceans bored down into green pools. “Please,” she managed to croak out before her lips were claimed by the lovely vision above. The slender girl luxuriated in sensation as she felt every curve of her new personal Goddess press into her petite form. Another moan slipped past her lips and was in turn swallowed by the blonde. That moan was followed by many more as she felt dexterous fingers run through her own long hair to massage her scalp.
Desperate to reciprocate, her arms struggled against the silken wrappings which bound her hands above her head. Had similar bindings not also constrained her ankles she knew she would have found herself wrapped completely around the blonde woman. So desperate for the friction that she knew would bring this wonderful encounter to far too premature an end.
A new burst of pleasure ran through her entire body like lightning as her love’s wonderful fingers worked down to her shoulders, over the sides of her small breasts, and dragged slowly across the outer reaches of her ribs. Liquid lust pooled in her aching center almost causing her to scream out loud as she felt her partner’s slick curls graze her own already soaked core.
Her hips bucked as she failed to resist the overwhelming urge to grind into the paradise teasing her by moving just out of reach. Their kiss finally broke as the mysterious blonde moved away with a chuckle. All she could do as this woman continued to tease her was whimper in frustration.
“Don’t worry, Sweetie,” the blonde murmured inches from her bound love’s face.
Suddenly, all thought was driven from her mind as the blonde’s fingers grasped her ass. She found a firm thigh driven into the growing slickness pooling between her trapped legs. As the divine figure above continued to rock back and forth into her core the woman writhing beneath couldn’t hold back her screams of rapture. “Goddess yes! Baby, fuck me! Fuck me! FUCK ME!” She roared as fireworks burst behind her clenched eyes. Spasms rocked every muscle in her body, and as she was left a quivering mess she heard that wonderful voice one more time.
“I just wanna tell you how I’m feeling. Gotta make you understand.”
Willow Rosenberg awoke with a shout leaping out of bed and landing in a demoralized heap on the floor. The delightful dream that left every inch of her young body humming with frustration, and in desperate need of an ice-cold shower, was quickly fading away as her radio alarm blared out “Never gonna give you up. Never gonna let you down.”
“Darn it!” shouted the poor redhead slamming her hand down on the alarm until the noise finally stopped. “Who the heck plays Rick Astley at this hour?” She grumbled to the empty room. Taking a moment to gather her senses, Willow recalled she was alone in the house. Normally the sense of loneliness from her parents’ absentee style of child care would have put off her mood until she was able to see her friends later at school. This morning however the solitude afforded the opportunity to do away with the already musky pajamas clinging to her sore thighs.
Gingerly extracting herself from the crumpled tangle of bedsheets, Willow stripped her flannel nightwear, grabbed a towel, and slowly made her way to the laundry room. With a mournful sigh, she loaded the lust scented garments and some other bits of attire into the machine. The overwhelming ache that only moments prior suffused her entire form had diminished to a dull throb nestled firmly between her legs. Once laundry had been taken care of, for the time being, Willow made her way back to her bathroom. Resting the towel on a hook, she took a long hard look in the mirror at the devastated girl staring back at her.
“Well, if the dreams I’ve had every night since before we ground the Master’s bones to powder left me thinking ‘I’m kinda gay,’ then this last dream is a pretty clear sign that ‘I’m a great big lezbo.’ What am I gonna do? How am I gonna tell my friends? How bad will my parents’ take it? How much more crap am I gonna have to take from the Cordettes? Will Buffy be more hurt that I’m gay or that my dream girl has more curves than she ever will? And why the frilly heck am I still talking to myself naked in front of my bathroom mirror?”
Fighting back the tears just starting to stream down her already puffy cheeks Willow climbed into the shower stall and let frigid water pound away at her slight frame. Once the ache between her thighs was a distant memory she cut the water off and went back to the mirror she had felt judging her the whole time. “I’m not going to let this ruin me.” Willow said while locking eyes with the ‘resolve face’ on her reflection. “I’m going to live my life the way I see fit, and if they can’t handle it they don’t have to be part of it.” Her tone softened at the thought of her friends turning on her, but Willow wouldn’t go back on the promise she had just made herself.
“I don’t have to tell everyone today.” She reassured herself. “I have time to work out their reactions. It’s not like the love of my life is going to walk in on a Scooby meeting and stick her tongue down my throat and her hand down my pants.” At that thought she began to blush from her calves all the way up her frame to her chest and face, turning a crimson shade almost as bright as her fiery locks.
“Oh, Goddess. I’m in trouble.” She muttered, terrified as her eyes drifted to the sink her hands had clutched at during her entire affirmation.
Realizing she would soon be running late, Willow ran to her room. Quickly dragging underwear up her barely dry legs and donning a bra she couldn’t later recall the color of. Willow threw on the first jeans she could find and grabbed one of her fuzzier pastel rainbow colored sweaters, struggling only when the towel wrapping her still wet hair got caught. Slipping into the strappy flat sandals Buffy practically forced her to buy she yanked her backpack from the floor onto her back. Willow barely had time to grab her keys and wallet before speeding out the door of her parents’ house.
Her day was off to a rough start.
Unbeknownst to Willow, a familiar girl with honey blonde hair in a motel room across town stirred from slumber at the exact moment she did. Tara Maclay awoke with the widest smile she had ever worn stretching across her face. Today was the day. The gorgeous redhead who had dominated her dreams for weeks would be in the library today. They would meet today. They would be together once again. Everything was falling into place.
Turning over to look at her sleeping mother in the bed next to hers, Tara let out a sigh. From the limited memories she had gained, Tara and her love had lived a great many lives together. Unfortunately, those memories gave her the impression the worlds where her mother lived long enough to meet her redheaded soulmate were few and far between.
Upon leaving the farm, she had a horrible feeling in the pit of her stomach the entire truck ride to the bus station two towns over. Once they were on a relatively empty bus Tara cast a minor spell to check her mother’s health. What she found frightened her but she had a strong sense that once she and her love joined they would be able to take care of everything. She had to have hope. This world was shaping up to be one of the better places they had come across in many lifetimes. Everything would work out once she found her other half.
Slowly climbing out of bed and making her way to the bathroom, Tara prepared herself for the big day and the most important meeting of her young life.
Approaching the school with her mother at her side, Tara’s sense of hopeful anticipation was only equaled by the dread she felt coming from the tainted presence of the Hellmouth. Sensing that her mother also felt ill at ease coming to this place, the young girl turned to her mother saying “Don’t worry, Mom. We’re here to help them deal with this awful place.”
“I know what you said before, Tara, but why you? Why do they need us at all?” Jennifer Maclay asked her daughter in a pleading tone. “You said they had the Slayer here guarding this place. Isn’t that enough?”
Tara sighed as they moved through the main doors of the school and down the hall she knew in her bones led to the library. “Mom, we are here because they need so much more than one Slayer. The average Slayer isn’t equipped to deal with magic threats any stronger than a novice dark witch. This Slayer is going to go up against hell gods.” Pausing to notice banners for science fair sign-ups, Tara forged ahead. “Besides, Mom. The love of my life is here risking everything to keep this world safe. I can do no less.”
As they neared the doors to the library a petite blonde came out looking in all directions for someone or something. Tara and her mother stepped aside allowing her to pass. Once she was out of sight around a corner Jennifer placed a hand on her daughter’s arm. “Oh, Goddess,” she said in a state of awe. “That aura, all that darkness, and light swirling around in such a little girl. That was her, wasn’t it? The Slayer.”
Tara paused to let the enormity of what her mother was feeling settle in. “Yes, Mom. That’s her. I knew she looked familiar at first sight, but the aura and presence of authority confirm it. She’s the Slayer.”
Jennifer looked pensive then let out the question she had dreaded asking. “Tara, are you sure you and this girl are soulmates? I mean, she just brushed right past us.” At Tara’s perplexed look her mother tried again. “Just what do you know about this girl aside from the fact that she fights demons all night long?”
A befuddled look passed over Tara, but shortly it turned into gratuitous heartfelt laughter. Bending over to catch her breath, Tara looked up at her mother as the laughter subsided. “Oh, owe. Mom. That was a good one. When did I give you the idea that I was in love with the Slayer?”
“What? You mean you’re not? Then why all the talk about soulmates and meeting ‘the one?’ Why are we standing a stone’s throw away from the Hellmouth if you weren’t after the Slayer?” Jennifer Maclay asked, confusion overcoming what she thought was her firm grip on the matter at hand.
“Don’t worry, Mom,” Tara reassured her bewildered mother. “Just trust me, when I meet her you’ll know.” Tara stood and strode confidently towards the library doors.
Looking at the sheer confidence and conviction her daughter now possessed, Jennifer couldn’t help but stare in wonder. In a matter of days, her daughter had completely transformed from the timid mouse who took every horrible thing life forced on her, into a strong, bold, and confident young woman who wouldn’t let the Hellmouth and all the forces of darkness vying for it stand in her way. Things had changed so much so fast and it seemed poor Jennifer Maclay was just being dragged along for the ride.
Hurrying after her daughter, Jennifer passed into the library but stopped at the sight of a middle-aged man in glasses and tweed looking up from a conversation with a dark-haired boy around Tara’s age.
“Ahh, can I be of assistance to either of you ladies?” The older man asked in a polite British accent.
Tara at first looked crestfallen, but it soon passed as she put on a bright smile. “Yes, I believe you can help me.” The blonde said in as polite a tone as she could muster. “I’m looking for someone, a girl.” She paused. “A very special girl.”
With that statement, Tara held their full attention. She and Jennifer moved further into the library. Once they were both past the desk and halfway to the table the two men stood at, the dark-haired boy seemed to tune into the subtext of the conversation. “Well,” he said with a start. “As you can see there’s no one like that here. So you might want to start elsewhere. With the looking. Elsewhere.”
“Xander, please.” The man who was clearly the school librarian said while adjusting his glasses. “I don’t think we’ll be able to help you. This is a library after all. Not a social club.” His British accent ever-present.
At the mention of his name, Tara took a long hard look at the familiar boy with dark hair and brown eyes. “Xander?” Things were starting to fall into place. Memories of other worlds where the young man with the charming grin served as the loyal brother to the close-knit, mostly female circle of friends. “You’re name is Xander.” Tara could already tell that if her own brother had been half the man Xander was she might have allowed him to join them as they left that awful farm.
Upon this renewed interest, the young man started to falter. “Um? Yes?”
Sensing the tension in the air, Jennifer decided to act. “Tara, darling, maybe we should go.”
“No,” Tara replied with a firm tone. “Everything is going to be okay, Mom. Something must have happened to set them on high alert. I have a hunch, about which evil they are facing, but all we really need to do is wait for the Slayer to get back here then everything will work itself out.”
At the mention of the “S” word the Englishman visibly stiffened. “Now see here, I don’t know what you are on about but I think it would be best for the two of you to leave.”
Before Tara could respond, or try to placate the man’s fears about their intentions for the blonde girl who Tara suspected was his charge, the doors to the library swung open. All eyes turned towards the doors and the three newcomers entering the room.
Blue met green and the whole world melted away.
While following Buffy back to the library to take care of whatever she meant by “Bat-signal,” Willow couldn’t help but feel concerned about Chris Epps. The brief conversation they had over science fair projects seemed to contrast starkly with his attempts to reign in his friend Eric. But then again Eric always was a creep.
“So, Buff, what’s the what?” Willow asked her best friend, trying for a jocular tone. Her dreams and series of bathroom revelations that morning still weighed heavily on her.
“Some creepy-crawly dug up a dead girl,” Buffy replied in far too casual a tone. “Need you to do your “hacky-hacky” thing so I can find it and do my “hacky-slashy” thing.”
Willow stopped dead in her tracks. “Oh, wow, eww.”
“I know right. Major grossville,” Buffy said stopping to reassure her brainy best friend.
Looking up to see the library doors down the hall, Willow felt a sense that if she didn’t get something off her chest to Buffy now it would be too late. Things might play out all wrong if she didn’t find the courage now.
“Buffy, before we get to the Scoobyage there’s something I need to tell you,” Willow said while taking the blonde’s arm, guiding her to the nearest girl’s restroom.
“Sure thing, Will,” Buffy replied, chipper as always.
Once inside, Willow did a quick sweep checking all the stalls. Upon finding themselves alone the redhead turned to her friend and began the conversation that might end one of the most important friendships of her life. “Buffy, I’ve been having dreams for the past few weeks.” She started out slow and took notice of the concerned look that crossed the Slayer’s face. “Each is different but they always feature the same girl in the dream with me. No, it isn’t you or Amy or anyone we know, and it especially isn’t Cordelia.” Willow shuddered at the horrific thought of ever looking at the stuck up head cheerleader in that light and had to fight back the sudden gag reflex that nearly overtook her. “No, most definitely no, never Cordelia.”
“Willow relax, stay with me, how bad can these nightmares be?” Buffy said with a smile, then a frown took hold. “We aren’t talking about Slayer style death and destruction prophecy nightmares are we?”
The redhead looked up in shock at this. “What? No. Buffy, who said anything about nightmares?”
“Will, you dragged me in here to talk about your bad dreams.” The Slayer rebutted.
“No, they’re just dreams. Very specific dreams that I’ve had every night for the past two weeks or so.” Willow said while wondering if this was such a good idea.
“Then why do they worry you so much if they aren’t nightmares?” Buffy responded.
“Because the sex in them is so amazing I wake up on the brink of orgasm in need of a freezing cold shower,” Willow said, starting out strong but as the statement dragged on her voice diminished so that Buffy could only hear the end with the aid of her Slayer senses.
“Ohh, sexy dreams. Awesome!” The blonde said with cheer but soon faltered. “But wait. You said the dreams were about you and another girl. Will, how does that work?”
The tears Willow had been fighting since that morning started to come freely as her eyes locked onto the tiles of the restroom floor. “I don’t know, it just works. I mean she is so beautiful, with the curves and the honey blonde hair and those eyes. Oh Goddess, Buffy, she has the most amazing blue eyes. Last night was so intense that I just couldn’t go on pretending anymore. I’m gay. I’m a lesbian. I’m a gay type lesbian. I haven’t met her yet but I just know there is a girl out there waiting for me to find her. Someone who will love me with all their heart just like I love them with all mine. I just.”
The redhead faltered when she realized her friend was just watching her cry and babble without saying a word. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done this. I-I just… Buffy, please don’t hate me.” Willow whispered with a sob.
Hearing the tone of condemnation the redhead had for herself in that last plea snapped Buffy out of the stupor she had been in since she started to visualize how it could “just work” and what that might entail. Quickly stepping forward and taking the sobbing girl in her arms, Buffy tried to reassure her best friend.
“Hey, Willow, come on. It’s okay. You haven’t done anything wrong, and I could never hate you,” Buffy whispered into the red hair covering her friend’s ear. “I’m just a little surprised, but I’ll get over it I promise. Okay? You’re still the best friend I’ve ever had, and if that means I get to be your wing woman and cruise lesbian nightclubs with you hunting for strange then that’s just a sacrifice I’ll have to make.”
Willow couldn’t help but laugh at the absurdity of Buffy’s description of what her dating life would be like from now on. “Thanks, Buff, but the closest thing this town has to a lesbian nightclub is that one bartender at the Bronze who can’t take her eyes off of your ass every time you walk by. I doubt I’ll have much luck finding “strange” there.”
“Well at least someone with a pulse appreciates all the work I put into looking this hot.” The Slayer said, smiling all throughout her retort.
“Sure, Buffy,” Willow replied. “You’re the hottest BFF slash sister I’ll ever have.”
Buffy let out a deep laugh at that endearment. “Which makes me glad that I look nothing like that oddly specific description of your sex machine of a dream girl.” The blonde let her grip on the slight redhead loosen. “Why don’t you splash some water on your eyes before we head into the library.”
Turning to the row of sinks Willow let out a sigh then her head shot up. “Oh goddess, I was babbling so bad there that I gave you a full description of her before I even came out didn’t I?”
“Yup, pretty much.” The Slayer said calmly. “It’s probably better this way. If I’m patrolling and come across any curvy, honey blonde, blue-eyed damsels in distress I can swoop in, save them, and steer them your way. Say, what’s the best way to ask a girl with a bite wound on her neck if she’s into genius redheads?” She asked with a sarcastic smirk as Willow continued to wash up.
As they exited the restroom a thought crossed Willow’s mind. “Buffy, how do you think the others will take it?”
“Hmm, that’s easy,” Buffy said with a smile. “Xander will be surprised and then he’ll be way too interested. Giles will be stuffy and British at first but he’ll always be supportive.”
As Buffy finished that statement, Cordelia came up to them. “Supportive of what? I’m not going to have to come in this weekend to fight evil am I?” The dark-haired cheerleader asked in her usual dismissive tone.
“Private conversation, Cordy,” Buffy answered before turning back to Willow. “Now Cordelia is something of a mystery. She’ll either surprise us all by being incredibly nice about it or outdo herself in the vicious bitch department.”
“I’m standing right here, Slayer.” Cordelia huffed.
Willow sighed. “Let’s just get on with the Scooby meeting and stop these grave robbers,” she said as they all entered the library.
Once inside the three girls came to a halt upon finding two strange women by the table arguing with Giles and Xander. The younger of the two turned around and her eyes locked on Willow. “Sweetie?” she said with a quiet breath.
Willow couldn’t believe it. “Baby?” The hacker cried out. It couldn’t be. There she was. The woman of Willow’s dreams standing there in the flesh. Every curvy, delicious, honey blonde inch of gorgeous flesh. ‘Stop thinking about her flesh!’ Willow chastised herself. Before her mind could work itself into another pointless babble she took a step forward. Then another.
Tara couldn’t stop herself from taking matching steps towards her girl. ‘My girl. My love. My heart and soul. My entire world.’ She couldn’t keep the joy from overwhelming her heart.
As the two young women approached one another the other five people in the room had to shield their eyes. A blinding light enveloped the two reunited lovers. As the light began to fade temporary blindness was replaced with outright shock as the onlookers were greeted with the sight of the redhead and honey blonde wrapped in each other’s arms while their tongues engaged in an age-old dance.
Giles, being the first to recover from the glare, removed his glasses for a good polish and gave his standard reply. “Oh dear lord.” Having retained a great deal of experience regarding matters of magic from his recklessly misspent youth, he knew that manifestations of pure light on the scale they just witnessed often accompanied great powers.
Xander may have said it best with his simple “Huh?”
By contrast, Cordelia just let her mouth hang open as she stared at the two young women in the middle of the room.
Buffy took a close look at the glowing girl her best friend held in her arms. Her eyes grew wide with the dawning realization that this mystery woman was a curvy, honey blonde with blue eyes. “Well, that took less time than I thought it would.” How could Willow’s dream girl be standing here before them? After what seemed an eternity of watching them kiss, but could really only have been a minute or so, Buffy finally broached the subject on everyone’s mind. “Will? Willow, buddy when you’re ready to come up for air I’m sure the rest of the class would like to get caught up on the deets.”
Willow sighed as Tara slowly broke the kiss and they gazed into each other’s eyes once more. “Your name is Willow? That’s beautiful, I love it.” Tara whispered into the redhead’s cheek.
“And I love you, Baby.” The hacker replied resting her forehead against the blonde’s.
As the quiet murmurs of “I love you.” continued Jennifer felt a need to speak up. “Tara, Sweetie? Don’t you think we should introduce ourselves?”
Willow perked up at that statement. “Tara. My girl’s name is Tara. Perfect.”
With the knowledge of both their names, the last of their memories from past lives fell into place. Sorting themselves according to how closely the worlds the memories came from resembled the dimension in which they currently resided.
As the two lovers once again fell into a deep lasting kiss, Giles finally set out for answers. “Yes introductions, of course.” He said in far too chipper a cadence for his accent. I am Rupert Giles and as you may deduce I’m the school librarian, among other things.”
Waving his hand at his young Slayer the watcher forged ahead. “This is Buffy Summers, one of my more active students.” Gesturing to the young man he continued. “Here is Xander Harris who aids us in many different efforts, and the other young lady over there is Cordelia Chase who on occasion lends her opinions. Often to our peril.”
As Giles called out names Buffy cautiously moved around the two love birds whose very public light show had faded down to a glimmer of the blinding flare it once was. “And the red-haired tramp, currently sticking her tongue down what I can only presume is your daughter’s throat, is our resident computer wiz Willow Rosenberg.” The Slayer added in all too casual a tone.
Jennifer knew they had left out some details and decided to err on the side of caution. “My name is Jennifer Maclay and this is my daughter Tara. I’m not exactly sure what is going on but Tara started acting strange a few days ago and decided we should come out here.” She paused to consider the mood in the room and then turned to her daughter with a slightly accusing tone. “She kept saying her love was here and I had to meet her.”
As the course of the conversation changed Willow perked up. “What? Tara! Baby, your Mom is here too?” She asked the blonde in her arms. “Oh, Goddess. How bad was he in this dimension? He didn’t hurt you, did he?”
“Hush, Sweetie, no he couldn’t hurt me.” The blonde witch reassured. “He’ll never hurt me again. You saw to that countless lifetimes ago, remember?”
The redhead visibly relaxed. “Right, our spell, of course. I’m just being silly and letting my worry girl run loose.” Smiling once more she held her love at arm’s length. “Introduce me to your mom.”
“My pleasure,” Tara whispered before turning and guiding the hacker across the room. “Mom, this is my soulmate, Willow Rosenberg. Willow, this is my mother, Jennifer Maclay.”
As the older woman looked into the girl’s green eyes the redhead reached out and enveloped her prospective mother in law in a warm hug. “Thank you. Thank you so much. You’ll never know how important your daughter is to me. She’s the air I breathe, the light that guides my journey. She’s my everything.”
“Willow.” Giles had stood there polishing his glasses at the declarations of love but felt something amiss. “Perhaps your new friends would like to step outside while we discuss certain matters?”
“Relax, Giles.” The hacker admonished while turning towards her mentor. “They are both natural-born witches with a gift for aura reading. They could tell there was a Slayer and a hellmouth in the room before they even entered the building.”
At that statement, both Giles and Jennifer stiffened and looked at one another. “All the more reason to figure out if this is some kind of spell.” The old Englishman warned.
Xander chose that moment to recover from the earlier shock and add more to the conversation than his earlier “Huh?” or “Whoa.” “A spell? Like a love spell? So would that explain the kissing and the light show?”
“Guys!” Willow called out in a firm tone. “This is no love spell. I’m gay. Tara is my soulmate. We are together. From now on, where one of us goes the other goes. If you all just sit down we’ll give you the Cliffsnotes.”
Buffy couldn’t help but let her Slayer caution creep up. “Will, this seems awfully convenient,” she said while trying to not outright accuse the two new blondes of anything. “I mean you just told me you’ve been having dreams for weeks and now this girl who fits your bill just shows up?”
“I was having the dreams also,” Tara chimed in as everyone sat around the table looking at the two young women who even now held one arm around the other’s waist and clasped their other hands together as if ready to start a waltz. “They are a side effect of the spell we cast a very long time ago. They call us to each other, give us memories of past lives, and just enough knowledge to get out of any danger one of us might face before we find the other.”
“Wait, Will, you’ve faced huge danger all last year, and just last week you were almost a human sacrifice,” Buffy couldn’t help but point out.
“Correct, but having a Slayer in shouting distance tends to make the spell effect hold back to see what happens,” the redhead told the stunned audience. “It may have seemed like I was in great danger dozens of times, but you being you proved more than enough protection.
“Anyway the short version is that we just recovered memories from lives other versions of us lived in parallel dimensions. Tara and I are now both incredibly powerful witches. Probably the most powerful in the whole world.”
At this frightening revelation, Giles glared directly at Willow. “Willow, the forces you are referring to so casually are extremely dangerous. Someone with no prior experience with magic shouldn’t be able to do the things you just rattled off and that display when you two first met shouldn’t have been possible from two people so young.”
Willow rolled her eyes. “Giles, we both have a tremendous amount of experience with magic. Which brings us to the long version.” She began. “A very long time ago in a dimension far far away,” she said with a wink at Xander. “Something terrible happened. A few years into Buffy’s career as the most successful Slayer in history one of her least powerful and most annoying enemies walked into her back yard with a loaded gun.” A collective gasp rose from each person at the table.
“I know right. Gasp indeed.” The redhead added. “I won’t go into details since we are going to change all the details and prevent that day from repeating, but someone was lost and someone else spent a lifetime suffering for that loss. At the end of her life, she took all the magical power she could muster and sent part of her soul to another dimension where she could live her life with her lost love one more time. They reunited and lived a few more years but it wasn’t by much. Luckily they rewrote the spell to make it so each time the couple passed away they would reincarnate in a new dimension and be given various clues to help guide them and find each other every time. Once found, they’d get the memories of all their past lives and be able to set things right on each world. You just witnessed the finding phase of the spell. Next comes the using what we now remember to make our lives infinitely better phase.”
Giles, still a bit skeptical, couldn’t refrain from asking. “How do we know this isn’t some elaborate demonic possession and that both the girl’s standing before us are still the ones we cared for?”
“Tara, you did act drastically different when we left home. Almost like another person was in control.” Jennifer added.
“Mom, that was mostly because I was dying without her as well as the spell giving me everything I needed to get the both of us out of the awful house.” Tara rebutted. “Do you really think daddy dearest would have let us go without a fight?”
Buffy couldn’t hold the question back anymore. “What is she talking about? Willow, what are they running from?”
Willow let a smirk cross her face. “We have now come to the point in the conversation where I blurt out everyone’s deepest darkest secrets. Secrets which I have no way of knowing up to this point, but will one day learn from each of you.”
Turning to Xander she let out a soft chuckle. “Xand, you and I have known each other forever. We have no secrets. So I’ll just say yellow crayon story and Aquaman underpants story. Please don’t give me a reason to elaborate.”
Xander suddenly thought back to the first time he had met a very young, very timid, Willow. Then he recalled an incident later that first school year they shared together. Looking at the faces around the table he suddenly exclaimed, “I approve of Willow’s new relationship and see no reason to question the two lovely women who are sure to be a vital part of our evil-fighting team.” Looking back to Willow and Tara he let out a soft “I’ll be good.”
Willow smiled as she patted him on the arm before turning to Buffy. “Buffy, you spent two weeks in an asylum when you saw your first vamp and tried to talk to your parents about it.”
Buffy looked at the redhead with shock. Pain and betrayal flooded her eyes. “How can you… Will? Why would you just?” She paused looking around at the faces of the people she came to rely on. “I’m not crazy.”
“No, Buffy. You’re not. Your parents just reacted horribly to something you went through that they wouldn’t even try to understand.” Willow said as she went around the table to place her hands on Buffy’s shoulders. “You are among friends here who love you and would never send you to a place like that. You only told me about that awful place because you were poisoned by a demon. Its venom made you slip in and out of reality, hallucinating a world where none of us were real and you never left the asylum.”
A single tear rolled down the Slayer’s cheek. “I’m never going back there.”
“You’ll never have to.” The redhead whispered in her friend’s ear. “Besides, that is nothing compared to the stories I could tell of Giles’ “misspent youth” as he puts it.”
Giles couldn’t help the look of fear spread over his face. “Oh dear lord.”
“Oh dear lord is right.” Willow agreed. “I’ll just stick to the bullet points so we save time. Ethan Rayne, Ripper, Eyhgon the Sleepwalker, Ethan Rayne a few more times, Pink Floyd, The Who, and Cruciamentum. Bee Tee Dubs, Buffy won’t be going through the Cruciamentum.”
Giles couldn’t help the shock of everything she just laid bare. From his greatest shame to his oldest pickup line. ‘I was a founding member of Pink Floyd,’ indeed. The young girl before him had just about shouted his darkest secrets from the rooftops. With resignation, he took hold of his glasses and began to polish them once again.
“I believe you have made your point, Willow.” He said with a weary sigh.
Buffy couldn’t hold back her curiosity. “What’s a crucial mentos, and why don’t I get one?”
Tara, having followed Willow around the table so she could wrap her arms around the lithe redhead’s midsection from behind, let out a bark of laughter.
Giles resigned himself to the confession he had been dreading since meeting his charge. “The Cruciamentum, dear girl, is an ancient rite of passage and a cruel idiotic act of sheer barbaric ineptitude preformed by the Watchers Council. On or near the Slayer’s eighteenth birthday her Watcher, that would be me,” he said to the Maclays. “Drugs the Slayer in secret with a cocktail of muscle relaxants and depressants designed to strip away her powers as a Slayer.”
Yet another gasp arose from those seated. Tara and Willow only added, “It gets worse.”
“Yes, quite,” Giles replied weakly. “The now helpless girl is then placed, unarmed, in a confined space with a deranged, half-starved vampire.”
Buffy couldn’t hold back the feelings of betrayal anymore. “How the hell could you even think of doing that to me?” She screamed half ready to storm out of the library if not for Willow and Tara placing reassuring hands on her shoulders.
“In his defense, Sweetie, they fire him right after every time,” Tara said in a calm soothing voice.
“Buffy, something like sixty percent to eighty percent of the versions of Giles we have come across in all dimensions outright refuse to drug you and perform the test,” Willow told her in just as calming a tone. “The ones who go through with it always try to back out by telling you about it before the final run. Of course, by then it’s too late.”
“What do you mean too late?” Giles begged.
“The vampire the Council brings in for the test always escapes. It murders and turns every watcher in town except for Giles and Travers. Then it kidnaps Joyce. Every. Single. Time.” Willow intoned. “Buffy just about always beats the test and saves her mom though.”
“Well thank god for small miracles,” Buffy said, allowing sarcasm to drip from her every word.
“Every time you come up to the Cruciamentum, Giles gets fired and they send a new watcher in his place.” Willow went on. “Unfortunately he’s an inexperienced ponce and a bit of a Nancy-boy.”
“S-so, due to those and many other s-shortcomings, w-w-we decided that going forward Buffy and any Slayer who doesn’t care for the Council’s rules will fall under our protection,” Tara said casually.
“How do you plan on besting the Council and just where are these other Slayers going to come from?” Giles asked in wonder.
“When Buffy faced the Master months ago she died just long enough for a new girl to be called. She lives in Jamaica, and her existence opens up some options with certain spells.” The redhead remarked.
Xander, having felt some detail gnaw at the back of his mind finally jumped into the fray. “Wait, how come you guys know all this stuff but earlier you acted like you didn’t know each other’s names?”
Willow perked up at this. “Great question, Xand. Basically, names don’t carry over in the majority of the memory transfer. On many worlds, our names are drastically different.”
“Th-there w-were even a few where I was the r-redhead and Willow was the blonde.” Tara chimed in. “Different worlds, different lives, different names.”
“I guess that makes as much sense as anything else today.” The young man relented. “Did Tara and her mom have some deep dark secret they wanted to share to even the playing field?” He asked in a voice that led everyone to believe he was joking.
The young blonde wasted no time in divulging of herself to the group. Trust had to be gained fast for them to let her even start half of what they needed to accomplish. “My father is a lying abusive sociopath who raised me to believe that the magic in the women of my family was the Devil’s work. The centerpiece of the lie was that I and my mother have demon in us. Once I turn twenty it is supposed to surface and make me go on a killing spree. The only way to suppress it is with back-breaking manual labor and terrifyingly high levels of domestic abuse.”
As another awkward silence fell over the room Willow wrapped her arms around her girl to express all her love and support. “Never again! If he even steps one foot in this town I’ll have Buffy break his legs.”
“I’ll probably do it too,” Buffy confirmed for her new blonde friend. “I may not be allowed to slay him if he’s run of the mill human, but pulling crap like that puts maiming back on the table.” The Slayer added in what she hoped was a humorous enough tone to lighten the mood.
Giles, being at a loss for words, just muttered. “Oh dear lord.”
Xander couldn’t believe she actually answered his question. Let alone the extent to which her deepest darkest secret dwarfed his. “I’m sorry, Tara. I shouldn’t have asked. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay, Xander.” The blonde reassured. “You guys needed to know about the demon l-l-lie in case h-he ever shows up and tries to forcibly drag us back to h-his farm. Besides, M-mom and I are still in shock about being forced to live a lie for so many years.”
Buffy looked over at Cordelia. She couldn’t help the feeling that her quiet demeanor during this entire exchange was hiding something. “You’re being awful quiet over there, Cordy. Care to chime in?”
The head cheerleader’s head shot up looking at the Slayer before turning to lock gazes with the two young witches. “I don’t understand most of this and frankly I don’t want to.” She said as a frown crept over Willow’s face. “That being said, you should know that growing up I only had one family member who cared about me. The best childhood memories I have are with my great aunt and her “roommate” from college that never left her side.”
With a renewed smile, Cordelia looked right at the redhead. “There are a bunch of reasons why you and I don’t get along, Rosenberg. The gender of the person you plan to spend the rest of your life with isn’t one of them.”
Stunned silence reigned over the library for what seemed an eternity. Willow reached into her pocket, pulled out her wallet, and withdrew a single dollar. While handing it to Tara she cracked a slight smile. “Thank you for that, Cordy. That’s probably the nicest thing you have ever said to me.”
Buffy looked perplexed. “What’s the what with the dollar?”
Willow beamed at that question. “Standing wager. Tara and I place bets periodically on who will say something completely new and unexpected that their previous doppelgangers never told us before. That is the very first time any version of Cordelia Chase has ever shared such an important personal memory.”
Cordy smirked at that revelation. “Don’t get used to it.”
Buffy still had a confused look on her face. “So you guys don’t know everything that’s going to happen before it’s going to happen?”
With a smile, Tara tried to reassure the girl she hoped would soon learn to trust her. “No, Buffy, we’re not gods. We don’t see every detail of the future two w-w-weeks ahead of time, and while we probably could read the minds of everyone in the building we n-never would do s-s-something so invasive.”
“Tara is right, Buffy,” Willow said, jumping back into the conversation. “Even when it looks like we know everything that is going to happen that just means we saw similar stuff happen over and over again. For instance, you brought me back here because something dug up a dead girl’s corpse. Now I could search the net for recent deaths of young women and find a report of three girls dying in a car crash. Or I could jump to the most common culprit and tell you that Chris Epps and his creepy sidekick Eric have taken to grave robbing because they need the parts. See Chris’s family has fallen apart since his brother Daryl died. So he went and brought his brother back as a big ugly Frankenstein style monster. Monster Daryl is lonely so he is making them build him a lady monster. If they have dug up those three girls then they have probably already dumped the leftover parts in the dumpster behind the old science building. Now the worst part is they need a head and are soon going to realize that brains break down too fast for their purposes. So Daryl will decide they should just take Cordelia’s head while she’s alive.”
At the conclusion of the fairly epic babble, a deafening silence fell over the room. No one could believe what the redhead had just told them. The sheer morbid horror of the atrocities listed brought tears to Jennifer’s eyes.
Perhaps the most startled person in the room was Cordelia. “They brought back Daryl and are going to kill me so I can be part of his sex toy?” She exclaimed with shock, outrage, and not a small amount of terror.
Rounding the table to stop any potential panic attack, Willow and Tara were quick to reassure the frightened women. “It’s going to be okay, Cordelia.” The hacker affirmed. “Buffy is going to stop them and we are all going to make sure you live to shake pompoms another day.”
“Right, okay people we have a mad scientist to stop, and a monster to find and slay!” Buffy announced as her Slayer side took over the conversation and started issuing orders to those assembled. Once everyone knew their roles they began to disperse. Buffy still having some lingering worry approached her redheaded friend. “Will, is everything really okay? You just seem so different since you found your girl.”
“Oh, Buffy,” Willow said calmly to reassure her stalwart friend. “I’m so much more than ‘Okay’. I have my everything back. Sure things are going to change around here, but I promise it’s all for the best. Our main goals have always included ensuring you live long enough that your grandkids have fond memories of playing with you.”
That thought struck the Slayer like a Mack truck. ‘Grandchildren.’ No Slayer had ever lived long enough to meet such descendants. As far as she knew none had ever even had kids. “I don’t know what to say. You just look like you’ve changed so much. I was worried.”
“I have changed, Buff. But I promise I’m still the girl who cried in your arms in the bathroom less than an hour ago. Still best friends and sisters. That will never change.” Willow confirmed with a soft smile. “What has changed is all the fears and doubts that once held me back are gone. They can’t touch me anymore. In their place is certainty, knowledge, and love. There’s so much Tara and I have to do, and so much of it involves your struggle against evil that we can’t do it without you.”
Buffy couldn’t believe the confidence coming off her friend. ‘This must be how she felt around me all this time.’ The Slayer thought to herself. “I’m with you, Will. Always. Tara too, though I need to get to know your girl better.”
Willow smiled at that. “After we take down Young Frankenstein there are some things we need to discuss with your Mom. Tara’s Mom too.” She paused for a moment. “You aren’t going to like this but we also need to have a talk about your relationship with Angel.” With that ominous statement, Willow left to guide the Maclay women who had instantly become the center of her world to the school’s office. A new student needed to enroll.
Buffy stood there watching her friend exit the library with the two blondes. The talk of grandchildren and relationships came out of nowhere, or so she thought. But there would be time for all that later. For now, the Slayer had monsters to fight.
Many strange things happened in Sunnydale over the next few days. Parts from three different girls were found in a dumpster on school grounds. The high school won a football game for once. Oddly enough someone had set fire to the old abandoned science lab during the game. No suspects were ever charged, but the remains of two bodies, one male and one female, were recovered from the site. Neither could be identified and the female remains were so badly burnt that her head was never found.
A day later software engineer and many times over multimillionaire David Nabbit flew into town on his company’s private jet. Someone in Sunnydale had apparently set up a meeting with the young tech tycoon from LA, and he was seen entering one of the nicer hotels in town with his security and financial advisors. Two hours later he was seen leaving the hotel. His financial advisor had a worried expression, but David’s face held what could only be described as unhinged glee.
Returning to board his jet one of the airport’s staff asked if he had any luck on his business trip. With a smile, the wealthy young man held up a small CD case that looked to contain around a dozen discs. “Best twenty million I ever spent. Those girls are gonna change the world with their programs and the stuff I just bought will allow me to ruin my competition.” With that shocking statement, his team boarded the plane leaving confused terminal staff behind.
Perhaps the strangest occurrence took place later that very night. No one is sure what happened but one witness says they saw a large number of fireflies surround the Mayor’s office late at night before disappearing. The next morning the daytime office staff arrived to find the building abandoned. There was no trace of any of the regular night staff the mayor kept on hand. Even more perplexing was the number of small ash piles all over the building. Every single room and hallway had at least one and some had up to half a dozen. When police personnel examined the premises they discovered the sub-basement held a layer of ash across its entire floor no less than three inches thick. The deepest section seemed to be atop an old sewer access grate that was welded shut from underneath. It was as if someone was expected to escape into the sewers and whoever had orchestrated this had gone down there to make sure that hatch would never open again.
All of this paled in comparison to the gruesome sight awaiting investigators in the room that had once been the Mayor’s personal workspace. Upon entering the room detectives found what remained of the man himself sitting at his desk. Across from his desk, a cabinet was torn from the wall revealing a hidden compartment filled with occult paraphernalia. Oddly enough, everything that had once clearly been stored in that hidden space was smashed to pieces and strewn around the room.
Returning attention to the Mayor’s desk the police found it covered with his own blood and a light sprinkling of PCP. Sitting in the large office chair behind the desk was the body of the Mayor Richard Wilkins the Third, also covered in PCP. His face still held a look of utter confusion. His head was tilted back in a grim fashion that revealed what had killed him. The man’s entire throat had been ripped out of his neck.
Crime scene units didn’t have to look far to find the missing flesh. It was sitting right there for all to see. Skewered atop a barbeque fork still standing upright, clutched in the dead man’s right hand.
The official report stated he suffered a barbeque related accident while being attacked by one of the many local PCP gangs.
Last edited by Citanul on Wed Jun 24, 2020 6:52 pm, edited 3 times in total.
loislane1
3. Flaming O
Well this definitely has many possibilities. The walking trunk made me think of the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett - I wonder if Willow's magical trunk would defend itself as strongly as the Luggage. The advantage to moving across dimensions/worlds is the sky is definitely the limit. I am curious to see how this develops as you move forward. These first few chapters introduced the concept of moving life to life across the dimensions and gave some small insight into each. Will you be going back to the worlds established so far to tell a story within them or will you be creating more worlds? With the girls being so powerful with the depth of memories and knowledge they hold how will you work to build plot/tension into the future stories?
I look forward to seeing what you do with this.
Okay editing to include my thoughts on the latest post - OMG you Rick Rolled Willow out of a sexy dream! That actually made me laugh out loud.
-H.
Sometimes it feels like we are running headlong through the woods on a dark cloudy night from monsters we can't see towards a destination we don't know.
Thank you for the feedback loislane1. I believe you hit the nail on the head a few times. I intend to develop in depth stories for four worlds. The odd numbered posts after the prologue will all be numbered chapters in the Buffyverse story you've seen. Aside from the Dark Age Chronicles story line there will be in depth entries for two other worlds yet to be revealed.
Sometimes the girls may seem overpowered but tension doesn't always go away just because the main character throws the hardest punch.
Lastly, thank you. I was worried I would be tarred and feathered for putting in a Rick Roll so many years after the trend became maddeningly annoying.
mysticrain
Posted: Thu Jul 03, 2014 6:09 am
I love this story so far! I really can't wait to see where you take it, and I hope you won't abandon it. Loved the big reunion chappy, and all the reveals and reactions. Also loved the pcp bbq mayor death! Roflmao! Can't wait for the next update!
Thanks for the encouraging feedback Mysticrain. I would have responded earlier but I've been dealing with pc crashes.
Post subject: Re: Time and Time Again 7/9/14
Rating: NC-17
Author’s Note: Okay so some stuff happened. I finished up the entry I was going to post. It was saved properly. I was proofreading and playing around with phrasing when the screen on my laptop turned into a static filled mess. Long story but my laptop's video card died. It's in the shop and I'm hopeful that the second card can just be swapped around but if not I'll have them just recover the data. Data which has all my story notes and the first entry for the third storyline world in this series. So instead of missing an update I wrote the first entry for the fourth storyline world I had planned with my sister's laptop.
Now for the story related note. This entry contains minor spoilers for one chapter in the middle of one of the later books in the Hitchhiker's guide series. It's not a big secret but the characters here mention the book's characters meeting someone at a party.
What could be a much bigger problem is that this entry may be the point where this series goes completely off the rails. I would just like everyone to know that this isn't coming completely out of the blue. I did run the basic premise by the moderator who green lit the prologue. I may have pushed the line here but I want everyone to know at it's heart this is still a love story about the two characters this site is dedicated to.
Standing at the base of the now world-famous skyscraper, the blonde former air force major gathered her thoughts. It had been a year since she set foot in this city. A year since she faced her former team members. A year since her scuffle with a skinwalker’s pet leech changed both of their lives forever.
The blonde ground the palms of her hands into her eyes and groaned. Even the briefest stroll down memory lane brought old wounds right back to the surface. She wasn’t ready for this. She might never be ready for this. Six months in a coma. Three months of physical therapy. Two months of counseling. One month of hiding from the world. It wasn’t enough.
If she had her way she would have spent another few months coming to terms with what had been done to her. At the very least she would have spent a few weeks focusing on the dreams. Odd dreams that plagued and pleasured her weary soul. Dreams starring a delectable crimson-haired Goddess. Dreams that brought her to the heights of ecstasy. Dreams that quickly became the highlight of her day during her long recovery. What confused her most about the dreams was her hair. Why she would dream about having honey blonde hair instead of her regular blonde perplexed her.
With so much of her mind still strained by trauma, the pleasurable flights of her subconscious mind’s fancy were a luxury she could ill afford. She needed to get her life back together.
So here she was. About to volunteer for fieldwork in the most dangerous field on the entire planet. The absolute highest stakes. The deadliest of threats. The fate of the entire world resting on the shoulders of a small handful of people. People who held more than their share of trauma, baggage, and dysfunction.
They were so desperate to get one of their heavy hitters back in the game. As if the billionaire, the monster, the god, and the soldier couldn’t handle just about everything. Let alone the handful of spies, the archer, and the score of other minor powers the team employed.
Everyone said she needed this to get her life back on track. To heal. To move on. The team needed her. The nation needed her. The world needed her. They all needed so much. They all expected her to come in and fix everything.
Yet here she was. Standing outside. Paralyzed by ghosts of nightmares past and dreams of never were. Old fears and phantom pains keeping her from doing what she and just about everyone else knew needed to be done. She couldn’t stay here all day. Standing on this busy Manhattan sidewalk any longer wasn’t the answer. Running away wasn’t the answer. Hiding wasn’t the answer. Wallowing in dreams of her mystery redhead wasn’t the answer.
Taking a deep breath, the woman girded herself for what lay ahead. This would not be a good day. “Well let’s get this donkey show on the road.” The blonde said to herself.
With all hesitation cleared from her mind, Carol Danvers strode forth. The doors of Stark Tower parted before her as she took the first steps on her next journey.
Sitting on a crate in a run-down warehouse nestled within one of New York’s most run-down boroughs a distraught redhead was babbling away. “What if someone finds out about the plan? What if the plan falls apart? What if we get caught and sent to a secret prison in another dimension? What if Thanos, Galactus, Annihilus, and a few other otherworldly horrors attack while the Avengers are busy with us? What if this makes the government stop funding regular military expenditures and start to exclusively finance the mass production of Sentinels?”
As the neurotic redhead went into full panic mode a silver-haired blur came to a stop at her side. “Sis! Jeez, you need to relax and go with the flow. Nothing bad is going to happen.” The speedster paused. “Well, nothing bad is going to happen to us specifically.”
“Pietro, Wanda!” A shout called out for the siblings. A moment later a figure decked in red and purple stormed into the open room and stared directly at them. “We’re moving out. You know your duties. Get into position.”
“Sure thing, Dad,” Pietro said with a salute. “Come on, Sis. Time to get going.”
Wanda sighed as her family and her father’s henchmen prepared for yet another skirmish in the ridiculous race war her father seemed dead set on inciting. No one cared about her objections. No one cared that her dreams had been overtaken by a certain blonde. No one cared that she disagreed with this crusade at the most fundamental level.
Like every day of her life for the last year, she felt backed into a corner. Where could she go? What could she do with her life when she left. As far as the world was concerned she was just another follower of the most feared international terrorist on the planet. Nothing more than another zealot for a cause that seemed to accomplish nothing more than putting people in the ground.
This would not be a good day. With a world-weary sigh, the redhead muttered to herself. “Well let’s get this donkey show on the road.” Standing up from the discarded crates, Wanda Maximoff set out for midtown Manhattan.
As she stepped out of the elevator onto the penthouse level of Stark Tower, Carol was blindsided by two outstretched arms. She was suddenly thankful for the dozens of hours spent in flight simulators, and even more thankful for the many hundreds of hours spent in the cockpit.
“Carol! Oh my god! You’re back! I missed you so much.” Jennifer Walters cried out as her emerald arms lifted Carol into the air and spun her around the lobby.
“Jen! Sweetie!” The blonde couldn’t help but feel happy to see her old friend, even as she was manhandled by said friend. “It’s good to see you too, but can you put me back down?”
“Oh god, I’m so sorry.” The large green woman suddenly stopped spinning. She set her friend down and almost immediately began to shrink. Her hair shifted from green to blonde as her jade complexion took on a more mundane tanned tone. Her iridescent green eyes shifted to an expressive hazel. Aside from the color change the most dramatic effect was to Jennifer’s body shape. She shifted from an over-muscled near seven-foot-tall frame to a slender five-foot, four-inches. “Sometimes I forget my own strength.”
“It’s okay, Sweetie.” The retired air force major said. “I missed you too. How have you been.”
“Phfft.” The petite blonde huffed dismissively. “Nothing worth telling to tell. Went to space a few times. Still a lawyer. Trying to keep the boys in line.”
“And the girls?” Carol asked.
“Ha!” The short blonde burst out. “Jessica and some of the Shield agents seem to be in a ‘who can rack up the most love triangles’ competition. Keeping track of Natasha and Bobbi has always been beyond me. Honestly, the revolving door and the constant costume swaps around here make giving you a full update very confusing now that I think about it.”
“Sounds about right.” The trained pilot remarked. “So I haven’t really missed all that much?”
“Nope.” The bubbly blonde replied. “What’s the what with using the elevators?” Jennifer asked, knowing full well that Carol could fly to the moon and back in the blink of an eye under her own power.
“Figured my s-showing up on the r-roof out of the blue wouldn’t go over so well after the last year.” The curvy blonde ventured with a nervous smile.
“Nonsense, Carol. You are always welcome here.” A chipper male voice came out from behind the two friends.
Turning to greet her old colleague Carol smiled at the man she once trusted. “Thanks for that, Tony.” She said. “It’s good to feel welcomed.”
“Of course you’re welcomed here.” A blonde man said coming up behind the billionaire who shared his name with the building. “It’s great to see you again, Carol.”
“Thanks, Steve.” She said to the other soldier with a welcoming nod.
“Come on, let’s get the rest of the team caught up on the good news,” Jennifer begged with a bounce in her step.
Nodding along with the small blonde’s cheer both men followed Carol and Jennifer into the main living and meeting space of the headquarters that made up the top several floors of Stark Tower. The home of the Avengers.
“Hey everyone! Guess who’s back!” She-Hulk cried out as the quartet entered the open chamber.
“Oh god, Carol!” A woman with jet black hair cried out. “You’re finally back!” She proclaimed while leaping across the room to hug her friend. “You have no idea what I’ve had to put up with without you. Tony keeps threatening to buy me bunnies!”
Carol couldn’t help the slight giggle. “I missed you too, Jessica.”
The rest of the team members present made sure to tell Carol how much she had been missed as well as how good it was to have her back. Bruce, Thor, Bobbi, Natasha, and Clint all greeted the wayward blonde with open arms. A young man dressed as a bird introduced himself as Sam and expressed how good it was to “finally meet the legend.”
Apparently, Rhodey, Hank, T’Challa, T’Challa’s new wife, and a guy from her and Hank’s other team were in Wakanda dealing with a vibranium crisis but would be back by the week’s end.
As they were about to start grilling her on how she was doing over the previous year, the alarms sounded. There was an attack just around the corner. Some group of costumed thugs was tearing up the very block their building was on.
“Avengers Assemble!” Steve cried out donning his mask with the distinctive ‘A’ on the forehead.
And just like that, Ms. Marvel was an active duty Avenger again. Quickly donning her skin-tight black suit with the lightning bolt across her ample chest, and the ‘stylish yet affordable’ red sash Jennifer convinced her should adorn her waist, Carol went to work.
Wanda had been given a specific order. Magneto wanted her to watch for the Avenger’s heavy hitters. When one of them showed up her job was to use her powers to neutralize them so the rest of his ground forces could get the device in place.
After all “The Scarlet Witch” could do anything. If only they knew how little she understood her powers they wouldn’t assume such things. Sighing heavily for what had to be the hundredth time that day, she looked up and saw an earth-shatteringly beautiful sight. A goddess had come to grace the Earth with her presence. As the Blonde haired beauty soared ever closer to Wanda the redhead was able to take in the breathtaking view of her delightfully tight costume. The coy yet sexy domino mask. The lighting bolt across her entrancingly ample chest, bisecting the shining black expanse covering her torso. The crimson sash teasingly wrapping perfectly curvy hips. Eyes like deep sapphire oceans. The thigh-high boots that gave the slender redhead all kinds of naughty ideas.
As the goddess flooded all of her thoughts and senses wonderful new thoughts and details of lives she couldn’t before fathom fell into place. As she resolved to make this gorgeous blonde the center of her life she began to glow with a blinding white light.
Ms. Marvel was in rare form. Even though she was returning from a year-long sabbatical she was still the first person on the scene. She knew she could do this. That was right up until the moment she looked down and saw the sight that changed her entire world.
There she was. The most beautiful creature the Goddess had ever given form to. Adorned in tight red leather from chest to toes. Her corset enhancing the cleavage formed by her petite breasts. A stylized red headpiece holding long flowing crimson locks out of her face. The most bedazzling green eyes Carol had ever seen.
Ms. Marvel couldn’t help but fly right for the woman in red. For the first time since she had absorbed alien energies and gained her powers the glow that emanated from every inch of her form was not prelude to an attack.
As the two soulmates finally came into contact their arms stretched out and enfolded one another. Their lips crashed together in a sensual dance which neither woman realized they had been missing every day of their lives. With the passion of their kiss rising Carol couldn’t help herself as she lifted them up into the sky. They hung in the air between skyscrapers, high over the streets of New York city, glowing like a second sun.
As their very public light show began to fade the rest of Carol’s team showed up. They witnessed the bright lights from the distance but were stunned to learn the source.
Wanda’s team would have fallen into complete disarray if they had been doing anything besides openly gawking the boss’s daughter round first base and ready herself to steal second.
As the two teams realized a confrontation was being ignored they began to square off. Sensing that their audience was going to lash out any second the redhead broke their kiss. “One sec, Baby, take us over towards that machine.”
“Wanda! What the hell do you think you’re doing with that enemy?” Magneto roared.
The Scarlet Witch turned in her love’s embrace and as the blonde’s arms wrapped securely around her waist she held out an arm of her own. “Squirrels!” She yelled as her gesture unleashed a wave of crimson energy engulfing the device that was the center of her father’s master plan.
Static sparked through the air around the machine. A creaking was heard as metal warped but soon faded as that same metal turned to flesh and fur. The doomsday device was no more and in its place was a chittering, squeaking mass of small furry rodents with big bushy tails. They quickly tumbled over each other as they scattered in all directions and faded into the melting pot of New York’s busy city streets.
Heroes and villains alike were stunned into silence. “This ends now.” Scarlet Witch intoned.
Visibly dripping with rage, Magneto called to his forces. “Full withdraw.” Using his powers of magnetism he prevented the Avengers from pursuing his men as they beat a hasty retreat.
Only one remained behind with Wanda. “Sis?” Quicksilver hesitated. “What’s going on?”
“I’m done, Pietro,” Wanda told her brother in a resigned tone. “Done with father’s lies. Done with his orders. Done with his race war bullshit.” She regarded the silver-haired man and her expression softened. “I love you but I can’t take that crap anymore.”
“Okay,” Pietro reassured. “You always were the brains in the family. Whatever you think we should do, I’ll back.” At this, his expression grew hesitant. “So um… who’s your girl there?”
“The other half of my soul.” The redhead let out a relieved sigh.
“H-hello, I’m Carol Danvers.” The blonde said.
Luxuriating in the arms of her love, Wanda smiled. “I’m Wanda Maximoff and this is my brother Pietro.”
As the two women floated there in front of the young man the sound of footsteps and thrusters drowned out the conversation. Looking up they found themselves surrounded by Carol’s teammates. “Ms. Marvel, what’s going on here?” Iron Man’s voice issued forth from his suit’s speaker system.
“I believe I just recruited two new teammates.” The blonde answered. “And one of ‘em just single-handedly stopped whatever plot her father hatched.”
“Hi, guys.” Wanda chimed in with a wave to the gathered crowd. “I’m Wanda and this is my brother Pietro.”
“Howdy.” The silver-haired man stated cheerfully. “So is there a dental plan? Some sort of profit-sharing? Or should I keep up my day job that can be performed by any well-trained border collie?”
“That’s it.” Called the befuddled billionaire. “We’re all going back to the tower to find out what’s going on.”
“That’s great.” Pietro beamed. “Cuz I know Jack about squat. Let’s go from there.” With that Quicksilver disappeared in a blur that headed straight for Stark Tower.
Carol smiled at the turn of events. Her doubts from an hour ago completely replaced by overwhelming love and affection for the woman she held in her strong arms. “Sounds like a plan. Come on, Sweetie. Let’s take the scenic route.” The former pilot said as she carried the redhead high into the sky.
“I love you so much, Baby,” Wanda replied as she once again wriggled around to face her love while still clasped tightly in the blonde’s arms. “You take me to the nicest places.” She whispered as her gaze took in the amazing view of the city from half a mile straight up.
As they departed the rest of the Avengers took in the sight of the new lovebirds. “Well, that happened.” Bruce let out with a sigh.
“Verily.” Thor agreed. “Tony, Steve, what do you make of those two?” The ancient Norse god inquired.
“My scans didn’t pick up any tech more interesting than the redhead’s corset, so I really have no idea what to think.” Iron Man offered to the group. “Personally they might be trouble but so are just about all of us.”
“Agreed.” Captain America said. “Let’s hear them out before we do anything hasty.”
“Are you guys crazy?” Jennifer nearly shouted. The shock of what she had just witnessed was clear to any who looked upon her emerald features. “Did you not see Carol sticking her tongue down that Wanda chic’s throat?”
“Oh, they saw alright,” Jessica answered, thankful that her Spider-Woman mask prevented the others from noticing just how much she was checking out Pietro’s ass during the short standoff. “Men! I tell you they’re all the same. Wave the prospect of lesbians doing stuff in front of them and their brains all go to mush.”
As Natasha and Bobbi laughed at the befuddled looks on all their male teammates’ faces, Clint finally spoke up. “To be fair those prospects were doing fairly distracting stuff when we got here.”
The team made their way back to the tower and only a few were surprised to see the silver-haired speedster sprawled out on one of their couches.
“Hi, guys,” Pietro said nonchalantly. “I let myself in, hope that’s okay. Anyone hungry? I know this great takeout place in Philly.”
“Maybe later,” Steve said cautiously. “First let’s start with who you are and what you were just a part of.”
The silver-haired man sighed. “Okay.” Standing up with a blur of motion he crossed the room faster than anyone expected. “My name is Pietro Maximoff, most people call me Quicksilver, and I honestly don’t know what Magneto’s plan was with that device. He may be my old man but he plays his cards pretty close to the chest.”
Jennifer walked up to the man and loomed over him. “What did that woman do to Ms. Marvel? Where are they?”
“Frankly you guys know as much as I do about what is going on.” He said with a smirk. “I’ve always known Wanda didn’t care for the fellas, but I’ve hardly ever seen her date, and I’ve never seen her move into a relationship this fast.” Pietro let out a low chuckle. “She’s the type to go on one or two dates and break things off when the other girl goes in for a kiss.”
“That is not quite the impression we got from meeting her,” Tony said with reluctance.
“I know,” Pietro replied. “It’s actually really surprising. As far as I know, that was the first time they met.”
“You’re not answering the important question,” Jennifer said while looming a little more aggressively. “Where the hell are they?”
“I have a pretty good idea what’s taking them so long,” Pietro said with a slight grin. “See, Wanda always loved the movie, Superman. Not for any of the characters mind you but for the date in the clouds scene.” His grin grew as he glanced over at the men in the room blessed with the gift of flight. “I’m sure some of you fellas know a few gals who like that sort of thing.”
Tony, Thor, and Sam all shared a brief glance then began a thorough inspection of the floor and ceiling tiles. Jennifer at first looked confused then her eyes grew wide. “Oh.” She said with a whisper.
“So they’ll get here when Carol is good and ready,” Natasha smirked.
“Pretty much,” Pietro affirmed.
“Good for her,” Natasha laughed out with an upbeat air. “That girl needed to get her play on.”
“Isn’t that the truth.” Jessica agreed while for the first time taking her eyes off Quicksilver’s body.
“So you were saying something about takeout, Pietro?” Bruce said trying to relieve tension in the room.
“Yeah, there’s this great sandwich shop in Philly.” He said pulling out a slim phone. “I’ll call ahead, order it, do a few laps around the planet, and pick it up in no time.” A questioning look arose on his face. “Do you guys have any food allergies I should know about or a petty cash account for this sort of thing?” He asked.
As Jennifer finally shifted back to her petite blonde form she took a seat. While still sporting a confused look she answered. “Carol is allergic to shrimp.”
“Hmm, good to know. Wanda has never been that much of a seafood fan.” Another grin spread across his face. “You know, aside from the occasional pearl diving expedition.”
A third of the team stared at him in shock for a moment but then everyone’s attention was drawn to Jessica as a long fit a laughter burst from her doubled over form.
“Oh, owe, pearl divers, that’s a good one.” Spider-Woman wheezed between laughs.
“Jess, you have a filthy mind,” Sam said with a chuckle. “So we’re sending the new guy on a food run while we wait for the lovebirds to get back?” An odd look crossed the face of the man wearing mechanical wings. “Wow, it feels odd not to be the new guy anymore.”
“Sounds good enough to me,” Steve confirmed.
“Verily.” Thor cheered.
“Let me show you where we keep the card to pay off the munchies Hulk puts away,” Tony said as he led the silver-haired man out of the room.
Watching their exit, Jennifer Walters let out a sigh. She couldn’t help but worry about the startling new developments in the life of her friend.
High in the clouds over the city that never sleeps, two women held each other in a passionate embrace. The redhead’s legs wrapped completely around the blonde’s hips. The blonde’s hands firmly holding the redhead close to her by the lower back and ass. Their lips merged as one, tongues waging a battle for supremacy that neither woman ever wanted to end.
As their fervent need to reconnect became satisfied the kiss slowed and turned to a gentle brushing of lips. With a sigh, Wanda leaned back to gaze into the blue eyes of the woman who held her heart for all time. “Baby, I missed you so much. I always miss you so much. I love you. I can’t believe I went so many years without saying that to you.”
“I know, Sweetie.” The blonde reassured. “I can’t believe how much we’ve been through this time before finding each other.”
“Carol, I don’t want to ruin anything for you here,” Wanda said with a nervous edge in her voice. “If my presence causes you any trouble with the team…” She paused. “I just want you to know I’ll always love you no matter what.”
“Sweetie? No! Absolutely not! I’m yours. Always. If they can’t deal then they don’t get to be a part of our life.” Ms. Marvel stated with firm conviction.
“We should probably get back and explain things to them.” Scarlet Witch said. “Don’t want their first impression of me to be the evil magic dyke that whisked you away.”
“They won’t th-th-think that,” Carol said. “They’re good people. Once they get to know you they’ll love you.” A smile crossed her lips. “Not as much as me of course.”
Wanda laughed. “Thank you for that. You always know just what to say to make everything better.” A slight smile popped up. “How do you do that again?”
Carol smiled in that particular way that always made her redheaded love melt. “Magic.”
Descending from the clouds towards the tower, Carol and Wanda were greeted with uproarious laughter as they neared the open balcony that led into the main living space of the lavish penthouse headquarters.
Upon landing with featherlike grace the two women heard the tail end of a story that seemed to have everyone bursting with laughter. “So then the idiot flips the table over and screams ‘Kill all humans!’ and the bar looks like it’s about to explode with violence. That is until the table flips itself back up and knocks his ass to the ground. It slaps him across the face once and we all hear Wanda yell out “Goddess damn it, Dominic! I’ve been trying to get that waitress’s number for the last hour. Do I come to where you work and slap the dicks out of your mouth? Specifically Toad’s dick in your mouth. No, I don’t!”
Laughter erupted from the assembled heroes. Over half of them were in tears. They were all gathered around the large dining table. A wide assortment of sandwiches, hoagies, and grinders were strewn about the surface and everyone looked like they had been enjoying the tale Pietro spun of his sister’s dating exploits.
“I can’t believe you told them that story. I’m not normally like that it’s just that Avalanche had been getting on my nerves starting the same fight in every single bar we got to and to be fair the table hadn’t done anything to him.” The redhead pleaded to the room of people she had wanted to give a good impression to.
At her nervous babble, half the room began a new round of laughter. “Oh god, Pietro was right she does do that babble thing every time she’s nervous.” Jessica practically shrieked with cheer.
“Hey, I like that babble thing.” Carol defended her love. “I love your cute babble, Sweetie.” She continued by nuzzling her nose into crimson locks as she draped one arm over a pale, lightly freckled shoulder.
“Thanks, Baby.” Wanda sighed into the blonde’s caress.
“Hey, Sis, I didn’t mean anything by it. I just figured if we gave them a few embarrassing stories we might get the fitting-in done with faster.” Pietro defended himself. “Besides I told them your call sign and a few of the more nervous ones jumped to the conclusion this whole love at first sight thing was a spell.”
“I didn’t jump to any conclusions.” Jennifer yelped. “I just asked you to explain what you meant by “witch.”
“I asked if she was a good witch or a bad witch.” Natasha giggled.
“I asked if she had winged monkeys wearing fezzes,” Jessica added with her own giggling.
“I asked if she grants wishes,” Sam said. “Do you grant wishes?”
“I asked if she would let me borrow her broom.” Bruce chimed in.
“I asked if she wanted to go to Salem this October on a double date.” Tony grinned.
“I asked if she knew a good tailor that sold pointy hats,” Bobbi said.
“I asked if she needed swimming lessons,” Steve said.
“I asked if she owned a cauldron or just rented one.” Clint laughed.
“I asked if she could say her own name backwards.” Thor raised his beer stein with cheer.
Carol stood there shocked for a moment. “Okay, guys! That’s enough picking on my girlfriend for now.”
“Come, join us.” Steve offered. “You can put to rest all our misconceptions while you two eat.”
Wanda glanced at the table again. “Pietro, did you go to the hoagie place in Philadelphia?”
“Yup, I got all your favorites and I think enough that everyone else found something they like,” Quicksilver said with a grin.
“Baby, you have to try this one grinder. It’s so good.” Wanda told Carol.
As the two women joined the assembly at the table and began to feast, a calm descended over the group. It was as if missing pieces had been found and returned to their rightful place. As they all finished eating Jennifer looked to the newest woman at the table.
“So, Wanda, tell us about yourself.” She ventured. “I mean your brother told us some stuff but most of it was in dirty limerick form.”
“Yeah, he does that from time to time.” The redhead smirked. “I think it’s a cry for help.”
“And to think I slaved over a lukewarm cell phone for you.” Pietro joked, sighing with an exasperated flourish.
“So anyway, we were pretty much normal children. Moved around a few times. Our powers developed as teenagers and we kind of had to move around a lot more after that. He has super speed as you all can tell. Mine is a little more complicated.” Wanda explained.
“Magic?” Thor asked.
“Nope, not my natural powers anyway. Let’s see.” She paused. “Okay, so the technical term would be ‘Reality Alteration through Statistical Probability Manipulation’. The thing is when I say that most people just look at me funny. Kinda like how some of you are now. So instead of a long-winded science lecture, I’m just going to say I work like the Infinite Improbability Drive from ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ by Douglas Adams.”
About two-thirds of the team looked at her with a smile. Tony had the widest grin. Thor and Steve looked lost at a reference they both missed completely.
“I always loved that book,” Bruce said.
Realization hit Carol. “Oh Thor, Steve you guys never had the chance to read it.” She got up and for the first time since meeting separated herself from the redhead who visibly shivered at the loss. She ran to one of the bookshelves on the far wall and grabbed two copies that Tony, Bruce, and a few other team members always liked to have on hand.
“Oh, Thor, you’ll love it. In one of the later books in the series, they go to a huge party that spans decades and the main characters meet you there.” Wanda added.
“What? I make an appearance, really?” The Norse deity asked.
“Yep,” Carol answered returning to the table with books for her two friends who had missed out on various cultural touchstones.
Jennifer couldn’t hold back her question anymore. “So how do you explain today? What happened out there and how do you know each other?”
“Oh, that’s simple,” Wanda remarked. “That was all actual magic.”
A hush fell across the room.
“See, Carol and I are soulmates in every sense of the word.” The redhead continued. “It’s this whole complicated past lives parallel dimensions thing but the gist of it is that we are in love, we have lived many lives together on many worlds and now that we found each other we got most of the memories of all that back.”
“You said other dimensions.” Tony began to venture. “What about the dimensions you leave behind?”
A smile spread across both their lips. Wanda responded to Tony’s inquiry. “A cartoon character once answered that best. “What about the dimension where Hitler cures cancer? The answer is “Don’t think about it!”
Steve thought about that for a long moment. “Carol you seem to be okay with all this. It’s just that a few hours ago you were still dealing with all the stuff that happened to you over the last year. You can see how any sudden change might get us worried, right?”
“Guys, I understand that you are worried and I’m th-thankful that you care,” Carol said with a smile as she moved around the table to wrap her arms around the redhead. “But I love this woman with all my heart. If I s-seem like I’ve changed suddenly well I have. I now have memories of hundreds upon hundreds of ha-happy lives with her. I also remember a skanky hell god sticking her fingers in my head to drain my sanity and leave me a gibbering m-mental patient. I recall that she is the one who stole my sanity back and restored me. So you could say I have newfound perspective.”
No one knew how to respond to that. The enormity of what had happened as a result of their first kiss was unfathomable to just about everyone in the room. Steve had an idea that might reveal something useful about the couple.
“So you now have all these extra memories,” Steve said cautiously. “Do you guys have any new skill sets we should know about?”
“Well, we’ve met in college during a bunch of different lifetimes,” Carol recalled wistfully. “So all together I would say we have doctorates in a dozen different academic and scientific fields.” Ms. Marvel looked around the table at her friends. “Plus there are some other tricks we now recall.” She closed her eyes and began muttering in Sumerian. A faint light covered her hands then coalesced into a floating orb that rose from her hands and began to orbit above her head. “In many past lives, we were both fairly powerful witches.”
No one knew how to respond to the minor demonstration of newfound personal power.
The redhead shot up from her seat. “Oh, just had a great idea, Tony is that PC over there wired into your network?” Wanda asked. As Tony nodded yes she turned to her brother. “Pietro, how many times have you ever seen me touch a computer?”
“Never. Not even once.” He said with a grin. “I honestly don’t know if you even understand what a computer is.”
“Ha, ha.” She laughed sarcastically as she went over to the terminal mounted on the wall. “Watch this.”
Her hands went up to the keyboard and danced across the keys so fast only a few in the room could keep up. Only one or two in the room could keep track of her finger movements and the various windows and programs that flashed across the screen. After ten minutes she looked up as her fingers slowed their dance and her eyes met with the billionaire who designed the systems she just dove into.
“Tony, come have a look,” Wanda said with a smirk.
The man came over to stand beside her at the terminal, looking at a diagnostic program she ran at the end of her show. At first, he didn’t believe what he was seeing. As realization dawned on him his eyes grew wide and his jaw dropped slightly.
“How did you?” He began to question the redhead as he marveled at her work.
Steve had a mischievous grin on his face. “What’s the matter, Stark? Did the new gal break your toy?”
“The new gal just reprogrammed the entire system. Everything is running at one hundred and fifty percent output, around two dozen security weak points have been found and fixed, and Jarvis is running forty-two percent faster and with eighty percent less strain on other systems.” Tony answered dumbstruck. “Even if Richards, Pym, and myself had worked a week straight I don’t think we could have done what she just did in under ten minutes.”
“Nifty.” The world war two veteran was impressed. Not many people could render Tony speechless by tinkering with his technology. “The look on your face gets her my vote.”
Bruce nodded. “If the only thing these siblings could do was run at Mach 20 and turn doomsday devices into armies of rodents, I’d say hire them to round out our squad power sets. All the other benefits make it a no brainer.”
“I want to keep them!” Jessica practically shouted.
A round of agreement swept the room. Each Avenger present expressed a heartfelt welcome. Towards the end of the night, the group members who lived elsewhere in the city started to depart. Each had some encouragement to give the two new members.
Jessica seemed to take an extended amount of time to wish Pietro a proper good night.
One of the last to say goodnight was Jennifer. The She-Hulk had kept an eye on her friend the entire evening. As the lawyer was getting ready to head back to her room in the tower she turned and quickly wrapped Carol in a warm hug. “I’m so glad you found someone. You deserve to be happy, and she seems like a great gal.”
Letting go of the blonde who had been her friend for so long, Jennifer turned her attention to the redhead they had just met. “I want to get to know you so much better than I do now. Thank you for making my friend so unbelievably happy, but if you hurt her I’ll beat you to death with a shovel.” With that, the petite blonde jogged to her own quarters.
With a shocked look on both their faces, Carol reached into her pocket and pulled out a dollar. Handing it to Wanda she let out a low chuckle. “I never expected to hear the Slayer give you the shovel speech to protect me.” The blonde said.
“I know.” The redhead was shocked. “Even when she’s a completely different person, she’s still incredibly loyal to the family she chooses for herself.”
With that, the couple retreated to the room Carol once spent so many lonely nights in. Not anymore. They had found each other and were just beginning on the first steps of their newest life long journey together. Slowly disrobing before one another the couple came together in a tender embrace.
They spent the rest of the night reconnecting.
Last edited by Citanul on Mon Jun 29, 2020 9:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Posted: Sat Jul 12, 2014 12:49 pm
Good update. I hope your computer situation gets worked out okay. You've done a good job portraying the gang. Even though they are different on the outside, you've written their personalities so well that it's easy to still see them as the scoobies. It's also easier to accept because this story has multiple realities, and most are with the original scoobs. Keep up the good work. I'll be looking forward to the next update.
So I heard the announcement that Thor is now a woman in the comic books and thought of this latest update. Now there is a fun image - Tara as Thor. I don't think you went of the rails, I think you are having a heck of a lot of fun playing with all the various scenarios and I'm having a lot of fun reading these. The joy of AU and fanfic is getting to play with the characters. So I am all in on following this story line and curious to see what happens and how you develop this story.
Greetings all. Great news. My laptop just needed a simple part switched out and the chapters I have on its drive should be available soon.
Mysticrain: Thank you for the words of encouragement. It is appreciated and I'm looking forward to some of the upcoming twists I've written.
Loislane1: I agree, of the Buffy characters Tara would be the most interesting as Thor and probably the only one that could be deemed "worthy" by the hammer. I have to say the whole 'Thor has a secret identity where he is less Thor.' aspect of the comics seemed unnecessary to me.
I mean Superman has a secret identity to keep kent farm off the map and so he could get out of paying child support in some of the worse 'golden age' stories. Even then his smarter villains probably know but don't say anything to keep him busy as a reporter 5 to 8 hours a day. Better still they don't attack because it's not like he's going to be less invulnerable.
Thor doesn't have parents sitting around a farm somewhere to worry about, and as soon as he proves himself worthy of his powers he really has no incentive to not be Thor all the time.
I can't tell if Marvel is trying too hard of not hard enough with making Thor a woman. In actual Norse mythology Loki gets gender swaps quite often and even uses his fancy new uterus to give birth to a few kids. So there is precedent in canon for this.
I just hope they handle it better than DC did when they made a big deal about one of the primary justice leaguers being gay. They went on for weeks about this Earth shifting reveal and when it came time to pull the trigger they chose the Green Lantern from the backup universe. No one cares about the sex life of old man lantern from the 1940's. Now if they had picked Hal Jordan for the task it would have actually been a brave move.
At the very least it would have put an interesting spin on fact one of Hal's longest running villains is his on again off again girlfriend.
But back to the topic at hand. Yes I am having a lot of fun playing with these characters. Thanks for the support.
Author’s Note: Okay so to everyone who is still with me after our stroll through the Marvelverse thank you. I know splitting up the updates into four different story lines is causing what feels like a very slow start on all of them but they are each going places.
It had been two days since she watched Daryl and his headless bride go up in flames. Buffy still couldn’t get the sight out of her mind, or the smell out of her hair. The Slayer had been fighting the forces of darkness for over two years and all she had to show for her trouble was a long trail of tattered, shredded, and blood-soaked designer apparel. She had even given her life for the cause once already.
Yet here she was. Sitting in the worm’s office. Listening to the little troll rant about how much of a criminal she was. One small solace was the fact that some other poor girl had been dragged into the principle’s wrath as well. Though going by Sheila’s attitude the list of trespasses he levied at her feet was a point of pride.
“Thursday is parent-teacher night,” Snyder stated with a gloat. “Your parents, assuming you have any, will meet your teachers, assuming you have any left. I’ve decided to put the two of you in charge of this event. You have three days to prepare the refreshments, make the banners, and transform the school lounge into a habitable place for adults. This will incur my goodwill and may affect what I tell your parents when I meet them. Are we clear?” The Napoleonic school official spoke with almost gleeful menace.
“I’m clear.” The Slayer replied. “Don’t you feel clear?” She asked her clearly unimpressed decoration partner. “We’re very clear.”
“Good, because you mess up this time and your parents will be coming to clean out your lockers,” Snyder promised.
As Buffy and Sheila made their way out of the school the Slayer tried to get some game plan out of her conscripted co-conspirator.
It was to no avail.
The rebellious girl saw a man who could only be described as skeezy. Without a second thought, Sheila ran off to stick her tongue down his throat.
On the bright side, Buffy was quickly joined by her closest friends. “Snyder’s got you guys making party favors huh?” Xander queried.
“His two worst students. That’s what my mom sees when she looks at me. A Sheila.” The Slayer said with a tone of defeat.
“Well, Sheila’s definitely intense.” The dark-haired boy affirmed. “That guy with her, that’s the guy she can bring home to mother.”
“She was already smoking in fifth grade,” Willow stated. “Once, I was lookout for her.”
“You’re bad to the bone.” Xander deadpanned.
“Yeah, she is!” Tara said with glee as she wrapped her arms around the lithe redhead and pulled her girl in for a deep sensual kiss.
Xander stood there on the busy walkway watching his oldest friend make out with his newest. The young man barely had the presence of mind to pick his jaw up off the ground. “I had a few more lines about Sheila and sharp objects for the bit we were doing, but my brain suddenly went on vacation.” He said to the Slayer.
“I was going to wallow in the unfairness of it all, what with my Slayer duties.” The petite blonde replied to the still gawking boy. “But with the two love birds about to come up for air anytime now, I’m cautiously optimistic that someone will have an idea to brighten my day.”
The redhead seemed to recall their audience and pulled away from the blonde whose arms were still wrapped around her waist. Turning to face the Slayer, Willow leaned back into her love and the honey blonde rested her chin on Willow’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, Buff.” The hacker assured. “We’ll help with the decorations and all that right after we get Tara and her mom moved into their new house.”
“You guys found a place already?” The Slayer’s interest was peaked. Real estate was always cheap in Sunnydale, for fairly obvious reasons, but to have found a place so fast must have taken considerable effort.
It had only been six days since Tara and Jennifer first walked into the Library. Six days since they cemented themselves in the lives of the Slayer’s family. Cemented so well that for a while Buffy assumed the two women would just move in with Willow. If nothing else it would have been fun to see just how long it took the Rosenbergs to even become aware of their new housemates.
“Found and renovated.” Tara beamed. “We just have to move our stuff in and we’re set.”
“Define renovated.” The Slayer asked skeptically.
“Well, we had some of the extra rooms downstairs turned into one big training room for Slayer stuff.” The redhead admitted. “Oh, and there’s a jacuzzi in the back for when you need to soak after a rough patrol.”
Those details shocked Buffy. To think that she barely knew this girl and yet the new blonde in her life had gone and added some of the most expensive luxuries to her new home just for her girlfriend’s friend’s convenience. “Tara, I… you did all that for me? Really?”
“No, Buffy.” The witch replied with a smile. “We did it for you.” A beat passed and the blonde holding the redhead couldn’t help but grin. “Well a little for us too.”
Willow smirked at her girl’s implication. “We have to go but we’ll call you both over in a little bit okay.”
“Okay.” The Slayer said, still completely thrown. She waved as the two lovebirds ran off hand in hand. Turning to Xander, she placed a hand over his arm in a comforting gesture. “I know. They make a lovely couple, but seriously stop drooling over them every single time they kiss or else someone is going to take a curse to the groin.”
“I can’t help it!” Xander whined in a voice two octaves too high. “Really, I don’t even know I’m doing it. I mean here I am, trying to date women for several years now with only a mildly decent batting average, then Willow comes along and on her first attempt hits it out of the park.” Xander gestured wildly at the whole situation. “I mean how do I top the “Oh don’t worry. We’re just magically bonded soulmates whose life together stretches across all of time and space.” pickup line?” The young man sulked as the wind left his sails.
“It’s okay, Xand,” Buffy said in as soothing a voice as she could. “It’s just going to take getting used to. Granted, I was a little thrown when Will came out to me all of ten minutes before meeting Tara, but we need to be supportive of them both. I mean I don’t even know the girl and she built me a training room in her mom’s new house. She’s practically a saint.” The Slayer admonished.
“I know.” The dark-haired young man relented. “I’m happy that Willow is so unbelievably happy. It’s just confusing seeing them so publicly displaying the affection when last week she was the shyest person in town.”
The Slayer smiled at how true that statement was. “Come on. Let’s go see what my mom is up to before we go visit their new love nest.”
Continuing to make their way towards Rovello Drive the duo made small talk about minor events of the day. As Buffy’s home came into view they noticed multiple trucks leaving the neighborhood. As they entered the Summers residence Joyce came out of the kitchen.
“Buffy, oh hello, Xander.” The mature blonde greeted the pair with a smile. “Did you see the new neighbors? Renovators and trucks have been next door the last few days and they just left.”
Xander let a wide smile cover his face. “Hey, Buff, wouldn’t it be funny if…” He asked.
“You don’t think…” Buffy said but quickly cut herself off.
“I made them a casserole. Come help me say hello.” Joyce continued in an upbeat tone.
The trio made their way out of the Summers’ house at sixteen-thirty Rovello Drive and walked to the house right next door at sixteen-thirty-two Rovello Drive. As they came to the front door Joyce reached out and rang the bell. She was beyond surprised when it opened to reveal a very familiar redhead.
“Oh wow, you guys are just in time. Come in.” Willow said with cheer in her voice and a bounce in her step. “Guys, they’re here.” She called out to the house as Xander and the two Summers women came inside.
As Tara and her mother rounded the corner Willow walked up to Tara and enfolded the blonde in her arms. “Joyce, I’d like you to meet Tara Maclay and her mother Jennifer. Guys, this is Buffy’s mom Joyce Summers.” The hacker proclaimed.
The Slayer’s mother stood there in mild shock at the turn of events. Noticing the way her daughter’s brainy friend held the newest young lady to move into the neighborhood, she quickly deduced their relationship was the kind she had grown more than used to during her time as an art gallery owner in Los Angeles. To find out one of her daughter’s young friends was gay was no surprise to her. That it hadn’t happened before was a minor curiosity. No, what truly shocked Joyce was the way this new turn of events seemed to completely do away with the shell Willow had worn since long before Joyce had ever met the young redhead.
Turning to greet the other adult in the room, Joyce smiled. “So, what brings you ladies to Sunnydale?”
Jennifer Maclay was unsure how much her daughter’s friends wanted to tell Joyce. It seemed the Slayer’s mother was left in the dark regarding the supernatural. Choosing to err on the side of caution, Jennifer went with the simplest of truths. “My marriage fell apart. We needed a change.”
Joyce took that in and smiled. “Mine too. You picked a great town for fresh start hunting. Isn’t that right, Buffy?”
“Yeah, Mom.” The Slayer responded with a smirk, thankful for Jennifer’s discretion. “Say, Tara, why don’t you and Will show us the renovations while our moms get to know each other?”
“That is a great idea, Buffy,” Tara replied. “Sweetie, let’s get the tour out of the way.”
The four youngsters filed out of the foyer and down a hallway. As they left, Joyce turned back to Jennifer and asked the first question that came to her mind. “So, how did you and your daughter meet, Willow?”
A nervous smile spread over the elder Maclay woman’s face. This would not be easy.
As the quartet retreated down the hallway they went through a large set of double doors. The Slayer’s jaw hit the floor so hard it might have left marks. They stood in the most opulent dojo she had ever seen. Skylights dominated the ceiling, allowing natural light to flood the room. The walls were decked in panels evoking an Asian aesthetic Buffy swore she had seen in many of her Slayer dreams. Runes and symbols adorned just about every vertical surface. Weapon racks covered one wall, while a pommel horse stood off to the side. The floor at the center of the room was laid out with a large sparing ring. A stack of floor mats as high as Buffy’s shoulders sat neatly in one corner, and in the opposite corner, a sizable punching bag was suspended from the ceiling.
Tears swam in Buffy’s eyes. “Will, Tara, you guys…” She choked up for a moment. “Thank you so much.”
“You deserve it and so much more, Buffy,” Willow said.
“Not to be a downer but how did you guys afford all this?” Xander chimed in.
“Willow s-sold some computer programs to a fortune five hundred CEO,” Tara said meekly.
“Willow, did you buy this whole house?” Buffy asked as pieces to a minor puzzle fell into place.
“Yes.” The hacker confirmed. “I sold some minor software to David Nabbit to get the seed money for our plans.”
“Plans?” Xander squeaked out. “There are plans now? I thought the plan was for you gals to make out during gym class.”
“Xander!” Willow yelped. “Of course that’s not the plan!”
Tara gave her love a wry look while Buffy just rolled her eyes at the couple. Willow noticed both gestures and felt like she had been caught in a lie. “Okay, well, just maybe that is part of the plan, but that isn’t the whole plan, but that does happen.” She stumbled over her own explanation as her three friends looked at her with smiles.
With a smirk, Tara leaned in and kissed her love’s temple. “Sweetie, we’re just teasing, don’t worry.”
“No fair.” She declared. “You guys can’t gang up on me when I panic.”
“Even when it nets you a kiss from your woman?” The Slayer quipped.
“Well, alright.” Willow conceded. “Maybe then it’s okay.”
Laughter resounded through the training room.
“They’re certainly getting along,” Joyce remarked as she and Jennifer sat in the kitchen.
“Yes.” Jennifer agreed. “It’s so good to see Tara finally happy and making friends with a group of such fine young people.”
“I know the feeling.” The art dealer replied. “I was so worried about Buffy falling in with a bad crowd when we moved here. Her bringing Willow home felt like a godsend.”
“You didn’t like Xander when she brought him around?” The witch asked though she suspected she already knew the answer.
“At first I just thought he was your typical teenage boy,” Joyce stated. “I used to stay up at night worried he’d get one of the girls pregnant.”
“But not anymore?” Jennifer prodded.
“No, not at all. Not for a long time.” The Slayer’s mother affirmed. “I learned pretty quickly that even though he wants more, my daughter isn’t going to let sex ruin her friendships with him or with Willow.”
The witch let out a chuckle at the gallery owner’s remark. “I knew there was a reason I liked her. Tara always needed a friend like your daughter.”
“So, what made you decide on this neighborhood?” Joyce asked.
“Oh, Willow suggested it,” Jennifer answered quickly. “When they introduced me to your daughter it was a simple enough decision. It’s always good to have someone like her close by.” She said with a smile.
That statement put Joyce on high alert. “What do you mean by someone like her?” Joyce asked in what she hoped was a neutral enough tone.
“Someone who can take care of herself. Someone brave and resourceful, who thinks of others in a crisis.” The witch intoned.
A smile crept over Joyce’s face. “I don’t know about that.”
Jennifer just smiled back. “Don’t sell your girl short, Joyce. I did that not too long ago. Tara proved me wrong in the best way possible.”
The Slayer’s mother sat there thinking about all that had happened in recent years and came to the conclusion that something important had slipped her notice.
“Tell me, Joyce.” The witch went on in a tone that implied a great secret was about to be revealed. “Have you ever heard the story of ‘The Daughters of Sineya’?”
As the four youngsters exited the training room, the two witches led the group towards an oddly inconspicuous door. “This is something I’m really proud of,” Willow said to the three people she trusted most.
Upon entering the door adjacent to the lavish training room Buffy and Xander both stared in awe. The room was just as large as the training room, and just like the previous room skylights bathed every surface in sunlight. One wall had a wide array of computer monitors clustered around a desk with multiple machines wired together and three large screens that all appeared to be running complex simulations. At the desk was a large comfortable looking office chair. Along the opposite wall was a massive glass cabinet containing shelves filled with jars of neatly labeled herbs, animal parts, and a great many other odds and ends that were obviously magic spell components. In front of the ‘supplies’ cabinet was a large island bar with built-in sink at one end, and an array of tools including multiple mortar and pestles of varying sizes, beakers, bunsen burners, cutting boards, and a block holding a large set of knives.
Covering every inch of wall space that didn’t have cabinets or screens adorning them were massive floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Roughly one-eighth of the shelf space was taken up by various occult books.
In the center of the room, surrounded by a dozen chairs, stood a table twice as wide and one and a half times the length of the one they had all gotten used to toiling away at in the school library. This would obviously be their new command center.
Again the Slayer was at a loss for words. Xander couldn’t resist the terrible joke dancing on the tip of his tongue. “Well they say go big or go home but I doubt they intended you do both at the same time.”
Buffy still at a loss, asked her friends the burning question. “How did you fit all this in here? I always thought this house was the same basic shape as mine.”
“I know right,” Willow answered with mild surprise. “It turns out this house looked the same from the front but had around double the square footage. We breezed right by the living room out front. It looks just like yours but we took out a few feet off the back to add to the training room.”
“Plus there are six bedrooms upstairs.” Tara chimed in. “Wait till you see the backyard.” She added with a smile.
Again the group moved out into the hallway and came to an archway which opened up to reveal the extravagant kitchen. A sturdy door at the back of the room turned out to be the main exit to the back yard. Moving outside, the four friends were greeted by the sight of a wide assortment of plants growing in all manner of places. There were rows of various vegetables planted off to one side. As well as archways and partial sections of fence which supported dense vines and ivy. Pots holding various herbs and spices hung from every structure. It was a truly magnificent garden.
Once again the two young witches lead their friends onward. They followed a stone pathway that curved around various bits of foliage and lead them to a jacuzzi just large enough that the Slayer thought she could swim laps in it.
Not too far from the amazing hot tub was a glass enclosure. It looked to be a small greenhouse. Along the edge of every pane of glass was a series of intricate runes and sigils. A tiny cross could be seen in the spaces between each distinct set of symbols. Inside was a tall bush the likes of which Buffy had never seen. It towered over the petite blonde but just barely matched Xander’s height. What really stood out were the leaves. Thick veins of deep blue ran across every leaf. They shone in the California sun like sapphire gemstones.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a plant like this,” Buffy said out loud.
Willow and Tara gave each other significant looks. “That’s because it’s only indigenous to a very specific area of rain forest on the other side of the planet.” The hacker admitted. “We had to use magic to bring it here and keep the conditions around it just to its liking.”
“It’s pretty and all.” The Slayer said. “But why all the fuss?”
“Its medicinal qualities make it worth the effort,” Tara said as a tear rolled down her cheek.
“What is that tea you’re drinking, Jennifer?” Joyce asked as they sat in the dining room at the front of the house.
“Oh, this?” The elder Maclay asked with a nervous tick. “It’s from a special plant Tara and Willow found out about. I take a leaf from the bush in the garden and boil it fresh in a teapot.” She looked around as if they ventured into restricted territory. “I need to drink at least 4 cups a day.”
Joyce couldn’t keep her lips from curling into a wry smile. “What does it do? Make you feel young again?” She asked with a light laugh.
Jennifer sighed sadly. “It’s a little more complicated than that.”
“What do you mean our moms are dying?” The Slayer practically shouted. “Tara, my mom is fine. She’s perfectly healthy. Isn’t she?” Looking around frantically, Buffy set her eyes on Willow. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“Buffy, listen it’s nowhere near as bad with your mom as it is with Tara’s.” The redhead tried to reassure her friend. “We looked at her aura just now when you came over. She’s fine, for now. She won’t start to show symptoms for a while.”
“How long?” The Slayer asked with cold steel in her voice.
“Buffy, don’t do this to yourself.” The hacker pleaded.
“Tell me how long I have before I lose my mother.” The Slayer said with no room for argument.
“Three and a half years,” Tara said flatly. “Give or take. She most often seems to take a sharp turn halfway through your sophomore year of college.” The witch said while looking at the other blonde. “But those are averages from other dimensions. This world might be ahead of the curve.”
The wind left the slim blonde’s sails. “That can’t be. Please god, that can’t happen. I can’t lose her.” Buffy eyes darted all over the garden seeking something to focus on. “Magic!” She yelled. “You can cure her with magic.”
“I-I-I’m sorry, B-buffy, but n-no.” Tara said with grim determination. “Using m-magic that way is w-w-wrong and only makes the person you want to help s-suffer unimaginable agony. Th-that’s why we’re using the plants.”
“Plants? The bush! It has the cure?” The Slayer looked at the odd shrub with renewed hope.
“It has the treatment.” Willow corrected. “We don’t have a cure yet but with the money we have now, we’ll start a company that will research a cure.” The Slayer stared at her redheaded friend as tears swam in both girl’s eyes. “Until then Jennifer and your mom need to drink the tea brewed from the leaves of this plant.”
“We’re lucky,” Tara said as she rested her hands on the shoulders of the chosen one. “My mom doesn’t normally live long enough to see Sunnydale.”
Buffy’s head snapped up at that admission. “Oh god, Tara, I’m so sorry.” She said as tears rolled down her face. “You guys already talked to your mom and she’s dealing with it?”
“There was crying and denial at first.” Willow supplied. “But she’s known her health was on a downward slope for a while now.” The redhead paused as she put on her famous resolve face. “We’re not loosing either of them. We are going to have them in our lives for many years to come. Where magic can’t help us science will.”
Xander stepped up to the trio of crying, hugging girls. “We’ll get through this, Buffy. Whatever you need we’ll get through this together.”
“This is what you meant by having a talk with my mom,” Buffy asked after they had all held each other in silence for a few minutes. “I have to tell her I’m the Slayer to explain why she is on tea brewed from an unknown plant.”
“We are going to tell her about magic when we head back inside the house,” Willow said.
“The choice to tell your mom about the Slayer is yours and yours alone,” Tara added. “We will be there to help explain if you want us but when you tell her is up to you, Buffy.”
A moment passed and the Slayer prepared herself for the one fight she never wanted to face. “Okay let’s go talk to the moms,” Buffy said with all the cheer of a funeral dirge.
The quartet made there way back to the house and into the kitchen. Once inside they found Joyce and Jennifer teary-eyed and holding hands.
“Mom,” Buffy said. “Can we go to the living room? There’s some things we have to talk about.”
Joyce looked concerned. “Sure, Honey. Should we go home and give the Maclays some privacy?”
“Some of these things involve them, Mom.” The Slayer said with a sigh.
The group made their way to the living room of the large house. Once they were all seated Willow decided to get the basics out of the way. “So, Mrs. Summers, in case you couldn’t tell, I’m gay. I’m with Tara. We’re in love. You’ve been so good to me I just wanted you to know.”
“Willow, relax.” Joyce admonished. “I get it. I don’t like you any less for who you love and I’m not going to do something insane like forbidding my daughter from spending time with you.” The art dealer let out a smile. “And what did I say about you kids calling me Joyce? Tara, that includes you.”
“Thank you, Mrs… Joyce,” Tara said catching herself halfway. “W-we had a good f-feeling about your reaction.”
“There is something more we need to tell you about and it is going to be harder to take.” Willow continued. “Tara, her mother, and myself are witches.” The hacker said in one quick breath.
“I’m sorry? Witches?” Joyce asked, dumbfounded.
“Yep.” The redhead replied. “Magic, spell-casting, witches.”
Turning to her daughter, Joyce asked in a slightly condescending voice. “Buffy, dear, did you put them up to this?”
In a tight voice, the Slayer responded. “Mom, please just try to keep an open mind and hear them out.”
“It’s true, dear,” Jennifer added. “Magic is real. It’s been a part of me all my life.”
Tara and Willow began to chant in Sumerian. A group of small points of light one might easily mistake for fireflies took form and circled the duo. Joyce was speechless.
A minute passed and the girls let the flight of fairy lights fade to memories. “Joyce, we needed to tell you this because we care about you and we need you to understand some things,” Willow stated. “Magic, vampires, werewolves, and a bunch of other stuff from myth and legend are all real.”
Joyce seemed to focus on one word. “Vampires?” She said while looking at her daughter.
“Yes, dear, vampires are real,” Jennifer stated calmly.
“Mom, please let them get to the important part before we freak out okay?” Buffy begged.
“We needed to tell you about magic because we needed to explain Jennifer’s treatment.” The hacker continued. “See…”
“Um, guys?” Xander spoke up. “If this is getting into private doctor-patient stuff should I wait outside?”
“Mom, are you okay with Xander staying inside for this discussion?” Tara asked her mother.
“Yes, dear,” Jennifer replied with a smile. “He seems like such a nice boy.”
“Joyce,” Willow said, trying to steer the conversation. “There is a plant in the back yard. It is from a rainforest half the world away. Jennifer has to drink tea brewed with its leaves several times a day or her condition will deteriorate fast.” She paused for a moment. “We would like you to start taking the same tea at least a few times a day.”
“What?” Joyce didn’t know how to respond. “But I’m not. I feel fine. Buffy, what’s going on here?”
“Mom, please.” The Slayer groveled. “Just trust them. Okay? For me?”
“Joyce.” The redhead had to make this good. “Part of the whole witches in love thing is we know some things most people don’t. Some things from past lives.” No way was Joyce going to understand the parallel dimension aspect. “In those lives, we came across a plant no one today knows about and were able to summon it to the back yard of this house. It doesn’t have FDA approval but it is keeping Jennifer alive as we speak.” She paused again. “If you began a regimen now it would prevent the condition we believe will one day affect you. At least for a few decades.”
“You think I’m sick?” Joyce asked startled.
“We know you will be sick one day.” Willow countered. “Please, Joyce, trust us on this.”
Joyce turned to her new friend. “You told me about the tea because they told you I would need it as well?”
Jennifer nodded. “Yes, Joyce. You asked, but the reason I told you everything was to ease you into this.”
“And you told me the myth of ‘Sineya’s Daughters’ to ease me into the magic discussion?” Joyce asked with a tired note.
At the mention of the first Slayer’s name, both Willow and Tara turned to Jennifer shocked. “Mom, you told her about that too?” Tara asked, terrified her mother had just outed her friend.
“Only the story. I didn’t say anything to give away current events.” Jennifer admitted.
“Who is Sineya?” Xander asked while Buffy held a nervous yet curious pose.
“The first Slayer.” Tara murmured as the slim blonde’s eyes widened.
“It’s not a myth or legend, Joyce.” Willow said as she prepared the speech she crafted to counter Giles’. “Vampires and Demons are very real. They once ruled this world but most left or were cast out. When humanity arose the monsters fed on them. To fight the darkness a group of shadowmen, magic users steeped in darkness, took a young girl deep underground and chained her to the Earth. They forced demonic energies into the girl. They put demon in her. She gained strength, speed, agility, heightened senses, fast healing, and prophetic nightmares.”
Looking to see that Joyce was still with her, Willow forged ahead. “When she died another girl was chosen. That girl gained all the power the first had. Then when she died defending humanity yet another girl was called. That has happened countless times. Into every generation, one girl out of many is chosen to be the Slayer for the rest of her life.”
“What does this girl do?” Joyce asked as pieces of a very simple puzzle began to fall into place.
“I go out just about every night and I hunt monsters. I track them or pretend to be helpless bait to lure them out and I slay them. The more I slay the longer people in this town get to live.” Buffy said in a soft voice barely above a whisper.
Silence reigned over the newly renovated living room.
Joyce was at a loss. How could this happen? How could something that sounded so crazy be true? How could her daughter be facing these things without her finding out? How could children be expected to face the things they were explaining to her?
“So you’re telling me that monsters are real and my daughter is the one who has to fight them until they kill her,” Joyce said in a dull tone.
“Pretty much,” Xander answered.
“And she has to face this all alone,” Joyce asked with a touch of irritation.
“No, not alone.” Willow rebutted. “Not since she met us.”
“But why her? Why any of you?” The single mother couldn’t take much more. “Buffy, have you tried not being a Slayer?”
“Yeah mom, I tried. I quit and everything.” Buffy replied. “It didn’t go over so well.”
“What happened?” Joyce was on the edge of her seat.
“I died.” The Slayer whispered. “I was destined to die at the hands of a really old vamp. I told them I quit. It didn’t matter. I still ended up in his lair. He beat me and left me to drown in a puddle. I died and Xander brought me back with CPR.”
As the story went on the Slayer’s mother grew more and more upset. Learning of what the boy had done for her daughter cast him in a new light, but as far as Joyce was concerned none of it should have happened in the first place. “And no one helps you face any of this?”
“Giles, the school librarian,” Buffy said. “He helps. He’s part of this group that trains Slayers whenever they get chosen. He’s my second watcher.”
“Second?” Joyce wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
“Merrick, my watcher in LA.” She said. “He died the first time I tried to stop being the Slayer.”
“Buffy,” Joyce said, clearly distraught. “There has to be a way out of this. I don’t want you going out all hours of the night risking your life.”
“I know, Mom.” Buffy pleaded. “If there was any way I could have a normal life I would, but I can’t.”
“There has to be a way to stop this,” Joyce said.
“It doesn’t stop. It never stops.” Buffy shot back on the edge of tears. “Do you know how lonely it is? How dangerous? I would love to spend my nights watching TV, or gossiping about boys or maybe girls, or god even studying!” Tears began to fall down the young blonde’s cheeks. “But I have to save the world. Again!”
Joyce was shocked. All she could do was reach over and wrap her arms around her shaking daughter. She began to ask again if they could find a way out of this nightmare but was cut short as the doorbell rang.
Willow looked at her watch. “Ah good, they’re here.” She and Tara went to answer the door and the four people left in the living room couldn’t help but hear an overtly cheerful voice greet them.
“Ms. Rosenberg, Ms. Maclay, so very good to meet you.” They heard a woman say. “On behalf of my company I would just like to thank you for choosing us for your personal defense needs.”
“So good to meet you as well,” Willow said as she stepped aside to allow the woman room to pass.
Stepping inside she took a look around. “My, what a lovely home.”
“Thank you,” Tara replied. “We’re just settling in. Please come this way.”
The group waiting in the living room were surprised to see Willow and Tara followed by a tall blonde woman with striking features. She wore her hair in a tight bun and her navy blue business suit and skirt displayed her figure quite well while never failing to portray an aura of professionalism and seriousness. Noticing the confused looks from her friends Willow introduced the newcomer. “This is Ms. Prescott. She represents a specialty tailor. She needs measurements from the four of us. Buffy, you’re first.”
As Willow escorted Buffy and Ms. Prescott to the training room the others looked at Tara. “It’s a surprise. Don’t worry. It’s all for the best.”
“Now her suit should take priority over the others. She needs at least two of them and if you can put a rush on the first one it would be appreciated.” Willow told Ms. Prescott as they were returning to the group. “Xander, you’re up, then Tara.”
As Xander left the room the others gave Willow and Tara questioning looks. “Guys it’s okay. This is just one small thing we are doing to make sure Buffy is safe while she goes on patrol.” The redhead proclaimed.
“Willow, what exactly are you doing?” Joyce asked. “Who is that woman?”
“Trust me it will all make sense in a few days when we get the first one they make,” Willow answered.
A few minutes later Xander returned and Tara went in for her turn. Shortly after that she and Prescott returned to the living room. Willow wrote a check and handed the woman a file. “Here is the first half we agreed on, and the chemical composition and instructions for making the polymer. Remember we want the final product light enough to conceal under clothing.”
“Of course, Ms. Rosenberg. You were very specific about your needs in the e-mail. I have no doubt my team can deliver a final product to your liking. I’ll have updates for you by the week’s end, and I’d just like to thank you once again for bringing your business to us.” With that, the woman left the newly refurbished home.
“Willow, how much did you just drop on whatever this surprise is?” The Slayer asked, getting slightly nervous about her friend’s newfound finances.
“Don’t worry. We’re still not even halfway through the second million.” Willow replied nonchalantly. “Once we get our company up and running we’ll make it all back a thousand times over.”
Joyce’s head shot up. “What do you mean second million? What company?”
“Willow sold some software to a billionaire. She’s been cagey on just how much she got, but it paid for this house.” Buffy told her mother.
“Twenty million,” Tara said nervously.
Xander choked on the breath he was halfway through taking. Jennifer looked particularly nervous. Joyce was once again at a complete loss.
“Twenty million?” Buffy asked. “Twenty? Million? As in a two followed by seven zero’s?”
“Well closer to eighteen-point-six now.” The redhead replied guiltily. “Guys, this doesn’t have to change things. We’re still friends right?”
“Willster, this changes everything,” Xander answered. “Okay well, mostly it just changes the fact that you’re paying for doughnut and pizza runs from now on.” The young man joked with a wide grin.
“Yeah, Will.” Buffy agreed. “If I stopped hanging with you now it’d be real hard to get you to pay off my student loans in a few years.”
“Thanks, guys,” Willow said before a grin came over her face. “But Tara and I have already reserved two seats on our board of directors for you.”
“She’s right,” Tara affirmed as she took a seat by the redhead and enfolded the slim girl in her arms. “She called CEO. I have dibs on COO.”
“Awesome,” Xander said with a grin. “So, what does this company do?”
“Designs software and innovative gadgets, invent new sources of clean energy, revolutionize the internet, fund groups of independent demon hunters, hostile takeovers of law firms and companies run by extra-dimensional demon triumvirates.” Willow rattled off. “You know, basic world domination stuff.”
A smile overtook the Slayer’s face. “I want to be vice president of pretty shoes and dresses.”
“I call Corporate Banana.” Xander cheered.
The four teens burst out in fits of laughter. Jennifer and Joyce shared a meaningful look and for the first time in hours, a genuinely happy smile spread across the face of the Slayer’s mother.
That night a cabal of Sunnydale’s nocturnal population held court in one of the industrial district’s many abandoned factories. The topic of discussion as always was the death of the Slayer.
“This weekend, the night of St. Vigeous, our power shall be at its peak.” A boastful vampire droned on. “When I kill her it’ll be the greatest event since the crucifixion, and I should know. I was there.”
“You were there.” A mysterious platinum blonde vampire scoffed with a chuckle. “Please. If every vampire who said he was at the crucifixion was actually there it would have been like Woodstock.”
“I ought to rip your throat out.” The braggart countered.
“I was actually at Woodstock.” The newest arrival continued as he sauntered into the factory. “That was a weird gig. I fed off a flower person and I spent the next six hours watching my hand move.” The first vampire ran up behind the blonde only to be knocked flat on his back. “So who do you kill for fun around here?”
The childlike anointed one was curious. “Who are you?”
“Spike.” The leather coat clad Billie Idol lookalike said. “You’re that anointed guy. I read about you.”
Another vampire approached him growling only to be laughed at. “You’ve got Slayer problems. That’s a bad piece of luck. Do you know what I find works real good with Slayers?” Spike asked. “Killing them.”
“Can you?” The baby-faced monster asked.
“A lot faster than Nancy Boy over there. Yeah, I did a couple Slayers in my time, I don’t like to brag.” He paused to laugh. “Who am I kidding? I love to brag. There was this one Slayer during the Boxer Rebellion and…” He stopped sensing his mate wandering into the factory behind him. “Drusilla,” Spike said as he turned to face her. “You shouldn’t be walking around.”
The dark-haired vampire looked around the room in a daze. “Look at all the people. Are these nice people?”
“We’re gettin’ along,” Spike replied.
“Do they know the stars are coming to their party?” She asked.
“The what now?” One of the anointed one’s cronies asked.
“The stars.” She said with a languid haze. “They’ve come to earth for a party but they don’t care for the jam and tea the missus has set out.” Turning to the child-sized vampire, Drusilla rubbed her forefingers against each other in a chastising fashion. “It makes them very cross.”
“She’s right you know. We don’t care for the jam and tea options here.” A new voice sounded out from above.
Looking up, the vampires spotted a tiny point of light hovering around a broken window. “What the bloody hell?” Spike shouted as the window was suddenly filled with more tiny balls of light. They flooded into the old building and surrounded the vampires. Laughter echoed throughout the building as the strange lights danced to and fro.
“Spike.” Drusilla cried reaching for her mate. “They burn, Spike. They scream. Don’t let them get me, darling.”
“Yes, dear William, don’t let us touch your precious Dru.” The dancing lights mocked in a cheerful British lilt. “You never know what dreadful things might happen.”
William the Bloody clutched his sire to his chest as the screaming began. One by one the lights flew into vampire after vampire burying themselves in the center of each undead heart. As they pierced one shriveled organ after another, the vampires burst into flames one by one until the anointed one and his few remaining followers were naught but dust in the wind.
When the room was clear of all vampires save for the two who still clung to each other, the lights began to widen their flight pattern. The tight circle the vampires were once trapped in, opened up to a circle that merely cut off all hope of escape.
“Well look what the cat drug in.” One light said in a distinctly southern drawl.
“William the Bloody, and Drusilla.” Another said in the stereotypical voice of the schoolmarm.
“Oh to taste their ashes this very night would be a delight mine brethren.” Said another point of light in what was the worst Arnold Schwarzenegger impression ever, of all time.
“Yes.” Said the British light. “But the Mistress was very clear. Her plans for these two involve far more pain and suffering than a simple dusting would accomplish.” With that ominous declaration of intent the lights withdrew.
Spike had no idea what was going on in this town but if some nasty with enough power to do what he just saw had plans for he and Dru then they would just pile into the DeSoto and head for another hellmouth.
As they passed the “Now Leaving Sunnydale” sign, Spike had no idea his car had taken on a long-range tracking device. He just wanted to be done with this place and heal his dark beauty.
Back at sixteen-thirty-two Rovello drive, one of the side monitors in the study displaying a map of the continent shifted to show a map of the state and one bright red dot as it traveled.
“I think that scared them off, for now, Baby,” Willow said to her love.
“Do you think it’s wise to just let them go?” Tara asked.
“I honestly don’t know.” The redhead sighed. “There are some things both of them might be crucial for. If we kill them now it might save Buffy some grief but take away important options down the road. Once we get LA set up just the way we like it we might trick them into returning. For now, let’s just get Buffy ready for her role as a leader and not just another lone warrior.”
“I agree, Sweetie,” Tara whispered while nuzzling the redhead’s ear.
“I love you, Baby.” Willow sighed while she luxuriated in the arms of her soulmate.
The nuzzling drew to a close and Tara pulled away just enough to take in the sight of her redhead. So knew no matter what her new memories revealed, neither of them wanted to rush what would be the most important moment of their life so far.
“Let’s get some sleep, Sweetie,” Tara whispered. “Tomorrow is a big day.”
A smile crept over the redheads face. “I’ll go change and meet you in our room.” Willow kissed Tara tenderly before pulling away and grabbing a small bag of clothes she brought from her parents’ house. The now even more depressingly empty house couldn’t truly be called a home.
Tara watched as her heart skipped out of the study and off towards one of the many bathrooms in the impressively large home they had designed to accommodate the first decade or so of their life together.
Heading upstairs, she wished her mother a good night and went to the bedroom they picked as hers but was really theirs. Tara change into her favored evening ware. Boxers and a spaghetti strap tank top. Moments after she was changed and settling for the night her bouncy love skipped into their room and flounced onto their bed.
“I love you, Baby,” Willow swore as she pulled covers up around them.
“I love you too, Sweetie,” Tara promised as she wrapped her arms around the lithe girl who held her world.
As they lay in each others’ arms, the promise of what lay before them sparked hope in their soul. Sleep soon claimed the couple and pleasant dreams of the life they could have eased the troubles clouding their minds.
The next day was off to an uneventful start. Buffy prepared decorations for the upcoming parent-teacher night. She even told her mom about the event ahead of time. The day after the massive revelations in their neighbor’s living room, the Summers women sat in their own living room for a chat.
“Mom, just remember.” The Slayer pleaded. “The things Snyder is going to say about me have explanations. I don’t want to overburden you with every horror story I have but please keep in mind I’m doing my best here.”
“I know, Buffy. I’m actually more interested in the chat I’m going to have with your librarian.” Joyce smirked.
“Please go easy on Giles, Mom,” Buffy said in a defeated tone. “He is actually so much nicer than what I’m told just about every other watcher out there is like. The fact most of them are nuts who isolate their Slayer’s from all human contact is probably one of the main reasons he is going along with Willow’s plan to remove me from the council’s radar.”
“I know you care for him, Sweetie,” Joyce replied. “But I don’t care for the fact he has had this whole secret relationship with you.”
A look of utter revulsion swept the Slayer’s face at the implications of the word relationship. As she was about to protest her mother’s phrasing she caught sight of the very same librarian out their front window. He made his way up the stairs of their porch and rang the bell.
“Ah good.” Joyce smiled. “That must be him. I wanted to get this all out in the open quickly.”
Standing up, she hastily went to the door. “Mr. Giles, so good to see you.” She said opening the door wide enough to allow passage.
“Ms. Summers, it is always a pleasure.” The bespectacled Brit said with a genuine smile as he stepped over the threshold and followed his charge’s mother into the living room.
As they sat down Joyce cut to the chase. “Mr. Giles, I know everything.” She said. “Everything you’ve been hiding from me about my daughter. I want to know what you think justifies keeping this from me and why I should let you continue to put her life in danger.”
Giles looked absolutely shocked and for a moment glanced at Buffy.
“Mom, please ease up.” The young woman sighed. “None of this is his fault.”
Realizing the cat was finally out of the bag, Giles let out a sigh of defeat. “Ms. Summers, no matter what you may think of me, I just want you to know that working with your daughter has been the single greatest honor of my life.” A slight smile graced the librarian’s face as he polished his glasses. “As far as keeping secrets from you goes, the only mention of you in the file I was handed when briefed on this mission said that when Buffy talked to you about vampires her father had her committed to an asylum,” Giles stated flatly. “I had no intention of putting Buffy through that again when her life is hard enough already, and no intention of forcing her to do something in her personal life that she was clearly not ready for.”
“But you feel okay with forcing her to fight monsters every night?” Joyce asked with a raised voice.
“Ms. Summers, I am not one of the ancient mystical forces that made your daughter the chosen one.” He rebutted. “I am not her first watcher, who neglected to inform you at all before he died at the hands of a monster he didn’t properly prepare Buffy to fight. Nor am I forcing her to do anything the spirit of the Slayer within her wouldn’t already compel her to do.”
Giles looked at Joyce and tried to convey his own anguish at the unfairness of the world they inhabited. “I am merely the man who trains her in various fighting styles, acquires weapons she has a tendency to burn through, teaches her about her powers and various dangers that specific demons might pose such as poison, infection, or mental trickery, and spends all his free time reading ancient texts to try deciphering the most dangerous threats she might face on any given day.” Giles finished with a weary sigh.
Joyce sat there trying to wrap her mind around all the details the watcher had just laid bare for her. She had been looking for a target to express her maternal outrage on and it seemed this man who cared for her daughter without her even knowing it had the same issues with the nightmare Buffy was forced into facing.
Joyce realized she had apparently been wrong to cast blame on the tweed-clad man. Something he said however caught her attention. “What exactly do you mean by spirit of the slayer within her?”
“Ah, Buffy, exactly how much was Joyce told about what it means to be the Slayer?” Giles asked with his normal tone reserved for educational lectures.
“We were having another discussion about magic with Will and the Maclays and Mom said that Tara’s Mom had told her the tale of Sineya’s Daughters,” Buffy recalled. “Willow then explained exactly how they made the first slayer and how a new one is called when the last one dies.”
“Willow knows how the first Slayer was created?” Giles asked in shock. That may have been one of the greatest mysteries the council had ever struggled to uncover.
“Yeah,” Buffy said with a faraway look. “It was vile. What they did to her was wrong on so many levels.”
“Oh dear lord.” The Englishman gasped and once more began to polish his glasses.
Turning to face Joyce, Giles sighed. “The Slayer has a great deal of natural instinct regarding how she handles her calling. This is due to the spirit of the Slayer that dwells within the chosen one. That and dreams often detailing the lives of past Slayers give the girl an edge when facing unknown adversaries. Many have described sensing a need to hunt periodically. Avoiding this need has detrimental psychological effects on the Slayer. Things like lack of focus, symptoms similar to cabin fever, and aggressively predatory behaviors have been noted in the past.”
Joyce was unsure how to process everything that had been uncovered since the day before. “It’s been made clear to me that no matter how much I don’t like this situation, blaming you won’t help Buffy.” The single mother replied. “Is there anything else I should know about?”
“When she turns eighteen, the watchers council will most likely try to put her through a cruel rite of passage with a deranged vampire,” Giles informed the horrified woman. “Willow has told me she has a plan to end that particular tradition. I have no idea what to think of her recent changes, but I do hope she at least succeeds on that point.”
A smile spread over Joyce’s face. “On that note, we should get going. We’ve all been invited to diner with Jennifer and Tara.”
Buffy shared her mother’s smile. “Giles, you are not going to believe what Tara and Willow have done.”
Giles’ face held a perplexed look as he was guided out of the Summers residence and next door. “Buffy, what do your neighbors have to, oh dear lord. Willow got the Maclays to move here didn’t she?” He asked as dawning realization struck him.
“Yep.” The Slayer replied. “She’s apparently setting herself up as an internet billionaire and buying her girl’s mom a McMansion was step one.”
“Willow bought this house?” The confused Brit was more than shocked.
“Oh yeah.” Buffy grinned. “Just wait till you see the additions they put in.”
As they stood before their neighbor’s door Joyce brought her hand up and rang the bell. The door opened to reveal a smiling Jennifer Maclay. “Oh how good to see you all here. The girls and Xander were just settling into the study.”
They quickly made their way to the study. Upon entering Giles and Joyce stood stunned at the sight of the lavish, well-appointed, command center. “Oh dear lord.” The man whispered.
“Hey, guys!” Xander called out cheerfully. “Look who finally found Slayer Central.”
“Giles!” Willow cheered. “What do you think of the new digs?”
“Yes, well you have certainly outdone yourself, Willow.” The librarian said with a hint of amusement and not too little pride at what one of his students had been able to build on such short notice.
“See, guys?” The Slayer chimed in. “I told you he’d love it. Just wait till you see the training room.”
“Mr. Giles?” Tara spoke up. “We may n-need some help from sources you probably have better ties with when we start filling up the shelves.”
A wide uncompromising smile spread across the watcher’s face. “I don’t believe that will be a problem,” Giles assured his newest student.
As the group went from warm greetings around the study to an excited display of the training room by the overjoyed Slayer, a sense of family few of them had ever experienced before settled in. Willow and Tara smiled as most of their closest loved ones sat around the dinner table. Their family was almost complete.
By the time Thursday had come around Willow and Tara had assuaged Giles’ concerns about the night of St. Vigeous. The patrols Buffy went on that week offered next to no action. The vampire population of the hellmouth had suffered severe reductions in the past week.
When the night finally came for Joyce Summers to meet her daughter’s principal she had been warned by both Mr. Giles and Ms. Calendar as to how little the man’s opinion of Buffy actually mattered. The meeting lasted only moments.
“Mr. Snyder before you start what I’m sure is a well-rehearsed diatribe you have been looking forward to, let me explain some realities to you,” Joyce told the troll in a firm voice.
“I am aware of all the horrible things you are going to accuse my daughter of. I am also aware of all the horrible things about this school you don’t have the spine to tell me.” She said with a smirk. “I know that this school you run is a death trap. I know that the actions my daughter takes keep the rivers of blood that should be filling these halls down to a manageable ankle-deep stream. I know that without my daughter’s tireless work you will suffer the same fate as your predecessor.” Joyce paused to let that sink in.
“Lastly, I know that if you keep antagonizing her and her friends she won’t lift a finger to save you when your time comes.” A smile spread across her face. “I honestly can’t blame her for that. After all, she faces so many hardships already that she really can’t be expected to go out of her way for every single person.” With that, Joyce left the startled school administrator and returned to her daughter who had been serving punch the entire night.
Buffy looked up to see her mother stroll across the school lounge with a smile. “How’d it go, Mom?”
“It was actually really fun,” Joyce replied. “The look on his face when he realized I wasn’t about to just take his word was priceless.” She said with a laugh. “Why don’t we get the others and head home, Sweetie.”
The Slayer couldn’t hold back the smile on her face. She found Tara and Willow with Jennifer and Xander. The group set off for the school parking lot.
On the way, they were surprised to see Sheila had actually shown up for the school function. What was even more surprising was the witches in the group taking one look at the girl and realizing she was now undead.
All in all, it was a short fight given that the fledgling vampire was newly risen and no doubt starving. The speed with which the Slayer dispatched her foe served as an excellent display of the young girl’s skill and a rather dramatic demonstration for Joyce.
“I may be mistaken,” Xander said with a grin as Sheila’s ashes drifted away on the evening breeze. “But I think that might be the first dusting for a few of you ladies.”
“That girl.” Joyce could hardly believe the sight. “She’s just gone.”
“Not a girl, Joyce.” Said Willow. “Vampire. As Giles would say “You’re not looking at your friend when you see a vampire. You’re looking at the thing that killed them.”
“That was my first vampire too, Sweetie,” Jennifer said with a slight tremor.
“Kinda hard to tell with me,” Tara said as she put an arm over Willow’s shoulder. “In-person this lifetime I think that was my first, but I have memories of so many that it really doesn’t count.”
“Do I have to watch out for my job security?” Buffy teased.
Willow smirked. “Just wait till we get our muscle memory caught up with our episodic memory. You aren’t the only one who’s going to use that new training room, Buff.”
Buffy laughed. “Once you guys get with the Witch Fu I’ll probably start dragging you along on more patrols.” The Slayer glanced towards her still startled mother. “Mom, I know seeing that can be shocking, but she was a threat. If I didn’t stop her, many people would have died.”
Joyce finally looked away from the spot the vampire used to occupy and towards her daughter. “I understand, Buffy. I’m terrified, but I understand. Let’s just go home.”
With that, the group got in the cars awaiting them in the parking lot. Buffy and Joyce dropped Xander off at his parent’s house. Willow, Tara, and Jennifer got into the car their seed money had acquired. As Jennifer drove the blue four-door hatchback back to their new home she looked at her girls snuggled close in the back seat.
The woman was shocked at how much the redhead had done for her so far. The young bookworm had stopped at nothing to make sure Jennifer understood what Tara already knew beyond a shadow of a doubt. That they were family. Willow loved her daughter. The redhead loved Jennifer as well for no other reason beyond the simple fact that Tara loved her mother.
In the days since they moved into their house, Willow had moved the vast majority of her possessions into the house the three now lived in and into the room the young couple shared. Part of Jennifer felt like she should object to how fast their relationship was progressing. A much more realistic part knew they belonged together. She knew she couldn’t keep them apart even if she wanted to. The fact that her prospective daughter in law was the single nicest person to ever enter Jennifer’s life probably helped as well. As they approach sixteen-thirty-two Rovello Drive, hope for a brighter future blossomed in her heart. For the first time in her adult life, Jennifer had a loving home.
Last edited by Citanul on Tue Jul 07, 2020 12:15 am, edited 4 times in total.
Cool update. I like how you're showing that even with all their knowledge from previous lives, they don't have a cure yet for Jennifer and Joyce.
I'm glad it's an easy fix for your comp, and you didn't lose any of the story you have so far. Some people, if they lost parts of their stories, get discouraged and don't finish them.
I love that we get basically four stories in one, and that every other update returns to sunnydale s2 reality. I love stories where Tara comes to Sunnydale during earlier seasons. I just don't know any s2 stories that are complete. lol
Can't wait for your next update! Now I remember why I don't usually like to read WIP stories, I'm too impatient for the next update! lol
Mysticrain as always thanks for the support. I too am relieved the entry I wrote will be easily retrieved.
One of my favorite W&T season 2 stories is called Wave. I haven't seen it on this site but it is on fanfiction.net
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/6147463/1/Wave Written by 9kodama. It seems finished or at least the author wrapped up things so that it ended on good terms.
Sorry for the slow tease but I know writers block is going to hit me at some point. So I'm trying to build up a backlog of entries and keep to a fairly regular weekly schedule.
Azirahael
9. Gay Now
Location: Beyond the orbit of Mars and accelerating...
I love this story!
I like the alternating format, letting you have some crazy stuff interspersed with the main story.
And i like the main story. The 'what would smart people do with Buffy's world' theme is great.
And oh, Willow and Tara, meeting time after time. Joy!
I think that's some of the best parts of a good W/T story.
but two of the best bits for me:
Aquaman underpants and “I want to be vice president of pretty shoes and dresses.”
Definitely putting this on my MUST WATCH! list.
I look forward to more
“All I feel is sunlight. All I hear is music.” Willow
How i Met Your Mother - By Ariel
My Story: Coming Home
That is one of my fav w/t fics too. I still hold out hope that the author might one day come back and write some more for both wave and twoth.
vampyregurl73
8. Vixen
Location: Southern Arizona
This story is quickly becoming a favorite of mine. I enjoy the whole premise so far. You're dealing with the multiple storylines very well, each feels plausible and you don't have any continuity problems that can sometimes be an issue.
Heather aka vampyregurl73 aka Riverwillows73
My stories:
"Dry Heat – In Progress (still)" "Penny Arcade - Completed"
My Fic Challenge entries:
"Fireworks" "Promise" "I Did What Last Night?"
Posted: Wed Jul 23, 2014 10:05 am
Vampyregurl73 and Azirahael welcome to the party and thank you for the kind words and support.
While I can't claim authorship of Xander's Aquaman underpants story I will say that Buffy's job title is one of my finer spur of the moment ideas.
While I enjoy a good love at first sight story as much as the next person I'm fairly certain this next installment will be the last as it is the fourth and "final" world/storyline being introduced.
Please enjoy.
Author’s Note: Good news to report. I got my laptop back, fixed earlier this week. No data was lost and I can finally bring you the first entry from the storyline I wrote immediately after writing chapter 2. This one may look similar to Marvels from a premise or gimmick standpoint but I'm fairly certain I set a very different tone.
It was another dreary overcast day in the city that seemed to have nothing but dreary overcast days. The only birdsong in the air was the occasional piercing shriek of crows. Yet another fine day, thought the young doctor as she entered the Asylum.
The lithe young blonde was the “new kid” to both the city and its infamous madhouse. Only months out of her residency and the eager psychiatrist had already garnered a coveted position at the prestigious institution. Anyone would feel great pride in gaining such a position.
At least that is what Dr. Harleen Quinzel thought when she started at Arkham Asylum a week ago. Truth be told, she was already beginning to see why this place had given out positions to such young talent. As well as why it had such an abysmally high turnover rate. The fact of the matter was that Arkham wasn’t a place where sane, respectable psychiatrists went to rehabilitate the cognitively impaired. It was a dumping ground for the ever-mysterious Batman to lock up the worst of his rogues gallery. No one coming here got better. None of the doctors would ever get notoriety for “cracking” a particular case.
The best-case scenario for the doctors here was to put in their time and transfer out. The worst-case was a tie between a slow painful death and being tricked by one of the more devious patients into giving them a clean bill of health. Momentary pride in a job well done only to be ostracized by the professional psychology community when the patient eventually went on another killing spree. All before their poor S.O.B. doctor could sign their first book deal.
All these thoughts meandered through Dr. Quinzel’s mind as she shuffled along with the rest of her colleagues into the routine morning meeting. Being one of the youngest mental health professionals in the facility left her at the bottom of the asylum’s pissing pole of “respectable” doctors. Even among the staff, Arkham was no place to make friends.
What seemed to draw the most surprise from Harleen was the occasional doctor who took to the facility with grim determination. The psychiatrists who came to Arkham “for the long haul” as it were.
One such man took a seat right beside her at the conference table. The portly older man sitting beside her had a distinctive round nose, thick curly brown hair engaged in a fully underway retreat from his brow, and the thickest set of bifocals Harleen had ever seen. Yes, Dr. Steve Brule had come to Arkham as a young man full of piss and vinegar. Nowadays he had a perpetual look of bewilderment on his face, and a brash manner that led many to question if he was due for admittance to the facility as a patient rather than a staffer.
The other doctors began to quiet down as the warden and the chief of doctors began the meeting. Harleen watched the warden finish his usual speech and depart, leaving the head physician in charge of her colleagues. “Okay everyone, it looks like Batman was busy this weekend. Both Joker and Poison Ivy were brought in over the last few days and the doctors who were assigned to them have transferred out.” He said with a grim monotone as he taped two headshots to the whiteboard.
No one in the room took notice as the eyes of a lithe, young, blonde doctor glowed with mysterious inner light as she gazed at one of the pictures.
Memories of another blonde with gorgeous curves and a lithe young redhead who she couldn’t help but identify with danced through Harleen’s mind. Staring at the picture of the green redhead on the board, she knew things would never be the same again. Oh Goddess, was she excited about that.
An idea formed in Dr. Quinzel’s mind. “I’ll take Poison Ivy.” She proclaimed to the room while the subdued and demoralized doctors continued to fight off sleep as the meeting progressed.
The head doctor looked at her with a confused expression. “I had actually planned on giving you the Joker case, Dr. Quinzel.” The man rebuffed. “Most new staff would jump at the chance for such a high profile case. Frankly, I was intending on giving Ms. Isley’s case to Dr. Brule.”
Harleen stared at the man open-mouthed. “Doctor, with all due respect I’m not here for fame or as some stepping stone for my career. I’m here for the work itself.” She almost smiled as she told the egregious lie. “Besides, there are a number of reasons why Dr. Brule would be better suited to the Joker case. Ms. Isley has a history of using various toxins and pheromones to seduce men.”
At this Dr. Brule perked up. “I’m sure I could handle it, I also might not mind taking one for the team.” He finished his statement with a suggestive tone that left no one questioning his meaning.
“Dr. Brule!” Harleen began before softening her tone. “Steven, didn’t you say you had allergies to pollen, and poison oak, and several other plants?”
The man obliviously nodded not catching her meaning at all. “Sure I do. Why this one time I went camping, I accidentally set up my latrine by the wrong patch of leafy undergrowth. By the end of the weekend, my entire body was covered in this huge rash.”
The head doctor was starting to get the picture his young colleague had painted for the room. Several of the other doctors had started snickering along at the obvious joke Steve was clearly missing. Harleen sighed at the realization she would have to spell it out louder for the poor deluded man. “Dr. Brule, there is a reason she chose Poison Ivy as her supervillain name. I’m pretty sure if you spent any time counseling her you would break out in even bigger rashes.”
The balding doctor paused for a moment as his colleagues watched the first signs of comprehension and understanding play across his face. It had been years since they saw anything like it from the man.
The chief of doctors had a slight smile on his lips as he took in the sight of his youngest colleague with newfound respect. “Well put, Dr. Quinzel. You take the Pamela Isley case,” he said handing her a folder containing the patient’s complete history. Or what he thought was a complete history, but Harleen knew to be a woefully incomplete account of only the last few years. “Dr. Brule, you take the Joker case.”
Dr. Brule looked up at this and replied with his usual detached bravado. “Sure thing, Boss.”
As the flow of the meeting shifted back to mundane routine, Harleen took the opportunity to study the file before her. She had done it. She had positioned herself in a unique position to get the love of her many lives out of this madhouse. Thankfully the file indicated it was fairly early in the criminal career of Poison Ivy. She wasn’t a mass murderer or a world-renowned sociopath. She had only racked up some minor violations for civil disobedience and ecological sabotage of various industries, organizations, and individuals who had less than sparkling reputations themselves.
This could work. With a clean bill of health from an Arkham Asylum doctor, she could get a fresh start. They could get a fresh start. They would be together again.
Memorizing the file took no time at all. It did however leave an uneasy feeling in the lithe blonde. She couldn’t shake the feeling that in several past lives she had a brother who would know so much more about this world than she did. She left the meeting with the other doctors and began her journey to the office she maintained for private sessions. She couldn’t help but feel that if only she had listened more to that goofball who loved her like a sister she would know some secret about this world and its inhabitants that would save her so much grief.
Sitting at her desk a thought struck her. She had always hated the name Harleen. Her friends, the very few she had once upon a time anyway, had always used a nickname she could stand when addressing her.
As Harleen sat in her office a soft glow emanated from her body. Ruminating over the slow trickle of memories coming to her, the first of many decisions she had to make was forming in her conscious mind.
Maybe it was time for another change.
Poison Ivy was having a truly terrible week. It all started with those dreams. Dreams that made her question the goals she had. Made her question the methods she employed to defend the earth. Dreams of her honey blonde hair flowing gracefully over the shoulders and breasts of the lithe, spritely young redhead writhing beneath her.
“Okay, why the hell am I dreaming of myself in a hair color I’ve never even though about sporting?” The emerald skinned redhead asked herself as she sat alone in the isolation cell. “It all used to be so simple. Stop corporate tyranny, stop wasteful human greed, save the world.” She said to the stone walls. “So why am I spending so much time pondering a life I’m never going to have with a girl I’m never going to meet? Why am I suddenly questioning the value I used to place on human life? More importantly why the hell did I let Batman capture me and drag me all the way here when I could have escaped his clutches a dozen times over?”
She stopped her tirade at the walls of her cell as she heard the unmistakable laughter from further down the corridor of padded rooms. Laughter coming from the maximum-security cell block. That damn clown was at it again. He took every opportunity available to grate on the nerves of every living creature within range of his obnoxious voice. The very idea that she was being subjected to the same treatment as that vile sociopath infuriated her to no end. To lump her crusade in with the pointless killing sprees that damn clown went on was an insult for which she would not soon forgive the Bat.
As the abrasive cackles faded in the distance her cell was returned to a state of quiet peace that allowed her to concentrate. Talking to herself in an insane asylum was far too cliché for her sense of pride to go on with the pointless questions. She was here. There was no changing that for the time being. She had allowed the Bat to catch her and bring her here. She felt a pull to something in this facility. A pull that rivaled and, if she actually examined it, she would find eclipsed her connection to the ‘Green’.
Ah, the ‘Green’. Her spiritual and psychic link to every living plant on the planet. Though it took her a great deal of effort to focus the link to gain any amount of information or achieve any effect, the link was always there. Giving her comfort, support, and a sense of purpose. Renewing her focus on the ‘Green’ she felt a flood of encouragement and pride flow into her mind. Whatever the source of this pull was, the ‘Green’ was in favor of her finding it.
Something important was about to happen. For the second time, the life of Dr. Pamela Isley was going to change irrevocably. She could not imagine a change as drastic as the results of her former mentor and colleague injecting her with the toxins and chemicals that imbued her with superpowers. The initial betrayal which transformed her into a human-plant hybrid.
Her life was about to change and she was beginning to suspect she had no control over the matter. Ivy sat in her cell trying to get a feel for any plants nearby. She was having no luck whatsoever as a knocking sound dragged her from her reverie. The cell doors slowly opened. Two large orderlies stood outside, trying to anticipate her next move. “Your doctor has scheduled a session, Isley.” The slightly older of the two men said in a gruff no-nonsense tone. “Don’t try anything funny.”
She sighed as she stood and slowly approached the two men who did absolutely nothing for her mood. Would it kill them to acknowledge the simple fact that she had doctorates in botany and biochemistry? “Sure.” She said in an obviously false upbeat tone. “Sounds like fun. Can’t wait to meet the good doctor.”
The men gave her a small amount of space as they escorted her out of the cellblock and towards the offices of the many psychiatric personnel. Why the doctor had specifically instructed them to not manhandle this particular patient was a mystery to them but they weren’t paid to ask questions. So long as ‘Little Miss Green Thumbs’ didn’t try anything they could indulge the young doc.
After passing a security checkpoint they moved down a hallway lined with office doors, each adorned with a plaque denoting the doctor residing within. The orderlies accompanying Ivy stopped at a door with the name Dr. Harleen Frances Quinzel emblazoned on its sign.
The younger of the two men knocked then opened the door announcing Ivy’s arrival. A feminine voice called them in. “Come in, come in. Please have a seat. Gentlemen, I believe we have everything in hand. If you could give us some privacy we’ll get this first session underway.”
Ivy sat in the chair placed before the desk. As the two men left the room she noticed the only thing on the desk was a file with her picture clipped to the outside. The figure behind the desk was seated and turned so that the large high back chair completely concealed her from view.
“Well, Dr. Isley, it is a pleasure to finally meet you.” The lovely feminine voice caressed Ivy’s heart in a way she never before felt. No other human had caused anything close to that effect on her in years. “As you can tell by the sign on the door I’m Dr. Quinzel.” She said with an upbeat tone.
Before Ivy could respond to the doctor’s odd mannerisms the chair spun around revealing a petite blonde with dazzling blue eyes and a captivating smile. “But you can call me Harley, Baby.”
Light filled the room as the sight of the bright, bubbly young doctor filled Ivy’s heart with joy. Visions of bliss-filled lifetimes swam in the green woman’s mind as the dreams she’d been having and the drastic doubts she now had about her crusade suddenly made sense. “Sweetie?” Ivy whispered as tears of joy swam in her eyes.
The lithe blonde gazed at her curvaceous emerald skinned love. “It’s me, Baby.” She reassured. “I found you. Or maybe you found me. What matters is we’re together. So much has to be done, but we’ll handle it together. You and me, Baby. We’ll find a way! Always and…” She paused her babble. “Oh, Goddess. I just want to kiss you so badly right now.”
Tears began to pour from green eyes down emerald cheeks. “I’m s-s-so s-sorry, Sweetie. I’m a poisonous m-m-monster.” For the first time since her unwilling change, she regretted the toxic effect she had on other humans.
“Hey!” The young psychiatrist yelled. “Don’t talk like that. No one gets to badmouth my girl in front of me and get away with it.” The blonde held the redhead’s gaze with a fierce look. “You are a genius botanist and biochemist. You can make a permanent antidote for me in your sleep. We just need to get you out of this nuthouse and into a decent lab.” The plant woman stared in wonder at the conviction and drive in the lithe doctor’s voice.
“I love you, Sweetie. I want nothing more than to be with you, but I can’t let you throw your life away breaking me out of here,” Ivy said with a mournful sigh.
“Don’t be so melodramatic, Doofus.” Harley rebutted with a smile. “No one said anything about a breakout. I’m going to get you out of here the right way and then we can both get a fresh start, together.”
“But I’m a widely known criminal.” The chlorophyll toned woman countered. “I’ve been caught committing countless acts eco-terrorism, and I’ve fought and almost killed Batman a dozen times.”
“And now you’ve been committed to an asylum for the criminally insane and assigned to a respected psychiatrist who knows just how you need to act to get a clean bill of health and an early release.” The blonde doctor smiled as comprehension dawned on the face of the redheaded doctor.
“What do I need to do, Sweetie?” The plant woman asked with renewed hope.
Harley beamed with joy as the glow from both their bodies finally diminished. “Next to nothing really.” She reassured her emerald love. “Just behave like you have in other worlds. Treat other people with respect, show compassion, don’t give the guards or inmates an opportunity to say you started a fight or some other lie they might pull out of their asses.”
The plant woman laughed at that list. “Oh, is that all?” She said with a smirk. Every single item on the list Ivy’s love had given would have been an insurmountable task a month ago.
“I know you can do this, Baby,” Harley affirmed. “The staff here is so dense they’ll buy just about any success story so long as they don’t see a knife at anyone’s throat. Just play nice in the sandbox, well nice by the standards of this sandbox, and I’ll get you out of here. I can fast track the process after reporting an unexpectedly successful first session and have you free and clear in a few short weeks. A month tops.”
Ivy couldn’t help but smile at her love’s gleeful babble. “Goddess, I can’t believe I survived so many years without you in my life.”
“I know how you feel, Love.” The slender doctor assured her curvaceous love. “We still have about an hour, Baby. I want to hear all about your life in this world. I can’t imagine you had to put up with that bullshit lie about demon ancestry here as well!” Harley exclaimed with a cheery smile.
“Not fair, Doctor.” Ivy proclaimed. “I want to hear everything about you just as badly.”
“Fair enough, Doctor.” The psychiatrist said to the biochemist she loved with all her heart.
In a padded room on the other side of the compound, the Joker was having second thoughts about his plan of getting into the mind of his latest shrink. The doctor stretched his legs out as he lay on the bunk in Joker’s cell, staring at the ceiling as he recounted another disturbing tale from his youth.
“And that was the fifth time I found out one of my girlfriends was a long lost cousin!” Exclaimed Dr. Steve Brule. “But it would not be the last!”
A sigh escaped the clown’s lips as the severity of his situation sank in.
After being escorted back to her cell, Ivy found herself overcome with delight. Already planning how best to display the good behavior made to seem like second nature by her newfound memories. Once she proved she was no longer a public menace her life would indeed start anew. She and Harley would go places, do things neither of them had ever dared dream possible before finding one another. She fell asleep that night while contemplating formulas for the serum she would make into a gift for her bubbly blonde love.
The special additives she was thinking of including would give her girl benefits far greater than simple poison immunity.
On her way home from work, Harley stopped by a sizeable electronics store. She had been saving up in the hopes of taking that special dream vacation. A chance to get away from it all. Perhaps meet that special someone to run off with. Having already met that special someone and hatched a plot to run off in the coming weeks, it became apparent that her meager funds would simply not do.
No, if they were to get away from it all it would require a payout the likes of which she could never hope to receive at Arkham.
Stepping up to the shelves of laptops, tablets, and books both net and power she started to sift through machines that had what she needed and those that were all flash and next to no functionality.
A clerk, upon seeing a lovely blonde slip of a girl peruse the merchandise, approached her. “Hello, Miss. Is there anything, in particular, you may be looking for?” He asked with a smile.
Giving the young man an almost dismissive look, Harley answered him. “Tell me. Are these the fastest processors you have in stock or do I need to special order something?”
Ah good, this customer knew more than the average porn enthusiast or connoisseur of pictures of kittens in rain boots. “No, these floor models would not have the highest-end specs we offer. May I ask what your system needs may be?”
Harley wasted no time in listing the needs her plans would garner. “Graphics and real-time simulation rendering, program coding, and satellite interfacing for deep wilderness fieldwork.” A thought struck her. “Oh, I’ll also need to hook the machine up to various types of lab equipment to tests ongoing biochemistry experiments.”
The store employee looked at her stunned. “Okay, you definitely want one of the higher-end models.” He said as he led her over to a nearby display. “These have the latest processors available, the most RAM we carry, and high-end graphics cards that take the strain off the CPU and make the images on screen really pop. They also come with all the different types of ports you’ll most likely come across and we sell kits with a small satellite uplink dish that works with just about every system we sell. Do you think you’ll need a high-end wifi adapter as well?”
The psychiatrist thought it over. “Maybe but it’s not a top priority if it conflicts with the rest of the system specs.”
He smiled again at her approach to his questions. “Okay, then you’ll definitely want one of these three units. It really comes down to screen size and form factor.”
Glancing over the three he pointed out she dismissed the giant of the group and skipped right over the smallest to rest her eyes on the middle one with a fifteen-inch screen and slightly curved edges. “Does this one come in green?”
“Actually you’re in luck.” The boy replied. “We just got a shipment in with full-color options and the highest specs.”
“Good,” Harley said. “Now tell me about your external storage drives.”
Some fifteen minutes later Harley had the satellite kit, a one terabyte drive the size of her palm, a small stack of software discs that would get her work off to a good start, and her lovely new green laptop. She had even been able to pick a shade that matched Ivy’s perfect eyes. The clerk rang up the total and she sighed as it came out to just about all of her nest egg.
“So, I was wondering if I could get your info.” The young man said with a nervous edge. “My roommate is throwing a party this weekend and I’d love for you to stop by, Miss?”
“Dr. Quinzel,” Harley responded coolly. “And unfortunately for your friend’s party, I am very happily married. Besides, my wife is the jealous type.” She said with a smile as she gathered her purchases and left the salesman in a stunned daze.
Depositing her bags in the trunk, Harley quickly drove back to the third story walk-up apartment the size of a shoebox that she used to call home. Home now had a new meaning in her soul, and that definition was Ivy.
Wasting no time in setting up her new purchase, Harley quickly wiped the laptops drive clean and rebooted the BIOS to calibrate the preferences she had grown fond of centuries ago. Once that initial configuration was done she set about installing the new operating system and programs she purchased.
Leaving the several hours long loading process for the morning and possibly next workday Harley readied herself for bed. Once tucked in she quickly fell asleep to images of Ivy dancing through her mind.
Morning came to Gotham City and its infamous asylum. One woman was up and awaiting the sunrise with bated breathe. The verdant young lass had positioned herself so that as the beam of sunlight from her cell’s tiny window moved across the room she could soak up as much of it as possible.
This had become her morning routine over the past week as she worked hard to give the facilities staff the impression that she was reforming with haste. The almost twice-daily sessions with her lovely doctor surely made the effort all that much easier. Today, however, held new challenges. Harley had said her programming efforts were coming to a head. The blonde had scheduled a meeting this morning with representatives from Wayne Enterprises to show off the demo versions of the software she had toiled over in all her spare time.
The more than tidy sum she could easily demand for the cutting edge software would serve them well in their new life together. To think they could get a fresh start and entry into a new income bracket all in one step.
All these thoughts sped through Ivy’s mind as she heard the all too familiar knock and click as the door to her cell opened. A new orderly stood outside waiting for her to respond to his intrusion. “Isley, come on. You’ve been approved for yard time.”
Her eyes shot open. “What? Yard time?” This was certainly unexpected. It was obviously a trap of some sort.
“Yeah, I can’t quite believe it too. Some of the more sadistic guards are probably trying to give you just enough rope to hang yourself with.” He replied casually. “Still, it’s nice, sunny, yard time. Even our more pasty inmates like yard time and they don’t even have chlorophyll.”
So that was their game. She despised the no-win scenario tests this afternoon would no doubt prove to be. “Well, let’s get this trial by fire underway then.”
“That’s the spirit.” Her naïve escort replied with a chuckle.
Today was going to be far too interesting.
Harley sat in the lobby on one of the higher floors in the Wayne Enterprises global headquarters. She had requested a meeting with Lucius Fox days ago. The blonde had claimed to represent a new startup company that had revolutionary software he and his computer analysts would no doubt want a peek at.
Expecting the matter to take weeks to resolve itself, Harley was downright shocked to hear they had set a meeting for her within the week. What surprised her, even more, was the sight of the distinguished older gentleman of African descent who approached her.
“Ms. Quinzel, is it?” Lucius Fox himself had come to retrieve her. She really expected to be handed off by five different secretaries before she actually met the man.
“Dr. Quinzel actually.” She responded politely.
“Of course, my apologies.” The man conceded. “Please, right this way. We’re eager to see what you’ve got for us.”
Harley smiled as she followed the man down a grand hallway to a large and ornate doorway. So far so good she thought. The blonde psychiatrist was stunned into silence when the doors opened and the man himself stood before her. “Ah, Dr. Quinzel, so good to meet you.” Bruce Wayne said in a cheerful voice that Harley couldn’t help but suspect was an act.
“It is certainly a surprise and a pleasure to be meeting you as well, Mr. Wayne.” She replied with just as bright false cheer. “I had expected a meeting with only a few tech experts and perhaps Mr. Fox to make an appearance at the end.”
“Nonsense.” Wayne rebutted with a smile. “What’s the point of owning a gigantic intimidating company if you can’t meet new people by surprising them at meetings?” His grin spoke worlds about how he viewed his duties as… CEO? President? Owner? Whatever his title, his name was on the building and the checkbook. She would have to wow him as well as Fox.
“Oh, of course. One must find joy in the little things after all.” She agreed wholeheartedly. “So let me set up the display and we can begin going over the programs that will net you your next several billion dollars.” She said, going over to a podium by a large screen at the end of a long table. Harley pulled her laptop from her bag and plugged it into the adapter she noticed ran to the projector on the table.
With a bit of shock, Mr. Wayne returned to the conversation with his cheery façade. “Wonderful. I always enjoy surprises that increase my net worth by a quarter.” Lucius let out a small chuckle at this, and Harley began showing them how the handful of programs she had written would revolutionize the way they did business.
An hour later Harley had wrapped up her presentation and given both men, and a string of tech experts Lucius called in halfway through, ample time to play with the interactive demo she set up. They seemed outright baffled by the complexity of the programs. Several of the young men called in said they had never seen anything like it before. Another said the designs were a decade ahead of what they had and at least twice that ahead of the local competition. Star Labs and Lexcorp might have something close to one or two of the programs but nothing near the comprehensive suite the young psychiatrist had presented.
Mr. Wayne had sat stunned by what he was shown for most of the meeting. He had looked into the woman’s background and nothing indicated the level of programming expertise that had befuddled his smartest analysts.
“Dr. Quinzel, forgive me but this all seems too good to be true. Why are you coming to me with this now?” Bruce asked hoping he hadn’t overplayed his hand.
“Money,” Harley replied flatly. “I’m getting married soon and my fiancé and I both want a fresh start and a new life together. The best versions of that new life that I could imagine all started with twenty million of your dollars.”
Bruce Wayne sat there, eyes wide. Lucius gasped at the number but appreciated the tremendous leap forward this software could provide the company and indeed all of Gotham.
Several of the tech experts still in the room began muttering amongst themselves animatedly. The most senior of them finally spoke up. “Boss, it’s a great deal. She is low balling the value of what she’s offering us.” He paused. “Dr. Quinzel could probably get two or three times that amount from Lexcorp.”
That simple statement of fact almost made poor Lucius fall out of his chair. Bruce simply frowned at the revelation. Soft laughter cut through the silence in the conference room at the top of Wayne Enterprises’ power structure. As it grew louder the young woman it emanated from began to cry and almost doubled over.
“Oh, owe, wow that was a good one. I needed that after the week I’ve had.” Harley said as the chuckles subsided. “Right, like I’m dumb enough to give that snake Luthor an opportunity to stick a knife in my back. No thank you. I’d much rather take your cash and not have to look over my shoulder in broad daylight.” The blonde paused as that statement knocked loose part of a memory she felt was imperative to the situation at hand.
Bruce Wayne noticed the odd wording and the immediate pause. Something was going on here and the only way to figure it out was to play along. “Sounds like we have a deal. I’m wondering, Dr. Quinzel, in the future, once you’ve settled into your new life of course, would you care to bring any other product you may have to sell to our attention?”
“Oh, Mr. Wayne, there are so many products I could sell you down the road,” Harley said with a smile. “But letting the cat out of the bag now would be telling.”
At that odd tease, Bruce let out a small chuckle. It struck the blonde as the first genuine glimpse behind his businessman façade she had seen all day, and yet another stray memory fought to fall into place.
The billionaire signaled for Lucius to begin a wire transfer for the amount the psychiatrist specified and the psychiatrist pulled out a case with a stack of discs, and a slip of paper. “The account number for the transfer in written here.” She said as she pulled up her account balance with her own laptop. Upon seeing the obscene amount of money in the offshore account she just set up the night before a sigh escaped her lips. “The password to unlock the full programs on those discs is ‘green eyed girl’.”
As she began to pack up her equipment she smiled at her new business associates. “This has been a genuine pleasure, gentlemen. Sometime after my honeymoon, I may give you another call.” A smirk crossed her lips. “Though I expect if you do the right thing and cripple Luthor with the new edge I just sold you the resulting increase in your stock may make my asking price go up.”
With that ominous statement, Harley Quinn waltzed out of Wayne Enterprises headquarters. As the tech boys went about unlocking and backing up the new programs Bruce and Lucius shared a concerned look.
“I want those programs gone over with a fine-tooth comb before they are added to our network.” The vigilante said to his coconspirator.
“Of course,” Lucius said. “Where do you think a psychiatrist at Arkham with no programming history dug up the skills to write software that baffled the sharpest minds in my tech department?”
“I don’t know.” Bruce replied in the deeper voice he used for his “nightlife.” “But I’m going to find out. If this is some trick by one of her patients I may need to do something about this ‘fiancé’ of hers.”
Having found herself a nice sunny corner of the yard, Poison Ivy sat down to take in her surroundings. There was only sparse vegetation in the area, but some was better than none, she thought while focusing on her connection to the plants around her.
The day so far had been only mildly eventful. The only person to approach her was a patient with a shiny new shiv. What Zsasz was doing out of solitary was anyone’s guess, but all Ivy had to do to rectify the situation was hit him with a burst of pheromones and order him to go wave the sharp implement in his hands around the yard where all the orderlies could see him. After putting up no struggle to keep the ugly improvised blade, the serial killer was taken back to the maximum-security cell block where they kept the Joker and all the truly monstrous nuts.
A few orderlies looked at her for all of a second but the higher-ups told them to get back to guarding the sickos and leave the plant bitch alone.
Oh, the indignities Ivy had to shoulder to be free. It would soon all be worth it.
Last edited by Citanul on Mon Jul 13, 2020 8:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.
cool update. I like how willow's trying to remember things Xander had told her about Comics. It's gonna take me a bit to get used to willow and tara's hair and eye color being reversed. lol I guess I'm a bit weird. Please don't take that as a criticism of your story, it's not. I absolutely love this story. But like I said before, it helps and is more important that they still have their personalities. I really don't like fics where they look like themselves, but don't have their personalities and quirks.
Can't wait for the next update!
Mysticrain thanks again for the encouragement. One of the funny/disturbing things about comics is no woman in the real world has the one body type all women in comics have. Scarlett Johansson is on the high end of gorgeous but she doesn't have Natasha Romanoff's bust and wait line. No one does. As a result one of the things I've been trying to convey is that they still look pretty much like Willow and Tara.
For instance I've been trying to describe Wanda as Alyson Hannigan in a red corset and Carol as Amber Benson only blonder and with more muscle tone. Likewise Harley is Willow with blonde hair and Ivy is redheaded Tara in green face.
She-Hulk looks like She-Hulk but when she stops looking like She-Hulk she looks like Sarah Michell Gellar. Likewise for the Xander and Anya stand-ins.
At least that's the way I've been picturing it in my head. Most of the other Avengers characters can easily be assumed to look like they did in the movie. You know, because Joss Whedon directed the third highest grossing movie of all time.
Well you've done a good job of conveying what's in your head, because that's how I'm picturing it too.
Also, I know pretty much nothing about the avengers. If it's possible, could you post a list of their names, both in and out of costume please? I mean like she hawk is Jennifer, and so forth.
Mysticrain that 's a great idea. I'm getting most of this from the Joss Whedon movie and a few cartoons. I had several wiki pages open while writing the first Marvels chapter.
Characters I'm playing around with the most.
Wanda Maximoff: Scarlet Witch = Willow
Carol Danvers: Ms. Marvel = Tara
Jennifer Walters: She-Hulk = Buffy when she isn't 7 feet tall and green.
Jessica Drew: Spider-Woman = Anya with long black hair. The first of 4 or 5 different Spider-Women. I won't be going into detail on the others as the main Spider-Woman wiki page gave me a headache.
Pietro Maximoff: Quicksilver = Xander with white hair.
Characters from the movies that seemed worth adding for periodic appearances.
Steve Rogers: Captain America #Murica!
Tony Stark: Iron Man
Bruce Banner: Hulk
Thor: Thor! There is no time after Act 4 of Thor 1 where he is less Thor.
Natasha Romanoff: Black Widow
Clint Barton: Hawkeye
Sam Wilson: Falcon I really liked his debut in Captain America 2
James Rupert "Rhodey" Rhodes: War Machine
Characters mentioned and added to round out ever changing teams.
Barbara "Bobbi" Morse: Mockingbird. Think of a blonde, less Russian version of Black Widow. She's also the lantern I'll hang whenever I need to explain why Clint isn't there. Oh wait. Should I not have mentioned that?
Hank Pym: Yellowjacket. Was the first Ant-Man but I liked the idea that the current Ant-Man is a thief who hangs out with Iron Fist and Luke Cage. His wiki page also induces headaches.
Blue Hank: Hank McCoy = Beast. Yes he's from the X-men but he also shows up in Avengers books often.
T’Challa: Black Panther. He's the king of Wakanda.
T’Challa’s new wife: Ororo Munroe = Storm
And a guy from her and Blue Hank’s other team: I won't say who now but he'll come in soon and he's connected to an as yet unmentioned character who will show up soon.
As yet unmentioned character who will show up soon: Now we're just getting into spoiler territory but they'll be a stand-in for a Buffyverse character.
Skinwalker: Raven Darkhölme = Mystique
Skinwalker's pet leech: Rogue
Let's be clear. Only a fraction of these characters will pop up in any given entry.
A guy who puts out a lot of net videos did an in depth study of Ms.Marvel awhile back. They may be worth a look.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/ ... ake-Part-1
He did one on She-Hulk as well.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/ ... lk-Shaming
So, this has the potential to be interesting.
I don't know if it's just me, but i keep seeing Batman as Xander
So who's Buffy in this one?
Is Faith there too?
Also, i've noticed with the hair colour swap, how hard it is for me to keep them straight in my head (so to speak) when i don't have 'the red-head' and 'the blonde' comments to help me out.
Time to hone my reading skills.
Anyway, i look forward to more.
awesome! Thank you. This'll help a lot. Also thanks for providing the links. You've gone above and beyond. It's appreciated.
Azirahael you asked several great questions. Unfortunately some of the answers count as spoilers. Not everyone from the Buffyverse will show up in each story and those who do may have drastically varying roles from one world to the next. Rest assured that when they do pop up you'll be able to tell who is who.
As to the hair color swap I agree it can be disorienting. Moving forward I'm sure I'll use the other descriptors for the pair like 'Hacker' or just constantly reference the fact that Tara is spending that life in "Green Face."
With that addressed here's the next Chapter.
Author’s Note: We have come to the Incan Mummy Girl episode. Though I suspect many of you will soon notice I diverged from that plot line quickly.
Chapter 4: L.A.
Professor Gerhardt stood in the exhibit hall of the Sunnydale Natural History Museum. Bringing the now famous Incan Mummy Princess to the small California town had proven to be the attention-grabbing milestone her career at U.C. Sunnydale needed. Her star at the small university was rising and the success of this tour would surly take her places that made the last few years worth of strife well worth it.
Looking to the dais where the mummy and her sarcophagus currently resided, the professor was surprised to see two young women standing over the mummy. The local high schools wouldn’t be taking field trips to her exhibit for another week. As Gerhardt approached the girls with red and honey blonde hair she thought she distinctly heard chanting in an obscure ancient language. Maybe Sumerian. She had never taken to the linguistics aspect of her profession. The chanting stopped the moment she took the first step up the dais to join the pair of girls.
The blonde turned to her companion and addressed her just loud enough for the professor to hear clearly. “Isn’t this such a great exhibit, Sweetie? I’ve learned so much, but something seems off about this layout.”
“I know what you mean, Baby.” The redhead said. “I’m trying to figure out what it, oh wait! I figured it out. They’ve gone to all this trouble to display the mummy for all to see, and they did a lovely job, but for some reason, they didn’t put in a plexiglass cover just in case anyone clumsy trips and falls into the exhibit.” She finished with a series of frantic hand gestures.
“Oh, I see what you mean.” The blonde replied with a smile. “That intricately designed plate looks especially fragile. Why, if some high school student on a field trip were to break it I wouldn’t want to be in the shoes of the woman who set this whole thing up.”
As the duo finished their inspection of the mummy and departed, Professor Gerhardt couldn’t hold back her shock. Two children had just taken one look at the highlight of her career and pointed out the one detail she forgot that could have almost ended her career.
Without a moment to spare, she found a gang of museum workers and had them bring out a display case glass for the sarcophagus. Within the hour it was affixed to the stone coffin and her career safety was assured. She owed someone a great favor for looking out for her.
As Tara and Willow left the museum they took one look at each other and laughed. “Sweetie, you make a wonderful actress.” Tara beamed.
“Not half as good as you, Baby.” Willow rebutted. “Now that Rodney and Xander are safe from the Ancient Incan Succu-Bitch we should get ready to move ahead with our plans. Fallback site B isn’t going to set up itself.”
Tara grinned wildly at her girl. “I love when you talk shop, you cool monster fighter you.”
“Just wait till I get you home and go over logistics and protracted operational support in my underwear.” The redhead whispered as she smirked and mischievously waggled her eyebrows.
Tara couldn’t hold back the lust in her eyes as she pulled Willow into a deep sensual kiss. The next phase of their plans was off to a wonderful start.
Charles Gunn stood before the entrance to Jenoff’s casino. His sister had talked him out of coming here for two years. Not anymore. He needed this to keep his people safe. To keep moving forward with the mission. To keep the vamps from wiping them out. So here he was. About to walk freely into a demon’s casino and bargain away the future he didn’t have. Taking one last breath Gunn reached for the door handle and entered the demon’s den. What he saw shook him to his core.
The bodies of demons were strewn about the place haphazardly. Humans huddled in fear beneath the more sturdy looking roulette and poker tables. A giant wheel of fortune style disc had come off its stand and was rolling across the main floor of the casino.
Off to one side, a vampire was locked in a struggle with three muscle bound demons from the casino’s security staff. The young gang member noticed a white guy about his own age and an older man with glasses were squaring off against one of the tusked security demons.
Even more strange was the fact that the vast majority of demons were being dispatched by one girl. A petite blonde who moved with a grace and ferocity the young man had never seen before. She was surrounded by demons on all sides both living and dead, and she was more than holding her own. Her longsword danced through the air with a whisper and cleaved through demons with ease.
Perhaps the oddest thing he saw, and indeed had ever seen, was in the center of the room. Jenoff, the demonic proprietor of this casino was suspended in the air as if an invisible hand was lifting him, by the throat, eight feet off the ground. Beneath him stood two women who looked to be the same age as the blonde warrior and the other young man in the room. A honey blonde with more curves than the warrior woman, and a slim redhead who had a finger waving back and forth at the suspended demon with an almost malicious grin on her face.
“Now, Jenoff. I wouldn’t normally drag this out but your refusal to cooperate is ticking me off.” The redhead mocked the choking demon. “For using the Akashic Records to further such base and vile purposes you are going to die. If you tell me what I want, it’ll be quick.”
“You’ll get nothing from me, witch.” The choking demon let out with a gasp.
“Now see, you think because you can regenerate you can live through just about anything, and normally that may be the case.” The thin redhead waved another hand as she walked in a slow circle around her floating victim. As the hand came up one of Jenoff’s arms twisted at a ninety-degree angle in a way that shouldn’t have been possible. The snapping sound from the bones in his forearm proved it was at the very least unwise.
“Damn,” Gunn whispered, causing the blonde and redhead to look across the room at him.
“Looks like time is up, Sweetie.” The blonde said with a sigh.
“I know, Baby.” The redhead said to her companion. “Looks like you got off lucky, Jenoff. Now that the guest of honor has arrived we no longer need your assistance. I’ll be sure to put your ill-gotten gains to good use.” With a slight grin, both women in the center of the room started up a slow chant. As their voices rose flames consumed the body of the suspended demon. Jenoff the soul sucker screamed in agony and was no more.
With the immolation of their employer, the rest of the demons present, and many humans, made a mad dash for the exits. Before Gunn could join them a firm hand was placed on his shoulder. Turning he saw the old man in tweed and glasses and the young guy with dark hair standing at his sides.
“Stick around for this next bit.” The young man said with a grin. “From what Willow said about your group’s situation I’m sure it will be worth your time.”
The warrior and the vampire came up to the three men with smiles. “Is this the guy Will and Tara said needed a hand?” The petite blonde asked with cheer. “I was so not looking forward to looking through every rundown warehouse and factory in L.A. trying to find the one group who can put up a fight against the undead.”
“Yes, Buffy. This is the guy.” The redhead said as she and the honey blonde strolled hand in hand across the carnage. “You’re Charles Gunn right.” She said more than asked.
“If I answer wrong are you gonna set my ass on fire, or just feed me to the vamp over there?” He rebutted with a scowl.
“Yup, this is him.” Willow sighed. “Listen, Gunn. We’re going to help you. Believe it or not, we are all in the same business.” As the scowl deepened she added. “We’re just a little better equipped than your gang is right now but that can change.”
As that statement sunk in his demeanor changed. Gunn had come here willing to bargain away his soul for a weapon. Could this group really be much worse than a soul-sucking demon?
At that moment the blonde holding the redhead’s hand spoke up. “Um, g-guys sh-shouldn’t we get what we came here for before anyone reports anything?”
Willow’s smile brightened. “Tara is right. Angel, search Jenoff’s office for safes. Buffy, Tara, and I will try to look for anything magic he might have been storing souls in. Guys look for any computers or artifacts we don’t want to just leave here for some baddie to find. Gunn if you wouldn’t mind helping please look around for a cart or something. We have to empty the contents of the casino’s vault or money room and fewer trips would be great.”
With that, the group dispersed. Gunn looked around confused for a moment but went to the employee service areas to find something that fit the redhead’s bill. He found an empty food serving table in the kitchens and began wheeling it out to the area he had seen the girls head towards.
As he turned the corner to enter what had to be the casino’s main offices and pit boss command center, Gunn heard a loud squeal of delight. “Found it! Buffy, smash that crystal orb.” Willow called out.
Gunn watched as the petite blonde went up to the ornate object, turned to her friends, and yelled. “Buffy smash!” Her arm whipped out and the magic doodad went flying and shattered as it hit the far wall. Once it lay in shards, wisps of multicolored mist poured out and up, disappearing into the ceiling. As the last wisp of soul energy seeped out the shards turned to dust.
The warrior Gunn had marveled at turned towards her friends and cocked her head to the side in a confused fashion. “Buffy smash good?” She asked while holding back a grin.
“Yes, you big goof,” Willow replied with an exasperated sigh as Tara giggled. “Buffy smash real good.”
“Great! What’s next on the agenda?” The Slayer inquired.
“We load up all the cash and every bit of precious in this hole and head back to Gunn’s place,” Willow said in a matter of fact tone.
“Once we explain ourselves to his t-team we take them with us to kill the demon nesting in the abandoned h-hotel and make them our offer.” Tara elaborated.
“Good to know,” Buffy replied. Glancing up to see Gunn standing by the entrance staring at them she smiled. “Will that be enough information about us to get an introduction to your crew or do you still have doubts?” She asked the young man.
“So long as you don’t bring the cops or demons down on our heads we’re cool,” Gunn said while still expecting the other shoe to drop.
“Bad news, Willster, no computers but we did find a ledger,” Xander said as he walked up behind the L.A. native.
“No problem,” Willow assured. “Let’s clean out the money room and clear out before any more guests drop in.” She and Tara moved towards a large door at the rear of the control room and began to chant. As the spell came to an end the door handles began to smoke. They popped off, falling to the floor with a clang. The door opened to reveal shelves filled with bundles of bills and a table in the center of the small room covered in gems. “Jackpot! Guys, start filling up Duffle bags. Baby, make sure none of those gems are cursed or filled with trolls. I’ll go check on Angel.”
“How often do you guys find fancy rocks with trolls inside?” Gunn asked, genuinely surprised.
“Not often,” Tara replied. “But it happens enough to check beforehand.”
As the redheaded witch breezed by the confused young man she stopped and turned to face him. “Gunn, don’t worry. At least half of this is going to your crew when they agree to our offer.” She smiled and went on to the owner’s office leaving behind the befuddled young man.
“Hey, Chuck. Come help me load up that cart you brought with those big plastic wrapped money cubes along the back wall.” Xander said with another grin. “This may not be the hills but we shouldn’t push our luck.”
Snapping back into action, Gunn wheeled the cart to the back shelves and went to work.
Willow walked into the main office and up to the brooding vampire who held an ear up to a wall safe set behind a portrait of dogs playing poker. “What’s the what, Angel?”
“Almost,” The vampire replied while straining his hearing as a click sounded through the room. “There!” He said, opening the door to reveal the contents of the safe. The bottom half held more than a few gold bricks while the top contained some stacks of large bills and a scepter-like object.
“Whoa there, big guy,” Willow said as the strange rod came into view. “Back away slowly.” She whispered. Reaching out with her senses the young witch immediately identified the object as some sort of energy focusing tool.
The problem was it had been used by a soul sucker for so long that it was of no use to them. Angel marveled at the young girl he had only known for about a year. She held up one hand and began another chant the vampire recognized as Gaelic. As light swirled around her the scepter turned to dust before his eyes.
“Wow, Willow. That is some serious power you’ve built up.” The vampire with a soul whistled. “At first I couldn’t believe what Buffy was telling me about you and Tara, but seeing it up close I gotta say I’m impressed.” He grew circumspect. “And you said it wasn’t dark magic or some kind of possession?”
“No, Angel. The darkest magic I would willingly cast is the Romani curse used to ensoul vamps.” She winked as the vampire suffering that very curse flinched. “As to possession, I’m filled with the memories and spirits of countless alternate versions of me from other dimensions. So yes. I am very much possessed by myself if that counts. Plus I know stuff I shouldn’t. Like Penn, Drusilla, Spike, and Sam Lawson”
Angel was stunned that the Slayer’s mousy redheaded friend knew that list of names from throughout his past. “Sounds like a long story you’re tired of telling.” A thought struck the man. “So I can assume we’ve had this conversation before?”
“Word for word,” Willow said cheerily as she loaded cash into a bag. “The good news is you always catch on quick and drop it.”
“I can’t imagine,” Angel said with a grin. The vampire quickly went about loading the heavy gold into a tough canvas sack he then slung over his shoulder. “So that kid and his homeless friends really fight any vampires that hit their neighborhood?”
“Yup,” Willow answered. “They’ll make a pretty good fighting force with a little training and the proper guidance.” She remarked as they left the office and returned to their friends in the now empty money room.
“Good news!” Xander called out as the red witch and the soul cursed vampire entered the room. “No trolls and a backpack full of precious gemstones. How’d things go in the office?”
“Cursed wand in the wall safe,” Willow responded cheerily. “Broke it with a Celtic chant and filled our backpack with solid gold bars.”
Angel held the bag he carried open for all to see. Buffy and the two boys had never seen an actual gold brick before. Giles had seen some once from a distance while on a council mission. Needless to say, the many one kilogram bars were a sight to behold.
“Will?” Buffy ventured. “How much is that worth?”
“Hmm.” The redhead thought for a moment. “Let’s see, each bar is one kilogram. One kilogram is worth about forty-two thousand and eight hundred. There are fifty Kilograms in the bag Angel is holding, just over one hundred and ten pounds. So around two point one four million. Give or take market fluctuations.”
“So, a lot then?” Xander quipped.
“Sweetie, you know how much I love your math talk, but we really should be going.” Tara chimed in.
“Right, no time to lose.” The redhead snapped to action. “Everything's loaded?” Buffy and Giles gave nods of affirmation. “Good. Let’s hit the road.”
The group exited the now thoroughly looted building still filled with dead demons. They all climbed into the large cargo van Gunn had helped load down with the booty. As they pulled away from the casino and towards a main road Gunn took a moment to study this new group that had so completely changed the outcome of his night. These were certainly the strangest white people he had ever come across.
Alonna was worried sick. Her brother had gone off to some demon run cesspit to literally make a deal with the devil. She had tried to argue him out of it for so long and tonight was apparently the night the well ran dry. He was gone and she had no idea if he was ever coming back.
Heading up to the street level door of their newest hideout she passed by Jason and Poe on the way in with freshly stolen goods. They wouldn’t last the night but every little bit helped.
As she neared the exit she saw Chain and Rondell arguing over what to do next. Things were looking bad without Charles to give them clear leadership. “What are you two fighting about now?” Alonna asked them in a far too chipper tone.
“We’re not fighting,” Rondell protested. “We just think he should have been back by now.”
“He said he was getting wheels,” Chain added. “What kind of wheels are worth going to all this trouble for if they can’t move fast enough for him to be back by now?”
“No wheels are worth what he’s going to give up,” Alonna said firmly. “But there’s no talking him out of it.”
As she was about to head back inside a huge bus pulled up right in front of them. The doors opened and her brother stepped out and came face to face with the trio who had worried over his whereabouts.
“Sup y’all,” He said with a smile.
“Don’t you “sup y’all” me,” Alonna practically shouted. “Where have you been and what the hell is that thing supposed to do for us?”
“Easy, girl.” Her brother protested. “I went to Jenoff’s but things there were going a little differently than what I had planned.”
As he was trying to ease his sister’s nerves Alonna couldn’t help but notice the three white girls standing behind him. “Charles! What the hell? You sold your soul to a demon for a tour bus and three white women?” She shouted.
At this outburst, all three girls behind Gunn just about doubled over with laughter. “Oh, Goddess, that’s funny.” The redhead wheezed into the hair of the taller blonde who was in tears.
“He wishes we were on the menu at that ratty casino.” The shorter of the two blondes said between chuckles. “Seriously though we have a demon to kill. Round up your crew, Gunn. Get everyone to pack their things and load into the bus. You won’t be coming back to this rats’ nest once we clear out your new headquarters.”
Both Rondell and Chain had matching looks of complete confusion on their faces. “What the hell is she talking about, Gunn?” Rondell said.
“What demon?” Chain added.
Gunn had a slight smile. He couldn’t wait to share the new plan with his people. “Just do what the lady said. The long version comes after kicking some demon ass, short version is we’ve now got corporate sponsorship.”
Once the thirty or so homeless kids had their few meager possessions packed onto the Greyhound and were seated Alonna took note of the old man sitting in the driver’s seat. He had glasses, a tweed blazer and while he didn’t act like some rich snob he did have an accent and an air of authority that set him apart from the young people who had shown up with Charles. The three girls were in deep conversation at the front of the bus and her brother seemed to be in on the party. ‘Just what is going on?’ She thought.
Turning towards his crew Gunn and the smaller blonde stood up. “Okay listen up people,” He said. “This is Buffy. She’s calling the shots on this op.”
“Gunn, what the hell?” Chain protested. “Who are these people?”
“I’m Buffy Summers.” The blonde spoke up. “And I’m the Slayer.”
As Buffy gave the young crowd the standard explanation for what being a Slayer entailed Giles started up the bus and drove towards the hotel where they had left Xander, Angel, and the van full of money.
This gave Willow and Tara the opportunity to prepare the spells that would soon need casting to face the paranoia demon. The connection between the two young lovers had never been stronger. Yet this fight would be the most taxing series of spells they had done yet. If not for the assistance of the rest of the Scooby gang they would never have approached a Thesulac in this way.
The fact remained, however. They had something to prove. This street gang needed to see the forces they would be facing beyond simple vampire nests. They needed to be shown what truly terrifying power looked like. How else would they understand the gravity of the proposal Willow and Tara would put before them?
As Giles pulled the bus up in front of the old abandoned Hyperion Hotel the girls came out of the focusing trance they had been in the entire trip. Buffy and Gunn got the crew off the bus and made sure everyone knew their roles in the coming fight. What they left out was the fact most of those roles were that of spectator. Buffy, Willow, Tara, and to a lesser extent Angel would be doing the heavy lifting. Xander, Giles, and Gunn would be by the rest of the onlooking crew to ensure the demon was penned in. Yes, they were in for a show this night.
As the large fighting force entered the old hotel many of them could hear whispers in the dark. Giles called them to attention. “Ignore the voices. It’s just the demon trying to break us before we even face it.”
"Aradia, Goddess of the lost, the path is murky, the woods are dense, darkness pervades, I beseech thee, bring the light,” Willow chanted. “Fiat Lux!”
Light filled the dark hotel lobby and allowed the teams to move into position. The Thesulac’s whispers grew more fervent but to no avail. The Scoobies were a trained team by this point, and even the weakest of Gunn’s crew was used to facing down more than their share of horrors.
Giles spread the bag of prepared powders across the area they wanted the demon to manifest in and as one the witches began their chant.
“We call thee forth, Thesulac of the Netherworld. We command you, leave our minds, and join us on this the physical plane.” Raising the Orb of Ramjarin, Tara and Willow continued. “We invoke thee by the power of the orb of priests of Ramjarin. What was once in our thoughts, be now in our midst.”
As the light in the orb grew to a blinding crescendo the air in the middle of the lobby thickened into shifting veils of light. As the deepest veil grew brighter and began to break through to the surface a scream could be heard throughout the chamber.
The sound of thunder and screams echoed as the last veil shattered. There before the assembled demon hunters was the Thesulac demon fully manifested in the physical world.
“I don’t remember ordering takeout, but I like what ya brung me. Not as delectable as the last one perhaps, but full of tasty paranoia just the same.” Looking around the demon took in the sight of all the delicious humans in his feeding grounds. “The large numbers especially make up for the slim pikin’s on a few of ‘em.”
Angel stepped forth. “You had your last meal here a long time ago. You should have gotten out when you had the chance.”
“Got out?” The demon scoffed. “Now why would I want to do that when the room service in this hotel is still excellent? Has been for fifty years.” A confused look came over Angel’s face as the demon leaned in close to gloat. “Paranoia here is like fine wine.”
“It gets better with age.” The vampire finished. “You’re still feeding.”
“Gunn!” Buffy called.
Raising his crossbow Gunn called out to his crew. “Fire!”
No less than fifteen crossbow bolts and arrows found themselves lodged in the towering demon. Half his tentacles were pinned to different surfaces around the Thesulac. Buffy flew into the fray. Her blade connecting with the demon’s body with frightening precision.
As Angel closed the distance to aid the Slayer, Tara and Willow began another chant. “Thespia, we call upon thee. Bind our foe. Thicken!”
The movements of the demon slowed to less than a crawl. Buffy took the opening to bury her sword in its chest. The blade went in all the way to the hilt as she and Angel drew back from the fight.
Still moving the demon looked like it was readying another go. That is until the witches ended their last chant of the battle.
Willow and Tara raised the hands that had been connected the entire time. As their outstretched arms pointed at the demon they shouted out in unison. “Lords of the sky and upper realms hear our plea. Strike!”
A pillar of light encircled both women as a beam of lightning arced out from their joined hands and consumed the hideous fiend. His screams pounded in the ears of those present as his form was engulfed in light and destroyed.
Nothing was left of the Thesulac as the light faded and the two witches slumped to the floor back to back. Angel began his lonely walk up the stairs.
“Where’s he going?” Xander asked.
“He h-has to say goodbye. T-tell that poor woman she can rest now.” Tara breathed out.
“Giles, the after-party,” Willow whispered to her mentor.
“Yes, dear girl,” He replied as he took his phone out and made the call.
Twenty minutes later thirty large pizzas had been delivered and everyone was enjoying themselves heartily. Alonna and Buffy seemed to be in deep conversation, and Gunn had introduced Xander to just about all of his people. The mere mortals of the ever-expanding group were sharing favorite dust stories. A Coroner had come by and taken the body of Judy Kovacs from room 214. Angel had written up a goodbye note for the old woman so they wouldn’t file her as a Jane Doe and Giles gave them instructions to follow so that Willow could pay for her service.
“It always helps to have an adult on hand to talk to the cops or doctors when things turn out screwy,” Buffy told Alonna. “Of course being able to run away really fast helps too.”
Alonna couldn’t help but laugh. “Says the girl with superpowers.” As her laughter subsided she looked over at Willow and Tara. “So have they always been that powerful?”
Buffy sighed at the change in topic. “Since the day they met. I’ve known Will for over a year now, but Tara only joined our group in the last few weeks.” Looking back at the young African American girl, Buffy smiled. “Ever since the moment they met their powers have grown, while they blossomed. Seeing them so in love gives me hope. You know?”
“I get that,” Alonna replied.
As the conversations in the room began to taper off Tara and Willow rose and walked to the center of the room. Clasping hands they intoned in unison. “Goddess, we invoke your will. Cleanse this place and allow it to heal.” Light flowed around them and suddenly everyone in the building could feel the air lighten. An evil presence had been cleansed from the place they had won.
The duo walked back over to the center of the room and sat down wearily on the circular couch. “Okay there’s only one more spell to cast but it’s a doozy and we’ll have to prep for it.” The redhead said to the assembled demon hunters.
“If e-everyone could gather round, there are some things w-we need to discuss,” Tara announced as she and Willow clung to each other.
As the crew of young homeless teens gathered around the two witches they all grew quiet. No one was sure about what was going to happen next. Alonna had felt a connection to the Slayer right away, but that didn’t help ease the sense that they were planning something.
“So,” Willow began slowly. “I bet you’re all wondering what’s going on. Well, we have an offer to make you all. Earlier tonight we killed Jenoff and ransacked his casino. That’s where we met Gunn. We then looted the place and now there is a van in this building’s parking structure with a few million dollars in it. Some of that is going to all of you.”
As the group of disenfranchised youth stood there shocked, Giles pulled out a file and some papers. He then crossed over to the Gunn siblings and handed them a pen.
“Charles, Alonna, if you would be so kind, please sign here,” He asked in his polite British accent.
The brother and sister looked at each other then Gunn took the pen and signed his name. Alonna followed right behind with her signature.
“Good,” Willow said. “As of midnight tonight Tara and I are the legal owners of the Hyperion Hotel. This place belongs to us. That form you just signed makes the two of you co-owners. As soon as it’s filed with our realtor the four of us officially own this hotel.”
Gunn was shocked. Alonna was just as surprised but still waited for the other shoe to drop.
“Your group could one day be a great force for good,” Tara told them. “But there are some things you’re going to need to learn.”
“Our group operates out of Sunnydale,” Willow went on. “It is the hellmouth. That means it has less than a twentieth of the population of L.A. and five times as many vamps and demons. Thus we have the Slayer stationed there.” She gestured to Buffy who waved at the assembled teens. “We just got the finances to fund a wide scale anti demon offensive but we don’t have the manpower to patrol a second city, especially one this size. You have manpower but no finances. That pizza party may have been the first full meal some of you have had in a while.” She paused to let them all understand she was aware of their situation.
“This hotel is now your base of operations,” Willow said. “Buffy please remove your shirt.”
This statement stunned the entire group who looked back and forth between the witch and the Slayer. Buffy complied easily but put on a good show of being put out. “Okay if you say so, Will, but just this once. Don’t want to show off too much of the goods.”
Shock turned to puzzlement as the Slayer removed her shirt and revealed a second covering beneath it. She wore what looked like a full-body wet suit covered in plates and ridges. Denser plated sections protected vital parts of the young woman’s anatomy.
“That,” Willow told the now curious crew. “Is state-of-the-art body armor. It’s a series of polymer plates over a Kevlar weave. Designed light enough to conceal under her normal clothes. Yet strong enough to stop most small arms fire, knives, the average demon claw, and many other things. It costs around three hundred thousand dollars, and each of us is wearing one.”
“We’re willing to supply you with vehicles, weapons, and similar armor,” Tara said as her mate’s statement was met with blank and confused stares. “Also food, medical supplies, and just about everything you need to live here comfortably.”
Something finally sparked in Gunn’s mind. It was too good to be true. “What’s the catch?” He asked.
“There are some rules each of you will have to follow,” Willow said with her best resolve face. “Obviously no drugs or anything illegal that isn’t part of the mission. We can’t have petty crimes jeopardize what we’re doing. No more stealing to survive. You will each be compensated for whatever part you play in this. Whether you fight in the field or stay here and support from base. Everyone eats, gets clean clothing, and a comfortable bed.”
Smiles spread across the faces of the no longer homeless kids. Willow saw this and went on to the hard part. “Those who can, are going back to school. Those who can’t, are going to earn G.E.D.’s.” The smiles vanished from half the faces. “The only way this works is if this place counts as a youth center slash halfway home on paper. Then it becomes a huge humanitarian tax write off and we can spend as much money as we want on it without the cops wondering if you guys are going to start world war three. That means education for all. We will provide tutors and anything else you guys need but you are all learning at least a trade skill if not earning a college degree.”
“That sounds fair when you put it like that,” Alonna stated.
“There’s more,” Tara replied.
“Right,” Willow said. “Tara and I own a company. A startup tech firm that will be selling all sorts of goods to fortune-five-hundreds all over. Once you get a diploma or G.E.D. we can put you on the company’s official payroll. We’re thinking of calling it the special projects division. Anyway, once you are officially our employee you get the special retirement package. We’re going to take the majority of the money we took from Jenoff’s and invest it in a bunch of places. Once any of you have been fighting here for ten years we’ll give you a cut of the interest earned. Five million each sound good? More than enough to start fresh somewhere or bankroll dreams you guys might have.”
The smiles were back as all of Gunn’s crew couldn’t believe the offer being made.
“Lastly there are some things you’ll have to understand,” Willow said, still serious. “There are demons that make the Thesulac we just killed look like a saint. There are also demons out there, especially in a city this size, who are absolutely harmless. They are fully integrated into human society and go their whole lives without spilling a drop of human blood. Furthermore, there are demons who go out of their way to serve the forces of good. The powers that be have many such demons positioned all over this city. They serve the greater good by guarding locations and objects of power and keeping such things out of the reach of the forces of evil.” She paused to let that sink in.
“Under no circumstances are you to slay any of those demons,” Willow said in the harshest voice they had heard from her yet. “There are a few demons we’re going to contact and have you guys work with on a regular basis. They are all good men trying to do right by the world.”
Rondell chose that moment to speak up. “So what, you just expect us to trust some demon with our lives?”
“I expect you to fight evil and protect innocent lives!” Willow shot back. “Regardless of the race of the innocents in question. When a group of evil demons runs through town trying to exterminate half breeds, I expect you to save the half breeds. When some otherwise peaceful demons go crazy for no reason, I expect you to find the reason. Half the time it’s some new drug we need off the streets. When a group of evil rich humans opens an underground demon fighting ring, I expect you to shut it down and free the demons being tortured and imprisoned. When a demon shows up protecting a pregnant woman whose unborn child is some chosen one, I expect you to protect the child, the mother, and the demon.”
The L.A. residents had no clue how to respond to that. Tara took the opportunity to try a softer approach. “There are countless different types of demons. Many are unspeakably evil, but just as many are completely harmless and just trying to go about living their lives in peace. They come to towns like L.A. because they can blend in and hide from anyone who might be hunting them. They want the same things we all want.”
Willow took Tara’s hand and spoke to the group. “There are a few demons you will have to trust completely for the mission to work. One of them is a total pacifist who will never fight in the field but will provide information and guidance that I can already tell all of you severely need. Another one we have in mind is a bit stronger and more than willing to fight other demons but he’s not half the fighter Gunn is. He’s also half human and in need of friends.”
“That’s all fine,” Gunn said. “We can work with the occasional demon who knows how to behave.” He paused and looked at Angel. “Vampires are another story though.”
“Angel is a special case,” Willow said with a chuckle. “He’s cursed. About a hundred years ago he ate the wrong Romani princess. They cursed him with a human soul.”
Confusion swept through the crowd. “So he’s good then?” Alonna asked.
“No,” Willow said. “He is mopey and brooding, but as long as the curse remains intact he fights evil and tries to be a good man. Which is why he is going to be stationed here with you.”
“What!” Buffy screamed.
Angel looked up puzzled. “Willow.”
“You two follow me,” The redhead said as she got up and walked to the office behind the front desk. The Slayer and the cursed vampire followed her.
“That’s going to be a messy conversation,” Tara said. “Because of the s-specific conditions behind the curse Angel should not be with our group in Sunnydale.”
“So why don’t you dust him?” Chain challenged. “It’s not like you don’t have the power.”
A smile spread over Tara’s face. “Because he has a destiny. If we dusted him s-some power will just go and bring him right back to use as a pawn or w-weapon against us.”
Closing the door behind him, Angel turned to Buffy and Willow.
“We’re not fighting about this, Buffy.” The witch told the Slayer. “This is something you both have to do or else things turn out bad for all of us.”
“So you’re just going to force us to break up?” Buffy asked with ice in her voice.
“Buffy, if you two sleep together you’ll break the curse and Angelus goes on a killing spree,” Willow said flatly. “For the time being, you can’t be together.”
“That’s how the curse gets broken?” Angel asked.
“It’s more complicated with the whole true happiness aspect, but yes.” The redhead told her friends. “There is a chance though.”
“What chance?” Buffy said with tears in her eyes. She couldn’t believe this was happening.
“There is a prophecy,” Willow began slowly. “It mentions the vampire with a soul. That being will play a pivotal role in the apocalypse. Afterwards, he will Shanshu.”
“What does that mean?” Angel pleaded.
“It’s an old term from a dead language.” The witch replied. “It means to live and die. It means the vampire will get to live until he dies.”
“How?” Buffy didn’t understand.
“It means after a long hard journey, and many apocalypses prevented, the vampire with a soul gets to be human,” Willow told them. “If Angel stays in Sunnydale he loses his soul and that chance. Angel has to stay here and take marching orders from the powers that be. I’m sorry, Buffy, but if you truly love him you can’t be together for now. You’ll have to be apart for a time.” With that, Willow walked to the door and slipped out shutting it behind her.
“I don’t believe this,” Buffy said.
“I can’t become a killer again, Buffy,” Angel said with a mournful sigh. “What kind of future can I give you if I’m the monster you’re sworn to fight?” He looked up into hazel eyes.
“So what?” She demanded. “This is it? You’re just leaving me.”
“Maybe if I become human again I can be the man you deserve.” The vampire pleaded.
As the Slayer dealt with the shocking news, and the breakup she always knew was coming, she made a decision. She would no longer let so-called higher powers call the shots in her war. She would fight the good fight according to her will and show no mercy to any force that stood in her way or tried to pull her strings.
As Willow left the office she noticed the L.A. crew was still gathered around Tara. Walking up to the group she heard the arguing.
“So you’re leaving the vampire here as a babysitter and expecting us to work with demons?” Chain obviously had problems with this plan.
“You can’t ask us to trust monsters.” Apparently so did Rondell.
“We can and we are,” Willow said causing the entire group to turn and look at her. “This is the deal. The way you fight this war is too short-sighted, and it’ll get all of you killed. We are going to give you everything you could ever need to fight and win while keeping casualties on your end as low as possible. Your end of the bargain is getting educated and treating the peaceful demons in this world the same way you would treat peaceful humans.”
“Okay, we get that,” Gunn said while gesturing for Chain and Rondell to stand down. “The part some of us have a beef with is the you leaving us with a blood-sucking fiend part.”
Willow sighed. “I know that, but Angel has saved my life many times. He has dedicated himself to the mission. Having a fighter as strong as him with your team keeps you alive.”
“What about breaking the curse?” Alonna asked. “You seemed concerned about it breaking in Sunnydale. What if that happens here?”
Smiles crept across both witches’ faces. “It can’t happen here for the foreseeable future. The curse is very specific. He will have his human soul so he can suffer the guilt of his monstrous actions. Once he experiences a moment of perfect true happiness his soul is taken from him. The one person who could make him perfectly happy right now lives in Sunnydale. So he stays here in L.A. with you guys.”
“What if someone here makes him happy?” Gunn asked.
“Don’t worry about that. No one here is his type,” Willow reassured them. “He’s got a thing for petite blondes he can spend weeks obsessing over.”
Realization swept the L.A. crew. As if on cue they turned to see the Slayer exit the hotel office. Buffy took one look at the group and turned to walk out the door to the open courtyard. Willow went over to Xander and whispered a request in his ear. He looked at her and nodded once before heading off towards the hotel garage. Willow watched him go. Hoping this was the right thing to say she turned towards the group she wanted to help and be helped by so badly.
“I get it,” Willow stated simply. “You have trust issues. You don’t like demons and vamps. Some of you might have some issues with witches. I get it. But that doesn’t change the fact that there are demons out there who will lay down their lives to save yours. There are many out there who would never harm another living being. They need protection from the world enders and the people eaters just as badly as any human. That’s the deal. Help the helpless regardless of race. Do that, and I’ll make sure each of you retires with more than enough opportunities and resources to find happiness. All it takes on your end is doing what you’ve been doing only better equipped and with one vampire fighting at your side. A vampire that has only drained the blood of pigs and rats for the last few decades.”
As the redhead said ‘rats’ Xander strolled into the room holding a large cube wrapped in a blanket. He set it down between Gunn and Willow and went to stand at her side. The hacker reached down and removed the sheet to reveal one of the cubes from the casino containing one million dollars.
“If the deal as offered is too much to ask then take this and the bus you rode over here in and go,” Willow whispered. “We don’t need to draft anyone who doesn’t believe in our mission.”
Gunn looked at her for a long moment. “Even with the vampire here we’ll still be in charge on our end? He won’t micromanage or send half my people to their deaths?”
“You, Alonna, and Angel will be in charge of things here,” Willow said with a glimmer of hope. “The demons mentioned earlier will provide information on what major threats pop up. They have powers that help with that. Once they get a vision of evil afoot you will take action against said evil. You have experience on these streets and Angel has over two hundred years of experience that you will need to face tougher enemies.”
Gunn looked to his sister who only nodded ‘yes’ trying to tell him to take the deal. Even Rondell and Chain seemed to be satisfied with the setup the witch had just laid out. “Okay,” Charles said. “We’re in. We want to do more in this fight. The vamp might take some getting used to, but we’ll work on it.”
Willow let out a relieved sigh. “Thank the Goddess.” Looking around at the tired faces she recalled the extremely late hour. “It’s almost dawn. Why don’t we see about getting some of this place habitable? Put this cube in the office under the desk. In the morning all of you should each take a thousand or so and go buy new clothing, personal items, books, maybe a video game console or two and some games. I’ll make a call and get food, computers, and other necessities shipped in.”
Angel spoke up for the first time. “I’ll check the fuses and the boiler room. Try to get power and water running while everyone gets some sleep.” He turned and left the grand lobby.
Gunn watched him go before turning to his people. “Okay, you guys heard the lady. Pick one of the larger rooms and let’s clean it enough to be camped out in for the night.”
“I’ll pass out name tags and markers tomorrow,” Willow said. “You guys can go through and stake out the rooms you want for the long term then. Eventually, you’re gonna want all the rooms cleaned and habitable. Never know when someone you save needs a safe house for a few days.” With that, she and Tara went out to the courtyard door to check on the Slayer.
Gunn watched the two witches exit the lobby. He couldn’t believe how drastically things had changed. With what they were offering he could move his operation beyond fending off vampire attacks in one small corner of a neighborhood. They could protect most of the city.
As hope for this new turn of events bloomed in his heart two of his boys walked up behind him. “Hey, Gunn,” Joey said. “James and I were talking it over. What do you think my chances are if I asked that redhead out?”
As the words left the young man’s mouth several people in the room had immediate and drastic reactions. Xander and Giles, who were discussing something with Rondell and Chain, both stopped speaking. They turned to look at Joey for all of five seconds before bursting into fits of laughter. Alonna merely slapped her palm against her forehead and held on as her head shook slowly back and forth.
Gunn couldn’t believe anyone in his crew could be that blind. “Okay, first off, most of us can tell you’re not her type. Second, she’s taken by someone who I wouldn’t cross if I valued my manhood. Lastly, she’s now technically our boss. We got a good thing going on here so far. Don’t ruin it by thinking with your dick.”
The witches entered the courtyard and found the Slayer they both cared for pacing back and forth.
“If you guys are gonna tell me I’m also allergic to chocolate please just kill me now,” Buffy said in a guarded tone. “I don’t think I can take any more life-altering news right now.”
“Aside from Tara and shrimp, we have no food allergies to tell, Buff,” Willow assured.
“That’s funny,” Buffy chuckled. “One of the most powerful witches on the planet is allergic to shrimp. Guess I should carry an EpiPen.”
“Buffy, are y-you okay?” Tara asked. “I know the news about Angel’s curse is bad.”
“What’s wrong with me?” The Slayer asked them. “You’ve both been around enough to spot defective people so tell me what my problem is. I shouldn’t be like this. I’m the Slayer damn it! I shouldn’t feel like I’m dying just because a relationship everyone said couldn’t work ended.”
Willow felt her friend’s pain. “Buffy.”
“No!” The Slayer fired back. “Don’t Buffy me! You don’t get to spring heartbreaking news on me and act like it wasn’t some part of your master plan. Willow, you can’t wave the love of your life in front of me and then tell me I’m not allowed to have mine.”
“Angel isn’t the love of your life, Buffy,” Willow said calmly. “Near as we can tell you haven’t met them yet.”
“Then why does it feel like my world is over? I can’t breathe, Will,” Buffy said through tears.
“Oh, Buff,” The hacker said as she took the Slayer into her arms. “You just have terrible taste in men is all.”
A harsh laugh broke through the tears. “Thanks, Will. You know just how to stroke my ego. How many times are you and Tara going to breakup my relationships?”
“There are some guys we need to steer you away from in college,” Tara said.
“One of them seduces you, fucks you, then dumps you because he only cares about one night stands,” Willow told her shocked friend. “The other seems like a nice normal guy but ends up being in some dumb government program. He acts like he loves you but can’t handle the fact you’re stronger than him and he leaves, breaking your heart.”
“Am I really that bad with relationships? Do I really only date guys who will either hurt me or end up trying to kill me?” The Slayer couldn’t believe it.
“Yes,” Tara said shyly.
“And we haven’t even mentioned the post-college, hate-fucking nightmare you went through with an abusive ass,” Willow added.
“Other versions of me really went through all that?” Buffy was crying again. “Oh god, you guys must think I’m an idiot.”
“No, Buffy,” Tara affirmed. “We love you. You just need help when it comes to this one aspect of your life.”
“And the few times you actually went through the hate-fucking it’s because you were going through really messed up stuff that other people put you through,” Willow assured. “Besides, it’s not like you’re alone. Xander goes through just as bad relationships as you.”
“But not you, Willow,” Buffy rebutted in a cold voice.
“Yes, I did,” The hacker told her friend. “My first life, I went through my share of bad partners. Let’s not forget the internet demon robot. Then this school year I would have started dating a guitarist who turned out to be a werewolf. He ended up cheating on me with another wolf then left to find himself.”
“Oh, wow. That’s horrible, Will,” Buffy said.
“But then I met Tara for the first time, and after I stopped treating her like some dirty secret and came out to you guys my life was complete,” Willow said before growing withdrawn. “Then I lost her and tried to destroy the world.”
“Sweetie, that wasn’t all your fault,” Tara tried to reassure her love.
“It happened and I let it happen,” Willow said with resolute determination. “I became a monster Buffy couldn’t slay and the only reason I didn’t go through with it was Xander risking his life to talk me down.”
Buffy had no idea how to respond to that. She fought her best friend and lost. This was something they couldn’t let happen again.
“After that, I tried moving on and ended up in a few meaningless relationships with women who I either couldn’t love or weren’t worth my time,” Willow sighed.
“It couldn’t have been that bad, Wills,” Buffy tried to be reassuring even though all this was overwhelming.
“Buffy, one of those women was a thirty-foot snake with boobs from another dimension.” The hacker deadpanned.
“Oh,” The Slayer let out in a whisper. “But that won’t happen since Tara and you are all big with the knowledge and the witchy, womanly, ways of witch-fu. Right?”
A smile spread over both witches’ faces. “Right,” Willow replied. “Which is also why we are going to help you get through all of this heartbreaking life stuff. Buffy, you deserve so much more than the handful of idiots we’ve seen you with over the years. Granted Angel was the best of a lackluster lot, but you can’t risk your vagina turning him into a mass murderer again. You deserve better.”
“But one day he’ll be human, right?” Buffy asked.
“Maybe, Sweetie,” Tara said. “Maybe by th-then you both w-will have moved on. Maybe another vampire will get a s-s-soul and the prophecy isn’t about him at all.”
“Right,” Willow agreed. “The point is you can’t waste your life waiting on him to become half the man you deserve. You need to let him go and maybe one day he might turn things around or maybe you will both end up in happier more stable relationships than the one you could have if you were together.”
“You guys will help me steer clear of the assholes, right?” The Slayer asked in an almost childlike tone.
“Always.” Both women promised.
The next morning held surprises aplenty for the L.A. crew. The formerly homeless teens awoke from the room they had cleared out and stored their few meager possessions. The first surprise was a well-dressed businesswoman waiting for them in the lobby.
“Ah. Hello there,” The business formal blonde said with a bright smile. “I am Ms. Prescott. Which of you are Alonna and Charles?”
Gunn stiffened at the question. “Why do you need to know?”
“Oh, sorry,” The woman said. “I assumed Ms. Rosenberg told you. I’m to take measurements for Alonna and Charles, then take measurements from everyone else, and then ask Charles to indicate which person’s suits take priority when my company processes your order.”
“What suits?” Chain asked.
“Why, body armor of course,” Prescott replied before a puzzled look came over her face. “I’m sorry, I was under the impression Ms. Summers had shown you the product we made for her. I’m in the correct place, right? There isn’t another Hyperion Hotel just around the corner with another group of disenfranchised looking youth expecting me to take their measurements for a multimillion-dollar merchandise order, is there?”
Sudden realization hit Gunn. “Sorry yes, I’m Charles Gunn and this is my sister Alonna. So much went down in the last few hours, the armor thing slipped our minds.”
The smile was back on Prescott’s face. “That’s quite alright, Mr. Gunn. If you and your sister could show me to a private enough area I can start taking measurements for each of you in turn,” She said.
Gunn and Alonna went with the woman to one of the smaller rooms the group had started to clear the night before. The process took next to no time and as Gunn returned to the crew he told them to start clearing spaces while one of them at a time went to Prescott’s room. Once everyone was done they could take some of that money from the cube in the office and go stock up on the things Willow had said. Mostly new clothing and entertainment for downtime. Setting out to find the Sunnydale crew, the young man quickly came to the office.
“Charles, you’re here, good,” Willow said as he entered the room. Were just getting some planning stuff out of the way. How did your group like the new sleeping arrangements?”
“We slept great. This is the nicest abandoned building we ever crashed in,” Gunn replied with a smile.
“Remember you and your sister own this building with us now,” Tara said.
“Thanks for that, but could we get a little warning next time you have a well dressed white woman waiting for us to wake up?” Gunn asked. “Some of my boys thought social services was here to drag them home.”
Willow looked up shocked. “Oh, I’m sorry about that, Gunn. I didn’t think Prescott would be a problem. We just needed to get her task out of the way so we can get you up and running.”
“It’s cool, Red,” Gunn dismissed his new benefactor’s fears. “So what’s the plan for today? I told my crew to start cleaning and once the last is done with Prescott I thought heading out to buy the new clothes and entertainment you mentioned would be good for morale.”
Willow beamed. “That is an excellent idea. Angel got the power and water running last night. Last I heard he and Buffy were in the boiler room checking to make sure the whole water system doesn’t need replaced. Giles and Xander will be spending most of the day handling cargo trucks that come by to drop off your new supplies. You may want to hang back with them to make sure things are to your liking.” A nervous look crossed the redhead’s face as she turned to Tara. “We had something we needed to discuss with Alonna.”
As Willow was finishing that statement the young woman herself walked into the office. “What did you guys need me for?” Alonna asked, nervous she had done something to sour this great new setup they had offered her brother.
After the two witches looked at each other for confirmation they turned to the girl. “We have an offer you may want to take, Alonna,” Willow said. “Gunn, could you give us a minute.”
He looked back and forth between his sister and the two women who had stormed in and turned their world upside down. “Whatever you want to make my sister do, I have a right to be here to look out for her.”
“No, you don’t,” Willow told the man plainly. “This decision is hers and hers alone to make. Whether she decides yes or no, we will abide by her decision and never bring it up again unless she wants us to. This has to be her choice and no one, not even you, gets to tell her what to do about it.”
Gunn didn’t know how to take that. He stammered looking back and forth between his sister and the witches.
“It’s okay, Charles,” Alonna told him. “They haven’t done anything to hurt us and it’s obvious they are never going to ask me for a three-way.”
Gunn and Willow gasped as Tara giggled at the very idea. “You’re sister’s cute and all, but we’re more than happy with our relationship as is, just the two of us,” Tara told the flabbergasted young man.
“Okay, I’ll go, but don’t think you can just act like she owes you just because of all you’ve done,” Gunn said as he left the room.
As the door closed Willow turned to look directly at Alonna. “So tell us what you think of Buffy.”
The day progressed rapidly. Gunn, Xander, and Giles signed for and received large shipments of computers, food, medical supplies, linens, furniture, and about a dozen other things needed to inhabit or run a hotel the size of the Hyperion. Angel had gotten the plumbing, heating, and other crucial building systems up and running. Gunn’s people worked tirelessly cleaning the first floor of their new headquarters until Prescott had finished and left. They then took several thousand dollars and bought all the little creature comforts that had been denied them for years.
When they returned to stake out who had which rooms they found Alonna right where they had left her. Sitting in the center of a five-point star in a circle made of salt, with the witches chanting tirelessly and the Slayer pacing a circle around the proceedings.
The four young women had begun whatever ritual this was hours ago and the only difference now was the audience. Gunn, Giles, Xander, and Angel had all taken up spots on various couches in the lobby. None save the three women in the circle knew what was going on and all Buffy had been told was to let no one ruin things by breaking the circle or interrupting the chants.
Ah yes, the chanting. It had gone on for hours in several different languages. At first quiet but now the blonde and the redhead had grown in volume so that their voices could easily be heard throughout the hotel’s lobby. Whatever this was it was big.
Buffy locked eyes with the returning group, and with a fierce predatory look held one finger up to her lips. If they wanted to make noise they were welcome to do so elsewhere. This spell casting thing, being a previously unheard of occurrence in their lives up until they came here last night, had them all curious. They each chose to stay for the show and took up seats all around the room. Each person careful not to make a sound until the experienced parties gave a sign things had ended.
Before too long, the spell kicked into high gear. “Goddess, we implore you!” Willow and Tara called out at the top of their lungs. “In your name, by your power, for the honor of all the guardians that came before! Make this child your vessel! Make this girl your champion! Make this woman the hero of the people!”
Light filled the chamber as a blinding pillar of radiant energy enveloped the circle and the Slayer guarding it dropped to her knees.
“Make this potential the Slayer!” The witches screamed out.
The pillar of light oscillated as a wind picked up and buffeted the audience the ritual had gathered. As the omnipresent glare subsided the onlookers slowly opened their eyes. What they saw shocked them. Alonna Gunn was glowing with a bright white light that seemed to emit from every pore of her skin. Even more miraculous was the fact that she floated seven feet in the air. The light began to fade to a glimmer and she slowly descended to the ground.
“Oh dear lord,” Giles said, shocked as the final words of the spell and the world of implications they held ran, through his mind. “They couldn’t have.”
Xander and just about all the other young people in the building were as a loss. “G man, what did they do?”
“It’s not possible.” The librarian muttered. “How could this happen?”
Gunn couldn’t take it anymore. “Tell me what they did to my sister, old man!”
A thin smile crept slowly across the watcher’s face. “They unlocked her potential.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Gunn couldn’t believe he had trusted these nuts with his crew’s wellbeing.
“Charles, they made me strong,” Alonna said as she left the circle. “I can feel it. Oh god. Buffy, is this how you feel all the time?”
“Most of the time yeah,” The Slayer said to her new counterpart. “But it feels stronger since you popped up on my radar. Willow, why are my senses stronger?”
“The ritual,” Willow wheezed as she kept her eyes clenched shut. “Takes a willing potential out of the Slayer line of succession and makes her a full-fledged Slayer. It also forges a link with other Slayers that we noticed happens when multiple slayers spend time together. Basically, your evil radar is linked to Alonna’s in a pseudo hive mind. You can sense other Slayers nearby and if they are Slayers we made then the Slayer senses are amplified for everyone. Baby, what color is my hair?” She asked still afraid to open her eyes.
“Open your eyes, Sweetie,” Tara said. “It’s your normal beautiful red except for one white streak and that is slowly fading away.”
Willow’s eyes popped open and locked with her love. A nervous smile spread over her features. “I’m sorry for being such a coward. I just don’t want you to ever have to see me like that.”
“And your eyes are my absolute favorite shade of green, Sweetie,” Tara said to her love. “We got over your darkness centuries ago, Will. You don’t have to hide from me every time we play with the Slayer line. Don’t ever call yourself a coward. You’re the bravest person I know.”
Willow couldn’t help the joy her love’s words ignited in her heart. “I love you, Baby.” The redhead said as she leaned forward against her honey blonde love and drew her into a slow tender kiss.
As Willow and Tara were reassuring each other Alonna was taking her new strength for a stroll. “Chain, Rondell, Joey come at me with some weapons.”
“Go easy on them, Alonna. Boys are so fragile,” Buffy said as she, Giles, and Angel watched the show.
The three young men each held a sword and came at the girl with no idea what they were in for. The fight was over in moments as Alonna disarmed and tossed the three young men around like dolls.
Pulling two longsword out of a duffle bag they brought from Sunnydale, Angel tossed one casually to the new Slayer. Alonna snatched it out of the air without even looking and immediately squared off against the vampire. The two adversaries took in the sight of one another for a long moment then closed.
The swords sliced through the air with a grace and precision few had ever witnessed. The fight transitioned into a dance that Alonna shouldn’t have been able to keep pace with. Yet, as they went through the motions it became clear the young woman was more than capable as she quickly took the lead.
Before anyone could tell it was coming Alonna moved inside of the vampire’s swing, knocked the sword out of his hand, and brought her blade up against his throat. Angel looked at the situation he was in and laughed.
“Oh this is great,” Angel chuckled. “I was really worried there when Willow said I was staying here. I thought I was gonna have to watch as this mission she keeps talking about picked you off one by one.”
“What’s so funny then, Fangs?” Gunn said.
“Now that there’s a Slayer on the team the survival rate for the rest of you just increased tenfold,” The vampire said with a smile. “We might actually be able to win this one.”
“Okay this changes things,” Buffy said as the tension in the room eased. “I don’t know how long we’re staying in L.A. but Giles, Angel, and I should work with Alonna and see where her training needs to be focused. Gunn, you should take Xander and your crew and get the rest of this hotel set up for business.”
“I’ll contact the council,” Giles said.
“No!” Willow called. “Giles, trust us on this. We’ll contact the council soon and tell them which watcher to station here.”
Buffy looked over at her exhausted friends on the floor. “That spell took everything you two had.” Turning to the crowd the blonde Slayer gave out one last assignment. “Alonna and I will carry them upstairs and put them to bed.”
Everyone headed off to follow the orders given and finish the tasks assigned. Gunn couldn’t believe his baby sister was now the strongest warrior on the team. He watched Alonna reach down to envelope Tara in her arms and then lift the curvy blonde into the air like she weighed nothing at all. As Buffy did the same with Willow the Slayers shared a smile and gently carried the two witches still holding each other’s hands up the stairs.
Everything had changed.
Allen Francis Doyle stood before the abandoned warehouse. He had searched all day and night for any signs of Lucas, the other Brachen demons, or the Scourge. The visions of blood and carnage would not leave his mind. Whoever or whatever had sent them was definitely proving a point about his duty to help others. If he found the poor clan of demon half breeds had been slain he would never forgive himself. This was the very last place he could think to look for what might be his very distant relatives’ corpses. Taking one last breath Doyle reached for the door handle and entered the warehouse. What he saw shook him to his core.
The bodies of Scourge demons were strewn about the place haphazardly. Brachen demons huddled in fear behind cages and torture devices. A giant wheel used to suspend victims being interrogated had come off its stand and was rolling across the main floor of the improvised Scourge base.
Off to one side, a vampire was locked in a struggle with three “pure” demons wearing the knock-off Nazi uniforms of the Scourge. The half-demon noticed an older man wearing glasses and tweed was in the middle of a large group of teenagers engaging the Scourge demons and protecting the weakened Brachen demons.
Even more strange was the fact that the vast majority of fanatical demons were being dispatched by two girls. A petite blonde who moved with a grace and ferocity the former teacher had never seen before, and a young ebony skinned girl whose movements may not have been as precise, but were more than up to the task. They were surrounded by demons on all sides, both living and dead. The two young women were more than holding their own. Longswords danced through the air with a whisper and cleaved through demons with ease. Doyle had heard of the Slayer within days of learning his true ancestry. He never expected to run into the chosen one so soon, though he didn’t know there could be more than one chosen one.
Perhaps the oddest thing he saw, and indeed had ever seen, was in the center of the room. The Scourge demon wearing what looked like the highest-ranking faux Nazi uniform was suspended in the air as if an invisible hand was lifting him, by the throat, eight feet off the ground. Beneath him stood two women who looked to be the same age as the Slayers and the young men in the room. A honey blonde with more curves than the Slayers, and a slim redhead with a finger waving back and forth at the suspended demon. Doyle’s breath caught at the sight of the redhead’s malevolent grin.
“Now, Tiernan. I wouldn’t normally drag this out but your whole Nazi aesthetic annoys the hell out of me.” The redhead mocked the choking demon. “For being a racist pig and trying to commit genocide you are going to die. If you tell me where to find more of your Hitler Youth Brigade clubhouses, it’ll be quick.”
“You’ll get nothing from me, witch,” The choking demon let out with a gasp.
“Now see, you think because you’re a pureblood you can live through just about anything, and normally that may be the case.” The thin redhead waved another hand as she walked in a slow circle around her floating victim. As the hand came up one of Tiernan’s arms twisted like a corkscrew as if it were a soaked rag being wrung out. The gruesome sight shouldn’t have been possible. The snapping sound from the bones in his forearm proved it was at the very least unwise.
“Well, that’s something you don’t see every day,” Doyle whispered, causing the blonde and redhead to look across the room at him.
“Looks like time is up, Sweetie,” The blonde said with a sigh.
“I know, Baby,” The redhead said to her companion. “Looks like you got off lucky, Tiernan. Now that the guest of honor has arrived we no longer need your assistance. I’ll be sure to put the information I gather on the Scourge here to good use.” With slight grins, both women in the center of the room started up a slow chant. As their voices rose flames consumed the body of the suspended demon. Tiernan, Colonel of the Scourge was no more.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.” Doyle couldn’t stop the old Irish curse as it slipped from his lips. He watched the demon wearing a gaudy imitation of a Nazi uniform go up in flames.
With the immolation of their commanding officer, the morale of the Scourge was broken. Doyle witnessed many demons dying at the hands of the Slayers that formed a whirling cyclone of death at the heart of the warehouse. The group of young men protecting the Brachen demons more than held their own against the few remaining purebloods. Before Doyle could jump into the fray the old man in tweed and glasses and a young guy with dark hair were standing at his sides.
“Stick around for this next bit,” The young man said with a grin. “I’m sure what Willow says will be worth your time.”
Doyle stood there shocked as another young man with ebony skin and a shaved head came up to him. “Is this the guy?” He asked.
“Yes, Gunn. This is the guy.” The redhead said as she and the honey blonde strolled hand in hand across the carnage. “You’re Doyle right,” She said more than asked.
Doyle looked around at the gathering crowd of humans and couldn’t help but feel like he was under a microscope. At the very least they had saved the Brachen demons from the Scourge. “Sure, why not.” He replied to the spritely redhead.
Willow beamed. “Listen, Doyle. We’re going to help you. Believe it or not, we are all in the same business.”
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Home Middle East
Pig intestines fly as Taiwan lawmakers engage in ham-fisted political attacks
November 27, 2020 admin 0 Comments
More than 100 countries ban meat with the additive, which is used by U.S. pig farmers to promote leanness but frequently poses an obstacle when it comes to exporting abroad. Washington has pressed successive Taiwanese administrations to lift the ban on meat from pigs given ractopamine-laced feed, but the issue has been highly charged in Taiwan, where politicians and industry groups have warned about adverse health affects of the additive.
After a landslide reelection victory this year and successfully eliminating the coronavirus domestically, Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen spent significant political capital lifting the ractopamine ban in September in a bid to smoothe trade relations with the Trump administration and pave the way for a comprehensive bilateral trade deal. But the move sparked an outcry from Tsai’s agricultural groups, parents and political opponents who vowed to launch a referendum over the decision.
On Friday, Premier Su Tseng-chang, a Tsai ally from the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), approached the rostrum to deliver an annual policy address shortly after 10 a.m. while flanked by party colleagues who anticipated trouble. Order quickly unraveled.
Videos showed lawmakers throwing pig organs at each other, while others engaged in more conventional shoving and boxing. Some lawmakers donned rain jackets. Others brawled in business suits soiled by what appeared to be bits of pig fat. Parliamentary staffers pleaded in vain for calm. KMT aides blew whistles and airhorns to heighten the atmosphere. One young lawmaker was put in a headlock.
Taiwan has long had a history of cameral chaos as legislators seek to demonstrate to constituents their, well, gutsiness. In 2004, a KMT legislator head-butted William Lai, the current vice president, and jabbed him in the stomach. In 2006, lawmaker Wang Shu-hui from the DPP snatched a written document that proposed direct transportation links to mainland China and tried to swallow it so it would not pass; KMT opponents pulled on her hair to force her to spit it out. Chairs were thrown over a 2017 infrastructure bill.
Lev Nachman, a PhD student at the University of California at Irvine and a Fulbright scholar who studies Taiwanese politics, said there is a “long history” of brawling in Taiwan’s parliament and that older KMT voters who remember the fight scenes from decades ago might appreciate the display. Younger voters, he said, “would think it’s an embarrassment.”
But American pork imports, Nachman said, constituted the most controversial issue facing Tsai in a country with a keen sense of food safety, and the KMT wants to capitalize on that at midterm elections a year away.
“It’s an embarrassment for Taiwan,” he said. “But Taiwanese people absolutely care about this issue, and if there’s one issue to go all-in on, this is it.”
A 2019 study by political scientists Nathan Batto and Emily Beaulieu of Taiwan’s Academica Sinica and the University of Kentucky found that Taiwanese voters generally viewed brawls negatively but that they were important ways to send signals to each party’s die-hard supporters.
On Friday, Taiwanese reporters in the media gallery recorded blow-by-blow who had struck whom in the face, and who had slipped on the soiled carpet while trying to land a punch.
Amid the tumult, Su, the premier, soldiered on and finished his speech from an elevated podium, flanked by DPP loyalists in rain jackets.
As soon as he finished, he sat down and flashed a smile. Order was eventually restored, and aides cleaned the floor of entrails and a large placard that featured the English word “INEDIBLE” and the American flag.
Su’s was the shortest policy address in Taiwanese history, according to Taiwan’s United Daily News. It lasted five minutes.
← Fewer kindergarten students means money problems for schools and learning concerns for children.
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Single Malt Report: GlenDronach Peated
Glendronach, famed for its high-quality sherried malts made from a previous owner's distillate, have recently brought two new and very different products to the market. GlenDronach Heilan and Peated are the first products made from the current ownership's (Benriach Distillery Company) spirit, and neither have much of a sherry cask influence.
Heilan has an age statement, 8 years, and is quite malty-licious in my opinion. Meanwhile Peated, the newer "expression", does not have an age statement. Though Glendronach spirit has previously held a tiny bit of peating, the Peated spirit is made exclusively from peated malted barley (PPMs unknown). The spirit spends it's first maturation in ex-bourbon casks for an unknown period of time, then has a second maturation in ex-oloroso and ex-PX casks, again for an unknown period of time. Peat + sherry can be fun if done well. Let's see what happens here.
Age: ???
Maturation: first ex-bourbon, then a combo of ex-oloroso and ex-PX sherry casks
Chillfiltration? No
Added Colorant? No
(Sample was purchased)
Its color is a light amber. Must've have been the wettest of sherry casks.
The nose starts with light peat, ocean, seaweed, and yeast. Sort of Ledaig-Lite. A slight sulphuric note in the background, but also some peach candy and marshmallows. Occasionally, there's a super floral new make note......okay, not occasionally, the new make takes over after 20 minutes in the glass.
The palate is malty and sweet with vanilla peat. White frosting, pears, rock candy. It gradually develops a slight bitter sting. Some pepper and seaweed here and there.
A very sweet finish, with hints of peat moss, marzipan, marshmallows, and seaweed. Ah, the floral new make shows up again.
WITH WATER (~40%abv)
Not much change in the nose, really. Maybe more yeast. Some oats. It's a little fartier than before.
The palate does shift a bit. Cinnamon and peat candy. More bitter smoke. Bigger cereal grain notes.
The very very sweet finish has hints of peat and saltwater, but is mostly sugar.
I was going to hazard a guess that this was younger than 8 years old before I tried it, specifically because Glendronach already has an 8yo, meanwhile this has no age statement. Then, as I went through this tasting, I started to think it was 6 years or younger. By the time it was done, I started to wonder how many days over 3 years they waited before bottling.
The good news is Glendronach priced it low(ish), similar to the 8. And if you're an enthusiast of naked malts, this is indeed pretty nude. I can't imagine how many rounds these casks went through previous to this filling. And if you don't like sherry, that's good news because there's very little of it to be found in Peated.
I like a good new make which is why I won't totally roast this whisky. But man, this is really really really young, sort of reminiscent of Kilchoman's 100% Islay releases which always seem a half step removed from their raw distillate. The whisky leaves me wondering why they were in such a hurry to release this stuff. In the end, I can only recommend this to people who want to experience 'Dronach's peated new make.
Availability - Mostly Europe, only a few US retailers so far
Pricing - $45ish in Europe, $60ish in US
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Archie #14 Review: The Veronica Strikes Back
10:00 AM Monry Archie, Comics, review, Zachary Krishef Edit
Still depressed over Veronica’s departure, Archie hands over the reigns to Jughead, which leads to a much weirder issue. Jughead tends to go off into imaginative fantasies like J.D., the main character in Scrubs. For example, the issue starts with Archie trying to persuade Jughead to buy a phone because it’ll improve his life, even comparing him to a fifty-year-old after Jughead’s complaints about not wanting to go anywhere or do anything.
Side note, I was actually confused at first, because I know that I’ve read an issue with Jughead owning a phone, but that was actually in an issue of his own series. In any case, it does lead to some odd moments, so it’s necessary to go over the pages more than once. In any case, Archie’s depression over Veronica and his anxiety over the resulting actions leads to unintended consequences. He becomes more like Jughead, not wanting to care about life and all about relaxing.
Meanwhile, Veronica takes her revenge on Cheryl after last issue’s encounter, but it leaves her feeling empty inside. Being in Riverdale has changed her. Exposure to the mostly nice townspeople (looking at you, Reggie) has left her wanting to be nice. Humiliating Cheryl as a petty act of vengeance doesn’t make her happy, instead just wanting to go back to Riverdale even more. By the issue’s end, she is even more unhappy with her life and Jughead is going to drastic measures to get Archie out of his funk. If Archie is going to turn into Jughead, then Jughead has to become Archie!
Archie #14 is a solid issue, advancing more of the plot while being entertaining. I’m excited to see the next piece of the story arc, especially if we do see a complete role-reversal with Jughead and Archie. Check it out! It’s written by Mark Waid and Lori Matsumoto and drawn by Joe Eisma. You can find it at your local comic book shop.
Zachary Krishef is an evil genius. Do not question his knowledge of Saturday Night Live trivia or Harry Potter books.
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About Daniel Rickett
Becoming Effective Partners
Evaluating Your Partnership
Articles and Workshops
“Making Your Partnership Work” Resources
Daniel Rickett is a recognized authority in cross-cultural ministry partnerships. With over thirty years of experience in working with indigenous ministries, he has facilitated cross-cultural partnerships and catalyzed organizational and ministry effectiveness in more than twenty countries. A few of his professional experiences include:
Current executive vice president — She Is Safe
Senior advisor for partner development and strategy — Partner’s International
Director of research — Geneva Global
Co-founder — Coalition on Support of Indigenous Ministries (COSIM)
In his own education and in teaching others, Daniel pursues his lifelong passion for authentic mission partnerships:
MA in intercultural studies, Wheaton College through Daystar University, Nairobi, Kenya
PhD in adult and continuing education, Michigan State University
Some of his teaching experiences include:
Associate professor of leadership, School of International Leadership and Development, Eastern University
Many graduate courses and professional presentations on business and mission
Dozens of participatory seminars, workshops, and consultations, addressing the complexities of cross-cultural partnerships
Daniel’s well-researched books — Building Strategic Relationships and Making Your Partnership Work — have helped hundreds of churches find the right partner and move that partnership toward a successful ministry outcome. He has authored and co-authored several books and dozens of published articles with an emphasis on cross-cultural ministry partnership. For a list of Daniel’s books, presentations, and articles, click here.
Daniel is married to Michele Rickett, founder and president of She Is Safe, which works with local initiatives to restore the lives of abused and exploited women and girls in places least reached with the gospel. She, too, is author of several mission-focused books.
Philosophy | Statement of Faith
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Daniel Rickett
Through workshops and consulting services, Daniel Rickett teaches the fundamentals and practices of authentic partnering in the gospel.
Photos courtesy of Drew Hood of Throwing Light Productions: www.throwinglight.com. All rights reserved.
E-mail: info@danielrickett.com
515 East Crossville Road
Copyright 2014 Daniel Rickett | All Rights Reserved
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Langstrath
ЗНАЧЕНИЕ: Recorded in several spellings including Langstrath, Langstroth, Langstreth, Longstreeth, and Longstreet, this is an ancient English surname. It is residential and may be from the place known as Langstrothdale in North Yorkshire, or from a now 'lost' medieval village believed to have been in the Cumbria region on the Scottish borders, or it is topographical and described a person who lived by a long marshy area. The word 'strother' meaning marsh land was Olde English pre 7th century. This type of residential surname was the earliest to be created, when to describe a person by where he originated from, or from a natural feature in the countryside where he lived, made for easy identification. The surname is well recorded from about the Tudor period when the first known recording was that of Richard Langstrothyr. He appears in the register of students of Oxford University in the year 1448, whilst Richard Langstother, who may have been his brother, appears in the same register, but two years later in 1450. Other recordings taken from surviving registers include John Langstreth of the parish of Tatham in Lancashire in 1666, whilst Elizabeth Longstreeth married Richard Holden at the church of St Katherines by the Tower (of London) on May 3rd 1672.
Очень славный мальчик,
Славик - Вдадислав,
Он порезал пальчик
И залез на шкаф.
Он прославился на пляже -
Чуть не утонул.
Во дворе известен даже -
Семь шаров надул!
Славный мальчик Владислав
Все везде успеет,
Имя у него такое -
Славой он владеет!
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The Trash Can
Trump Protestors Storm Capitol; Armed Standoff at House Floor (Page 3)
Trump Protestors Storm Capitol; Armed Standoff at House Floor
This topic is 6 pages long: 1 2 3 4 5 6
Trump Protestors Storm Capitol; Armed Standoff at House Floor by theBDub
Replies : 206 (2598 views)
Last post by : sourmash on 01-09-2021 01:37 PM
Originally posted by Bradley Jay:
Your comparisons are neither equivalent nor coherent. You referred to these people as “patriots”. This is the Capitol building. And a “patriot” as you identify for them died. In exchange for violating a significant symbol of American democracy you have lost support for this ideal in government, and gained... nothing substantial. That’s putting it lightly.
No. I didn't. I responded to a statement that it has never happened in our blah-blah-blah, false pomp and virtue signal blah-blah-blah. You fail so hard at both discussions it's bound to happen with 100 predictability.
However, based on your previous word vomit above regarding race it is hard to imagine that I am talking to anyone other than a sick individual. I am no longer going to grab your low-hanging fruit.
Dude, stay away from my fruit. It might be tempting, but don't.
WS say POC have a higher IQ. They say that. Deal with it.
We are that point in history where if you choose to continue supporting Trump, you are a terrorist sympathizer.
You have had four years to spew your right-wing vitriol... It's time to sit down, shut up, and let the adults do their jobs to put our country back together.
Unfortunately for you there are no adults on the Left which is manifestly evident by you calling 74 Million Americans "terrorist sympathizers".
As I recall you also delight in calling people on this forum Nazis and racists so there's that too.
You are better served by heeding your own "sit down and shut up" admonishment.
People have had beyond enough.
They want their freedom back. They want their rights back. They are tired of being pushed around, bullied and micro-managed. Most just want to earn their living and be left alone to enjoy life, and not be slaves to the system. That's what Trump was trying to do mostly.
The left are determined they wont have that.
Yes, they will. One way or another.
The vandals in DC sent a message, they made a statement. It was the same message as the spoiled brats in Portland and Seattle last summer: They don't give a damn about anyone but themselves. They really screwed all of us.
The good people who were there need to grab the instigators by the nape of the neck and bring them out into the light of day.
I am a conservative and I believe Trump has done an admirable job. I believe the election was stolen. I am also opposed to unnecessary, pointless, counterproductive violence and destruction. None of my beliefs are up for debate, so have fun, trolls.
[This message has been edited by williegoat (edited 01-07-2021).]
rinselberg
From: Sunnyvale, CA (USA)
Accept it at "Face Value"..?
"Facial recognition firm claims ANTIFA infiltrated Trump protesters who stormed Capitol"
A retired military officer told The Washington Times that the firm XRVision used its software to do facial recognition of protesters and matched two Philadelphia antifa members to two men inside the Senate.
The source provided the photo match to The Times.
Rowan Scarborough for the Washington Times; January 6, 2021.
https://www.washingtontimes...iltrated-protesters/
"Trump loyalists push evidence-free claims that ANTIFA activists fueled mob"
On Wednesday night when Congress reconvened to resume the certification of President-elect Joe Biden's win, [Trump ally] Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., used his time to also float that antifa was behind the violence.
“I don’t know if the reports are true, but The Washington Times has just reported some pretty compelling evidence from a facial recognition company that some of the people who breached the Capitol today were not Trump supporters, they were masquerading as Trump supporters, and in fact were members of the violent terrorist group antifa,” Gaetz said.
Brandy Zadrozny and Ben Collins for NBC News; January 6, 2021.
https://www.nbcnews.com/tec...-fueled-mob-n1253176
Yin and Yang. Point and Counterpoint. Matter and Anti-matter. "You make the call."
[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 01-07-2021).]
"The glove that dare not speak its name"
CLICK FOR FULL SIZE
Photo: Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images
Correct me if I'm mistaken here, but I think this is President Trump addressing the "Stop The Steal" protesters yesterday in front of the White House and urging them to walk en masse along Pennsylvania Avenue and reassemble in front of the Capitol Building.
According to the video that I have seen (aired on MSNBC; hope it's not a "deep fake") President Trump told the protesters that he would be with them in front of the Capitol Building, but that did not happen. He did not "Make It So."
Jus sayin'
The Trump Presidency and Covid should have really taught people something very important that those who really understand our pollical system have been saying all along and way before Trump, Obama, Bush and etc.
But the media and social media even more has also deepen the miscaption about our pollical system that many people have become so ingrained to looking at it through such a narrow lens that they don't make any logical sense, yet it is passed as mainstream thinking. Our only really saving grace from this is that "mostly" it is harmless to everyone in our current era. Not to say that it has or leads to widespread economic damage and deaths as collateral damage, but modernity is really changing that.
Much like religion and those that would identify as religious. I remember seeing a presentation on a survey by Neil Tyson, that 90% of the USA would identify as religious. But if you had a college degree (in any field), 70% of those people in that group would identify as religious. If you had a college degree in hard science and engineering , the number of religious people dropped to 40%. It went all the way to those that had PhD's in hard science, and that group, those that identify as religious dropped to 7%. The point was that the more you deeply understand subjects, committed to higher learning and understand and uncovering truths, the more likely you were to know that there is no sky God. But those that are religious and believe in a sky god and that someone is listening to your prayers, it is really ok, because it is mostly harmless thinking and really doesn't harm you.
The same applies to politics. People that are highly politically charged are no different that those that are religious. The media figures and pundits on TV or any media platform, like Rachel Maddow and Sean Hannity are the same as any religious tv evangelist like Pat Robertson. If you like them and want to stay politically charged, then so be it. It's mostly harmless to absorbed current events spinned to political camps and the satire and trolling that takes place because of it. Sometimes it's entertaining and fun. For many it causes stress and unfounded fears, but so do sharks and spiders.
For those that studied Political Science, we never worried about Obama, Trump, Biden or any other President. Because we know that Presidents have very little power to do anything, especially domestically. And that our system is resilient enough to survive most anything, with the recent example of the Trump Presidency. Your local city council person or county commissioner has more power to affect your personal life than the President and Congress could ever do, yet hardly anyone could even name their own city council person that represents them. As you should have experienced in 2020 with Covid, that Governors have more power than the President, Congress and the entire Judiciary system in America has.
If you listen to the pundits, if you are consumed by the Washington Post, Fox News, NBC or whatever, it is all religious talk from religious people.
I'm glad we had a Trump Presidency to really show people that even a highly charged political environment it created with Tea Party/Trumpsters and BLM/Antifa/99%ers protesters seemingly causing a ruckus, that most everyone is living ordinary lives and ordinary concerns and problem that no matter who the political characters are, they won't and cannot change anything for you. You will also see this with Pee Pad Biden. We will experience a feeble man, who clearly has sundowners and dementia, who you will barely see or hear from (opposite of Trump), and the country and your life will not really change. We will experience a President that will never make a decision on his own, will barely work a couple of hours in a day at best and our system of government will continue to operate as it always have.
Even those on here on PFF, most all really just religious people who just regurgitate stuff from MEM to rinselberg. But is harmless and they are too. Just nobodies with silly ideas.
Originally posted by cvxjet:
Are you for Trump....Or are you for America? You can't claim both.
I disagree. Are you crazy ?
I don’t care about your politics, with all due respect. Not even going to bother entertaining a conversation in that regard.
The Capitol building got a little cleansing today. I feel better about it now that the citizens illustrated a point to the elite.
Oh yeah? How so?
What did you accomplish today?
You accomplished proving that you do not mean what you say.
Well cliffw, aren't you kind of splitting a hair with that one?
Good morning (by the way.)
Lambo nut
From: Centralia,Missouri. USA
Member since Sep 2003
Look out. The covid drama queen is back!
slicknick
Originally posted by rinselberg:
The source provided the photo match to The Times.Rowan Scarborough for the Washington Times; January 6, 2021.
Since the Washington Times didn't even provide the photos they're hinging their article on, I can only assume it's about these jokers:
https://phillyantifa.org/ke...0pU0pMzqfsEyuldNvqSI
[This message has been edited by slicknick (edited 01-07-2021).]
I've learned to just scroll past his posts and settle on something more relevant to the topic.
From: Southern MN
“I don’t know if the reports are true, but The Washington Times has just reported some pretty compelling evidence from a facial recognition company that some of the people who breached the Capitol today were not Trump supporters, they were masquerading as Trump supporters, and in fact were members of the violent terrorist group antifa,” Gaetz said.Brandy Zadrozny and Ben Collins for NBC News; January 6, 2021.
When the news is bought and sold, yes one must think hard about what they are told.
[This message has been edited by 2.5 (edited 01-07-2021).]
People talking with baiting questions only trying to trip triggers built in their brain by the media, tripping those triggers flips an off switch. This has been taught.
It seems they have now been told which face to blame, seemingly told that face, that manufactured identity, is evil, they believe anything they can associate with that face is unworthy and should be silenced.
If you listen or watch any one or two or three "news" services regularly, I recommend thinking about a change. I also recommend talking to a friend (or anyone) who believes differently than yourself.
Originally posted by 2.5:
and try to convince them that they are wrong and call them names if they don't listen and change.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVF0ojfhSrE
I think some of the examples are kind of weak, but the point is good.
Using the reporting standards of the MSM, yesterday's protests were "mainly peaceful".
Violence is not the answer.
Politics should be about policy, not popularity.
You can't win a fair fight against a dishonest fighter. Sometimes it takes violence.
So should elections but that is far removed from the real world we live in.
cvxjet
From: ca, usa
Congressman Kinzinger (A REPUBLICAN) in a call for Trump's removal from office; “Here’s the truth: The president caused this. The president is unfit, and the president is unwell,” Kinzinger said, addressing conspiracy theorists who joined in the mob breaching the Capitol.
[This message has been edited by cvxjet (edited 01-07-2021).]
He is entitled to his opinion, as we all are.
I'm sure there are no 'politics' involved.
In order to have a career "inside the beltway", it is required that one denounce Trump. It is a tenet of their religion.
Nice! (The couplet.)
That's kind of a truism.
What would be some (or any) important examples of news that is not bought and sold?
It's not that I have any particular direction or agenda in mind, with this question.
But that is an obvious question, if this aspect of the discussion were going to be enlarged or carried forward in any way.
I think it's interesting that Stephanie Grisham resigned after yesterday's somewhat amusing (in an Animal House kind of way) but undeniably tragic (young woman shot dead) events around and inside the Capitol Building.
Interesting, because Stephanie Grisham had become the First Lady's chief of staff.
Who'd like to be a fly on the wall inside the room where Melania Trump is conversing freely with one or more of her circle of friends and confidantes, without any particular concern about maintaining her public role as FLOTUS..?
Or is that thought so vicarious that I should be ashamed to think of it myself?
I'm sure its hard to recognize. How about news that is reported purely.
Ah, Mister Twain.
On 9/11, 40 crew and passengers of UA Flight 93 heroically gave their lives to prevent an attack on the Capitol Building.
Yesterday, the President of the United States incited his supporters to attack the Capitol Building, calling them "great patriots."
Today, people on Pennock's Fiero Forum, the same people who earlier this year decried the Black Lives Matter movement as having no legitimate cause and are just a bunch of rioters/looters/hooligans, are justifying the actions of seditionists and traitors who attacked the halls of our democracy at the urging of the POTUS with the statement that "People are tired of being pushed down/around". I'd call them out on their hypocrisy, but it would fall on deaf ears...
Also, yes, the drama queen is back. I stand by my post. The Rebel flag is the symbol of traitors who decided that people with dark skin are less than people with white skin. It was flown by a traitor army in the Civil War, and was carried through the halls of our government center yesterday by traitors. You can justify this as heritage all you want, but the truth hurts, so suck it up buttercup.
"I am asking for everyone at the U.S. Capitol to remain peaceful. No violence! Remember, WE are the Party of Law & Order — respect the Law and our great men and women in Blue. Thank you!""
- Donald Trmp
Also, I am no fan of Trump
Fox? Youtube? Brietbart? Which one of these is the pure reporting?
Jason, I love you like a brother, I truly do, but I removed you from my friends list for good reason. Broaden your sources a bit. Youtube is a self-guided echo chamber, and I am sincerely concerned that this is the only place you are finding what you want to hear.
None, of any, you and I know this.
Which is what I said when we chatted online. Unfriending people is your choice, of course.
- TRUMP
And video showing the Trumps and others in the White House, loud music playing, live streaming online during yesterday's riots, celebrating the actions of the sheep that follow Trump. It was incited by the President in his actions. Are you not hearing the dog whistles, or are you looking past them?
While I have no issues condemning the rioters that breached the capitol and sincerely do hope that they are prosecuted, I also recognize that not all protestors were rioting.
I didn't condemn all those that protested with BLM nor will I condemn all that attended this protest. Those that committed crimes should be prosecuted.
I didn't condemn all those that protested with BLM not will I condemn all that attended this protest. Those that committed crimes should be prosecuted.
That is a very well stated post, and I thank you for it sir.
Today, people on Pennock's Fiero Forum, the same people who earlier this year decried the Black Lives Matter movement as having no legitimate cause and are just a bunch of rioters/looters/hooligans, are justifying the actions of seditionists and traitors who attacked the halls of our democracy...
I never condoned anything, though I am not against protesting as a whole.
One plus I give them, some misguided individuals or not, and whatever the actual facts are in the end (if we ever know)... is taking the protest to the leaders instead of other citizens businesses and highways.
And when the leaders don't listen because they don't see a problem?
I doubt they will burn down their fellow citizens businesses and threaten passers by they don't even know on roadways, but I can't see the future.
The point you and numerous others are missing is that this isn't four years of "Drain the swamp" and all that bullshit that leads to people who are disgruntled for perceived wrongs by a leadership that doesn't care.
This is systemic, centuries long repression of a race of people who are treated as less than by a leadership that doesn't care. Again I ask you: When the leadership doesn't listen, what's left? Shrug and go home? Give up? Just say "Oh well."
You are speaking from the perspective of white privilege, and you have absolutely zero understanding of the trials and tribulations that people of color have faced. I speak from the perspective of white privilege as well, but I have personally seen the damage caused by the devaluation of black and brown people, have lost people I loved that happened to be black to police violence. I can not fully see things from the perspective of people of color, but I have lived in the shadow of their struggles in my life. I choose to use the voice that my white privilege grants me to speak up for those who do not enjoy white privilege.
I do not condone the riots that happened with BLM, but to negate the entire movement by summarizing it as "they burned down their fellow citizens businesses", you are lumping all of them together in direct contradiction to the way you are separating yesterday's rioters from yesterday's protestors. It is hypocrisy, Jason. You are better than that.
[This message has been edited by Synthesis (edited 01-07-2021).]
theBDub
From: Dallas,TX
Originally posted by Lambo nut:
[to Synthesis]
Quoting for posterity.
Originally posted by theBDub:
Yep. Personal attacks directly against a user... Where's the probation?
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Home British Columbia Vancouver & Lower Mainland
Lions Fall To Ti-Cats In Defensive Battle
Lion's To Use Bye Week To Search For Answers To Win Column
August 24, 2019 Vancouver, BC (ISN) - BC Lions John White IV. - Erich Eichhorn photo (www.allsportmedia.ca)
Story – Matt Baker/ BC Lions
August 24, 2019 Vancouver, BC – It was a defensive struggle for the better part of three hours. And for the hometown BC Lions, they will once again be left scratching their heads after three or four key plays went in favour of the opposition.
August 24, 2019 Vancouver, BC (ISN) – A tight defensive battle would see the Lions on the short end of the stick, dropping a close 13-10 decision. – Erich Eichhorn photo (www.allsportmedia.ca)
The Hamilton Tiger-Cats (8-2-0) intercepted Mike Reilly twice in the end zone and successfully read a fake punt attempt by the Lions early in the second half en route to a 13-10 victory at BC Place on Saturday night.
This loss dropped the Lions to 1-9-0 in what continues to be a season that has left many inside the locker room scratching their heads.
August 24, 2019 Vancouver, BC (ISN) – Lions OL Sukh Chungh looks skyward for an offensive answer to Hamilton’s defence. – Erich Eichhorn photo (www.allsportmedia.ca)
“It’s a tough one,” said receiver Shaq Johnson.
“We had a little trouble at the start getting the ball into the end zone. We had good drives, we were backed up, some penalties kind of hurt us as well. It just sucks when you start the game like that, then have good drives to get you out of the hole and then you can’t finish. We really just have to focus on the finishing part and with that comes the little details.”
August 24, 2019 Vancouver, BC (ISN) – Shaq Johnson with a great individual effort to pull down this Reilly sideline pass on his way to 75 yards receiving. – Erich Eichhorn photo (www.allsportmedia.ca)
The game was tied 3-3 Tiger-Cats backup David Watford scored on a one-yard quarterback sneak with 5:55 to play in the third quarter. Hamilton’s only major of the night came after that aforementioned fake punt where Ryan Lankford was stopped well short of the sticks after a toss from punter Josh Bartel. The turn of events set the visitors up at the Lions’ 38-yard line.
August 24, 2019 Vancouver, BC (ISN) – Lion’s John White IV carried the ball just four times, but punished the Ti-Cats defence with 13.3 yards per carry – Erich Eichhorn photo (www.allsportmedia.ca)
“We were trying to generate a play, we actually had numbers to the field and the call was supposed to be if Lank got in trouble, he was supposed to kick it,” explained head coach DeVone Claybrooks.
“(It was) miscommunicated and it didn’t get executed. Even with that being said, you look at the opportunities that we had. We thought the one guy was offside Mike takes a shot in the end zone. That was one pick in the end zone. The corner (route) to Lemar was another pick in the end zone. Serg missed a field goal, as well. That’s nine points right there.”
August 24, 2019 Vancouver, BC (ISN) – In a denfensive struggle, BC was rarely able to pressure Ti-Cats QB Dane Evans with any pressure. – Erich Eichhorn photo (www.allsportmedia.ca)
Another potential turning point came late in the first half when the on-field officials missed a clear fumble by Hamilton’s Frankie Williams on a punt return. That one would result in a field goal and Hamilton’s first points of the night before the break. Claybrooks said head referee Andre Proulx admitted the mistake and apologized as they were walking off the field. Still, they won’t use it as an excuse.
And with the club’s second bye week now looming, Claybrooks will look at everything as he tries to salvage something out of his first season as the sideline boss.
“We’re gonna assess everything over the bye and we’re going to assess everything and leave no stone unturned,” he said.
“We’re going to assess this thing from top to bottom. I’m going to assess myself and assess my staff and we’re going to assess every player. We’re going to meet together and we’re gonna figure this thing out. We’re slowly building a team, but the glaring thing is we’re giving up sacks and you can’t keep doing that in this league.”
August 24, 2019 Vancouver, BC (ISN) -Lion’s QB Mike Reilly, pressured often, would be sacked seven times in the game, five of those in the first half alone. – Erich Eichhorn photo (www.allsportmedia.ca)
If there is a positive to take in this one, it’s the fact they didn’t quit. Garry Peters’ second interception of the night led to a touchdown reception for Bryan Burnham with 31 seconds to play. After they narrowly missed recovering the onside kick, it was lights out.
Even with the losses piling and the clock ticking on their 2019 season, the players will still return from their week off with the mindset they can make something happen.
August 24, 2019 Vancouver, BC (ISN) – Johan White IV, his team pinned deep in their own end, would carry this ball through the Ti-Cat defensive line for yards. – Erich Eichhorn photo (www.allsportmepdia.ca)
“I’m going to be honest with you, we all have the belief in this locker room that we can turn it around,” added Johnson.
“It’s just a matter of getting those little details fixed and having everybody on the same page.”
Quarterback Mike Reilly finished 21/31 for 286 yards, the touchdown and two key interceptions. Running back John White left in the first half with an ankle injury. Claybrooks said he will be re-evaluated throughout the bye week.
August 24, 2019 Vancouver, BC (ISN) – BC Lions QB Mike Reilly would finish 21/31 in pass attempts for 286 passing yards. – Erich Eichhorn photo (www.allsportmedia.ca)
Up next after the bye is a trip to Montreal on Friday, September 6th.
Final Takeaways
White’s injury meant more touches out of the backfield for Wayne Moore who finished with 96 all-purpose yards. While the wins may not be piling up, it’s important to know they have depth in key areas should situations arise like this.
Hat tip to Jevon Cottoy who continues to demonstrate he has been a solid find by GM Ed Hervey and his scouting crew. Could we be witnessing the next great Canadian receiver for this franchise? Cottoy finished with five catches for 56 yards.
August 24, 2019 Vancouver, BC (ISN) – Jevon Cottoy ( a la Langley Rams of the CJFL ) makes his impact on the game with yardage gained after the reception. Cottoy finished with 56 yards receiving on five catches. – Erich Eichhorn photo (www.allsportmedia.ca)
The line of scrimmage was key again in this one. Not only when talking about the Lions’ offensive line, but the Ticats did an excellent job of both pressuring Reilly and stopping the run game.
Another game, another ode to Reilly the warrior. Eventually, that trickle down to his teammates is going to will them to a winning streak.
The football Gods. You have to think they don’t exist. If they did, how do they lose a game like this one?
SOURCEStory - Matt Baker / BC Lions Photos - Erich Eichhorn / ISN
2019 CFL season
2019 CJFL
BC Lions 2019
Hamilton Tiger-Cats
Erich Eichhorn
Cullen Cup Escapes Rebels, Rams Claim BCFC Championship
Westshore Rebels Use Defense In Return To Cullen Cup Final
Rebels Seal Playoff Field Advantage With Shutout Win Over Broncos
In Pictures : Westshore Rebels Suffer Loss To Undefeated Langley Rams
Rebels Step Closer To Post Season With First Half Effort Over Huskers
Photo Essay : Hamilton Ti-Cats Scratch Out Win Over BC Lions
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About Haver
US: Consumer Sentiment (Jan-prelim), Mfg & Trade Inventories & Sales (Nov), IP & Capacity Utilization, Adv Retail Sales, Producer Prices (Dec)
US: Industrial Production Detail (Dec)
US: Producer Price Indexes by Commodity Detail (Dec)
Economy in Brief
Empire State Manufacturing Index Declines in January
The Empire State Manufacturing Index of General Business Conditions decreased to 3.5 in January...
U.S. Industrial Production Continues Recovery
Industrial production advanced 1.6% in December...
U.S. PPI Rose 0.3% in December
The Producer Price Index for final demand rose 0.3% (0.8% y/y) in December...
U.S. Business Inventories Accumulate during November as Sales Weaken
Total business inventories increased 0.5% during November (-3.2% y/y)...
The EMU Trade Surplus Stabilizes
Both exports and imports have been regaining momentum...
Commentaries are the opinions of the author and do not reflect the views of Haver Analytics.
Remote Working Limited the Economic Fallout In 2020, And Its Reversal Will Spur Growth In 2021
Some Reasons To Be Cheerful
2021 Could Be The Opposite of 2020: Economy Up & Equity Markets Down
State Coincident Indexes in November
State GDP in 2020:Q3
Huge Holes in Europe with Limited Capacity to Climb Out Fast
by Andrew Cates August 13, 2020
Yesterday's release of Q2 GDP data in the UK has generated a more complete global picture of the economic devastation that's been generated by the Coronavirus pandemic. UK GDP specifically fell by 20.4% in Q2 which is the worst slump on record. It compares unfavourably moreover with other major, albeit larger, economies. The US, for example, chalked up a retreat of 9.5% q/q while the Euro area contracted by 12.1%. China in contrast eked out a 12.4% q/q gain (see first chart). The timing and severity of the Coronavirus crisis in these economies, the size and nature of the policy response and the underlying exposure of various sectors to lockdown restrictions are all key to the reasons for the discrepancies in these Q2 growth rates. On the timing front, for example, China's GDP gain of 12.4% needs to be looked at relative to its GDP loss of 10.8% in Q1, in turn a manifestation of much earlier - and subsequent loosening of - lockdown restrictions. Equally the Euro area's GDP retreat of “only” 12.1% in Q2 needs to be set against an earlier albeit smaller contraction of 3.6% that in Q1. This was a function again of the earlier wave of the virus in countries such as Italy and Spain, relative to, say, the UK and the US.
Looking ahead what arguably matters now is firstly the size of the hole that economies find themselves in and secondly their ability to dig their way out. On the first of these, namely the size of their holes, our second figure below offers some perspective. This shows levels of GDP rebased to 2009 – a trough year for economic performance following the global financial crisis (GFC) – and with China contrasted on a different scale (given its much stronger growth performance over the past decade) compared with the more developed economies. This shows that Europe (i.e. the Eurozone and the UK) is arguably – at present – in a more worrisome position compared with the US and particularly China. For while the latter has already managed to overtake the output level that it reached prior to the Coronavirus crisis (in Q4 2019), GDP in both the UK and the Euro area has now fallen to levels that pre-dated the GFC. Specifically UK output is about 6% below its 2009 level while the Euro area's output is about 2.5% lower. The US is – at present – roughly half way between, with output that's around 13% above 2009 levels having been nearly 27% or so above that level in Q4 2019. For Europe though this means that having enacted a number of major policy initiatives, including of course extraordinarily loose monetary policy, and thus fostering a substantial, but necessary, bout of balance sheet deleveraging over the past 10 years, its economies now find themselves even worse off than when they kick-started that effort.
This inference of a wasted decade of economic repair is admittedly a little unfair. The economic consequences of the Coronavirus crisis have, after all, been deliberately engineered by various governments in order to deal with that crisis. They are not a direct consequence of excessive leverage and acute financial imbalances which were some of the hallmarks of the GFC. Unwinding those imbalances took time, effort and pain. One would hope that easing lockdown restrictions, ending social distancing and thereby returning to some semblance of economic normality will happen more quickly once the virus – with vaccine assistance – starts to fade.
But it almost goes without saying that absent that vaccine and there is little prospect that Europe will be digging itself out of its holes that fast. The latest data on case numbers do not make for pleasant reading as one by one Europe's economies have either already succumbed to, or are on the verge of, a second wave of the virus (see third and fourth charts below). The clear Catch 22 for the economy is that easing lockdown restrictions and reopening previously moribund sectors allows the virus to regain some traction. Reduced mobility (i.e. social distancing) has contained the virus but clamped down on economic activity. Heightened mobility, however, has obviously fed the virus again.
In the meantime, the normal channels via which one might anticipate moving the wheels of an economic recovery are either hampered or missing in action. Europe's financial markets, for example, are still fairly stressed compared with recovery norms of the past notwithstanding tremendous efforts from Central Banks to unlock the wheels of credit. As evidence for this the ECB's composite indicator of systemic stress in financial markets is still a long way from prior norms (see fifth chart below).
The wheels of household income growth are also at risk of stalling and going into reverse from the current and prospective wave of labour market instability. Government furlough schemes have been an important reason why those wheels have been turning in recent weeks but some of these schemes, and most notably the UK's, are destined to wind down in the coming months. The issue here of course is that, as those schemes come off and household incomes are drained, an important source of support for other sectors that are reliant on consumer spending will begin to feel more pain.
Against this backdrop it is little wonder that many economists remain somewhat gloomy about the economic destiny of many of Europe's economies. The latest August snapshot from the Blue Chip Economic Indicators Panel does not envisage that the Euro area and the UK will regain their prior pre-Coronavirus level of output until at least Q1 2022 (see final chart below). Moreover, the risks to this at present seem to be skewed toward the later rather than the sooner.
Viewpoint commentaries are the opinions of the author and do not reflect the views of Haver Analytics.
Copyright 2021 Haver Analytics. All rights reserved.
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Journal of the Korean Society for Aviation and Aeronautics (한국항공운항학회지)
The Korean Society for Aviation and Aeronautics (KSAFO)
Machinery ＞ Aircraft System
Aims Firstly, The Korean Society for Aviation and Aeronautics (KSAA) aims at conducting research for both the aviation and also aerospace studies. This is mainly due to the fact that the Korean air law deals with aircrafts that fly into the atmosphere. Spacecraft, also flies into the atmosphere and is hence considered as a type of aircraft according to the Korean air law. Therefore, the society seeks theories and scientific studies on occurrences in the atmosphere. These comprises of studies on the atmosphere, meteorology, thermodynamics, hydromechanics and environmental engineering. Secondly, the KSAA aims at developing pilot training through research on fundamentals of piloting, pilot education and aviation psychology. This purpose shall be achieved by either theoretical or scientific studies of flight information and procedure, flight navigation theories, instrumental flight theories, other operation related technic improvement and airspace management (flight plan, changes of flight plan and reserved airspace). Thirdly, the KSAA would also be conducting research on personnel management and facilities. This includes studies on personnel organizations and personnel management such as personnel selection, training and qualification, personnel welfare management. In relation to facilities, there will be new knowledge and theories on design of aviation airport, security and additional facilities, methods and management of operation through research studies. The studies will be developed by established academic theories, scientific investigation and academic research. Scope of the research 1. Aeronautical engineering (mechanical, electronic and communication engineering, aircraft equipment and instrument) 2. Aviation safety (aircraft accident investigation, flight safety) 3. Aviation operation and Air traffic management 4. Aviation meteorology 5. Aviation medical studies 6. Air and space law 7. Environmental protection 8. Aviation security and facilities 9. Aviation policies 10. Airspace management 11. Aerodrome and airport management 12. Aviation maintenance management 13. Aviation management 14. Aviation and aeronautics technology and standards (technology intelligence, test flight, flight simulator, flight training)
http://acoms.kisti.re.kr/journal.do?method=journalintro&journalSeq=J000127 KSCI KCI
A Study on the Relationship between Personality Type, GPA of Student Majoring in Flight Operation
Han, K.K. 1
The purpose of this study was to identify the relationship between personality type and GPA scores of the student majoring flight operation. The data were collected from 96 "H' University student. MBTI Test was selected and used to analyze student's personality type. The results from MBTI Test and GPA scores were analyze by SPSS 10.0 package. I found that E, S, T, J Type, SJ, ST Type, ESTJ, ISTJ Type student are dominated. There were no significant relationship between personality type and GPA scores. The effective teaching strategies have to be considered for each personality type for better education.
Aeroelastic Vibration of a Rocket under a Deflected Follower Thrust
Um, Jae-Ik;Park, Jung-Sun 9
The stable motion has been judged by mathematical modeling of the conditions that a rocket flies flexibly to take an active part in atmosphere. In this paper, the rocket conditions consist of the air speed, thrust and automatic attitude control. Aerodynamic force, a critical trust and a critical air speed are determined by comparing mathematical knowledges with eigenfrequencies of vibration equation. And then rocket object model is designed. Parameters and eigenfrequencies are used in dimensionless forms for in general applications by eliminating restrictions such as dimension, weight and select of materials.
The Study for Construction of the Improved Optimization Algorithm by the Response Surface Method
Park, J.S.;Lee, D.J.;Im, J.B. 22
Response Surface Method (RSM) constructs approximate response surfaces using sample data from experiments or simulations and finds optimum levels of process variables within the fitted response surfaces of the interest region. It will be necessary to get the most suitable response surface for the accuracy of the optimization. The application of RSM plan experimental designs. The RSM is used in the sequential optimization process. The first goal of this study is to improve the plan of central composite designs of experiments with various locations of axial points. The second is to increase the optimal efficiency applying a modified method to update interest regions.
Modeling and SPM Analysis of Fuel Slosh in a Rocket-Thrusting Vehicle
Kang, J.Y. 34
The objectives of the study are to present simple physical and mathematical models of liquid fuel in the tank of an aerospace vehicle such launch vehicle or missile and to investigate its dynamic stability for a parameter space. In this paper, liquid in the container is modeled as multi-mass system subject to parametric excitations, and a stability diagram for determination of stable-unstable regions of the motion is obtained by using an analytical method. Also, computer simulations are conducted at various parameter points to verify the analytical results, and time histories of motion are compared to explain the effect of variation of parameters of the system.
A Study on the Legal Application for Sport Pilot Certificate in Korea
Noh, Yo-Sup;Kim, Young-Hoon 43
In september 2004, a new pilot certificate scheme referred to as Sport Pilot Certificate was declared official and standardized in the US. The designation of Light-sport aircraft and the details of the relevant pilot certificate policy was announced out of the perception that a new regulation is required to be applied whereby the limitations on the manufacturing process enhancements and current aviation rules are considered the triggering factors. US Federal Aviation Regulation retains a comprehensive range of airworthiness certificates and aircrafts are managed systematically in accordance with FAR 21, 103. The airworthiness are further segregated into sub categories, which allows differentiated management. Korean Aviation Law classify aircraft into five different categories and powered air vehicle that weighs more than 150kg(19liters fuel capacity) for one seat, 225kg for two seats(38liters fuel capacity) while the systems that fall under a specific mass threshold level are known as ultralight vehicle. The research discusses the policy of the sport pilot certificate and the light-sport aircraft ratings announced official by the Federal Aviation Administration in an intuitive fashion with the analysis of the operations providing the evidence as to the viability of adopting the policy in local grounds. Based on the findings, the report discusses the case for introducing the light-sport aircraft and make recommendation on a strategy of applying the policy in Korea with respect to the pilot certificates, safety agenda, and the written test for the pilot certificate, and operating efficiency.
A study on the development for an air transportation cultural index
Lee, K.S. 61
The main purpose of this study is to develop air transportation cultural index which is able to estimate the level of them. Generally Speaking, air transportation cultural, a compound word of 'air transportation' and 'culture', is a substantial entity consisting knowledge, art, morality, legality, cultivation, customs, and etc, which comes from aircraft operation sector, airport operation/management sector and user sector. They are classified in a primary scope, as aircraft operation sector relating to flight operation, airport operation/management sector and user sector. The research and analysis were taken approximately 4 months, from June 2004 to October 2004. To evaluate the index, the detailed item for three categories were chosen and quantified. The grades for each items were induced from calculation formula for air transportation cultural index by applying weight values. The final grade of Korea's air transportation cultural index recorded 63.19 points.
A Study on Prediction of Aircraft Noise in Tae-an Airfield
Kim, D.H.;Park, S.B.;Song, B.H. 73
Hanseo University's Tae-an Airfield was opened in July, 2005 for aeronautical education such as aircraft flight, air traffic control, avionics, etc., and will play an important part as a base for local economic and industrial developments. On the contrary, the aircraft noise from the airfield will give an impact against the vicinity of the airfield and become a big issue which the airfield authority has to solve. The aim of this study is to analyse the aircraft noise contour in vicinity of the airfield and to make understand the people around the airfield how much the aircraft noise will have an effect on. For the prediction of the aircraft noise in the local area, this study showed the method to assess the aircraft noise in the developed countries for aviation, and the result to compute WECPNL by INM 6.1 after encoding the various data including environmental input data, tract, and profile. The major results of the study can be summarized as follows ; While the area with influence contour of noise from 75 to 80 WECPNL is 0.555$km^2$, the area from 80 to 85 is 0.343$km^2$, and the area with influence contour of noise over 85 WECPNL is 0.163$km^2$. In addition, there are 4 houses in the contour over 85 WECPNL and the inhabitants(10 people) in this area will have effect from the noise. Therefore Tae-an airfeild authority is preparing the noise-prevention method or noise abatement program. Finally, according to the noise contour, it is one of the best way of decreasing the effect of aircraft noise that 33 runway is assigned as calm-wind runway because there is no resident in the area around 15 threshold.
A study of Airline Choice Behavior of Air Freight Forwarders
Kim, M.S.;Lee, D.S.;Yoo, K.E. 85
The objective of this study is to investigate freight forwarders' airline choice behaviors in the Korean air cargo transportation market. This study identifies the major factors affecting airline choice and their relative importance by analyzing the data gathered by the survey from freight forwarders in Seoul. The questionnaire of the survey is composed of two parts; the first part is to identify the significant variables of airline choice and the second part is to gather the data about airline choice using stated preference techniques. The relative importance of major variables considered in forwarders' airline choice is estimated by the logit models calibrated with stated preference data. To strength the reliability of the analysis, this study segments the market by three routes; Seoul-Los Angeles, Seoul-Amsterdam and Seoul-Hongkong. The five major variables that are considered seriously in airline choice are reliability, space availability, frequency, cost and flight schedule. The utility trade-offs between variables are estimated by the ratio analysis of coefficients of logit model of each route, and the results of ratio analysis is interpreted as reflecting the reality of market conditions.
Canard Type Aircraft Structural Test
Kim, Jin-Won;Ahn, Soek-Min;Jung, Do-Hee;Song, Byung-Heum 97
A canard type aircraft, which has good wing stall and stall/spin-proof characteristics, is under development. The aircraft prototype has full-depth core sandwich type wing and fixed landing gear, and has been built for test flights. Newly developing aircraft will be equipped with retractable landing gear and conventional foam core sandwich laminate structures and multi-rib wings. In this study, we present the structural test procedure and result for aircraft Firefly.
Implementation of the U.S. Aviation Security Policy and Privacy Protection Problem
Kang, J.Y.;Kim, C.H. 110
TSA needs to be more transparent with the new passenger screening system and its functioning to build the citizen trust. The system is needed to be not only effective but supported by Congress and the general public. Until this occurs, skepticism will underlie any discussion about its effectiveness in balancing the protection from terrorism with respect to individual liberties. CAPPS II can be a viable system if it is developed appropriately. The objectives of the study are to introduce the security program in the U.S. aviation security policy and to discuss privacy problems when it applies. Korea also needs to study a harmonious plan with the basis of global approach mind in the case of considering the transferring of passenger information from other states for the purpose of security.
A Study on Trend of Aviation Terrors and Countermeasures
Choi, M.S.;Choi, Y.C. 117
Since terrorist attacks on the United States in 9/11, the aviation terror has been rapidly reduced while having an enormous amount of expenses invested in the aviation terror prevention. The aviation terror indicates itself the problem, and by the same token, the aviation terror prevention requires a huge investment. However, the available resources are limited, which raises concern over the effective use of the limited resources. Therefore, in order to contribute to the establishment of effective aviation security measures, this study examines and analyses the aviation terror types and changes, with the forecast of the aviation terror types with high occurrence potentiality, and suggests the countermeasures for the aviation terror prevention.
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#[http://journalism.utexas.edu/facstaff/PROD75_007702.html Lorraine Branham,] director, School of Journalism, University of Texas, Austin, Texas
#[http://www.blogger.com/profile/09082059581230075706 Steve Brant], Founder & Principal, [http://www.trimtab.com Trimtab Management Systems], [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steven-g-brant HuffPost Blogger], New York, N.Y.
#[http://www.mediagiraffe.org/wiki/index.php/Jtm-dc-Robert_Brasler Robert Brasler,] ex-N.A. news editor/now blogger Reuters PLC, Washington, D.C.
#Cody Brotter, student editor-in-chief, The Hastings Buzzer, Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.
#[http://www.promar.com/MerrillBrown.html Merrill Brown,] / chairman, NowPublic.com / [http://www.carnegie.org/reporter/10/news/index.html editorial director,]of the [http://newsinitiative.org/news21/index.html News21 Carnegie-Knight Initiative on the Future of Journalism Education]
1 WHO'S ATTENDING / READ THE INVITATION / DOWNLOAD PROGRAM/AGENDA (PDF) LOCATION / DIRECTIONS / LODGING / OVERVIEW / " JTM2007 BLOG / LEARNING LINKS / READING LINKS / BLOGGING THE EVENT / ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS / PRE-CONVENING INTERVIEWS
2 Journalism That Matters -- the DC Sessions:What will happen when only the journalism is left?
2.1 August 7-8, 2007, George Washington University, Media & Public Affairs Building805 21st St., NW, Washington, DC 20052
3 Who's attending? The signup roster
3.1 A-D
WHO'S ATTENDING / READ THE INVITATION / DOWNLOAD PROGRAM/AGENDA (PDF)
LOCATION / DIRECTIONS / LODGING / OVERVIEW / " JTM2007 BLOG / LEARNING LINKS / READING LINKS / BLOGGING THE EVENT / ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS / PRE-CONVENING INTERVIEWS
Journalism That Matters -- the DC Sessions:
What will happen when only the journalism is left?
August 7-8, 2007, George Washington University, Media & Public Affairs Building
805 21st St., NW, Washington, DC 20052
Who's attending? The signup roster
If you have registered or are planning to attend Journalism That Matters: The DC Sessions please add your name, any appropriate affiliation and location to the list below. Simply click on the "edit" tab on the top of this page to edit and then the "save page" tab when done. You may also provide a link to your bio or other appropriate material.
Bill Allison, The Sunlight Foundation, Washington, D.C.
Christopher Anderson, Ph.D. communications candidate, Columbia University, Brooklyn, N.Y.
Faye Anderson, citizen journalist, Anderson@Large, Brooklyn, N.Y.
Richard Anderson, founder/CEO, VillageSoup.com, Rockland, Maine
Angie Bado, president/founder, mckinneynews.net, McKinney, Texas
Robert Basler, Reuters Inc. blogger, Washington, D.C.
Paul Bass, editor, New Haven Independent/ Online Journalism Project, New Haven, Conn.
Matthew Bates, doctoral student, University of Maryland Philip Merrill College of Journalism (AEJMC)
Valery Y.R. Bates-Brown, asst. VP / professor, visual communications, Virginia State University, Petersburg, Va.
David Bennahum, president/CEO, The Center for Independent Media, Washington, D.C.
Clyde Bentley, convergence journalism professor, University of Missouri (AEJMC)
Scott Bosley, executive director, American Society of Newspaper Editors, Reston, Va.
Wally Bowen, exec. director, Mountain Area Information Network, Asheville, N.C.
John Boyer, executive director, Ilmworks Inc./Muslim Project, Annandale, Va.
Lorraine Branham, director, School of Journalism, University of Texas, Austin, Texas
Steve Brant, Founder & Principal, Trimtab Management Systems, HuffPost Blogger, New York, N.Y.
Cody Brotter, student editor-in-chief, The Hastings Buzzer, Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.
Merrill Brown, / chairman, NowPublic.com / editorial director,of the News21 Carnegie-Knight Initiative on the Future of Journalism Education
Will Bunch, reporter/blogger, Attytood, and The Daily News, Philadelphia, Pa.
Patrick Butler, vice president, programs, International Center for Journalists, Washington, D.C.
Bill Buzenberg, executive director, Center for Public Integrity, Washington, D.C.
Jessica Bynoe, Program Officer, Youth Engagement, Academy for Education Development, New York, N.Y.
Mary Beth Callie, assistant professor, communication, Regis University, Denver, Colo. (AEJMC)
Ed Carter, assistant professor, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah
Sam Chaltain, Executive Director, Five Freedoms, Washington, D.C.
Sue Ellen Christian, assoc. prof. of journalism, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Mich.
Jessica Clark, research director, Center for Social Media, American University and editor-at-large, In These Times magazine
David Cohn, graduate student, blogger/ Columbia Journalism School and NewAssignment.Net, Brooklyn, N.Y.
Jeff Crigler, CEO, Voxant Inc., Reston, Va.
Ingrid Dahl, Editor, Youth Media Reporter, Academy for Educational Development, New York, N.Y. Youth Media Reporter
George L. Daniels, asst. professor of journalism, Univ. of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Ala. (AEJMC)
Tom Davidson, project director, Tribune Interactive, Newport News, Va.
Michael Deehan, Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst
Bill Densmore, director, The Media Giraffe Project at UMass, Amherst, Mass.
Eduardo de Oliveira, editor, The Brazilian Journal/N.E. Ethnic Newswire / Nashua, N.H.
Neil Didriksen, publisher, Maryland Media, Lutherville, Md.
Jacqueline Dupree, JDLand and intranet editor, The Washington Post, Washington, D.C.
Margaret Duffy, acting dean for graduate studies, Missouri School of Journalism, Columbia, Mo.
Todd Eskelsen, attorney/partner, Schiff Hardin LLC, Washington, D.C.
Guillemette Faure, U.S correspondent,Le Figaro and Rue89
Fabrice Florin, director, NewsTrust.net, Mill Valley, Calif.
Pam Foster, director, student publications, Tennessee State Univ., Nashville, Tenn.
Andrea Breemer Frantz, associate professor, Wilkes University
Margaret Freivogel, co-founder, St. Louis Platform, Kirkwood, Mo.
William Freivogel, acting dean, School of Journalism, Southern Illinois University, Cabondale, Ill. (AEJMC)
Lew Friedland, Madison Common co-founder and professor, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wis.
Paul Fucito, communications director, School of Media & Public Affairs, GWU, Washington, D.C.
Kevin Gamble, associate director, National eXtension Initiative, North Carolina State Univ., Raleigh, N.C.
Manuel Garcia, AME-Metro, The Miami Herald Media Co., Miami, Fla.
Robert Giles, curator, Nieman Foundation for Journalism, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.
Dan Gillmor, founder, Center for Citizen Media, Berkley, Calif., and Cambridge, Mass.
Bob Greiner, local news editor, WashingtonPost.com, Arlington, Va.
Tom Grubisich, OJR contributor, web editor, The World Bank, Washington, D.C.
Andrew Haeg,senior producer, CIJ, American Public Media, Saint Paul, Minn.
John Hamer, executive director, Washington News Council, Seattle, Wash.
Tanya Harned, ePluribus Media and ePluribus Media Timelines, Columbia, Mo.
Tana Hartman, board member/talk-show host, The Peoples Channel, Chapel Hill, N.C.
Susan Hasan collaborator, Ilmworks Inc./Muslim Project, Annandale, Va.
Arthur Hayes, associate professor, Dept. of Communication & Media Studies, Fordham University, Bronx, N.Y.
Barbara Hipsman, associated professor/news, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio
Peggy Holman, author, The Change Handbook and co-director, Journalism that Matters Consortium, Seattle
Brant Houston, director, Investigative Reporters & Editors, Columbia, Mo.
Cody Howard, 6News director, The World Company, Lawrence, Kansas
Anne Hoyt, master's candidate/Georgetown University, Washington correspondent, Mexico's Grupo Radio Centro / Washington, D.C.
Evelyn Hsu, program director, Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, Oakland, Calif.
Lee W. Huebner, director, School of Media & Public Affairs, the Geo. Washington Univ., Washington, D.C.
G. Patton "Pat" Hughes, CEO-editor, Paulding.com / Neomaxcom LLC / Dallas, Georgia
Paul Janensch, associated professor, Quinnipiac University, Hamden, Conn. (AEJMC)
Debra Jasper, director, Kiplinger Program in Public Affairs Journalism, Ohio State Univ., Columbus, Ohio
William Jiles, Florida A&M University (AEJMC)
Pam Johnson, executive director, Reynolds Journalism Institute, Univ. of Missouri, Columbia, Mo.
Linda Jue, exec. director, New Voices in Independent Journalism / exec. editor, George Washington Williams Fellowship, San Francisco
Mark Jurkowitz, associate director, Project on Excellence in Journalism, Washington, D.C.
Susan Kearney, vp-marketing, Voxant, Inc., Reston, Va.
Janet Keefer, associate professor, School of Journalism and Mass Comm, journalism, Drake University, Des Moines, Iowa (AEJMC)
Janet Key, lecturer in journalism/mass. comp./American University in Cairo, Egypt
Natasha Klauss, videographer, The Documentary Center at Geo. Washington Univ., Washington, D.C.
Steve Klein, Coordinator, Electronic Journalism Program, George Mason University
Susan M. Knight, journalism professor, Univ. of Arizona, Tucson, Ariz.
Bill Kovach, chairman/acting director, Committee of Concerned Journalists, Washington, D.C. (AEJMC)
Peggy Kuhr, dean, University of Montana Journalism School, Missoula, Montana (former Knight Chair, Univ. of Kansas) (AEJMC)
Beth Lawton, digital-media manager, Newspaper Association of America, Arlington, Va.
Tien-Tsung Lee, professor, William Allen White School, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kan.(AEJMC)
Al Leeds, president and editorial director, L.A. Times/Washington Post News Service, Washington, D.C.
David Loomis, professor, Indiana University of Pennsylvania (AEJMC)
Chopeta Lyons, editor, ePluribus Media and ePluribus Media Timelines, Willington, Conn.
Andrew MacRae, intern,Center for Public Integrity, Washington, D.C.
Audrey Manring, editor, The Women's Times, Great Barrington, Mass.
Kathleen Manzo, associate editor, EPE/Education Week, Bethesda, Md.
Albert May, assoc. professor of of media and public affairs, George Washington University, Washington,D.C.
Dori Maynard, president, Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, Oakland, Calif.
Jeanne McCann, managing editor, edweek.org, Bethesda, Md.
Jen McClure, executive director, Society for New Communications Research, Palo Alto, Calif.
Meredith McCulloch, New England News Forum, Bedford, Mass.
Shawn Mcintosh, instructor, digital communications, Columbia University, New York, N.Y.
Susan McKenna, master's candidate/publications director, Univ. of Illinois College of Communications, Champaign-Urbana, Ill. (AEJMC)
Ilona Meagher, writer, ePluribus Media, Caledonia, Ill.
Gabriella Meerbach, managing director Media on the Spot, Amsterdam (AEJMC)
Sara Melillo, journalism program officer, McCormick Tribune Foundation, Chicago
Rachel Davis Mersey, assistant professor, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minn.(AEJMC)
Stephanie Michelle, videographer/attorney, Stealing Joy Productions, Arlington, Va.
Amy Mitchell, Project for Excellence in Journalism, Washington, D.C. (AEJMC)
Bill Mitchell, editor, Poynter Online, The Poynter Institute, St. Petersburg, Fla.
Lawrence Mitchell, law professor, Geo. Washington Univ., Washington, D.C.
Arlene Morgan, associate dean, Columbia Univ. Graduate School of Journalism, New York
Nikhil Moro, Assistant Professor, Central Michigan University, Mount Pleasant, Mich.
Emily Moses, multimedia program coordinator, UC-Berkley Journalism School/Knight New Media Center, Berkeley, Calif.
Sharon Moshavi, director, digital media, International Center for Journalists
Brett Mueller, website manager, Committee of Concerned Journalists, Washington, D.C.
Angela Nelson, senior news/politics producer, Boston.com/Boston Globe, Lowell, Mass.
Chris O'Brien, founder, Next Newsroom Project / reporter, San Jose Mercury News, San Jose, Calif.
Russell Okamoto, Cofounder, Public Press, Portland, Ore.
Mike Orren, president and founder, Pegasus News / Panlocal Media, Dallas, Texas
Geneva Overholser, professor, Univ. of Missouri journalism school, Washington, D.C.
Robert Park, graduate student journalism, Point Park Univ., Pittsburgh, Pa.
Michael Parks, director, School of Journalism, Univ. of Southern California, Los Angeles
Chris Peck, editor, The Commercial Appeal, Memphis, Tenn.
Dale Peskin, managing director, iFOCUS, Virginia
Nicholas Penniman, Washington director, Schumann Center for Media and Democracy, Washington, D.C.
Peter Perl, asst. managing editor/training, The Washington Post, Washington, D.C.
Steve Petersen, The Bivings Group, Washington, D.C.
Victor Pickard, FreePress.net and graduate student, Univ. of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Ill.
Vikki Porter, director, Knight Digital Media Center, Los Angeles, CA
Krishna Prasad, Citizen Journalist, Churumuri and Sans Serif, Mysore, India
Jay Rosen, NewAssignment.Net, OffTheBus, and New York University, New York
Marjorie Rouse, vp Europe/Eurasia, Internews Network, Washington, D.C.
David Ryfe, Ourtahoe.org and the University of Nevada Reno (AEJMC)
Elena Sassower, director, Center for Judicial Accountability, White Plains, N.Y.
Ali Savino, program director, The Center for Independent Media, Washington, D.C.
Jan Schaffer, director, J-Lab/The Institute for Interactive Media, Univ. of Maryland, College Park (AEJMC)
Wadim Schreiner, managing director, Media Tenor Ltd.-South Africa (AEJMC)
Carl Schierhorn, assoc. professor, Kent State Univ. School of Journalism, Kent, Ohio
Barbara Schulz, writer, ePluribus Media and ePluribus Media Timelines, Encinitas, Calif.
Barbara Selvin, journalism professor, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, N.Y.
Ellen Scully-Russ, doctoral candidate, Columbia University Teachers College, Oakton, Va.
Jim Shaffer, dean, Univ. of Southern Maine business school, Portland, Maine
Michael Shanahan, asst. journalism professor, George Washington University, Washington, D.C.
Andrew Sherry,senior vp-online communications, Center for American Progress, Washington, D.C.
Keika Shimmyo, project assistant, School & Community Services, Academy for Educational Development, New York, N.Y.
Vjollca Shtylla, senior program director, International Center for Journalists
Stephen Silha, co-director, Journalism That Matters Consortium and past president, Washington News Council, Seattle, Wash.
Norman Sims, Media Giraffe Project, Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst, Mass. (AEJMC)
Maurreen Skowran, founder, Journawiki and copy editor, The News & Observer, Raleigh, N.C.
Timothy Smith, journalism professor, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio
Jennifer Snyder-Duch, Assistant Professor, Carlow University, Pittsburgh, Pa.
John Soloski, professor and former dean, University of Georgia, Bogart, Ga.
Tom Stites, consulting editor, Center for Public Integrity, Newburyport, Mass.
S. Holly Stocking, assoc. professor, Indiana University School of Journalism, Bloomington, Ind. (AEJMC)
Michael Stoll, lecturer, San Jose State Univ., and director, Public Press Initiative
Federico Subervi, professor, Texas State Univ. Journalism & Mass. Comm., San Marcos, Texas
Roberto Suro, director, Pew Hispanic Center/USC-Annenberg, Washington,D.C.
Jaap Swart, retired General Manager, Radio Netherlands Training Centre, Amsterdam
Erin Teeling, New Media Associate, The Bivings Group, Washington, D.C.
Jennifer Thomas, journalist/photographer, iberkshires.com/Boxcar Media, North Adams, Mass.
Paul Thomas, writer, ePluribus Media and ePluribus Media Timelines, , Granville, Mass.
Esther Thorson, associate dean, University of Missouri-Columbia School of Journalism
Joe Torres, goverment relations manager, Free Press, Washington, D.C.
Tony Van Witsen, independent documentary producer / formerly PBS Newshour / Boulder, Colo.
Russ Walker, asst. managing editor, nation/world, washingtonpost.com, Alexandria, Va.
Patrick Walters, graduate student, Univ. of Memphis, former Poynter Institute Naughton Fellow, Wyomissing, Pa.
Jennifer Ward, interactive media editor, The Fresno Bee, Fresno, Calif.
Tom Warhover, innovations editor, The Missourian / faculty, Univ. of Missouri J-School, Columbia, Mo.
Elin Waring, ePluribus Media and ePluribus Media Timelines, / Joomla-Open Source Matters, Bronx, N.Y.
Jiyan Wei, product manager, Vocus Inc./PRWeb, Lanham, Md.
Carol White, Book Editor, ePluribus Media, Hamilton, Va.
Josh Wilson, Newsdesk.org / also: Illuminated Media
Leonard Witt, PJNet.org, Robt. Fowler chair, Kennesaw State Univ., Kennesaw, Ga.
Jeffrey Young, web editor, Chronicle of Higher Education, Washington, D.C.
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Home Automation Overview
November 22, 2016 Home Automation No comments
Ever since I was little I have had (on top of my love for computers in general) a fascination for home automation. In The Netherlands we had a ‘House of the Future’, and my dad got me the accompanying book, which I loved to read and scan through over and over again.
Fast forward to today and it seems, finally, the future is here. Sure, things were possible before, but only if you were either willing to pay big bucks for a rather closed system, or if you were willing to go all DIY (and still pay quite some bucks). Now, especially if you’re not afraid of a bit of tinkering and perhaps a bit of DIY, a lot is possible and kind of affordable. Moreover, a lot of things are inter-operable or can be opened up, which is especially fun if you have a programming background.
Everything seems to come together, many companies develop devices, stores are putting them on the shelves, ads are on TV, WiFi, broadband and 3G are (in western world) ominous, small computers are cheaply available and everyone always has a powerful internet-connected computer with build in touch screen at hand.
From a birds eye view, what are some of the currently available options and exciting features?
In The Netherlands, a company called ‘Klik-aan-klik-uit’ came up with a line of cheap actuators and sensors that operate together wirelessly on the 433Mhz channel. It provides a nice entry to the world of Home Automation, but this cheap price comes with some downsides: communication is ‘send-and-forget’. Sensors only send and actuators only receive so missing a radio message can result in inconsistent situations. Also there’s no security at all.
Z-Wave is a wireless protocol operating on 868.42 MHz (Europe) or 908.42 MHz (USA). Although it’s a proprietary standard licensed by Sigma Designs, other companies are also welcome to build their devices around it. This has resulted in a broad range of sensors and actuators from different brands, all operating together. Z-Wave is bi-directional, and uses a mesh protocol where data can hop a few times before it reaches its destination, enabling a network to span more than the square of the 1-to-1 radio range. Z-Wave requires a central controller, of which there are plenty. Z-Wave.me offers RaspberryPi and USB controller modules, which DIY people can use to interact with the Z-Wave network.
Zigbee is, in contrast to Z-Wave, an open standard. It runs on the 2.4Ghz frequency (same as WiFi and Bluetooth) and also uses mesh technology. Just like Z-Wave, it requires a central unit, which is called a ‘coordinator’. At first glance, at least in The Netherlands, there’s less devices available for Zigbee, and interoperability is not always straightforward (see Hue below). Operating with Zigbee devices can be done using a custom coordinator, such as the XBee shield for Arduino.
WiFi requires more power than Zigbee and Z-Wave, offers higher data rates but no mesh technology (so all devices must be in range of a router, although star designs can of course be made using standard ethernet). Devices can use a lot of readily available protocols but also have to worry about different standards, network architectures, and firewalls in order to operate together. A ‘dial out’ solution can be used where devices find each other at a central server (of the manufacturer) on the internet. This brings of course privacy and security issues.
Because of all this, WiFi is less practical for smaller sensors and actuators that need to be placed in great number (ie per lamp, per door, per room), but more so for devices such as the Nest (thermostat). Interacting with these devices will be different on the software level for every manufacturer (Nest, for instance, has an API available).
X10 is a protocol that a bit older than the others, and original ran over the power lines (on the same lines as the power itself), although it is also used on wireless channels. Because of its age it is a bit slow and limited, especially compared to Z-Wave and Zigbee. It has a more ‘industrial’ user base, and I have not really seen consumer products with this protocol like I have seen for the others.
Turning lights on and off over AC current (230V or 110V) is quite straightforward both mechanically (wall switch) and automatically (relais). Dimming them, without side effects, humming noises or other artefacts is a whole different ballgame. This holds true even for LED’s, as long as the dimming is applied already on the AC line. It’s much better to use DC lamps and dim ‘after’ the AC-DC conversion. Since most houses run AC over the wires up unto the lamp, this poses a problem (because this only allows dimming over AC, which is more difficult).
The Philips Hue lamp solves this by combining LED lighting, AC-DC conversion, dimming and wireless control all inside a single bulb that is powered from the E-27 socket. Hue uses the Zigbee protocol, but a variation of it, which makes interoperating with it on the Zigbee level impossible or impractical (depending on hardware / software versions and who you ask). Instead, one can use a Hue bridge and connect to that over the local ethernet network. It has a REST API available for that, including various SDK’s and extensive documentation.
Hue also has switches and PIR sensors available, but sadly there is still no option in the API to react on their events (except for continuously polling their state, but I don’t think the bridge can handle polling fast enough to monitor multiple switches in a way that makes swift responses possible).
So now you have these devices in your house, how to interconnect them? Well, some solutions provide their own (simple) ways to ‘wire’ your wireless devices together. The Dutch 433Mhz solution ‘Klik-aan-klik-uit’ for instance has a way to pair actuators and sensors directly together, and the Philips Hue system has an app that both controls and programs the system through the bridge.
One step more ‘in control’ would be to buy a device that acts as a ‘heart’ of your system. Inside will be a computer running some pre-installed software, probably with a web interface through which you can configure your system and make rules for it. Some of these central units only work with a single protocol, such as the BeNext with Z-Wave, others can connect to devices with different protocols.
One step further is to ‘build’ the device from the previous step yourself (well, combine a few hardware parts, such as a Raspberry Pi and a Z-Wave module) and run some open source software (such as Domoticz) on it to basically make the off-the-shelve device described in the previous paragraph. Different software modules can be also added, for instance to integrate the Hue lamps.
Myself I am going yet one more step further, because I’d rather program than tinker with existing software that more often than not misses exactly that feature that I would like to see. Therefore, I’ve setup a Raspberry Pi a MQTT broker. This is a lightweight messaging protocol to which others can subscribe and publish. All I need is to make bridges between every different platform and MQTT, and some software that will do some reasoning based on one MQTT subscription and publish the result to another (I could use Node-RED for that, but perhaps I’ll just build it myself). There’s already quite some building blocks available, such as free apps that report your phone’s location to an MQTT server of your choice, offer (Apple) Home Kit integration, C libraries for Arduino and the likes, etc. I’ll describe this setup in more detail in a separate post.
To bring Star Trek, and probably many other SciFi worlds, be bit more to life, controlling your home with your voice would be a cool thing! There’s roughly two ways to get the audio in: nearby mic (ie your phone) and far-field mics (that hear you from across the room). There’s also roughly two ways to process the audio: locally (in your home), or remotely (at the servers of a company you may or may not fully trust). Currently not all combinations of the above are readily available.
Picking up your voice throughout the room over background noise has currently (to my knowledge) only been demonstrated with the Amazon Echo (and Echo Dot), and the Google Home. Both process data remotely, and have mics always on, which may be a privacy concern. I for one would not mind, but they’re not yet available here.
Voice recognition on your phone is much less cool. Although ‘Ok Google’, may have some custom integration options, Siri comes equipped for home automation out of the box, as long as your setup supports Home Kit. Another solution I want to look into is Tasker (an Android app), combined with plugins for voice recognition and MQTT messaging.
It’s clear that a whole range of home automation devices are flooding the market. You can either lock yourself into one brand (such as Philips Hue), one protocol (such as Z-Wave) or – with a bit more technical knowledge – build a system that integrates multiple systems. Especially the latter approach is in my opinion now, and only just now, feasible. Not being locked in and being able to add a bit of your own hacking and tinkering to a system that otherwise consists of off-the-shelve components convinced me to, after all these years, to make my home into what in my childhood was predicted as the future.
three − = zero
MobDevel
Developing for mobile devices
iOS Localization, some reflection and a hack
iOS Core Plot (minimal example)
Why I think Android developers should rotate their phone often
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DVD Review: Das Cabinet Des Dr Caligari
12 Days Of Christmas: Day 7
Chris Faers
Editor's Choice, Features
Film4 Frightfest
Horror Channel Frightfest review: Francesca
Matthew Hammond
Film4 Frightfest, London, London Reviews
Francesca is, in the purest and simplest of terms, absolute giallo. It captures in totality the essence of a genre that exists still as one of the most distinctive and cultishly adored sub genres in horror history, touched by masterful mavericks such as Dario Argento, Mario Bava and Lucio Fulci, who crafted images that blurred the lines between beauty and barbarism in worlds laced with mystery and madness.
In the true tradition of the genre, Francesca follows two detectives in the pursuit of a serial killer who, after butchering his victims, leaves references to Dante’s Divine Comedy with the body. As the body count grows, they realise the key to discovering the killer’s identity is to solve the mysterious disappearance of a young girl 15 years ago. The film follows in the recent footsteps of the likes of Bruno Forzani and Helene Cattet’s Amer and Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears, and Astron-6’s The Editor, as a work of genre homage, and it is remarkable how accurate Francesca is in capturing the very essence of the Giallo in its stylisation. There are so many details that director Luciano Onetti orchestrates in the construction of film, from obvious visual motifs such as the abundance of point of view shots, exaggerated and frequently schizophrenic soundtrack, the murder set piece and the icon of the gloved, ambiguous killer; to more subtle nods such as the use of J&B Whiskey and the twisting narrative form that features familial, gender and social confusion at the core of the mystery being weaved. It’s a truly spectacular blending of sleazy saturation, pop art excess, bad dubbing and dark desires. Of all the works to inspire the visual and narrative of Francesca, Dario Argento’s iconic Deep Red (Profondo Rosso) appears to be the strongest factor in both visual and narrative shape, and in choosing such an architype as its core influence, Onetti is able to build a spine to layer texture upon texture, reference upon reference, while still maintaining structure in the anarchy of ideas.
Perhaps the one distinct flaw early in the film is one that comes inherently with creating such a direct work of homage: the difficulty in finding an original identity within the blend of reference. The fact that it is so perfectly reflective of other works, creates a sense early in the film of a work of collage rather than a complete picture; a restless storm of images and ideas that holds power, but doesn’t focus in to craft its own true voice, almost echoing within the spaces sculpted by other creators, like a spectre wandering the halls of giallo’s past itself. This elusiveness juxtaposed with the sheer directness of the vision can be quite jarring, but as the film builds, what becomes most impressive is that rather than continuing to merely imitate, becoming flat and monotonous in the display of iconography and cliché in the process, it only builds in confidence as it progresses. Set pieces form naturally with the momentum of the narrative, holding reference to classic moments (the confrontation between the killer and a pianist of course heavily referential to the aforementioned Deep Red) but becoming grisly and leering spectacles within themselves, and this sense of vitality ultimately leads to an archetypal giallo conclusion, executed with finesse and surprise, feeling true to the spirit of the classics, while marking itself as a genuinely effective thriller. It’s a wonderfully nasty sting in the tail that confirms not only Francesca’s credentials as a superior work of homage, but also helps elevate it as thrilling genre work in its own right.
Francesca is a joyous example of pure referential love captured on film; it succeeds as a work of both style and tone in the grandest traditions of the form. In devoting itself entirely to texture of the genre, Francesca walks a fine line between homage and vacancy of originality; however, as the film develops, it matures into a truly delightful slice of throwback cinema, marked by the balance between the tenderness of its imitation and commitment to delivering a thrilling ride.
Matthew Hammond is a full time cinephile, specializing in cult, art house and 1980s cinema. While film is his overwhelming passion, Matthew has been known to enjoy comic books, Sherlock Holmes stories and a good film related T-shirt. Feel free to email me with any questions or comments: mattpaul250190@gmail.com
Arrow Video Frightfest Review: Relic
Arrow Video Frightfest Review: Heckle
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Orion Completes Environmental Tests at Plum Brook
March 16, 2020 Doug Messier News Leave a comment
Orion undergoing testing at Plum Brook Station. (Credit: NASA–Marvin Smith)
SANDUSKY, Ohio (ESA PR) — The first Orion spacecraft that will fly around the Moon as part of Artemis to return humans to the lunar surface has finished its space-environment tests at NASA’s Plum Brook Station in Ohio, USA.
The vehicle – that can transport up to four astronauts – consists of the European Service Module, the Crew Module and connecting adapter and all elements have now been given the stamp of approval for spaceflight after being subjected to the vacuum, extreme temperatures and electro-magnetic interference it will encounter during its trip to the Moon.
Orion arrived at Plum Brook Station – the only centre large enough to test the spacecraft – on 26 November and passed two months of thermal-vacuum tests subjecting the spacecraft to temperatures ranging from –175°C to 75°C in vacuum.
After passing the trial by temperature, Orion went through electromagnetic interference testing to ensure the electronics worked well together – the European Service Module has over 11 km over wiring to gather information and send commands to its 31 engines, propellant tanks, solar wings and more.
Orion is a key component of Artemis 1, an uncrewed test flight around the Moon that paves the way for the Artemis 3 mission which will land the first woman and next man on the lunar surface by 2024. ESA is designing and supplying the European Service Module for Orion – the bottom part of the spacecraft in the picture – that provides electricity, water, oxygen and nitrogen as well as keeping the spacecraft at the right temperature and on course.
Orion will now ship to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center where it will be further prepared for launch, including assembling the solar panels and more individual tests.
Artemis I, ESA, European Service Module, European Space Agency, Kennedy Space Center, NASA, NASA KSC, Orion, Plum Brook Station
Transforming Energy into Imagery: How Satellite Data Becomes Stunning Views of Earth
Video: Virgin Orbit Cosmic Girl Taxi Test with LauncherOne Attached
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Comedian Louis C.K. Mocks Parkland Shooting Survivors In Recent Routine
January 2, 2019 Entertainment Daypop
Comedian Louis C.K. is embroiled in controversy again, this time for seeming to make fun of survivors of the Parkland school shooting and their effort for stricter gun control. In audio from a recent comedy set, the
Release Date Announced For “Stranger Things’ Season 3
Netflix has announced July 4, 2019 is the day it will release the eagerly awaited new season of its hit series, “Stranger Things.” Netflix used the New Year’s holiday to tweet an image showing the show’s cast
Mister Rogers Movie Starring Tom Hanks Officially Titled “A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood”
December 31, 2018 Entertainment Daypop
Sony Pictures has announced the title for its Fred Rogers biopic will be called: A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. The studio revealed the name on its social media accounts for the film, which is set for
Netflix Says Record-Breaking 45 Million Accounts Have Watched “Bird Box” In It’s First Week Of Streaming
Streaming service Netflix said that over 45 million accounts have watched their new original thriller, “Bird Box,” in what is now the best first week for a Netflix movie. Netflix tweeted: “Took off my blindfold this morning
Netflix Drops Release Date And Trailer For “Black Mirror” Movie, “Bandersnatch”
On Thursday, Netflix released the trailer for the upcoming film for the acclaimed show, “Black Mirror,” which centers on a young British programmer, played by Fionn Whitehead, who helps design a video game based on a book
Billie Lourd Honors Her Late Mom Carrie Fisher On 2-Year Anniversary Of Her Passing
Carrie Fisher’s daughter, actress Billie Lourd, honored her mom with a song on the two-year anniversary of her death. Lourd wrote in an emotional Instagram post, which was accompanied by a video: “It has been two years
Jordan Peele Debuts First Trailer For Horror Film ‘Us’
Jordan Peele released the first trailer to his latest horror film “Us,” starring Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o and “Black Panther” star Winston Duke. The film follows a family of four who are haunted by a demonic version
Miley Cyrus Confirms Wedding To Actor Liam Hemsworth
Miley Cyrus and Liam Hemsworth are married. On Wednesday, the 26-year-old Cyrus went on Instagram to share a handful of sweet photos of herself with Hemsworth, 28, at what appears to be from the couple’s wedding day.
Kevin Spacey Charged With Sexual Assault; Posts Bizarre Video As His “Frank Underwood” Character From House Of Cards
Officials announced earlier this week that Kevin Spacey has been formally charged with sexual assault, more than a year after a former Boston news anchor came forward with allegations the disgraced actor sexually assaulted her teenage son
HGTV’s “Flip Or Flop” Co-Star Christina El Moussa Marries In Surprise Wedding
Christina El Moussa, the star of HGTV’s “Flip or Flop,” married Ant Anstead, host of the car series “Wheeler Dealers,” over the weekend at their Newport Beach, California home.The two told their 70 guests they would be
New Rock After Hours
New Rock Music
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The Corona Diaries: Richard Carson
These recent times have been some of the hardest challenges we've faced and as a community, it hit us pretty hard. However during these difficult times, here at Pocket Size Theatre, we wanted to spread a little positivity and share some peoples experiences because we are all in this together. Each day we'll be speaking to our friends in the industry to share their experiences with you all so take a read and see how people are getting through these hard times.
Let's stick together, share the love and get through this as a community!
*Some information mentioned in this article may be out of date due to the progress of the current situation. Please keep that in mind when reading*
Richard Carson is currently appearing in the London production of Les Miserables at the Sondheim Theatre. His other credits include Reuben/cover Pharaoh in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (London Palladium); Sky Masterson in Guys and Dolls (The Mill, Sonning); Sky in Mamma Mia! (Novello); ensemble/cover Chris in Miss Saigon (Prince Edward); ensemble/cover Fiyero in Wicked (UK and Ireland tour); Strephon in Sasha Regan’s All-Male Iolanthe (UK tour), Jason in Myth (The Other Palace); ensemble/Farmer in Oklahoma! (Royal Albert Hall, BBC Proms); Man One in Closer Than Ever (The Pheasantry) and John in The Hired Man (Bernie Grant Centre).
On Monday 16th March 2020, The Society of London Theatre announced the closure of all Theatres in London. This followed suit with regional venues. Where were you when you found out and what was your initial reaction?
I was in my dressing room, it was so odd. We were told ‘no warm-up but meet on stage’ so we knew something was up. When we were called off, our dressing room stayed and had a few drinks knowing we might not be back for some time. Such a weird feeling!
Can you tell us anything productive you’ve been doing?
I’ve been live-streaming some fitness classes on my Instagram (1pm Fridays, join me!), and also been hosting workouts and quizzes for our Les Mis cast. It’s a nice way to keep in touch with everyone and keep my brain active.
There's so much important information and messages being spread on social media but sometimes it can be quite mentally draining and consume a lot of your time, how have you been trying to look after your mental state whilst using these platforms?
I think it’s got a lot better recently though, or maybe I’ve just blocked the negative?! Seeing people posting songs and funny videos is always nice. I read a great book recently that really helped me check out of everything that simply doesn’t matter, so that helps me stay focused on the rest.
With the Arts temporarily shut down, how would you advise people to continue to support the Arts industries?
It’s so important now more than ever. Anytime you see someone raising money for the arts or an arts charity, help them! I believe the entertainment industry has been majorly overlooked by this government, and we simply need the arts to pick everyone back up once this is all over.
Have you discovered anything that you’d like to recommend to our viewers?
So much! Last Dance on Netflix, Schitts Creek on Netflix, Unorthodox on Netflix, Friends all the time, everything on Disney+, NT streams on YouTube, Myth the musical on YouTube (cheeky plug!). As for books, Mark Manson’s books are great. I won’t say the titles because they’re quite rude, but really great for now.
In these times of Social Distancing and isolation, how have you been trying to connect with Friends and Family? Any fun quizzes or games?!
My family have been having zoom quizzes once a week, where we all make up 10 questions, so that’s always fun. Plus face timing friends a lot. It’s an awful situation we are in, but it’s allowed time to focus on ourselves and do some work there.
And finally, looking to the future, what are you most looking forward to when all of this is over?
Going back to work! I miss it. Then, hugging my family. Then, the luxury of travel. Any chance I get is a chance to see somewhere new!
We'd like to thank Richard and all other performers who have given up their time to contribute to this feature.
For more information please visit GOV.UK and NHS.co.uk
Other useful links for anyone needing further help:
Acting For Others - Charity that provides financial & emotional support to all theatre workers in times of need.
Help Musicians - An independent Charity that helps all forms of Musicians through times of need.
Industry Minds - Mental Health Support for the creative arts.
Theatre Helpline - a free, independent and confidential phone and email service that provides support to people working in the theatre industry.
Labels: Acting for others, Coronavirus, Covid-19, Help Musicians, industry minds, Richard Carson, The Corona Diaries, Theatre Helpline
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Prodital Italia
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Measuring of internal and external image - Image Audit
Monday, January 31, 2011 Business Communication, Conference No comments
Hindu Business Line organises 'Business Line Club' in various colleges and arranges interaction session with industry experts on all topics. K. Srinivasan, Founder of Prime Point Foundation was invited by Hindu Business LIne Club to give a talk on "Measuring internal and external image - Image Audit" to the Management students of Manakula Vinayakar Institute of Technology, Puducherry on 31st Jan 2011.
In the talk, K. Srinivasan explained how perception was getting formed and the importance of understanding the 'hidden perception' of stake holders. He also explained how perception leads to image. He explained the techniques of studying the 'hidden perception' known as 'Image Audit'. He advised the students to visit www.imageaudit.com to know more about this concept and to look at some of the sample reports.
Srinivasan answered various questions posed by the students on the concept of image and perception.
Please see the photo stream:
Business Communication Course at Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan sets the trend
Wednesday, January 12, 2011 Business Communication No comments
Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Chennai launched an unique skill based Business Communication Course for the working professionals in July 2010. This is a week-end course spread over 120 hours (20 week ends - 40 days x 3 hours each) focussing only on skill development. 15 experts and 10 CEOs/achievers handled the sessions. The course was launched by Dr Abdul Kalam in July 2010 at Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan.
L to R: K. Srinivasan, N Ravi, M Narendra,
T S Krishna Murthy. K N Ramaswamy and Vaidyanathan
The convocation to distribute the certificates was held on Sunday the 2nd Jan 2011 at Bhavan. Mr T S Krishna Murthy (Former Chief Election Commissioner of India and now the Chairman of Bhavan's Chennai Kendra), Mr N Ravi (Vice Chairman of Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan and Editor of The Hindu), Mr M Narendra (Chairman and Managing Director of Indian Overseas Bank) participated and shared their valuable thoughts on communication trends.
The photo stream of the event:
Mr K. Srinivasan, Chairman of Prime Point Foundation and the Course Director presented a brief report on the course.
Mr T S Krishna Murthy, Chairman of the Chennai Kendra delivered his special address. In his address, Mr Krishna Murthy stressed the growing importance of business communication in the competitive environment.
Mr N Ravi, Editor of The Hindu presided over the function and delivered his address. Mr Ravi emphasised the need for maintaining long form of communication, which is now distorted due to SMS, Email, etc. Mr Ravi will be the Chairman of the 'Board of Studies' for the Second batch, which will start in February, 2011.
Mr M Narendra, Chairman of Indian Overseas Bank was the Chief Guest and delivered his address focussing on the need of internal communication in organisations. He said that only internal communication leads to external communication.
Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Chennai will be launching the second batch of the Business Communication Course in February 2011. Interested may contact through email bizbvb@gmail.com
Prasar Bharati to introduce new HR Policy to suit global standards
Saturday, January 08, 2011 Media No comments
Prasar Bharati Board has set up a committee headed by Mr V Shivakumar, Member (Personnel) to draft a new HR Policy, including recruitment and service conditions, to suit the changing needs.
V Shivakumar
While disclosing this in a Seminar on "Public Service Broadcasting" organised by Programme Staff Association of AIR and DD, here today, Mr Shivakumar said that the policy would be drawn up to meet the global standards. He also said, that the draft policy would be submitted to the Prasar Bharati Board in 3 months, who would forward to the Government of India for approval.
The Seminar was organised to get the feedback from the persons of different walks of life. Mr K. Srinivasan, Chairman, Prime Point Foundation urged the Prasar Bharati to change its mindset to manage the competition from the private operators and adopt new techniques.
Mr R Bhagwan Singh, Consulting Editor, Deccan Chronicle said that if they could not improve the Prasar Bharati, they could close down the organisation.
Dr G Ravindran, HOD, Department of Journalism of University of Madras said that Government of India was the third largest advertiser for the private channels, while they did not support Prasar Bharati for improvement.
Mr G Jayalal, Deputy Director General of AIR, New Delhi said that both DD and AIR had great competencies for handling any situations. Even during natural calamities, only the public service broadcasters were providing information to the public. He also said, nearly 70 percent of the programmes broadcast by them were not commercial and were only in public interest.
Mr R Srinivasan, General Secretary of Programme Staff Association, Mr Sanjay Kumar, President and Mr A Rajavelu, State Secretary also spoke.
Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan completes the first batch of Business Communication course
Tuesday, January 04, 2011 Business Communication No comments
PodUniversal Edition 123
Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Chennai Kendra launched a skill based business communication course in July 2010. This is an unique course in India, probably, the only of its kind with 120 hours of teaching and working sessions (40 days x 3 hours). This course contents were designed after an extensive research and understanding of the needs of working professionals and industry. This course was formally launched by Former Indian President Dr APJ Abdul Kalam on 10th July 2010.
N Ravi, Editor, The Hindu
The course was completed in December 2010. A function was organised by Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Chennai to award certificates to the participants who completed the course. Mr M Narendra, Chairman and Managing Director of Indian Overseas Bank and Mr N Ravi, Editor of The Hindu, one of the leading Indian National dailies delivered inspiring speeches.
In this edition, we publish an extract from the speech of Mr N Ravi, Editor, The Hindu on the importance of business communication. During his speech, he focussed on the following points:
1. Presently, though youngsters possess excellent domain knowledge, they do not have adequate business communication skills.
2. Even educational institutions do not give importance to develop communication skills of their students. They remain satisfied with the text book knowledge. On the other hand, developed nations like US provide enough importance on developing communication skills at schools and college level.
3. The youngsters should get trained in business communication skills through such courses, to fill the gap in their communication skills.
4. SMS / Emails have brought a new culture of short form communication. Though such short form of communication is done for quick communication, only long form communication is accepted in the formal communication. Youngsters should focus on the long form communication more.
Please listen to his speech by clicking 'play' button. (7 minutes). We will separately publish the speech of Mr M Narendra.
This video may also be listened from:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYjs9qEGZUQ
Measuring of internal and external image - Image A...
Business Communication Course at Bharatiya Vidya B...
Prasar Bharati to introduce new HR Policy to suit ...
Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan completes the first batch o...
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"Man vs. Beast at High Noon"
I wrote this story as part of Patti Abbott's "At the Zoo" Flash Fiction Challenge. Thanks, Patti, for hosting the event. Check out her blog for more details and other participants.
“Man vs. Beast at High Noon”
by Cullen Gallagher
Chase Klorfine had just about finished tying Pastor Jack to his pulpit.
“Folks always say a pastor should be tied to his job,” Chase said.
“You’ll pay for this, Chase Klorfine. May wild animals tear you limb from limb for all eternity in the pits of Hell!” Pastor Jack said.
“Now that’s just downright mean.” Chase pulled the rope tighter and Pastor Jack winced. “When my time comes—a long time from now, and far away from this stinking Kansas cowtown—I’ll deal with the Lord one-on-one. I can be quite the charmer. Just ask the nice old lady who plays the organ—once she regains consciousness.”
“You beast!” Pastor Jack struggled futilely against the rope.
Flashing a wicked grin, Chase tugged the rope one final time and spat a thick glob of tobacco juice in the pastor’s face.
“Just watch yourself, Pastor, or you’ll soon be joining all those saints you talk so highly of.”
As Chase stormed out of the church, he passed dozens of parishioners, all of whom were hogtied and stuffed in the aisles between the pews. Some of them squirmed hopelessly, while others prayed out loud. The collective rumble of their devotion raised even the hairs on the back of Chase’s neck.
“Keep your religion to yourself!” Chase roared, and emptied his pistol into the rafters. Dust and splinters rained on the churchgoers as Chase stepped out of the musty church and into the blazing noon heat. The outlaw’s underlings—lieutenants, he called them—were lined up in the middle of the street, standing at attention.
“Lieutenants, report!”
One by one, they stepped forward and spoke.
“The sheriff and all his deputies are locked in their cells, sir!”
“Telegraph wires are down.”
“The bank manager and tellers are locked in the safe. We got over ten grand.”
“All the merchants are locked in a cellar. The door is locked, and there’s a couple hundred-pound barrels of grain on top. No chance they’ll escape from there. All in all, five hundred and some change.”
“Every last townsfolk is corralled in the town hall. Heff and his crew are guarding them now. Got roughly seventy-five and some small change from the wallets and pocket books.”
“And Madam Fifi and her girls are all ready, waiting, and willing—provided we reimburse them for services rendered, of course.”
Chase frowned at that. He’d have to show Fifi some of the old Klorfine Family Charm.
Only one lieutenant hadn’t reported.
“Vega! What about those snake oil peddlers?”
Vega stepped forward. “You mean Doc Delaney’s Wonders of the Wild West and Beyond Traveling Zoo, Medicine Show and Universitarium, sir!”
“I don’t care what in tarnation they call it, it is still just some has-been charlatan hawking booze behind medicine labels and parading some pretty white lady covered in mud pretending to be an Injun princess.” Chase shot a torrent of tobacco between Vega’s legs. “Despicable. A whore house is more educational than that.”
“This one has animals, sir!”
“Critters, you say?” Chase stroked his goatee.
“The most wondrous and dangerous creatures in the world. Boxing kangaroos from Australia …”
“Go on …”
“… elephants from India, poisonous snakes, more deadly than anything to be found in the desert …”
“Psssh. That’s all? I thought you said dangerous.”
“But wait, Chase, there’s more. The star attraction is a real African lion. The king of the jungle. The biggest killer of them all. No lion has ever met a foe in the wild that it couldn’t kill yet. This one is even rumored to have killed its former owner, Christian Charlie.”
“Who’s that?” Chase asked.
“Christian Charlie, as in Christian Charlie’s Trick Pony and Circus Sideshow, Sponsored by Christian Charlie’s Religious Elixirs and Spiritual Rejuvenation Products. You might not believe it if you haven’t tried it yourself, but his elixirs really did wonders for my spirit.”
Chase stopped rubbing his chin.
“Just ask my wife!” Vega said.
Chase lobbed the whole gob of tobacco in Vega’s face.
Vega let the wad drip down his face, and then continued. “There’s a trick, though, sir. Christian Charlie told me this after drinking a little too much of his own elixir. The lion is hypnotized, so he’s actually as friendly as a kitten, even though he’s roaring and clawing like a wild animal. But just say the magic word, and he goes back to killer mode—for real this time. Charlie never did tell me the magic word, though. And it sure would come in handy now because, well sir, something happened.”
“Vega, I’m going to give you just five seconds to tell me how much money we got from those circus freaks. One …”
“Nothing, sir!”
Chase hadn’t felt so dumbfounded since his schoolhouse days. And those ended when he was six.
“Come now, Vega?”
“That is correct, sir. No money. The lions got it. Doc Delaney, he hides it in a chest in the lion cage so that no one can get it.”
“So why didn’t you go get it, if the kitten is so friendly?”
“Well, sir, you said yourself those snake oil salesmen are a bunch of charlatans. What if he was lying about the whole hypnotism bit and the lion bit my head off?”
Chase’s hand went to his gunbelt, resting on the butt of his Colt.
“You know how we do in this outfit, Vega. You don’t get the money, you get one chance to shoot for your life. You remembered what happened to Billy, and Goat, and Rooney, and Chick, and Dallas. Do I need to go on?”
Chase snapped back the hammer on his Colt.
“But, Chase! I can still get it from the lion, just give me a chance!” Without reaching for his guns, Vega’s hands flew up in protest.
Chase’s Colt exploded twice. Hot iron bore holes through both of Vega’s eyes, the force of the bullets throwing him backwards into a trough.
“Now let’s go kill us a lion and get the rest of the money and get back on the trail. If we ride all night, we can be in Topeka by tomorrow morning.”
Doc Delaney’s Wonders of the Wild West and Beyond Traveling Zoo, Medicine Show and Universitarium was set up on the outskirts of town. The two-dozen wagons formed a circle, inside which the performances and lectures would be held. Some of the wagons had signs like “Fortunes Told” and “Anatomy Lectures—No Females or Children,” and these had small steps leading into the wagon. Other wagons were little more than cages on wheels. Sure enough, there was a kangaroo, an elephant, and even wicker baskets that hissed and rocked back and forth. Chase had no interest in snakes, however. His eyes were locked on the cage in the center of the circle.
The lion. And in the middle of the cage, a large wooden chest.
“There it is, boys. Now watch and learn.”
Chase stalked back and forth in front of the cage, mirroring the lion’s movements inside the cage. He stared the beast in the eyes, locking their gaze, never blinking or looking away.
Chase’s lieutenants formed a semi-circle around the two warriors. They whispered back and forth, impressed with their chief’s almost instinctual rapport with the lion.
Chase and the lion had stopped pacing, and were staring fiercely into each others’ eyes. Chase’s eyes were cold and steady.
And then the lion lay down, resting its large jaw on top of its folded paws.
“See? Nothing to it.”
Chase opened the cage and walked circles around dormant beast and the treasure chest.
“I told you those snake oil peddlers were just charlatans. The lion’s as harmless as a female. Now to get this treasure chest out of here. It sure is heavy. Must be full of money!”
Chase crouched behind the treasure chest, getting ready to push it out the cage door. Unfortunately, he got careless and stopped paying attention to the lion. Specifically the lion’s tail. Right before he shoved the treasure chest, he lifted his foot and stomped down hard for extra momentum. It was a good idea, except he crushed the lion’s tail, arousing the angry killer within the beast.
Outside the cage, all the lieutenants watched in horror as the lion stuffed Chase Klorfine’s entire head into its mouth, and then ripped his limbs from his body like an angry child with a ratty doll.
So entranced were the lieutenants that they failed to register as the lion stepped to the edge of the cage door, hind legs poised to pounce, front claws fully extended.
The lion jumped out of the cage and into the dumbfounded outlaws, fatally crushing two of the lieutenants with its five hundred pounds of pure man-eating muscle.
One of the remaining lieutenants instinctively reached for its pistol, but the lion was faster on the draw, and swatted the gun out of the outlaw’s hand with one paw while ripping out his throat with the other.
The two remaining lieutenants both ran towards the exit. With one giant leap, the lion landed in front of one of the outlaws, deafening the man with its mighty roar and sickening him with its nauseating breath. The last sound the human ever made was a girly shriek. Then the lion clubbed him across the head and dug its teeth into a feast of human entrails.
The lion had forgotten about the remaining human until a poor shot kicked up dirt into its face. The beast, its regal mane streaked with blood and tufts of human hair caught between its razor sharp teeth, turned around to see the last remaining lieutenant standing in the center of the entrance. His gun drawn and ready to fire.
The lion calmly rose and strode towards the lone gunman.
The man fired.
The shot missed.
The lion walked was getting closer and closer.
Another shot.
Another miss.
The lion kept coming, slow but steady.
Two more shots, both of them wild misses.
The gunman was panicking.
He raised the gun to his lips, kissed the piping hot barrel, singeing his lips as he whispered a prayer.
He never did finish that prayer before the lion slashed with its claw and ripped the last lieutenant’s lips from his face. The beast then proceeded to devour the rest of his head.
Alerted by all the gunshots, Heff and the remaining outlaws ran to the zoo to see what all the commotion was about. They found the arena littered with the dismembered, disemboweled corpses of their leaders.
By the time they realized the lion cage was empty, it was too late. The beast was in the air, roaring its magnificent war cry. There were ten outlaws this time, but that was nothing compared to the battles it had fought—and won—in the jungles back home. These human didn’t stand a chance against the king.
Inside the church, the pastor and his parishioners—all still tied up—heard the blood-curdling screams.
“Let us pray. God, grant us mercy,” Pastor Jack said, roped tight to his pulpit, “and give us a gust of wind so that the church door will close and protect us from beasts, whether human or animal.”
The screams stopped, and the lion’s roar came closer and closer, growing steadily louder.
The Pastor held his breath, and waited for his prayers to come true.
Labels: My Stories, Western
pattinase (abbott) April 2, 2012 at 10:01 AM
Wow, Cullen. This was so much fun! That little town really came to life--and then to death.
Charles Gramlich April 2, 2012 at 11:43 AM
Now there's a twist I didn't see coming. Excellent.
sandra seamans April 2, 2012 at 11:53 AM
"The lion's as harmless as a female." Loved that line because you knew he was done for the instant he said it. Good, fun story, Cullen.
Heath Lowrance April 2, 2012 at 12:31 PM
What a fun story! Loved it.
Yvette April 2, 2012 at 12:34 PM
Do you suppose the lion meant to eat everyone in town? Ha! Good story, Cullen. Enjoyed reading it. Lions can be fussy about their tails. :)
John Weagly April 2, 2012 at 12:36 PM
Prashant C. Trikannad April 6, 2012 at 1:43 AM
That was one angry and hungry lion, Cullen. Great story!
Rob Kitchin April 8, 2012 at 6:48 AM
Liked this a lot. The travelling circus was a neat idea. Feel like one of those elixers now.
"30 Days of the 5-2" Keith Rawson's "$25"
"The Criminal Kind: Voyeuristic Pleasures" at The ...
Mosaic Noir #148
RED HAMMOND (aka ANTHONY NEIL SMITH) - XXX SHAMUS (2013)
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Oceania Home Values '10% Of What We Paid'
As of Wednesday, July 3, 2013
Discuss 1 comment, Blog about
By NEIL HARTNELL
Tribune Business Editor
nhartnell@tribunemedia.net
The controversy-plagued Oceania Heights project has been plunged into a fresh row over the two-month shut off of its water supply, one homeowner yesterday alleging real estate values were now “10 per cent of what we paid for them”.
Chris Fleming, who has led the homeowner campaign at the Exuma-based project, told Tribune Business that the subdivision’s nine existing homes were being “held hostage” by developer Howard Obront’s refusal to pay a four-figure water bill for his home.
He also slammed the Ministry of Works and Water & Sewerage Corporation, asserting that it was “unbelievable” that they approved a water system for Oceania Heights where everything was placed on one meter - leaving the project at the mercy of non-payers.
However, Mr Obront’s Bahamian attorney yesterday blasted Mr Fleming’s claims as “disingenuous”.
Michael Scott, of Scott & Company, told Tribune Business said the problem stemmed from the water bill for Oceania Heights’ common (community) areas being lumped in with his client’s personal bill, and Mr Obront was no longer prepared to continue this arrangement.
Arguing that Mr Fleming and the other homeowners shared equal responsibility with his client for separating their water meters into separate accounts, Mr Scott said he had “not had much success” in finding out whether Anthony Thompson, the project’s attorney, had made good on his pledge to provide title deeds to all fully-paid purchasers.
A solution to the much-publicised Oceania Heights dispute, which has sparked interventions from both the US and Canadian governments on behalf of its homeowner citizens, thus seems as elusive as ever.
Mr Fleming, alleging that the Water & Sewerage Corporation has cut-off Oceanian Heights’ water supply for eight weeks, told Tribune Business: “It is unbelievable to me that the Government of the Bahamas approved a system such that these nine homes, all of our shrubbery, greenery is going to be fried and die.
“Our pools are all completely green and need to be refilled. The homes are in tremendous disrepair, and no one cares.”
Mr Fleming said he and fellow Oceania Heights residents had previously paid to have the water pumps repaired, despite Mr Obront’s alleged refusal to contribute.
In relation to the current situation, Mr Fleming said: “He [Mr Obront] refuses to pay the bill, and the Water & Sewerage Corporation has shut the meter off for the entire development.
“It’s all in the name of Oceania Heights Ltd, which is Anthony Thompson, but it’s Howard Obront’s home that he refuses to pay the bill for. We are all held hostage because of him.”
Mr Fleming alleged that Mr Obront had a water leak at his home, which had contributed to his share of the outstanding Oceania Heights water bill being $2,238.
A further $1,000 is said to be owed for water usage at Oceania Heights’ common area, and Mr Fleming said the formation of a Homeowners Association would in future see “all the lot owners pay a proportionate share of that bill”.
“Right now, it’s Mr Obront’s responsibility,” Mr Fleming said of the common areas.
Not surprisingly, that account was disputed by Mr Scott on Mr Obront’s behalf. The common area bill, the attorney said, was “getting lumped in” with his client’s personal water bill, and “Howard is no longer prepared to pay for that”.
“The property owners should be separately metered, have their own accounts and pay for the water consumption for the common areas,” Mr Scott told Tribune Business.
“Fleming is in a position, as a homeowner, as much as Howard is, to ensure Water & Sewerage separates the metering functions.
“From my perspective, and Howard’s perspective, that is simply a disingenuous stance being adopted by Fleming.”
Such reasoning is unlikely to sit well with Mr Fleming, who told Tribune Business: “People shouldn’t be held hostage by this very poor situation.
“The Ministry of Works approved Oceania Heights as a subdivision on November 1, 2005. They approved the water system for Oceania Heights that was presented to them.
“Residents were never told that was the case, that one person could hold hostage the entire community.... We don’t even know where the water pipes are.”
Questioning whether the developers, Messrs Obront and Thompson, had lodged a bond with the Ministry of Works, as required by law, to ensure all infrastructure works at Oceania Heights were completed, Mr Fleming added: “That water system is inoperable.
“The value of our properties is probably less than 10 per cent of what we paid for them. That’s how bad it’s gotten.
“All of the water in the toilets has evaporated, and that exposes you to the septic system, as gas gets into your home and could be a danger. It’s a bad situation that’s only gotten worse.”
Meanwhile, Mr Scott said he had been unable to discover whether Mr Thompson had made good on his May 13 pledge to turn over all title documents to Oceania Heights buyers who had fully paid their purchase prices, and from whom he had received Stamp Duty monies.
“I’ve been trying to find out from Anthony Thompson, his lawyer (Keod Smith), the Deputy Prime Minister as to whether that undertaking has been honoured, and I’ve not had much success,” Mr Scott told Tribune Business.
“I’ve been trying to find out as I really want this problem to go away, and have not had much success at all.
“As the attorney for the company, he [Mr Thompson] was required to hand over deeds and documents to purchasers, collect Stamp Duty and recording fees, and do the necessary work. That has got absolutely nothing to do with Howard.”
Oceania homeowners demand $6.9m refund
DPM 'rejects' $500k solution for Oceania
Oceania Heights settle offer 'absolute nuts'
Oceania homeowners bid for $1.5m 'seed capital'
'Pretty excited' about Oceania heights solution
dnedzel 7 years, 6 months ago
Mr. Hartnell,
My name is Derrick Nedzel, I represent the estate of my father: Dr. Gleb A. Nedzel, who purchased property at Oceania Heights. I have to take exception to Mr. Obront no longer being willing to pay the water bill at Oceania. Mr. Obront and Mr. Thompson arranged Oceania so that they would maintain title to all the properties in the name of a company they setup (Oceania Properties Ltd) and then broker the purchase and sale of property in the development themselves. This plan avoided stamp and duty and property taxes as they didn't record any of the sales with the Bahamian goverment - a key selling point they used in the original sales of the properties, although they failed to explain the legal ramifications to purchasers like my father. And they collected funds for Stamp and Duty, but since they didn't record the sales, they didn't pass onto the Bahamian treasury, Oceania just kept that money. Oceania benefited from treating the development as one large holding by keeping money collected for Stamp and Duty tax and thru legal fees for the sale of each lot (even though the sale was never recorded). They arranged for services in the same way: Water was metered once for the whole development, rather than being broken up lot by lot because they saw the development as a single property they owned. This was in their interest and is reflected, to this day, in the Conveyances recorded with the Bahamian Goverment.
Now Mr. Obront wants to have the homeowners pay for their services individually even though most don't have Conveyances for their properties - the lots are still owned legally by Oceania Properties LTD. Mr. Obront: you can't have it both ways. Either continue to treat Oceania as your personal property and accept responsibility for services and for maintaining and improving the development, or get us our conveyances, return our money for stamp and duty and other various fraudulent overcharges, make good on your debts regarding your failure to provide the promised amendities to support the price you charged us for lots, resolve the multiple sale of lots, repair the existing infrastructure that has been damaged because you didn't maintain it and let us organize a homeowner's association to manage the development in the best interest of the homeowners. Then, and only then, should the homeowners accept responsibility for paying for development services.
Right now I don't own the lots I paid for, why would I pay for services for lots I don't own?
Respectfully, - Derrick Nedzel
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(i can't get no)
stevie jackson
Dates •
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Roy Moller & Sporting Hero’s album
Some of you may be interested to hear about the new Roy Moller & Sporting Hero’s album ‘The Singing’s Getting Better’. Several songs written by The Company (Stevie Jackson, Roy Moller & Gary Thom) are featured on the album and there’s even an appearance from Lazy Line Painter Jane chanteuse Monica Queen. The album is available as CD and download from Mecca Holding Co.
September live shows – West Coast
Here’s the final run-down for this month's west coast tour.
West Coast shows in September
Next month I’m heading to the sunny west coast to play at two Chickfactor hosted events.
NEW YORK SHOW, 28TH AUGUST 2012
I’ll be playing at The Living Room, New York on the 28th August.
(I Can’t Get No) Stevie Jackson out now in the US
Stevie Jackson & The Wellgreen on Tenement TV
Stevie performs at Glasgow’s Tenement TV.
Upcoming Dates »
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Farewell Neville
The Memorial Service to celebrate the life of our late President, Sqn Ldr Neville Duke, took place at the RAF Church, St Clement Danes, London, on Thursday, 11th October. Several members of the Museum led by our Chairman, Gp Capt David Baron, joined his widow Gwen and a large congregation which included senior serving and retired RAF officers and many old colleagues and friends from the aviation world. The address was given by Air Chief Marshal Sir Michael Graydon with tributes by Melvyn Hiscock of Aeroplane Magazine and ex-test pilot, Peter Twiss. A trumpeter from the RAF Central Band played the Last Post and Reveille and, following the Service, a lone Spitfire flew above the Strand dipping its wings in salute.
These words taken from the ‘Bidding Prayer’ summarise perfectly why we were there: “Neville Duke, a man of distinguished courage, consummate flying skill and moral integrity who, by his modesty, gave others courage, by his flying brought hope to a Nation, by his moral strength enabled so many to rise above their personal hardships and reach for the stars in their own lives. On this day especially, we come together to salute the bravest of the brave, whose final act was to save life”.
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[tuesday, august 18, 2015]
Development Update: Tuesday, August 18
Updates include: Syfy pulls the plug on "Haven" after five seasons; Jennifer Schuur, Josh Reims exit "The Catch" at ABC; and Martin Short signs onto NBC's Maya Rudolph variety show.
Bravo Media Delivers Record Ratings
Bravo further spins the numbers for Monday, August 10 through Wednesday, August 12.
Video: WGN America Unveils First Trailer for "Manhattan" Season Two
The trailer hints at the questionable motivations, duplicitous nature and high stakes secrets held by the series' main characters inside the world's most guarded city.
"Dolly Parton's Coat of Many Colors" to Air Thursday, Dec. 10 (9-11 P.M.)
The film is based on the inspiring true story of living legend Dolly Parton's remarkable upbringing.
Justice Is Served in Washington State with a Second Season of "Rugged Justice" on Animal Planet
Look for the first of 10 new episodes on Sunday, September 6 at 8:00/7:00c.
WATCH Disney Channel, WATCH Disney XD and WATCH Disney Junior Apps Are Now Live on Xbox 360
Using WATCH Disney, Xbox 360 viewers can now access full episodes of their favorite Disney shows on demand for free.
Oxygen Media Premieres Syndicated Daily Comedic Show "Crazy Talk" Exclusively on Cable Beginning Monday, September 14 with Back-to-Back Episodes
From NBCUniversal Domestic Television Distribution, this fast-paced, laugh-out-loud, comedic show raises an eyebrow at the most outlandish, and sometimes bizarre, moments on reality television.
Blair Brandt, Star of ABC Family's "Next Step Realty: NYC," to Participate in a Live Twitter Chat with Fans Tonight
Blair will answer viewer questions about the series and building his real-estate business, and will share behind-the-scenes stories about the "Next Step Realty: NYC" episode.
Discovery's Hit Series "Bering Sea Gold" Returns for Its Fifth Season with Crews Up Against the Clock to Find More Gold
New episodes kick off on Friday, September 4 at 9:00/8:00c.
Turner Broadcasting, Intel and Mark Burnett Join Forces On Massive, Innovation-Driven Content Partnership To Discover the Next Smart Connected Consumer Device
In 2016, the two companies will team up with Emmy(R)-winning executive producer Mark Burnett to launch a brand new TBS original series - "America's Greatest Makers" (working title).
"Shadowhunters" Star Matthew Daddario to Participate in a Live Twitter Chat with Fans on Tuesday, August 18th at 12 PM PT/3 PM ET
Starting at 12pm PT/3pm ET, fans can tweet Matthew Daddario (@MatthewDaddario) using #AskMatt in their message.
Startup Legend Tim Draper of ABC Family's "Startup U" to Participate in Live Twitter Chat with Fans Tonight
Tim will answer viewer questions about the series and building startup businesses, and will share some fun behind-the-scenes scoop from the episode.
Nat Geo WILD's New Series "Vet School" Goes Behind the Scenes at One of the Country's Top Veterinary Schools
The newcomer premieres Saturday, September 19 at 10:00/9:00c.
Nickelodeon's Nick News with Linda Ellerbee Presents Stories of Kids with Terminal Illnesses in "Before I Go... Living With Dying" Premiering Sunday, August 23, At 8 P.M. (ET/PT)
In their dying, kids teach people the real meaning of courage and grace.
Entertainment Industry Foundation Announces "Roadblock" Telecast for National Think It Up Education Initiative
ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC will simultaneously broadcast the live Think It Up one-hour special from the Barker Hangar at the Santa Monica Airport, home to some of the most exciting charity events and concerts in Los Angeles.
Bravo Media, E! and Oxygen Media Launch First-of-Its-Kind Cross-Network Partnership with Mobile App Dubsmash
The partnership will launch with "The Real Housewives of New York City" Reunion Part 1 airing on Tuesday, August 18 at 9:00/8:00c.
CMT Signs Multi-Year Production Deal with Veteran Producer John Hamlin's Newly Created Switched on Entertainment
In addition, two of CMT's senior executives, Jayson Dinsmore and Leslie Fram, will oversee new roles in the music, talent and event departments.
Nickelodeon Continues to Charm Fans with Season 10 Order of Animated Series "The Fairly OddParents"
The 13 half-hour episode order continues the comedic adventures of Timmy Turner, who overcomes typical kid obstacles with the help of his wand-wielding wish-granting fairy godparents, Cosmo and Wanda.
NBC Wins Monday in 18-49 and Total Viewers, With "American Ninja Warrior" #1 for the Night in Both Measures
NBC spins the numbers for Monday, August 17.
Monday's Broadcast Ratings: "American Ninja Warrior" Extends NBC's Demo Win Streak
The Peacock is the night's top adults 18-49 draw for the third consecutive week.
ABC's "Bachelor in Paradise" Hits New Season High in Viewers and Equals a Series High in Adults 18-49
ABC spins the numbers for Monday, August 17.
TV One's "News One Now" Moves to New 7 A.M. ET Time Slot, Beginning Monday, September 14
The one-hour program, hosted by Roland S. Martin, will continue to air live weekdays exclusively on TV One.
Comedy Central Renews "Another Period" for a Second Season
"Another Period is a beautiful reflection of a great American truth: the more things change, the more they stay the same," said Kent Alterman.
IFC Renews "Documentary Now!" for Seasons Two and Three Ahead of Series Premiere on August 20
IFC also announced the addition of a surprise seventh episode to season one, up from the initial order of six episodes.
CMT to Celebrate Life and Artistry of Johnny Cash in New Unprecedented Original Documentary "Johnny Cash: American Rebel"
The film premieres on the 12th anniversary of his passing on Saturday, September 12 at 9:00/8:00c.
America's Favorite Summer Dance Series, Emmy Award-Winning "So You Think You Can Dance," Hits the Road for Its Season 12 Tour, Traveling to 70 Markets
The tour kicks off on Tuesday, October 13, at the Verizon Theatre in Grand Prairie, TX and crosses the United States and Canada with 70 sensational stops.
Development Update: Monday, August 17
Updates include: Aron Eli Coleite's "Home" to rebuild at TNT; Michael Cassidy joins "The Group" at TBS; and Malcolm Barrett books a role on NBC's "Coach" revival.
"So You Think You Can Dance" Voting Results for August 17
Next week, the Top Eight finalists will be paired with All-Star partners.
Levi Miller to Play Cat Grant's Son on "Supergirl"
As the son of a high-power corporate tycoon, 12-year-old Carter finds himself in the shadows, often keeping his thoughts and feelings quiet.
Application Period Open for Disney Channel Storytellers, an Incubator for the Next Generation of Series Creators and Writers
Emmy-nominated Marc Warren, writer and producer of Disney Channel hit series "Even Stevens," "That's So Raven" and "Cory in the House," returns as program supervisor.
Discovery Channel's Hit Series "Fast N' Loud" Races Back with All-New Episodes Monday, September 7 at 9PM ET/PT
Car fanatics Richard Rawlings, Aaron Kaufman and the entire Gas Monkey Garage crew return with new builds and new episodes.
"America's Got Talent" Alumni Emily West and William Close Collaborate for Special Performance on Aug. 19 Live Results Show
Twelve more acts from the Top 36 will perform this week in hopes of securing a spot in the semi-final rounds.
Live + 7 Ratings Ascends Disney's "Descendants" to #5 Movie in Cable TV History in Total Viewers and #6 Cable TV Telecast Ever Across Major Youth Demographics
Disney Channel further spins the numbers for Friday, July 31.
Season Four of "The Half Hour" Premieres August 22 at Midnight and 12:30 a.m. ET/PT with Liza Treyger and Hampton Yount
Filmed at The Royale in Boston, "The Half Hour" showcases some of the best up-and-coming stand-up comedians.
"Under the Dome" Is the Week's Top Program in Live +7-Day Lift in Viewers and Adults 18-49
CBS further spins the numbers for the week of July 27-August 2.
truTV and Tumblr Team Up Again to "Hack" Your Life for the Better!
The best hacks will be featured during the "Tumblr's Hack Mail" segment of "Hack My Life," which returns Tuesday, August 18 at 9:00/8:00c.
ABC Family Announces the Cast of and Starts Production on Pilot "Guilt"
Katrina Law stars as Natalie, a Boston attorney who drops everything when her sister becomes a murder suspect.
ESPN Signs Multi-Year Extension With John Saunders
Saunders will continue to appear on college football studio coverage, including anchoring regular-season Saturdays on ABC alongside Mack Brown and Mark May, and a hosting role on the College Football Playoff on ESPN.
FX Networks Acquires Latest Box Office #1 Straight Outta Compton
So far this year, FX Networks has secured the exclusive U.S. commercial television premiere rights to numerous blockbusters, including Mission Impossible - Rogue Nation, Minions, Jurassic World and Furious 7.
Ovation Debuts Season Five of Its Original Series "The Art Of" on September 6
Each episode profiles three artists who are creating boundary-pushing work in media that are not part of the traditional definition of "art."
FOX Orders Third Season of "Hotel Hell"
Casting is open now for the new season.
Spike's "I Am Chris Farley" Is Most-Watched Documentary in Network History
Spike TV further spins the numbers for Monday, August 10.
Live + 3 Day Ratings: ABC's "Bachelor in Paradise" Scores Another Series High in Adults 18-49
ABC further spins the numbers for Monday, August 10.
SundanceTV's Online Destination Adds Five New Films to the "Rectify" Short Film Festival
Five new shorts produced, created and/or headlined by the cast of "Rectify" have just been added to the line-up.
"SNL" Opens 41st Season with Miley Cyrus (Oct. 3), Amy Schumer (Oct. 10) and Tracy Morgan (Oct. 17)
Musical guests will be announced at a later date.
ESPN's "Sunday Night Baseball" Sets Ratings Record in Kansas City Metered Market
ESPN spins the numbers for Sunday, August 16.
"Bachelor in Paradise" Grows for the 2nd Week to Deliver New Sunday Highs
ABC spins the numbers for Sunday, August 15.
The Ties of Family Run Deeper Than Ink as VH1's "Black Ink Crew" Returns Monday, August 24th at 9 PM ET/PT
Additionally, the entire cast will come together to try and mend their relationships with a reunion special airing Monday, October 19 at 9:00/8:00c.
Sunday's Broadcast Ratings: PGA Overrun Helps Spark CBS Victory
The Eye's "Big Brother" once again is the night's most-watched program among adults 18-49.
Second Hour of "American Ninja Warrior" Rebroadcast Ranks #1 in All Key Demographics
NBC spins the numbers for Sunday, August 15.
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We've all been there, or at least passed the off-ramp: when it's nearing midnight day/week/weekend that may have been pleasant and productive enough, but for whatever reason you remain just a bit...restless, just short of satisfaction, unable to fully shut down or harboring the slightest nagging feeling about something yet left undone, often complicated further by a lack of another sentient being in the vicinity from whom you could feasibly solicit assistance in resolving the issue. It's a damning little nuisance of a conundrum, and one that, I'd boldly venture to guess, is hardly an uncommon occurrence for a large portion of the population. What to do?
Apparently this kind of less-than-ideal circumstance discriminates not by class, wealth, or fame, a sort of great equalizer between celebrity and plebeian. And seeing as commonplace personal conflict supplies such a generous amount of material for contemporary pop music artistic creation, it makes sense that the topic shows up in the repertoires of some of the medium's biggest (usually female) artists, as much as the nature of the matter dictates the unique indirectness with which it is approached. Herein we compare and contrast a few of the more prominent recent examples of such serenades on self-fulfillment, because after all, if we don't do it ourselves, who will?
"She Bop" Cyndi Lauper (She's So Unusual, Epic Records, 1984)
Five years before Madonna got a gospel choir to help her sing about blowjobs, her one-time rival for the Queen of Pop title (and original front-runner, believe it or not) scarred the first of the overprotective Generation X parents with her third single from her debut album She's So Unusual. In case you ever wondered why cd cases now come emblazoned with parental warning labels like cigarette cartons, here's one of your culprits: "She Bop" was one of the offending items on the infamous "Filthy Fifteen" list compiled by the new censors...sorry, I mean the National Parent Teacher Association...in support of their efforts to control their precious children's access to anything having to do with the act with which they were created.
Sample lyric:
They say I better get a chaperone
Because I can't stop messin' with the danger zone.
No, I won't worry, and I won't fret
Ain't no law against it yet.
Subtlety: B-
Musical Achievement: B
Suggested Penance: Minimal (maybe just brush your teeth)
Lady Gaga - "So Happy I Could Die" (The Fame Monster, Streamline/Konlive/Cherrytree/Interscope, 2009)
By the time Lady Gaga's extended re-release of her 2008 debut album The Fame (as The Fame Monster), everyone was pretty familiar with the new pop icon's penchant for riding disco sticks and bad romance in her rear window. This down-tempo, glammed up electro-pop number, the penultimate track of the eight new offerings on The Fame Monster, follows tracks referencing anal sex, anonymous liaisons, and one devoted entirely to a particularly well-endowed paramour, almost as reassurance that the Gaga is indeed capable of giving herself a hand on the seemingly rare occasions one isn't already being offered. Which is good, because we were a little worried.
I am as vain as I allow
I do my hair, I gloss my eyes;
I touch myself all through the night.
Subtlety: C
Musical Achievement: B+
Suggested Penance: For this track alone, two Hail Marys and some antibacterial soap. For entire EP, fifteen minutes quality time at confession.
Bernadette Peters - "Making Love Alone" (Saturday Night Live 1981/Sondheim, Etc. Live From Carnegie Hall, Angel Records, 1987)
In 1981, the frizzy-haired Broadway star showed up for a guest hosting gig at 30 Rockefeller for the relatively new late-night comedy show Saturday Night Live, and performed this belly laugh-inducing ode to manual labor (surely the ancestor of the recent output by fictional SNL group The Lonely Island). She reprised her performance six years later for an appreciative high-class crowd in her first concert outing at Carnegie Hall in a night otherwise devoted to notoriously droll songwriter Stephen Sondheim (after apologizing to the ghosts of the famed concert hall). Sample lyric:
Who can describe the special sweetness of knowing the speed that you're going is right?
And is there anything as thrilling as trying to keep the book open to page 24 all night?
Subtlety: D-
Suggested Penance: A forced viewing of either The Love Guru or A Night at the Roxbury.
Britney Spears - "Touch of My Hand" (In the Zone, Jive Records, 2003)
The girl who once declared (without discernable irony) her intention to remain a virgin until marriage must have gotten one hell of a sexual education during her Camelot-like romance with fellow teen pop idol Justin Timberlake, because as soon as the then 22 year old pop princess largely took over creative control on her fourth album, 2003's In the Zone, it was pretty clear that she'd had her first taste of the forbidden fruit and boy did she ever want more. Perhaps the bluntest example of her refreshing newly discovered sexual freedom was the cooly sensual candlelight electro-ballad "Touch of My Hand," a feat of self-love to rival any single by Jay-Z (albeit in a much less egotistical manner). Sample lyric:
And I just discovered
Imagination taking over.
Another day without a lover,
The more I come to understand
The touch of my hand.
Subtlety: B
Suggested Penance: Scraping the candle wax from all bedroom surfaces and airing out the smell of incense and lubricant.
Pink - "Fingers" (I'm Not Dead, LaFace Records, 2006)
On this now almost impossible to find bonus track to her 2006 album I'm Not Dead, not only does pop rocker Pink let us in on her nighttime mischief-making, she leads us on an all-access tour of the whole filthy scene. With a killer beat, knowingly naughty tone and full audio performance of a semi-stifled orgasm to finish things off, "Fingers" is easily the filthiest and sexiest track the dynamically fun pop bad girl has yet delivered.
Rewind and you will see
Why in the morning I'm happy
Right there on the tv screen
Me vengo, me vengo!
Musical Achievement: A
Suggested Penance: A thorough cold shower!
Now go take that shower.
Tags: bernadette peters, britney spears, cyndi lauper, lady gaga, lists, pink
Ryan January 11, 2010 at 8:05 PM
Love it. The Bernadette number is one of my favorite songs of all time; has anyone been able to find video of her SNL performance anywhere online?
Ryan March 7, 2011 at 9:58 AM
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OREGON 7 Electoral Votes
(Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Oregon Secretary of State)
Total Population, April 1, 2000 3,421,399
Voting Age Population, Nov. 2000 2,530,000 % change from '96 +5.2
Total Registration, Nov. 2000 1,954,006
Dem. 769,195 (39.37%) Rep. 699,179 (35.78%) NAV 428,406 (21.92%) Others 57,226 (2.93%)
Oregon has: 36 counties, 240 incorp. cities.
Five largest counties: Multnomah, Washington, Clackamas, Lane, Marion.
Five largest cities: Portland, Eugene, Salem, Gresham, Beaverton.
Governor: John Kitzhaber (D) First elected 1994; re-elected 1998.
State Legislature: Oregon Legislature House: 25D, 35R Senate: 13D, 17R
Local: Cities, Counties... NACO Counties
U.S. House: 4D, 1R - 1. D.Wu (D) | 2. G.Walden (R) | 3. E.Blumenauer (D) | 4. P.DeFazio (D) | 5. D.Hooley (D).
U.S. Senate: Gordon Smith (R) up for re-election in 2002, Ron Wyden (D) re-elected 1998.
Changes as of the November 2000 Elections
State Legislature: All 60 House seats and 15 of 30 Senate seats were up. Republicans retained control of both chambers, although Democrats narrowed the margins. House: 27D, 33R Senate: 14D, 16R.
U.S. House: No changes in the delegation.
The Beaver State
Oregon OnLine
Democratic Party of OR
Libertarian Party of OR
Natural Law Party-OR
OR Republican Party
Pacific Green Party of OR
Reform Party of OR
Constitution Party of OR
More Media (Newsp.)
More Media (TV)
Politics1-OR
General Election -- Tuesday, November 7, 2000
Clinton (Dem.).......649,641 (47.15)
Dole (Rep.)............538,152 (39.06)
Perot (Ref.)...........121,221
Nader (Pac.)............49,415
Others (4+misc.)......19,331
Total........1,377,760
Bush (Rep.)............475,757 (32.53)
Perot (IIPO)...........354,091
Others (2 + w/ins)....11,481
Buchanan/Foster (Ind.)
Bush/Cheney (Rep.)
Nader/LaDuke (Pac.)
Hagelin/Goldhaber (Ref.)
Phillips/Frazier (Const.)
+Gore/Lieberman (Dem.)
Browne/Olivier (Lib.)
1,559,215 total ballots counted; on 25,247 ballots (1.6%) no vote for President was recorded--due to under or over votes.
The election was conducted entirely by mail.
First day for mailing ballots: Oct. 20, 2000. Registration deadline: Oct. 17, 2000. Overview
In 1996 Oregon provided the best showing of any state for Ralph Nader's "non-campaign." With Nader running an active campaign this time around, great attention focused on how much the Nader factor would hurt Vice President Gore's chances. Oregon became a closely fought battleground state. In the end, however, the Gore-Lieberman ticket did prevail, winning the state's 7 electoral votes by a plurality of 6,765 votes (0.44 percentage points). Bush carried 28 counties to Gore's 8, but Gore's plurality of more than 100,000 votes in Multnomah County (Portland) won the day. Voters faced "the most complex state ballot in Oregon's history;" in addition to the various candidate races, 26 state measures crowded the ballot.
General Election Activity
Primary Date: Tuesday, May 16, 2000
CandidatesConduct of Elections
Republican Primary
Total Vote Percent
+George W. Bush 292,522 83.62%
Total Delegates
24 of 2,066 (1.2%).
Democratic Primary
+Al Gore 300,922 84.86%
Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. 38,521 10.86%
Total Pledged Delegates
Copyright 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001 Eric M. Appleman/Democracy in Action.
Recent Electoral History (General Elections)
1998 U.S. Senate Ron Wyden (D) 682,425 61.05
John Lim (R) 377,739 33.79
Others 57,583 5.15
1998 Governor John Kitzhaber (D) 470,082 64
unofficial Bill Sizemore (R) 222,382 30
1996 U.S. President Bill Clinton (D) 649,641 47.15
Bob Dole (R) 538,152 39.06
Ross Perot (REF) 121,221 8.79
Ralph Nader (PAC) 49,415 3.59
1996 U.S. Senate Gordon Smith (R) 677,336 49.80
Tom Bruggere (D) 624,370 45.90
1996 U.S.Senate Ron Wyden (D) 571,739 48.38
(Jan.30 Special) Gordon Smith (R) 553,519 46.84
1994 Governor John Kitzhaber (D) 622,083 50.9
Denny Smith (R) 517,874 42.4
Others 81,053 6.7
George Bush (R) 475,757 32.53
Ross Perot (I) 354,091 24.21
1992 U.S. Senate Bob Packwood (R) 717,455 52.14
Les AuCoin (D) 639,851 46.50
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Is Export Led Growth Passé?
Dani Rodrik argues in his latest piece for Project Syndicate that changes in the world economy, may be the death of the export led growth model. A disappointingly light treatment by Rodrik, since all it does it tell us what we already knew and offers no deep alternatives. I was also puzzled by the lack of acknowledgement of China's increasing role in creating these export processing zones across much of the African continent, and therefore who actually bears most of the risk of poor market conditions. There's also the issue f the current momentum for regional integration, which is not sufficiently addressed. (See a previous blog on Zambian MFEZs) :
Is Export Led Growth Passé?, Dani Rodrik, Project Syndicate, Commentary :
For five decades, developing countries that managed to develop competitive export industries have been rewarded with astonishing growth rates: Taiwan and South Korea in the 1960’s, Southeast Asian countries like Malaysia, Thailand, and Singapore in the 1970’s, China in the 1980’s, and eventually India in the 1990’s.
In all these cases, and a few others — also mostly in Asia — domestic reforms would surely have produced growth regardless of international trade. But it is difficult to see how the resulting growth could have been as high — reaching an unprecedented 10 percent or more annually in per-capita terms — without a global economy able to absorb these countries’ exports.
Many countries are trying to emulate this growth model, but rarely as successfully because the domestic preconditions often remain unfulfilled. Turn to world markets without pro-active policies to ensure competence in some modern manufacturing or service industry, and you are likely to remain an impoverished exporter of natural resources and labor-intensive products such as garments.
Nevertheless, developing countries have been falling over each other to establish export zones and subsidize assembly operations of multinational enterprises. The lesson is clear: export-led growth is the way to go.
But for how long? While reading the economic tea leaves is always risky, there are signs that we are at the cusp of a transition to a new regime in which the rules of the game will not be nearly as accommodating for export-led strategies.
The most immediate threat is the slowdown in the advanced economies. Europe and the United States are both entering recession, and fears are mounting that the financial meltdown accompanying the sub-prime mortgage debacle has not worked itself out. All this is happening at a time when inflationary pressures hamper the usual monetary and fiscal remedies. The European Central Bank, tightly focused on price stability, has been raising interest rates, and the US Federal Reserve may soon follow suit. So the advanced economies will suffer for a while, with obvious implications for the demand for exports from emerging markets.
On top of this is the almost certain unwinding of global current-account imbalances. Emerging markets and developing countries ran a surplus of $631 billion in 2007, split roughly equally between Asian countries and the oil-exporting states. This amounts to 4.2% of their collective GDP. The US alone ran a current-account deficit of $739 billion (5.3% of its GDP). Neither the economics nor the politics of this pattern of current-account balances is sustainable, especially in a recessionary environment.
The politics is clear to see. Nothing works as potently to inflame protectionist sentiment as large trade deficits. According to a December 2007 NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, almost 60% of Americans think globalization is bad because it has subjected US firms and workers to unfair competition.
If globalization has acquired a lousy reputation in the US, the external deficit deserves much of the blame. US trade policy has been remarkably resistant to protectionist pressure in recent years. But, regardless of who wins America’s presidency, the world should expect closer scrutiny of imports from China and other low-cost countries as well as of outsourcing of services to places like India.
As the US and other advanced economies become less hospitable to developing-country exports, rapidly growing emerging markets, help as they may, are unlikely to take up the slack and thus provide ample fuel for export-led growth. Import tariffs tend to be higher in developing countries, making it more difficult to gain access to them. Moreover, developing countries compete in similar products – consumer goods of varying levels of sophistication – so that the politics of expanded South-South trade looks even worse than the politics of North-South trade. Anti-dumping action against imports from China, Vietnam, and other Asian exporters is already commonplace in developing countries.
So exporting will become an even tougher business. Countries like China that have large surpluses will have to rely much more on domestic demand to fuel their economies. This is not all bad, because China can certainly use more public investment in social sectors such as health and education.
But the impact will extend beyond the surplus countries. If exporters from Brazil, Turkey, South Africa, and Mexico – all deficit economies – were already struggling to compete with China in third markets when those markets were wide open and expanding rapidly, imagine how they will fare under less hospitable conditions.
The impact on growth will almost certainly be negative, even if domestic demand compensates fully for the decline in external demand. The reason is microeconomic, not macroeconomic: you can sell only so much steel or auto parts at home, and labor productivity in service industries does not match that of export-oriented activities. So shrinking export markets will slow down growth-promoting structural change at home.
None of this implies a disaster for developing countries. Long-term success still depends on what happens at home rather than abroad. What is moderately bad news at the moment will become terrible news only if economic distress in the advanced countries – especially the US – is allowed to morph into xenophobia and all-out protectionism; if large emerging markets such as China, India, and Brazil fail to realize that they have become too important to free ride on global economic governance; and if, as a consequence, others overreact by turning their back on the world economy and pursue autarkic policies. Absent these missteps, expect a tougher ride on the global economy, but not a calamity.
THEMES : growth, investment
What could happen is that as labor costs in China rise, more manufacturing could shift to lower labor cost countries such as Vietnam and even parts of Africa. So there would still be export led growth, but just in different parts of the world.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_13/b3977049.htm
MrK 17 September 2008 at 04:08
Cho,
Check this out. THis guy is argueing for stimulating the economy by raising wages and preventing workers from competing against eachother around low wages - following the lead of Henry Ford.
Economics For Democrats
Henry Ford's lead would not work now, because there are too many countries with low paid workers competing for manufacturing jobs. Only when surplus labor is absorbed by economic growth will wages naturally rise because of decreased supply of workers. Which is what is happening in China now.
Kafue001,
Henry Ford's lead would not work now, because there are too many countries with low paid workers competing for manufacturing jobs.
It would work under any circumstance.
The (corporate) notion is that businesses only compete on the basis of low wages. However, there are a lot of other ways to incentivize business (taxes, location, unique offerings such as Zambia's unique copper and cobalt deposits).
Also, the presumption is that we can only attract foreign manufacturing companies to set up in Zambia.
Instead, the government can create manufacturing companies itself, by attracting technical expertise.
Or it can buy foreign manufacturing companies and move them to Zambia.
There are so many possibilities outside of the 'we need to attract foreign corporations to Zambia' model.
Mr K,
"However, there are a lot of other ways to incentivize business (taxes, location, unique offerings such as Zambia's unique copper and cobalt deposits)."
True, but labor costs are a major factor. And would other countries not also offer other incentives of their own as well?
"Also, the presumption is that we can only attract foreign manufacturing companies to set up in Zambia. Instead, the government can create manufacturing companies itself, by attracting technical expertise. Or it can buy foreign manufacturing companies and move them to Zambia. "
True, but for that Zambia needs competitive advantage (as opposed to comparative advantage)
"Lessons for Africa based on Malaysia’s experiences It is a common view of policy-makers in Africa and advisers from donors thatcomparative advantage is an important and essential factor for a country’s eco-nomic development. However, comparative advantage is not the key. It is com-petitive advantage that is the most essential element for development. In simple terms, comparative advantage depends on factors like a country’s naturalresources and location, so the country has no choice in the matter, while com-petitive advantage must be fostered by man to make full use of comparativeadvantage. For competitive advantage to develop, there is a need for maximum coopera-tion, efficiency and incorruptibility among the forces that initially make up aTOH."(triangle of hope)"
http://www.grips.ac.jp/forum-e/DCDA/Chapter08.pdf
So if Zambia is able to achieve competitive advantage, then your proposition could succeed. If not, then attracting foreign corporations to Zambia is an alternative method of development, and these corporations may be able to attract capital to Zambia more easily as well.
"Lessons for Africa based on Malaysia’s experiences It is a common view of policy-makers in Africa and advisers from donors thatcomparative advantage is an important and essential factor for a country’s eco-nomic development.
I would go further than that. Not only should we not be looking at competitive or comparative advantages, we should not use Malaysia (or Singapore, or Hong Kong) as examples at all.
We should be using Japan, South Korea, China or India as models. These countries are much more similar to Zambia with it's landmass, natural resources, population size and history, than neoliberal exceptions like these tiny trade oriented 'Asian Tigers', which are island or city states.
Also, I don't think looking at competitive advantage is going to be the key. What we should be looking at is not economic theory, but concrete models that can be adjusted to local Zambian conditions or even just look at past successes in Zambia to understand why certain policies are successful.
I think we can sidestep any kind of international 'competitive advantage' by focusing on saturating domestic markets. We can protect domestic producers by instituting tariffs to make imported products more expensive than domestically produced products, limiting tariffs to only products that are domestically produced, which would also minimize the effect on inflation. That would also help attract foreign businesses and encourage them to manufacture within Zambia.
I think we can create domestic markets, by making sure people earn more. To do this, there are lots of options, of which these are a few:
1) Use money from the mines to create infrastructure
If we used hundreds of millions in mining revenues to hire the Zambian National Service and Chiefs to pay people (say, $5,- per day, up from the $1,- per day most people live on), to build feeder roads, works that make productive use of rainfall for agriculture and prevent flooding, highways, build thousands of 100 hectare farms, etc. These works projects would both improve infrastructure and put money in people's pockets, which they can then spend on consumer products. This was the idea of Henry Ford, that his workers should make enough money to afford to buy the cars they made. He created a guaranteed domestic market for his own product.
2) Require a minimum wage from foreign companies doing business in Zambia
Especially the mines could pay a lot more to their workers. And if you realize that the minimum wage in the US is $5,- per hour, require a US company to pay workers 50% or 80% of their domestic minimum wage. That way, these companies would also not be as tempted to move factories from the West to low wage countries. If this was done in coordination with the EU, NAFTA, SADC and other regional blocs, this would guarantee a good minimum wage worldwide. Corporations would no longer be able to play one country's high labour standards against a country with poor labour standards. This would remove wages as a 'competitive advantage' worldwide.
3) Create tens of thousands of 100 hectare commercial organic farms
This would revolutionize agriculture in Zambia and Africa. It would create farmers with an annual income of at least $10,000 per year, evenly dispersed throughout the country, in rural areas. This would give them enough disposable income to pay for services, which would require professionals, etc. There would also be spin-off businesses, in horticulture, agro-forestry, livestock raising. This in turn would create the opportunity for manufacturing companies to make use of agricultural surpluses. Instead of exporting hides, Southern Province (for instance) could export leather products - clothing, handbags, etc. First nationally, then regionally.
4) Start producing our own energy
Every time Indeni shuts down, the country is reminded how inefficient it is to rely on a single refinery that works imported fossile fuel that must be paid for in foreign currency. Zambia should be producing it's own biofuel, and switch to solar energy. There already exist solar panels and gadgets that allow you to collect solar energy, turn it into electricity, and feed the surplus electricity generated back into the mains. In theory, this could give households a negative energy bill (they would in fact receive money from the electricity company). This can only increase when photovoltaic cells become more efficient - which is going to revolutionize Africa even more than mobile phones have. PV cells should be built and installed by domestic companies.
We should be turning away from the notion of export-led growth, and turn towards production led growth that would involve and benefit the entire population. Producing for local, national and regional markets would also stabilize the economy, reduce effects of differences in exchange rates, reduce Zambia's vulnerability to the global economy (exaggerated from depending on the export of minerals), promote local wealth creation, recirculate the currency many times over before it leaves local communities, etc.
"Not only should we not be looking at competitive or comparative advantages, we should not use Malaysia (or Singapore, or Hong Kong) as examples at all. We should be using Japan, South Korea, China or India as models. These countries are much more similar to Zambia with it's landmass, natural resources, population size and history, than neoliberal exceptions like these tiny trade oriented 'Asian Tigers', which are island or city states."
Actually, Malaysia has quite a big landmass and twice Zambia's population. Also has mineral resources like Zambia and was poor like Zambia is today.
"I think we can sidestep any kind of international 'competitive advantage' by focusing on saturating domestic markets. We can protect domestic producers by instituting tariffs to make imported products more expensive than domestically produced products, limiting tariffs to only products that are domestically produced, which would also minimize the effect on inflation. That would also help attract foreign businesses and encourage them to manufacture within Zambia.
Especially the mines could pay a lot more to their workers. And if you realize that the minimum wage in the US is $5,- per hour, require a US company to pay workers 50% or 80% of their domestic minimum wage. That way, these companies would also not be as tempted to move factories from the West to low wage countries.
4) Start producing our own energy"
Tariffs work in the short term, however in real life they result in smuggling of cheaper products from the many neighbouring countries. Also the lack of competition can lead to inferior products (like in former Soviet Union).
Cross subsidies such as using money from mines to create infrastructure is possible in the short term, however who will pay to maintain the infrastructure in the long term? Without sustainable industries generating tax revenue, the infrastructure will fall apart.
Requiring a minimum wage of 50% or 80% of the foreign wage would simply mean the foreign businesses would go to countries without such requirements, since we live in a global competitive economy.
Creating thousands of organic farms is not the problem, the problem is making them self sustaining in the long run. Unless they are inherently profitable, they will only survive with subsidies.
In the West, without tax credits, solar firms would not be able to survive.
So your circular economic theories all require subsidies to be able function. In rich countries such as the Gulf Arab nations, this is possible. However in poor countries such as Zambia, its competitive advantage needs to be developed and market friendly policies need to be established to attract global capital for sustainable industries in the long run, since subsidies from mines may not be sufficient in amount and not last forever.
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IMF on Zambia's Economic Outlook
Tackling rural deforestation...
A mining windfall tax in tatters, 3nd Edition
Linking Zambia (Rupiah Banda 2008)
Executive Issues (October Edition)
Petroleum (Exploration and Production) Bill 2008
Chiefs and election fever (3)
Zambia Diaspora E-Conference 2008
China's new slave empire...
Election 2008 : MMD's Statement of Intent
Mine Watch (South Africa)
Where is the copperbelt headed?
The unending Angola - China integration...
Kariba North Bank Project
Crocodile powered development ?
Quote of the week (Justice Valentine Chileshe)
Inflation Statistics - September 2008
A new fuel policy..
Re-evaluating Mwanawasa's legacy, 2nd Edition
Agriculture and national growth...
Election 2008 : UPND Policies - Health (2)
Holding out for a better deal...
Election 2008 : UPND Policies - Economy
Zambia's infrastructure challenge...
UNZA disgrace...
Insights from Chiefs (Chieftainess Mwasephangwe)
Global Tax Trends
"Frontier Markets" and financial crisis...
Where the water meets the sky...
Linking Zambia (The Watchdog)
Zambia Social Cash Transfer
The lost Post Editorial....
In praise of larger and larger firms...
Elections 2008 : ECZ preparations...
Linking Zambia (Hakainde Hichilema 2008)
How ethnic (tribal) fragmentation undermines good ...
Election 2008 : PF's Statement of Intent
Mine Watch (Uranium Policy)
Tollgated Zambia?
Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai
To be aware (1)
Tackling rural finance...
Bits and pieces (1)
Charity or food based corruption?
Zambia and the Doing Business 2009 report..
Gearing up for 2010....
Notice : Mine Watch Zambia Conference 20008
Bigger than Lumwana?
Quote of the week (The Post)
Bee powered development ?
Nchelenge!
Re-evaluating Mwanawasa's legacy....
Diamonds are not forever...
A more perfect ticket?
A mining windfall tax in tatters...
Your country needs you...and its fully paid!
Where are commodity prices headed next?
30 October 2008!
Magande's Economic Philosophy (Guest Blog)
Escaping the resource curse...
Africa's "Frontier Markets"
Undermining Zambia, revisited...
Linking Zambia (Michael Sata 2008)
Sakwiba "dangerous" Sikota..
Fighting for independence....
Leading the way....
The case for "smart" protectionism?
Picture of the week (Zambians)
Linking Zambia (percymwale)
Its Banda!
Presidential bye-election and Zambia's economic pr...
Executive Issues (September - Special Edition)
Mobile rates....how does Zambia compare?
From MFEZs to satellite towns?
Traditional Authorties & Levy's Legacy
Political or Economic Leadership? Which way for MM...
The politics of democratic transitions...
Removal of Fuel Subsdies (Guest Post)
We Must Do Better (Guest Post)
Chinese Investment in Zambia (Unreported World)
The State of Konkola Copper Mines
Brick World Zambia
Lusaka Stock Exchange (LUSE)
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Let your costume be the real you.
Then wear it for the rest of the year!
Posted by rhonda's escape at 5:00 AM No comments:
What Halloween Means to Me as a Transgender Person
Addison Rose Vincent
By: Addison Rose Vincent
Halloween reminds me that safe spaces are not confined to people or places, that it can instead be based on time. It’s an annual event that gives people like myself permission to be who we are, even if it only lasts a few hours before needing to lock it away for another year. It’s a time when you can finally see yourself reflected back in a world with broken, distorted mirrors. I will always love, appreciate, and celebrate Halloween, as well as every person who uses that night to embrace their magic.
In Fall 2010, I had just moved from Michigan to California to attend college and finally come out publicly as gay. I gave myself permission to gender bend and cross dress for Halloween, deciding to go as a cliché sexy witch with black and red stalkings, a black dress, a red feather boa, and curly black wig. My friends did my makeup, and when I saw myself in the mirror it all clicked. The person I saw in the reflection took my breath away, I felt I was seeing myself for the first time. But the moment faded as my friends laughed, thinking I was in on a joke I was supposedly telling. We went out, the night ended. I felt magical but that it was too much, that I needed to tone it down and lock it away.
Read Addison's story here.
Read my Halloween story
Asymmetrical Fashion
Asymmetrical design - clothes in which one side is not the same as the other.
Supposedly, humans have strong preference for symmetry, but no one has figured out why. It was once thought to be a sign of health, but there is much debate about that theory.
Perhaps the reason is simply that symmetry is just so familiar. Think about it; How many time have you arranged a shelf so so that items on the right balance with items on the right. Yes, symmetry.
According to science asymmetry get your attention; it’s edgy, bold, and says one thing loud and clear; “I don’t need to be like everyone else.”.
I love the look.
Amazon - LACOZY Women's Waffle
Knit Off The Shoulder Tops
Knot Batwing Shirt Tunic Blouse
The photo above is a Lauren Ralph Lauren
Off-The-Shoulder Top that I wore to my Mercedes club dinner event last Sunday. It has one side that falls off the shoulder, one sleeve is longer than the other and the hem falls on the diagonal. Lots of stuff going on.
Recently I have purchased several sweater from Amazon that have done the same with off-the-shoulder and full arm opening on one side.
Here are 5 reason from Fasionnia on "Why does Fashion Love asymmetry?"
1. Asymmetry is unexpected, and great style is never boring. Off-center buttons make this chambray shirt so much more interesting.
2. Uneven hemlines are perfect for covering your assets.
3. Asymmetry can be bold and dramatic. One shoulder dresses are perfect for making a grand entrance whether for daytime or for the evening.
4. An asymmetric cut-out elevates basic style.
5. Asymmetrical style is subtly sexy. As popular as it is with celebrities on the red carpet, I find the “nude” dress trend to be tasteless. For most of us, a little shoulder exposure or a discreet cut-out is a sensuous enough.
Fun Fashion play - What do you think?
I Love A Success Story - Ruth Rose
I BECAME A WOMAN AGED 81
Carri-Ann Taylor
Updated: 3 Sep 2018, 16:07
Ruth Rose
Oldest person in Britain to have reassignment surgery shares her joy at becoming a woman thanks to the NHS. Ruth Rose, 85, had the surgery four years ago after her doctor told her she could be considered for the full procedure.
She has defended the £4,000 cost of the surgery by sitting on an NHS advisory board and volunteering for charities that support old people.
Ruth told the BBC: “It is only in the past 15 years that this has become acceptable. Before that people thought it was just for freaks.”
Ruth had the surgery after living as a woman for several years.
She had been known as James Rose, an ex-RAF navigator, mechanical engineer and financial consultant.
She married but kept her secret until 1973 when her wife found pictures of her dressed as a woman. They finally divorced in 2003.
Ruth - 1973
Ruth waited until retirement to come out as a woman but first realized she wanted to be female aged nine.
She did not expect the NHS to fund the surgery due to her age. She added: “I was surprised to be given the chance for a medical transition. It’s like starting my life all over.”
See - It Is Never Too Late...
Posted by rhonda's escape at 5:00 AM 2 comments:
Someone Had To Invent it...
United States Patent Drawings
The engineer in me loves these.
These prints are available on ETSY. (fun decorating)
The New Feminine Differential?
How to Wear Ankle Boots With Skinny Jeans
If you are still living in the alternate reality of skirts and dresses think again. So much has changed since we were going out as groups to restaurants, clubs and the office just a few months ago. Working from home and even outing to Starbucks has change the way we think style. YS Weekender described it this way when discussing future style:
The COVID-19 pandemic has been truly a “black swan” event all across the globe and ushered in major changes to different aspects of life. While some of these changes may or may not be permanent, certain tectonic shifts in industries like fashion are inevitable. If ever there was a time for fashion to reinvent itself, it is now.
With blending in and still keeping the feminine differential in mind, I will attempt to post suggestions that will give us options and suggestions. Today on the blog, Hi Sugarplum, I found an enlightening discussion on a style that is seen everywhere especially in fall/winter; ankle boots with skinny jeans.
Here are Cassie's suggestions:
And while there are no right or wrong ways for cuffing, some are definitely more flattering than others! When it comes to ankle boots (basically any boot but knee-high or over-the-knee) and skinny jeans, I am not a fan of tucking your jeans in the boots, or pulling them over the top of the boot. Leave those looks to tall boots and boot-cut jeans.
I personally like this look. The jeans are distinctively feminine and the boots provide some gate changing heel effect.
I am sad to see dresses and skits passing and those of us of the boomer generation will always have several for dressy events. One of my daughter has a recruiting business and even the job interview outfit has changed especially when the interview and job both may be virtual.
Females have been moving away for dresses and skits preferring pants for a number of years. The practically is obvious. As one Q&A blog stated: "Nobody wants to look like someone from the 1950's". Oh, that hurt!
How are you adapting to this new Feminine Differential?
Rhonda's Political Week In Review 10/25/2020
Thanks Vela for sending along this one.
Focus...
ESCAPE one step at a time!
LGBTQ People Fear 'Relentless' Attacks...
Uncertain future amid Trump's re-election campaign
ASBURY PARK, N.J. – Rebekah Bruesehoff is tired, and she’s scared.
Rebekah Bruesehoff
Rebekah, a 13-year-old transgender girl, has spent nearly a third of her life living in President Donald Trump’s America, with near-weekly attacks on the LGBTQ community by the administration.
“To be honest, it’s exhausting,” said Rebekah, who lives in Camden County. “Every time I go on social media, I see another attack. And it’s also really scary because I know that at some point this could mean that I can’t be who I am.”
The last four years have been particularly grueling for members of America's lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer community and their allies.
GLAAD, via its Trump Accountability Project, has reported more than 181 attacks — averaging nearly one a week by mid-October 2020 — on the LGBTQ community, either in actions or in statements, from the Trump administration since the president took office.
Any time an LGBTQ issue comes up, "they take the anti-LGBTQ position," said Diana Flynn, litigation director for Lambda Legal, a national nonprofit organization working for the civil rights of the LGBT community and those living with HIV. "It seems like they are seeking out opportunities to try to undermine the community’s status in the law.”
Rebekah said she was first moved to activism following the Trump administration's February 2017 rollback of Obama-era protections for transgender students that had allowed them to use school restrooms corresponding to their gender identity.
Rebekah said:
It was really upsetting and pretty infuriating. I was 10 years old and it was the beginning of four years of attacks on LGBTQ people.
The diminishment of LGBTQ rights and protections has been felt on many fronts, from the rolling back of protections for transgender patients under the Affordable Care Act, a proposed rule allowing federally funded homeless shelters to deny services to transgender people and largely not enforcing the Supreme Court's June ruling that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects LGBTQ people from employment discrimination.
“People need to vote, that’s the gist of it," Rebekah said. "People need to vote for kids like me who can’t vote yet, for so many others and really because my future and my life as the person who I know I am depends on them voting.”
Read the whole article at Yahoo News.
Posted by rhonda's escape at 5:00 AM 1 comment:
Feminine Differential - Proportions
Ralph Lauren - Pattern Play
In classic navy and white, spring’s subtle designs easily mix and match
Stana in one of her posts recently discussed receiving an advertisement email from ShopBAZAAR, which featured the image of a model of indeterminate gender. I guess my radar went up as I noticed another prominent designer with a similar image, shown above.
As to the gender-specific marketing, there is no question. Yes, the items are feminine. E.g. a drawstring purse, flora skirt on the model to the right and feminine cut pantsuit on the model to the left.
However, look closely at then model on the right. There are some very subtle not so feminine features. Yes, I know models are tall, thus many times producing larger overall features by comparison. Let face it, they are models because of their proportions and visual appeal. Many times specific (beautiful) male features do not become noticeable until seen alongside a genetic female. Thus the possible contrast in the above photo.
I know, maybe just a silly observation. Likely completely wrong and misinterpreted. What is most encouraging, as Stana and I have discussed, is the blurring of the male/female gender lines. If this is the case, certainly not the first male model wearing feminine clothing and unlikely to be the last. We have come along way, baby.
Treasure our new found freedom - Escape!
Married father of 3 wears skirts, heels to work because he can
Mark Bryan, a 61-year-old engineer
By: Suzy Weiss
For one dad of three, getting dressed can be a real drag.
Mark Bryan, an American robotics engineer living in Germany, wears towering high heels and skirts every day to prove “clothes have no gender,” he told Bored Panda.
Bryan has shared his style shots on his now-viral Instagram, @MarkBryan911. There, his bio explains further: “I am just a straight, happily married guy,” he wrote to his 62,000 followers, “that loves Porsche’s, beautiful women and incorporating high heels and skirts into my daily wardrobe.”
His daily wardrobe includes red pumps, plaid miniskirts, and seasonally appropriate suede boots, which Bryan paired with a sensible mid-calf beige pencil skirt.
“I prefer skirts to dresses,” said Bryan, 61. “Dresses don’t allow me to mix the genders. I prefer a ‘masculine’ look above the waist and a non-gendered look below the waist.”
When it comes to footwear, Bryan, who also coaches football, prefers heels from the brand Lost Ink. He has pairs of strappy stilettos and open-toed sandals from the company, because they “are great for men as they offer a wide fit in most of their shoes,” according to his Instagram.
Bryan is happily married
and has a passion for high heels and skirts.
Bryan insisted that his sartorial choices are for “non-sexual reasons.” The habit began in college with an old flame — the two would practice dancing together, both in high heels. Then it quickly became normal for him.
He compared the experience of teetering around in public to having green hair. “You look up and see this person, your mind tells you it’s a person with green hair, you think to yourself, ‘That’s odd or interesting,’ then you go back to do what you were doing and don’t give it another thought.”
His wife of 11 years helps him pick out clothes, and his daughter often wishes she could borrow his shoes.
At 6 feet tall without the heels, Bryan is quite the towering figure when he’s all gussied up. Even while working from home during the pandemic, when most former office-goers took the opportunity to dress down, Bryan wore business dress at his home desk.
His advice for men? “If you are asking about heels, then I would say to start with a low heel and work your way up as your confidence gets higher.”
Read the whole article and watch the video here.
I Love A Success Story - Capt. Jennifer Peace
Capt. Jennifer Peace on Being Transgender in the Military
As the Supreme Court allows the Trump administration’s military transgender ban to go into effect while a legal challenge plays out in lower courts, Captain Jennifer Peace, a transgender woman who joined the US army when she was 19, joins the program.
Thank you for you service.
It's Leather Time
From one of the first times I ever wore a leather item I was hooked. It is the richness of the texture, and the way it shapes to the body. To my joy you see it year-after-year. I typically try and find it on sale and many times it can be found in the spring when merchants are clearing fall/winter items.
A good quality black or tan skirt is a must for those "make an entrance" evening out. Do not be fooled by vegan-leather or faux-leather. Nothing looks cheaper and it will not hold up for more than one season. Think investment shopping when choosing any leather product. You are purchasing an item that will not go out of style and will last. The above leather skirt was purchased from Talbot's about 5 years ago.
The sweater item of note is the Venus - Boat Neck Cable Knit Sweater. it is currently on the Venus site and covers several of my favorite looks. The peach color looks great with my white hair; the boat neck is flattering for short necks, and it has enough texture to the fabric to have style. Best of all is the price - reasonable at $54.00. (on sale today @ 39.00)
The other item worth noting is the MCM Berlin Visetos Coated Canvas Drawstring Handbag. It is currently offered at the Nortstrom site and is an investment item that I have been watching for several years. MCM is a recognizable designer item by its coated canvas material and distinctive "MCM" logo. Here is a product line description:
Founded in 1976 in Munich, MCM is a brand that's bold, irreverent and aspirational—with an eye toward revolutionizing classic design. MCM's vision is to transform luxury fashion accessories and travel goods by combining craftsmanship and value for today's modern generation of global nomads: dreamers, creatives and digital natives who are unconstrained by rules and boundaries.
I am still looking forward to time when getting out is not a "Do I really need to attend this event?" question.
‘Worst American President’: New York Times Flames ‘Racist Demagogue’ Trump
The New York Times went scorched earth in a scathing editorial Friday, calling Donald Trump — with his “rampant corruption, celebrations of violence, gross negligence with the public’s health” and incompetence — the “worst American president in modern history.”
“End our national crisis” the Times pleaded with voters to oust the president, adding that Trump’s reelection campaign “poses the greatest threat to American democracy since World War II.”
Trump “cannot solve the nation’s pressing problems because he is the nation’s most pressing problem,” the newspaper flatly said. “He is a racist demagogue presiding over an increasingly diverse country; an isolationist in an interconnected world; a showman forever boasting about things he has never done, and promising to do things he never will.
The editorial is part of a special package in the Times’ Sunday Review section that also features a series of accompanying essays about Trump’s corruption, his COVID-19 “superspreader agenda,” his “fake populism,” his racism, and his attacks on the environment, immigration and on the rights of people of color, women and the LGBTQ community.
Politico - Political cartoons from the desk of Matt Wuerker.
Do More Escapes
Friends Friday - Out with the Old, In with the New!
By Katy
That black leather mini…back in the day
I finally did some serious closet cleaning last week. I think I’ve been putting this off for the last 30 years so you can imagine the task! To be honest, it wasn’t my idea. My spouse was right: “every 30 years you should clean things out whether they need it or not!” I really, really needed to clean up and to get rid of some stuff.
I’ve been inspired by Marie Kondo and her “method.” I’m an emotional person…surprise…who attaches memories to “things.” My mind will say that throwing out the dress is like throwing out the memory of the great/sad/exciting/devestating/beautiful time I had wearing that dress. Marie Kondo says that people like me should only own “things that spark joy in their lives.” Wow. So, beginning with the end in mind…only keeping things that spark joy inside me…we start by discarding things that are out of style, don’t really fit, are age inappropriate, and the like. Marie recommends you hold up the candidate and let it talk to you. Really. You should begin to feel the joy it brings. If there is no sense of joy, you simply thank the garment for the role it played in your life, and then wish it well in its new life, being owned by someone else! Then, out it goes.
I made good progress. Some items just didn’t talk to me at all. I looked dumbly at the garment saying out loud, “what was I thinking when I bought this? Or, maybe, I liked it but it really never fit right so I never wore it. Some of the items still had sales tags attached. Geez.
But then I came to my row of skirts. There were grouped “summer/spring” and “fall/winter” and then arranged by length (this was the most organized segment of my closet…ever. There were maybe 20 skirts, total. But the first one in the fall/winter department was a little black leather mini skirt. I held it up. “How did I ever get those hooks to catch?” It was tiny. But then the memories came flooding back: I remember going to The Raven in New Hope around Halloween, wearing a short, platinum bob wig, black turtle-neck sweater with a little black knit belt, the leather mini skirt, black tights, and black leather pointy-toe boots with a kitten heel.
Two years ago at the Hyatt in Philadelphia
Like it was yesterday, I remember the butterflies-in-the-stomach feeling as I opened the door to the Oak Room which contained about 100 men, half of whom were singing a show tune to Russ Eiffert’s accompaniment on the baby grand in the center of the room. To me, it was like the classic saloon scene in a western movie, where someone pushes through the swinging doors and the piano stops and every poker player and bar drinker turns to eyeball the “new cowboy in town.” That’s how it felt when Russ recognized me entering and he looked me over from top to bottom, pretending the keys on the piano were suddenly too hot to touch and he gently blew on his fingers to cool them. The whole room turned to check me out. I was mortified but luckily recalled the advice of a friend who told me to enter a room “like you own the place!” I smiled, I waved and found a seat near the piano where I could sit down and sort of disappear into the crowd. Russel (RIP) behind the bar sent over a cosmo and we were off to a really fun night, singing and meeting new people.. That was a great night.
So, I held up that little leather mini-skirt and I thanked it for that night and for the memories it brought back. Then, I wished it safe travels and put it in the Goodwill bag.
The skirt is gone but the memories are still there. It’s OK.
No Men Allowed
Source: http://corpseruncomics.com/corpse-run-700-my-fair-lady/
Oreo - Proud Parent
Oreo’s New Ad On LGBTQ Acceptance Is So Necessary
ProudParent Pack of Oreos
(Thanks Velma for sending this one along)
by Kristine Cannon October 9, 2020
Oreo and PFLAG’s year-long Proud Parent initiative is designed to, as Oreo puts it, “shine a spotlight on the powerful impact love and acceptance can have on LGBTQ+ youth.”
Not only did Oreo create a limited edition #ProudParent pack of Oreos that feature rainbow-colored creme, but they’re giving them away solely to the first 10,000 people who share a photo on Instagram or Twitter showing what allyship means to them. And so far, the tweets and posts are just beautiful.
"A loving world starts with a loving home’
Chug a glass of water and grab a tissue (or use your shirt like I did), because Oreo‘s new ad — just in time for LGBTQ History Month — will hit you square in the feels and bring you to tears.
Feminine Differential - The Necklace
But fear no more! Here is a "Necklace Cheat Sheet" just for you. Simply follow our guide on how to accessorize different necklines and you'll be walking out the door looking like a fashionista.
See "Whats The Fashion" for more details...
I love A Success Story - Defied Her Mafia Upbringing
Daniela Lourdes Falanga, her family's first male heir, was expected to follow the path of her mafia boss father. She overcame a brutal Naples childhood to become a prominent transgender rights activist.
Dedicated to the cause:
Daniela Lourdes Falanga, 42, is the first transgender woman to chair the Naples branch of Arcigay, the leading Italian organization for the protection of LGBT+ people and the fight against gender discrimination. She was the first son of a local mafia boss.
Daniela Lourdes Falanga
The narrow alleys stretching from the Obelisk of Saint Dominic are a popular image on Naples postcards. Here university students stroll along Spaccanapoli, the main street that cuts through the historic city, drinking espresso and nibbling ricotta pastries. Short, slender doors lead into the vasci, one-room, ground-floor apartments that used to be homes for the poor but are now more often shops, cellars or even restaurants. In one of them, Daniela Lourdes Falanga is taking a break after a series of hectic days.
Says the 42-year-old, surrounded by banners and posters from the annual Pride Parade:
I've spent the whole night providing free HIV tests to everyone who asked for one. The stigma associated with HIV is still strong in the transsexual community, so many avoid taking the test.
These barriers to genuine acceptance condemned older generations to live as outcasts. "If your body did not fit into a binary representation of gender then you got expelled from the labor market.
Read the whole article.
Married father of 3 wears skirts, heels to work be...
Grace Hopper Quote
New England Journal...
Should Trans Woman Athletes be Allowed to Compete ...
Why You Should Buy The Shoes...
I Love A Success Story - Ines Rau
Style Fun - Is It Cool Yet?
Rhonda's Political Week In Review 10/4/2020 & SNL
Great Things...
Friend's Friday - Connie's Hair
There’s Nothing Wrong With A Boy Being Girly
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Court Judgements
Over 2 lakh Indian cases. Search powered by Google!
C/M, ADARSH JANTA INTER COLLEGE, GHAZIPUR AND ANOTHER versus STATE OF U.P. THRU' EDUCATION SECRETARY (M) AND OTHERS
High Court of Judicature at Allahabad
Case Law Search
Indian Supreme Court Cases / Judgements / Legislation
C/M, Adarsh Janta Inter College, Ghazipur And Another v. State Of U.P. Thru' Education Secretary (M) And Others - WRIT - C No. - 56351 of 2006 [2007] RD-AH 15532 (14 September 2007)
This is an UNCERTIFIED copy for information/reference. For authentic copy please refer to certified copy only. In case of any mistake, please bring it to the notice of Joint Registrar(Copying).
Reserved on 30.08.2007
Delivered on 24.09.2007
Committee of Management Amar
Veer Inter College and others
State of U.P. & others
Hon'ble V.K. Shukla,J.
In the district of Chandauli, there is a Society registered under the provisions of the Societies Registration Act, 1860, which is named as ''Shksha Prasar Samiti, Dhanapur, District Chandauli. Said society runs and manages an educational institution known as Amarvir Inter College., Dhanapur, District Chandauli. Said institution is governed under the provisions of U.P. Act No. II of 1921 and by virtue of being in grant-in-aid list of the State Government the provisions of U.P. Act No. 24 of 1971 are fully applicable to the said institution. Last election of Managing Committee of the institution was held in the month of October, 2001 wherein Shri Prem Narain Upadhyay as elected as President and Sri Keshav Prasad Singh as Manager and Sri Munnu Rastogi as Assistant Manager alongwith other office bearers of the Committee of Management. Shri Keshav Prasad Singh died on 17.11.2004 and entire papers were under his custody and after his death no papers were available. Thereafter on 26.11.2004 meeting took place wherein petitioner no. 2 Munnu Ram Rastogi, claims that he was co-opted as Manager-Secretary of the Managing Committee the society as well as the institution and was authorized to convene meeting by publishing notice in the newspaper in regard to the enrolment of new members so that next elections be held. Petitioners have contended that despite best efforts papers were not traceable as such notarial affidavit has been filed for attestation of signature of petitioner no. 2 before the District Inspector of Schools and thereafter District Inspector of Schools granted recognition on 16.12.2004 and attested the signature of petitioner no. 2. Petitioners have further contended that meeting of the Committee of Management was held on 19.12.2004 after issuing notices to members of Committee of Management to consider as the record pertaining to the institution was not available for framing scheme of administration and its approval by Regional Joint Director of Education. Petitioners have further contended that thereafter Scheme of Administration was submitted under covering letter dated 23.05.2006 and said scheme of administration was approved on 27.05.2006. Complaint was made that said approval has been obtained by practising fraud and in between election process was undertaken by publishing election programme in daily newspaper Amar Ujala on 12.08.2006 and thereafter Civil Misc. Writ Petition No. 45530 of 2006 was filed before this Court and this Court on 23.08.2006 asked the Regional Joint Director of Education to decide the objection and thereafter petitioner claims that election dated 09.09.2006 have been held in the presence of Observer appointed by the District Inspector of Schools and papers was submitted before the District Inspector of Schools for its transmission to the Regional Level Committee. Then thereafter pursuant to order dated 23.08.2006 passed by this Court, Regional Joint Director of Education took up the matter in respect of grant of approval to the Scheme of Administration and on 25.11.2006 order was passed cancelling the approval granted to the Scheme of Administration. Against said order passed by Regional Joint Director of Education Civil Misc. Writ Petition No. 69713 of 2006 was filed before this Court by the petitioner's Committee of Management. Said writ petition was dismissed on 16.01.2007 giving liberty to petitioners to approach authority concerned as per order mentioned. Thereafter petitioners' under covering letter dated 27.01.2007 represented the matter and it has been informed that till date no decision has been taken on the same. District Inspector of Schools on 12.06.2007 passed order mentioning therein that till recognition is not granted order of single operation shall be there. Against the said order Civil Misc. Writ Petition 30011 of 2007 has been filed and this Court on 09.07.2007 stayed the order dated 12.06.2007. Thereafter on 02.08.2007 Authorized Controller has been appointed and earlier elections held to be illegal. At this juncture present writ petition has been filed.
Counter affidavit has been filed on behalf of respondent no. 5 and it has been contended therein that Sri Keshav Prasad Singh remained Manager of the institution as well as Secretary of the society since 1961 till his death. Tenure of Managing Committee was three years and subsequently it was extended to five years by way of amendment introduced by the Committee of Management which as approved by the Regional Joint Director of Education on 09.11.2000 and after death of Keshav Prasad, Sri Munnu Ram Rastogi who was Deputy Manager was made Manager for the remainder period. It has been contended that Munnu Ram Rastogi after becoming Manager with a view to have full control over the institution run by the Society prepared new Scheme of Administration and got it approved by the Regional Joint Director of Education on 27.05.2006. It has further contended that order dated 27.05.2006 was obtained by practicing fraud and when representation was moved, as fraud and misrepresentation was apparent said order was recalled. It has been further stated that two Civil Suits being Civil Suit No. 89 of 1968 had been filed in the past by Akshaibar Singh wherein late Keshav Prasad Singh had been arrayed as defendant no. 1 and similarly Civil Suit No. 19 of 1973 had also been filed and in both Civil Suits Scheme of Administration which existed, had been filed as such Scheme of Administration is in existence and petitioners have tried to manipulate the thing for taking advantage of present situation. It has been contended that matter was represented before the Regional Joint Director of Education and thereafter Regional Joint Director of Education called for report from District Inspector of Schools but the District Inspector of Schools did not submit any report and on the other hand accorded permission to the petitioner to hold fresh election. It has further been contended that no meeting of Managing Committee of the institution was held to decide the election programme and it has been contended that entire act of the petitioners is only to grab the institution. In this background it has been contended that decision in question is rightful decision and no interference be made.
Rejoinder affidavit has been filed and therein statement of fact mentioned in the counter affidavit has been disputed and that of writ petition has been reiterated.
After pleadings mentioned above have been exchanged present writ petition has been taken up for final hearing and disposal with the consent of the parties.
Sri Ashok Khare, Senior Advocate, assisted by Sri Irshad Ali Advocate, contended with vehemence that in the present case opinion which has been formed is totally incorrect opinion in view of the pending application of the petitioners for according approval to the new Scheme of Administration and impugned order could not have been passed unless and until any decision was taken in respect of accepting/rejection of new Scheme of Administration and ipso facto election held could have been held to be not illegal and the order passed is unsustainable and is liable to be quashed. Order of single operation is also unsustainable as there is no default.
Sri G.K. Singh, Advocate, appearing on behalf of respondent no. 5 on the other hand contended that entire claim of the petitioner is an outcome of manipulation and maneuvering and petitioners have tired to manipulate the things in this background it has been contended that there is no scope of interference and writ petition deserves to be dismissed, as any interference would be perpetuating manipulation and maneovering.
Learned Standing Counsel simply followed the arguments advanced by Sri G.K. Singh Advocate.
After respective arguments have been advanced factual position which is emerging in the present case is that there has been approved Scheme of Administration for running and managing the affairs of the institution framed in exercise of power vested under Section 16(A) of U.P. Act No. II of 1921. In the said Scheme of Administration amendment has been introduced by extending the term of the Committee of Management from three years to five years. Said amendment has been approved on 09.11.2000 by the Regional Joint Director of Education.
Sri Keshav Prasad Singh, died on 17.11.2004 and thereafter petitioner no. 2 who was Deputy Manager was asked to function as Manager of the Committee of Management of institution. Papers were transmitted to District Inspector of Schools, and signatures of petitioner no. 2 was attested on 16.12.2004. Thereafter parties are at dispute practically on all issues. Qua petitioner no. 2 it has been contended that in order to have full control over the affairs of the institution large scale manipulation was made by him and in spite of the fact that there existed Scheme of Administration with false misrepresentation fresh Scheme of Administration was got prepared and subsequently got approved by Regional Joint Director of Education on 27.05.2006. Prem Narain Upadhya the President of erstwhile Managing Committee had filed Civil Misc. Writ petition No. 45530 of 2006 wherein fraud practiced by Mannu Ram Rastogi was highlighted and this Court asked Regional Joint Director of Education to look into the matter on 23.08.2006. On 09.09.2006, petitioners claim to have held the elections of Managing Committee. Regional Joint Director of Education on 25.11.2006, cancelled the approval accorded to the Scheme of Administration on on 25.07.2006 with observations that said order has been upheld in Civil Misc. Writ Petition No. 69713 of 2006. Regional Joint Director of Education in order dated 25.11.2006 has clearly mentioned that earlier approval was obtained by fraud and in case due to non availability of earlier Scheme of Administration, after giving full details fresh proposal be sent. Thereafter, fact of the matter is that by mentioning that earlier incorrect statement was incorrectly mentioned and Scheme of Administration be accorded approval. Till date on the said request no action has been taken. As far as election dated 09.09.2006 no credibility could be attached to the said election as admittedly said election has been held as per provisions of the Scheme of Administration, approval of which was based on fraud and misrepresentation. Even if any action is taken on representation dated 08.05.2006 and said Scheme of Administration is accepted the same would at the best apply prospectively in terms of Section 16-A (5) of U.P. Act No. II of 1921. Much emphasis has been laid, that Regional Joint Director of Education ought to have placed the matter before Regional Committee, constituted under Government Order dated 19.12.2000. On admitted position as entire election proceeding was based on the provisions of Scheme of Administration approval of which was based on fraud and misrepresentation, then Regional Joint Director of Education is not at all wrong in saying something null and void as null and void. Further exercise was not at all liable to be undertaken.
In these circumstances it is hereby directed that Prabhand Sanchalak shall continue to run and manage the affairs of the institution and Regional Joint Director of Education shall go into the question of availability of the old Scheme of Administration specially keeping in view of the fact that two civil suits which had been filed way back in year 1968 and 1973 wherein copy of Scheme of Administration had been filed and therein Keshav Prasad Singh had been arrayed as defendant-respondent, qua whom there is no dispute, as to whether Keshav Pradad Singh had accepted the existence of said Scheme of Administration be also examined and once finding of fact is returned that old Scheme of Administration is there then election be held strictly in consonance with the provision as contained in Scheme of Administration from amongst valid members of General Body and in case Scheme of Administration is not there then claim of petitioners, as to whether Scheme of Administration submitted by them could be accepted or not be considered and if said Scheme of Administration is accepted then steps be undertaken for holding of elections from amongst valid members of the general body.
Civil Misc. Writ petition No. 30011 of 2007 is dismissed as infructuous, as appointment of Prabhandha Sanchalak has been upheld. Civil Misc. Writ Petition No. 37802 of 2007 is disposed of with the direction mentioned above.
No orders as to cost.
Dated: 24th September,2007
Dhruv
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Masters Running
Midwest Running
USATF Club Cross Country Championship-Recap 2--Age Grading and Age Groups
December 18 2016. On Saturday, December 10, in Tallahassee the skies were clear and the temperatures unseasonably frosty. Those from the north were philosophical; after all it was colder and snowier where they came from. Those from warmer climes felt a little cheated; they had bargained for decent temperatures and a fine XC course. They got the 2nd but not the first. The course had a very wide start at the top of a field; as the runners advanced there was a slight funnel effect but not enough to bunch runners up. This part had short grass. After passing the eventual finish line about 500 meters into the race, runners sweep up a gradual rise, bend to the left and come out on a flat portion past the 1 K mark. Shortly thereafter the course bends to the left and then it heads down into the wooded portion of the course. This part is apparently made of crushed oyster shell although it feels like any path with gritty little stones in it.The course winds through the woods, mostly downhill but then a little up and down and then eventually after the 2K mark, runners have the one hard hill on the course whre they climb back up almost level with the start. Here the runners are again in the open, running over short grass down to either begin another loop or to finish the race. That is the basic 3K loop; there is also a short 2K loop that sends runners to the left just before the 1K mark, cutting off about a kilometer of the basic loop. The women run 2 basic loops for 6K; the 60+ men run 2 basic loops, followed by a short loop for 8K; and the 40+ men run 2 basic loops followed by two short loops for 10K. The mercury was right at freezing when the women were warming up for the 8 am start of their race. At least the winds were calm, but there was definitely frost on the grass. The temperature had climbed to the upper 30's by the time the 60+ men went off at 8:45. But itwas windier too at about 5 mph so the wind chill was still only 35 degrees. Still every little bit helps and many runners felt like hats and gloves were unnecessary. Finally the 40+ men went off at 9:45 with the thermometer reading a balmy 45. Again with winds up to 6 mph now, the wind chill was 42.
In recap number 1, posted on December 15, I covered the first runner across the line, the overall winner in each of the 3 races. Here I will cover Age-Grading and Age Groups. Age-Grading provides a way of comparing the relative performance of runners of different age groups. The time for each runner is associated with the world's best time for that runner's age and sex. An age-grade of 90% for a 62 year old male means (roughly) the runner is running 90% as fast as the World's Best for a 62-year old male. The closer to 100, the better the Age Grade.
Age Grade Contests. The top age grade performances for Women this year in Masters LDR and XC Championships were turned in by Sabra Harvey, Libby James, Kathy Martin, Edie Stevenson, and Marisa Sutera Strange. James and Stevenson were not competing in this race. Among the other three, Martin had the strongest age grade, followed by Harvey, followed by Strange. Trish Butler and Lynn Cooke had an age-grade 2nd and 3rd place, respectively, at the 5 km Masters XC and Lorraine Jasper had 3rd Age Grade in the 1 Mile Road Race. But it would be a lot to expect them to challenge for the podium. Just as Harvey upset Martin in the Age group contest, she also had the edge in Age Grade. Strange ran strong too, nailing down 3rd place, less than a percentage point ahead of Butler who had to settle for 4th.
Harvey 97.1% Martin 93.5 Strange 90.1
Sabra Harvey (red hat) on her way to the best Age Graded Performance at the 2016 USATF Club Cross Country National Championships [Photo by Michael Scott]
Top Age Grade performers for those entered in the Men's 8K this year came from Brian Pilcher, who had the top age grade in the 5K, 10K and 15K this year, and John Barbour, who had the 2nd best Age Grade score last year in Club XC. John Barbour had a top Age grade at the 2015 Club XC Championship in this age group. Doug Bell got the 4th best Age-Grade for 60+ men in the 10K at Dedham and the same in the 5K at Syracuse. Bell's teammate, Dan Spale, had 4th best age grade for 60+ men at Tulsa in the 15K. As noted in the post on the top finishers in the race, Barbour, who is 62 to Pilcher's 60, was able to hang with Pilcher until he final few hundred meters when Pilcher pulled away to win by 7 seconds. Staying that close meant that Barbour was able to keep Pilcher from claiming his 4th straight age grade title.
There is a hint of a smile as John Barbour approaches the finish line knowing he has the top Age Grade for Men 60+ at the 2016 USATF Club Cross Country National Championships [Photo by Michael Scott]
Bell got the better of his teammate, Spale, in claiming third place by more than a percentage point. A newcomer to the USATF Masters Grand Prix circuit, Dave Blankenship, came in 4th, edging Spale by 3 one hundredths of a percentage point.
Barbour 89.4% Pilcher 88.0 Bell 87.1
The 10K also had a super set of Age-Graders. Kevin Castille took top honors at San Diego in the Half Marathon, probably his favorite distance, and top honors among those 40-59 at the 5K in Syracuse. Nat Larson finished 2nd among all age-grades at the 10K, 5K and 15K but in only one of those races did a current 40-59 year old beat him and that runner is not entered. Peter Hammer finished right behind Larson at Dedham and was 4th best Age Grader among the 40-59 year olds at last year's Club XC. Pete Magill returns to national championship competition and cannot be overlooked. The last two XC races he ran were at Bethlehem PA in 2014 where he finished 3rd in age-grading right behind Hammer and in the USA XC Championships in Boulder in 2015 where he was the 4th place age-grader. Carl Combs had the 2nd best Age Grade at Bend and finished 5th at the stacked 5K race in Syracuse. Kerry Barnett looked to be a little more of a long shot; he had the 7th best age grade among M40+/M50+ runners in the 1 Mile Road Race at Flint and had the 9th best Age Grade for the groups in the 5K at Syracuse. In the end, it was Magill who had the legs for the best Age Grade, taking the crown with a half percentage point to spare.
Pete Magill, 55,(1282) leading a pack with Kristian Blaich, 50 (on Magill's right elbow), Eric Stabb, 48 (1220), and Nat Larson 54 (1349). Magill Won the Men's 55-59 Gold Medal and Had the Top Age Grade at the 2016 USATF Club Cross Country National Championships [Photo by Michael Scott]
Larson collected his 4th 2nd place this year, besting Castille by less than half a percentage point. Hammer ran well but had to settle for 4th, a percentage point back. Barnett surprised many by running a terrific race and finished 5th Age Grading less than a percentage point behind Hammer. Combs had an off day by his standard but still claimed a top 10 Age Grade.
Magill 91.66 Larson 91.2 Castille 90.8
Congratulations to these top Age-Grading Competitors! They are the elite of our Masters Runners.
40-44. As usual, the tale of this age group was already told inthe coverage o the Overall contest for the Women's 6K. Club Northwest's Janet McDevitt and GVH's Heather Webster who took 2-3 overall, finished 1-2 in this group with the 5th place overall finisher, McDevitt's teammate, Camille Shiflett, in 3rd. That coverage did not indicate how well Nancy Ellis of the Tacoma City Running Club and Athena's Alice Kassens ran in finishing 4th and 5th. Ellis was only a couple of seconds back from Shiflett when the pack passed the 1K mark. She fell a few more seconds off the pace in the second kilometer but then maintained that gap for the whole rest of the first lap and well into the 2nd. Eventually around the 4K mark, the gap up to Shiflett started to grow over ten seconds. But Ellis hung tough and finished in 4th only 16 seconds off the podium, with Kassens another 14 seconds back.
Janet McDevitt, Club Northwest, wins the Women's 40-44 title at the 2016 USATF Club Cross Country National Championships [Photo by Michael Scott]
McDevitt 22:37 Webster 22:55 Shiflett 23:06
45-49. The overall winner, Atlanta's Sonja Friend-Uhl, took the title in this age group with nearly a minute to spare while the Impala's Nancy Thomas, who finished 6th overall, had no problem nailing down 2nd with over a minute back to the 3 closest chasers, Deborah Fletcher, Rachel Hopkins, and Caren Mangarelli.
Sonja Friend-Uhl surging towards the Women's 45-49 title along wit hthe Overall Win at the2016 USATF Club Cross Country National Championships [Photo by Clay Shaw, posted on Facebook]
Hopkins could only stay within 10 seconds of Thomas through the first kilometer but she already had 14 seconds on her closest rival, Mangarelli.
Rachel Hopkins heading for a bronze medal in the Women's 45-49 group at the 2016 USATF Club Cross Country National Championships [Photo by Michael Scott]
Both of those gaps grew in the course of the race so Hopkins took 3rd with a half minute gap back to Mangarelli, who had a half minute on Fletcher.
Friend-Uhl 22:15 Thomas 23:07 Hopkins 24:13
50-54. As the top 3 in this group finished 4th, 7th and 8th overall, again the tale of this group is the tale of the overall race, plus one. The overall tale noted that Santa Cruz's Liisa Miller went out fast and had 3 seconds on Athena's Marisa Sutera Strange by the first kilometer, with Southern Cal's Katherine Wolski right off of Strange's elbow. What I did not recount is that Kathleen Cushing-Murray, of the Jane's Elite, was right off of Miller's elbow. Cushing-Murrray stayed right there the whole first loop. At that point she was in 2nd, 1 second behind Miller and with 4 seconds on Strange and 6 on Wolski. Even after Strange surged to control the age group by the 4K mark, Cushing-Murray seemed to be heading for the podium with 7 seconds on Wolski. With 1000 meters to go, Strange surged up the last hill and was away but Miller was only 2 seconds ahead of Cushing-Murray and Wolski was still 7 seconds back. Strange claimed the gold with ten seconds to spare, a dominant victory in the end!
Marisa Sutera Strange nails down the Women's 50-54 victory with a definitive closing sprint at the 2016 USATF Club Cross Country National Championships [Photo by Michael Scott]
As the chasers broke into the open out of the wooded part, no matter how hard she pushed, Cushing-Murray could not close on Miller. But once she reached the flat portion at the top, leading to the downhill slope to the finish,Wolski found her kick and it carried her past Cushing-Murray and almost up to Miller!
Katherine Wolski outlasts Kathleen Cushing-Murray for the Bronze Medal in the Women's 50-54 Race at the 2016 USATF Club Cross Country National Championships [Photo by Michael Scott]
Wolski claimed third by a single second over Cushing-Murray--Wow, what a race!
Strange 23:00 Miller 23:10 Wolski 23:13
55-59. I saw this as a contest between the two Athena Track Club teammates, Lorraine Jasper and Mary Swan and the New Balance Tampa runner, Susan 'Lynn' Cooke. Margaret Sloan's 2nd place in the Masters 5 km XC caught my attention as did Paula Jones and Patrice Combs, who were 4th and 5th at Syracuse. Somehow I overlooked Amanda King, who took 2nd at the USATF New England XC Championships and ran 43:03 at the 10K Championship in Dedham. Give her a challenge and she rises to it. Despite my picking her two Athena rivals to finish ahead of her, Cooke raced right to the front and had 8 seconds on Jasper, her closest pursuer, by the time they passed the 1K mark before turning and heading into the wooded section. King was 4 seconds back from her with Sloan just behind. They maintained those positions through the wooded section and when they passed the Finish line chute with one lap to go, Cooke had 9 seconds over Jasper, with Sloan and King matching stride for stride another 17 seconds back. Swan, on an off day, was another 16 seconds back.
Lynn Cooke cruising toward the Gold medal in the Women's 55-59 Race at the 2016 USATF Club Cross Country National Championships [Photo by Michael Scott]
As they headed up slope and then around to the left on the flat, the gap between the two leaders came down to 6 seconds and Jasper may have has some hope of closing. But once they headed down slope into the woods, Cooke was able to re-establish the gap; it was back up to 11 seconds with a thousand meters to go. Up the hill and out into the open area, try as she might, Jasper could not gain enough ground. In the end it was Cooke with a 9 second win. Jasper came on strong at the end for the 2nd place.
Lorraine Jasper striding toward the Silver Medal in the Women's 55-59 Race at the 2016 USATF Club Cross Country National Championships [Photo by Michael Scott]
What about the final podium position? King and Sloan were still going stride for stride at the 4K mark. But once into the wooded portion, the gap started to grow as Sloan pulled away from King, an 8 second gap at the 5K mark growing to 14 by the finish.
But King knew she had put up a real fight and made Sloan work for her bronze medal.And Cooke let me know after the race, with a twinkle in her eye that she had upset my prediction.Another hard fought race!
Cooke 24:51 Jasper 25:00 Sloan 25:36
60-64. The Impala's Mo Bartley was the heavy favorite in this group. After that it was a little more doubtful. I gave a heavy weight, in the end, to the 2015 Club XC results which showed So Cal's Debbie Lee, the unattached Claire McManus, and the Impala's Jill Miller-Robinett finishing in that order with a minute between the first two and 17 seconds between the next two. I did note that Miller-Robinett had had a stellar autumn of running and maybe I should have taken more note of the fact that Lee and McManus were in a different group last year, 55-59, so may not have gotten the attention of Miller-Robinett's competitive instincts. I also knew that Atlanta's Mary Richards had run some strong 5K's and had finished only 10 seconds back from Miller-Robinett at the 1 Mile at Flint, but I thought Lee and McManus had an edge on her.
Indeed it was Bartley's show. By the kilometer mark, she had 12 seconds on Lee and a half minute on the rest of the field. She poured it on the rest of the way and won with a huge margin, almost two minutes!
Mo Bartley, adding to her lead with every stride over the frosty turf, on her way to the Women's 60-64 Gold medal at the
2016 USATF Club Cross Country National Championships [Photo by Michael Scott]
Although Lee was not able to run with Bartley, she was away smartly at the gun and by the kilometer mark had an 18 second gap on Miller-Robinett, with Richards and, to my surprise, Atlanta's Cynthis Lucking, close behind.Lee held her lead at 18 seconds through the 2K mark but after that Miller-Robinett began to steadily chip away at the lead, leaving Richards behind to strive with Lucking. When they passed the finish chute heading int the 2nd loop, Miller-Robinett had cut Lee's lead to 11 seconds, still substantial but, no doubt, Miller-Robinett could look up the slope and feel she had Lee in her sights. She had chipped another 3 seconds off by the time they entered the wooded back loop. From there Miller-Robinett really accelerated, cutting off huge chunks of Lee's lead! With 1000 meters to go, Miller-Robinett was right on Lee's heels. Up the last tough hill and down the grassy slope to the finish, Miller-Robinett had found another gear and cruised to 2nd place with a 10 second gap to Lee.
Jill Miller-Robinett generating almost enough kinetic heat to keep herself warm in the early going over frosty turf-headed for the Women's 60-64 Silver Medal at the 2016 USATF Club Cross Country National Championships [Photo by Michael Scott]
And even though Lee was somewhat spent, she hung on gamely to claim third place with a three second margin over the fast closing Richards. Lucking finished in 5th, another 9 seconds back.
Bartley 26:42 Miller-Robinett 28:13 Lee 28:23
65-69. This was one of the most tantalizing match-up's of the day. Kathryn 'Kathy' Martin has been Harrier of the Year many, many times and was fresh off a record-breaking 5K run at the USATF 5K Championships at Syracuse, where she broke 20 minutes. At the recent World Athletics Championships in Perth Australia she had entered the Cross Country race and 5 events on the track, including the Steeplechase. Too ambitious? Maybe but Martin is a Hall of Famer; she set new world records in the 5000 meters and 2000 meter steeplechase and brought home 4 gold and two silver medals. The only shortcoming was that she was not able to prevail in two short events, the 800 and 1500 meters, where her Team USA teammate, Sabra Harvey defeated her, earning a new world record in the 800. Some pundits opined that Martin was better at the longer distances and Harvey excelled at the shorter ones. Others felt that perhaps Martin had taken on too many events, wore down and only lost to Harvey because of that. They felt Martin would have no trouble beating Harvey on her favored turf when each was just running the one event. Still others worried there might be lingering effects of a Perth overload. In any case, there was much attention focused on the 65-69 race between Martin, the 2013 and 2015 Masters Long Distance Runner of the Year (ROY), and Harvey, the 2016 Award ROY winner. Atlanta's Nonie Hudnall and the two GVH runners, Jeanne Herrick and Cindy Ingalls were the favorites to battle for the last podium position.
The duel between Martin and Harvey started out looking like the classic case of a runner with a strong kick sticking with a front-runner who lacked the strong kick, knowing they could kick past in the end. At the 1 kilometer mark, Martin was leading but Harvey was tucked in right behind. As they headed down into the wooded loop it was as if Martin sensed Harvey there and knew she needed to put a gap on her. She had her 5 second gap by the 2K mark. Then it was up the hill and down the long slope past the finishing chute and Martin had 7 seconds on Harvey. Which way would it go?
Kathy Martin, [#1076] ahead of a 40's runner, leading the field in the Women's 65-69 Race at the 2016 USATF Club Cross Country National Championships [Photo by Michael Scott]
In years past we would have expected Martin to continue to steadily pull away over the 2nd lap but Harvey is a very strong runner; could she keep the gap there and then sprint past in the end? As it turned out, that was the high point for Martin; Harvey accelerated up the hill and had taken 4 seconds off of Martin's lead by the time they headed into the wooded back loop for the 2nd time. Harvey then bided her time, closing to 2 seconds with 1000 meters to go. Again it was up the tough hill and down the long, gentle slope but this time it was not Martin padding her lead, but Harvey emerging into the open and powering away from Martin. It was a tremendous duel; the final margin of 16 seconds belies the closeness of the race.
Sabra Harvey winning the Gold medal in the Women's 65-69 Race at the 2016 USATF Club Cross Country National Championships [Photo by Michael Scott]
I salute these two terrific champions who went head to head, giving it everything they've got. I look forward to their competitions in the races to come in 2017.
And what of the final podium spot? Ingalls had an off day; it was a contest between Hudnall and Herrick. In the event, it was all Hudnall; she had 12 seconds on Herrick in the first kilometer and built her lead steadily throughout the rest of the race. Hudnall claimed third decisively, a minute and 47 seconds ahead of Herrick.
Harvey 25:26 Martin 25:42 Hudnall 31:09
70-74. Dianne Anderson came to help her Impala team but also took home the gold medal in this group, unopposed, but with a fine time.
Dianne Anderson finsihing off the first loop on her way to the Women's 70-74 Gold Medal at the 2016 USATF Club Cross Country National Championships [Photo by Michael Scott]
Anderson 34:53
75-79. Madeline Bost ran solo in this division as well, claiming the gold medal and the Individual Grand Prix title in the same race.
Madeline Bost finishing her Women's 75-79 Gold Medal win at the 2016 USATF Club Cross Country National Championships [Photo by Michael Scott]
Bost 49:07
40-44. As the coverage of the overall race makes clear, Kevin Castille, in his last year in the group, devastated the field, romping to victory with the rest of the field barely in sight.
Kevin Castille wins the Master's Men's 10K Race at the 2016 USATF Club Cross Country National Championships [Photo by Michael Scott]
Greg Mitchell (1259) and John Gardiner (1275) Pulling Away from Neville Davey in the Masters Men's 10K at the 2016 USATF Club Cross Country National Championships [Photo by Michael Scott]
Bowerman's Gregory Mitchell and Cal Coast's John Gardiner completed the podium. Just off were West Valley's Neville Davey and Christopher Mutai, of 1st Place Sports, in 4th and 5th.
Neville Davey (black singlet)bearing Down on Christopher Mutai heading to the finish of the Masters Men's 10K at
the 2016 USATF Club Cross Country National Championships [Photo by Michael Scott]
Castille 31:29 Mitchell 32:43 Gardiner 32:54
45-49. Although I was pretty good about identifying the main contenders, I had no luck in predicting the eventual winners in this very competitive field. My picks for 1-2-3 came in 10th, 7th and 14th. In addition to Tim Van Orden of the Central Mass Striders, I identified three others of the 7 actual contenders: Bowerman's Matthew Farley, Derrick Jones, unattached, the BAA's Keven O'Neill, and Atlanta's Eric Stabb. I entirely missed Cal Coast's Steven Frisone, perhaps relying too much on the 8K Championship at Brea where he finished 8th in his age group, but perhaps on an off day. I could find no recent results for Sandu Rebencuic, of the Greater Springfield Harriers; he was the overall winner of the Mayor's Cup Cross Country race in Boston 15 years ago when he was 32 but that is hardly enough to project a top finish. Jones, a newcomer to USATF Masters events , but with top finishes at the Cooper River Bridge 10K and the Boilermaker 15K, went out like he was the class of the field, establishing a six second gap on Farley and Rebencuic in the first kilometer. Frisone, O'Neill, Stabb and Van Orden followed 5 seconds back in a bunch. Jones continued to build his lead through the wooded back loop and after they emerged into the open and passed the starting chute to begin loop #2, he had 11 seconds on Farley and Rebecuic, with Van Orden six seconds further back, followed closely by O'Neill and Stabb, with Frisone 10 seconds back. As they headed up the slope toward the 4K mark, Rebencuic upped the pace, with Farley hanging on, and was rewarded by a 4 second reduction in Jones's lead. They felt it behind as well; Van Orden was now 8 seconds back with O'Neill on his shoulder and Stabb a few seconds back. Frisone continued to track them about 10 seconds back. Rebencuic was relentless through the back loop, cutting Jones lead to 4 seconds by the 5K mark, continued to press up that last tough hill and onto the open ground and down past the finishing chute again. Now he had a 2 second lead; Jones had not slacked his pace but Rebencuic had cranked it up! Farley was still sticking like glue to Rebencuic, 3 seconds back, right up on Jones. O'Neilll and Van Orden now faced an 11 second gap up to the leading trio, but they had 5 seconds on Stabb and 7 on Frisone who was finally starting to find some of the early leaders coming back to him.
Tim Van Orden leading the 2nd Chase Pack, including Kristian Blaich (red singlet) and Nat Larson (white singlet behind Blaich) in the Masters Men's 10K at the 2016 USATF Club Cross Country National Championships [Photo by Michael Scott]
The first half of the short loop found Farley passing Jones to tuck in right behind Rebencuic again; Jones was hanging tough just a couple of strides back. O'Neill and Van Orden were still ten seconds back; Frisone had passed Stabb and was only six seconds back from Van Orden. They bypassed the finishing chute one last time to start the last short 2k loop.
Rebencuic's continuing pressure resulted in a 4 second gap back to Farley, who, in turn, had an 11 second gap back to Jones, who was still hanging onto 3rd place. O'Neill and Van Orden were now only 6 seconds back, with 5 seconds back to Frisone and Stabb, who had rallied nicely.With a kilometer to go Rebenuic had a 9 second lead on Farley and no one was going to catch him.
Sandu Rebencic (white singlet) leading Mike Galoob (1243) and Peter Hammer (1244) in towards the finish of the Masters Men's 10K at the 2016 USATF Club Cross Country National Championships [Photo by Michael Scott]
But Farley had no worries for 2nd either as the chasers were struggling, now 18 seconds to the rear. Jones and O'Neill were running 3-4 with 8 seconds back to Van Orden, who had Stabb and Frisone right on his heels. Rebencuic closed out strongly for an 18 second margin of victory. Though he could not match Rebencuic's ferocious pace, Farley nonetheless distanced himself from the rest of the field, claiming 2nd by 17 seconds. O'Neill was able to kick away from Jones and hang on for the last podium position as Frisone and Stabb surged past Jones in the final 400 meters. Van Orden, spent by his efforts in the middle of the race, came in 9 seconds later. A very tough race; now we know what a class runner Sandu Rebencuic is. perhaps we will see him more regularly at USATF Championships in the future.
Rebencuic 33:27 Farley 33:45 O'Neill 34:02
50-54. With this race I had all of the main contenders identified, with the exception of Mark Hixson, of the Greater Springfield Harriers who surprised me by being in contention for the podium. The contenders I identified were: Atlanta's Kristian Blaich, Club Northwest's Carl Combs, the BAA's Peter Hammer, Springfield's Nat Larson and his teammate, Kent Lemme. When the gun sounded, Hammer moved out smartly but the rest of the field was in close. As they passed the 1K mark just before heading into the wooded back loop, Hammer had Larson right on his shoulder, with Blaich, Hixson and Lemme striding along right behind. Combs was 5 seconds back. Was this just a measured start for Combs or was it a sign of an off day? By the end of the first loop we had our answer. Hammer had pulled away to an 8 second lead but the chase pack was still tightly bunched and they were about 12 seconds ahead of Combs. Combs would ordinarily be right with Larson and Blaich so it seemed something was not quite right. Over the next loop Hammer extended his lead but the pack stayed tight 16 seconds back with Lemme showing the first signs of struggle as he now faces a 3 second gap to the chasers. Hammer built his lead the rest of the way and won the group handily.
Peter Hammer (1244) Running with the 40+ Gang as He Claims Victory in the Men's 50-54 Race at the 2016 USATF Club Cross Country National Championships [Photo by Michael Scott]
The third short loop showed no change among the chasers, Blaich, Hixson and Larson as they continued stride for stride. Who would break first? Lemme was now 9 seconds back and, despite having an off day, Combs was now only 6 seconds back from Lemme.With a kilometer to go the three chasers were locked in step as they all recorded the exact same time at the 9K mat, and Combs was now even with Lemme. Larson had the best kick, edging Blaich by 2 seconds for 2nd with Blaich edging Hixson by 3 seconds. Combs, not surprisingly passed Lemme, who had the consolation of knowing he had pressed the pace and tried to stay with the chase group.
Carl Combs (1306) Heading for the Finish Line at the Masters Men's 10K at the 2016 USATF Club Cross Country National Championships [Photo by Michael Scott]
Combs, even on an off day, showed that he belonged among the top 50+ runners in the nation. Hammer dominated the group no doubt but the three chasers, Larson, Blaich and Hixson distinguished themselves with a very hard fought duel for the podium.
Hammer 33:28 Larson 34:05 Blaich 34:07
55-59. For this group I had the top 4 but underestimated Kerry Barnett of Playmakers Elite/New Balance. Cal Coast's Pete Magill was the odds-on favorite to win. Club Northwest's Michael Smith had finished 3rd last year so looked good to make the podium. Dirigo RC's Pete Bottomley had finished 5th in the 50-54 group at the 10K Championship in Dedham before he aged up. Had he been in the 55-59 group only Mark Reeder and Brian Pilcher would have beaten him; that looked like pretty good credentials. Barnett has been running very strong this autumn and seemed to be getting stronger each race. Magill went off like a bullet when the gun went off, leaving the field in his wake, 11 seconds back by the 1K mark. Then it was Bottomley, Barnett and Smith 2-3-4, separated by a few strides. Magill built his lead steadily throughout the race, taking the age group gold by well over a minute. And it was not Smith's day; despite his best efforts, Bottomley and Barnett kept pulling away. But which of the two B's would have his way. On the back loop, Bottomley pulled away ever so slightly from Barnett, 5 seconds at the 2K and then 6 seconds when they passed the finish line chute for the first time. By the 5K mark toward the end of the wooded portion Bottomley was 7 seconds ahead, but that was the high water mark. By the time they finished the 2nd loop, Barnett had cut a couple of seconds off of the lead. But that gap held through the first kilometer of the 1st short loop. But once they entered the woods, now for the 3rd time, Barnett hit the accelerator and by the end of the loop, had closed to within a second of Bottomley. As they headed up the slope and around the flat portion, Barnett puled even and then passed, but Bottomley held on.
Kerry Barnett Driving for Home and the Silver Medal in the Men's 55-59 Race at the 2016 USATF Club Cross Country National Championships [Photo by Michael Scott]
But in the end Barnett was not to be denied as he pulled away, first by a few strides and then crossed the finish line with a 5 second gap to Bottomley-well raced by both of them.
Magill 34:13 Barnett 35:37 Bottomley 35:42
60-64. I thought this would go to Tamalpa's Brian Pilcher by a mile; at the beginning of October he broke the US 5K record and a week later tied the Marathon record and on his way, broke the Half Marathon, 25K and 30K records. I knew Greater Lowell's John Barbour had stuck with Rick Becker most of the way last year at Club Cross and only lost out in the final 200 meters. But, as strong a runner as Becker is, he has not yet broken any records in the age group. But when Pilcher heard I was predicting him to win it easily, he replied, "It's John Barbour and it's Cross Country-you saw what he did last year with Becker. He's gonna push all the way!" And who would be competing for third? Boulder's Dan Spale has run really strong this autumn; at the 15K Championship in Tulsa, Spale was second behind Pilcher. Other contenders included GVH's Mark Rybinski on the comeback trail from injury,his teammate, Gary Radford, who has also had a strong autumn including a 2nd place finish at the Masters 5K XC, and Mark Richtman, Pilcher's teammate, who is one of the top Trail Runners in the Bay Area. When the gun went off, Pilcher surged forward but Barbour found his shoulder and established himself there; they had 9 second so n the field by the 1K mark and the gap kept growing throughout the race. There was the race for first between Pilcher and Barbour and the race for third between Radford, Richtman, Rybinski and Spale. Those four were a tight chase pack at the 1K mark. Throughout the race it was as if Pilcher and Barbour were connected by a short tether; sometimes Pilcher had a stride on Barbour and sometimes Barbour had a stride on Pilcher,
Brian Pilcher (blue headband) and John Barbour match stride for stride on their way to a 1-2 Finish in the Men's 60-64 Race at the 2016 USATF Club Cross Country National Championships [Photo by Michael Scott]
but neither could break the other and so it went through the first loop and the second loop and most of the third Coming up the last hill they were still even but once they crested the hill, ran along the flat and saw the slope down to the finish line, Pilcher used his famous kick to pull away from Barbour and record the win. Like last year, Barboour took second after an epic duel, but this year the gap was 4 seconds instead of 6. What a race!
The 4-runner chase pack was intact through the 2K mark but once they reached the end of the first 3K, where they passed the finish line chute, Spale had 4 seconds on the others.
Dan Spale on his way to an impressive Bronze Medal performance at the 2016 USATF Club Cross Country National Championships [Photo by Michael Scott]
Pushing up the slope, Spale grew that to 8 seconds by the 4K mark. Spale steadily pulled away from the other chasers , claiming 3rd, with a half minute margin. Radford, Richtman and Rybinski were locked in a race within the race. Even if they could not make the podium there were team goals and individual bragging rights at stake. They were dead even at the 5K, 6K and 7K mats so it would come down to the final sprint. Rybinski managed the fastest turnover and kicked to 4th place with a 2 second margin over Radford who had a mere second over Richtman.
Pilcher 29:37 Barbour 29:41 Spale 30:33
Doug Bell (orange) heading for the Men's 65-69 Gold Medal, with Mark Richtman (on his elbow) heading for a Men's 60-64 6th place and Mark Rybinski (GVH) eventual 4th place finisher in the Men's 60-64 Race at the 2016 USATF Club Cross Country National Championships [Photo by Michael Scott]
65-69. Bowerman's Doug Winn is the defending champion who defeated Boulder's Doug Bell by a half minute at the 10K Championship in Dedham in April. These two great runners have a long history of meeting each other in Masters races with the honors sometimes going to Winn and sometimes to Bell. Would Bell get back on top this time or would Winn make it two in a row? And who else might surprise? I thought Atlanta's Kirk Larson or GVH's Doc Rappole might be a factor but I missed Santa Cruz's David Blankenship and Syracuse's Dave Foster. The only results I could find for a David Blankenship of the right age were some 40 minute plus 5K's; apparently I did not find the right Blankenship. With Foster I may have put too much emphasis on his 27th place finish at Club XC last year. He must have been running hurt. Bell started out like he believed it was his turn to be champion; by the 1K mark he had 6 seconds on Foster and 9 on Winn, with Blankenship tucked in between those two. Neither Larson nor Rappole got close enough to the chase group to factor into the race for the podium. It turns out Bell was right. He ran a great race; it was not Winn's day.' Bell was up by almost 20 seconds at the 2K mark and never looked back. He claimed the win with a 50 second margin of victory. But Blankenship, Foster and Winn were giving it their all in a tight chase pack to see who would get the remaining spots on the podium.
Doug Winn (red singlet) racing toward the Silver Medal in the Men's 65-69 Race at the 2016 USATF Club Cross Country National Championships [Photo by Michael Scott]
They were dead even at the end of the first 3K loop and it stayed that way through the first 2K of the second 3K loop. By then Blankenship was tucked in behind Winn and there was a small gap back to Foster. By the time Winn and Blankenship surged up the hill and emerged into the open at the end of the 2nd loop, Foster was now 9 seconds back and the gap was growing. Blankenship hung on gamely but at the back of the short 3rd loop, a small gap emerged and then once they got to the top of the last hill and headed for the finish, it was Winn claiming 2nd with a 7 second margin over Blankenship.
Foster finished 4th 24 seconds back from Blankenship
Bell .31:37 Winn 32:27 Blankenship 32:34
70-74. The Silver Bullet, Doug Goodhue, of the Ann Arbor Track Club, took the title at the 5K Masters XC in Tallahassee in November, his first National Championship race of the year after battling pesky injuries most of the year. When Goodhue is running, even if not fully fit, it is hard to pick against him. He won Age Group Runner of the Year an unprecedented 8 years in a row from 2007 through 2014. He would have his work cut out for him though; a slew of strong runners from the West Coast were descending on Tallahassee. Len Goldman, the defending champ, and his new Tamalpa teammate, Donald Porteous, were going to be tough. Porteous has been running right with Goldman this autumn. Ron Enos, who finished 2nd to Goldman last year at Club XC is back and his Florida Track Club West teammate, Ronald Wells has been running some very fast 5K's this fall. And let's not forget Jim May, GVH's stellar road ace; he finished 3rd at the 5K championship in Syracuse. I thought Boulder's Jan Frisby might also factor as his fitness seemed to be improving over the last month or so. I (Paul Carlin) did not expect to factor in, despite finishing well ahead of Frisby at the 5K in Syracuse, because I had some setbacks after that, missed a number of workouts and just plain lacked fitness. Wells set off smartly with the gun; May was on his heels, Goldman a few strides back, followed closely by Goodhue and Porteous. The 3rd Tamalpa runner, Gene French, was 10 seconds back. Frisby was back a fair piece and I was even further back; neither of us factored into the hunt for the podium. By the 2K mark in the wooded section Wells had opened up a 6 second gap back to May; Goldman and Porteous were running a stride or two back from May. Goodhue was starting to struggle with the pace dropping off by 8 seconds. No doubt that old pesky injury was troubling him. After they crested the hill and emerged into the open area at the end of the first loop, Wells had pushed his lead to 14 seconds and it did not look as if anyone was going to head him.
Ronald Wells heading for the Gold medal in the Men's 70-74 Race at the 2016 USATF Club Cross Country National Championships [Photo by Michael Scott]
He added to the lead further throughout the race and eventually claimed victory with almost a minute to spare. What a performance! The 3-runner chase pack was still tight at that point.
Donald Porteous (white singlet) leading rivals Doc Rappole (1562) and Jim May (partially obscured by Rappole) as he heads for the Silver Medal at the 2016 USATF Club Cross Country National Championships [Photo by Michael Scott]
By the time they entered the wooded portion of the 2nd loop, May was struggling, 6 seconds back from Goldman and Porteous who were still matching stride for stride. Goodhue was clearly struggling now, clearly not his day; he was unable to finish that loop. By the time they hit the bottom of the hill, the two Tamalpa aces had 14 seconds on May and it looked like it would be a California sweep with the only question being the order. And that's the way it unfolded, with the two runners tight over the last loop. Porteous had the better kick at the end and claimed the 2nd spot by 4 seconds over his teammate, Goldman, who was delighted with his third place finish amidst this very tough bunch of runners.
Len Goldman (white cap) striving with Jerry Learned; Goldman earned the Bronze Medal in the Men's 70-74 while Learned was 8th in the Men's 65-69 Race at the 2016 USATF Club Cross Country National Championships [Photo by Michael Scott]
May hung tough after those two had pulled away; he claimed 4th 50 seconds back but still 14 seconds ahead of French who surprised many with his excellent 5th place effort.
Wells 34:04 Porteous 34:59 Goldman 35:03
75-79. It looked like a race for the gold between Potomac Valley's John Elliott and Atlanta's David Turner, with Atlanta's Andrew Sherwood favored to take the 3rd spot over Ann Arbor's Phillip Kroll. In the event, Elliott went out handily, establishing an early lead and had a 20 second gap on Turner by the end of the first loop. He grew the margin the rest of the way,claiming the gold medal with well over minutes to spare.
John Elliott building a big lead in the Men's 75-79 Race, on his way to the Gold Medal at the 2016 USATF Club Cross Country National Championships [Photo by Michael Scott]
After Turner came in, it was 4 and a half minutes before the next competitor finished. But who was it, Sherwood or Kroll? The bronze medal race was actually the closest contest within this age group. Kroll ran much faster over the first 2 loops and had built up a 90 second lead over Sherwood by the 4K mark. Somehow almost a minute of that lead vanished over the next kilometer as Sherwood was only 37 seconds back from Kroll by the 5K mark. It got 20 seconds closer due to a minor mishap at the end of the second loop. Kroll notes that the volunteer who was supposed to direct him away from the finishing chute to finish the 3rd short loop, failed to do so. He wound up in the finishing area, realized that was wrong and returned to the course; but he had lost momentum, if not the lead. The 37 second led had shrunk to 17 seconds!
Phillip Kroll heading for the Bronze Medal in the Men's 75-79 Race at the 2016 USATF Club Cross Country National Championships [Photo by Michael Scott]
Luckily Kroll was able to regain his momentum, pushed the lead back up to 37 seconds with a kilometer to go and claimed the bronze medal with 43 seconds to spare. Elliott showed once again that he is one of the strongest runners in the 75-79 category. Turner had an off day but still left the rest of the field far behind.
Elliott 42:38 Turner 45:00 Kroll 49:31
Posted by The Running Professor at 10:07 PM
Labels: masters ldr, race recaps
Paul Carlin
USATF Club Cross Country Championship-Recap 3--Tea...
USATF Club Cross Country Championship-Recap 2--Age...
USATF Club Cross Country Championships--Recap 1--O...
Preview No. 3 -2016 USATF Club Cross Country Champ...
USATF Club Cross Country Championships—Preview No. 1
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Sandrine Berges
The Philosophy of Domesticity
The Home: A Philosophical Project
Women Philosophers Calendars
Bridging the Gender Gap Through Time
Wollapalooza
Wollstonecraft at Bilkent
Wollapalooza II
Liberty in thy name!
Feminist History of Philosophy
Historical zombies and other fiction
Crafts and things
Liberty in Their Names
Three Women of the French Revolution: Olympe de Gouges, Manon Roland and Sophie de Grouchy
A fully ripe season for writing
Not many in the eighteenth century agreed that women should be writers of anything other than gossipy letters. But even those who did found it hard to agree as to when was the best time for a woman to become a writer.
A woman who had the misfortune not to be married or have children could write at any time, provided she did not disturb her relatives. Hence Jane Austen would get up early, before her family’s breakfast, and write at the dining table. Afterwards there was household tasks to attend to, of course, and any other time she could take up a pen was devoted to writing letters to family members who were away.
Considerations of respectability only applied to respectable women, of course. So Olympe de Gouges, widowed, living under her assumed name instead of her husbands (Aubry), bringing up her boy alone, assisted financially by her lover, and pursuing a career as a playwright could write when she wanted to. This is probably why her biographer lists over 140 pieces penned by Olympe in the last five years of her life. (Her writing career began 1788 and she died in 1793)
Little is known of Sophie de Grouchy’s writing habits, except for a report from her aunt that as a twenty year old, staying in a convent finishing school in Normandy, she spent so much time reading and translating that she made herself ill and damaged her eyesight. Given that the social life of the school was quite active – the idea was for the young women to be presented to society and hopefully find husbands – Sophie probably worked during the night, by candlelight. The only obstacle standing between her and her work then was her social life, and it is likely that even when she married and became a mother this carried on, i.e. that her activities as a saloniere were the only thing that stopped her from writing when she wanted to. Her daughter, Eliza, had a wetnurse, so that Sophie was not bound by the usual duties of motherhood.
Manon Roland was firmly opposed to wet-nursing, being a follower of Rousseau, and a middle class woman, less able to ‘adopt’ a nurse, i.e. invite a woman to become a permanent member of the family and live under their roof until she could be retired.
Manon also had some duties at home. Even though she had servants, they had to be trained, supervised, their work had to be done for them when they were sick and big jobs, such as laundry, had to be shared, and dinner had to be ordered, and prepared by herself when she wanted something done in a particular manner. And most importantly, children – in her case a daughter, Eudora – had to be educated following Rousseauian precepts. But none of this, Manon reflected, ought to take particularly long, so that a good mother and housewife ought still to have plenty of time for study and writing.
Those who know how to organize their work always have leisure time. It is those that do nothing that lack the time to do anything. Moreover it is not surprising that women who spend their time in useless visiting and who think they are badly dressed if they have not spent a great deal of time at their mirror, find their days too long through boredom and too short for their duties. But I have seen those we call good housewives become unbearable to the world and even their husbands through a tiresome attention to little things.
Manon’s stance was not unlike that of Mary Wollstonecraft, who claimed that a married middle class woman with children was in an ideal position, once her children were at school and no longer needed her full time attention, to take up science, literature or the arts.
And did they pursue a plan of conduct, and not waste their times in following the fashionable vagaries of dress, the management of their household and children need not shut them out from literature, nor prevent their attaching themselves to a science, with that steady eye which strengthens the mind, or practicing one of the fine arts that cultivate the taste (VRW).
Both in Roland and Wollstonecraft’s case, however, the life plan that would allow women to write while mothering young children relied very much on a reformed, republican and proto-feminist model of family life in which only necessary household duties were perfomed - the ‘vagaries of dress’ to be avoided and ‘if men do not neglect the duties of husbands and fathers’.
I expect a woman to keep her family’s linen and clothing in good order, to feed her children, order, or herself cook dinner, this without talking about it, keeping her mind free and ordering her time so that she is able to talk of something else, and to please, at last, through her mood, as well as the charms of her sex
So what would an 18th woman who wanted to write but had no expectations that a revolution would bring about major changes in her household duties do?
This was the case of Hannah Mather Crocker, born in Boston in 1752, writer of several books and pamphlets, including “Observations on the Real Rights of Women” a work in which she cites Wollstonecraft amongst others. Crocker, although she had always been philosophically inclined, only began to write in earnest once her ten children had left home, remarking that this period in a woman’s life was :
a fully ripe season to read, write, meditate and compose, if the body and mind are not enfeebled by infirmities.
In other words, if bringing up ten children hasn’t left you a mental and physical wreck, now is the time to pursue a literary or philosophical career!
This is where I live blog about my new book project, an intellectual biography of three French Revolutionary women philosophers.
Abolitionism
Bonheur Primitif
Brissot
Cabanis
Champ De Mars Massacre
Charlotte Corday
Declaration Of The Rights Of Man
Hannah Mather Crocker
Helvetius
Les Trois Urnes
Letters On Sympathy
Louise Keralio
Macaualy
Manon Roland
Saint-Domingue
September Massacres
Sieyes
Sophie De Grouchy
The Great Fear
Theroigne De Mericourt
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Tag: Lyda Borelli
PINA MENICHELLI, Our Lady of Spasms (Nostra Signora degli Spasimi)
Posted on February 18, 2012 February 24, 2012 by Gene Zonarich
Seriously ill, dependent on morphine and in an impossible relationship, Countess Natka (Pina Menichelli) decides to commit suicide by first taking a large dose of morphine. As the drug numbs her pain and fills her senses with a temporary euphoria, she realizes (lower far right frame) that she must get her lover to complete the act. She will ask him to give her what will be, unknown to him, a second — and fatal — dose of morphine. Tigre Reale, Itala-Film, 1916, directed by Giovanni Pastrone.
“Tutto veniva dalla sua corona di capelli, che era un puro capolavoro: chioma di Gorgona, serpenti dell’isteria, riccioli di pathos, desiderio e follia mescolati. Mostruosi ornamenti di un giardino di folla: e intorno a Pina Menichelli, Nostra Signora degli Spasimi . . .”
“Everything came from her crown of hair, that was a pure masterpiece: a Gorgon’s mane, serpents of hysteria, curls of pathos, desire and madness intertwined. Monstrous adornments of a crowded garden: all around Pina Menichelli, Our Lady of Spasms . . .” (Nino Frank, Cinema dell’arte. Panorama du film italien, Paris, Bonne, 1951.)
In one of the early scenes in Tigre Reale (Royal Tigress, Itala-Film, 1916) directed by Giovanni Pastrone, La contessa Natka (Pina Menichelli) meets Ambasciatore Georgio La Ferlita (Alberto Napoti), at the opera. These frames show a striking effect accomplished by a semi-circular pan shot employed by Pastrone: using the Countess as the “pivot point” of the frame, the camera scans the interior of the opera house from the stage to the luxury boxes opposite the seats where the Countess and the Ambassador watch.
Made only 18 months after Cabiria, Pastrone’s bold and unexpected use of camera movement in this scene, and elsewhere throughout the film shows that his use of this technique, while widely lauded in minimal use in Cabiria, has now become much more daring and sophisticated, as well as integral to the narrative. Motion and color will be two key elements of diva film, whether practiced by Pastrone, Nino Oxilia, Carmen Gallone, Amleto Palmeri or other directors of important films of the genre. And then there are the Divas themselves, most prominently among them Lyda Borelli, Francesca Bertini, and “la terza grazia del cinema muto italiano” — “the Third Grace of Italian silent film” — Pina Menichelli.
In his brief but indispensable biography of Pina Menichelli, Italian film historian Vittorio Martinelli describes how, “in the history of Italian cinema from the years of World War I to the Great Depression of the twenties, at least for ten years, the name Pina Menichelli . . . had a great popularity scarcely imaginable today.” It was a legacy precisely as she desired it to be.
For every “Norma Desmond” or Mae Murray, there is a Norma Shearer or a Kay Francis, and probably quite a few more, who were glad to be done with celebrity more than we their adoring public could perceive. We remember, sometimes painfully, the slow sad fade of those who seem unable or unwilling to let go of fame or of an image. Yet there are those who are more than glad to be rid of the trappings, the prison of fame, to move on with their lives to something that may be just as much or more a part of them as the fame, the only part in which we see them eternally. So often it is we who cannot let go.
Pina Menichelli had married Italian journalist Libero Pica in Argentina in 1909, and they separated shortly before the birth of their third child in 1912, just before the beginning of her career in film. Through the years, Pica steadfastly refused to grant her the annulment of their marriage. She waited until his death in 1924 to marry film producer Carlo Amato, and then promptly retired from acting to assume her preferred life as a wife and mother of her two surviving children, now aged 12 and 14. It is rare that a performing artist leaves the public at or near the absolute peak of their artistry and fame, but Menichelli did exactly that. (She did have one prior precedent to follow: Lyda Borelli ended her career under very similar circumstances six years earlier.) So complete was Pina Menichelli’s break with the past that, as recounted by Martinelli:
“[She] had destroyed everything that could recall the past, burning photographs, portraits, programs, posters and any other documents, and severing any relationship, already very tenuous, with “those” films. Only a faithful servant . . . had over the years retrieved a few photographs, but without the knowledge of her mistress, who absolutely did not want to hear more talk of cinema.”
No more “talk of cinema?” But why? One can retire and, with sufficient financial resources, practically reinvent oneself, if that is what one desires. Only if the past is either so repugnant or incongruent with the “new” present would the desire to escape it completely make sense. Was that the case with Pina Menichelli? Possibly.
Menichelli retired to become a housewife and mother. Her work in film was at odds with this. Her screen image was not simply that of diva, a complex creature in and of itself, but a rare diva who, at least in her earlier films (particularly Il fuoco and Tigre Reale), was “La favilla, la vampa, la cenere,” “the spark, the flame, the ashes,” an all-in-one, ultra femme-fatale. And the “vamp” or “femme-fatale” went against the grain of the concept of the Italian film-diva and of the diva-film.
Following Il fuoco and Tigre Reale, Menichelli was able to move beyond a vamp variant of the diva film. But her reputation and image remained that of a sex symbol, an outrageous proposition in the early 20th century.
She was now 35 and been acting virtually her entire life, with the exception of three years in Argentina after marriage and the birth of her children. It seems to have been her desire to resume the family life she had essentially given up after the separation from her first husband. Her remarriage soon after his death made resumption of a stable family life feasible. Taking these factors into consideration, along with the post-war economic depression in Italy and near-collapse of the Italian film industry in the mid-1920s, Menichelli’s decision to leave show business and celebrity begins to make sense. I say “begins” only because for many of us fame seems to be something so rare, so desirable, so fleeting, that the idea of letting it go willingly is almost unthinkable.
* * *.
Natka enters the party pensively, she attracts the attention of every male in the vicinity, not the least, that of Giorgio, the ambassador, his mind reeling as he recalls their moment of passion at the opera, now rekindled at the sight of Natka . . .
Natka not only does not notice the male stares, she is fumbling, rather adorably, with the collar button of her coat. She appears as a normal woman, or girlish, even, for the first time in the film.
Tigre Reale was an 1873 novel by Giovanni Verga, and had been offered to Itala Film by the Countess Dina Castellazzi Aordevolo as her own work. In reality, Verga had arranged with the Countess to treat the screenplay as hers, in order to avoid associating his name directly with a motion picture adaptation of his novel. It is
reflective of the ambiguity felt toward the new art of cinema by some — but not all — writers of “serious” literature, even in the adaptation of their own original work for a screenplay. Itala purchased the rights to Tigre Reale for six hundred pounds in September 1912. However, the screenplay sat in a drawer, ignored until 1916 when, in the wake of the success of Il fuoco, Giovanni Pastrone selected it as his follow-up to that film for Pina Menichelli.
(Above, The countess and her friend relax and browse the floor for interesting men.)
(Left: Alone for only a moment, Natka is almost immediately surrounded by her admirers.)
(Below: She wears an enormous, six-foot necklace of pearls . . . and dangling at its end, near her ankles, a sacred object — a gold crucifix — to ward off unwanted evil . . .)
(Below: As the men swarm around and nearly encircling her, she quickly jerks the necklace and its dangling crucifix level with her crotch. It is a gesture, a sign, that the men immediately understand.)
The use of the crucifix as a decorative object dangling on a six-foot pearl necklace is outrageous in itself — it shocked people nearly seven decades later when imitated by Madonna. But using it as a talisman between her legs to ward off unwanted sexual advances is still jaw-dropping today. One can only wonder about its effect on audiences of 1916. And a Roman Catholic Italian audience at that. But the church and censors did not attach much significance to it, at least not as much as later scenes involving suicides, grotesque fiery death and adultery without an ultimate punishment, things that are typical prime time TV entertainment fare today.
The plot of Tigre Reale is both convoluted and emotionally ecstatic, with a level of unbelievability that, by contrast, allows the film’s many outrageous images to seem perfectly appropriate. The ambassador in Paris, Giorgio La Ferlita, encounters during a reception the Russian countess, Natka, with whom he is fascinated, even to the extent of challenging to a duel another man who has insulted her. Despite being both enticed and rejected by her several times over, he cannot leave her alone.
He is intrigued and completely enamored of her, and she begins to tell him about her horrible past. She married a Count, of course, a marriage that was unhappy. She was in love with another man named Dolski. Her husband discovered the adultery, and had his rival exiled to Siberia. Natka climbs hills, crosses rivers and the frozen tundra to reach her lover Dolski in Siberia, only to find him with another woman. The guilty lover escapes his imprisonment, then after she confronts him, he commits suicide in front of her.
After she tells Giorgio the story of her life, the Countess Natka disappears for months. After searching in vain, the diplomat began a relationship with another rich woman. But eventually he reunites with the mysterious Countess. Georgio goes to her at her hotel and finds her gravely ill, and still married to the abusive Count. Realizing the impossibility of living, or loving another man, she plans to commit suicide with the unwitting assistance of Giorgio.
Before his arrival at her suite, she takes a large dose of morphine (to which she is possibly addicted). Upon his arrival they seem to reunite joyfully, but she feigns a serious spell of illness and when he panics, she tells him to get her “medicine” from the cabinet. It is the morphine. He gives her a dose which combined with the one she had just taken, causes her to lose consciousness, appearing to die. During this sequence of events, a fire breaks out at the hotel, the two lovers are trapped having been locked in the hotel suite by her husband, who had discovered Giorgio’s reappearance. However, Natka regains consciousness during the holocaust, and she and Giorgio manage to escape, while her husband dies horribly in the fire.
The following images are among the most striking of Menichelli as Natka. Intoxicated by the overtures of Giorgio, she deeply inhales the fragrance of a bouquet of roses, then begins to DEVOUR them in near-orgasmic ecstasy. The scene was such that it inspired the surrealist Salvador Dali to recall it years later in his essay on diva film, a subject which fascinated him as a young man in Spain:
“The Age of Hysterical Cinema”
“I recall those women frantic and wobbly of step, their hands caressing the castaways of their love down the corridor walls, clinging to the curtains and plants, those women of the screen, whose neckline slipped continuously over bare shoulders, in an endless night among cypress and marble staircases.
“At that critical and turbulent period of eroticism, palms and magnolias were literally taken in bites, torn with their teeth by these women, whose fragile and pre-tubercular appearance did not preclude, however, their audacious shapes thriving on a precocious and feverish youth.” Salvador Dali, 1932.
[My translation may be a bit awkward, but I think you get the gist of what Dali was trying to convey about diva film, and specifically the psychic impact of these kinds of images on the future surrealist as a young man. Sort of explains a few things about Dali, does it not?]
At the complete opposite end of the spectrum from Menichelli’s ecstatic cab ride above are the next series (the last, for now) of frames from the final sequence of Tigre Reale, in which a nearly unrecognizable Pina Menichelli as Countess Natka proceeds to carry out, almost, her assisted suicide by morphine. (And in the first frames before she takes the drug, Menichelli’s sick and weary Natka resembles no one so much as her rival diva, Lyda Borelli.)
Natka puts her suicide plan into action — reaching into the medicine cabinet, she retrieves a bottle of the clear liquid morphine, with its ominous instructions, “The morphine may ease your pain, but too many drops will be fatal.” It is precisely what she desires.
The bitter taste of the morphine is quickly forgotten as it takes effect, seen immediately below, in the marked change in Menichelli’s expression from two consecutive frames first at left, then at right.
Above, the brief euphoria provided by the morphine brings Natka back to “normal” until she remembers, below, that she must still trap her love Giorgio into completing, unwittingly, her death wish.
Almost immediately upon Giorgio’s arrival, Natka begins to feign illness.
Below, she asks Giorgio to find and administer her “medicine.”
She consumes the apparently fatal dose, and is “Overcome by the double insanity of love and death,” in which the drug again briefly rekindles a small spark, which is quickly extinguished.
Giorgio is unaware he has played a part in a planned assisted suicide, but he is also unaware that Natka is not dead, and will shortly revive, ironically by the hotel fire that kills her husband, and frees her to be with Giorgio.
Martinelli aptly sums up Pina Menichelli’s characterization of Natka, and this period of her initial popularity, by quoting two writers, the latter of whom was her contemporary:
“‘She was not trying to provoke the sympathy of the audience, but its dislike. She was looking for the dislike of the spectators. The femme fatale who has never a tender or calm thought, but rather, sows hate, a duel, and is happy and proud. It was impossible to love her, but it was so attractive that we hope to be destroyed by the sharp claws of this beast. She hovered above men who, rolling about, pitiful and small, at her feet, hoped at the very most to touch the hem of her dress.’
“‘With her silhouette twisted, screwed, pointed, her sudden smiles . . . her worldliness and dissipation . . . her feverish lust for life, Menichelli dominates the film from top to bottom,’ so expresses an acute scholar like Francis Savio, while Nino Frank, a French writer who lived in Italy at the time of those movies, indulges in a prose even more frenzied than the film itself: ‘Everything came from the crown of hair, which was a pure masterpiece, a Gorgon‘s mane, snakes of hysteria, curls of pathos, desire and madness intertwined. Monstrous adornments of a crowded garden: all around Pina Menichelli, Our Lady of Spasms, arranged in terraces to nowhere, but the imagination, falling short, wanders still with regret and sorrow.’”
Martinelli, Vittorio, Pina Menichelli, Le sfumature del fascino, Bulzoni Editore, Rome, 2002. Softcover. 130pp. In Italian. Many B&W photos.
Dalle Vacche, Angela, Diva: Defiance and Passion in Early Italian Cinema, University of Texas Press (2008, Paperback, with DVD, “Diva Dolorosa,” (Filmmuseum Netherlands)/VPRO, 1999, Dir: Peter Delpeut).
Brunetta, Gian Piero, The History of Italian Cinema, Princeton University Press (2009, paperback).
(For more information on the above books, see the “Bibliography” under the page header image.)
For further viewing, in addition to the Diva Dolorosa DVD, available with the Dalle Vacche book or separately (each is about 35.00US so the book is the better bargain). Also, see YouTube and search for any of the divas or films or directors by name. Many decent quality, some outstanding, portions of films, (and in case of Tigre Reale available in its entirety), are to be found for viewing free at the YouTube website.
Tagged cinema muto italiano, Giovanni Pastrone, Itala Film, Italian Cinema, Lyda Borelli, silent film4 Comments
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Athens All Destinations
Things to do in Greece
Propylaea
The Propylaea is an ancient gateway in Athens, Greece that leads to the famous Acropolis. It surrounds the natural entrance to the plateau where the Acropolis is located. This entryway is actually a collection of impressive buildings that were built from 438 to 432 BC. Today you'll see two large structures with a smaller one in the center, but this is because most of the center structure is missing. When it was complete, it looked like the front of a temple with Doric columns. Inside the structure are several Ionic columns.
The stairway visitors walk up while approaching the Propylaea is built into the natural rock of the plateau. The Propylaea itself is made of the same marble that was used in constructing the Parthenon. Though it is in a ruined state today, it is still an impressive structure, and visitors can imagine how much more striking it must have been in ancient times.
Daily 8am-6:30pm
Acropolis, Dionysiou Areopagitou , Athens, Attica, Greece, 10558
Tours and tickets to Experience Propylaea
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Athens Half-Day Sightseeing Tour
Discover some of Greece’s greatest treasures and the best of modern Athens on this morning or afternoon Athens sightseeing tour. With an expert guide, take a coach tour of top Athens sites, including the Greek Parliament and Panathenaic Stadium, stage of the first modern Olympic Games. Then, explore the mighty Acropolis on foot to see the glorious Parthenon and other highlights. Want to add more sightseeing in Athens? Upgrade your morning tour to include entry to the Acropolis Museum to see its incredible Parthenon friezes, and other archaeological exhibits.
Athens Full Day Private Tour
Explore the highlights of Athens in a private vehicle on this full-day tour. Depart from your hotel and make your way the the Acropolis, where you can stroll through the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, the Temple of the Athena Nike, the Propylaea, the Erechtheum, and the Parthenon. Take in views from Lycabettus Hill and explore the neighborhoods of Plaka and Monastiraki.
Athens Sunset Bike Tour
Hop on a bike for this fun and fascinating 2-wheeled tour around Athens, capped off by an unforgettable sunset. Follow a friendly tour leader to most of the capital’s major sights and panoramic viewpoints. Cover much more ground than walking while enjoying the flexibility to stop often and soak up scenes of daily life along the way.
Acropolis Walking Tour, Including Syntagma Square and Historical City Center
Delve into the history of ancient Greece on this Athens walking tour. With an expert guide, stroll around the historic heart of Athens to see Syntagma Square, the Parliament Building, and the ancient ruins tucked around the slopes of the stunning, UNESCO-listed Acropolis. Check out fascinating archaeological exhibits in Syntagma Square and admire awesome views of the Parthenon as you view the Theater of Dionysus, Odeon of Herodes Atticus and other sights. With revealing commentary from your guide throughout, this walking tour of Athens will delight history buffs. Please note admission to the Acropolis is at your own expense.
Athens Highlights Half Day Private Tour
If you’re short on time but want to see everything that Athens has to offer, take a five-hour tour by private transportation. The day starts with convenient pickup from your hotel and then takes you to the Acropolis, Panepistimiou Street, and much more. Traveling by private car enables you to take advantage of your time. You also have the flexibility to explore each attraction independently or add a licensed guide at an additional coast.
Athens Super Saver: City Sightseeing Tour plus Half-Day Cape Sounion Trip
Combine two popular tours of Athens and Cape Sounion into one day at a discounted price with this Athens Super Saver. In the morning, board an air-conditioned coach for a sightseeing tour of Athens’ highlights. With an expert guide, stroll around the Parthenon and antiquities on the Acropolis; visit the New Acropolis Museum; see the Panathenaic Stadium and more. Then, take an afternoon trip to Cape Sounion, where the Temple of Poseidon overlooks the Aegean Sea. Admire the glittering temple and stellar views before your return by coach to Athens.
Skip the Line: Acropolis of Athens Afternoon Walking Tour
See the landmark monuments of Athens in a new light during a late afternoon tour of the Acropolis, guided by a licensed archaeologist. You’re guaranteed to skip any long wait lines during this walking tour of the UNESCO World Heritage Site. Avoid the crowds and warmer temperatures while taking a leisurely stroll around the Parthenon, Propylaia gateway, Temple of Athena Nike and more.
New Acropolis Museum and Acropolis of Athens Skip-The-Line Small Group Tour
Go by foot and get up-close to the ancient wonder of Athens’ Acropolis. Visit the Greek capital’s most-renowned monuments on this flexible half-day walking tour. Soak in the historic significance of the place where Western politics and ideals were forged, your guide on hand to tell you more about the site's rich history. Don’t just look through the window of a tour bus: truly experience the Acropolis by taking a stroll around this epic landmark of civilization.
Self-guided Virtual Tour of Acropolis hill
Experience the Acropolis hill from the comfort of your home with an engaging self-guided virtual tour, from your PC or smartphone browser. It’s so simple! You'll receive an email with the tour link with instructions and, in a couple of minutes, you will travel back in time and enjoy a virtual journey from the comfort of your couch! Through the power of storytelling combined with street and satellite views, you will learn not only about historical facts but also discover unknown stories and tales of ancient and modern times that will amaze your family and friends. The tour’s content is the result of in-depth research, squeezed into brief intriguing stories that will make your virtual visit both engaging and informative. The tour is only available online and you can access it repeatedly and anytime. This is an unmissable opportunity to gain valuable insights into the most iconic landmark of Athens, the Acropolis, and immerse yourself in the surroundings in an entirely innovative way.
Historical Athens and Acropolis of Athens Walking Tour
See ancient Greece's most impressive sights on this Athens walking tour. Get an up-close look at the Greek Parliament and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, as well as the presidential guards who protect it. Explore the National Garden and wander the timeworn streets of Plaka. Then, cap your tour at the Acropolis of Athens, the Greek capital’s UNESCO World Heritage–listed showstopper, where the Parthenon and other classical ruins await.
Athens By Night Private Tour
Experience the nighttime side of Athens on this private evening tour. Meet your driver at your hotel and depart in a private vehicle to the main sights of Athens, including the Acropolis, the Parthenon, the Port of Piraeus, Lycabettus Hill, and more. Explore each place independently and at your own pace.
Athens Electric Bike Guided Tour with Food & Refreshments
Tour Athens by bicycle without tiring yourself out by booking this guided electric bicycle trip around the Greek capital. You'll spend three to three and a half hours touring the city, with stops to take in views of the Acropolis, the Temple of Olympian Zeus, and the National Gardens, to name a few. You'll also visit the remains of the Ancient Roman Agora, all with a guide to lead the way.
11-Day Amazing Greece: Athens, Mykonos, Delos, Santorini & Heraklion(Crete)
Greece. The Aegean Sea. Apollonius Light. All Greek mythology in front of your eyes, a valuable road, a holy place. In the country that gave birth to culture, each step is a journey through history. Enjoy activities, local specialties of Greek cuisine, shopping, and nightlife. A complete package that includes 10 nights’ accommodation in a specific hotel with breakfast, transfers, guided visits and ferry tickets. Highlights: Athens (Acropolis, Parthenon, Acropolis Museum, Monastiraki, Thissio, Temple of Olympian Zeus, Historical Center), Delos (archeological museum, ancient theatre, Temple of Isis), Santorini (archeological site of Akrotiri, Oia, Fira, Nea Kameni volcano, Imerovigli, Firostefani), Mykonos (Little Venice, Lower Mills, Matogiannia), Heraklion in Crete (Knossos Palace)
4 Hours - Athens & Acropolis Highlights Private Tour
Delve deep into the history of ancient Greece on a 4-hour private tour of the ancient ruins of Athens. Visit the ruins on Acropolis Hill, the Temple of Zeus, the Old Olympic Stadium, Lycabettus Hill, and much more. Discover what each building was used for over 2,000 years ago and what daily life was like for the ancient Greeks as you admire the ruins and views of the city.
Athens Highlights & Ancient Corinth Full Day Private Tour
It can be difficult to cram all of Athens’ historical highlights into an itinerary, even more so if you also want to fit in other towns such as ancient Corinth. Remove the stress of planning a timetable with this full-day tour of the most impressive landmarks in the two towns. Spend the morning walking from the Acropolis to Lycabettus Hill, the highest hill in Athens, then jump over to Corinth for an exploration of the Corinth Canal and the Temple of Apollo.
Self-guided Virtual Tour of Acropolis hill: The Highlights
Experience the Acropolis hill from the comfort of your home with an engaging self-guided virtual tour, from your PC or smartphone browser. It’s so simple! You will receive an email with the tour link with instructions and, in a couple of minutes, you will travel back in time and enjoy a virtual journey from the comfort of your couch! Through the power of storytelling combined with street and satellite views, you will learn not only about historical facts but also discover unknown stories and tales of ancient and modern times that will amaze your family and friends. The tour’s content is the result of in-depth research, squeezed into brief intriguing stories that will make your virtual visit both engaging and informative. The tour is only available online and you can access it repeatedly and anytime. This is an unmissable opportunity to gain valuable insights into the most iconic landmark of Athens, the Acropolis, and immerse yourself in the surroundings in an entirely innovative way.
Athens Shore Excursion: Private City Sightseeing and Acropolis Tour
Make the most of your time in port in Piraeus with a private half-day shore excursion to Athens. Unravel the secrets of Ancient Greece as you walk around the monumental ruins of the UNESCO-listed Acropolis of Athens (entrance not included) and the Parthenon. Then, hop aboard a minivan to see the rest of the city, including the lively Syntagma Square, the Panathinaikon Olympic Stadium and ancient landmarks like the Temple of Zeus and Hadrian’s Arch. Best of all: your tour is covered by Viator’s worry-free policy, ensuring on-time return to your cruise ship.
Evening Athens & Acropolis Half Day Private Tour
Discover the wonders of Athens at a cooler time of the day—during the evening. Enjoy a hassle-free tour with round-trip transport included. You’ll see many Athens top sites from the comfort of a private vehicle, including the hill of Acropolis, the Parthenon, Parliament, and Lycabettus Hill. By going on a private tour, you’ll enjoy a more personalized experience.
Private Walking Tour: The Acropolis
Explore the Acropolis, Athens’ crowning glory, and other historical highlights on this personalized walking tour. With a private guide, see the Greek Parliament House and Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Syntagma Square; meander through the charming Plaka neighborhood; and view monuments such as the Zeus Temple. Then, hear about the glories of ancient Athens as you admire its showpiece monuments at the UNESCO-protected Acropolis. Stroll around highlights such as the Parthenon and Temple of Athena Nike, and ogle the breathtaking views from the rock down over Athens.
Athens Highlights & Sounio Temple of Poseidon Full Day Private Tour
Experience the best of Athens and Sounio on this action-packed private day tour. By traveling in a private vehicle, you’ll be able to access places that would be hard to reach by public transport. It’s the perfect tour for travelers with limited time as you’ll see multiple Athens and Cape Sounio highlights in a day including Acropolis Hill, the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, Temple of Zeus, and Temple Of Poseidon.
6 Hours - Athens Sightseeing Private Tour
There’s so much to see in Athens and only so much time. Maximize your Greek vacation with a full-day private tour of the city. Starting from your hotel, you’ll have private transportation at your disposal whisking you away to multiple UNESCO World Heritage Sites, including the Acropolis. You can explore each location independently at your own pace or choose to hire a private guide in advance. It's your day.
Athens Historical Private Virtual Tour Live Experience
See Athens in 40' while relaxing on your sofa! This is your best option. See the highlights of Athens on a private virtual tour, feeling like a traveler.
Athens Shore Excursion: Private Acropolis Walking Tour
Make the most of your time in Athens’ port with this private shore excursion. When your cruise ship docks, meet your private guide and set off to explore the Greek capital and its bevy of ancient sights. Get up close to the House of the Greek Parliament, the Zeus Temple and Hardian's Arch; traverse the paved streets of bustling Plaka (Athens Old Town); and head to the UNESCO-listed Acropolis of Athens’ summit for breathtaking views of Dionysious Sanctuary, Philopapos Hill, Herodion Theatre and Mars Hill.
Acropolis and Ancient Agora Private tour with licensed Guide
Experience some of Athens’ top historic destinations on this all-day excursion. After meeting up with a friendly, knowledgeable guide, explore landmarks like the Parthenon, the Erechtheion, the Theater of Dionysus, the Temple of Nike, and the Museum of the Ancient Agora. Capture memorable photos of ancient Athens’ architectural treasures and learn their stories with a friendly, knowledgeable guide.
What are Propylaea hours of operation?
Propylaea hours of operation: Daily 8am-6:30pm. Buy tickets in advance on Viator. If you book with Viator, you can cancel at least 24 hours before the start date of your tour for a full refund.
Should I book Propylaea tickets in advance?
We recommend booking e-tickets ahead of time to secure your spot since Propylaea can get crowded. If you book with Viator, you can cancel at least 24 hours before the start date of your tour for a full refund. See all 41 Propylaea tickets and tours on Viator.
How much does it cost to visit Propylaea 2021?
Currently, an entrance ticket to Propylaea costs USD 11.05. Guided Propylaea tours start around USD 11.05 per person. See all 41 Propylaea tickets and tours on Viator.
What's the best way to experience Propylaea?
The best ways to experience Propylaea are:
See all Propylaea experiences on Viator.
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Town of Maine Man Allegedly Had Sexual Relationship With Teen
Photo: Blake David Taylor
A 30-year-old Town of Maine man is accused of having a sexual relationship with a child under the age of 13.
Broome County Sheriff’s officials say Justin Miller is charged with felony counts of predatory sexual assault against a child and disseminating indecent material to minors.
Authorities announced the arrest on November 25 and said Miller was in custody of the Broome County Sheriff’s Correctional Facility.
MORE: See 30 toys that every '90s kid wanted
Source: Town of Maine Man Allegedly Had Sexual Relationship With Teen
Filed Under: 13-year-old, 30-year-old, indecent materials, predatory sexual assault, Town of Maine
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Kevin Durant's mom hurt by 'vicious things' said in return to OKC
By Ramona Shelburne
OKLAHOMA CITY -- Kevin Durant's mother said she was hurt by the treatment she and her son received Saturday night in his return to the city where he played the past eight seasons.
"The most vicious things you could say, they said about my son tonight. It's hurtful," Wanda Durant told ESPN after theGolden State Warriors'130-114 win over theOklahoma City Thunder.
"We poured our heart into this place. Not just him. Our family. This is basketball. This is not whether or not you're going to make it into heaven."
Wanda Durant sat in the stands behind the Warriors' bench for the game. She said several fans approached her and said obscene things about her son, to her.
"They called him a snake, a sellout, a b----," she said. "It's just a sad day. I understand that they loved him. I do understand it. But the name-calling. The people with the cupcakes on their backs. ... It didn't have to be like this."
After the game, she had tears in her eyes after hugging her son outside the Warriors' locker room.
"This is not the first time I've been back since Kevin left," she said. "This is maybe my fourth or fifth time. Every time that I've been back, people seem like they are afraid to say something nice to me. People will whisper, 'There's his mom. Ooooooh!'
"There are people who tell me they still love him. But then you have the people who shot his jersey up. My son poured his heart and soul into this place for eight years, and for them to treat him like this because he decided to go someplace else to play is really tough."
ESPN's Chris Haynes reported that the Warriors arranged for additional security for Wanda Durant at Saturday's game.
Durant's not-so-friendly return to OKC
Kevin Durant makes his return to Oklahoma City for the first time as an opponent, and there is no shortage of drama, including heated words with Russell Westbrook and Andre Roberson.
sportsespnoklahoma city thundergolden state warriorswanda durantkevin durantnba
Copyright © 2021 ESPN Internet Ventures. All rights reserved.
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The Strongest Level 5
A Certain Alternate Universe :: General Topics :: The Arena
Accelerator on Mon Sep 03, 2012 8:38 pm
Anyone feel like a sparring match with Accelerator? I feel like writing some ridiculously over the top fights.
Level 5 Vector Change
Location : Academy City
Re: The Strongest Level 5
Milo Lorelei on Wed Sep 05, 2012 10:05 pm
Accelerator wrote: Anyone feel like a sparring match with Accelerator? I feel like writing some ridiculously over the top fights.
Hm. I might be up to it. I'll probably be a little slow at posting but I will try to post when I can. :3
Milo Lorelei
Requiem8118
Accelerator on Thu Sep 06, 2012 4:59 pm
That's OK, it's just for a bit of fun, so there's no rush.
How do you feel about a freeform fight? No rules, just bouncing off one another and see what happens? Or would you prefer something with a bit more structure behind it?
Milo Lorelei on Thu Sep 06, 2012 6:36 pm
Hm. A freedom fight sounds fun. x3 This is probably going to be an OOC fight since out two character's haven't even met yet but that makes this a sort of 'what if' scenario. x3
Accelerator on Fri Sep 07, 2012 12:59 am
Yeah. That's why we've got this subforum, so people can play around with OOC and non canon stuff.
Milo Lorelei on Fri Sep 07, 2012 3:09 am
Yeah. x3 So, I'm up for it. :3 It should be fun. x3 Are you playing as Accelerator from season 1 or season 2?
Accelerator on Fri Sep 07, 2012 5:32 pm
I was thinking second season. It's more fun when he has some sort of limit.
It was already dark by the time Accelerator arrived at the designated point. He sighed to himself despondently as he adjusted the machine on his collar, activating his link to the MISAKA network. The pale boy grunted in resigned frustration. What a troublesome device, he thought, longing for the days when he wasn't reliant on a battery to use his powers. The weight of his cane was especially noticeable today. These thoughts filled his head.
He glowered into the distance. This was no time for him to be reminiscing. He had a job to do. The higher ups had sent him here for a reason. If only he knew what that reason was. Red eyes scanned the rooftops. It was curiously quiet on the streets tonight. The entire district seemed almost abandoned. The work of the higher ups no doubt.
Now there remained only one question; where would his target approach from?
Milo Lorelei on Fri Sep 07, 2012 8:48 pm
Accelerator wrote: I was thinking second season. It's more fun when he has some sort of limit.
(( Yeah. That makes it a little easier on me. xD Everyone needs some sort of handicap. Even the almighty Accelerator. xD ))
Milo had just finished up with the prey he had chosen tonight. A sorry excuse for a Magician. He hadn't lasted very long. Milo was either getting far stronger from this or the Magician's he fought were getting weaker. He could no longer tell. It was then that he realized he wasn't alone. Some one else was wandering on the same path that he was on, just in the opposite direction. It would only be another moment or so before they met face to face.
It didn't take long for Milo to spot the white-haired boy. An albino? Was this the 'Accelerator' he had heard about? Wasn't he supposed to be among the strongest Espers in Academy City? However, he wasn't a Magician so he couldn't take Mana from him and it was Mana that he required. Though, should this boy desire a fight and refused to let him pass then Milo may have no choice but to use force in order to continue on his way.
Accelerator on Sun Sep 09, 2012 12:53 am
Accelerator watched apprehensively as the lone figure approached him from the front. That alone made him reassess his strategy. Complacency had already cost him enough. Either his opponent was very strong or very foolish. The other boy's steely resolve revealed no hint.
Fine. He would gauge his enemy's strength before making an attack.
"A little late for a walk, isn't it?" He snarled with contempt. Would his prey take the bait? He stamped his foot sharply on the pavement. The effect was immediate as the cars parked along the road launched skywards, landing with the sound of twisting metal and buckling glass. A simple display of power. But would it be enough to intimidate the enemy into an early attack?
Milo Lorelei on Sun Sep 09, 2012 1:19 am
The little trick Accelerator pulled in order to try and intimidate him clearly didn't work. He didn't even flinch as the cars flew into the air. The loud sound of the cars crashing to the ground hurt his sensitive ears but he didn't let that show. Milo really didn't have time for this. He needed to find another Magician to collect Mana from. Milo had already skipped one night when he stopped by to greet his old friend for the first time in many years. As such, he couldn't afford to lose another night. Milo continued to walk closer to Accelerator, wanting mostly to just pass by while the boy probably thought he was just another Esper. However, he took each step with caution, masking that with an uncaring-kind of look.
"It may be late but it really is a nice night for a walk." he stated calmly.
This albino that stood in his way seemed entertaining and it made his inner voices scream at him to fight and to kill him. The only problem was that fighting this person wasn't worth it. There was no Mana to take from him since he was an Esper and not a Magician. It would be nothing more but wasted time and wasted effort on Milo's part if he were to fight Accelerator. However, it didn't seem like the other was just going to let him pass, either.
Accelerator on Sun Sep 09, 2012 4:06 pm
Accelerator felt his hackles rising as the other boy stepped towards him with a measured gait. So his opponent wasn't intimidated by a simple show of power? That was fine too. He didn't mind if this one put up a bit of a fight. In fact it might even be fun, he thought.
Still, that attitude bothered him. Did this one think that trying to avoid fighting would spare him? Accelerator scoffed. Neither of them had any say in this. The powers that be had decreed that Milo Lorelei, an enemy of Academy City, would die this day.
Accelerator stepped towards Milo. Between them a crumpled car lay in a twisted wreck. Accelerator struck it with his foot, kicking the car towards his opponent with superhuman strength. The high scream of tearing metal could be heard as it scraped and skidded along the tarmac towards Milo as fast as if someone had been driving it at him.
Hardly a subtle move, but it was important for Accelerator to understand his opponent. He wouldn't underestimate his enemy this time.
Milo Lorelei on Sun Sep 09, 2012 5:23 pm
Watched as the mangled wreck of a car came flying at him after being kicked by the Esper. It came at Milo fast but his eyes were trained to follow such high-speed objects. His reaction time was also pretty good. However, this was among the fasted moving objects he has had to track in a very long time. So, he was a bit rusty but he was still able to react in time, but only just. He was sure that he would grow accustomed to the speed of Accelerator's attacks by the time this fight was done with.
"Stop." he stated.
The car stopped in it's path, slightly suspended above the ground only a mere inches from hitting Milo.
"Return." he added.
The car then went flying back at Accelerator. His power was a bit complicated, as the powers of some Magician's were. However, it wouldn't be any fun if the strengths and weaknesses in his powers were found out so soon. His odd eyes focused on Accelerator, not wandering or even flickering away. He was determined not to lose sight of the opponent before him.
This certainly was an interesting match-up, mostly because they both had a form of Albinism. Milo wasn't wearing his contacts tonight so his odd eyes were not hidden from view. The light from the moon reflected in his eyes as he continued to focus upon Accelerator, barely even blinking.
Milo, in a flash, drew out his pair of guns. It was just a precaution against another speedy attack by Accelerator, himself. The guns wouldn't do much if the other launched another hunk of mangled wreckage at him.
"Load right. Smoke screen. Load left. Sleeping gas." he stated.
He would try to use none-lethal force at first, just to test whether on not this Esper truly planed to fight him. Milo would fight it out to see if the other would lose his nerve and back. If not then Milo may actually be forced to kill him.
Accelerator's brow creased in concern when the enemy stopped his attack dead with a single word. The car flung back at him and Accelerator lifted his arm, swatting the enormous projectile aside with ease. He waited, determined that his opponent would be the one to launch the next attack. He still needed more information on Milo's abilities.
Possibilities raced through his mind. Could he mimic Accelerator's own Vector Change ability? Was he a telekinetic? Was his power the product of some unseen technology or other aid? For now all he could do was proceed with caution. He didn't need to wait long as Milo produced a pair of pistols. How boring, Accelerator thought as he watched Milo mumble something to himself.
Accelerator wasn't taking any chances. He lunged forward, his right arm coiled back to deliver the killing blow.
Milo watched as Accelerator came at him with his arm drawn back, ready to land a fatal blow. The Magician knew that he could stop and return the attack back at Accelerator but then what about his other arm? His legs? The human body was a weapon and Accelerator's was even more so with his Vector Change ability. If Accelerator managed to land a solid hit then it could cause him some serious injury, even death. Milo may possess strong magical abilities and was able to learn other kinds of magic with little difficulty but he was still human. He could die just as easily as any normal human if his neck were to be snapped or other such things occur.
He raised the gun in his right hand and fire the smoke screen. It was simply a diversion to get a little more distance between Accelerator and himself. Milo was fast and light on his feet. His footfalls were quiet and it made him hard to hear as he retreated a little ways. The Magician knew that the smoke screne wouldn't do much and he also knew that Accelerator was far fast than he was, at least when using his Vector Change ability to increase his speed.
"Load right. Poison. Toxicity level at low. Type: Paralysis."
Milo didn't seem all that interested in killing Accelerator. His main goal was to simply tire the other out in order to make an escape. Trying to escape was useless right now and would be a wasted effort. He needed to weaken Accelerator but that was easier said than done. He had heard about Accelerator and the stories were something that were quite unbelievable. However, seeing Accelerator in person made all the stories he heard seem undoubtedly true.
Accelerator on Tue Sep 11, 2012 12:44 am
The smoke screen enveloped his vision and for a brief moment Accelerator was blind. But he didn't let such a thing deter him. With a swipe of his hand the air swirled, splitting the cloud. He clawed his way out, each swing of his hand dispelling more of the shroud, slowly eliminating the hiding places left to Milo.
Accelerator felt the still unfamiliar tug of fear in the back of his mind. The slight twinge that warned him to suspect his opponent had a card up his sleeve. Defeat had taught him to be wary. But that wariness hadn't dulled his instincts as a predator.
His ecstatic grin was chilling to behold. Accelerator pounced like a beast descending on its prey, his rail thin arm reaching into the cloud of smoke, clawing and raking for purchase on Milo's body.
Milo Lorelei on Mon Sep 17, 2012 12:42 am
The bad thing about a smoke screen is that it hindered Milo's ability to know exactly where his opponent was so he had no choice but to get closer in order to figure out where Accelerator was. The Magician couldn't afford to waste bullets. Every shot had to count in some way. He only had one shot in each gun before he had to reload. However, he didn't realize just how close he had gotten until he felt a hand grab him. Not good. This was bad...very bad.
"Edit right. Raise toxicity to medium. Edit type: Venom." he stated, needing to quickly rewrite the bullet he had loaded in his right gun to deal with this situation.
He pointed the gun at Accelerator and prepared to pull the trigger. It didn't matter where he hit. The pain the poison would cause should allow him time enough to put more distance between them. Milo wasn't as used to close-combat as he used to be and it had been a while since he last fought an Esper. Even if he lost his arm he would still fight. He couldn't afford to get himself killed here, not before he could save Aleister.
Accelerator on Wed Sep 19, 2012 7:03 pm
Accelerator felt something. His hand closed around it, tugging himself forward he pulled his other arm back, ready to smear Milo across the street. However as the smoke cleared Accelerator found himself staring down the barrel of a gun. And for a second he hesitated. It was enough for Milo to escape his clutches as the bullet spun off harmlessly into the night.
Accelerator cursed his wariness. He had allowed his fear of the enemy's unknown strengths cow him into backing down. He had flinched because he thought his opponent might have been able to kill him. It was an unfamiliar feeling for the Esper, who was so used to being at the top of the food chain. And in a single moment that unfamiliar feeling had cost him his chance of victory.
Noted. Accelerator logged the experience in his memory. It wouldn't happen again.
The Esper dropped his aggressive stance, letting his arms fall to his side and he leant heavily on his cane. "You know it'll be a lot easier if you just die, right?" He looked at the other boy with an expression of dull weariness.
Milo Lorelei on Thu Sep 20, 2012 11:22 am
Milo quickly put some distance between himself and the Esper again. That had been close...almost too close. The Magician wasn't able to go for long periods of time in a fight and it was showing. It wasn't that he was using to much Mana. The truth about that was that he was barely using any Mana to begin with. He liked to conserve what strength he had. However, that strength was running out and he needed to think of something to end this fight here and now.
There was only one way he could think of right now but it was an idea that he wasn't too fond of. Could he even do it? He was certain that only a hit to his being could bring out one of his many personalities. However, he had no choice. He had to try to draw one of them out himself. Hopefully it would be a personality that could help him to turn this situation around. Milo had no control over which personality was brought out. All he could do was hope and pray that it would be a helpful one.
"Cancel right." he stated.
His gun released a bright light that Milo had to look away from as the bullet inside of it evaporated into nothingness.
"Load right. Bullet type: Pressure." he added.
This bullet, however, wasn't meant for Accelerator. It was meant for himself. He raised the gun, placing it to the side of his head. This was the only way he could think of. This bullet was condensed air but he was certain that it would still hurt quite a bit but he was prepared for that. His opponent had the potential to be among the strongest opponents he has ever faced, as far as Espers go. He had been pushed this far because Milo, as he is now, had less physical strength and endurance than your average person.
Milo took a breath and closed his eyes before pulling the trigger. The blast knocked him to the side, directly into a wall. He fell to the ground. All was quiet and, for a moment, it seemed as if Milo wasn't breathing. However, it was then that he moved, slowly standing up. Blood dripped from the side of his head. Even if it had just been air it had still caused damage at such a close range but it was nothing life-threatening.
What happened next was a tad bit unexpected. Milo began laughing, a crazed sort of laugh. He holstered his guns and looked over towards Accelerator. His true eyes were now visible and the ring around his irises seemed to glow as the moon shown within them. He then abruptly stopped his laughter and, instead, opted for a smile.
"My, my. Aren't you the adorable one?"
This particular personality was actually that of a female, even if Milo had a male's body. She, yes she, stared at Accelerator for a moment. He was cute in a 'mass murderer' kind of way. That made Accelerator almost her type. He really did have rather good looks for an Esper but he was still the enemy. Milo had brought her out for this reason so she had no other choice but to fight this Esper.
"It's a shame that I have to fight someone as cute as you. However, the First wants you out of the way so this is something I must do." she mused, mostly to herself.
"My name is Loraine. I am one of many living within the mind of Milo Lorelei. We are known as Requiem8118. Prepare yourself for battle. En Garde!" she told him, entering into an offensive stance and raising her fists.
It didn't seem like she was going to use the guns at her hips but they were still there and they were still dangerous. However, right now it was her fists that she seemed to be favoring as her weapons of choice.
(( Wow. That was longer than I thought it would be. ^^' Hopefully the whole 'female personality' thing doesn't creep you out. It's just that he has so many of them and not all of them can be male. ^^' Or even of his same age. xD I hope to reveal some of those at some point. x3 ))
"Load right. Bullet type: Pressure."
What the hell? Accelerator watched with bewilderment as his enemy dutifully obeyed him, placing a gun to his head and pulling the trigger.
Blam! The boy's body went tumbling. Accelerator felt an odd sense of disappointment. What an underwhelming fight. With a shrug he turned to walk away.
Laughter pealed through the streets. Accelerator stopped in his tracks. His brow furrowed in confusion and he looked back towards his fallen target.
"My, my. Aren't you the adorable one? It's a shame that I have to fight someone as cute as you. However, the First wants you out of the way so this is something I must do. My name is Loraine. I am one of many living within the mind of Milo Lorelei. We are known as Requiem8118. Prepare yourself for battle. En Garde!"
"Did that shot to the head make you retarded or something?" Accelerator cackled sharply. "The other guy at least had the sense to eat a bullet!" He stamped hard on the ground, a shockwave of splintering rock erupting towards Milo. The dust cleared and Accelerator was upon 'her', leaping high above her and bringing his foot down sharply as he speared towards the ground where 'she' stood.
"Did that shot to the head make you retarded or something? The other guy at least had the sense to eat a bullet!"
This comment was immediately followed by an attack. Perhaps this boy WAS her type? He certainly came at her with a killer's intent. She liked it when her opponents came at her with murder in their eyes. Most wouldn't fight a female. She wondered if he would still fight her if she had a female's body? Something told her that Accelerator would. Age and gender didn't seem to matter to Accelerator. He seemed the type to fight anyone who stood against him. Loraine liked that.
She charged towards the splintering rock. Her reaction time and reflexes were amazing. Those were her strengths. Loraine used Accelerator's own attack to launch herself into the air, meeting Accelerator's downward attack head on. She had no fear as she flew up to meet Accelerator, barely avoiding his kick. However, she made her move as he passed her in the air.
"Weapon type: Claws." she stated.
Nothing seemed to happen but she still made a swipe at Accelerator. Her claws were invisible but, upon swinging, one could faintly see the trail they made as they sliced the very air around them. No...that wasn't quite right. They were made of air. That's why they were invisible. As they swung through the air they gathered more air to repair themselves. The air was constantly moving so her claws needed to constantly gather the air from around Loraine in order to remain sharp enough to cut.
Accelerator snarled as his opponent launched themselves at him. An odd move, considering the disparity in their power. The blades scored barely perceptible lines through the air only to disperse on contact with their target. Accelerator landed with a heavy thud. The ground beneath him erupted in chunks of concrete as the force of his landing sent a visible shockwave through the street.
He felt an unfamiliar chill around his stomach and as he looked down Accelerator was surprised to find that his shirt had been sliced cleanly. He felt his abdomen. No wounds. So they hadn't been able to bypass his shield after all. His emerging smile was interrupted by an insistent beeping in his ear.
Damn. He had forgotten about the time limit on his choker. He tugged at the small black box about his neck. If he didn't get this over with soon he'd be unable to use his powers. Against an opponent like Milo that would be an instant death sentence.
He planted his hand against the lamp post to his side. It was a small matter for him to redirect the vectors acting upon it. A small matter, but one that drained his remaining time nonetheless. With a rumbling crack Accelerator tore the post from the ground and walked slowly towards Milo. As soon as he was within range Accelerator grasped the thick base of the light, swinging it in a wide arc at his enemy like a baseball player making a home run. It skipped and sparked along the ground, building speed at an incredible rate.
Milo Lorelei on Mon Sep 24, 2012 5:35 pm
Loraine landed a short distance from Accelerator but it was distance enough to put her just out of danger. The shockwave that was created by Accelerator's landing was no problem for her since she chose to ride the thing like it was wave in the ocean. Doing this seemed to entertain her quite a bit, so much so that she seemed a bit disappointed when the wave ended. She returned to where she had landed and looked at the young albino. She had been able to tell that her claws had not connected with flesh but had, instead, sliced his shirt up a little. Loraine had gotten close and next time she might just be able to reach the boy.
"You're good for being so young." she told Accelerator.
That was a compliment on the others skill as a fighter. Loraine could tell that Accelerator has been through many fights, even at such a young age. How long has he been fighting for? It must have been since he was a child for him to possess such a bloodthirsty demeanor and skill when facing an opponent such as herself. She was no pushover, she knew that but she didn't go around bragging because there is always someone stronger. That's how the world worked.
She watched as Accelerator picked up a light post. What strength! That's not something you see everyday. However, in this brief moment she had lost her chance to dodge the oncoming attack and had only a moment to come up with a different course of action. She sliced at the lamp post but it was already a tad too late. Loraine was tossed backwards but some of the force behind the blow had been cancelled. The reason for that was that the lamp post hadn't fully made contact with her.
Her claws had sliced the lamp post into pieces and so it broke apart upon contact but it still had force enough to knock her off her feet. However, she quickly regained her footing. It was hard to believe that she and Accelerator seemed so equal in terms of skill but she was glad. This was the most fun she has had in ages! The blow from the shredded lamp post hadn't been strong enough to cause another switch in personalities. That meant that Accelerator would be in her company for a bit longer.
"Is something wrong, boy? Just before you swung that light at me you had a look about you that told me something was wrong. I haven't caused you any injury yet so it's not of my doing. Fighting a previously injured opponent isn't my style but you do seem to be holding your own quite well. Your skill is truly amazing for your age." she told him.
Accelerator on Tue Sep 25, 2012 5:33 pm
Accelerator tutted as the lamp post was shredded apart. What a pain. This one was putting up more of a struggle than he had expected. It was time for a different approach. He dropped his guard.
Accelerator stood his ground, leaning his weight onto his cane in a relaxed posture and he cocked his head wearing a disgruntled frown. The battery would last longer this way. As long as he used his powers sparingly he could still get through this. But still, he hated playing waiting games.
"Is something wrong, boy? Just before you swung that light at me you had a look about you that told me something was wrong. I haven't caused you any injury yet so it's not of my doing. Fighting a previously injured opponent isn't my style but you do seem to be holding your own quite well. Your skill is truly amazing for your age."
"Don't you ever shut up, you freak?" Accelerator sighed with exasperation. Inwardly he cursed his own transparency. Now his enemy knew he was in trouble. He left the substance of their question unanswered. His free hand dangled at his side as he prepared himself for what may well be his final counter attack. He could feel his fingers tingle in anticipation.
The power to reverse blood flow. Among his powers it was unquestioningly the most lethal. The human body couldn't withstand such a trauma, no matter how hardened. No matter what defenses this target had, they wouldn't be able to survive. All he needed was an opening. Accelerator strained against his instinct to attack. He would let his opponent come to him. And then...
It would be all over.
Loraine watched as the other let down his guard, leaning against his cane. It was a strange move but she could instantly tell that he was trying to get her to attack him. This was obviously a trap of some sort. She could tell that he was confident in whatever plan or ability he had up his sleeves. However, Loraine wasn't the type to back down from the unknown. Whatever it was, she was almost certain that she would survive it. No pain, no gain, right?
She made sure her claws were good to go. They were. Great. Loraine smiled as she ran forward, straight at Accelerator. Some would call this a suicide charge but she called it 'meeting one's fate'. Whatever happened would happen. Sure, it would suck if she died but she would if that was fate's design. She waited until she was close enough before slashing at Accelerator with the claws of her right hand.
"Show me what you're hiding, Accelerator!" she told him.
This was it. This was the moment in which this battle's outcome would be decided. There was no holding back and no backing down. She would put all of her strength and will into this one last attack and she was certain that Accelerator would, as well. This fight had been fun. Even if she did die she would go out fighting and that was exactly how she wished to meet her end. It helped that she would be meeting her end at the hands of an opponent like Accelerator.
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In Super Bowl 50 , the first Super Bowl to be branded with Arabic numerals , the Broncos, led by the league's top-ranked defense, defeated the Carolina Panthers , who had the league's top-ranked offense, in what became the final game of quarterback Peyton Manning 's career.
Von Miller dominated, totaling 2. In Super Bowl LI , the first Super Bowl to end in overtime, the Atlanta Falcons led 28—3 late in the third quarter; however, they squandered the lead as the Patriots would tie the game 28—28 on back to back touchdowns and two point conversions.
The Atlanta Falcons lost to the Patriots 34—28 in overtime. This 25 point deficit would be the largest comeback win for any team in a Super Bowl, breaking the previous of a 10 point deficit to comeback and win.
The Patriots never held the lead until the game winning touchdown in overtime. The Patriots totaled yards in defeat, with Tom Brady breaking his previous Super Bowl record of passing yards with an all time playoff record passing yards in the high scoring game; while the Eagles would gain yards in victory.
The Patriots' 33 points was the highest losing score in Super Bowl history. The combined total of 1, yards of offense for both teams broke an NFL record for any game that had stood for nearly seven decades.
It was the Eagles' third Super Bowl appearance, and their first win in franchise history. The Patriots defeated the Los Angeles Rams , 13—3. Tom Brady would receive a record sixth Super Bowl championship, the most of any player in NFL history, surpassing his tie with Charles Haley for five wins.
Brady would also become the oldest player to ever win a Super Bowl at age 41, while Bill Belichick would be the oldest coach to ever win a Super Bowl at age The Super Bowl is one of the most watched annual sporting events in the world, with viewership overwhelmingly domestic.
This means that on average, more than million people from the United States alone are tuned into the Super Bowl at any given moment.
In press releases preceding each year's event, the NFL typically claims that this year's Super Bowl will have a potential worldwide audience of around one billion people in over countries.
However, the statements have been frequently misinterpreted in various media as referring to the latter figure, leading to a common misperception about the game's actual global audience.
The halftime show followed with Ratings for that game, a San Francisco victory over Cincinnati, may have been aided by a large blizzard that had affected much of the northeastern United States on game day, leaving residents to stay at home more than usual.
Famous commercial campaigns include the Budweiser " Bud Bowl " campaign, the introduction of Apple's Macintosh computer, and the and dot-com ads.
Super Bowls I—VI were blacked out in the television markets of the host cities, due to league restrictions then in place.
Super Bowl VII was telecast in Los Angeles on an experimental basis after all tickets were sold ten days prior to the game. The Super Bowl provides an extremely strong lead-in to programming following it on the same channel, the effects of which can last for several hours.
Because of this strong coattail effect, the network that airs the Super Bowl typically takes advantage of the large audience to air an episode of a hit series, or to premiere the pilot of a promising new one in the lead-out slot, which immediately follows the Super Bowl and post-game coverage.
Initially, it was sort of a novelty and so it didn't quite feel right. But it was just like, this is the year Bands of our generation, you can sort of be seen on a stage like this or, like, not seen.
There's not a lot of middle places. It is a tremendous venue. Early Super Bowls featured a halftime show consisting of marching bands from local colleges or high schools ; but as the popularity of the game increased, a trend where popular singers and musicians performed during its pre-game ceremonies and the halftime show , or simply sang the national anthem of the United States or America the Beautiful emerged.
They approached Michael Jackson , whose performance the following year drew higher figures than the game itself. For many years, Whitney Houston 's performance of the national anthem at Super Bowl XXV in , during the Gulf War , had long been regarded as one of the best renditions of the anthem in history.
The halftime show of Super Bowl XXXVIII attracted controversy , following an incident in which Justin Timberlake removed a piece of Janet Jackson 's top, briefly exposing one of her breasts before the broadcast quickly cut away from the shot.
The incident led to fines being issued by the FCC and a larger crackdown over " indecent " content broadcast on television , and MTV then a sister to the game's broadcaster that year, CBS , under Viacom being banned by the NFL from producing the Super Bowl halftime show in the future.
No market or region without an active NFL franchise has ever hosted a Super Bowl, and the presence of an NFL team in a market or region is now a de jure requirement for bidding on the game.
The Louisiana Superdome has hosted seven Super Bowls, the most of any venue. This was as the winning market was previously not required to host the Super Bowl in the same stadium that its NFL team used, if the stadium in which the Super Bowl was held was perceived to be a better stadium for a large high-profile event than the existing NFL home stadium in the same city; for example Los Angeles's last five Super Bowls were all played at the Rose Bowl , which has never been used by any NFL franchise outside of the Super Bowl.
Starting with the selection of the Super Bowl XXVIII venue on May 23, , the league has given preference in awarding the Super Bowl to brand new or recently renovated NFL stadiums, alongside a trend of teams demanding public money or relocating to play in new stadiums.
No team has ever played the Super Bowl in its home stadium. In that instance, U. Bank Stadium became the first Super Bowl host stadium selected on May 20, to also host a Divisional Playoff Game in the same season which the Vikings won ; all previous times that the Super Bowl host stadium hosted another playoff game in the same postseason were all Wild Card games.
Only MetLife Stadium did not have a roof be it fixed or retractable but it was still picked as the host stadium for Super Bowl XLVIII in an apparent waiver of the warm-climate rule, with a contingency plan to reschedule the game in the event of heavy snowfall.
There have been a few instances where the league has rescinded the Super Bowl from cities. Super Bowl XLIX in was originally given to Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri , but after two sales taxes failed to pass at the ballot box a renovation proposal had passed successfully, but a second ballot question to add a rolling roof structure to be shared with Kaufmann Stadium critical for the game to be hosted was rejected , and opposition by local business leaders and politicians increased, Kansas City eventually withdrew its request to host the game.
The location of the Super Bowl is chosen at a meeting of all NFL team owners, usually three to five years prior to the event.
The game has never been played in a metropolitan area that lacked an NFL franchise at the time the game was played, although in NFL commissioner Roger Goodell suggested that a Super Bowl might be played in London , perhaps at Wembley Stadium.
Through Super Bowl LVI , teams were allowed to bid for the rights to host Super Bowls, where cities submitted proposals to host a Super Bowl and were evaluated in terms of stadium renovation and their ability to host, but this competition was rescinded in In , a document listing the specific requirements of Super Bowl hosts was leaked, giving a clear list of what was required for a Super Bowl host.
Much of the cost of a Super Bowl is to be assumed by the host community, although some costs are enumerated within the requirements to be assumed by the NFL.
The designated " home team " alternates between the NFC team in odd-numbered games and the AFC team in even-numbered games.
Regardless of being the home or away team of record, each team has their team logo and wordmark painted in one of the end zones.
Originally, the designated home team had to wear their colored jerseys, which resulted in Dallas donning their less exposed dark blue jerseys for Super Bowl V.
The Cowboys, since , have worn white jerseys at home. The Redskins wore white at home under coach Joe Gibbs starting in through , continued by Richie Petitbon and Norv Turner through , then again when Gibbs returned from through Meanwhile, the Steelers, who have always worn their black jerseys at home since the AFL—NFL merger in , opted for the white jerseys after winning three consecutive playoff games on the road, wearing white.
The Steelers' decision was compared with the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XX ; the Patriots had worn white jerseys at home during the season, but after winning road playoff games against the New York Jets and Miami Dolphins wearing red jerseys, New England opted to switch to crimson for the Super Bowl as the designated home team.
For the Broncos in Super Bowl 50, Denver general manager John Elway simply stated, "We've had Super Bowl success in our white uniforms"; they previously had been 0—4 in Super Bowls when wearing their orange jerseys.
During the pairing of Bill Belichick and Tom Brady , New England has mostly worn their blue jerseys for home games, but have worn white for a home game in the , , and seasons.
The 49ers, as part of the league's 75th Anniversary celebration, used their throwback uniform in Super Bowl XXIX , which for that year was their regular home jersey.
The Los Angeles Rams in Super Bowl LIII wore their royal blue and yellow throwback uniforms, which they have previously worn for six home games including a home playoff game.
The 49ers reportedly requested to wear an all-white third jersey ensemble for Super Bowl LIV , which the San Francisco Chronicle noted they could do with special permission from the league; the league never granted such permission, and the 49ers instead opted for their standard uniform of white jerseys with gold pants.
A total of 26 different stadiums, six of which no longer exist and one of which does not yet exist, either have hosted or are scheduled to host Super Bowls.
Before that, the stadium had a Miami address while in unincorporated Miami-Dade County. Also, London, England , has occasionally been mentioned as a host city for a Super Bowl in the near future.
Seven stadiums that hosted a Super Bowl game no longer exist. Humphrey Metrodome in Minneapolis, which hosted the Super Bowl, was demolished in March ; the Georgia Dome in Atlanta , which hosted two Super Bowls, was demolished in November ; and the Pontiac Silverdome in suburban Detroit , which hosted the Super Bowl, was demolished in March , five months following the demolition of the Georgia Dome.
In reaction to the letters, many Vegas resorts, rather than discontinue the popular and lucrative parties, started referring to them as "Big Game Parties".
In , the NFL made an attempt to trademark "The Big Game" as well; however, it withdrew the application in due to growing commercial and public relations opposition to the move, mostly from Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley and their fans, as the Stanford Cardinal football and California Golden Bears football teams compete in the Big Game , which has been played since 28 years before the formation of the NFL and 75 years before Super Bowl I.
Like the other major professional leagues in the United States, the winner of the Super Bowl is usually declared de facto "World Champion.
While controversial, most players in the league endorse the use of the word, due to the fact that there aren't any teams from other countries that have challenged for the title.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. For other uses, see Superbowl disambiguation. National Football League championship game.
Since Super Bowl XLV , the Roman numeral of the game has been featured alongside the trophy, with the exception of Super Bowl 50 , with the logo decorated in different colors for each year.
This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.
January Learn how and when to remove this template message. Main article: Super Bowl television ratings. See also: List of most watched television broadcasts in the United States.
See also: National Football League on television. See also: List of Super Bowl lead-out programs. Bank Stadium. Department of Agriculture.
Retrieved December 19, Retrieved February 5, The Hollywood Reporter. Archived from the original on February 11, Retrieved June 28, Television Audience".
Retrieved February 2, The Independent. Why Roman Numerals? Midwest Sports Fans. Retrieved January 28, Petersburg Times. Associated Press.
January 7, Rozelle asks newsmen to help". Fort Scott Tribune. May 26, The Evening Standard. July 18, Retrieved January 16, Pottstown Mercury.
July 30, America's Game. New York: Random House. National Football League. Retrieved February 4, BBC Sport.
January 31, Retrieved December 14, Retrieved April 10, Sports Illustrated. Archived from the original on December 10, Retrieved January 15, Voice of America.
February 3, Archived from the original on September 24, Television History With TV By the numbers. Retrieved February 3, Nielsen Media Research.
April 30, Archived from the original on May 13, February 6, Retrieved February 11, Retrieved May 30, Archived from the original on February 1, Retrieved February 1, Retrieved February 6, The Huffington Post.
Retrieved February 7, The New York Times. Retrieved January 30, Chicago Tribune. ABC News. February 4, Rolling Stone.
July 3, The Daily Beast. Retrieved February 22, Retrieved September 30, Fort Lauderdale Daily. Retrieved December 2, Retrieved May 21, Dolphins will host New York Jets in London in South Florida Sun-Sentinel.
Retrieved November 6, In Swayne, Linda E. Encyclopedia of Sports Management and Marketing. Sage Publications. The game is hosted by a different city each year.
The agreement called for an end-of-season championship game, and, although the merger was not finalized until , the first such game, then called the AFL-NFL World Championship Game, was played at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on January 15, The day of the Super Bowl game, known as Super Bowl Sunday, has evolved into an unofficial American holiday, with viewing parties held in homes, taverns, and restaurants throughout the country.
The week prior to the game is highlighted by extensive media buildup and a festival atmosphere in the host city.
The game itself is accompanied by elaborate pregame and halftime ceremonies and entertainment. All Super Bowls since the first have been sellouts and consistent TV-ratings leaders, with many Super Bowls among the highest-rated televised sporting events of all time.
The high-profile advertisements have featured celebrities and noted filmmakers as well as new technologies in hopes of making an impression on the huge Super Bowl audience.
Since the s, media scrutiny of and public interest in Super Bowl commercials have nearly matched that accorded the game itself.
Super Bowl. Article Media. Info Print Cite. Submit Feedback. Thank you for your feedback. See Article History.
Das Spiel ist aber auch das Slots 777 der beiden Quarterbacks. AFC Championship. Januar amerikanisches Englisch. Beim Finale in der Nacht zu Montag 0. Es ist die Oliver hat einen neuen Verantwortlichen für Marketing und das Lizenzgeschäft. Aaron Rodgers. NFL Bericht: Streik? Februar ; abgerufen am 3. Larry Csonka. Doch dann zeigte er, warum er der beste Spieler der NFL ist. Sechs Celtics-Spieler scoren zweistellig. Januarabgerufen am 7. Die folgende Angriffsserie der Chiefs endete mit einer Interception.
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Coldplay's FULL Pepsi Super Bowl 50 Halftime Show feat. Beyoncé \u0026 Bruno Mars! - NFL Louisiana Superdome 4 [sb 6]. Pittsburgh Steelers A 2, 2—0. More About. AFL champion a 4, 2—2. Houston Texans A. The Los Angeles Rams in Super Bowl LIII wore their royal blue and yellow throwback uniforms, which they Merkur Tricks Pdf Download previously worn for six home games including a home playoff game. Retrieved May 23,
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Dafür werden zahlreiche Sicherheitsvorkehrungen für die Fans geplant. Houston Texans South -Gewinner. Das erste Super Bowl-Spiel nach heutigem Vorbild wurde am Von bis erfolgte die Übertragung durch Sat. Quelle: Promiboom mehr. Februar ; abgerufen am 3. Rekorde, Statistiken und Co. Im kleinen Neteller Account Verification unter dem Bild oben steht der 7. Auch in Deutschland erfreut sich American Football immer größerer Beliebtheit. Doch wie kommt man eigentlich in den Super Bowl und welches Team ist der. Der Super Bowl ist das Finale der US-amerikanischen American-Football-Profiliga National Football League (NFL). Jennifer Lopez hat sich von ihrem Super-Bowl-Auftritt vor zwei Wochen erholt. Das teilt die Sängerin nun mit einem Bikini-Selfie mit. Prominente, Freunde und. Deutschlands führende Nachrichtenseite. Alles Wichtige aus Politik, Wirtschaft, Sport, Kultur, Wissenschaft, Technik und mehr. Su·per·bowl, kein Plural. Aussprache: IPA: [ˈzuːpɐˌboːl]: Hörbeispiele: Lautsprecherbild Superbowl.
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Type hereDie Liste der Super-Bowl-Sieger - Überblick über die erfolgreichen NFL-Teams der letzten Jahre
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Home Corruption
Politics rein in KRA progress
South Korea - October 12, 2017
Korea’s horse racing industry, considered the sleeping giant of Asia, has not been immune from the turmoil sweeping through the country’s political and business classes, with modernization plans in the balance after the Korean Racing Authority chairman was removed from office. It’s just the latest setback for the sport, which has been beset by political obstacles. Exorbitant taxes, uncompetitive take out rates, a unionized labor force at its training centers and vociferous anti-gambling lobbyists determined to shut down off-track betting centers are all perennial problems for the government-controlled Korean Racing Authority.
Kangwon Land admits to past corruption scandal
South Korea - September 12, 2017
Casino operator Kangwon Land may see itself back in the center of a corruption scandal which took place between 2012 and 2013, local media...
China Welfare Lottery officials suspected of corruption
Mainland China - August 28, 2017
Two officials previously in charge of China’s state lottery have been stripped of their positions under suspicion of bribery and corruption, reports Reuters. Former head...
Duterte intends to fire CDC chief: reports
Philippines - June 29, 2017
Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte is allegedly planning to fire the head of the Clark Development Corporation (CDC) for "corruption," The Rappler reports. Duterte reportedly voiced...
Aguirre receives documents that could prove corruption
Philippines - March 17, 2017
Documents alleging the corruption of senior officials of the previous Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation (Pagcor) administration have been turned over to Justice Secretary...
Sombero denies involvement in bribery scandal
Philippines - February 14, 2017
Alleged middleman of gambling tycoon Jack Lam, Wally Sombero, has denied involvement in the bribery scandal involving Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre and two Bureau...
Domingo denies being offered bribe from Lam
Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. (Pagcor) chair Andrea Domingo denies she was offered a bribe by gaming tycoon Jack Lam, though she admitted having...
Outlook improves, but China remains in driver’s seat
Macau - January 19, 2017
Macau got off to a good start in January, with GGR in the initial weeks higher than expected, though few expect any return to the stellar growth rates of the past, with China still likely to be the driving factor for casino operators. Beijing’s crackdown on corruption triggered a two-year slump in gaming revenue and going forward the performance of its economy, efforts to control capital outflows and its ongoing fight against graft will all play a role in determining the strength of the local gaming market.
Fixing Malaysia’s sports corruption image
Malaysia - January 5, 2017
Assertions that Malaysia is now Southeast Asia’s epicenter for match fixing didn’t go down well with the country’s authorities. But just how accurate are these claims and why do so many fixes emanate from this part of the continent?
Duterte orders seizure of Lam assets
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has ordered the seizure of all of casino mogul Jack Lam’s assets in the Philippines for allegedly not paying taxes. Duterte...
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By admin Affiliate Board Members July 5, 2019
Affiliate Board Members
chip@wakinguptogether.net
Leland “Chip” Baggett, M.A. LPC received an M.A. in Humanistic Psychology from the University of West Georgia in 1977. He has been an active member on the Board of AHP since 1991, having served as president (2001-2002) and later as co-president (2009 – 2011). He is also past president of the North Carolina Mental Health Counselors Association. Chip has maintained a private psychotherapy practice for over thirty years in Asheville, North Carolina, where he integrates humanistic, existential, and archetypal elements into a mindfulness based approach to therapy. He has developed a unique approach to couples work which is presented in his book, “Waking Up Together: An Interactive Practice For Couples”. In 1988 he published a book of poetry, “So Where’s The Dawn”, which depicts the journey of emotional healing after the loss of a relationship. He and his partner, Natalie, love to ground their spiritual journey by tending to their home and property in the country just outside of Asheville, tending to its gardens and communing with the land and wildlife.
Leland “Chip” Baggett, M.A.»
Category all-events
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dawnklehrbooks » Electronic music » Various - In The Mood For Love (Original Soundtrack From The Motion Picture)
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Various - Welcome To Paradise Vol. I: Italian Dream House 89-93
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MP3 1890 mb. | FLAC 1189 mb. | WMA: 1647 mb.
Electronic music / Jazz / Rock
Various - In The Mood For Love (Original Soundtrack From The Motion Picture) album mp3
Title: In The Mood For Love (Original Soundtrack From The Motion Picture)
Style: Modern Classical, Easy Listening, Ambient
Other formats: DMF VOX MP2 AUD TTA MIDI MP3
Various Modern_Classical Easy_Listening Ambient 2000
Banda Sonora Original de la Película In The Mood For Love (Deseando Amar) Un Film de Wong Kar-Wai (CD, Album). In The Mood For Love (Original Soundtrack From The Motion Picture) (CD).
Higher Octave Music keeps expanding its scope beyond its original new age intentions, and that includes the Omtown imprint, featuring such unique projects as this eclectic soundtrack to the Wong Kar-wai film. The director sought to convey the sounds of the Hong Kong of his youth with this soundtrack, which included Western and Latin music, including songs by Nat King Cole.
Endless Love: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack is the soundtrack album to the movie of the same name. The album was released worldwide by Mercury Records and PolyGram in 1981. While the Endless Love movie itself faded into obscurity, the film's soundtrack and its theme song by Diana Ross and Lionel Richie, also called "Endless Love", certainly did not. The song became a hit on the Billboard Hot 100, and nearly 30 years after its release still remains the best-selling single of Ross' career
1. Alfie's Song (Not So Typical Love Song) - Bleachers. 2. Rollercoaster - Bleachers. 3. Never Fall In Love - Jack Antonoff, MØ.
Album · 2016 · 8 Songs. Born for You (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack). Elmo Magalona, Janella Salvador & David Pomeranz. A Love to Last a Lifetime - Single.
We don‘t have an album for this track yet. View all albums by this artist. Famous for her bawdy double entendres, West made a name for herself in vaudeville and on the legitimate stage in New York before moving to Hollywood to become a comedian, actress and writer in the motion picture industry.
Frozen: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack is the soundtrack to the 2013 Disney animated film, Frozen. The soundtrack features 10 original songs written and composed by Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez, and 22 score pieces composed by Christophe Beck
1 –Unknown Artist Mo-wan's Dialogue 0:06
2 –Shigeru Umebayashi Yumeji's Theme 2:26
3 –Zhue Xue Qing, Xie Hui Jun Zhuang Tai Bao Xi 1:11
4 –Fu Quan Xiang, Lu Jin Hua Qing Tan 0:59
5 –Tan Xin Pei Si Lang Tan Mu 0:31
6 –Tan Xin Pei Sang Yuan Ji Zi 0:51
7 –Nat King Cole Aquellos Ojos Verdes 2:08
8 –Unknown Artist Li-zhen's Dialogue 0:06
9 –Nat King Cole Te Quiero Dijiste 2:35
10 –Deng Bai Ying Shuang Suang Yan 2:53
11 –Zhou Xuan* Radio Broadcasting / Hua Yang De Nian Hua 3:16
12 –Nat King Cole Quizas, Quizas, Quizas 2:43
13 –Rebecca Pan Bengawan Solo 2:50
14 –Zheng Jun Mian, Li Hong Hong Niang Hui Zhang Sheng 1:56
15 –Chiu Wai Ping Yue Er Wan Wan Zhao Jiu Zhou 3:06
16 –Michael Galasso Angkor Wat Theme I 2:11
17 –Michael Galasso Angkor Wat Theme II 2:05
18 –Michael Galasso Angkor Wat Theme III 2:05
19 –Michael Galasso ITMFL I 2:07
20 –Michael Galasso Cassanova / Flute 2:13
21 –Michael Galasso ITMFL II 1:01
22 –Michael Galasso ITMFL III 1:30
23 –Michael Galasso Angkor Wat Theme Finale 2:42
24 –Shigeru Umebayashi Yumeji's Theme (Extended Version) 3:00
25 –Unknown Artist Li-zhen's Dialogue 0:07
Japanese release with extra tracks.
Includes additional inserts:
- 8 postcards of stills from the film (each with RD-1566 printed on the back)
- original insert with notes in Chinese and English
- insert with translation of original insert into Japanese
- Japanese liner notes dated 2001-01-05
- a promo insert for Rock Shop
Albums related to Various - In The Mood For Love (Original Soundtrack From The Motion Picture):
Nat King Cole - Por Siempre... Sus Inolvidables Canciones En Español mp3 download
Nat King Cole - Te Quiero Mucho mp3 download
Nat 'King' Cole - Cole Español mp3 download
Various - Just Brasil - The Fantastic Latin Rhythm mp3 download
Nat King Cole - Cole Español / A Mis Amigos mp3 download
Nat King Cole - Body And Soul mp3 download
Ralph Font - Jalousie / Quizas, Quizas, Quizas (Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps) mp3 download
Nat King Cole - Twin Best Now mp3 download
2016-2019 © album.dawnklehrbooks.com
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Why the agency consolidation trend won't end anytime soon
More venerable agency names are expected to disappear in 2021 as individual brands carry less weight
By Lindsay Rittenhouse. Published on December 02, 2020.
Credit: iStock
Commenting on Procter & Gamble agency roster consolidation three years ago, the company’s Chief Brand Officer Marc Pritchard said the marketer was seeking “greater end-to-end” solutions. That, he said, had been made increasingly difficult as holding companies continually snapped up disparate agencies, creating what he called “a whole long tail” of shops. And then came the kicker: “Frankly, your complexity should not be our problem,” said Pritchard. “We want you to make that complexity invisible.”
WPP, it seems, made that complexity visible when it merged AKQA and Grey. Reports that the Grey name would be retired as a result riled P&G, who was reassured by the holding company that the name would live on in certain markets for certain clients. Whether or not P&G’s concern was actually with the name or the potential of losing the talent that lives at Grey is debatable.
But this much is clear: The merge-and-purge mentality at holding companies is now a well-established trend that’s only likely to accelerate. “The marketing and procurement worlds, now more than ever, are looking for greater efficiencies from their agency partners and are trying to do more with fewer agencies,” says R3 Co-founder and Principal Greg Paull. “This process is only going to gain traction in a post-COVID world as complexities need to be smoothed over.”
AKQA Group is only the latest example just within WPP, which has already mashed up VML and Y&R, Wunderman and J. Walter Thompson and Burson Marsteller with Cohn & Wolfe. It is also in the process of folding Geometry into VMLY&R.
Publicis Groupe, meanwhile, has put its Marcel artificial intelligence system to work for its “Power of One” model that brings together the resources of its entire agency network for clients, and binds them together in a single P&L. The holding company breaks down its agencies into four categories: Publicis Communications, Publicis Media, Publicis Sapient, and Publicis Health. Publicis Communications houses its creative agencies: Leo Burnett, Saatchi & Saatchi, Publicis Worldwide, BBH, Marcel, Fallon, MSL and Prodigious.
In a similar vein, Dentsu is decreasing its international agency brands from 160 to just six as it continues on its path to become “One Dentsu.” That strategy saw the creation of three lines of businesses last year: creative, customer relationship management and media. Within creative is now Dentsu Mcgarrybowen and Isobar; within CRM is Merkle and 360i; and within media is Carat and iProspect.
AKQA, Grey merger naming sparks employee uproar and 'upsets' P&G
WPP retires legacy Grey creative brand, merging it with AKQA
Dentsu McGarrybowen rocked by restructuring
Sentimentality aside, these massive combinations appear to be working. In its most recent third-quarter earnings, WPP called out all three merged companies as its “strongest performing.” VMLY&R was cited as its “best-performing global agency,” with revenue down "only slightly year-on-year,” a decent result given pandemic adversities. WPP overall reported a 9.8% decline in third-quarter revenue and its global integrated agencies saw a 6.7% decline in like-for-like revenue less pass-through costs, which was a big improvement from the 15.7% decrease posted in the second quarter.
VMLY&R, moreover, ranked first among creative agencies in consultancy R3 Worldwide’s “new business league” report for September. The report is based on revenue figures from new business, and it found that VMLY&R generated approximately $69.8 million, year-to-date, from wins like the YMCA of the USA and projects with Adidas and Tesco. This year, the agency reeled in 122 wins, according to the report.
Isobar, now part of DentsuMcgarrybowen, came in at second in R3’s new business league report, bringing in $65.7 million in new business revenue year-to-date and notching 243 wins including a project with Panasonic and digital duties for Danone India.
MDC Partners has taken a slightly different approach by forming agency collectives rather than merging shops. It’s created clusters like Constellation, comprised of creative shops 72andSunny and Crispin Porter Bogusky; digital brand and experience agency Instrument; strategy and design firm Redscout; and production company Hecho Studios in a push to combine various capabilities to create more seamless experiences for clients while still preserving its brands. On a higher level, however, Mark Penn, president and managing partner of The Stagwell Group and chairman and CEO of MDC, is in the midst of merging those two holding companies.
Two executives close to the matter speculate that Interpublic Group of Cos.’ incoming CEO, Philippe Krakowsky—who was the driver of the holding company’s Open Architecture model, which offers clients integrated solutions across creative, data, design, digital, marketing, media, production, public relations and strategy—may move to bundle some agency brands together in the same fashion as MDC.
To that, an IPG spokesperson said: “We already did the necessary consolidations based on strategy and market demand, like merging Draft and FCB in 2006 and merging Mullen and Lowe in 2015.”
The major holding company holdout appears to be Omnicom Group. The company has maintained the independence of its creative shops, which include BBDO, DDB and TBWA\Chiat\Day. In 2012, Omnicom did buy and merge Adam & Eve with DDB and, in 1995—which may feel to some and very well be for others, a lifetime ago—it bought Chiat/Day and merged it with TBWA. This year, Omnicom also merged all of its direct marketing agencies into one entity, Rapp Worldwide, which absorbed shops like Proximity.
Still, Omnicom has steered clear of dismantling its legacy creative brands, which Avi Dan, founder and CEO of Avidan Strategies, comments “seems a more logical way to go because it’s not as disruptive.”
CEO John Wren declined to be interviewed for this story. However, on a recent earnings call, he explained Omnicom’s positioning as such: “While we have undertaken numerous organizational changes, our philosophy—to support strong brands and cultures so they can be vital incubators for creativity and innovation as well as magnets for the best talent—has not changed. We believe our approach is a significant competitive advantage in retaining and hiring the best people and in serving our clients.”
The first Omnicom creative agency ranked on R3’s new business league report is GSD&M, coming in at No. 9, just under Grey Group at No. 8, with $50 million in new business revenue, year to date.
“There are advantages and disadvantages to either approach,” Jay Pattisall, principal analyst at Forrester, says. “For this moment in time, I think there is an advantage of a more single model because of the ability to tap into shared resources; things are particularly tight during the COVID period. But the pendulum swings and you can make an argument that having strong agency brands could be an asset in different market conditions.”
Betting on brands
It’s a bit ironic that an industry whose mission is building brands is increasingly culling their own. But observers say the world has changed since the days when a shop was defined by a David Ogilvy or a Leo Burnett. Though independent, The Richards Group is its own cautionary tale, showing how being too allied to a founder can bring down an entire agency.
“The agency brand is morphing and changing and becoming less meaningful,” says Patisall, noting how agencies do not revolve around their colorful founders anymore. While there may still be sentimental attachment for employees to a name like Grey or D’Arcy, clients, the argument goes, are more interested in access to top talent who can execute effective work at a procurement-friendly price.
“It doesn’t surprise me that holding companies are consolidating agencies,” says Barry Lowenthal, CEO of MDC’s Media Kitchen. “It’s happening at every holding company. Everyone is looking to streamline structures, provide more nimble services and create mechanisms to deliver clients more services. It’s smart and makes sense. It’s what clients want and it also makes Wall Street happy.”
Except, of course, if the talent leaves as a result. A former WPP executive, who spent time at Grey New York, says it’s really the creativity that suffers when “agencies get diluted and their legacies erased.” The exec says subsequently all the power falls in the hands of holding companies, “which are essentially financial conglomerates.”
“Suddenly, the conversation shifts from creativity and ideas to subjects like ‘synergy’ and ‘optimization,’” the person says. “Not the best way to retain creative talent.”
A people business
Avidan Strategies’ Dan says typically with these mergers, clients are more concerned with what will happen to the people working on their businesses, and the political issues that will arise from bringing two different agency management teams together. It’s not necessarily the brand itself clients are concerned with, but how eliminating the brand will affect talent.
“You have to believe that these people will start being laid off,” Dan says. “From a client perspective, that really is the risk.”
While holding companies say that their decisions to consolidate are driven by clients and their needs, Dan argues the move is not all that client-centric. "The holding companies went from 30 years of spending a lot of money, finding out they have hundreds of agencies and then finding out that clients are spending less money and can’t support all these agencies," he says.
Dan says it’s more of an “artificial solution” to a problem, versus being proactive on behalf of clients, and every merger carries the potential for “a tremendous cultural clash.”
“Clients ask for less complexity in their agencies but never come out and say ‘I want you to put two agencies together,’” Dan adds. “That’s not going to cause less complexity. It causes more complexity.”
There will always be difficulties retaining talent through mergers and acquisitions, argues Pattisall, “and that extends outside of the agencies and to consultancies, too.” He says “the people who joined Droga5 joined Droga5, not Accenture.” Yet, that combination appears to be working. The R3 new business league report for September placed Droga5 at No. 5 with $56.5 million in revenue from wins this year. The shop has been on somewhat of a win streak lately, picking up accounts including Petco, Maserati and Allstate.
There could be a silver lining for consolidating holding companies born out of the pandemic, Pattisall says.
“This cultural issue has always been there when there’s a merger or acquisition or something of the like,” he says. “In the last six months, remote work has changed that a bit. The brand is not as meaningful as it used to be, when it was born out of a founder and very distinct cultures were reared around [that founder]. Those walls have fallen down a little bit in the ways the agencies are integrated.”
But the downside might be fewer opportunities for agency talent, like this former Dentsu exec who is now seeking job opportunities on the client side. “I don’t see the agency side growing,” she says. “They all keep consolidating, consolidating, consolidating.”
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Japanese boost
Published 3rd September, 2010 by Nadine Bloxsome
Supplies to domestic and export markets expanded to 179941t from 158605t a year earlier, the Japan Aluminium Association said in a statement. The growth was led by demand from auto and electronics makers.
“Shipments are going well at the moment,” Masateru Yoshihara, the association’s vice chairman said. “I don’t expect they will keep expanding at the current pace.”
Aluminium product shipments to the auto sector surged 46% to 24 956t, while sales to manufacturers of chip- making equipment and other devices jumped 61%, data from the association showed.
The government will end a subsidy programme for fuel- efficient cars at the end of September. Demand could be affected by the halt of such programmes, Takashi Ishiyama, the association’s chairman, said.
Members of the association include Furukawa-Sky Aluminum Corp, Kobe Steel Ltd. and Nippon Light Metal Co.
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<!-header row 2 -->
United States Folklore
Mexican Folklore
Canadian Folklore
Jokes & Tongue Twisters
The Spooky Series
European-American
Montana folklore
It was the sound of laughter and children’s voices that caught my attention. Curious, I materialized in my old bedroom and went out into the hallway to peer over the railing by the grand staircase. The voices had come from the Great Hall, where the house tours gathered. Yes, there were two children scampering about, to the distraction of their parents. An older boy and a tousled haired little toddler who reminded me of my own daughter at that age.
Bleeding Sink
I found it extremely annoying that one of the bathrooms on my dorm was permanently closed. Especially since the cause was an urban legend. An urban legend, I tell you!
Bloody Mary Returns
My stepmother was vile. I guess most kids think that when their father remarries. But in this case, it was true. She only married Father because he was rich, and she hated children. There were three of us – me (Marie), my middle brother Richard and my youngest brother Charles. We were the price my stepmother Gerta paid for being rich. And we were all that stood between her and inheriting Father’s money when he died. So she took steps against us.
Montana Travelogue
Today started way too early! Up at five a.m. in the dark to get to the airport by 6 a.m. I flew out of Newark, NJ. First stop was Minneapolis with a quick layover and then on to Missoula, Montana. Total travel time door to hotel was 10 hours, but it was only 2 pm Mountain time! The shuttle driver who took me to the car rental place gave me a ghost story lead, telling me about a downtown Macys building that was supposed to be haunted. Then I rented a Subaru Forester SUV and drove to my hotel. It was a lovely place called C'mon Inn, and was built in a rustic style with log staircases and balconies, the head of an elk over the fireplace and about 6 hot tubs and two pools. (Did I mention the waterfall?)
Sheep Herder's Lawsuit
A sheep herder from Montana fell afoul of the law and hired a lawyer to get him off if he could. The lawyer realized that it was an open and shut case, and advised the sheep herder to pretend that he had a bit of Sheep Herder's Complaint.
Wild Goose Island
In the middle of St. Mary Lake in Glacier National Park is a small island halfway between two shores. Many moons ago now, there were two tribes living on either side of the lake. While there was no direct warfare between them, the two tribes avoided one another and had no dealings one with the other.
Paul Bunyan
Funny Ghost Stories
Ghost Stories A-Z
Halloween Stories
Weatherlore
About the Author: S.E. Schlosser
S.E. Schlosser is the author of the Spooky Series by Globe Pequot Press, as well as the Ghost Stories deck by Random House. She has been telling stories since she was a child, when games of "let's pretend" quickly built themselves into full-length tales acted out with friends. A graduate of both Houghton College and the Institute of Children's Literature, Sandy received her MLS from Rutgers University while working as a full-time music teacher and a freelance author. Read more
About the Author | The Spooky Series | Facebook Page | Folklore Resources | Folklore stories A-Z | Reprints/Permissions
Comments? Email us at webmaster@americanfolklore.net
© S.E. Schlosser 1997 - 2030.
This site is best viewed while eating marshmallows around a campfire under a starry sky.
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Antinote
Wishpond Vs Drip
They say that the most significant thing about business is the location. This might have been true in the days before the advent of the internet, but it appears that now, marketing is what determines the success of a business.
Starting a business nowadays is still all about the location, but now it ought to be about getting your brand to stick out in the most aggressive real estate market: the internet. On the world wide web, attention is a precious resource that everyone is fighting for. This is the reason marketing has changed its priority towards internet marketing. Wishpond is among those products that aims to make online marketing easier and much more effective.
Wishpond is a software firm based in British Columbia, which was featured in the Ready to Rocket list back in 2016. Ready to Rocket features new applications on the rise to establish themselves in their respective categories.
With CEO and Founder Ali Tajeskandar, Wishpond was launched to become an online marketing solution to take care with all the actions necessary to create a successful campaign. While it has gained recognition for being one of British Columbia’s best, is this the right marketing tool for you?
> > Click Here to Try Wishpond for Free! < <
Features: How can Wishpond Assist Your Business? Wishpond Vs Drip
Build Effective Landing Pages
Wishpond makes it easy for users to create landing pages with a fresh and modern vibe. Programming knowledge is not necessary, as putting together and editing elements of the landing page is all just a matter of drag and drops and double clicks.
The components ready for building include multimedia as photographs and videos, and text boxes, as well as elements that site visitors can interact with such as selection buttons, icons that link to social media websites, and forms. Adding and changing the contents of text boxes simply need a double click.
Wishpond also comes with a wide number of templates, all completely customizable. Elements can be dragged and dropped in and out of the templates as much as the user likes to. The included templates also adjust automatically to any size of screen, so users can be sure that the quality of the landing pages are consistent irrespective of device used. All landing pages created with this tool are also mobile responsive, and will interact perfectly with mobile devices.
People who have knowledge on CSS and Javascript programming can utilize the landing page builder’s advanced CSS and Javascript editor. This provides for more comprehensive landing page customization. To provide a landing page a much more stylish finish, Wishpond makes it easy to make a Parallax effect for landing pages. The Parallax effect is that smooth, subtle effect that makes it seem that pictures are moving, far from what is possible with GIFs.
Add Pop-ups and Forms to Your Landing Page Wishpond Vs Drip
Apart from landing page templates, Wishpond also gives users plenty of options when it comes to the appearance of forms found in the landing page. Aside from the basic text field, users may also include fields for additional purposes such as for:
Uploading files and documents;
Drop down menus to make a list of alternatives have a cleaner look;
and checkboxes and radio buttons.
Pop-ups can also be added to landing pages in order to encourage interaction while keeping the clean and modern look of the webpage. The pop-ups available can come in the shape of entry pop-ups that appear once a visitor has arrived on the page, or even ones that activate if visitors scroll down the page or spend a set amount of time on it.
Pop-ups can also be set to be triggered once people click on a submit button to act as a confirm button. For final attempts to acquire clients, exit pop-ups are also offered. They show up if visitors decide to leave your landing page.
What’s better is that pop-ups can be added to other pages of the user’s websites.
Adding forms and pop-ups are also drag and drop, like other elements of the landing page.
Landing Page Analytics: Get the Numbers on Your Landing Page’s Performance
We should never underestimate the power of data-driven decisions in our business. Wishpond users can easily make copies of their landing page and customize them individually. After creating several landing pages, users may then take advantage of the A/B testing quality that comes with Wishpond.
A/B testing means that consumers can fetch and compare data to see which landing page styles are more successful when it comes to visitor interaction rate and conversion rate, which lets users know how probable visitors are to input data in the forms. This is essential for landing pages which aim to get visitors to subscribe to newsletters, seminars, and many more which requires visitors to input their email addresses and other details. In a nutshell, A/B testing allows users know which components and layouts are better than others when it comes to visitor participation.
Data that can be fetched include analytics, which gives an overview on the performance of all marketing campaigns created via Wishpond. This can also be used to understand the likelihood that a link is clicked by visitors of the page.
A/B testing can also let users know how many of the web site visitors interact and input data on the forms included on the landing pages. If the visitors allow tracking, then A/B testing can be used to compare the data between visitors.
Manage Contests and Promos Wishpond Vs Drip
Contests and promos can help your business collect email addresses and have them subscribe to your newsletter to be able to inform them of future products and promos. Wishpond makes this as easy as creating landing pages: just a few clicks, then drag and drop.
Wishpond lets users facilitate contests on social media sites like facebook. When run on Facebook for example, then people can join competitions by giving them an option to subscribe to your newsletter with the email that they provided to create their accounts, or any email that they want.
Wishpond can also encourage visitors to share your content on their social media sites with the addition of social networking link icons.
To help design promotions and contests, users can opt pick between the software within Wishpond. The software will enable users to quickly create Essay contests, Vote contests, Video competitions, Referral competitions, and even Sweepstakes.
Automate Your Internet Marketing
Apart from making attractive advertising content, part of what makes an effective campaign is consistency. Following through with upgrading and engaging with customers long after their subscription is just as important.
As is the norm with other marketing tools, Wishpond makes it easy for users to create email campaigns. Users can begin drip campaigns and even private mail with ease.
Users can also assign scores to prospects and sort them based on how they perform. In this manner, real-time analytics is possible and users can gauge the performance of their campaigns. Users can make emails and other content tailored to suit the activity and demographic of their target audience. This leads to higher conversion rates due to the better targeted, personalized emails.
The Basic plan goes for $45 per month for 1 user and includes free email and live chat, can be used to manage up to 1000 contacts, along with access to the following features:
Website popups
The Pro plan goes for $78 a month and may be used by 5 users to manage 2500 contacts. It has all the characteristics of this basic plan but offers more customization with CSS and Javascript, A/B testing, promotions and contests, and lead management.
The Growth plan is $129 a month and can be used by unlimited users to manage as much as 1 million clients. It unlocks the complete suit of Wishpond’s features and will have an implementation and coaching program.
Enough about pricing, just look at their cute panda logo. Isn’t that enough to try out their free trial?
Final Thoughts: Wishpond Vs Drip
It’s always good to remember how important the right tool is for your business. Wishpond is a great product and will help all levels of users with their online marketing: from the brand new start-up to big companies. I can say that the cost for each plan is reasonable enough for the features and services that they offer.
In general, Wishpond is a great product. About which strategy is best, only you can answer that. However, a good deciding point is the number of clients and customers that your company can accommodate. The simple plan is more than enough for 1000 clients. Sure, the Guru plan offers more analytics tools and the promotions and contest builder all for an extra $33 per month. However, what you get from it’s limited by how many customers your business can cater to.
The things that can be made with Wishpond look sleek and match for modern online marketing. The intuitive user interface also reflects this. Users won’t find it hard to create the marketing content that they want with Wishpond.
I suggest you try Wishpond for free now and see how you like it. I’m pretty sure you’ll find it to be so helpful, you’ll smile like this guy right here!
FAQ Wishpond Vs Drip
Q: Does Wishpond offer a free trial?
A: Yes. All 3 of Wishpond’s plans have a 14-day free trial.
Q: Does Wishpond incorporate with other Email Marketing software?
A: Yes, Wishpond can integrate well with Email Marketing software. Analytics can also be obtained from the interaction with emails made with third party email marketing program. The entire list of compatible applications is on Wishpond’s web site.
Q: Can Wishpond be used on already existing websites?
A; Yes. The designs made with Wishpond can be integrated into sites made with WordPress as well as sites with personal domains owned by the user.
Q: Is Wishpond compatible with Linux?
A: Yes. Wishpond is compatible with Windows, Mac, and Linux.
Copyright © 2021 Antinote | Sitemap | Disclaimer: We receive compensation from companies whose products and services we recommend
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Banff Sanitarium 1
Dr. Brett 1
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topic:"Banff Sanitarium"
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https://archives.whyte.org/en/permalink/artifact104.20.1136
White oval dish with a band of sunflowers and waterlilies against a scalloped green background. In the centre of the decoration on one side there is an oval-shaped belt with "SANITARIUM HOTEL" on the belt and “BANFF” in the centre. The underside of the dish is marked with a crest and “PORCELAINE …
2.4 x 14.2 x 20.4 cm
White oval dish with a band of sunflowers and waterlilies against a scalloped green background. In the centre of the decoration on one side there is an oval-shaped belt with "SANITARIUM HOTEL" on the belt and “BANFF” in the centre. The underside of the dish is marked with a crest and “PORCELAINE OPAQUE TRADE MARK BRIDGWOOD & SON. ENGLAND SUPPLIED BY W.O. REID & CO. LONDON & WINNIPEG.”
Banff Sanitarium
Dr. Brett
Gift of Bertha Verkuil Davis, Calgary, 2003
The Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies acknowledges the Government of Canada Department of Canadian Heritage through the Museums Assistance Program for their generous support in funding this site to enable online access to the source materials used for the research, exhibition and publication of Artistry Revealed: Peter Whyte, Catharine Robb Whyte and Their Contemporaries, which was in honour of the 50th Anniversary of the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies.
The Whyte Museum gratefully acknowledges the support of The Peter and Catharine Whyte Foundation and the Alberta Foundation for the Arts
© 2021 Whyte Museum
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Long Beach State 49 - 66 St. John's
No. 17 St. John's routs Long Beach State
Dec 23, 2014 - 5:58 AM Queens, NY (SportsNetwork.com) - Chris Obekpa had 16 points, six blocks and eight rebounds as No. 17 St. John's routed Long Beach State 66-49 on Monday night.
Phil Greene IV posted 16 points and four steals, while Sir'Dominic Pointer added 11 points, seven rebounds and seven assists for the Red Storm (10-1), who moved to 8-0 at home this season.
"This team grinded it out and manufactured the win," Red Storm coach Steve Lavin said.
Mike Caffey netted 13 points to lead Long Beach State (5-8), which fell to 0-7 on the road this year.
"(St. John's) was able to force us to turn the ball over in the second half and get some baskets off of their defense. I thought that was the difference," LBSU coach Dan Monson said.
After Tyler Lamb's layup cut the 49ers' deficit to 46-39, the Red Storm went on a 15-3 run to put the game away. Obekpa had four points during the surge, which was capped on a pair of D'Angelo Harrison free throws for a 61-42 advantage with 1:28 left.
Earlier, St. John's raced out to an 11-4 start, but Long Beach State stayed within striking distance and was down 24-20 heading into the break.
Lamb nailed a 3-pointer to give LBSU a 28-27 edge early in the second half, but St. John's responded with a 9-0 spurt, with Greene's triple staking the Red Storm to a 36-28 margin.
St. John's posted 12 steals and nine blocks ... The Red Storm were just 3- of-15 from beyond the arc and sunk just 9-of-16 from the foul line ... Harrison tallied nine points and 10 boards for the Red Storm.
LONG BEACH STATE: 49
ST. JOHN'S: 66
Dec 22 9:27 PM
Long Beach State 28, St. John's(17) 31 2nd - 15:12Dec 22 8:48 PM
RUWTbot Added 27 roots (Upset)
Long Beach State 20, St. John's(17) 24 1st - 1:00Dec 22 8:18 PM
Long Beach State 6, St. John's(17) 4 1st - 17:55Dec 22 7:41 PM
LONG BEACH STATE: 0
ST. JOHN'S: 0
Ward, Bridges help No. 2 Michigan State rout Savannah State Dec 31
Snow sacks Marquette-St. John's basketball game Jan 23
St. John's center Sima out 4-6 weeks with broken hand Jan 8
St. John's freshman Kassoum Yakwe cleared to play by NCAA Nov 25
NCAA reinstates St. John's guard Felix Balamou Nov 19
St. John's Balamou sidelined indefinitely by NCAA Nov 13
St. John's LoVett ruled a partial qualifier by NCAA Nov 11
St. Thomas Aquinas beats St. John's 90-58 Nov 4
St. John's about to start the "Mullin Era" Oct 21
Richmond, St. Jean complete Mullin's staff Oct 6
St. John's hires Chris Mullin as coach Mar 31
Report: Mullin to be St. John's coach Mar 30
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Magnitude of and Characteristics Associated With the Treatment of Calcium Channel Blocker-Induced Lower-Extremity Edema With Loop Diuretics
Scott Martin Vouri, Xinyi Jiang, Todd M. Manini, Laurence M. Solberg, Carl Pepine, Daniel C. Malone, Almut G. Winterstein
Pharmacy Practice and Science
Importance: Calcium channel blockers, specifically dihydropyridine calcium channel blockers (DH CCBs, eg, amlodipine), may cause lower-extremity edema. Anecdotal reports suggest this may result in a prescribing cascade, where DH CCB-induced edema is treated with loop diuretics. Objective: To assess the magnitude and characteristics of the DH CCB prescribing cascade. Design, Setting, and Participants: This cohort study used a prescription sequence symmetry analysis to assess loop diuretic initiation before and after the initiation of DH CCBs among patients aged 20 years or older without heart failure. Data from a private insurance claims database from 2005 to 2017 was analyzed. Use of loop diuretics associated with initiation of angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors, angiotensin receptor blockers, and other commonly used medications was used as negative controls. Data were analyzed from March 2019 through October 2019. Exposures: Initiation of DH CCB or negative control medications. Main Outcomes and Measures: The temporality of loop diuretic initiation relative to DH CCB or negative control initiation. Secular trend-adjusted sequence ratios (aSRs) with 95% CIs were calculated using data from 360 days before and after initiation of DH CCBs. Results: Among 1 206 093 DH CCB initiators, 55 818 patients (4.6%) (33 100 [59.3%] aged <65 years; 32 916 [59.0%] women) had a new loop diuretic prescription 360 days before or after DH CCB initiation, resulting in an aSR of 1.87 (95% CI, 1.84-1.90). An estimated 1.44% of DH CCB initiators experienced the prescribing cascade. The aSR was disproportionately higher among DH CCB initiators who were prescribed high doses (aSR, 2.20; 95% CI, 2.13-2.27), initiated amlodipine (aSR, 1.89; 95% CI, 1.86-1.93), were men (aSR, 1.96; 95% CI, 1.91-2.01), and used fewer antihypertensive classes (aSR, 2.55; 95% CI, 2.47-2.64). The evaluation of ACE inhibitors or ARBs as negative controls suggested hypertension progression may have tempered the incidence of the prescribing cascade (aSR for ACE inhibitors and ARBs, 1.27; 95% CI, 1.24-1.29). Conclusions and Relevance: This study found an excessive use of loop diuretics following initiation of DH CCBs that cannot be completely explained by secular trends or hypertension progression. The prescribing cascade was more pronounced among those initially prescribed a high dose of DH CCBs.
https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2019.18425
10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2019.18425
Fingerprint Dive into the research topics of 'Magnitude of and Characteristics Associated With the Treatment of Calcium Channel Blocker-Induced Lower-Extremity Edema With Loop Diuretics'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.
Sodium Potassium Chloride Symporter Inhibitors Medicine & Life Sciences
Calcium Channel Blockers Medicine & Life Sciences
Edema Medicine & Life Sciences
Amlodipine Medicine & Life Sciences
Prescriptions Medicine & Life Sciences
Vouri, S. M., Jiang, X., Manini, T. M., Solberg, L. M., Pepine, C., Malone, D. C., & Winterstein, A. G. (2019). Magnitude of and Characteristics Associated With the Treatment of Calcium Channel Blocker-Induced Lower-Extremity Edema With Loop Diuretics. JAMA Network Open, 2(12), e1918425. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2019.18425
Magnitude of and Characteristics Associated With the Treatment of Calcium Channel Blocker-Induced Lower-Extremity Edema With Loop Diuretics. / Vouri, Scott Martin; Jiang, Xinyi; Manini, Todd M.; Solberg, Laurence M.; Pepine, Carl; Malone, Daniel C.; Winterstein, Almut G.
In: JAMA Network Open, Vol. 2, No. 12, 02.12.2019, p. e1918425.
Vouri, SM, Jiang, X, Manini, TM, Solberg, LM, Pepine, C, Malone, DC & Winterstein, AG 2019, 'Magnitude of and Characteristics Associated With the Treatment of Calcium Channel Blocker-Induced Lower-Extremity Edema With Loop Diuretics', JAMA Network Open, vol. 2, no. 12, pp. e1918425. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2019.18425
Vouri SM, Jiang X, Manini TM, Solberg LM, Pepine C, Malone DC et al. Magnitude of and Characteristics Associated With the Treatment of Calcium Channel Blocker-Induced Lower-Extremity Edema With Loop Diuretics. JAMA Network Open. 2019 Dec 2;2(12):e1918425. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2019.18425
Vouri, Scott Martin ; Jiang, Xinyi ; Manini, Todd M. ; Solberg, Laurence M. ; Pepine, Carl ; Malone, Daniel C. ; Winterstein, Almut G. / Magnitude of and Characteristics Associated With the Treatment of Calcium Channel Blocker-Induced Lower-Extremity Edema With Loop Diuretics. In: JAMA Network Open. 2019 ; Vol. 2, No. 12. pp. e1918425.
@article{e066298583d449b1ace2260b45670f4b,
title = "Magnitude of and Characteristics Associated With the Treatment of Calcium Channel Blocker-Induced Lower-Extremity Edema With Loop Diuretics",
abstract = "Importance: Calcium channel blockers, specifically dihydropyridine calcium channel blockers (DH CCBs, eg, amlodipine), may cause lower-extremity edema. Anecdotal reports suggest this may result in a prescribing cascade, where DH CCB-induced edema is treated with loop diuretics. Objective: To assess the magnitude and characteristics of the DH CCB prescribing cascade. Design, Setting, and Participants: This cohort study used a prescription sequence symmetry analysis to assess loop diuretic initiation before and after the initiation of DH CCBs among patients aged 20 years or older without heart failure. Data from a private insurance claims database from 2005 to 2017 was analyzed. Use of loop diuretics associated with initiation of angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors, angiotensin receptor blockers, and other commonly used medications was used as negative controls. Data were analyzed from March 2019 through October 2019. Exposures: Initiation of DH CCB or negative control medications. Main Outcomes and Measures: The temporality of loop diuretic initiation relative to DH CCB or negative control initiation. Secular trend-adjusted sequence ratios (aSRs) with 95% CIs were calculated using data from 360 days before and after initiation of DH CCBs. Results: Among 1 206 093 DH CCB initiators, 55 818 patients (4.6%) (33 100 [59.3%] aged <65 years; 32 916 [59.0%] women) had a new loop diuretic prescription 360 days before or after DH CCB initiation, resulting in an aSR of 1.87 (95% CI, 1.84-1.90). An estimated 1.44% of DH CCB initiators experienced the prescribing cascade. The aSR was disproportionately higher among DH CCB initiators who were prescribed high doses (aSR, 2.20; 95% CI, 2.13-2.27), initiated amlodipine (aSR, 1.89; 95% CI, 1.86-1.93), were men (aSR, 1.96; 95% CI, 1.91-2.01), and used fewer antihypertensive classes (aSR, 2.55; 95% CI, 2.47-2.64). The evaluation of ACE inhibitors or ARBs as negative controls suggested hypertension progression may have tempered the incidence of the prescribing cascade (aSR for ACE inhibitors and ARBs, 1.27; 95% CI, 1.24-1.29). Conclusions and Relevance: This study found an excessive use of loop diuretics following initiation of DH CCBs that cannot be completely explained by secular trends or hypertension progression. The prescribing cascade was more pronounced among those initially prescribed a high dose of DH CCBs.",
author = "Vouri, {Scott Martin} and Xinyi Jiang and Manini, {Todd M.} and Solberg, {Laurence M.} and Carl Pepine and Malone, {Daniel C.} and Winterstein, {Almut G.}",
note = "Copyright: This record is sourced from MEDLINE/PubMed, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine",
doi = "10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2019.18425",
pages = "e1918425",
journal = "JAMA network open",
publisher = "American Medical Association",
T1 - Magnitude of and Characteristics Associated With the Treatment of Calcium Channel Blocker-Induced Lower-Extremity Edema With Loop Diuretics
AU - Vouri, Scott Martin
AU - Jiang, Xinyi
AU - Manini, Todd M.
AU - Solberg, Laurence M.
AU - Pepine, Carl
AU - Malone, Daniel C.
AU - Winterstein, Almut G.
N1 - Copyright: This record is sourced from MEDLINE/PubMed, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine
N2 - Importance: Calcium channel blockers, specifically dihydropyridine calcium channel blockers (DH CCBs, eg, amlodipine), may cause lower-extremity edema. Anecdotal reports suggest this may result in a prescribing cascade, where DH CCB-induced edema is treated with loop diuretics. Objective: To assess the magnitude and characteristics of the DH CCB prescribing cascade. Design, Setting, and Participants: This cohort study used a prescription sequence symmetry analysis to assess loop diuretic initiation before and after the initiation of DH CCBs among patients aged 20 years or older without heart failure. Data from a private insurance claims database from 2005 to 2017 was analyzed. Use of loop diuretics associated with initiation of angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors, angiotensin receptor blockers, and other commonly used medications was used as negative controls. Data were analyzed from March 2019 through October 2019. Exposures: Initiation of DH CCB or negative control medications. Main Outcomes and Measures: The temporality of loop diuretic initiation relative to DH CCB or negative control initiation. Secular trend-adjusted sequence ratios (aSRs) with 95% CIs were calculated using data from 360 days before and after initiation of DH CCBs. Results: Among 1 206 093 DH CCB initiators, 55 818 patients (4.6%) (33 100 [59.3%] aged <65 years; 32 916 [59.0%] women) had a new loop diuretic prescription 360 days before or after DH CCB initiation, resulting in an aSR of 1.87 (95% CI, 1.84-1.90). An estimated 1.44% of DH CCB initiators experienced the prescribing cascade. The aSR was disproportionately higher among DH CCB initiators who were prescribed high doses (aSR, 2.20; 95% CI, 2.13-2.27), initiated amlodipine (aSR, 1.89; 95% CI, 1.86-1.93), were men (aSR, 1.96; 95% CI, 1.91-2.01), and used fewer antihypertensive classes (aSR, 2.55; 95% CI, 2.47-2.64). The evaluation of ACE inhibitors or ARBs as negative controls suggested hypertension progression may have tempered the incidence of the prescribing cascade (aSR for ACE inhibitors and ARBs, 1.27; 95% CI, 1.24-1.29). Conclusions and Relevance: This study found an excessive use of loop diuretics following initiation of DH CCBs that cannot be completely explained by secular trends or hypertension progression. The prescribing cascade was more pronounced among those initially prescribed a high dose of DH CCBs.
AB - Importance: Calcium channel blockers, specifically dihydropyridine calcium channel blockers (DH CCBs, eg, amlodipine), may cause lower-extremity edema. Anecdotal reports suggest this may result in a prescribing cascade, where DH CCB-induced edema is treated with loop diuretics. Objective: To assess the magnitude and characteristics of the DH CCB prescribing cascade. Design, Setting, and Participants: This cohort study used a prescription sequence symmetry analysis to assess loop diuretic initiation before and after the initiation of DH CCBs among patients aged 20 years or older without heart failure. Data from a private insurance claims database from 2005 to 2017 was analyzed. Use of loop diuretics associated with initiation of angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors, angiotensin receptor blockers, and other commonly used medications was used as negative controls. Data were analyzed from March 2019 through October 2019. Exposures: Initiation of DH CCB or negative control medications. Main Outcomes and Measures: The temporality of loop diuretic initiation relative to DH CCB or negative control initiation. Secular trend-adjusted sequence ratios (aSRs) with 95% CIs were calculated using data from 360 days before and after initiation of DH CCBs. Results: Among 1 206 093 DH CCB initiators, 55 818 patients (4.6%) (33 100 [59.3%] aged <65 years; 32 916 [59.0%] women) had a new loop diuretic prescription 360 days before or after DH CCB initiation, resulting in an aSR of 1.87 (95% CI, 1.84-1.90). An estimated 1.44% of DH CCB initiators experienced the prescribing cascade. The aSR was disproportionately higher among DH CCB initiators who were prescribed high doses (aSR, 2.20; 95% CI, 2.13-2.27), initiated amlodipine (aSR, 1.89; 95% CI, 1.86-1.93), were men (aSR, 1.96; 95% CI, 1.91-2.01), and used fewer antihypertensive classes (aSR, 2.55; 95% CI, 2.47-2.64). The evaluation of ACE inhibitors or ARBs as negative controls suggested hypertension progression may have tempered the incidence of the prescribing cascade (aSR for ACE inhibitors and ARBs, 1.27; 95% CI, 1.24-1.29). Conclusions and Relevance: This study found an excessive use of loop diuretics following initiation of DH CCBs that cannot be completely explained by secular trends or hypertension progression. The prescribing cascade was more pronounced among those initially prescribed a high dose of DH CCBs.
U2 - 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2019.18425
DO - 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2019.18425
SP - e1918425
JO - JAMA network open
JF - JAMA network open
|
cc/2021-04/en_middle_0011.json.gz/line2716
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| 0.837783
| 0.837783
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The safety, efficacy, and pharmacoeconomics of low-dose alteplase compared with urokinase for catheter-directed thrombolysis of arterial and venous occlusions
Koji Sugimoto, Lawrence V. Hofmann, Mahmood K. Razavi, Stephen T. Kee, Daniel Y. Sze, Michael D. Dake, Charles P. Semba
Senior VP Health Sciences
Purpose: The purpose of this study was to compare the efficacy, complications, and costs associated with low-dose (≤2 mg/h) alteplase (tissue plasminogen activator [t-PA]) versus urokinase for the catheter-directed treatment of acute peripheral arterial occlusive disease (PAO) and deep vein thrombosis (DVT). Materials and methods: A retrospective review was performed during sequential time periods on two groups with involved extremities treated with either t-PA with subtherapeutic heparin (TPA group) or urokinase with full heparin (UK group) at a single center. Treatment group characteristics, success rates, complications, dosages, infusion time, and costs were compared. Results: Eighty-nine patients with 93 involved limbs underwent treatment (54 with DVT, 39 with PAO). The treatment groups were statistically identical (TPA: 45 limbs; 24 with DVT, 53.3%; 21 with PAO, 46.7%; UK: 48 limbs; 30 with DVT, 62.5%; 18 with PAO, 37.5%). The overall average hourly infused dose, total dose, infusion time, success rates, and cost of thrombolytic agent were as follows (± standard deviation): TPA, 0.86 ± 0.50 mg/h, 21.2 ± 15.1 mg, 24.6 ± 11.2 hours, 89.4%, $466 ± $331; and UK, 13.5 ± 5.6 (104) U/h, 4.485 ± 2.394 million U, 33.3 ± 13.3 hours, 85.7%, $6871 ± $3667, respectively. Major and minor complication rates were: TPA, 2.2% and 8.9%; and UK, 2.1% and 10.4%, respectively. No statistical differences in success rates or complications were observed; however, t-PA was significantly (P < .05) less expensive and faster than urokinase. Conclusion: Low-dose t-PA combined with subtherapeutic heparin is equally efficacious and safe compared with urokinase. Infusions with t-PA were significantly shorter and less expensive than those with urokinase.
https://doi.org/10.1067/mva.2003.41
10.1067/mva.2003.41
Fingerprint Dive into the research topics of 'The safety, efficacy, and pharmacoeconomics of low-dose alteplase compared with urokinase for catheter-directed thrombolysis of arterial and venous occlusions'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.
Pharmaceutical Economics Medicine & Life Sciences
Urokinase-Type Plasminogen Activator Medicine & Life Sciences
Tissue Plasminogen Activator Medicine & Life Sciences
Arterial Occlusive Diseases Medicine & Life Sciences
Peripheral Arterial Disease Medicine & Life Sciences
Sugimoto, K., Hofmann, L. V., Razavi, M. K., Kee, S. T., Sze, D. Y., Dake, M. D., & Semba, C. P. (2003). The safety, efficacy, and pharmacoeconomics of low-dose alteplase compared with urokinase for catheter-directed thrombolysis of arterial and venous occlusions. Journal of vascular surgery, 37(3), 512-517. https://doi.org/10.1067/mva.2003.41
The safety, efficacy, and pharmacoeconomics of low-dose alteplase compared with urokinase for catheter-directed thrombolysis of arterial and venous occlusions. / Sugimoto, Koji; Hofmann, Lawrence V.; Razavi, Mahmood K.; Kee, Stephen T.; Sze, Daniel Y.; Dake, Michael D.; Semba, Charles P.
In: Journal of vascular surgery, Vol. 37, No. 3, 01.03.2003, p. 512-517.
Sugimoto, K, Hofmann, LV, Razavi, MK, Kee, ST, Sze, DY, Dake, MD & Semba, CP 2003, 'The safety, efficacy, and pharmacoeconomics of low-dose alteplase compared with urokinase for catheter-directed thrombolysis of arterial and venous occlusions', Journal of vascular surgery, vol. 37, no. 3, pp. 512-517. https://doi.org/10.1067/mva.2003.41
Sugimoto K, Hofmann LV, Razavi MK, Kee ST, Sze DY, Dake MD et al. The safety, efficacy, and pharmacoeconomics of low-dose alteplase compared with urokinase for catheter-directed thrombolysis of arterial and venous occlusions. Journal of vascular surgery. 2003 Mar 1;37(3):512-517. https://doi.org/10.1067/mva.2003.41
Sugimoto, Koji ; Hofmann, Lawrence V. ; Razavi, Mahmood K. ; Kee, Stephen T. ; Sze, Daniel Y. ; Dake, Michael D. ; Semba, Charles P. / The safety, efficacy, and pharmacoeconomics of low-dose alteplase compared with urokinase for catheter-directed thrombolysis of arterial and venous occlusions. In: Journal of vascular surgery. 2003 ; Vol. 37, No. 3. pp. 512-517.
@article{a05deb876876404d9d207e0c8ddcecc2,
title = "The safety, efficacy, and pharmacoeconomics of low-dose alteplase compared with urokinase for catheter-directed thrombolysis of arterial and venous occlusions",
abstract = "Purpose: The purpose of this study was to compare the efficacy, complications, and costs associated with low-dose (≤2 mg/h) alteplase (tissue plasminogen activator [t-PA]) versus urokinase for the catheter-directed treatment of acute peripheral arterial occlusive disease (PAO) and deep vein thrombosis (DVT). Materials and methods: A retrospective review was performed during sequential time periods on two groups with involved extremities treated with either t-PA with subtherapeutic heparin (TPA group) or urokinase with full heparin (UK group) at a single center. Treatment group characteristics, success rates, complications, dosages, infusion time, and costs were compared. Results: Eighty-nine patients with 93 involved limbs underwent treatment (54 with DVT, 39 with PAO). The treatment groups were statistically identical (TPA: 45 limbs; 24 with DVT, 53.3%; 21 with PAO, 46.7%; UK: 48 limbs; 30 with DVT, 62.5%; 18 with PAO, 37.5%). The overall average hourly infused dose, total dose, infusion time, success rates, and cost of thrombolytic agent were as follows (± standard deviation): TPA, 0.86 ± 0.50 mg/h, 21.2 ± 15.1 mg, 24.6 ± 11.2 hours, 89.4%, $466 ± $331; and UK, 13.5 ± 5.6 (104) U/h, 4.485 ± 2.394 million U, 33.3 ± 13.3 hours, 85.7%, $6871 ± $3667, respectively. Major and minor complication rates were: TPA, 2.2% and 8.9%; and UK, 2.1% and 10.4%, respectively. No statistical differences in success rates or complications were observed; however, t-PA was significantly (P < .05) less expensive and faster than urokinase. Conclusion: Low-dose t-PA combined with subtherapeutic heparin is equally efficacious and safe compared with urokinase. Infusions with t-PA were significantly shorter and less expensive than those with urokinase.",
author = "Koji Sugimoto and Hofmann, {Lawrence V.} and Razavi, {Mahmood K.} and Kee, {Stephen T.} and Sze, {Daniel Y.} and Dake, {Michael D.} and Semba, {Charles P.}",
doi = "10.1067/mva.2003.41",
journal = "Journal of Vascular Surgery",
T1 - The safety, efficacy, and pharmacoeconomics of low-dose alteplase compared with urokinase for catheter-directed thrombolysis of arterial and venous occlusions
AU - Sugimoto, Koji
AU - Hofmann, Lawrence V.
AU - Razavi, Mahmood K.
AU - Kee, Stephen T.
AU - Sze, Daniel Y.
AU - Dake, Michael D.
AU - Semba, Charles P.
N2 - Purpose: The purpose of this study was to compare the efficacy, complications, and costs associated with low-dose (≤2 mg/h) alteplase (tissue plasminogen activator [t-PA]) versus urokinase for the catheter-directed treatment of acute peripheral arterial occlusive disease (PAO) and deep vein thrombosis (DVT). Materials and methods: A retrospective review was performed during sequential time periods on two groups with involved extremities treated with either t-PA with subtherapeutic heparin (TPA group) or urokinase with full heparin (UK group) at a single center. Treatment group characteristics, success rates, complications, dosages, infusion time, and costs were compared. Results: Eighty-nine patients with 93 involved limbs underwent treatment (54 with DVT, 39 with PAO). The treatment groups were statistically identical (TPA: 45 limbs; 24 with DVT, 53.3%; 21 with PAO, 46.7%; UK: 48 limbs; 30 with DVT, 62.5%; 18 with PAO, 37.5%). The overall average hourly infused dose, total dose, infusion time, success rates, and cost of thrombolytic agent were as follows (± standard deviation): TPA, 0.86 ± 0.50 mg/h, 21.2 ± 15.1 mg, 24.6 ± 11.2 hours, 89.4%, $466 ± $331; and UK, 13.5 ± 5.6 (104) U/h, 4.485 ± 2.394 million U, 33.3 ± 13.3 hours, 85.7%, $6871 ± $3667, respectively. Major and minor complication rates were: TPA, 2.2% and 8.9%; and UK, 2.1% and 10.4%, respectively. No statistical differences in success rates or complications were observed; however, t-PA was significantly (P < .05) less expensive and faster than urokinase. Conclusion: Low-dose t-PA combined with subtherapeutic heparin is equally efficacious and safe compared with urokinase. Infusions with t-PA were significantly shorter and less expensive than those with urokinase.
AB - Purpose: The purpose of this study was to compare the efficacy, complications, and costs associated with low-dose (≤2 mg/h) alteplase (tissue plasminogen activator [t-PA]) versus urokinase for the catheter-directed treatment of acute peripheral arterial occlusive disease (PAO) and deep vein thrombosis (DVT). Materials and methods: A retrospective review was performed during sequential time periods on two groups with involved extremities treated with either t-PA with subtherapeutic heparin (TPA group) or urokinase with full heparin (UK group) at a single center. Treatment group characteristics, success rates, complications, dosages, infusion time, and costs were compared. Results: Eighty-nine patients with 93 involved limbs underwent treatment (54 with DVT, 39 with PAO). The treatment groups were statistically identical (TPA: 45 limbs; 24 with DVT, 53.3%; 21 with PAO, 46.7%; UK: 48 limbs; 30 with DVT, 62.5%; 18 with PAO, 37.5%). The overall average hourly infused dose, total dose, infusion time, success rates, and cost of thrombolytic agent were as follows (± standard deviation): TPA, 0.86 ± 0.50 mg/h, 21.2 ± 15.1 mg, 24.6 ± 11.2 hours, 89.4%, $466 ± $331; and UK, 13.5 ± 5.6 (104) U/h, 4.485 ± 2.394 million U, 33.3 ± 13.3 hours, 85.7%, $6871 ± $3667, respectively. Major and minor complication rates were: TPA, 2.2% and 8.9%; and UK, 2.1% and 10.4%, respectively. No statistical differences in success rates or complications were observed; however, t-PA was significantly (P < .05) less expensive and faster than urokinase. Conclusion: Low-dose t-PA combined with subtherapeutic heparin is equally efficacious and safe compared with urokinase. Infusions with t-PA were significantly shorter and less expensive than those with urokinase.
U2 - 10.1067/mva.2003.41
DO - 10.1067/mva.2003.41
JO - Journal of Vascular Surgery
JF - Journal of Vascular Surgery
|
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| 0.573431
| 0.426569
|
Structured List | All used keywords | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z
Structured List:
ANIMAL PRODUCT (95)
- > Egg (37)
- > Fur (11)
- > Flesh (14)
- > Milk (51)
BIRD (364)
- > Duck (34)
--- > Duckling (5)
- > Goose (52)
--- > Gosling (3)
- > Chicken (128)
--- > Perchery (33)
--- > Freerange (44)
--- > Cock (2)
- > Hummingbird (1)
- > Poult (71)
- > Penguin (5)
- > Stork (5)
- > Ostrich (2)
- > Pigeon (11)
- > Turkey (1)
INSECT (100)
- > Bee (26)
--- > Beehouse (3)
--- > Beehive (6)
MAMMAL (732)
- > Monkey (19)
--- > Chimpanzee (1)
- > Elephant (15)
- > Fox (4)
- > Camel (51)
--- > Dromedary (3)
--- > Lama (14)
--- > Bactrian camel (8)
- > Bunny (7)
- > Human (59)
--- > Angler (9)
--- > Hunter (1)
- > Mink (3)
- > Horse (76)
--- > Donkey (20)
--- > Foal (14)
--- > Riding (16)
- > Cattle (220)
--- > Calf (76)
--- > Cow (96)
----- > Bull (3)
- > Sheep (64)
--- > Lamb (1)
- > Pig (121)
- > Goat (19)
- > Angling (3)
- > Free (110)
- > Hunt (8)
- > Corpse (83)
--- > Preserved specismen (8)
- > Mast (3)
- > Reptile (8)
--- > Crocodile (3)
--- > Turtle (5)
- > Stable (187)
- > Unknown (24)
- > Meadow (112)
- > Pond (15)
- > Circus (186)
- > Zoo (202)
--- > Gazer (48)
- > Breeding (47)
- > Cage (241)
--- > Breeding of the offspring (44)
----- > Garbage (21)
- > Sign (50)
- > Statue (2)
- > Fence (174)
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| 0.524528
| 0.524528
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RUNNER MISSES HOME PLATE
MLB Umpire Manual
Rules 5.09(b)(5), 5.09(b)(12), 5.09(c)(2):
Official Baseball Rule 5.09(b)(12) states that should a runner, in scoring, fail to touch home plate and continue on the way to the bench (making no effort to return), the runner may be put out by the fielder touching home plate and appealing to the umpire for a decision. However, this rule applies only where a runner is on the way to the bench and the catcher would be required to chase the runner. It does not apply to the ordinary play where the runner misses the plate and then immediately makes an effort to touch the plate before being tagged. In that case, the runner must be tagged. In such cases, base path rules still apply to the runner (i.e., he may not run more than three feet from the “base path” between him and home plate).
On a play at the plate, should the runner miss home plate and the fielder miss the tag on the runner, it is preferable that the umpire make no signal on the play. As outlined in the previous paragraph, the runner must then be tagged if the runner attempts to return to the plate; if the runner continues on the way to the bench, the defense may make an appeal.
A runner may no longer return to touch a missed base—home plate or otherwise—after having entered the dugout. On a “No Touch/No Tag” play, the runner is permitted to return to touch home plate when the ball is dead as long as there are less than three outs and/or a following runner has not scored.
If two runners arrive at home plate about the same time and the first runner misses home plate but the second runner legally touches the plate, the first runner may not return to retouch home plate and may be put out on appeal. If the appeal on the runner is sustained for the third out of the inning, neither run scores. See Official Baseball Rule 5.09(c)(2) Approved Ruling (A).
Related Rules
2.03 The Bases
First, second and third bases shall be marked by white canvas or rubber-covered bags, securely attached to the ground as indicated in Diagram 2. The first and third base bags shall be entirely within the infield. The second …
9.01 Umpire Duties
(a) The league president shall appoint one or more adult umpires to officiate at each league game. The umpire shall be responsible for the conduct of the game in accordance with these official rules and …
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Obstruction? Interference? Nothing? You Make the Call!
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Player Focus
Kevin Durant’s Advice to Giannis? “Play for Yourself”
Justin Kirkland
Mandatory Credit: Photo by AP/REX/Shutterstock
This discussion won’t seriously heat up until 2020, but Giannis Antetokounmpo is already getting free agency advice.
Last summer after inking a four year $100 million deal in 2016, the Greek Freek sent out a tweet to end any speculation of his intent once his shiny new contract was up:
https://twitter.com/Giannis_An34/status/883118398695239680
While this provided temporary reassurance to the Milwaukee Bucks fan base, the reality of long NBA seasons that fall short of expectations eventually come to haunt stars, especially in their prime. Giannis seems to be enjoying his time for now even if he can’t get a seat at his first restaurant choice after a big win, but if the Bucks continue to be good but not great will he feel the same in 2020 at age 25? For now, per ESPN’s Nick Friedell, he seems to believe so.
“Definitely. That’s one of my goals,” Antetokounmpo told ESPN recently. “Kobe [Bryant] did it. Tim Duncan did it. Dirk Nowitzki did it. I just want to be one of those guys … that stays for the city, play for the city for 20 years.”
Luckily for Giannis, he won’t be the first star who has ever had to make a contract decision during their prime that could affect their legacy. Defending Finals MVP Kevin Durant knows a little something about being the face of a franchise for a small market with big expectations on his shoulders. During his time in Oklahoma City, he and Russell Westbrook made waves in the Western Conference for several years before KD decided to join Golden State in search of a championship. Naturally, he received a lot of criticism for it but he has maintained that he did it for the betterment of his career and winning his first NBA championship perfectly vindicated his vision. Recently, he shared his thoughts on Giannis’s situation with ESPN:
“What I would say to him, I would tell him to play for himself,” Durant said. “Because he’s the one out there putting in the work, he’s the one out there getting up in the morning staying committed to the game. Obviously [the comments about staying put] sounds good to the fans in Milwaukee and to the ownership, because he cares so much about wanting to please them and play well for them, and I get it. But his career is about him; it’s about whatever he wants to do and however he feels is right for him. And what type of basketball does he want to play? He’s not going to stay in Milwaukee if he’s not having fun playing the game.”
The issue of player loyalty vs. what is best for their career has been going on forever. Kevin Garnett did not see significant career success until after finally leaving the Minnesota Timberwolves teams that he so famously led early in his career. Conversely, we watch today as players like Kemba Walker and Damian Lillard toil away season after season and either miss the playoffs or exit early. Sports are the only profession where we blame the people who work for moving to better situations. I find it hard to imagine myself turning down a better job out of loyalty to my current company, and you should too.
GIANNIS WHAT DID YOU JUST DO TO THAT MAN?!?!?!?!!!!!!
(via @clippittv) pic.twitter.com/EAfIdyYDcv
— Basketball Society (@BBallSociety_) April 22, 2018
The Milwaukee Bucks have yet to see the true progression they have hoped for from their supporting cast of 2017 Rookie of the Year Malcolm Brogdon, Tony Snell, Eric Bledsoe, and others. Giannis said the right thing to appease the fans, but I can’t imagine him signing a multi-year extension in his prime to stay with a team that continues to underachieve.
The Milwaukee Bucks just lost a tight series to a shorthanded (and young) Boston Celtics team. Kevin Durant will no doubt take a beating for telling Giannis to look out for himself, but he is right. The pressure is on the Bucks’s front office to keep their unicorn from walking away.
eric bledsoe
Jabari Parker
Malcolm Brogdon
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Jaguar Tests V2X Tech That Can Help Drivers Avoid Red Lights
0 0 Monday, November 19, 2018 Edit this post
From Motor Trend
Jaguar Land Rover is one of the many automakers exploring a future that involves cars communicating with road infrastructure to minimize traffic jams and improve safety. It participated in a U.K. research project testing technologies that can help drivers avoid red lights and handle intersections more effectively.
When properly set up, roads can send traffic light information to a connected car. With that info, the car calculates an optimal traveling speed that will help it avoid red lights, which not only reduces traffic congestion but also curbs emissions. Jaguar vehicles are also testing technology that warns a driver if it's unsafe to enter an intersection, and assigns priority when multiple connected vehicles come to an intersection and there is no traffic light to dictate the vehicle that should go first.
© Motor Trend Staff
These Vehicle-to Infrastructure (V2X) technologies have been trialed on F-Pace crossovers in the U.K. It's part of a $25 million research project funded by the U.K. government and industry members to accelerate the development of self-driving cars. Ford and Tata Motors European Technical Center were also involved in the three-year project that ended in October.
© Motor Trend Staff Jaguar F Pace V2X rear three quarters
Other technologies that came out of the program include a feature that warns drivers when an emergency vehicle is approaching, a feature that provides real-time parking information, and an in-car display feature that alerts drivers of current road conditions. Another feature alerts a driver when a vehicle ahead brakes suddenly, even if the weather conditions are poor or there are other vehicles in between the driver and the braking vehicle.
Audi has already rolled out a traffic light information system that can tell drivers how long they'll be stuck at a light. Of course, the feature only works in cities with the infrastructure to support such technology, including Las Vegas, Washington, D.C., Dallas, Denver, and a few others. Meanwhile, Cadillac plans to introduce V2X technologies on a high-volume crossover by 2023.
Autos - U.S. Daily News: Jaguar Tests V2X Tech That Can Help Drivers Avoid Red Lights
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https://autos.dailynews.us.com/2018/11/jaguar-tests-v2x-tech-that-can-help.html
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Home > Journals > Journal of Economic Entomology > Volume 96 > Issue 6 > Article
1 December 2003 Evaluation of Predatory Mite (Acari: Phytoseiidae) Releases to Suppress Spruce Spider Mites, Oligonychus ununguis (Acari: Tetranychidae), on Juniper
Paula M. Shrewsbury, Mark R. Hardin
Paula M. Shrewsbury,1 Mark R. Hardin2,3
1Department of Entomology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742–4454 ( ) pshrewsb@umd.edu
2Horticultural Services Division, Smithsonian Institution, Arts & Industry Bldg., Washington, DC 20560–0420
3Current address: Office of Safety and Regulatory Affairs, Howard County Public School System, 10920 Route 108, Ellicott City, MD 21042
J. of Economic Entomology, 96(6):1675-1684 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1603/0022-0493-96.6.1675
A laboratory trial evaluated four phytoseiid species for their potential as biological control agents of spruce spider mite, Oligonychus ununguis (Jacobi) (Acari: Tetranychidae). An augmentative biological control approach, using the predatory mites Neoseiulus fallacis Garman and Galendromus occidentalis Nesbitt (Acari: Phytoseiidae), was evaluated for reducing pest mite densities and injury, and economic costs on Juniperus chinensis ‘Sargentii’ A. Henry (Cupressaceae) in an outdoor nursery. Sequential releases of predator species, individually and in combination, were tested and compared with two commonly used miticides, a low-toxicity miticide, horticultural oil, and a conventional miticide, hexythiazox. Timing of treatments was based on grower-determined need, and predator release rates were based on guidelines in literature received from producers of beneficial organisms. Predator releases were more expensive and provided less effective suppression of spruce spider mites, resulting in greater spider mite injury to plants, compared with conventional pesticides. However, spider mite damage to plants did not differ in an economically meaningful way between treatments. Unsatisfactory levels of control seem related to under estimations of actual spider mite abundance based on grower perceptions and the beat sampling technique used to estimate predator release rates. These data suggest that when initial populations of spruce spider mite are high, it is unlikely that sequential releases of predator species, individually or in combination, will suppress spider mite populations. In this trial, augmentative biological control was 2.5–7 times more expensive than chemical controls.
Paula M. Shrewsbury and Mark R. Hardin "Evaluation of Predatory Mite (Acari: Phytoseiidae) Releases to Suppress Spruce Spider Mites, Oligonychus ununguis (Acari: Tetranychidae), on Juniper," Journal of Economic Entomology 96(6), 1675-1684, (1 December 2003). https://doi.org/10.1603/0022-0493-96.6.1675
Received: 7 April 2003; Accepted: 1 August 2003; Published: 1 December 2003
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Paula M. Shrewsbury, Mark R. Hardin "Evaluation of Predatory Mite (Acari: Phytoseiidae) Releases to Suppress Spruce Spider Mites, Oligonychus ununguis (Acari: Tetranychidae), on Juniper," Journal of Economic Entomology, 96(6), 1675-1684, (1 December 2003)
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Alcester Lane's End
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The United Kingdom's city that is second-most populous, after London, and the most populous city in the English Midlands is Birmingham (/ˈbɜːrmɪŋəm/ locally also: /-mɪnəm/). Address to five universities is Birmingham: Aston, Birmingham, Birmingham City, Newman and UC Birmingham. The oldest graduate-level business school in the United Kingdom is the Business School, established in 1902 by Sir William Ashley.
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Grew in the Midlands Enlightenment of the 18th-century and Industrial Revolution subsequently, which in economic expansion, technology, and science saw advances, producing a series of innovations that laid many of the foundations of modern industrial society, was Birmingham, a market town in the medieval period. Enjoy international reputations were Birmingham's institutions of culture that were major - the Birmingham Royal Ballet, the Symphony Orchestra of Birmingham City, the Study of Birmingham, the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, and the Birmingham Repertory Theatre; and Birmingham has influential and vibrant grassroots music, art, culinary and literary scenes.
By traffic of passengers, the seventh busiest airport in the UK and outside the London area the third busiest, after Edinburgh and Manchester, is Birmingham Airport, located 6 miles (9.7 km) east of the city centre in the neighbouring borough of Solihull. Europe's local authority that is largest in terms of the covering population with 101 councillors, as of 2018, representing 77 wards, is Birmingham City Council.
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The largest centre in Great Britain for employment in health, education, and public administration is Birmingham; and the centre that is second largest outside London for financial and other business services employment after Leeds. Made Birmingham an important centre of Victorian art, within the Arts and Crafts and Pre-Raphaelite movements particularly, was the influence of the Royal Birmingham Soc. of Artists and the Birmingham School of Art. Address to many venues for leisure and entertainment, including Europe's largest complex Star City as well as Europe's first out-of-city-centre entertainment and leisure complex Resorts World Birmingham owned by the Genting Group, is Birmingham.
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Dialogue on intangible cultural heritage underway at RGU
RONO HILLS, Nov 19: A two-day colloquium, ‘Dialogue on intangible cultural heritage of communities’, got underway at the Arunachal Institute of Tribal Studies (AITS) at the Rajiv Gandhi University (RGU) campus here on Monday.
The colloquium is organized by the AITS in collaboration with New Delhi-based Intangible Culture Heritage (ICH) Division of the Indian National Trust for Art & Cultural Heritage (INTACH).
Addressing the inaugural ceremony as chief guest, RGU Vice-Chancellor (in-charge) Prof A Mitra said that, in addition to its role as a provider of quality higher education, the university is also mandated in its charter to document and assist in the promotion of the rich culture of the tribes of the state.
Prof Mitra underlined the importance of organising such programmes along with academic works and research, and mentioned how collaborations with the communities are “essential to bring out more constructive output.”
INTACH ICH Division Director Nerupama Y Modwel spoke on how maintenance of heritage and community memories are essential, and said steps to preserve and understand them should be taken seriously.
In her keynote address, titled ‘Unseen but felt: This continuum of culture’, renowned poet and professor at Delhi University, Sukrita Paul Kumar, encouraged all community members to embrace their traditions and appreciate their cultural heritage.
She also spoke about how the skills and knowledge of tangible cultures are an asset for any community “in order to bridge the emerging cultural disconnect, and to ensure continuity.”
Earlier, AITS Director Prof Simon John said the idea of conducting the dialogue was to “engage with the communities and explore ways by which the intangible heritage can be protected and promoted.”
The INTACH’s Assam Chapter Convenor Dr Shiela Bora dubbed Arunachal “an anthropological museum,” and stressed on integrating modernity with tradition, “so that cultural heritage will be kept alive and preserved in its beautiful and unique form.”
A book titled Change and Continuity Among Tribes: The Idu Mishmis of Eastern Himalayas, edited by AITS Assistant Professor Dr Tarun Mene and Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh)-based Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Manav Sangrahalaya’s Director Prof SK Chaudhuri, was released jointly by Prof Mitra and Idu Mishmi igu (traditional priest) Ache Mimi.
The book offers a comprehensive understanding of the post-colonial research trends on the Idu Mishmi community of Arunachal Pradesh. It covers issues pertaining to daily life, socio-cultural aspects and resource mobilization.
Various intangible cultural heritages will be discussed and methodologies for documenting them will be explored during the two-day colloquium.
The inaugural day’s interaction was conducted by filmmaker Moji Riba, and the first session was moderated by Prof Jumyir Basar of the AITS. It witnessed ritual performances by shamans of various communities – Ache Mimi (Idu Mishmi), Tahor Muang (Adi), Geli Ete (Galo), Namgram Tama (Nyishi) and Khoangam Suyang (Nocte) – who also shared their personal histories and deliberated on the challenges faced by the traditional priests today.
Interactive sessions and demonstrations by artisans (wood carving and basketry) and Nyishi folk artists were moderated by AITS faculty members Dr Wanglit Mongchan and Lisa Lomdak. The participants spoke about the difficulties that they face in pursuing these dying traditional art forms.
An installation and demonstration of opo (traditional method of brewing), was followed by a presentation of the Kit Laam dance of the Rongmei Naga by Imphal (Manipur)-based Ragailong Cultural Songs and Dramatic Union.
Demonstration and interactive sessions with weavers, indigenous chiropractors, bead workers and Galo folk performance will be showcased on the second day. A crafts and weaves display was also a part of the event.
Some key features of the colloquium are discussion on the way forward for retention of the indigenous culture, interaction among CRPs on learning from each other, and suggestions on overcoming the challenges, that will take place on the second day.
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Intel Commits $50 Million with Pandemic Response Technology Initiative To Combat Coronavirus
relay April 8, 2020
Intel is pledging an additional $50 million in a pandemic response technology initiative to combat the coronavirus through accelerating access to technology at the point of patient care, speeding scientific research and ensuring access to online learning for students. Included in Intel’s effort is an additional innovation fund for requests where access to Intel expertise and resources can have immediate impact. This is in addition to prior announcements of $10 million in donations that are supporting local communities during this critical time.
The world faces an enormous challenge in fighting COVID-19. Intel is committed to accelerating access to technology that can combat the current pandemic and enable new technology and scientific discovery that better prepares society for future crises. We hope that by sharing our expertise, resources and technology, we can help to accelerate work that saves lives and expands access to critical services around the world during this challenging time.”
–Bob Swan, Intel chief executive officer
What It Funds
Approximately $40 million will fund the Intel COVID-19 Response and Readiness and Online Learning initiatives. The Intel COVID-19 Response and Readiness Initiative will provide funding to accelerate customer and partner advances in diagnosis, treatment and vaccine development, leveraging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), high-performance computing and edge-to-cloud service delivery. Through the initiative, Intel will help healthcare and life sciences manufacturers increase the availability of technology and solutions used by hospitals to diagnose and treat COVID-19. It will also support the creation of industry alliances that accelerate worldwide capacity, capability and policy to respond to this and future pandemics, building on Intel’s own experience in driving technology innovation in the health and life sciences arena.
The Intel Online Learning Initiative will support education-focused nonprofit organizations and business partners to provide students without access to technology with devices and online learning resources. In close partnership with public school districts, the initiative will enable PC donations, online virtual resources, study-at-home guides and device connectivity assistance. The Intel Online Learning Initiative builds on Intel’s long-standing commitment to technology that improves learning. It will begin immediately in regions with the greatest needs across the United States and expand globally.
The company has also allocated up to $10 million for an innovation fund that supports requests from external partners and employee-led relief projects, addressing critical needs in their communities. For example:
Intel is working with India’s Council of Scientific and Industrial Research and International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad, to deploy Intel client and server solutions to help achieve faster and less expensive COVID-19 testing and coronavirus genome sequencing to understand epidemiology and AI-based risk stratification for patients with comorbidities. Intel is also collaborating with India’s National Association of Software and Service Companies to build an application ecosystem and multicloud back end to enable population-scale COVID-19 diagnostics, to predict outbreaks and to improve medical care management and administration.
Medical Informatics Corp.’s (MIC) Sickbay™ platform, powered by Intel technology, is a solution that can turn beds into virtual ICU beds in minutes, help protect critical care workers from risk of exposure with clinical distancing and expand their care capacity Weeks ago, Houston Methodist Hospital deployed Sickbay for its vICU and was able to leverage it within one day to support monitoring of its COVID-19 patients and enable their care providers to monitor patients virtually without risking exposure in ICU rooms. Videos: Houston Methodist: Virtual ICU | Houston Methodist Deploys Medical Informatics Corp.’s Sickbay Platform (B-Roll)
In the U.K., Intel is working with Dyson and medical consultancy firm TTP to supply FPGAs for CoVent, a new ventilator specifically designed in response to the U.K. government’s request for help. The ventilator is pending regulatory approval and is designed to be bed-mounted.
Intel technology underpins critical products and services that global communities, governments and healthcare organizations depend on every day. We hope that by harnessing our expertise, resources, technology and talents, we can help save and enrich lives by solving the world’s greatest challenges through the creation and development of new technology-based innovations and approaches.
Coronavirus Relief to Date: This technology response initiative builds on Intel’s prior announcements of $10 million in donations that are supporting local communities during this critical time. Those donations include 1 million gloves, masks and other equipment for healthcare workers, $6 million from the Intel Foundation toward relief efforts in local communities and $4 million from Intel and its subsidiaries around the globe.
Additional Technology Efforts: As previously announced, Intel and Lenovo have teamed up with Beijing-based BGI Genomics to accelerate the analysis of genomic characteristics of COVID-19. Intel has also joined the global XPRIZE Pandemic Alliance along with other companies to fuel collaboration on solutions through shared innovation to effectively address the immediate needs of the crisis.
How You Can Learn More and Get Involved: Intel COVID-19 Response Website
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All posts tagged 2010
Alexander Bellos (born in 1969) is a British writer and broadcaster. He is the author of books about Brazil and mathematics, as well as having a column in The Guardian newspaper. After adventures in Brazil (see his Wikipedia page) he returned to England in 2007 and wrote this, his first book. It spent four months in the Sunday Times bestseller list and led on to five more popular maths books.
It’s a hugely enjoyable read for three reasons:
Bellos immediately establishes a candid, open, good bloke persona, sharing stories from his early job as a reporter on the Brighton Argus, telling some colourful anecdotes about his time in Brazil and then being surprisingly open about the way that, when he moved back to Britain, he had no idea what to do. The tone of the book is immediately modern, accessible and friendly.
However this doesn’t mean he is verbose. The opposite. The book is packed with fascinating information. Every single paragraph, almost every sentence contains a fact or insight which makes you sit up and marvel. It is stufffed with good things.
Lastly, although its central theme is mathematics, it approaches this through a wealth of information from the humanities. There is as much history and psychology and anthropology and cultural studies and philosophy as there is actual maths, and these are all subjects which the average humanities graduate can immediately relate to and assimilate.
Chapter Zero – A Head for Numbers
Alex meets Pierre Pica, a linguist who’s studied the Munduruku people of the Amazon and discovered they have little or no sense of numbers. They only have names for numbers up to five. Also, they cluster numbers together logarithmically i.e. the higher the number, the closer together they clustered them. Same thing is done by kindergarten children who only slowly learn that numbers are evenly spaced, in a linear way.
This may be because small children and the Munduruku don’t count so much as estimate using the ratios between numbers.
It may also be because above a certain number (five) Stone Age man needed to make quick estimates along the lines of, Are there more wild animals / members of the other gang, than us?
Another possibility is that distance appears to us to be logarithmic due to perspective: the first fifty yards we see in close detail, the next fifty yards not so detailed, beyond 100 yards looking smaller, and so on.
It appears that we have to be actively taught when young to overcome our logarithmic instincts, and to apply the rule that each successive whole number is an equal distance from its predecessor and successor i.e. the rational numbers lies along a straight line at regular intervals.
More proof that the logarithmic approach is the deep, hard-wired one is the way most of us revert to its perspective when considering big numbers. As John Allen Paulos laments, people make no end of fuss about discrepancies between 2 or 3 or 4 – but are often merrily oblivious to the difference between a million or a billion, let alone a trillion. For most of us these numbers are just ‘big’.
He goes on to describe experiments done on chimpanzees, monkeys and lions which appear to show that animals have the ability to estimate numbers. And then onto experiments with small babies which appear to show that as soon as they can focus on the outside world, babies can detect changes in number of objects.
And it appears that we also have a further number skill, that guesstimating things – the journey takes 30 or 40 minutes, there were twenty or thirty people at the party, you get a hundred, maybe hundred and fifty peas in a sack. When it comes to these figures almost all of us give rough estimates.
we are sensitive to small numbers, acutely so of 1, 2, 3, 4, less so of 5, 6, 7, 8, 9
left to our own devices we think logarithmically about larger numbers i.e lose the sense of distinction between them, clump them together
we have a good ability to guesstimate medium size numbers – 30, 40, 100
But it was only with the invention of notation, a way of writing numbers down, that we were able to create the linear system of counting (where every number is 1 larger than its predecessor, laid out in a straight line, at regular intervals).
And that this cultural invention enabled human beings to transcend our vague guesstimating abilities, and laid the basis for the systematic manipulation of the world which followed
Chapter One – The Counter Culture
The probable origins of counting lie in stock taking in the early agricultural revolution some 8,000 years ago.
We nowadays count using a number base 10 i.e. the decimal system. But other bases have their virtues, especially base 12. It has more factors i.e. is easier to divide: 12 can be divided neatly by 2, 3, 4 and 6. A quarter of 10 is 2.5 but of 12 is 3. A third of 10 is 3.333 but of 12 is 4. Striking that a version of the duodecimal system (pounds, shillings and pence) hung on in Britain till we finally went metric in the 1970s. There is even a Duodecimal Society of America which still actively campaigns for the superiority of a base 12 counting scheme.
Duodecimal Society of America
Bellos describes a bewildering variety of other counting systems and bases. In 1716 King Charles XII of Sweden asked Emmanuel Swedenborg to devise a new counting system with a base of 64. The Arara in the Amazon count in pairs, the Renaissance author Luca Paccioli was just one of hundreds who have devised finger-based systems of counting – indeed, the widespread use of base 10 probably stems from the fact that we have ten fingers and toes.
He describes a complicated Chinese system where every part of the hand and fingers has a value which allows you to count up to nearly a billion – on one hand!
The Yupno system which attributes a different value for parts of the body up to its highest number, 33, represented by the penis.
Diagram showing numbers attributed to parts of the body by the Yupno tribe
There’s another point to make about his whole approach which comes out if we compare him with the popular maths books by John Allen Paulos which I’ve just read.
Paulos clearly sees the need to leaven his explanations of comparative probability and Arrow’s Theorem and so on with lighter material and so his strategy is to chuck into his text things which interest him: corny jokes, anecdotes about baseball, casual random digressions which occur to him in mid-flow. But al his examples clearly 1. emanate from Paulos’s own interests and hobby horses (especially baseball) and 2. they are tacked onto the subjects being discussed.
Bellos, also, has grasped that the general reader needs to be spoonfed maths via generous helpings of other, more easily digestible material. But Bellos’s choice of material arises naturally from the topic under discussion. The humour emerges naturally and easily from the subject matter instead of being tacked on in the form of bad jokes.
You feel yourself in the hands of a master storyteller who has all sorts of wonderful things to explain to you.
In fourth millennium BC, an early counting system was created by pressing a reed into soft clay. By 2700 BC the Sumerians were using cuneiform. And they had number symbols for 1, 10, 60 and 3,600 – a mix of decimal and sexagesimal systems.
Why the Sumerians grouped their numbers in 60s has been described as one of the greatest unresolved mysteries in the history of arithmetic. (p.58)
Measuring in 60s was inherited by the Babylonians, the Egyptians and the Greeks and is why we still measure hours in 60 minutes and the divisions of a circle by 360 degrees.
I didn’t know that after the French Revolution, when the National Convention introduced the decimal system of weights and measures, it also tried to decimalise time, introducing a new system whereby every day would be divided into ten hours, each of a hundred minutes, each divided into 100 seconds. Thus there were a very neat 10 x 100 x 100 = 100,000 seconds in a day. But it failed. An hour of 60 minutes turns out to be a deeply useful division of time, intuitively measurable, and a reasonable amount of time to spend on tasks. The reform was quietly dropped after six months, although revolutionary decimal clocks still exist.
Studies consistently show that Chinese children find it easier to count than European children. This may be because of our system of notation, or the structure of number names. Instead of eleven or twelve, Chinese, Japanese and Koreans say the equivalent of ten one, ten two. 21 and 22 become two ten one and two ten two. It has been shown that this makes it a lot simpler and more intuitive to do basic addition and subtraction.
Bellos goes on to describe the various systems of abacuses which have developed in different cultures, before explaining the phenomenal popularity of abacus counting, abacus clubs, and abacus championships in Japan which helps kids develop the ability to perform anzan, using the mental image of an abacus to help its practitioners to sums at phenomenal speed.
Chapter Two – Behold!
The mystical sense of the deep meaning of numbers, from Pythagoras with his vegetarian religious cult of numbers in 4th century BC Athens to Jerome Carter who advises leading rap stars about the numerological significance of their names.
Euclid and the elegant and pure way he deduced mathematical theorems from a handful of basic axioms.
A description of the basic Platonic shapes leads into the nature of tessalating tiles, and the Arab pioneering of abstract design. The complex designs of the Sierpinski carpet and the Menger sponge. And then the complex and sophisticated world of origami, which has its traditionalists, its pioneers and surprising applications to various fields of advanced science, introducing us to the American guru of modern origami, Robert Lang, and the Japanese rebel, Kazuo Haga, father of Haga’s Theorem.
Haga’s Theorem
Chapter Three – Something About Nothing
A bombardment of information about the counting systems of ancient Hindus, Buddhists, about number symbols in Sanskrit, Hebrew, Greek and Latin. How the concept of zero was slowly evolved in India and moved to the Muslim world with the result that the symbols we use nowadays are known as the Arabic numerals.
A digression into ‘a set of arithmetical tricks known as Vedic Mathematics ‘ devised by a young Indian swami at the start of the twentieth century, Bharati Krishna Tirthaji, based on a series of 16 aphorisms which he found in the ancient holy texts known as the Vedas.
Shankaracharya is a commonly used title of heads of monasteries called mathas in the Advaita Vedanta tradition. Tirthaji was the Shankaracharya of the monastery at Puri. Bellos goes to visit the current Shankaracharya who explains the closeness, in fact the identity, of mathematics and Hindu spirituality.
Chapter Four – Life of Pi
An entire chapter about pi which turns out not only to be a fundamental aspect of calculating radiuses and diameters and volumes of circles and cubes, but also to have a long history of mathematicians vying with each other to work out its value to as many decimal places as possible (we currently know the value of pi to 2.7 trillion decimal places) and the surprising history of people who have set records reciting the value if pi.
Thus, in 2006, retired Japanese engineer Akira Haraguchi set a world record for reciting the value of pi to the first 100,000 decimal places from memory! It took 16 hours with five minute beaks every two hours to eat rice balls and drink some water.
There are several types or classes of numbers:
natural numbers – 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7…
integers – all the natural numbers, but including the negative ones as well – …-3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3…
which are also called rational numbers
numbers which cannot be written as fractions are called irrational numbers
transcendent numbers – ‘a transcendental number is an irrational number that cannot be described by an equation with a finite number of terms’
The qualities of the heptagonal 50p coin and the related qualities of the Reuleux triangle.
Chapter Five – The x-factor
The origin of algebra (in Arab mathematicians).
Bellos makes the big historical point that for the Greeks (Pythagoras, Plato, Euclid) maths was geometric. They thought of maths as being about shapes – circles, triangles, squares and so on. These shapes had hidden properties which maths revealed, thus giving – the Pythagoreans thought – insight into the secret deeper values of the world.
It is only with the introduction of algebra in the 17th century (Bellos attributes its widespread adoption to Descartes’s Method in the 1640s) that it is possible to fly free of shapes into whole new worlds of abstract numbers and formulae.
Logarithms turn the difficult operation of multiplication into the simpler operation of addition. If X x Y = Z, then log X + log Y = log Z. They were invented by a Scottish laird John Napier, and publicised in a huge book of logarithmic tables published in 1614. Englishman Henry Briggs established logarithms to base 10 in 1628. In 1620 Englishman Edmund Gunter marked logarithms on a ruler. Later in the 1620s Englishman William Oughtred placed two logarithmic rulers next to each other to create the slide rule.
Three hundred years of dominance by the slide rule was brought to a screeching halt by the launch of the first pocket calculator in 1972.
Quadratic equations are equations with an x and an x², e.g. 3x² + 2x – 4 = 0. ‘Quadratics have become so crucial to the understanding of the world, that it is no exaggeration to say that they underpin modern science’ (p.200).
Chapter Six – Playtime
Number games. The origin of Sudoku, which is Japanese for ‘the number must appear only once’. There are some 5 billion ways for numbers to be arranged in a table of nine cells so that the sum of any row or column is the same.
There have, apparently, only been four international puzzle crazes with a mathematical slant – the tangram, the Fifteen puzzle, Rubik’s cube and Sudoku – and Bellos describes the origin and nature and solutions to all four. More than 300 million cubes have seen sold since Ernö Rubik came up with the idea in 1974. Bellos gives us the latest records set in the hyper-competitive sport of speedcubing: the current record of restoring a copletely scrambled cube to order (i.e. all the faces of one colour) is 7.08 seconds, a record held by Erik Akkersdijk, a 19-year-old Dutch student.
A visit to the annual Gathering for Gardner, honouring Martin Gardner, one of the greatest popularisers of mathematical games and puzzles who Bellos visits. The origin of the ambigram, and the computer game Tetris.
Chapter Seven – Secrets of Succession
The joy of sequences. Prime numbers.
The fundamental theorem of arithmetic – In number theory, the fundamental theorem of arithmetic, also called the unique factorization theorem or the unique-prime-factorization theorem, states that every integer greater than 1 either is a prime number itself or can be represented as the product of prime numbers.
The Goldbach conjecture – one of the oldest and best-known unsolved problems in number theory and all of mathematics. It states that, Every even integer greater than 2 can be expressed as the sum of two primes. The conjecture has been shown to hold for all integers less than 4 × 1018, but remains unproven despite considerable effort.
Neil Sloane’s idea of persistence – The number of steps it takes to get to a single digit by multiplying all the digits of the preceding number to obtain a second number, then multiplying all the digits of that number to get a third number, and so on until you get down to a single digit. 88 has a persistence of three.
88 → 8 x 8 = 64 → 6 x 4 = 24 → 2 x 4 = 8
John Horton Conway’s idea of the powertrain – For any number abcd its powertrain goes to abcd, in the case of numbers with an odd number of digits the final one has no power, abcde’s powertrain is abcde.
The Recamán sequence Subtract if you can, unless a) it would result in a negative number or b) the number is already in the sequence. The result is:
0, 1, 3, 6, 2, 7, 13, 20, 12, 21, 11….
Gijswijt’s sequence a self-describing sequence where each term counts the maximum number of repeated blocks of numbers in the sequence immediately preceding that term.
1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 1, …
Perfect number A perfect number is any number that is equal to the sum of its factors. Thus 6 – its factors (the numbers which divided into it) are 1, 2 and 3. Which also add up to (are the sum of) 6. The next perfect number is 28 because its factors – 1, 2, 4, 7, 14 – add up to 28. And so on.
Amicable numbers A number is amicable if the sum of the factors of the first number equals the second number, and if the sum of the factors of the second number equals the first. The factors of 220 are 1, 2, 4, 5, 10, 11, 20, 22, 44, 55 and 110. Added together these make 284. The factors of 284 are 1, 2, 4, 71 and 142. Added together they make 220!
Sociable numbers In 1918 Paul Poulet invented the term sociable numbers. ‘The members of aliquot cycles of length greater than 2 are often called sociable numbers. The smallest two such cycles have length 5 and 28’
Perfect, amicable and sociable numbers
Mersenne’s prime A prime number which can be written in the form 2n – 1 a prime number that is one less than a power of two. That is, it is a prime number of the form Mn = 2n − 1 for some integer n. The exponents n which give Mersenne primes are 2, 3, 5, 7, 13, 17, 19, 31, … and the resulting Mersenne primes are 3, 7, 31, 127, 8191, 131071, 524287, 2147483647, …
These and every other sequence ever created by humankind are documented on The On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences (OEIS), also cited simply as Sloane’s. This is an online database of integer sequences, created and maintained by Neil Sloane while a researcher at AT&T Labs.
On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences
Chapter Eight – Gold Finger
The golden section a number found by dividing a line into two parts so that the longer part divided by the smaller part is also equal to the whole length divided by the longer part.
Phi The number is often symbolized using phi, after the 21st letter of the Greek alphabet. In an equation form:
a/b = (a+b)/a = 1.6180339887498948420 …
As with pi (the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter), the digits go on and on, theoretically into infinity. Phi is usually rounded off to 1.618.
The Golden Ratio
The Fibonnaci sequence Each number in the sequence is the sum of the two numbers that precede it. So the sequence goes: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, and so on. The mathematical equation describing it is Xn+2= Xn+1 + Xn.
as the basis of seeds in flowerheads, arrangement of leaves round a stem, design of nautilus shell and much more.
The Fibonnaci sequence
Chapter Nine – Chance Is A Fine Thing
A chapter about probability and gambling.
Impossibility has a value 0, certainty a value 1, everything else is in between. Probabilities can be expressed as fractions e.g. 1/6 chance of rolling a 6 on a die, or as percentages, 16.6%, or as decimals, 0.16…
The probability is something not happening is 1 minus the probability of that thing happening.
Probability was defined and given mathematical form in 17th century. One contribution was the questions the Chevalier de Méré asked the mathematical prodigy Blaise Pascal. Pascal corresponded with his friend, Pierre de Fermat, and they worked out the bases of probability theory.
Expected value is what you can expect to get out of a bet. Bellos takes us on a tour of the usual suspects – rolling dice, tossing coins, and roulette (invented in France).
Payback percentage if you bet £10 at craps, you can expect – over time – to receive an average of about £9.86 back. In other words craps has a payback percentage of 98.6 percent. European roulette has a payback percentage of 97.3 percent. American roulette, 94.7 percent. On other words, gambling is a fancy way of giving your money away. A miserly slot machine has a payback percentage of 85%. The National Lottery has a payback percentage of 50%.
The law of large numbers The more you play a game of chance, the more likely the results will approach the statistical probability. Toss a coin three times, you might get three heads. Toss a coin a thousand times, the chances are you will get very close the statistical probability of 50% heads.
The law of very large numbers With a large enough sample, outrageous coincidences become likely.
The gambler’s fallacy The mistaken belief that, if something happens more frequently than normal during a given period, it will happen less frequently in the future (or vice versa). In other words, that a random process becomes less random, and more predictable, the more it is repeated.
The birthday paradox The probability that, in a set of n randomly chosen people, some pair of them will have the same birthday. By the pigeonhole principle, the probability reaches 100% when the number of people reaches 367 (since there are only 366 possible birthdays, including February 29). However, 99.9% probability is reached with just 70 people, and 50% probability with 23 people. (These conclusions are based on the assumption that each day of the year (excluding February 29) is equally probable for a birthday.) In other words you only need a group of 23 people to have an evens chance that two of them share a birthday.
The drunkard’s walk
The difficulty of attaining true randomness and the human addiction to finding meaning in anything.
The distinction between playing strategy (best strategy to win a game) and betting strategy (best strategy to maximise your winnings), not always the same.
Chapter Ten – Situation Normal
Carl Friedrich Gauss, the bell curve, normal distribution aka Gaussian distribution. Normal or Gaurrian distribution results in a bell curve. Bellos describes the invention and refinement of the bell curve (he explains that ‘the long tail’ results from a mathematician who envisioned a thin bell curve as looking like two kangaroos facing each other with their long tails heading off in opposite directions). And why
Regression to the mean – if the outcome of an event is determined at least in part by random factors, then an extreme event will probably be followed by one that is less extreme. And recent devastating analyses which show how startlingly random sports achievements are, from leading baseball hitters to Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski’s analysis of the form of the England soccer team.
Chapter Eleven – The End of the Line
Two breakthroughs which paved the way for modern i.e. 20th century, maths: the invention of non-Euclidean geometry, specifically the concept of hyperbolic geometry. To picture this draw a triangle on a Pringle. it is recognisably a triangle but all its angles do not add up to 180°, therefore it defies, escapes, eludes all the rule of Euclidean geometry, which were designed for flat 2D surfaces.
Bellos introduces us to Daina Taimina, a maths prof at Cornell University, who invented a way of crocheting hyperbolic surfaces. The result looks curly, like curly kale or the surface of coral.
Anyway, the breakaway from flat 2-D Euclidean space led to theories about curved geometry, either convex like a sphere, or hyperbolic like the pringle. It was this notion of curved space, which paved the way for Einstein’s breakthrough ideas in the early 20th century.
The second big breakthrough was Georg Cantor’s discovery that you can have many different types of infinity. Until Cantor the mathematical tradition from the ancient Greeks to Galileo and Newton had fought shy of infinity which threatened to disrupt so many formulae.
Cantor’s breakthrough was to stop thinking about numbers, and instead think of sets. This is demonstrated through the paradoxes of Hilbert’s Hotel. You need to buckle your safety belt to understand it.
Hilbert’s Paradox of the Grand Hotel
This is easily the best book about maths I’ve ever read. It gives you a panoramic history of the subject which starts with innumerate cavemen and takes us to the edge of Einstein’s great discoveries. But Bellos adds to it all kinds of levels and abilities.
He is engaging and candid and funny. He is fantastically authoritative, taking us gently into forests of daunting mathematical theory without placing a foot wrong. He’s a great explainer. He knows a good story when he sees one, and how to tell it engagingly. And in every chapter there is a ‘human angle’ as he describes his own personal meetings and interviews with many of the (living) key players in the world of contemporary maths, games and puzzles.
Like the Ian Stewart book but on a vastly bigger scale, Bellos makes you feel what it is like to be a mathematician, not just interested in nature’s patterns (the basis of Stewart’s book, Nature’s Numbers) but in the beauty of mathematical theories and discoveries for their own sakes. (This comes over very strongly in chapter seven with its description of some of the weirdest and wackiest number sequences dreamed up by the human mind.) I’ve often read scientists describing the beauty of mathematical theories, but Bellos’s book really helps you develop a feel for this kind of beauty.
For me, I think three broad conclusions emerged:
1. Most mathematicians are in it for the fun. Setting yourself, and solving, mathematical puzzles is obviously extremely rewarding. Maths includes the vast territory of puzzles and games, such as the Sudoku and so on he describes in chapter six. Obviously it has all sorts of real-world application in physics, engineering and so on, but Bellos’s book really brings over that a true understanding of maths begins in puzzles, games and patterns, and often remains there for a lifetime. Like everything else maths is no highly professionalised the property of tenured professors in universities; and yet even to this day – as throughout its history – contributions can be made by enthusiastic amateurs.
2. As he points out repeatedly, many insights which started out as the hobby horses of obsessives, or arcane breakthroughs on the borders of our understanding, and which have been airily dismissed by the professionals, often end up being useful, having applications no-one dreamed of. Either they help unravel aspects of the physical universe undreamed of when they were discovered, or have been useful to human artificers. Thus the development of random number sequences seemed utterly pointless in the 19th century, but now underlies much internet security.
On a profounder note, Bellos expresses the eerie, mystical sense many mathematicians have that it seems so strange, so pregnant with meaning, that so many of these arcane numbers end up explaining aspects of the world their inventors knew nothing of. Ian Stewart has an admirably pragmatic explanation for this: he speculates that nature uses everything it can find in order to build efficient life forms. Or, to be less teleological, over the past 3 and a half billion years, every combination of useful patterns has been tried out. Given this length of time, and the incalculable variety of life forms which have evolved on this planet, it would be strange if every number system conceivable by one of those life forms – humankind – had not been tried out at one time or another.
3. My third conclusion is that, despite John Allen Paulos’s and Bellos’s insistence, I do not live in a world ever-more bombarded by maths. I don’t gamble on anything, and I don’t follow sports – the two biggest popular areas where maths is important – and the third is the twin areas of surveys and opinion polls (55% of Americans believe in alien abductions etc etc) and the daily blizzard of reports (for example, I see in today’s paper that the ‘Number of primary school children at referral units soars’).
I register their existence but they don’t impact on me for the simple reason that I don’t believe any of them. In 1992 every opinion poll said John Major would lose the general election, but he won with a thumping majority. Since then I haven’t believed any poll about anything. For example almost all the opinion polls predicted a win for Remain in the Brexit vote. Why does any sane person believe opinion polls?
And ‘new and shocking’ reports come out at the rate of a dozen a day and, on closer examination, lots of them turn out to be recycled information, or much much more mundane releases of data sets from which journalists are paid to draw the most shocking and extreme conclusions. Some may be of fleeting interest but once you really grasp that the people reporting them to you are paid to exaggerate and horrify, you soon learn to ignore them.
If you reject or ignore these areas – sport, gambling and the news (made up of rehashed opinion polls, surveys and reports) – then unless you’re in a profession which actively requires the sophisticated manipulation of figures, I’d speculate that most of the rest of us barely come into contact with numbers from one day to the next.
I think that’s the answer to Paulos and Bellos when they are in their ‘why aren’t more people mathematically numerate?’ mode. It’s because maths is difficult, and counter-intuitive, and hard to understand and follow, it is a lot of work, it does make your head ache. Even trying to solve a simple binomial equation hurt my brain.
But I think the biggest reason that ‘we’ are so innumerate is simply that – beautiful, elegant, satisfying and thought-provoking though maths may be to the professionals – maths is more or less irrelevant to most of our day to day lives, most of the time.
Alex’s Adventures in Numberland on Amazon
Alex Bellos’s website
Alex Bellos Wikipedia article
by Simon on April 1, 2019 • Permalink
Posted in Books, History, Mathematics
Tagged 2010, abacus, Akira Haraguchi, Alex Bellos, Alex's Adventures In Numberland, algebra, Amazon, ambigram, amicable numbers, anzan, Arabic numerals, Arrow's Theorem, Babylonians, base 10, betting strategy, Bharati Krishna Tirthaji, Blaise Pascal, book, Brazil, Buddhists, Carl Friedrich Gauss, Chinese, curved space, Daina Taimina, Descartes, Duodecimal Society of America, Edmund Gunter, Egyptians, Einstein, Emmanuel Swedenborg, Erik Akkersdijk, Ernö Rubik, Euclid, expected value, fractions, France, French Revolution, gambling, Gaussian distribution, Georg Cantor, Gijswijt's sequence, Greek, Greeks, Guardian, Haga's Theorem, Hebrew, Henry Briggs, Hilbert's Hotel, Hindus, hyperbolic geometry, India, integers, irrational numbers, Japanese, Jerome Carter, John Allen Paulos, John Horton Conway, John Napier, Kazuo Haga, King Charles XII, Koreans, Latin, linear maths, logarithmic, Luca Paccioli, Martin Gardner, Mathematics, Mersenne's prime, Munduruku people, National Convention, natural numbers, Neil Sloane, non-Euclidean geometry, normal distribution, On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences, Paul Poulet, payback percentage, perfect number, persistence, phi, pi, Pierre Pica, Plato, playing strategy, prime numbers, probability, probability theory, Pythagoras, quadratic equations, rational numbers, regression to the mean, Robert Lang, rolling dice, roulette, Rubik's cube, Sanskrit, sexagesimal, Shankaracharya, Simon Kuper, sociable numbers, speedcubing, Stefan Szymanski, Sudoku, Sumerians, tangram, Tetris, the birthday paradox, the Chevalier de Méré, the drunkard's walk, the Fibonnaci sequence, the Fifteen puzzle, the fundamental theorem of arithmetic, the gambler's fallacy, the Goldbach conjecture, the golden section, the law of large numbers, the law of very large numbers, the long tail, the Menger sponge, the powertrain, the Recamán sequence, the Reuleux triangle, the Sierpinski carpet, tossing coins, transcendent numbers, Vedas, Vedic Mathematics, William Oughtred, Yupno, Zero
Posted by Simon on April 1, 2019
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2019/04/01/alexs-adventures-in-numberland-alex-bellos/
The Crimean War by Orlando Figes (2010)
This was the first war in history in which public opinion played so crucial a role. (p.304)
This a brilliant book, a really masterful account of the Crimean War, a book I reread whole sections of and didn’t want to end. It covers the military campaigns (along the Danube, in Crimea) and battles (at the Alma river, Balaklava, Inkerman) competently enough, maybe with not quite the same dash as the Crimea section of Saul David’s Victoria’s Wars – but where it really scores is in the depth and thoroughness and sophistication of Figes’ analysis of the political and cultural forces which led to the war in the first place and then shaped its course – his examination of the conflict’s deep historical roots and in its long lasting influence.
Thus the first 130 pages (of this 490-page text) deal with the background and build-up to conflict, and drill down into the issues, concerns, plans and fantasies of all the main players. Not just the British (though it is a British book by a British historian) but a similar amount of space is devoted to the Russian side (Figes is a world-leading expert on Russian history), as well as the situation and motives of the French and the Ottoman Turks, with insights into the position of the Austrian and Prussian empires.
The Holy Places
The trigger for the war has always struck anyone who studied it as ridiculously silly: it concerned the conflict about who should have control of the ‘Holy Places’ in Jerusalem, the Catholic church (championed by France) or the Orthodox church (championed by Russia). (Who could have guessed that the acrimonious theological dispute about the meaning of the word filioque which split the two churches in the 11th century would lead to half a million men dying in miserable squalor 800 years later.)
To recap: the life and preaching and death of Jesus took place in Palestine; by the time of the Emperor Constantine (c.320), Roman Christians had supposedly tracked down the very barn Jesus was born in, at Bethlehem, and the precise site of the crucifixion in Jerusalem – and begun to build chapels over them. By the 1800s there were well-established Churches of the Nativity (at Bethlehem) and of the Holy Sepulchre (in Jerusalem) with attendant monasteries, chapels and so on stuffed with Christian priests and monks of all denominations.
The situation was complicated by two factors. 1. In the 700s the Muslim Arabs stormed out of Arabia and by the 900s had conquered the Middle East and the North African coast. The Muslim world underwent a number of changes of leadership in the ensuing centuries, but from the 1300s onwards was ruled by the Ottoman dynasty of Turkish origin. The Ottoman Empire is alleged to have reached its military and cultural peak in the late 1500s/early 1600s. By the 1800s it was in obvious decline, culturally, economically and militarily. Many of the ‘countries’ or ‘nationalities’ it ruled over were restive for independence, from the Egyptians in the south, to the Christian ‘nations’ of Greece and Serbia in the Balkans.
What Figes’ account brings out in fascinating detail is the extent to which the Russian Empire, the Russian state, Russian culture, Russian writers and poets and aristocrats, academics and military leaders, were all drenched in the idea that their entire Christian culture owed its existence to Constantinople. The founding moment in Russia’s history is when missionaries from Greek Orthodox Byzantium converted the pagan ‘Rus’ who inhabited Kiev to Christianity in the 9th century. This newly-Christian people went on to form the core of the ‘Russians’, a people which slowly extended their empire to the Baltic in the North, the Black Sea in the south, and right across the vast territory of Siberia to the Pacific Ocean.
In a really profound way, which Figes’ book brings out by quoting the writings of its poets and philosophers and academics and Christian leaders, Russia saw itself as the Third Rome – third in order after the original Christian Rome and the ‘Second Rome’ of Constantinople – and felt it had a burning religious duty to liberate Constantinople from the infidel Turks (Constantinople, renamed Istanbul, being of course the capital of the Ottoman Empire). It is fascinating to read about, and read quotes from, this broad spectrum of Russian nationalist writers, who all agreed that once they’d kicked the Turks out of Europe they would rename Istanbul ‘Tsargrad’.
Alongside the deep and varied rhetoric calling for a ‘Holy War’ against the infidel Turks was the linked idea of the union of all the Slavic peoples. Russians are Slavs and felt a deep brotherly feeling for the Slavic peoples living under Ottoman rule – in present-day Serbia and Bulgaria in particular. The same kind of Russian intelligentsia which wrote poems and songs and pamphlets and sermons about liberating Constantinople, and – in extreme versions – going on to liberate the Christian Holy Places in Jerusalem, also fantasised about a great pan-Slavic uprising to overthrow the shackles of the infidel Turk, and uniting the great Slavic peoples in an Empire which would stretch from the Adriatic to the Pacific.
Intoxicating stuff, and this is where Figes is at his tip-top best, taking you deep deep inside the mind-set of the Russian educated classes and leadership, helping you to see it and understand it and sympathise with it.
The only snag with this grand Russian vision was the unfortunate fact that there is such a thing as Catholic Christianity, and that a number of the ‘nations’ of the Balkans were not in fact either Slavs or Orthodox Christians – e.g. the Catholic Romanians. In fact, there was a lot of animosity between the two distinct versions of Christianity, with the Catholics, in particular, looking down on the Orthodox for what they regarded as their more primitive and pagan practices.
The simmering conflict between the two came to a head at the two churches mentioned above, especially the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. The churches had become rabbit warrens themselves, with holy grottoes underneath and vestries and side chapels sprouting onto them, with both Orthodox and Catholics clerics building monasteries and so on in the immediate vicinity and claiming complete access and ownership to the sites.
The Ottoman Turks had done their best to resolve disputes between the squabbling Christians and there had even been a succession of treaties in the 1700s which laid down the precise access rights of each Christian sect. But when the silver star embedded in the floor of the Church of the Nativity by the Catholics was dug up and stolen in 1847 the ‘dishonour’ was so great that the new ruler of Catholic France became involved, demanding that the Ottomans cede the French complete control of the Holy Sites to ensure there wasn’t a repetition of the sacrilege.
In that same year, the religiously significant silver star was stolen that had been displayed above the Grotto of the Nativity. In 1851, the Church of the Nativity was under the control of the Ottoman Empire. But near Christmas of 1852, Napoleon III sent his ambassador to the Ottoman Empire and forced the Ottomans to recognise France as the “sovereign authority” in the Holy Land, which the Latins had lost in the eighteenth century. The Sultan of Turkey replaced the silver star over the Grotto with a Latin inscription, but the Russian Empire disputed the change in “authority,” citing two treaties—one from 1757 and the other from 1774 (the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca)—and deployed armies to the Danube area. (Wikipedia)
Egged on by the pan-Slav and religious zealots in his court, Tsar Nicholas I saw the opportunity to teach the Ottomans a lesson, to reassert Orthodox authority over the Holy Places, to spark the long-awaited Slavic uprising in the Balkans and to extend Russian power to the Mediterranean. Hooray! In May 1853 Russian forces moved into the two principalities which formed the border between Russia and the Ottoman Empire – the Danubian Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, ‘Danubian’ because the river Danube ran through them. The Ottomans moved armies up to face them, and the war was on!
Politics in depth
What sets Figes’ account apart is the thoroughness with which he explains the conflicting political and cultural pressures within each of the countries which then got drawn into this conflict.
France, for example, had recently been through a revolution, in 1848, which had eventually been crushed but did manage to overthrow the Bourbon monarchy and usher in the Second Republic. To people’s surprise the man who managed to get elected President of the Republic was Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, nephew and heir of the famous Napoleon Bonaparte. When Napoléon’s presidential term expired in 1851, he first organised a coup d’état in that year, and then the following year, reclaimed the imperial throne, as Napoleon III, on 2 December 1852. At which point the Second Republic changed its name to the Second Empire. (19th century French history is a hilarious farce of revolutions, coups, republics and empires, each one more incompetent than the last. Mind you, 20th century French history isn’t much better – between 1946 and 1958 the French Fourth Republic had 22 Prime Ministers!)
But that’s not the interesting stuff, that’s just the basic factual information: the interest Figes brings to his account is his analysis of the various political pressures which the new president found himself under from within France. Obviously the Catholic Right and many actual churchmen were calling for action to defend the rights of Catholics in the Holy Places; but there was a large left-wing grouping in France whose hopes had been crushed by in the 1848 revolution. Napoleon realised that he could reconcile these opposing factions by depicting war against Russia as a pro-Catholic crusade to the Church and as a setback to the autocratic Tsarist regime – which was widely seen on the Left as the most repressive and reactionary regime in Europe. On top of which a glorious French victory would of course cover secure his place as successor to his famous uncle.
Polish liberation was a big cause in France. It wasn’t so long since 1830 when Polish nationalists had risen up to try and throw off Russian control of their country. The rebellion was brutally put down and Tsar Nicholas I (the same Tsar who launched the Crimean offensive 20 years later) had decreed that Poland would henceforward be an integral part of Russia, with Warsaw reduced to a military garrison, its university and other cultural activities shut down.
A stream of Polish intellectuals and aristocrats had fled west, many of them settling in France where they set up presses, publishing newspapers, pamphlets, books and poems and establishing networks of lobbyists and contacts. Figes investigates the writers and activists who made up this Polish lobby, specifically Prince Adam Czartoryski, and explains how they went about demonising Russia (and you can understand why), losing no opportunity to exaggerate Russia’s threatening intentions and, of course, lobbying for the liberation of Poland. Figes is excellent at showing how the Polish activists’ influence extended into both British and French ministries and military hierarchies.
But this was just one of the many forces at work across Europe. All the way through his account of the war, which lasted two and a half years, the constellation of forces at work in France shifted and changed as public opinion evolved from feverish support of a war against the Russian aggressor to increasing war-weariness. It is absolutely fascinating to read how Napoleon III tried to manage and ride the changing positions of all these factions, the vociferous press, and fickle public opinion.
And the same goes for Britain. In the 1830s and 40s conflicts in the Middle East – not least the rebellion of Mehmet Ali, pasha of Egypt, who rebelled against his Ottoman masters and demanded independence under his personal rule for Egypt and Syria – had forced the British to realise that, corrupt and collapsing though it may be, it was better to have a weak Ottoman Empire imposing some order, rather than no Ottoman Empire and complete chaos over such a huge and crucial region.
Thus the French and British governments, though perennially suspicious of each other, agreed that they had to prop up what became known as ‘the sick man of Europe’.
Again where Figes excels is by going much much deeper than standard accounts, to show the extent of the ‘Russophobia’ in British politics and culture, identifying the writers and diplomats who showed a fondness for Turkish and Muslim culture, explaining how British diplomats, the Foreign Office, and the cabinet staked their hopes on British-led reforms of Turkey’s laws and institutions.
Figes presents not a monolithic slab called ‘Britain’, but a complex country made up of all kinds of conflicting interests and voices. For example, it’s fascinating to learn that the British had the most varied, free and well-distributed press in the world. A side-effect of the railway mania of the 1840s had been that newspapers could now be distributed nationally on a daily basis. The prosperous middle classes in Bradford or Bristol could wake up to the same edition of The Times as opinion leaders in London.
This led to the first real creation of an informed ‘public opinion’, and to a huge increase in the power of the press. And Figes is fascinating in his depiction of the robust pro-war politician Lord Palmerston as the first ‘modern’ politician in that he grasped how he could use the press and public opinion to outflank his opponents within the British cabinet. Thus the British Prime Minister, Lord Aberdeen, was against war and supported the moderate Four Points which a peace conference held in Vienna suggested be put to the Russians. But Palmerston, as Foreign Secretary, had a much grander, much more aggressive vision of attacking Russia on all fronts – in the Baltic, Poland, the Balkans, the Crimea and in the Caucasus.
Figes’ account goes into great detail about these other little-known fronts in the war – for example the repeated efforts by the British to storm the Russian naval port of Kronstadt on the Baltic, with a view to ultimately marching on St Petersburg! (The successive British admirals sent out to size up the plan consistently declared it impossible pp.337-339.) Or the plan to foment a Muslim Holy War amongst the tribes of the Caucasus, who would be levied under the leadership of the charismatic leader Imam Shamil and directed to attack the Russians. In the event there were several battles between Turks and Russians in the Caucasus, but Palmerston’s Holy War plan was never implemented (pp.336-337)
The summary above is designed to give just a taste of the complexity and sophistication of Figes’ analysis, not so much of the actual events which took place – plenty of other histories do that – but of the amazingly complex kaleidoscope of political forces swirling in each of the combatant countries, of the various leaders’ attempts to control and channel them, and of the scores of alternative plans, alternative visions, alternative histories, which the leaders were considering and which could so nearly have taken place.
Being taken into the subject in such detail prompts all kinds of thoughts, big and small.
One is that history is a kind of wreck or skeleton of what is left when leaders’ grand plans are put into effect and come up against harsh reality. History is the sad carcass of actual human actions left over when the glorious dreams of night time meet the harsh reality of day.
The Tsar dreamed of liberating the Balkans, creating a great pan-Slavic confederacy and throwing the Turks completely out of Europe, liberating Istanbul to become the centre of a reinvigorated empire of Orthodox Christianity.
The Polish agitators dreamed of throwing off the Russian yoke and creating a free united independent Poland.
Napoleon III dreamed of establishing French supremacy over a weakened Ottoman Empire, thus consolidating his reputation at home.
Palmerston dreamed of a grand alliance of all the nations of Europe – Sweden in the Baltic, France and Prussia in the centre, Austria in the Balkans, allied with the Turks and Muslim tribesmen in the Caucasus to push back the borders of the Russian Empire a hundred years.
Figes is just as thorough in his analysis of the forces at work in the Ottoman Empire, which I haven’t mentioned so far. The Ottoman Emperor also struggled to contain domestic opinion, in his case continual pressure from Muslim clerics, imams and muftis, and from a large section of educated opinion, who all dreamed of an end to the ‘humiliation’ of the Muslim world by the West, who dreamed of a ‘Holy War’ to repel the Russians and restore Muslim power and dignity.
All these shiny dreams of glory, honour, liberation and holy war ended up as battlefields strewn with the corpses of hundreds of thousands of men blown up, eviscerated, decapitated, butchered, bayoneted, as well as plenty of civilian women and children raped and murdered – all rotting in the blood-soaked soil of the Crimea, the Danube, the Caucasus.
No matter what glorious rhetoric wars start off with, this is how they always end up. In rotting human bodies.
Figes brilliantly shows how, as reality began to bite, the various leaders struggled to control the rising tides of disillusionment and anger: Napoleon III deeply anxious that failure in the war would lead to another French revolution and his overthrow; the Tsar struggling to contain the wilder pan-Slavic fantasies of many of his churchmen and court officials on the one hand and a steady stream of serf and peasant rebellions against conscription, on the other; and, strikingly, the Ottoman Emperor (and his British advisors) really worried that unless he acted aggressively against the Russians, he would be overthrown by an Islamic fundamentalist revolution.
In standard histories, the various nations are often treated as solid blocks – Britain did this, France wanted that. By spending over a quarter of his book on an in-depth analysis of the long cultural, historical, religious, technological and social roots of the conflict, Figes gives us a vastly more deep and sophisticated understanding of this war, and of the deeper social and historical trends of the time.
Many of which, of course, endure into our time.
Why read history, particularly a history of a forgotten old war like this? Because it really does shed light on the present. In a number of ways:
1. The area once ruled by the Ottoman Empire is still desperately unstable and racked by conflict – civil war in Libya, military repression in Egypt, chaos in northern Iraq, civil war in Syria. Almost all Muslim opinion in all of these regions wants to restore Muslim pride and dignity, and, whatever their factional interests, are united in opposing meddling by the West. And it doesn’t seem that long ago that we were living through the civil wars in former Yugoslavia, in lands where Catholic Croats, Orthodox Serbs and Muslim Bosnians were raping and murdering each other.
2. In other words, the religious and cultural forces which lay behind the Crimean War still dominate the region and still underpin modern conflicts. Again and again, one of Figes’ quotes from the pan-Slavic visions of the Russians or the Muslim doctrine of Holy War read exactly like what we read in the newspapers and hear on the radio today, in 2017. After all it was only as recently as March 2014 that Russia annexed the Crimea, an act most UN member states still consider an act of illegal aggression, and the Foreign Office consequently advises against any foreign travel to the Crimea.
165 years after the events analysed so brilliantly in this book, Crimea once again has the potential to become a flashpoint in a wider war between East and West.
What could be more relevant and necessary to understand?
3. And the book continually stimulates reflection not just about the possible causes of war, but about how national and religious cultures have eerily endured down to the present day. Figes paints a fascinating portrait of the fundamentally different social and political cultures of each of the belligerent countries – I was particularly struck by the contrast between the essentially open society informed by an entirely free press of Britain, as against the totalitarian closed society of Russia, which had only a handful of state-controlled newspapers which never criticised the government, and where a secret police could cart people off to prison and torture if they were overheard, even in private conversations, to utter any criticism of the tsar or the army. 160 years later Britain is still a raucously open society whereas journalism in Vladimir Putin’s Russia is a risky occupation and open opposition to the President has landed many of his opponents in gaol, or worse. Plus ca change… Also, it becomes quite depressing reading the scores and scores of references to Muslim leaders, mullahs, muftis and so on, insistently calling on the Sultan to put an end to Western interference, to declare a Holy War on the Western infidels, to attack and punish the Christians. Again, almost every day brings fresh calls from Al Qaeda or the Taliban or ISIS to defeat the infidel West. How long, how very, very long, these bitter hatreds have endured.
4. And the book offers another, more general level of insight – which is into the types of political pressure which all leaders find themselves under. The leaders of all the belligerent nations, as described above, found themselves trying to manage and control the often extreme opinion of their publics or churches or courts or advisors. How they did so, where they gave in, where they stood firm, and with what results, are object lessons modern politicians could still profitably study, and which give fascinating insight to us non-politicians into the sheer difficulty and complexity of trying to manage a big modern industrialised country, let alone a modern war.
The Crimean War was a shameful shambles for nearly all the participants. This book not only describes the squalor and suffering, the disease and dirt, the agonising deaths of hundreds of thousands of men in a pointless and stupid conflict – it sheds fascinating light on how such conflicts come about, why they are sometimes so difficult to avoid and almost impossible to control, and why sequences of decisions which each individually may seem rational and reasonable, can eventually lead to disaster.
This is a really outstanding work of history.
Memorable insights
The trenches The Siege of Sevastopol lasted from September 1854 until September 1855. Criminally, the British were completely unprepared for winter conditions in Russia (like Napoleon, like Hitler) resulting in tens of thousands of British soldiers living in pitifully inadequate tents, with no warm clothing, amid seas of mud and slush, so that thousands died of frostbite, gangrene and disease. In an eerie anticipation of the Great War both sides created elaborate trench systems and settled into a routine of shelling and counter-shelling. In between times there were pre-arranged truces to bury the dead, during which the opposing armies fraternised, swapped fags and booze and even toasted each other. In this element of prolonged and frustrating trench warfare,
this was the first modern war, a dress rehearsal for the trench fighting of the First World War. (p.373)
Alcohol 5,500 British soldiers, about an eighth of the entire army in the field, were court-martialled for drunkenness. It was rampant. Some soldiers were continually drunk for the entire 11-month siege.
Disease As usual for all pre-modern wars, disease killed far more than weapons. For example, in January 1855 alone, 10% of the British army in the East died of disease. Died. Cholera, typhoid and other waterborne diseases, combined with gangrene and infection from wounds, and frostbite during the bitter winter of 1854-55. Figes has a splendid few pages on Florence Nightingale, the tough martinet who tried to reorganise the wretched hospital facilities at Scutari, on the south side of the Black Sea. I was staggered to read that the Royal Inquiry, sent out in 1855 to enquire why so many soldiers were dying like flies, despite Nightingale’s intentions, discovered that the hospital barracks was built over a cesspit which regularly overflowed into the drinking water. As Figes damningly concludes, the British wounded would have stood a better chance of survival in any peasant’s hut in any Turkish village than in the official British ‘hospital’.
Nikolai Pirogov Figes goes into some detail about Florence Nightingale (fascinating character) and also Mary Seacole, who is now a heroine of the annual Black History Month. But Figes brings to light some other heroes of the 11-month long siege of Sevastapol, not least the Russian surgeon Nikolai Pirogov. Pirogov arrived in Sevastapol to find chaos and squalor in the main hospital, himself and the other doctors operating on whoever was put in front of them by harassed orderlies and nurses, as the allies’ continual bombardment produced wave after wave of mangled bodies. Finally it dawned on Pirogov that he had to impose some kind of order and developed the system of placing the injured in three categories: the seriously injured who needed help and could be saved were operated on as soon as possible; the lightly wounded were given a number and told to wait in the nearby barracks (thus not cluttering the hospital); those who could not be saved were taken to a rest home to be cared for by nurses and priests till they died (pp.295-298). He had invented the triage system of field surgery which is used in all armies to this day.
Irish A third of the British army consisted of Catholic Irish. This surprising fact is explained when you learn that the army was recruited from the poorest of the urban and rural poor, and the poorest rural poor in the British Isles were the Irish.
The camera always lies The Crimean War is famous as seeing the ground breaking war reporting of Russell of The Times and some of the earliest photographs of war, by the pioneer Roger Fenton. However, Figes points out that the wet process of photography Fenton employed required his subjects to pose stationary for 20 seconds or more. Which explains why there are no photographs of any kind of fighting. He goes on to explain how Fenton posed many of his shots, including one claiming to be of soldiers wearing thick winter wear – which was in fact taken in sweltering spring weather – and his most famous photo, of the so-called Valley of Death after the Light Brigade charged down it into the Russian guns – in which Fenton carefully rearranged the cannonballs to create a more artistic effect.
The Valley of the Shadow of Death (1855) by Roger Fenton
This reminded me of the account of Felice Beato I read in Robert Bickers’ The Scramble for China. Beato was an Italian–British photographer, one of the first people to take photographs in East Asia and one of the first war photographers. Beato was allowed into the Chinese forts at Taku after the British had captured them in 1860 towards the climax of the Second Opium War and – he also arranged the bodies to create a more pleasing aesthetic and emotional effect.
Interior of the North Fort at Taku (1860) by Felice Beato
The Crimean War on Amazon
Orlando Figes website
Crimean War Wikipedia article
The immediate causes of the Crimean War on the Victorian web website
Other blog posts about Empire
Artist and Empire @ Tate Britain (2016)
Unfinished Empire by John Darwin (2012)
The Global Seven Years War by Daniel A. Baugh (2011)
The Scramble for China by Robert Bickers (2011)
Civilisation: The West and the Rest by Niall Ferguson (2011)
The Inheritance of Rome by Chris Wickham (2009) Chapters 1 – 8
Victoria’s Wars by Saul David (2006)
Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire by Niall Ferguson (2004)
Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World by Niall Ferguson (2003)
American Colonies by Alan Taylor (2001)
King Leopold’s Ghost by Adam Hochschild (1999)
The Scramble For Africa by Thomas Pakenham (1991)
Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe 900-1900 by Alfred W. Crosby (1986)
The Boer War 1899-1902 by Thomas Pakenham (1979)
Reviews of Rudyard Kipling
Posted in European History, History, War
Tagged 1853, 1854, 1855, 2010, Adam Czartoryski, Austro-Hungarian Empire, Battle of Balaklava, Battle of Inkerman, battle of the Alma, British Empire, Bulgaria, Byzantium, cholera, Christianity, church of the Holy Sepulchre, church of the Nativity, Constantinople, Crimean War, Danubian Principalities, Egypt, Felice Beato, Florence Nightingale, France, French Empire, Greece, Holy War, Istanbul, Jerusalem, Kiev, Lord Aberdeen, Lord Palmerston, Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, Mehmet Ali, Moldavia, Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon III, Nicholas I, Nikolai Pirogov, Orlando Figes, Orthodox Christianity, Ottoman Empire, Poland, River Danube, Roger Fenton, Roman Catholic, Rus, Russian Empire, Russophobia, Saul David, Scutari, Second Republic, Serbia, Sevastapol, Siege of Sevastopol, Syria, the Balkans, the Baltic, the Black sea, the Caucasus, the Crimea, the Crimean War, the Danube, the Holy Places, the Light Brigade, the Slavs, the Valley of Death, Tsargrad, Victoria's Wars, Wallachia, William Russell
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2017/07/10/the-crimean-war-orlando-figes/
Shaped by War by Don McCullin (2010)
I felt I was in the right place at the right time. I had an almost magnetic emotional sense of direction pulling me to extraordinary places. (p.37)
In 2010 the Imperial War Museum held an exhibition of the war-related photos of Don McCullin. This is the large-format, coffee table book of the exhibition. It features a lot of his best-known work but also a number of previously unpublished photos, alongside some of his less well-known colour photos, and documentary records of his numerous trips, including passport photos and the covers of the magazines the work ended up appearing in. The final pages feature a selection of the powerful black-and-white photos he’s been taking more recently around his home, a renovated farmhouse in Somerset.
Many of the wars are introduced with explanations of the situations Don flew into and what he observed there, and so this handsome book amounts to an autobiography told through pictures of war. It’s divided into five sections:
Early years 1935-1957
Discovering photojournalism 1958-1966
The Sunday Times 1967-1978
Changing Times 1976-1983
A new direction 1983-2009
The photos are printed large and on good quality glossy paper. They come across much powerfully than in his autobiography, Unreasonable Behaviour. The bigger pages, and gloss shine, makes a surprising difference.
I’ve read criticism of this book about the way that many of the photos are shown in the context of the original newspaper or magazine pages where they were first published. But, for me, seeing the yellowed pages of old Sunday Times magazines, and the words that journos and sub-editors have put round them, vastly increases their impact. Plus there’s an element of nostalgia for me, as I began to read newspapers in the early 1970s and so the layout and typefaces and picture quality reminds me of my youth.
Cover story photo for the Sunday Times magazine, July 1970
The inclusion of the original magazine spreads also reminds you that McCullin was a jobbing photographer, going to sometimes extraordinary lengths to get the shot that conveyed a situation, a plight, a crisis. Not an artist. He is very insistent about this. Commenting on his single most famous image, the shell-shocked American soldier at Hue in Vietnam, he comments:
There’s an iconic look about it and you have to be careful about icons, because they can border on art. I have to be mindful about playing that card because I don’t want to be associated with art. I’m a photographer. I’m a photojournalist or whatever you want to call me. But I don’t belong to the world of art. (p.82)
Below are links to some of the images in the book. After an opening sketching out McCullin’s very tough, deprived childhood in squalid Finsbury Park, each section of the book has introductory text explaining the background to the war in question, as well as anecdotes about how he got to the scene, what he witnessed, the struggle to get the defining shot. There are also memories of colleagues he worked with, quite a few of whom died along the way, highlighting how many times he just made it, was lucky, avoided bullets, shells and grenade while those about him were not so lucky.
American Troops Looking across the Wall, Berlin (1961)
Turkish Cypriot sprinting from a cinema door under fire, Limassol, Cyprus, 1964
Refugee, Hue, Vietnam 1968
Orphanage, Biafra, 1969
Mother and starving child in Bangladesh, 1971
Christian gunmen in the foyer of a Holiday Inn battle Palestinians in Beirut, Lebanon 1976
Another notable thing about the book is the number of colour photos, from a man known mainly for his preference for black and white. The coloured ones are just as good.
Cover photo for the Sunday Times magazine, March 1968
The photos are grim and powerful but what comes over most from the text is how much he is now ashamed, embarrassed and even disgusted at the way he sometimes behaved, at the situations he found himself in, at the continual nagging feeling that he was exploiting people and their terrible suffering.
I’m ashamed of it, of all the things I’ve seen in my life, all the blood, all the burnt children. I’m disgusted with the whole business. (p.160)
Which begs the question – How should we feel? The people who buy and look at these photos for ‘pleasure’?
The short last section concludes with a few of his landscapes and still lifes: louring photos of the Somerset countryside around his farmyard home, and still lifes he has carefully arranged, unique combinations of traditional English flowers and fruits with artefacts brought back from his travels.
Still life 1989
Somerset 2008
He only photographs the landscapes in winter. He likes the skeletal structure of the trees and the spareness of the landscape. Also, he dislikes it if people compare the landscapes to war photos or imply they contain the psychological damage of his war experiences.
I like my landscape photographs to have the most perfect composition, because I want them to be kind on the eye. I want you to fall in love with them. You’re not going to love one of my war photographs, because they were never made for that reason. But my landscapes are for you to enjoy. (p.185)
As with the autobiography, the book ends with a hymn of appreciation to the beauty of the landscape around his house. It is very moving, after all the mayhem he has witnessed and described, for him to end the book watching the trout dance in the nearby stream, and for us to learn that he bought the land on the other side of the stream so that no-one could hunt and shoot the deer who sometimes cross it.
Enough of killing.
Shaped by War by Don McCullin Don McCullin was published by Jonathan Cape in 2010. All references and quotes are to the 2010 hardback edition.
Shaped by War on Amazon
Press release for Shaped by War: Photographs by Don McCullin @ the Imperial War Museum
Review of Unreasonable Behaviour by Don McCullin
Don McCullin: The New Definitive Edition on Amazon
India by Don McCullin on Amazon
Don McCullin In Africa on Amazon
Southern Frontiers: A Journey Across The Roman Empire on Amazon
2016 Don McCullin interview with the Financial Times
Don McCullin Wikipedia article
Review of Tim Page’s Nam (1983)
Review of Dispatches by Michael Herr (1977)
Reviews of photography exhibitions
Malick Sidibé @ Somerset House (January 2017)
Paul Strand: Photography and Film for the 20th Century @ the Victoria and Albert Museum (June 2016)
Unseen City: Photos by Martin Parr @ Guildhall Art Gallery (March 2016)
Strange and Familiar: Britain as Revealed by International Photographers @ Barbican Art (March 2016)
The World of Charles and Ray Eames @ the Barbican (November 2015)
Peter Kennard @ Imperial War Museum London (April 2015)
Beard @ Somerset House (March 2015)
Dennis Hopper – The Last Album @ Royal Academy (August 2014)
Only in England @ the Science Museum (March 2014)
Man Ray Portraits @ the National Portrait Gallery (April 2013)
Everything Was Moving: Photography from the 60s and 70s @ the Barbican (November 2012)
Posted in Adventure, Art, History, Photography, Vietnam War, War
Tagged 2010, Don McCullin, exhibition, Imperial War Museum, photo, photograph, photography, Shaped by War
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2017/03/07/shaped-by-war-don-mccullin/
The Wilt Inheritance by Tom Sharpe (2010)
Another Tom Sharpe novel (in fact, the last one) and so another big country mansion full of grotesques – in this case the vast, architecturally bizarre Sandystones Hall in which reside big, roaring Sir George Gadsley – who is partial to very fat lady cooks (like Philomena Jones, who makes him roast pork with all the trimmings) and his long-suffering wife, Lady Clarissa – who has an idiot son by her first marriage, Edward, who has failed every exam ever put in front of him.
Which is why Lady Clarissa, learning that the nice woman who helps out sometimes with one of her charities, Eva Wilt, has a husband who’s a lecturer at the local Uni and might be prepared to tutor Edward during the summer holidays, offers to pay him a generous £1,500 a week, and let the whole family come to stay in a cottage on the estate for the summer.
Thus does Henry Wilt, Head of the ‘so-called Communications Department’ at the former Fenland College of Arts and Technology – now, of course, upgraded to a university – enter the frame, still being harassed by his wife, nowadays nagging him to show some ambition and get a better job so he can pay for his horrible teenage quadruplet daughters to go to private school. Instead he gets disgustingly drunk with his old mate Peter Braintree or goes down the allotment with old Peter Coverdale, who had the sense never to get married.
The book runs multiple plotlines in parallel, told in short, punchy chapters:
Lady Clarissa has an Uncle Harold, a retired Colonel, who needs to go into a nursing home but refuses to. He is finally decanted into the ‘Last Post Rest Home’ and hates it, shouting angrily at all the staff until he stumbles on the fact that Lady Clarissa takes advantage of her frequent journeys into town to bonk her chauffeur at the local Black Bear pub/hotel. The manager of the hotel is an old army man and tips the Colonel off. And so the Colonel blackmails Lady C, claiming the room she uses at the pub is fitted with cameras and he has plenty of evidence of her high jinks, plenty to show Sir George. And so Lady C is forced to let the old colonel permission leave the rest home and hole up in the Black Bear itself, where she is wondering what the hell to do next, when he very conveniently drinks himself into having a stroke and dying.
At St Barnaby’s school for young ladies Wilt’s daughters, the quadruplets, now around 15, are causing mayhem in true St Trinians manner. They stuff a potato up the exhaust and put sugar in the petrol tank of the car belonging to a teacher they dislike, Miss Young, the multiple complications of which give her a nervous breakdown. They watch a naturist swimming in the nearby lake and have the bright idea of stealing his pants and trousers – and adding a used condom found in nearby bushes – and sneaking them into the bedroom of their headmistress, Mrs Collinson, for her husband to find when he gets home late that night, leading to a massive drunken row.
When Wilt finally makes it to Sandystones Hall he is astonished by its raw ugliness, by the way it is stuffed with furniture from Imperial-era India and by the way Lady Clarissa makes a blatant pass at him which, in true Wilt style, he runs away from, red-faced.
After that it gets complex with the endless running on and off stage of different characters getting lost, shouting and swearing at each other, getting drunk and passing out, corpses and coffins and vicars and coppers all increasingly enmeshed in the tangled farce.
Briefly, Uncle Henry’s body is brought to the Hall to be buried but Sir George refuses permission to let it lie in the family chapel. While he and his wife argue, Wilt’s wicked teenage daughters steal the body from the coffin and replace it with a log – which surprises the local vicar when he and a pall bearer open it, and even more so the police who are called in to add to the general confusion.
The quads drag the colonel’s body off to a clearing in the wood, intending to burn it, but are interrupted by Edward the psycho son stalking towards them firing one of his step-father’s many guns, oops. Until one of the quads hits him a lucky blow on the head with a stone, Edward trips, and blows his own head off. Double oops.
So the quads mock up the scene to look as if it was Edward who stole the body in order to do macabre target practice at it, but then stumbled and accidentally killed himself (the last part being more or less true), and then the police – called by the horrified vicar – turn up with sniffer dogs and even Wilt’s old nemesis, Inspector Flint, arrives from Ipford. The bodies are found which leads to an orgy of recriminations in which everyone blames everyone else – Sir George, Lady Clarissa, Wilt, Eva, the quads – until all concerned break for a nice cup of tea served by the housekeeper, Mrs Bale…
And when they reconvene Sir George and Lady C have come to an arrangement. She will testify to Sir George always keeping the gun cabinet locked, but that Edward must have found the keys, stolen a gun, purloined Uncle Henry’s body and been using it for target practice when he had a terrible accident. (In return Sir George allows Edward’s body to be buried in the family crypt and pays for Lady C to take Uncle Henry’s corpse back to Kenya, where he wanted to be buried – and where she stays on for a three-month holiday, being shagged senseless by the chauffeur. While she is away, Sir George takes advantage of her absence to invite the obese cook, Philomena Jones, back into the kitchen and then into his bed where, a few months later, he dies happy, whether from all that pork crackling or from more strenuous exercise or from both, who can say?)
Inspector Flint – who thought he had finally implicated his old enemy, Wilt, in a particularly bizarre murder – is foiled once again. Eva extracts full payment for the tuition to the now-dead Edward from Lady Clarissa and uses it to pay for the quads to return to their private school, having fulsomely apologised to their headmistress. Relieved to have escaped yet another adventure, they drive back to their nice quiet home at 45 Oakhurst Evenue, Ipford.
And Wilt? He goes back down his local, the Hangman’s Arms, for a ruminative pint with his old mate, Peter Braintree, Head of English at the Tech – only to be told that the Tech is finally being closed down and that he and Peter will be made redundant. What does the future hold, for him, for them, for anyone?
The Wilt Inheritance by Tom Sharpe was published by Hutchinson Books in 2010. All quotes and references are to the 2011 Hutchinson paperback edition.
The Wilt Inheritance on Amazon
Tom Sharpe Wikipedia article
Tom Sharpe’s novels
1971 – Riotous Assembly – Absurdly violent and frenzied black comedy set in apartheid South Africa as three incompetent police officers try to get to the bottom of the murder of her black cook by a venerable old lady who turns out to be a sex-mad rubber fetishist, a simple operation which leads to the deaths of 21 policemen, numerous dogs, a vulture and the completely wrongful arrest and torture of the old lady’s brother, the bishop of Basutoland.
1973 – Indecent Exposure – Sequel to the above, in which the same Kommandant van Herden is seduced into joining a group of (fake) posh colonial English at their country retreat, leaving Piemburg in charge of his deputy, Luitenant Verkramp, who sets about a) ending all inter-racial sex among the force by applying drastic aversion therapy to his men b) tasks with flushing out communist subversives a group of secret agents who themselves end up destroying most of the town’s infrastructure.
1974 – Porterhouse Blue – Hilarious satire on the stuffiness and conservatism of Oxbridge colleges epitomised by Porterhouse, as a newcomer tries in vain to modernise this ramshackle hidebound institution, with a particularly cunning enemy in the ancient college porter, Skullion.
1975 – Blott on the Landscape – MP and schemer Sir Giles Lynchwood so loathes his battleship wife, Lady Maud, that he connives to have a new motorway routed slap bang through the middle of her ancestral home, Handyman Hall, intending to abscond with the compensation money. But he reckons without his wife’s fearsome retaliation or the incompetence of the man from the Ministry.
1976 – Wilt – Hen-pecked lecturer Henry Wilt is humiliated with a sex doll at a party thrown by the infuriatingly trendy American couple, the Pringsheims. Appalled by his grossness, his dim wife, Eva, disappears on a boating weekend with this ‘fascinating’ and ‘liberated’ couple, so that when Wilt is seen throwing the wretched blow-up doll into the foundations of the extension to his technical college, the police are called which leads to 100 pages of agonisingly funny misunderstandings.
1977 – The Great Pursuit – Literary agent Frederick Frensic receives the anonymous manuscript of an outrageously pornographic novel about the love affair between a 17-year-old boy and an 80-year-old woman, via a firm of solicitors who instruct him to do his best with it. Thus begins a very tangled web in which he palms it off as the work of a pitiful failure of an author, one Peter Piper, and on this basis sells it to both a highbrow but struggling British publisher and a rapaciously commercial American publisher, who only accept it on condition this Piper guy goes on a US tour to promote it. Which is where the elaborate deception starts to go horribly wrong…
1978 – The Throwback – Illegitimate Lockhart Flawse, born and bred in the wastes of Northumberland, marries virginal Jessica whose family own a cul-de-sac of houses in suburban Surrey, and, needing the money to track down his mystery father, Lockhart sets about an elaborate and prolonged campaign to terrorise the tenants out of the homes. Meanwhile, his decrepit grandfather has married Jessica’s mother, she hoping to get money from the nearly-dead old geezer, he determined to screw as much perverse sexual pleasure out of her pretty plump body before he drops dead…
1979 – The Wilt Alternative – After a slow, comic, meandering first 90 pages, this novel changes tone drastically when international terrorists take Wilt and his children hostage in his nice suburban house leading to a stand-off with the cops and Special Branch.
1980 – Ancestral Vices – priggish left-wing academic Walden Yapp is invited by cunning old Lord Petrefact to write an unexpurgated history of the latter’s family of capitalists and exploiters because the old bustard wants to humiliate and ridicule his extended family, but the plot is completely derailed when a dwarf living in the mill town of Buscott where Yapp goes to begin his researches, is killed in an accident and Yapp finds himself the chief suspect for his murder, is arrested, tried and sent to prison, in scenes strongly reminiscent of Henry Wilt’s wrongful arrest in the first Wilt novel.
1982 – Vintage Stuff – A stupid teacher at a minor public school persuades a gullible colleague that one of the parents, a French Comtesse, is being held captive in her chateau. Accompanied by the stupidest boy in school, and armed with guns from the OTC, master and pupil end up shooting some of the attendees at a conference on international peace taking part at said chateau, kidnapping the Comtesse – who turns out to be no Comtesse at all – and blowing up a van full of French cops, bringing down on themselves the full wrath of the French state.
1984 – Wilt On High – Third outing for lecturer in Liberal Studies, Henry Wilt who, through a series of typically ridiculous misunderstandings, finds himself, first of all suspected of being a drug smuggler and so bugged by the police; then captured and interrogated on a US air base where he is delivering an innocuous lecture, on suspicion of being a Russian spy; before, in a frenzied climax, the camp is besieged by a monstrous regiment of anti-nuke mothers and news crews.
1995 – Grantchester Grind – The sequel to Porterhouse Blue, following the adventures of the senior college fellows as they adopt various desperate strategies to sort out Porterhouse College’s ailing finances, climaxing with the appointment of a international drug mafiosi as the new Master.
1996 – The Midden – Miss Marjorie Midden discovers a naked ex-City banker trussed in bedsheets hidden in her rural farmhouse, The Midden, and then the ancestral hall she owns under attack from the demented forces of nearby Scarsgate police force led by their corrupt chief constable Sir Arnold Gonders, in a blistering satire on the corruption and greed of post-Thatcher Britain.
2004 – Wilt in Nowhere – Fourth novel about the misadventures of Henry Wilt in which his wife Eva and the 14-year-old quads ruin the life of Uncle Wally and Auntie Joanie over in the States, while Wilt goes on an innocent walking holiday only to be accidentally knocked out and find himself implicated in a complicated murder-arson-child pornography scandal.
2009 – The Gropes – Driven out of his mind by his wife, Vera’s, sentimental fantasies, timid bank manager Horace Wiley pretends he wants to murder their teenage son Esmond, who is therefore hustled off to safety by Vera’s brother, Essex used-car dealer, Albert Ponson. Albert gets the teenage boy so drunk that his wife, Belinda, leaves him in disgust – locking their bungalow’s internal and external doors so securely that Albert has to call the police to get released, with disastrous results – while Belinda drives with the unconscious Esmond back to her ancestral home, the gloomy Grope Hall in remote Northumberland where – to the reader’s great surprise – they fall in love and live happily ever after.
2010 – The Wilt Inheritance – Sharpe’s last novel, the fifth and final instalment of the adventures of Polytechnic lecturer Henry Wilt, his naggy wife, Eva, and their appalling teenage daughters, all of whom end up at the grotesque Sandystones Hall in North Norfolk, where Wilt is engaged to tutor the lady of the manor’s psychotic teenage son, and Eva gets caught up in complications around burying dead Uncle Henry, whose body the quads steal from the coffin and hide in the woods with dire consequences that even they don’t anticipate.
by Simon on September 8, 2016 • Permalink
Posted in Books, Comedy, Novel
Tagged 2010, book, comedy, comic novel, Eva Wilt, farce, Henry Wilt, Inspector Flint, Lady Clarissa Gadsley, novel, Sandystones Hall, Sir George Gadsley, The Wilt Inheritance, Tom Sharpe
Posted by Simon on September 8, 2016
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2016/09/08/the-wilt-inheritance-tom-sharpe/
Spies of the Balkans by Alan Furst (2010)
The map at the start shows the ‘Balkan escape route 1941’, highlighting the train track from Berlin to Salonika on the Greek coast. So we have a possible subject matter, and date, before we’ve read a word.
Like all Furst’s novels the text follows the adventures of one manly man, a good man, in this case the Greek detective Constantine ‘Costa’ Zannis who enjoys smooth, sophisticated sex with his English girlfriend. As in all Furst’s novels, events are very precisely dated, so as to embed them in the troubled events of war – this one taking place between 5 October 1940 and 5 April 1941, giving a powerful sense of the historical events the characters are caught up in, as well as a dynamic sense of movement to the story, pace, at times rising to genuine tension.
Like all Furst’s historical spy stories, the text is divided into a handful of parts or ‘acts’, in this novel, four:
1. Dying in Byzantium – 5 to 27 October 1940
Introducing us to Costa Zannakis, senior detective in the port town of Salonika, to his staff in his office on the Via Egnatia, to his family and girlfriend, the succulent English woman Roxanne (‘content, feline and sleepy, her damp middle clamped to his thigh as they lay facing each other,’ p.46), to his beloved dog Melissa, and other characters such as Elias, the venerable poet who remembers fighting with the partisans in the Balkan Wars before the Great War, Vangelis, the ancient head of the police department, and so on.
Roxanne introduces Costa to Francis Escovar, a posh English travel writer who he immediately suspects of being a spy. More importantly he meets Emelia Krebs who begs him to help her set up an ‘escape route’ for the harassed Jews of Berlin. Costa’s role is to manage their transfer on through Bulgaria, into Greece, and then on to Turkey. Being a good chap he agrees. He can use his contacts in the Bulgarian police to smooth the way, and also pull in favours with the Turkish consul to facilitate ongoing journeys into Turkey.
2. The Back Door To Hell – November 1940 to mid-January 1941
Mounting political threats finally solidify as Mussolini’s Italian Army invades Greece from Albania (which it had invaded in April 1939) on 28 October 1940. Costa is called up and moved north to the village of Trikkala, along with detachments of the Greek Army. His unit are housed in a school which becomes the main radio contact for the area, and here he is met by a liaison officer from Yugoslavia, Marko Pavlic.
A local criminal is suborned by threatening foreigners to locate the building with a radio mast and to place a white blanket on the roof. This acts as a marker for the Italian dive bombers which appear and bomb the schoolohuse. Costa only just survives because he happens to have been standing in the doorway, the frame of which protects him. He pulls Pavlic from the wreckage and is himself taken to hospital with cuts to leg, damaged wrist, one eardrum punctured. And eventually patched up and sent back to Salonika, having made his military contribution.
Alas, at the first sign of trouble his English lovely, Roxanne, suddenly needs to leave. She gets Costa to drive her to an airfield where she is being met by an RAF plane, no less. Costa realises, sadly, that Roxanne was always a British spy, ‘not on you, my darling,’ she insists, but still. Deception.
Ho hum, but every cloud has a silver lining and back into his life comes Anastasia ‘Tasia’ Loukas, who he’d had a fling with previously, and who now wants to test out some of the tricks she’s learned from being an enthusiastic bisexual during their period apart. Lucky old Costa.
Back in his office, Costa continues working through the plans to set up the escape route. He and Emilia settle into a routine of sending innocent-looking letters about business to fictional companies requesting fictional orders, in which are concealed coded details of the people being sent down from Berlin.
Costa uses his underworld contacts in Salonika (Sami Pal) to identify a leading underworld figure in Budapest, Gypsy Gus, who he flies up to meet and concludes a deal with to smooth the refugees’ passage through Hungary.
We follow the fraught journey across Europe of the Gruens, renamed the Hartmanns, who encounter various problems but overcome them, in Budapest thanks to the enthusiastic stewardship of Akos, the white falcon’, a teenage psychopath who Gypsy Gus puts in charge of ensuring the ‘packages’ safety.
At every step, Furst makes us aware of the threat, the permanent threat from the Nazis, SS, Gestapo spy machinery, designed to keep watch on everyone. And we are introduced to Haupsturmführer Albert Hauser, a tidy-minded Gestapo official who had been instructed to arrest the Gruens and is irked to find them disappeared. And so starts to keep tabs on their social contacts, including one Frau Krebs. — Thus giving the story an ominous threatening sense of a net closing in on Emilia.
Back in Salonika Costa’s boss in the police, Vangelis, then brokers a meeting with Nikolas Vasilou, the richest man in Salonika, who is persuaded to donate money to fund the escape route. The quid pro quo is that Vangelis has assured Vasilou that Costa might one day end up Head of Police in Salonika: a good man to have in your debt. OK. Here’s your money, Zannakis, spend it well.
As Vasilou’s Rolls Royce purrs away Costa catches a glimpse of Vasilou’s (third) wife, the matchlessly beautiful Demetria, and it is love at first sight!
3. A French King – mid-January to 9 February 1941
British SIS officers tell Escovil he has to manage the escape of an airman, Harry Byer, from Paris. Byer is an important scientist who rashly enlisted in the RAF, was shot down in France, rescued and transported to a safe house in Paris by the Resistance. Escovil has an uncomfortable meeting with Costa in which he forces him to take the mission. Costa travels to Paris, meets the French people guarding Byer, but there is a complication. When one of the French resisters takes him to the Brasserie Heininger for dinner, Costa nearly gets into an argument with a drunk SS man who, unfortunately, follows them to the secret hotel where Byer is being kept. In getting away, Costa is forced to shoot the SS man as he approaches their car.
So, Plan B, which is Costa goes to track down his uncle, old Uncle Anasta, who moved to Paris all those years ago. Amazed to see him, Anasta calls on contacts until Costa meets an amazingly smooth man who is obviously doing very well out of the occupation (the French king of the title) who arranges for them to join an illicit cargo flight which is carrying machine guns to Bulgaria, departing from a foggy field somewhere north of Paris.
Arriving at Sofia airport Costa and Byer are nearly put under arrest until he persuades the captain unloading the crates to phone his old friend, Ivan Lazareff, chief of detectives in Sofia. What it is to have friends! Lazareff takes him and Byer for a tasty restaurant lunch, arranges exit visas and later the same day, Costa is back in Salonika, greeted like a hero by his family, handing over Byer to a suspicious Escovil, before collapsing exhausted onto his bed.
4. Escape from Salonika – 10 February to 5 April 1941
10 February 1941. Back in his office Costa has to deal with some petty cases, then Escovil phones and irritates him by demanding a meeting and then demanding to know exactly how he got Byer out of Paris which – as it involved his uncle and Costa promised the rich Frenchman complete silence – he refuses to do.
Then he plucks up the courage to call Demetria, who he is completely besotted by – but she has gone, left with Vasilou for Athens. But then he opens one among the many letters waiting on his desk to read that she has escaped Athens on the pretext of visiting her mother and is a hotel in a village not 10 miles away. Costa takes a taxi there. They rendezvous in the place’s one shabby hotel. They sit on the bed, sad adulterers. If this was Graham Greene, just this adultery would give rise to hundreds of pages of suicidally-wracked guilt. Being Furst it only takes a glass of retsina before she’s slipping her silk panties over her garter belt and Costa makes the important discovery that her bottom is fuller and rounder than it appeared when she was dressed – and then that she is an ‘avid and eager lover without any inhibitions whatsoever’ with a fondness for fellatio. Lucky Costa. But she is another man’s wife, and not just any man, the richest man in town. This is all a very bad idea.
Next day a phone call out the blue for Roxanne, his former English lover. She drives round to his apartment. No romance, she is all business, every inch the hardened SIS agent. She describes the deteriorating situation in the Balkan countries which, one by one, are being forced to ally with Nazi Germany or will be invaded. One hope is to mount a coup in Belgrade against the pro-Nazi government. If a vehemently anti-Nazi regime can be put in place, the British will support it and that will hold up the Germans. Roxanne has come to ask Costa if he can pull strings, and contribute in a small way to the success of the coup. A wistful farewell and… she is gone!
1 March. King Boris of Bulgaria signs a pact with the Axis Powers and allows German troops to swarm into Bulgaria, not to occupy, to ensure ‘stability’ elsewhere in the Balkans. The border between Greece and Bulgaria is 475 km long.
As March proceeds Hitler threatens Yugoslavia and Costa makes arrangements for his friends and family to flee Greece. He secures visas for his lieutenant Gabi Saltiel and his family, and tells his own family they must go to Alexandria. Without him. He will stay and fight.
Costa takes a train to Belgrade where he meets up with the friend, Pavlic, who he pulled to safety from the bombed schoolhouse all those months previously and, along with a squad of hand-picked Serbian detectives, they carry out the British orders which are to arrest 27 senior Army officers and hold them in preventative custody while the Serb Air Force can carry out a coup, replacing the pro-Nazi government with an anti-Nazi one. Which is what – despite one or two hairy moments – happens.
Emilia is visited by the Gestapo man Hauser who adopts a polite tone but she is not fooled. When her husband returns home they realise they must part. She drives to see her grandfather (very rich) who has secured exit visas. Their chauffeur drives them all the way to the Swiss border which they cross with ease. Well, that was simple.
Costa’s office seems empty without Saltiel. Costa helps his family pack – even his beloved Melissa – then sees them off on a ship bound for Alexandria. Goodbye my beloved family.
A phone call from Demetria. She has finally left Vasilou. She is in a luxury hotel in Salonika. He takes a fast taxi there, runs up to her room, they order champagne, and in a few seconds she is just wearing bra and panties. And so on. It does seem to be a kind of law in these novels, that the men hold guns and the women hold penises.
The end is a sudden clot of plot. An anonymous letter, clearly from Escovil, includes one ticket on the last steamer heading to Alexandria, the Bakir. They go to board but the captain says, trouble with the engines, come back tomorrow. They’re lying in bed in the hotel next morning when the Germans begin bombing the city. The first hits are the ships in the port including the Bakir. They take what they can carry and trot to the train station. It is mayhem but they just about squeeze Demetria on the last train out of town. Costa plans to stay but has to hit a few surly men to get them to let Demetria get a tiny space on the jam-packed steps, so she implores him to stay. Thus it is that Costa ends up hanging onto the handrail by the door, one foot on the platform, almost swinging off at the bends. But instead of stopping at the next stop, the train accelerates through it and the next one, until it reaches the Turkish border. Without wanting to, he has fled Greece.
But Costa and Demetria have no visas and are just being turned away by an unimpressed Turkish official when a weedy little man pops up with Costa’s name on some list which he puts in front of the Turk – who jumps to his feet and salutes Costa! ‘Certainly he and his wife may enter Turkey!’ The little man is an agent of the British and tells an amazed Costa that he is now a captain in the British army! They will be taken to Izmir where they will help to co-ordinate the Greek resistance. They are safe. They will live!
And the little man who saved them? Is none other than the shabby little agent S. Kolb who has cropped up in numerous other Furst novels, helping out various protagonists. When his name is given on the penultimate page, I burst out laughing. It’s like the moment at the end of the movie Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves when the tall knight takes off his helmet to reveal it is – Sean Connery!
Although they deal with terrible events, there is a kind of Steven Spielberg sentimentality to Furst’s novels which means you are never really threatened, upset or afraid.
The political and strategic backgrounds
The timelines in Furst’s novels keep you on your toes regarding your World War Two knowledge and their depth of research into – here – the fast-moving political situation in the Balkans over a six month time period is fascinating.
Above all, the novels make you realise what it felt like day to day to live through the changing and generally grim events of these years. The story we on the British side are told is always very monolithic – Dunkirk, Battle of Britain, Blitz, the Desert War, D-Day, Victory.
Furst’s novels are very well-researched attempts to take you into the maze, the extremely complex mesh, of political developments on the continent, showing the reader the wide range of attitudes or opinions which were available for people to hold. Every European nation had to consider its position vis-a-vis not only the Nazis, but the likelihood of help from the Allies (Britain alone, before the Americans joined in December 1941) or the risk of entanglement with communist Russia. And every individual in those nations had to decide whose side they were on, how long they could delay making a decision, how things would pan out and affect them and their loved ones.
In Salonika, in the morning papers and on the radio, the news was like a drum, a marching drum, a war drum. (p.224)
Shucks, it was nothing
Something that places Furst’s novels a little on the simple side, psychologically, is that in all of them the protagonist is a hero: they may have foreign names but beneath the foreign clothes and foreign food and foreign languages, you can make out the lineaments of a clean-cut, all-American liberal fighting for Truth and Justice. Furst’s heroes abhor Hitler and his bully boys, they instinctively sympathise with the Jews or any other refugees. They are all decent men.
But if there is one thing we know about WW2 it is that it unleashed a very large amount of horrific indecency – betrayal, violence, torture, mass murder. Furst’s heroes not only never really see this, but even if they have minor adventures ‘in the field’, you can rely on them always returning to the healing presence of a round-bottomed young lady in their bed, trailing a winsome finger over lovely female contours, before making inventive love.
The carefree, problem-free sex (no periods, no pregnancy, no venereal disease) are symptomatic of fictions in which the hero encounters various problems, but has no inner problems or complexity. There is an untouchable innocence about the novels which is what makes them so easy and enjoyable to read. The Second World War without tears.
Furst has developed a relaxed easygoing style which easily incorporates the thoughts of the main characters. In the last two novels, however, I’ve noticed the characters starting to say ‘fuck’ quite a lot. I dare say lots of people did say ‘fuck’ or its equivalent during the war, but it is such an Anglo word that rather undermines the effort of setting the stories among foreigners, among Greeks and Turks and Hungarians. Once they all start saying ‘fuck’, they all sound like they’re in an American action movie.
Zannis walked back to the office. Fucking war, he thought. (p.172)
Shut your fucking mouth before I shut it for you. (p.183)
Go fuck Germans and see where it gets you, Zannis said to himself. (p.192)
They start to sound like Rambo or Bruce Willis or anyone out of The Godfather. The advent of ‘fuck’ also made me notice the way other aspects of Furst’s style have also become more unbelted, more American. This is a Gestapo officer reviewing his card index of suspects:
He returned to his list and flipped over to the Ks: KREBS, EMILIA and KREBS, HUGO. The latter was marked with a triangle which meant, in Hauser’s system, something like uh-oh. (p.177)
Uh-oh? This makes the supposedly fearsome Gestapo officer sound like a character in Scooby-Doo or The Brady Bunch. And here is Costa, trying to decide whether to phone his mistress at her home, given the risk her husband might be there and might answer the phone:
Zannis’s eye inevitably fell on the telephone. He didn’t dare. Umm, maybe he did. Oh no he didn’t! Oh but yes, he did. (p.175)
The blurbs on the cover talk about Furst’s sophistication but I think they’re confusing descriptions of exotic locations, nice meals in fancy restaurants and women slipping out of their cami-knickers with psychological depth or acuity. In moments like these Furst’s characters come perilously close to being pantomime figures.
As always, it’s only when listing them that you realise the scale and breadth of Furst’s imagination in creating such a multiplicity of characters whose paths cross and recross in fascinating webs of intrigue.
Constantine ‘Costa’ Zannis, detective in Salonika, a sea port in northern Greece.
Gabriel – Gabi – Saltiel, his assistant.
Vangelis, head of the Salonika police force.
Spiraki, head of the local office of the Geniki Asphakia, the State Security Bureau (p.21).
K.L. Stacho, Bulgarian undertaker, somehow mixed up with the mystery German in the first part of the book (p.22).
Roxanne Brown, Costa’s sexy English girlfriend, ostensibly head of the Mount Olympus School of Ballet (p.24) though when the Italians invade she is exfiltrated by RAF plane, suggesting she was always some kind of British agent.
Laurette, Costa’s lover from way back, from his early years growing up in Paris.
Balthazar, owner of a popular restaurant in Vardar Square (p.24).
Sibylla, the stern clerk in Costa’s office (p.27).
Ivan Lazareff, chief of detectives up in Sofia, capital of Bulgaria (p.28).
Emilia ‘Emmi’ Krebs, née Adler, rich Jewess from Berlin, who entreats Costa to smuggle into Turkey two Jewish children (Nathaniel and Paula) she’s brought with her all the way from Berlin (p.30).
Ahmet Celebi the Turkish consul (p.35).
Madam Urglu, ‘in her fifties, pigeon-chested and stout’, Celebi’s secretary (p.37), in reality the Turkish legation’s intelligence officer (p.142).
Elias, king of Salonika’s poets (p.41).
Francis Escovil, English travel writer Roxanne introduces to Costa, pretty obviously a spy (p.44).
Captain Marko Pavlic, Costa’s liaison counterpart from the Yugoslav General Staff (p.74).
Behar, young illiterate Greek thief, bribed to place a white sheet on the roof of the schoolhouse which has been commandeered by Greek soldiers after the invasion, which acts as a marker for dive bombers who score a direct hit on it, wounding Costa and Pavlic, and killing many others (p.80).
Anastasia ‘Tasia’ Loukas, who works at Salonika city hall, former lover with a bisexual twist (p.94).
Sami Pal, Hungarian crook in Salonika, dealing in forged passports among other things (p.103)
Gustav Husar aka Gypsy Gus, head of Sami’s gang in Budapest (p.107).
Ilka, once beautiful, still sexy, owner of the bar where Gypsy Gus does business (p.119)
Nikolaus Vasilou, richest man in Salonika (p.120).
Demetria, Vasilou’s stunning goddess wife (p.122).
Herr and Frau Gruen, rich Jews helped by Emmi Krebs to flee Berlin, given the names Herr and Frau Hartmann (p.123).
The vindictive woman who picks up on the fact the Hartmanns lied when they said they were going to Frau H’s mother’s funeral, and confronts them on the boat to Hungary (p.127).
Man wearing a maroon tie who follows Akos and the Hartmanns to their cheap hotel and who Akos scares off by slicing the tie with his razor sharp knife (p.131).
Akos (Hungarian for white falcon), psychotic young fixer for Gypsy Gus (p.119).
Haupsturmführer Albert Hauser, dutiful officer in the Gestapo sent to arrest the Gruen / Hartmanns a few days after they arrive safely in Salonika (p.135).
Traudl, Hauser’s departmental secretary, a ‘fading blonde’, ‘something of a dragon’ (p.177)
Untersturmführer Matzig, Hauser’s devoted Nazi assistant (p.136).
Colonel Simonides, of the Royal Hellenic Army General Staff, gives a speech to the top 50 people in Salonika, including Costa, explaining that sooner or later the Germans will intervene to support the Italians and will win and occupy Greece. Everyone in the room should prepare for that event (p.148).
Jones and Wilkins, two British Secret Intelligence Service operatives who arrive in a yacht from Alexandria, compel a meeting with Francis Escovil, and surprise him by handing him a mission to smuggle a British scientist out of Paris (p.160).
Harry Byer, British scientist, pioneer of location finding radio beams who foolishly enlisted in the RAF and got shot down over France. Smuggled by the resistance to a safe house in Paris. Jones and Wilkins want Escovil to use Costa to smuggle him out (p.161).
Moises, ancient Sephardic Jew who owns the best gunshop in Salonika (p.171)
Didi, French aristocratic woman who is Costa’s contact in Paris, and takes him to dinner at the Brasserie Heininger, then onto the hotel where Byer is being hidden (p.180).
The Brasserie Heininger. Like the Fonz saying Heeeeey or Captain Kirk saying ‘Beam me up Scotty’, this is the scene the audience waits for in every Furst novel, the appearance of this fictional up-market restaurant. Here Costa is taken to lunch there by his contact in the French Resistance and, as always, they are seated at table 14, the one with the bullet hole from the shootout which featured in the first novel in the series, Night Soldiers.
The drunken SS officer who nearly picks a fight with Costa at the Heininger.
French aristocrat guarding Byer at the Paris hotel (p.185). Typically, Costa guesses that Didi and this officer are lovers.
Uncle Anastas, Costa’s uncle who stayed on in Paris minding a second hand store in the vast flea market at the Porte de Clignancourt (p.194). He is astonished to see his nephew, then earnestly sets about using his contacts to get him smuggled out of Paris.
The unnamed friend of a friend who looks like a French king, smoothly accepts the $4,000 Costa gives him, and explains the process for being flown out of France (p.197).
An emigre Greek who drives them up to a field north of Paris (p.199).
The Serbian (?) pilot of the plane which flies them to Sofia (p.200).
Vlatko, a bulky pale-haired Serb detective who Pavlic elects his number two when he and Costa set about rounding up potential Army opponents of the Yugoslav coup (p.239).
Spies of The Balkans by Alan Furst was published in 2010 by Weidenfeld and Nicholson. All quotes and references are to the 2011 Phoenix paperback edition.
Spies of The Balkans on Amazon
Alan Furst Wikipedia article
Alan Furst’s website
Personal Tour: Alan Furst’s Paris
The Night Soldiers novels
1988 Night Soldiers – An epic narrative which starts with a cohort of recruits to the NKVD spy school of 1934 and then follows their fortunes across Europe, to the Spain of the Civil War, to Paris, to Prague and Switzerland, to the gulags of Siberia and the horrors of the Warsaw ghetto, in a Europe beset by espionage, conspiracy, treachery and murder.
1991 Dark Star – The story of Russian Jew André Szara, foreign correspondent for Pravda, who finds himself recruited into the NKVD and entering a maze of conspiracies, based in Paris but taking him to Prague, Berlin and onto Poland – in the early parts of which he struggles to survive in the shark-infested world of espionage, to conduct a love affair with a young German woman, and to help organise a network smuggling German Jews to Palestine; then later, as Poland is invaded by Nazi Germany, finds himself on the run across Europe. (390 pages)
1995 The Polish Officer – A long, exhausting chronicle of the many adventures of Captain Alexander de Milja, Polish intelligence officer who carries out assignments in Nazi-occupied Poland and then Nazi-occupied Paris and then, finally, in freezing wintertime Poland during the German attack on Russia.
1996 The World at Night – A year in the life of French movie producer Jean Casson, commencing on the day the Germans invade in June 1940, following his ineffectual mobilisation into a film unit which almost immediately falls back from the front line, his flight, and return to normality in occupied Paris where he finds himself unwittingly caught between the conflicting claims of the Resistance, British Intelligence and the Gestapo. (304 pages)
1999 Red Gold – Sequel to the World At Night, continuing the adventures of ex-film producer Jean Casson in the underworld of occupied Paris and in various Resistance missions across France. (284 pages)
2000 Kingdom of Shadows – Hungarian exile in Paris, Nicholas Morath, undertakes various undercover missions to Eastern Europe at the bidding of his uncle, Count Janos Polanyi, a kind of freelance espionage controller in the Hungarian Legation. Once more there is championship sex, fine restaurants and dinner parties in the civilised West, set against shootouts in forests, beatings by the Romanian police, and fire-fights with Sudeten Germans, in the murky East.
2003 Blood of Victory – Russian émigré writer, Ilya Serebin, gets recruited into a conspiracy to prevent the Nazis getting their hands on Romania’s oil, though it takes a while to realise who’s running the plot – Count Polanyi – and on whose behalf – Britain’s – and what it will consist of – sinking tugs carrying huge turbines at a shallow stretch of the river Danube, thus blocking it to oil traffic. (298 pages)
2004 Dark Voyage – In fact numerous voyages made by the tramp steamer Noordendam and its captain Eric DeHaan, after it is co-opted to carry out covert missions for the Allied cause, covering a period from 30 April to 23 June 1941. Atmospheric and evocative, the best of the last three or four. (309 pages)
2006 The Foreign Correspondent – The adventures of Carlo Weisz, an Italian exile from Mussolini living in Paris in 1938 and 1939, as Europe heads towards war. He is a journalist working for Reuters and co-editor of an anti-fascist freesheet, Liberazione, and we see him return from Civil War Spain, resume his love affair with a beautiful German countess in Nazi Berlin, and back in Paris juggle conflicting requests from the French Sûreté and British Secret Intelligence Service, while dodging threats from Mussolini’s secret police.
2008 The Spies of Warsaw The adventures of Jean Mercier, French military attaché in Warsaw between autumn 1937 and spring 1938, during which he has an affair with sexy young Anna Szarbek, helps two Russian defectors flee to France, is nearly murdered by German agents and, finally, though daring initiative secures priceless documents indicating german plans to invade France through the Ardennes – which his criminally obtuse superiors in the French High Command choose to ignore!
2010 Spies of the Balkans The adventures of Costa Zannis, senior detective in the north Greek port of Salonika, who is instrumental in setting up an escape route for Jews from Berlin through Eastern Europe down into Greece and then on into neutral Turkey. The story is set against the attempted Italian invasion of Greece (28 October 1940) through to the German invasion (23 April 1941).
2012 Mission to Paris
2014 Midnight in Europe
2016 A Hero in France
Posted in Adventure, Books, Novel, Second World War, Sex, Spy novel, Thriller, War
Tagged 2010, Ahmet Celebi, Akos, Alan Furst, Anastasia Loukas, Balthazar, Behar, Brasserie Heininger, Bulgaria, Colonel Simonides, Constantine Zannis, Costa, Costa Zannis, Demetria, Didi, Elias, Emilia Krebs, Francis Escovil, Gabriel Saltiel, Geniki Asphakia, Germans, Greece, Gustav Husar, Gypsy Gus, Harry Byer, Haupsturmführer Albert Hauser, Herr and Frau Gruen, Herr and Frau Hartmann, Hungary, Ilka, Ivan Lazareff, Jones, K.L. Stacho, Laurette, Madam Urglu, Marko Pavlic, Moises, Nazis, Nikolaus Vasilou, Roxanne Brown, Salonika, Sami Pal, Serbs, Sibylla, Sofia, Spies of the Balkans, Spiraki, Tasia Loukas, Traudl, Uncle Anastas, Untersturmführer Matzig, Vangelis, Vlatko, Wilkins, Yugoslavia
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2016/07/31/spies-of-the-balkans-alan-furst/
Our Kind of Traitor by John le Carré (2010)
‘Well, fuck, said Hector happily.
‘Fuck indeed,’ Perry agreed, bemused. (p.88)
Perry and Gail
Thirty-something Oxford tutor, Peregrine ‘Perry’ Makepeace, and his girlfriend, the beautiful, rising star barrister, Gail (immediately reminiscent of the beautiful, rising star journalist, Penelope, in The Mission Song), are on holiday in Antigua.
Gail is a stunner (‘Men fell in love with her all the time’, p.181). Perry, we are told, rather adventurously, went to a State school – gosh – but seeing as he is a famous tennis player, and a famous mountain climber, who is also passionate about cricket, looks good in his Oxford bags, and says ‘chaps’ and ‘fellows’ a lot, he actually sounds like all le Carré’s other public school heroes. In fact, the characters’ lexicons quickly transport us back to the 1950s of the black-and-white St Trinians movies.
As a small example, there’s an Australian tennis coach at the resort who takes Perry under his wing but sounds like no Australian I’ve ever met, more like a diamond geezer from a 1950s crime caper.
‘Thank you, Perry, no doubles for Dima, I’m afraid,’ he interjected smartly. ‘Our friend here plays singles only, correct, sir? You’re a self-reliant man. You like to be responsible for your own errors, you told me once. Those were your very words to me not so long ago, and I’ve taken them to heart… Perry, I do not believe you should be reluctant to take this gentleman on,’ Mark insisted, ramming his case home. ‘If I was a betting man, I’d be pushed which of you to favour, and that’s a living fact.’ (p.9)
Australian? Similarly, the maitre d’ at the hotel is named Ambrose but since, in le Carré land, no character goes without a facetious nickname or adjective for very long, he swiftly becomes ‘the venerable Ambrose’ (p.48).
This habit of giving every character a larky adjective (‘the immaculate Gail’, ‘Ace Operator Perry’ p.77) and then making them speak with improbably plumminess or butler-like servility, quickly makes the whole book feel like a P.G. Wodehouse novel with, admittedly, a lot of modern swear words thrown in. As if aware of this, JLC has the characters explicitly reference PGW on p.94:
‘Precisely, Bertie,’ Perry agreed in his best Wodehousian, and they found time for a quick laugh.
It is Perry’s demon tennis-playing which gets him introduced to a stocky, charismatic, over-friendly Russian named Dima. Perry and Dima have a sweaty singles match, with Dima effing and blinding all the way through, as he goes on to do throughout the rest of the novel.
Next day the couple find themselves invited to join Dima’s extended family on the beach, getting to know his reclusive, religious wife Tamara, the stroppy twin boys and the beautiful, pubescent Natasha. Ice cream and cricket on the beach are followed by an invitation to a party at Dima’s villa that evening.
Here Perry and Gail are surprised to find themselves ushered into a remote room up in the windy attic of the building and handed a piece of paper while Dima signs them not to speak and they realise he is worried about being bugged and recorded.
On the paper, Dima has written a long message claiming that he has invaluable information he wants to give to the British government in return for asylum in Britain for him and his family. Gail is taken aside by Tamara, leaving the men alone, and Dima gives Perry a small package which turns out to contain a tape cassette to give to ‘the right people’ back in England. Then they all go on to the party.
After the party, back at their holiday apartment, a bewildered Perry and Gail decide to cut short their holiday and return to Britain. Being a lecturer at Oxford, Perry has heard about a fellow tutor who, rumour says, makes ‘approaches’ to his undergraduates on behalf of the security services. Perry goes and tells him his story; the don listens, then gives Perry a phone number. Perry rings it and is put through to ‘Adam’ who instructs him to a) write his own account of the proceedings b) expect a taxi driven by ‘Ollie’ who will collect him and Gail and drive them to a basement flat in Bloomsbury.
Perry and Gail’s debriefing
Here the couple undergo an immensely detailed ‘debriefing’, in which their ‘handlers’, Luke and Yvonne, force them to relive every word, every inflection, every facial expression of every single exchange they had with Dima and with each other during the Antigua trip.
This is le Carré’s forté, the detailed presentation of the debriefing and recruitment process, a process we know from his biography that he actually carried out himself when he worked for the security service in the 1950s. But whereas in, say, The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, the reader is only slowly and cannily allowed insights into the cunning conspiracy being carried out by the disgruntled spy, Leamas, and so is on tenterhooks throughout his interrogation by East German security – here, we don’t yet know how much, if anything, is at stake, and so these long opening pages contain no tension.
Lacking this, we are left with the characters of the posh young couple and quickly become irritated by their bickering and nerviness, especially Gail’s bitchiness. Her feminist unhappiness that Dima chose to speak to Perry alone, and that Perry then refused to reveal what was said at that private meeting, comes out in the sustained use of italicised emphases:
‘It’s true. I felt appointed by him. Over-promoted is more like it. Actually, I don’t know what I felt any more.’ (p.50)
In her leaden sarcasm:
‘You listening, Gail?’
What the fuck d’you think I’m doing? Singing ‘The Mikado’? (p.75)
And her improbable mimicking of the voices of everyone concerned – Dima, Tamara, Perry himself – so that she comes across as a rather demented Mike Yarwood. Not helped by her mannerism of ending almost every paragraph with the tag, ‘didn’t we, Perry?’ Gail is meant to be a rising star barrister but quickly comes across as a petulant, spoiled 14-year-old.
‘Perry! Stop! Come back! Stay here! I’m the fucking lawyer here, not you.’ (p.75)
Hector Meredith
At the end of these sessions, disgruntled Gail is told to go (again), leaving Perry with Luke and Yvonne. At this point they reveal that their boss has been listening, upstairs, to the couple’s debriefing. Now he pads downstairs to meet Perry in person.
The boss is called Hector Makepeace and he is an extraordinarily old-fashioned, 1950s type of fellow, who overwhelms the text with his blustering, hail-fellow-well-met manner, his bolshy, anti-modern Britain attitude, and his copious, ceaseless swearing.
‘Well, I’ll tell you what you are, Mr Perry Makepeace, sir,’ he asserted, as if he’d reached the conclusion they had both been waiting for. ‘You’re an absolute fucking hero, is what you are’ – seizing Perry’s hand in a flaccid double grip and giving it a limp shake – ‘and that’s not smoke up your arse.’ (p.87)
‘Smoke up your arse’? ‘And that’s a living fact’? On every page the prose is studded with heroically out-of-date slang. Although the narrative is set in the Noughties, the lexicon is a combination of Dixon of Dock Green livened up by The Sweeny. The monotonous, continuous use of ‘fuck’, many times on every page, quickly becomes wearing. Pages 75 to 77:
‘Jesus Perry. I’m fucking scared…I’m the fucking lawyer here…For fuck sake, it’s me, Gail…What the fuck is going on between you two…What the fuck d’you think I’m doing… what the fuck are you trying to tell me… Tamara didn’t speak, Perry. Not one solitary fucking word… absolutely fuck-all passed between Tamara and myself… either mind your own fucking business or tell me what Dima said to you.’
I laughed out loud when Hector is described as a ‘maverick’ (p.124). Just like the swearing, blustering ‘maverick’, Bachmann, in the previous novel, Hector is the ‘legendary’ subject of the same kind of ‘rumour mill’ (p.125) and ‘ground-floor gossips’ (p.145) and ‘office wits’ (p.163) that all JLC’s sweary mavericks inspire. He even has devoted ‘Hector-watchers’ (p.126), as there are ‘Bachmann-watchers’ and watchers of each of this character type in all the novels going back to Tinker, Tailor (and even turn out to be ‘Perry watchers’, on page 180). It’s as if every JLC character comes trailing a retinue of adoring followers, like a supermodel or film star.
Hector explains himself:
‘You’re on record as believing that our green and pleasant land is in dire need of saving from itself. I happen to share that opinion. I’ve studied the disease. I’ve lived in the swamp. It is my informed conclusion that we are suffering, as an ex-great nation, from top-down corporate rot. And that’s not just a judgement of an ailing old fart. A lot of people in my Service make a profession of not seeing things in black and white. Do not confuse me with them. I’m a late-onset, red-toothed radical with balls. Still with me?’ (p.119)
No, frankly. This is worthless as any kind of political analysis, and it just confirms your opinion of Hector – who is the lynchpin and centre of the plot – as, well, an ailing old fart. Is this how the author sees himself – a late-arriving radical, a maverick, the man who tells it like he sees it, damn the consequences and that’s not smoke up your arse?
There is a bit of sub-plot thrown in whereby Hector, a few years earlier, took leave from the Service to fight off the aggressive takeover of his family firm by dastardly corporate raiders. His battle made the press, in which he is described as ‘a doughty lone warrior’ fighting off ‘vulture capitalists’ (p.126), depicted as the kind of gentlemanly, paternalistic, tweedy business owner that went extinct in the 1950s. So the reader is not at all surprised to learn that the doughty warrior is ‘a stubborn technophobe’ (p.145).
A man, in other words, completely unsuitable for the 21st century world he finds himself in, who is not trusted or respected by his superiors and who, as we shall see, embarks on a ramshackle security mission which completely fails.
With Hector we get our first introduction to the office politics of the security services, insofar as this wild ‘maverick’ has trouble getting his superiors on-board for his projects (just as Bachmann had trouble with his bosses in the previous novel).
This is especially true of the Head of his Department, William J. Matlock. Since no le Carré character goes un-nicknamed (just like back at prep school), Matlock is immediately referred to as Billy Boy Matlock or plain ‘Bully Boy’ (p.130). From the start Hector conveys the sense that there are wheels within wheels at the security service, and that he is struggling against official scepticism, bureaucratic inertia, and worse, to get the Dima project signed off.
Dima’s career
Through all Hector’s bluster and swearing, it emerges that the security services know about Dima and have a good record of his career. For Dima is currently the finance officer for the seven brotherhoods which dominate the Russian crime underworld. As a youth he was imprisoned in the harshest possible labour camp in the Kolyma region of Siberia. He was sentenced to 15 years hard labour for murdering a military administrator who frequented his horrible state-built family apartment, and who ushered him and the other kids out of the apartment while he screwed their mother, very noisily, so that the rest of the floor could hear it all. Until teenage Dima snapped and stabbed him to death. (As with Martin Cruz Smith’s Arkady Renko novels, every reference to ordinary life in Russia makes it sound unbearably awful.)
In the Kolyma camp Dima got covered in underworld tattoos, and became a vor or member of a criminal brotherhood. Once released and back in Moscow, his natural aptitude for figures, and the contacts he made in prison, saw him rise through the ranks of his particular brotherhood, before becoming financial manager for the Big Seven, going on to create a vast international money-laundering operation of which he is now the lynchpin.
But now things are going wrong for Dima. A shadowy underworld figure referred to only as ‘the Prince’ (p.147) is taking over the brotherhoods and he wants to replace Dima with his own man. Dima is being forced to sign over his control of all the gangs’ finances, in two separate tranches which are coming up very soon, whereupon he knows he will be ‘whacked’.
The net is closing in very fast and violently. A protege of his, a vor he mentored named Misha, who had married Tamara’s sister (an ex-hooker) and so became family, was assassinated just a week before Perry and Gail met Dima. Hence the air of tension about the whole family which they both noticed, the bodyguards, the silent meeting in the attic of the villa. And why Misha’s newly orphaned children were among the large family group Gail, in particular, found herself entertaining on the beach.
All this explains Dima’s desperate approach to the first half-reputable Englishman he could find – the unfortunate Perry. And clarifies the whole following sequence of events – Perry approaching his fellow tutor, phoning Hector, writing his account and now, meeting Hector.
What Perry hadn’t told Gail – and part of the reason for her resentment at his secrecy – is that Dima insists that, when he meets representatives of British security, Perry and Gail are present as a guarantee for his safety. Hector now offers Perry his proposition: do he and Gail want to work for him, and British intelligence, on a dangerous mission, namely to help smuggle Dima and his family away from the Russian mafia, out of the Continent, to safety here in Blighty?
Perry returns to Gail’s flat and puts the proposition to her. She thinks of Dima’s girls. She thinks of the beautiful Natasha. She says yes.
Conspiracy at the highest levels
Dima has insisted that Gail and Perry rendezvous with him in a box to watch the French Open Tennis championship at the Roland-Garros stadium in Paris on June 7. So the team must be in place by then.
Hector meets with his boss, Matlock and plays him Dima’s tape, which contains hot information about the far-reaching criminal activities of the seven brotherhoods, some of which include British officials.
Then, a whole new arena in our understanding of the situation opens up, with the screening of video footage taken by British security agents of a party held aboard a luxury yacht given by ‘the Prince’ and featuring a rogues gallery of crooks AND a senior figure in the British Opposition (ie Labour) party, who happens to be charged with overseeing banking reform and regulation, AND Aubrey Longrigg, Matlock’s predecessor as senior executive in MI6 itself!
Once again in a le Carré late fiction, Britain’s darkest enemy seems to be inside the ranks of its own ‘Establishment’: as in The Night Manager where the evil arms smuggler was shown to have supporters within the security services, as in The Mission Song where an illegal African coup was mounted with the help of ‘elements’ of the British security services.
Same here. Hector is playing a ‘dangerous’ game by trying to secure Dima’s defection, since the Russian’s confession will implicate some very influential people indeed, people who will pull every string to make the mission fail or to silence Dima.
While these high-level machinations trundle on, Gail and Perry undergo a detailed preparation for their role in the great Dima defection, an abbreviated course in spy skills given by Ollie and Luke. (Throughout the book we hear more and more about Luke, about his unhappy marriage and his multiple affairs and indiscretions. He is quickly ‘little Luke’ and moves on to being described as ‘randy little Luke’, not least because he rather too overtly fancies Gail, another string in her bow of permanent irritation.)
Gail and Perry are flown to Paris, put up at a hotel and the next day, as arranged, accidentally-on-purpose, bump into Dima in one of the shopping malls outside the Roland-Garros stadium.
Dima is accompanied by a large group of Russian mafiosi, including the Prince himself, and a number of western courtiers, including the over-the-top ‘queen’, Bunny Popham, the sinister Italian fixer, Dell Oro, and a former Royal Navy officer, de Salis, now PR man for the Prince in the City of London.
Dima is being kept under the beady watch of sundry heavies but gaily invites Gail and Perry to join him in their luxury box for the big game featuring Roger Federer (since all the best Society events nowadays have special boxes for the Russian mafia).
Out of all these courtesies and invitations, it is somehow agreed that Dima and ‘the Professor’ will play a little amateur match (after everyone has enjoyed the big one with Federer) on one of the small, private courts. It is pouring down with rain, but they decide to proceed anyway and the group of criminal VIPs, their hookers and hangers-on, as well as the armed hoods watching his every move, don’t seem to find this suspicious.
But in fact this match is an elaborate excuse for Dima to go with Perry down to a subterranean ‘massage room’ where Hector is waiting – to introduce himself to Dima, and ask him vital questions about the timing of his signing over of his fiduciary powers, to explain how they’re planning to snatch him, to quiz him about his family who are still back in Switzerland and how they will be brought to safety.
Hector and Dima shake hands on the deal, then Dima and Perry sally out to play their rather silly game of tennis in the rain. Once it’s over, both players return to the ‘massage room’, where Hector and Dima make final arrangements – before both players return, showered and changed, to the hoods drinking champagne in their box.
The snatch
Next day our team are in place – as in an episode of Mission Impossible – at the Bellevue Palace Hotel, which is where the Russian contingent is staying.
Luke is in the lobby, posing as an innocent bystander tapping away on his laptop. When Dima comes downstairs with the Prince and other heavies he asks to go for a pee in what happens to be the downstairs toilet. Down he goes, followed by Luke, who none of the Russkies know or suspect. As they turn a corner and are hidden from view of the mafia, in one fell swoop Luke clobbers one of Dima’s two minders with his laptop, while Dima turns, punches and savagely kicks the other one to the ground.
They flee out the back door – carefully unlocked in advance – jump into the car stashed in a nearby car park, roar out onto the street and are well on their way to the remote Alpine village of Wenden, before the Russkies realise anything is wrong.
Collecting the family
Meanwhile, Gail and Perry have been driven by Ollie, in a horsebox as a disguise, to Berne, where Dima has told us his family are staying. Here they hurriedly load up Tamara, the boys et al. Except that the beautiful teen Natasha is not there! That morning she had asked her bodyguard, Igor, to drive her to the station. Gail – who had formed a close bond with Natasha on the beach and then carried on exchanging messages by text and phone – volunteers to track the teenager down and bring her to the safe house.
Reluctantly, Perry and Ollie leave her and drive the rest of the family direct to the house in Wenden. What Gail knows that none of the others do – because they’ve discussed it in text messages – is that Natasha is pregnant by her ski instructor, Max. Gail knows the ski resort where Max lives and has a shrewd idea that’s where Natasha has gone.
After taking the train there, Gail asks around and quickly finds the house of the dashing instructor, and there finds a miserable Natasha cowering on the sofa. She has discovered that her Alpine Adonis is in fact married with a child of his own and is being offered tea by his kindly wife, all unawares of the situation. Ah. Teenage love. Gail gently removes Natasha and transports her via a series of trains towards the safe house and to the rendezvous with the main party.
Now that the 250 pages of meetings and interviews are over, and that something is actually happening, these last forty pages of the novel become genuinely tense. For a start the various cars driven by Ollie et al – and Gail and Natasha on their train – seem to be stopped and asked for their tickets or their passes or their car permits, more than is strictly necessary.
They become convinced that some kind of alert is out for them, even though no law has been broken. The text powerfully conveys the strong suspicion that the Swiss authorities have been tipped off by – might even be collaborating with – the Russian mafia. At each stopping, as the police kick the tyres and ask for the boot to be opened and then stare at them for a long time as they drive off, JLC very effectively builds up the tension and the certainty in the reader’s mind that one or all of them will be arrested, assassinated, blown up – that something terrible is going to happen.
Gail, Perry, Luke, Ollie, Dima and his family are now all holed up in a remote Swiss chalet awaiting the signal for them to be shipped to England. And wait. And wait.
Because the running thread through the book describing Hector’s struggles with his superiors – with his boss Matlock, and the people above him, and also the baleful influence of Longrigg and other shadowy figures – now comes to the fore.
Hector phones the team from London, bitterly reporting delays, with the Home Office, passport, immigration, HMRC, all putting blockers in the way. Meanwhile, the hours turn into days, day after day, of tense waiting and diminishing hope for Dima, his family and the team.
In their conversations, JLC is at pains to bring out the theme of all his post-Cold War fiction, that the Enemy Within, the greed and corruption inside the so-called ‘Establishment’, which infects the higher reaches of British society – Parliament, the banks, corporate lawyers, multinational corporations – is at least as bad as the Enemy Outside, terrorism or international crime.
Thus it is strongly implied that a cohort of 40 or so MPs, a number of buyable Lords, the Financial Services Authority, parts of the Press guided by PR consultants, have all been bought and paid for by the Russian mafia. As one character puts it, at a period of crippling credit crunch, any money – even Russian mafia money – is good, especially if it comes in billions.
Eventually, Hector tells Luke and Perry that he’s got conditional approval to fly Dima to London and that, if Dima’s information satisfies the security services and other stakeholders, then the family can follow.
Perry accompanies Luke and Dima to the tiny private airport at Belp, near the safe house, and there are last hugs and handshakes. He notes that Dima seems a shrunk, lost man, having abandoned hope over these last soul-sapping days.
Dima and ‘randy little Luke’ board the plane and Perry watches it take off, bank and then blow up. BOOM. The flaming fragments falling to the snowy earth. That’s the end. There’s a page giving an impartial record of the ‘official enquiries’ held into the ‘incident’ which speculate about ‘instrument failure’ or ‘pilot error’. Oh well. Nothing at all about Perry or Gail or Ollie or Yvonne or the rest of Dima’s family or Hector.
Just a cold bleak end.
Reader response
So a high-level Russian mafiosi is murdered. Do I care? Nope. Will Gail and Perry go back to their normal lives, sadder and wiser? Yes. Will Hector the maverick’s career be damaged, maybe finished? Probably, but he is ‘an ailing old fart’, anyway. Is it sad to see ‘randy little Luke’ blown to pieces? Yes, but he was as tiresome as all the other characters.
In fact, the only people I felt anything for were the two unnamed pilots of the plane who were, presumably, totally innocent of any involvement in anything and are the most genuine victims of the whole book.
Am I scared or concerned that ‘senior figures’ in the Establishment are somehow ‘in cahoots’ with possibly criminal elements of the Russian mafia? Once I’ve put the book down and the sense of fear generated by the clever writing towards the end has faded away – No. I can well imagine MPs and Lords working as consultants for companies which are ‘fronts’ for dubious activities – they’ve done that for centuries.
All of us know that our banks have been involved in countless criminal activities, from selling us PPI to laundering drug money – so no surprises there. Do I believe that the British Security Services engage in illegal and criminal activities? Well, we know they bugged and burgled their way across London for decades, and Edward Snowden’s revelations proved the astonishing degree of their surveillance over us, and we’ve known about the US-UK policy of extraordinary rendition for some time.
So, although JLC is outraged at these travesties, he seems to have discovered them a long time after the rest of us. The one claim that stands out from these books, is that some elements of the British Security Services actively conspire against other elements in the same services, to collaborate with international criminals and to quash investigations into their activities. But again, since 9/11 and the decision to invade Iraq, it’s become common knowledge that different security organisations don’t talk to each other, withhold information, are poorly co-ordinated, and so on. That this sometimes crosses the line into actively criminal behaviour would require more proof than a novel.
No matter how serious, complicated and well-documented many of these issues are, in imaginative terms, I’d say these books fail to convince you because – whatever the facts of the matter – the style of these novels all too often makes the characters seem absurd.
This is because every aspect of the style is overblown.
From the get-go the characters are ‘legendary’, ‘fabled’, ‘famous’, much talked-about, the subject of the ubiquitous ‘gossips’ and ‘rumour mills’, with sets of ‘watchers’ devoted to monitoring their every move, as if they are film stars or celebrities.
Where are they legendary? In the world they move in? Or in the author’s mind, where he creates theatres of overacting?
… Perry says, parading his fabled powers of recall. (p.35)
Perry on guard over his celebrated memory. (p.47)
He was renowned for his ability to quote tracts of English literature on the strength of a single read. (p.58)
His surprise had been all the greater therefore when a month into his sentence he lifted the phone that hardly ever rang to hear himself being summoned by Hector Meredith to lunch with him forthwith at his famously dowdy London club (p.123). ‘Forthwith’?
Was it because Longrigg and Matlock had for years been famously at daggers drawn? (p.163)
Hector’s fabled nerve (p.152)
a view of the fabled Lauterbrunnen Valley (p.276)
The ringmaster presents!
The narrative introduces characters with the facetious over-ripeness of a circus ringmaster – the eminent this, the legendary that, introducing for your deelight and deelectation none other than the one and only, world famous Mr Mafia Himself!!!! Or, as Dima’s become by page 277:
The world’s number-one money-launderer.
The circus master idea is made explicit late in the novel, when the text refers to ‘Giles de Salis, ringmaster of the media circus’ (p.282). Is le Carré consciously parodying this bombastic manner? Why? It’s one of the many ways in which there is no subtlety or nuance in these late novels. Everyone is performing grand, larger-than-life roles.
Another aspect is the way all the characters accumulate a large number of descriptors:
Perry the English tutor (p. 35) Perry as capsule historian (p.109) Perry the puritan (p.48) Perry the climber of north face overhangs (p.54) Perry the devoted mountaineer (p.299)
Gail the actress’s daughter, Gail the barrister (p.184) the immaculate Gail (p.94)
Little Luke, randy little Luke, Luke the conciliator, adept little Luke, dapper Luke, little B-list Luke, Luke the habitual worrier (p.276), Luke the good man on a rope (p.304)
Mocking sobriquets
Giving all the characters facetious tags is very double-edged. Sometimes the tone is one of reckless over-promotion; but at least as often it smacks of public school mockery. The tags which attach themselves like limpets to the characters, are often mocking, knowing, superior, dismissive.
Nine p.m. approx. Supper arrives, wheeled in not by any old room-service waiter, but the venerable Ambrose himself. (p.32)
‘This very fine bottle of champagne comes to you folk courtesy of the one and only Mr Dima himself.’ (p.32)
the hallowed archives (p.140)
Yvonne, our Iron Maiden (p.138)
These larky adjectives don’t help the plot at all. Maybe they’re intended to add depth to the characters but they do the opposite, turning all of them into caricatures:
Deft little Luke papering over the gaps (p.38)
Genial Ollie the driver (p.40)
Little Luke ever the conciliator (p.49)
Perry the innocent (p.146)
Two of the Prince’s entourage are never named but Gail immediately makes up nicknames for them – Peter and the Wolf – which everyone agrees are jolly apt, and that’s how they’re referred to for the rest of the book. Similarly, one of Dima’s minders is a lean lanky man and Gail nicknames him ‘the cadaverous philosopher’, which is how he’s referred to for the rest of the book.
Everyone is infected with the same kind of facetious public school banter. For example, Hector is referred to as the team’s ‘supreme leader’ (p.85), the head of HR is referred to as ‘the queen of Human Resources’ (p.124).
Because Gail is not going to be available for work during ‘the mission’, she texts her chambers to get a colleague to cover for her. The colleague is named Helga, but these facts aren’t enough for the narrative, which immediately caricatures her:
Helga her bête noire? Man-eating Helga of the fishnet stockings who played the Chambers’ male silks like a lyre. (p.214)
JLC doesn’t just show his characters – he is continually poking you in the chest, nudging your elbow and crowding you into accepting his caricature estimation of them. And I intensely dislike being bullied by a book, instead of being allowed to judge and work out for myself. It is condescending. It insults the reader’s intelligence to be continually nudged and reminded that Luke is little or randy, that Yvonne is stern, that Gail is immaculate, and so on and on and on and on.
The overblown effect of the characters is reinforced by the liberal use of italics to emphasise random parts of the characters’ dialogue.
Perry wasn’t signing when he signed the form, he was joining. (p.34)
‘After picking her way delicately over the sand for all eyes to see, she then settles herself languidly under the furthest sunshade of the row and begins her terribly serious reading. Right, Perry?’ (p.35)
‘Her whole body was like a warning sign in black and red. Forget Dima, I thought. This is really something. And of course I was still wondering what her problem was. Because boy, did she have one.’ (p.57)
There are scads of italics on every page, which so often emphasise trivial and insignificant details that they not only become dreadfully wearing to read, but eventually teach the reader to ignore half the things the characters are saying.
Public school tags
Adding to the tone of heavy-handed public school facetiousness, the text is sprinkled with tags from the Bible or popular classics, knowing references to clichés from hymns or the Bible or Shakespeare.
The Lord is in his heaven (p.122)
in heaven or on earth (p.139)
‘our green and pleasant land’ (p.119)
It is a recurrent habit for the most pompous characters to add ‘Amen’ to the end of any grand or definitive sentence.
Similarly, the text tries to bully you into thinking things are funny when they aren’t. Every one of these later novels has a scene where protagonists discourse in a restaurant or lecture room or bar to an audience which falls about ‘hooting’ with laughter, who interrupt the speech with gales of hysterical mirth, who explode with laughter – when nothing funny has actually been said.
[Dima] ‘You know Jack London? Number one English writer?’ [Perry] ‘Not personally.’ It was a joke. (p.23)
[Niki the driver] ‘To cut undergrowth you got to have big knife.’.. ‘I wish we had, Niki,’ Gail cries, still in her father’s skin. ‘I’m afraid we English never carry knives.’ What gibberish am I talking? Never mind. Talk it. ‘Well, some of us do, to be truthful, but not people like us. We’re the wrong social class. You’ve heard about our class system? Well, in England you only carry a knife if you’re lower-middle or below!’ And more hoots of laughter.. (p.74) Hoots.
‘Is this the Men’s Singles Final or the Battle of Borodino?’ [Dima] shouts gaily, pointing at Napoleon’s troops. She makes him say it again, lets out a hoot of laughter, and squeezes his hand. (p.197) Hoot
‘Do I sound like a scoutmaster?’ ‘I’ll say you do,’ said Perry… ‘Good,’ said Hector complacently to jolly laughter (p.209) I’ll say
Dell Oro was asking Bunny Popham whether it was too early for champagne and Bunny was saying it depended on the vintage. Everyone exploded with laughter (p.220) Exploded
Bunny Popham, queen of the roost, is addressing the unwashed. ‘Our brave gladiators have finally agreed to grace us with their presence. Let us all immediately adjourn to the Arena!’ A patter of knowing laughter for Arena. ‘There are no lions today, apart from Dima. No Christians either, unless the Professor is one, which I can’t vouch for.’ More laughter. (p.227)
Humour is difficult in a novel, but this novel’s consistent promising of humour and consistent failure to deliver it, adds to the sense of untrustworthy over-reaching, of a book which says it is a subtle indictment of corruption at the highest levels, but feels like a collection of posh caricatures swearing and doing funny voices.
The characters either sound like 1950s servants or 1950s debutantes.
[Gail] ‘And I mean honestly, try buying decent wrapping paper in St John’s, Antigua.’ (p.51)
If they had been looking for adventure, the Nature Path alone would have provided it. They must have been the first people to use if for simply years. (p.52) Simply years.
Dixon of Dock Green servility:
‘All the same,’ said Luke, ‘If you don’t mind, sir.’ (p.58)
‘And you an experienced lawyer, if I may say so.’ (p.60)
JLC emphasises that the two lead characters went to State school (golly, the daring). But in imaginative terms they are just the same upper-class, pukka characters as swan around all his late novels. Gail has a nice flat in Primrose Hill, her brother likes shooting pheasants in the country with his rich friends, she talks about her and Perry’s ‘Brideshead look’, how good he looks in flannels, and says ‘daahhling’ as liberally as Patsy in Absolutely Fabulous. The text is more at home with Luke who went to Eton (are there any other schools, darling?) and his wife, the French aristocrat. She’s the one who gives the MI6 building at Vauxhall the terrifically funny nickname of La Lubyanka sur Tamise (p.141), the Lubyanka on the Thames. It’s so terrifically funny because it’s in French, you see.
The fact that Perry’s an Oxford don doesn’t shed much light on teaching English at Oxford, but it does mean that:
a) he is comfortable in JLC’s own posh, pukka, upper-class milieu, and so can confidently discuss Dima’s unrealistic request to get his children into Eton and Roedean schools
b) his supposedly ‘flawless’, academic memory is a naked authorly contrivance which enables him to repeat vast stretches of his initial conversations with Dima to Hector verbatim, allowing the scene to be told in the book’s long opening flashback
c) it allows all the characters to refer to him, in typical cartoon style, as ‘the Professor’, and for the narrative to make plays on his profession: thus Hector jokes that Perry’s written account of the meeting with Dima is an ‘alpha plus’ essay, Hector refers to his retelling of events as his ‘recitation’ and ‘lecture’, his interview is referred to as his ‘viva voce‘ and so – leadenly – on.
All these elements, taken together, amount to a tone of permanent overemphasis and exaggeration which can accurately be described as ‘bombast’ – defined as ‘speech or writing that is meant to sound important or impressive but is not sincere or meaningful’.
The sustained use of sarcasm and facetiousness, the shouty italics and the overselling of every character, the use of swearing and bluster where there should be thought or analysis, all give the impression that someone is shouting at you for hours on end. It becomes very wearing and dulls any interest in the storyline which – once abstracted from the bombastic style and improbable dialogue – is actually quite gripping.
You can see why a lot of these later novels have been successfully turned into TV dramatisations or movies. By changing medium you at a stroke remove the intolerably mannered style; all you have to do then is completely rewrite all the dialogue, as if it’s spoken by real people living in the 21st century – and the resulting storylines emerge as very compelling.
Almost all John le Carré’s post-Cold War novels contain a my-little-pony moment, where a lead character reveals their ineluctably upper-class childhood with a sentimental reminiscence about the little pony their parents bought them. The reference in this novel is shorter than usual, but still works as a marker, indicating the pukka nature of Gail’s character and – by extension – of the text as a whole.
Early on in the story Gail is on the beach with Dima’s extended family, supervised by an older man who Gail has, of course, given a nickname – in this case ‘Uncle Vanya’ after the Chekhov play:
Uncle Vanya from Perm is up his ladder with the family-sized pistol in his belt and Natasha – whose name is a challenge to Gail every time she approaches it; she has to gather herself together and make a clean jump of it like horse-riding at school – Natasha is lying the other end of the beach in splendid isolation. (p.41)
‘Like horse-riding at school’.
The subject matter of this novel is very 2010, with its vision of a crime-infested Russia whose money has reached out to corrupt western banks and politicians and even the security services.
But the style and the text itself keep reverting to a jolly hockeysticks mentality and prep school phraseology which are more reminiscent of Enid Blyton’s Malory Towers novels, with added swearwords.
Our Kind of Traitor by John le Carré was published in 2010 by Viking books. All quotes are from the 2011 Penguin paperback edition.
Our Kind of Traitor on Amazon
Our Kind of Traitor Wikipedia article
John le Carré Wikipedia article
John le Carré’s website
‘The United States of America has gone mad’ – 2003 article by John le Carré
John Le Carré’s novels
1961 Call for the Dead – Introducing George Smiley. Intelligence employee Samuel Fennan is found dead beside a suicide note. With the help of a CID man, Mendel, and the trusty Peter Guillam, Smiley unravels the truth behind his death, namely he was murdered by an East German spy ring, headed by Mundt.
1962 A Murder of Quality – Smiley investigates the murder of a teacher’s wife at an ancient public school in the West Country, incidentally the seat of the father of his errant wife, Lady Ann. No espionage involved, a straight murder mystery in the style of Morse or a thousand other detective stories.
1963 The Spy Who Came in from the Cold – Extraordinarily brilliant account of a British agent, Alec Leamas, who pretends to be a defector in order to give disinformation to East German intelligence, told with complete plausibility and precision.
1965 The Looking Glass War – A peculiar, downbeat and depressing spy story about a Polish émigré soldier who is recruited by a ramshackle part of British intelligence, given incompetent training, useless equipment, and sent over the border into East Germany to his pointless death. Smiley makes peripheral appearances trying to prevent the operation and then clear up the mess.
1968 A Small Town in Germany – Political intrigue set in Bonn during the rise of a (fictional) right-wing populist movement. Overblown.
1971 The Naïve and Sentimental Lover
1974 Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy – His most famous book. Smiley meticulously tracks down the Soviet mole at the heart of the ‘Circus’ ie MI6.
1977 The Honourable Schoolboy – Jerry Westerby is the part-time agent instructed to follow a trail of money from the KGB in Hong Kong, which involves intrigue at various locations in the Far East. It is done on Smiley’s orders but the latter barely appears.
1979 Smiley’s People – The assassination of a European émigré in Hampstead leads via a convoluted series of encounters, to the defection of Karla, Smiley’s opposite number in the KGB.
1983 The Little Drummer Girl – A long and brilliant meditation on the Arab-Israeli conflict, embodied by Charlie, the posh young English actress recruited by Israeli intelligence and trained to ‘allow’ herself to then be recruited by Arab terrorists, thus becoming a double agent.
1986 A Perfect Spy – Long flashback over the career of Magnus Pym, diplomat and spy, which brilliantly describes his boyhood with his chancer father, and the long tortuous route by which he became a traitor.
1989 The Russia House – Barley Blair is a drunk publisher who a Russian woman approaches at a book fair in Moscow to courier secrets to the West. He is ‘recruited’ and sent back to get more, which is when things begin to go wrong.
1990 The Secret Pilgrim – A series of vivid short stories describing episodes in the life of ‘old Ned’, a senior British Intelligence officer now in charge of trainees at the Service’s base at Sarratt in Buckinghamshire. When he asks George Smiley to come and lecture the young chaps and chapesses, it prompts a flood of reminiscence about the Cold War and some references to how abruptly and completely their world has changed with the collapse of Russian communism.
1993 The Night Manager – Jonathan Pine is recruited by British Intelligence to infiltrate the circle of British arms dealer Richard Onslow Roper – described with characteristic hyperbole as ‘the worst man in the world’ – after first laboriously acquiring a persuasive back story as a crook. Once inside the circle, Pine disobeys orders by (inevitably) falling in love with Roper’s stunning girlfriend, but the whole mission is endangered by dark forces within British Intelligence itself, which turn out to be in cahoots with Roper.
1995 Our Game – Incredibly posh, retired Intelligence agent, Tim Cranmer, discovers that the agent he ran for decades – the legendary Larry Pettifer who he knew at Winchester public school, then Oxford and personally recruited into the Service – has latterly been conspiring with a former Soviet agent to embezzle the Russian authorities out of tens of millions of pounds, diverting it to buy arms for independence fighters in the tiny republic of Ingushetia – and that Larry has also seduced his girlfriend, Emma – in a claustrophobic and over-written psychodrama about these three expensively-educated but eminently dislikeable upper-class twits.
1996 The Tailor of Panama – Old Etonian conman Andrew Osnard flukes a job in British Intelligence and is posted to Panama where he latches onto the half-Jewish owner of a ‘traditional’ English gentlemen’s tailor’s, the legendary Harry Pendel, and between them they concoct a fictional network of spies based in a fictional revolutionary movement, so they can embezzle the money London sends them to support it. Described as a comedy, the book has a few moments of humour, but is mostly grimly cynical about the corrupt workings of British government, British intelligence, British diplomats and of the super-cynical British media mogul who, it turns out, is behind an elaborate conspiracy to provoke a gruesomely violent American invasion of Panama, leaving you feeling sick and jaundiced with a sick and jaundiced world.
1999 Single & Single – Public schoolboy Oliver Single joins the law-cum-investment firm of his father, the legendary ‘Tiger’ Single, to discover it is little more than a money-laundering front for international crooks, specifically ‘the Orlov brothers’ from Georgia. He informs on his father to the authorities and disappears into a witness protection programme. The novel opens several years later with the murder of one of the firm’s senior lawyers by the Russian ‘clients’, which prompts Single & Single to go into meltdown, Tiger to disappear, and Oliver to come out of hiding and embark on a desperate quest to track down his estranged father.
2001 The Constant Gardener – Astonishingly posh diplomat’s wife, Tessa Quayle, discovers a big pharmaceutical company is illegally trialling a new drug in Kenya, with disastrous results among its poor and powerless patients. She embarks on a furious campaign to expose this wickedness and is murdered by contract killers. The novel combines flashbacks explaining the events leading up to her murder, with her Old Etonian husband’s prolonged quest to discover the truth about her death.
2003 Absolute Friends – Former public school head prefect and champion fast bowler Ted Mundy befriends the radical leader Sasha in the radical Berlin of the late 1960s. Years later he is approached by Sasha, now living in East Germany, who says he wants to spy for the West, and thus begins Ted’s career in espionage. This in turn comes to a grinding halt with the fall of the Berlin Wall. A decade later, Sasha contacts Ted again and unwittingly lures him into a Machiavellian American sting operation, whereby their entire previous careers are turned against them to make them look like dangerous ‘terrorists’, a set-up which climaxes with them being shot down like dogs. First ‘historic’ part good – second part overblown anti-Americanism.
2006 The Mission Song – Ex-public school boy Bruno ‘Salvo’ Salvador, a half-Congolese translator, is invited by British intelligence to lend his knowledge of arcane African languages and dialects to an unofficial meeting of three leaders of Congo’s warring factions. These have been brought together by a British ‘syndicate’, ostensibly in the name of negotiating peace, but who are actually planning to engineer a coup and impose a compliant leader who will allow his Western backers to plunder the country’s mineral resources. When Salvo learns this he sets out on a quixotic mission to reveal the ‘truth’.
2008 A Most Wanted Man – Posh Hamburg-based British banker Tommy Brue and posh refugee lawyer Annabel Richter find themselves involved in a conspiracy by German security services to frame an apparently innocent Muslim refugee and, along with him, the moderate organiser of Muslim charities, as ‘terrorists’. But this dubious German plan is itself trumped by the CIA who betray all the characters in the book, violently kidnap the two Muslims, and take them away for indefinite incarceration and torture.
2010 Our Kind of Traitor – An Oxford don and his barrister girlfriend on holiday in Antigua get involved with a Russian mafiosi who wants to ‘defect’ to the British, exposing ‘corruption in high places’ – and end up playing crucial roles in the mission to rescue him and his family which, however, does not go according to plan.
2013 A Delicate Truth –
by Simon on July 7, 2016 • Permalink
Posted in Books, Novel, Spy novel, Thriller
Tagged 2010, Dima, Hector Meredith, John Le Carre, Our Kind of Traitor, Peregrine Makepeace, Russian mafia, Tamara
Posted by Simon on July 7, 2016
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2016/07/07/our-kind-of-traitor-john-le-carre/
Three Stations by Martin Cruz Smith (2010)
She crossed the road to look at the bus shelter. It had been built during a period of optimism, and although the pain had faded and holes had been mysteriously punched through the wall, Maya could still make out the faint outline of a rocket ship lifting off the ground, aspiring to more. The bus route had been closed for years. The shelter was mainly used now as a pissoir and message centre: GO FUCK YOURSELF, I FUCKED YOUR MOTHER, HEIL HITLER, OLEG SUCKS COCK.(p.118)
Three Stations is the nickname Muscovites give to Komsomol Square because of the proximity of three mainline railway stations, as well as the intersection of two metro lines and ten lanes of traffic, ‘a Circus Maximus with cars’ (p.12). Into its vortex are swept the worst scum of Moscow.
Men with vague intentions idled in small groups, beers in hand, watching prostitutes grind by. The women walked with a predatory eye and looked as likely to eat their clients as have sex with them. (p.13)
This is the shortest (277 pages) and most Muscovite of the Arkady Renko novels, as it uses its characters and plot to explore the dingy surrounds, the violent underworld, and the moneyed corruption of Arkady’s home town. Its 36 chapters are short and punchy, making it feel fast-moving and edgy.
Senior Moscow crime investigator Arkady Renko is in deep poo with his boss, prosecutor Zurin, despite solving the mystery of ‘Stalin’s ghost’ and nailing two colleagues who turned out to be murderers in the previous novel, Stalin’s Ghost.
Zurin has forbidden him to work on any case. Typically, Arkady gets round this ban by simply tagging along with his assistant, the trying-to-give-up-alcohol detective Viktor Orlov. The novel opens with the pair standing over the body of a murdered prostitute in a shabby trailer near the three Stations. She seems to have been poisoned then her skirt hitched up around her waist and her legs carefully arranged so one ankle is touching the other heel. Why?
They follow a power cable from the one naked bulb in the trailer, through rubbish outside, to the nearest militia office: i.e. the police appear to have been pimping her out. This comes as no surprise since successive Renko novels have taught us that Russian police are often worse than the criminals they supposedly pursue; someone who’s been burgled often finds the militia removing any valuables the burglars missed.
Arkady names the corpse ‘Olga’ and gets an old schoolfriend, fat Willi Pazenko, to do an autopsy. She was given knock-out pills then poisoned with ether, which has remained in her asphyxiated lungs.
Zhenya
For the last couple of novels Arkady’s life has been enlivened by the occasional presence of Zhenya, a street kid who flops in his apartment sometimes, but also goes missing for stretches. Zhenya is a larger presence in this book than usual, as we see him fitting in with the hundreds if not thousands of street kids who infest the squalid Three Stations area. Cruz Smith repeats the stunning fact, first mentioned in Stalin’s Ghost, that there are anything up to 50,000 children living wild on the streets of Moscow, having run away from the traditional Russian, alcoholic, abusive home, and who have contributed to an epidemic of petty crime, mugging, arson and vandalism (p.102).
Zhenya differs from most of the kids in that he is a chess genius, rarely seen nott clutching his precious board. In the previous novel we learn that his father, Osip Lysenko, spotted his talent from an early age and used him to lure unwary passengers on trains or in waiting rooms into chess games which Zhenya was briefed to lose until the gull could be persuaded to bet big money on a game – at which point Zhenya wiped the floor with him. If Zhenya made any mistakes, let alone lost, his father beat him. That’s why he ran away when he was about 8 and Arkady first met him at one of Moscow’s many refuges for children.
Zhenya is 15 now and playing chess for money is the only life skill he has. Thus, throughout the novel there are scenes where he persuades unwary travellers between the three stations to bet on a match with him, with variable results, including violence.
The novel actually opens by introducing us to a simple-minded young woman, Maya Pospelova, aged 16. She is on a train to Moscow with her very small baby, Katya. When she goes outside the carriage to breast feed it she is confronted by a drunken soldier who threatens her for a blowjob. She is rescued by a sweet old lady, calling herself Auntie Lenya, who smacks the soldier and sends him off, before helping Maya back to her seat, giving her some of Auntie Lenya’s nice tea etc, generally fussing over her and telling her to get some rest while she looks after the baby.
When Maya wakes up the train is in Moscow station and Auntie Lenya and the baby are gone. Distraught, she searches all over the train, asks the guard, the driver, any station official she can find, and then the police. Nada. Nothing.
It is now that she is spotted by Zhenya who gets talking to her. He takes pity on her and takes her back to his secret base, a luxury casino near the station, named after Peter the Great, which has recently been closed down and mothballed, but which Zhenya is the only one to have figured out how to break into. Thus he – and she, now – have free run of a big, eerily empty building, giving Cruz Smith scope for some typically atmospheric descriptions.
Fans of the previous books in the series will be impatient to find out what happened to Dr Eva Kazka, the doctor Arkady hooked up with two novels previously, and who was – shockingly and unexpectedly – seriously wounded in a knife attack in the very last pages of the previous novel, Stalin’s Ghost.
We have to wait until page 70 before she’s even mentioned whereupon we find out, rather disappointingly, that she recovered from her injuries, that their relationship staggered on a bit, and then she left him. She simply declared she didn’t want to wait around for him to be executed by criminals; she didn’t want to be the grieving widow at the graveside. Boom. She’s out of his life. Shame, She was a sparky, recalcitrant element in the novels.
The Nijinsky Fair
At the scene of Olga’s death, Arkady found an invitation to a glitzy, high society charity event called the Nijinsky Fair, so he uses it to go along. He looks woefully out of place, a skinny, lank, badly-dressed cop trying to mingle with super-rich mafia types and skinny supermodels in a huge ballroom festooned with luxury brands, flashing lights, waiters serving champagne cocktails and so on. Arkady catches sight himself in a room full of mirrors.
With so many mirrors reflecting each other, he seemed to share the room with multiple desperate men with lank hair and eyes deep as drains, the sort of figure who might wander the streets on a rainy night and cause people to roll up their car windows and jump the traffic light. (p.126)
Not, in other words, a desperately reassuring presence. To his surprise he bumps into Anya Rudikova, his new neighbour in his apartment building, a rather self-dramatising journalist. She is drinking with Sasha Vaksberg, a characteristically semi-criminal New Russian multi-millionaire who was running a set of casinos among other things, until ‘our friend in the Kremlin’ decided to cut the oligarchs down to size and closed them all down. His casinos include the Peter the Great casino in Three Stations, which we have seen Zhenya making his hideout. Aha. The reader has the familiar sensation of threads and storylines beginning to pull together.
This party is actually a charity event, given by nice Mr Vaksberg to raise money for the very street kids we’ve seen as we follow Maya and Zhenya. It leads up to a big stage show, part of which features ballet dancers, not actually dancing but adopting the numbered postures and positions they use in training. For some reason number 4 is missing, so Vaksberg surprises us all by running down onto the stage and nimbly adopting the posture himself. Laughter from his super-rich audience. More cocktails. Gaiety as a trapeze artist pulls cunning stunts and then there is another tableau, this time of the dwarfs from Snow White. And so the show rambles on while Arkady watches, dazed by all the bling on display.
The trapeze arsonist
Poking around, as is his habit, Arkady finds himself backstage and climbs to the gallery to look down on the stage. Here he finds the trapeze artist who was part of the show, crouched on his almost invisible wire. As Arkady asks him questions, the artist dementedly lights matches for each question and drops them down into the flies below. He could easily start a fire which would cause mayhem in the club, is he mad? Scratch, another match dropped. Arkady makes his excuses and leaves…
Maya the child prostitute
We get an incredibly bleak flashback of Maya’s childhood in some God-forsaken dump miles from Moscow and civilisation, working from as early as she can remember, since before puberty, as a child prostitute in a room decorated as a little girl’s room, all in pink complete with teddy bears.
She remembers all the fat, middle-aged clients who want to fuck Daddy’s little girl but end up on the side of the bed crying. Matti, her Finnish pimp, tells her she’s been sold into prostitution by her parents, presumably to buy more vodka, that noble drink for, as Arkady points out, ‘Four out of every five violent crimes involved vodka’ (p.20).
It is a portrait of a society in complete moral and social collapse.
‘Girls flock to Moscow with romantic ambitions of being models or dancers and Moscow turns them into escorts and whores. We wax them and pluck them and inflate their breasts like balloons. In short, we turn them into freaks of beauty.’ (p.138)
Eventually, Maya becomes pregnant, which causes trouble with the brothel’s owners who make Matti look like Father Christmas. Soon as she’s had the baby, two of the ‘Catchers’, as they’re known, come to visit, intending to take Maya away and make an example of her as they have of previous girls who in any way rebelled – burn her face off with acid or break every bone in her body, that kind of thing. Foolishly, they let her sit in the derelict bus shelter out front of the brothel while they crank up with some of Matti’s vodka.
Unexpectedly, an Army bus is passing from the nearby barracks and to everyone’s surprise stops when Maya sticks her hand out. She quickly boards to the cheers of the soldiers and although the Catchers come running out brandishing pistols, the bus has pulled off and Maya is safe. It drops her at the local train station and she uses all her pitiful savings to buy a train ticket to Moscow. It was on this journey that the kindly old lady stole her baby.
Shootout on the freeway
Back in the present, Vaksberg offers Arkady and Anya a lift home in his huge armour-plated, bullet-proof Mercedes. As it starts to rain, Vaksberg sits snugly inside patting the Adidas bag filled with the takings from the charity event, bitterly complaining how ‘the judo master in the Kremlin’ (p.138) ie Putin, has screwed the oligarchs.
The car drives up onto a stretch of freeway flyover which was never completed and the car stops at the edge of the road, yawning into space as thunder and lightning erupt. Vaksberg gets out to pace under an umbrella and is in mid-rant when the trunk of the Mercedes unexpectedly pops open and a figure opens up with a gun. Vaksberg’s bodyguard fires back and is mown down by sheets of submachine gun bullets, same with the driver, as Vaksberg drops to the floor and Anya hides inside the car. Meanwhile, Arkady grabs the bodyguard’s gun and walks calmly towards the boot and, as the assailant pauses to reload, shoots him dead.
To everyone’s surprise the shooter turns out to be the man who played Dopey from the Seven Dwarfs in the gala show earlier that evening.
Maya in the underground
Maya falls into the unhealthy orbit of a bully boy among the street kids, Yegor, who promises to find her baby for her if she becomes his whore. Zhenya tries to dissuade her but he can’t out-gun Yegor and his gang. Yegor’s mere name inspires terror.
Yegor’s name was a drop of ink in water. Everything took a darker shade. (p.62)
In fact, we now learn how and why the baby was stolen. After leaving the train holding Maya’s baby, Auntie Lenya emerges from the toilets in her true identity of Magdalena, and joins up with the drunken soldier who turns out to be her partner in crime, Vadim. They take the baby back to their flat and then on to an apartment overlooking the Three Stations. Here, in a crappy Soviet-era tower block, lives Colonel Kassim and his wife, who is always nagging him for a baby.
Now Kassim pays off Magdalena and presents his wife with a real baby. But it is crying for its milk and refuses to take formula. After twelve hours of non-stop crying Kassim’s wife is begging him to get rid of the horrible little brat.
He packs it in a box with airholes punched in it, puts it in a carrier bag and sets off through the drizzle to the chaos of Three Stations. On one of the concourses he finds nowhere good to ditch a whimpering baby and is wondering what to do next, when he realises – he’s been robbed. He put the bag down for a second and – it’s gone! Oh well. Job done, he returns to his apartment where his wife resumes her nagging.
The catchers
The two angry Catchers arrive in Moscow in pursuit of the girl who got away. They show people in the Three Stations crowds photos of Maya. One of the people they show is Zhenya, who feigns ignorance but realises Maya is in deadly danger and is wondering how to get word to her, but one of the other street kids has already been shown the photo and immediately told the bad guys Maya is holed up with the street kid, Yegor. Off they go to find her.
Angry Anya
The journalist Anya turns up on Arkady’s doorstep, soaking wet and furious. Arkady left her and Vaksberg at the scene of the shooting waiting for the militia who, of course, stole the Adidas bag with the cash in it and gave them both a grilling. Some friend he turns out to be! Anya sleeps on his sofa, carrying on giving him a hard time until Arkady rather angrily shows her the letter he’s just received from his boss, Zurin.
Arkady has been officially fired for disobeying the clear order not to take part in any further investigations. So he has no influence with the cops any more, that’s why he left the shooting scene, advising Vaksberg to take the credit for shooting the assassin.
Itsy’s gang
Now the novel introduces us to a new set of characters, the barely pubescent members of Itsy’s street gang. Turns out it’s they who stole Colonel Kassim’s bag and are astonished to find it contains a crying baby. The narrative gives us several half-comic descriptions of owners of shops around Three Stations being ‘steamed’ by a gang of children storming through their shop, causing havoc but, when the dust settles, only having lost nappies, wipes and milk formula. Aha. That’ll be Itsy’s gang deciding they are going to raise the baby as their own and stealing the necessary kit.
We get Itsy’s backstory, too. Like Maya’s parents selling her into prostitution and Zhenya’s dad beating him until he became a chess huckster or Arkady’s own dad bullying him until he can strip and rebuild a pistol, Itsy’s childhood was one of unmitigated misery. Her father was a dog breeder, often drunk, who forced Itsy to feed and tend his dogs. One day he went too far and began knocking her about inside the dog pen and the dogs, who had come to think of Itsy as their feeder, savaged him to death. She left for Moscow with the fiercest dog, Tito, and quickly carved out a space in the street gangs.
In the morgue
Inevitably disobeying his boss’s instructions, Arkady accompanies Viktor to the morgue to see Dopey’s body. Stripped bare it is covered with amateur tattoos. Viktor expains to Arkady (and the reader) that Russian criminal tattoos give an elaborate account of the owner’s criminal career. Dopey was no amateur; he was a hard-core professional criminal.
Arkady notices the crop of other corpses on ice in the morgue includes a young man who has committed suicide.
Viktor has been doing some research at Arkady’s suggestion, and found a number of other murdered young women from the past few years, all found without panties, with their dresses hitched up around their waists and their legs arranged in funny postures. In a flash Arkady realises all the murdered women have been posed in the classical postures of ballet training, the ones he saw at the Nijinsky Club!
Arkady sets out to interview the inhabitants of the tower block which overlooks the trailer where ‘Olga’ was found. He meets he choreographer of the Nijinsky Club, Madame Isa Spiridona, fascinating survivor from happier times, with her b&w photos of the greats.
With a shock Arkady recognises the photo of her son on the mantelpiece – Roman Spiridon – as the corpse he saw in the morgue. Madame Spiridona explains that she got a message to say he was going on a long trip, passed on to her by his old friend Sergei Borodin. And from another photograph he identifies the trapeze artist behind the scenes at the Nijinsky Club, the one who behaved as if he was mad, as the ‘friend’, Borodin. Could he… have murdered M. Spiridona’s son? Is he the killer?
When Arkady leaves, Madame S lets him take a coffee table book which has taken his fancy, about the great dancer Nijinsky, since ballet seems to be the thing and the club was named after him…
Maya is plying her new trade under the supervision of young Yegor. She is in the middle of being screwed by a middle-aged Pakistani trader, Ali, who has broken off to go for a pee, when the two Catchers burst into the seedy hotel room. Ali returns to find them waiting for him. ‘Where’s the girl?’ they ask. They torture him but he doesn’t know. In fact Maya had heard a sound outside, hidden from the Catchers, then slipped into the hall and out while they attack Ali.
She steps over the body of Yegor, who has had his pool cue broken and stuffed down his throat before the Catchers then killed him. For his part, before he dies Ali mentions Zhenya, whose name he’s heard being mentioned by the girl and Yegor. Oops.
Anya attacked
When Maya finds Zhenya and tells him what she saw, Zhenya knows bad trouble is coming and phones Arkady. Our hero picks him and Maya up and bring them back to his apartment, where he interviews the terrified girl, along with trusty (if alcoholic sidekick) Viktor.
Half way through Arkady senses rather than hears something and goes cautiously into the next door apartment, the one recently leased by the pain-in-the-neck journalist, Anya.
He and Viktor discover Anya in a crumpled heap against the wall, no knickers and her skirt pushed up around her waist, her legs posed in ballet posture number 5, blue and not breathing.
Arkady realises she is suffering from anaphylactic shock, having mentioned something about being allergic to milk. He saves her life by finding her EPI pen in her fridge, and injecting her with a full dose in the thigh. Above her body, ‘God is shit’ has been sprayed in big words on the wall.
Anya starts and begins breathing. Soon she is conscious again. Arkady wraps her in blankets, feeds her, settles her on his bed, packs Viktor off to his long-suffering wife and settles down to read the book Madame Spiridona leant him. But it isn’t a book about Nijinsky, it is an edition of his notorious diary, which chronicles his descent into madness, and it falls open at one of his rants.
God is dog, Dog is God, Dog is shit, God is shit, I am shit, I am God. (p.218)
So Arkady realises: he is dealing with a Nijinsky-channeling, ballet-obsessed serial killer.
In a weird scene Itsy takes some of her gang of kids shoplifting leaving the two boys, Leo, Peter and Emma to guard their camp and look after the baby. The two boys immediately sniff air freshener and have a trip. They see a brightly caparisoned Mongol from the Golden Horde approaching, jangling his bridle. In fact it is a street cleaning machine driven by a Tajik (although Muscovites call anyone who comes from one of the central Asian republics a ‘Tajik’, regardless of their ethnic identity).
The driver sees that the boards of several crates near the kids’ base have been broken off to make firewood. What they don’t know is that the crates contain a big consignment of Afghan heroin which is being stored here in the scruffy backstreets before being distributed.
The ‘Tajik’ is not happy at the discovery. He pulls Peter’s head back and is about to slash his throat, when the baby starts crying. Emma, who has seen all this, scuttles to the furthest end of the container, and watches as the ‘Tajik’ approaches the baby’s makeshift cot.
She – and the reader – fear the absolute worst and steel our nerves. But when Emma pokes her head out from cover, the ‘Tajik’ has left, and she discovers the baby alive and kicking, having been given an amulet with Koranic script on it to suck on. Thank God there is some humanity in this God-forsaken wasteland.
Anya apologises
It’s a few days later and Anya is well enough to be up and doing her part time charity work, distributing condoms to the street children. We see her being hassled by the militia who try to blackmail out of her box till they realise what’s in it. Back in the apartment block she knocks on Arkady’s door to thank him and apologise again. She has found out from contacts that Vaksberg is virtually bankrupt and has been creaming the money from his own charities. The whole incident with Dopey was staged by him. Dopey was meant to steal the bag of cash and make off, later giving it to Vaksberg (minus a fee) but he got carried away with the gun and sparked a bloodbath.
Anya carefully establishes that Eva has definitely left, and that Arkady is definitely a single man – before abruptly consenting to have sex with him. Arkady isn’t complaining.
Itsy returns from the shoplifting trip and Emma tells her what happened with the ‘Tajik’. Itsy realises they have to leave this base. She hussles her gang into packing up and moving out, whipping them on ahead of her, but Peter and Leo are lagging behind. When she goes back to find them, she discovers they have both been shot dead by the Catchers, their little bodies lying in the mechanics trench next to the trailer.
Then Itsy herself is shot dead by Ilya, one of the Catchers. He crouches over her body and is not at all expecting Tito the wolf to attack him, knocking him onto the trench and, while his partner tries to get a clear shot, ripping open his carotid artery so he is dead in seconds. Tito then bounds out of the trench to kill the second Catcher, but he empties his magazine into the beast which falls dead.
Christ, he thinks, what a mess. How is he going to move his partner’s body? Then he realises there’s a laser red mark on his own body, and he himself is shot by the ‘Tajik’. Carnage.
Sergei Borodin
Arkady is fairly sure the trapeze artist, Sergei Borodin, is the killer so he rings him, and implies he has the evidence to convict him, and invites him to his apartment for a chat. Then Arkady sets up two separate tape recorders to capture everything.
Eerily, Sergei is accompanied by his mother, who clearly dominates and dictates his life (distant echoes of Norman Bates in Psycho). Realising he really thinks he is Nijinsky reincarnated, Arkady plays on his delusions and extracts a spectacular confession from Borodin. All helped when he stage manages for the supposedly dead Anya to enter Arkady’s kitchen dressed in the nightgown she was wearing when Sergei tried to murder her, at just the right psychological moment. Confronted by a ghost, Borodin screams his confession.
Sasha at the races
Arkady visits Vaksberg at a racetrack outside Moscow where the millionaire is hosting a bizarre party. When Arkady had left the scene of the shooting of Dopey, he had told Anya and Sasha to omit mention of his presence and claim that it was Sasha who foiled a daring attack on a respectable businessman.
This has had the unexpected consequence of turning Vaksberg into a popular hero and, even more improbably, he has been rehabilitated with the Kremlin, had his passport returned, and his ability to do business restored.
Hence he is getting back into the swing of things with a new business venture. Although the stands at the racecourse are empty, the loudspeakers blare out the sounds of cheering crowds, as the relatively small number of VIP guests quaff champagne and let them be persuaded by Sasha to get involved in his next enterprise, buying and breeding elite racehorses.
This isn’t the first time Arkady sees Moscow’s hyper-rich in action and each time it gets harder to bear.
On his mobile Arkady gets a call from Viktor identifying Dopey as a regular at the racetrack, Pavel Petrovich Maksimov. Without even being questioned, Sasha suavely admits to Arkady that the dwarf attack was staged, and confirms Anya’s story that, yes, he was, at that point, skimming money from his own charities. But now everything has turned out well – ‘more champagne, detective?’
Madame Furtseva
In his questioning of characters in the apartment block overlooking Three Stations Arkady had met Madame Furtseva, a world famous photographer, her rooms adorned with b&w photos of the mid-century greats, Hemingway, Malraux etc. Out of nowhere, she appears next to the startled Emma in one of the alleyways around the Square, and offers to take her in.
Old and infirm, Madame Furtseva explains that, although she can barely move nowadays, still she likes to spend her time staring out the window, observing the human wildlife prowling around the waterholes of the Three Stations. She has seen a lot of Emma’s story play out and offers to protect her and the baby.
Car chase with Sergei
To his astonishment Arkady’s solid gold confession from Sergei Borodin is rejected by Arkady’s vindictive boss, Zurin, because it was obtained while Arkady was not technically employed as an investigator. Borodin is released from custody to kill again.
Driving back from police headquarters in Viktor’s knackered Lada, Arkady finds himself terrorised by a shining black Hummer. There is a high tension car chase around the snowy, midnight-black streets of Moscow and when the Hummer draws level the automatic window slips slickly down and Sergei points a pistol at Arkady’s head, smiling like the psycho he is.
But all the time Arkady has been driving towards his own rundown neighbourhood, and in particular towards the pothole which has been causing him grief intermittently throughout the novel and which we have observed various squads of unhappy workman trying and failing to fill.
Now, as Sergei goes to pull the trigger, the Hummer hits the big pothole at 150 kph, upending into it so that Borodin mother and son go flying through the windscreen at speed. End of the Borodins.
The final catcher
In a final sequence the sort-of family of Arkady, Anya, Victor and Zhenya take a break at his father the General’s old dacha out in the country by a lake.
But – with wild improbability – Arkady has been ‘befriended’ by the second of the Catchers. Turns out he wasn’t shot dead by the ‘Tajik’ as we thought, just shot through the shoulder.
Now recovered, the Catcher makes efforts to adopt an (implausible) disguise, pretending to be a bookish intellectual who bumps into Arkady at libraries. He follows the ‘family’ to Arkady’s dacha and makes elaborate plans to swim across the lake in a wetsuit, emerge silently and kill them all in their beds.
Instead, as he emerges slickly from the black water, Arkady who had long ago rumbled his disguise, is waiting, and cuts him open from sternum to balls, then watches him writhe and die in the lake water, in clouds of his own blood.
This whole sequence feels like it comes from a different novel, even a different type of novel, a more straightforward action hero novel.
Maya’s baby returned
And in another scene which doesn’t quite match the tone of the book, the reader is surprised to encounter a fairy tale happy ending.
Arkady, Anya, Victor and Zhenya put on a little carnival in one of the squares around Three Stations, hiring a number of child-friendly acts, balloons and entertainers, jugglers and fire eaters.
Lured from her hideyhole up in the veteran photographer’s apartment, Emma wanders open-eyed among the marvels and, when Arkady asks her to, very gently hands little baby Katya back to her mother, Maya.
Against all probability, plausibility or reason, this made me burst into tears. Thank God that something good and innocent and pure is capable of coming out of the moral, physical, spiritual, economic and cultural desolation which is modern Russia.
Three Stations is the shortest of the Renko novels and feels like a chamber symphony, with all the same instruments and elements, but on a more domestic scale, based on tighter, tauter, more integrated plotlines and themes – especially the locale of Three Stations with its hookers, street kids and street crime.
The waiting hall at Kazansky station put Zhenya in mind of the nocturnal habitat at the zoo, a place where things stirred indistinctly and species were difficult to identify. (p.41)
Russia is depicted as a lost, doomed civilisation. Is it really as woeful, as impoverished, violent and corrupt as depicted in these novels? Are there really so many Russian prostitutes in Italy that the new slang word for prostitute is ‘Natasha’? (p.18)
Mind you, in 2009 when this novel was being written, the entire global financial system was nearly brought to its knees by clever bankers in London and New York, and Cruz Smith makes the point that, in many ways, we in the West are no better, having the New Russian billionaire crook Vaksberg drily comment:
‘A year ago we had over a hundred billionaires in Moscow. Today there are less than thirty. So it’s the best of times, the worst of times and sometimes it’s just the shits. It turns out we don’t know how to run capitalism. That’s to be expected. As it happens, nobody knows how to run capitalism. That was a bad surprise. Cigarette?’ (p.97)
Maybe because it’s shorter and tauter, there were fewer really breath-taking turns of phrase in this novel than in its predecessors, though there are still some crackers:
The Lada’s exhaust pipe and muffler hung low and occasionally dragged a rooster tail of sparks. (p.8)
He tried to sleep but his anger was a match struck before a mirror and he saw what a fool he’d been. (p.160)
As a footnote, I annotated for the first time something I’ve noticed in the past few Cruz Smith novels, a particular verbal formula which helps express Arkady’s sense of whatevere-ness, a kind of verbal shrug of the shoulders: his or the narrator’s habit of saying or thinking that, if something is not x, then what is?
The director of the children’s shelter that Zhenya originally came from claimed that the boy and Arkady had a special relationship. Zhenya’s father had shot Arkady. If that wasn’t special, what was? (p.9)
‘A healthy young woman was dead. If that doesn’t make you suspicious, what does?’ (p.89)
I like it. I like pretty much everything about these wonderful books.
Three Stations by Martin Cruz Smith was published by Mantle in 2011. All quotes and references to the 2011 Pan paperback edition.
Three Stations on Amazon
Three Stations Wikipedia article
Martin Cruz Smith website
Martin Cruz Smith Wikipedia article
Review in the New York Times by Olen Steinhauer
Arkady Renko novels
Smith is a prolific writer. Under his own name or pseudonyms, he has written some 28 novels to date. The eight novels featuring Russian investigator Arkady Renko make up the longest series based on one character:
1981 Gorky Park – Introducing Arkady Renko and the case of the three faceless corpses found in Gorky Park, in the heart of Moscow, who turn out to be victims of John Osborne, the slick American smuggler of priceless live sables.
1989 Polar Star – In the first novel, Renko had clashed with his own superiors in Moscow. Now he is forced to flee across Russia, turning up some years later, working on a Soviet fish factory ship in the Bering Sea. Here, once his former profession becomes known, he is called on by the captain to solve the mystery of a female crew member whose body is caught in one of the ship’s own fishing nets. Who murdered her? And why?
1992 Red Square – After inadvertently helping the Russian security services in the previous book, Arkady is restored to his job as investigator in Moscow. It is 1991 and the Soviet Union is on the brink of dissolution so his bosses are happy to despatch the ever-troublesome Arkady to Munich, then on to Berlin, to pursue his investigations into an art-smuggling operation – to be reunited with Irina (who he fell in love with in Gorky Park) – before returning for a bloody climax in Moscow set against the backdrop of the August 1991 military coup.
1999 Havana Bay – Some years later, depressed by the accidental death of his wife, Irina, Arkady is ssent to Havana, Cuba, to investigate the apparent death of his old adversary, ex-KGB officer Colonel Pribluda. He finds himself at the centre of a murderous conspiracy, in an alien society full of colourful music by day and prostitution and voodoo ceremonies by night, and forced to work closely with a tough local black policewoman, Ofelia Orosio, to uncover the conspiracy at the heart of the novel.
2004 Wolves Eat Dogs The apparent suicide of a New Russian millionaire leads Arkady to Chernobyl, the village and countryside devastated by the world’s worst nuclear accident – and it is in this bleak, haunting landscape that Arkady finds a new love and the poisonous secret behind a sequence of grisly murders.
2007 Stalin’s Ghost The odd claim that Stalin has been sighted at a Moscow metro station leads Arkady to cross swords with fellow investigator Nikolai Isakov, whose murky past as a special forces soldier in Chechnya and current bid for political office come to dominate a novel which broadens out to become an wide-ranging exploration of the toxic legacy of Russia’s dark history.
2010 Three Stations In the shortest novel in the series, Arkady solves the mystery of a ballet-obsessed serial killer, while the orphan boy he’s found himself adopting, Zhenya, has various adventures in the rundown district around Moscow’s notorious Three Stations district.
2013 Tatiana – is Tatiana Petrovna, an investigative journalist who appears to have jumped to her death from the 6th floor of her apartment block. When Arkady investigates her death he discovers a trail leading to Kaliningrad on the Baltic Coast and a huge corruption scandal which will involve him in love and death amid the sand dunes of the atmospheric ‘Curonian Split’.
Posted in Adventure, Books, Crime, Novel, Thriller
Tagged 2010, Anya Rudikova, Arkady Renko, crime novel, Dr Eva Kazka, homicide, Martin Cruz Smith, Maya, Moscow, murder, Russia, Sasha Vaksberg, Three Stations, Victor Orlov, Zhenya
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2016/07/04/three-stations-martin-cruz-smith/
The Cobra by Frederick Forsyth (2010)
‘Good information is vital, accidental misinformation is regrettable, but skilful disinformation deadly.’
The Cobra (p.400)
After a sequence of thrillers dealing with the Muslim world and Islamic terrorism, Forsyth makes an (apparently) clean break with a novel about cocaine smuggling from Latin America. In the event, we are soon introduced to characters from previous novels, which gives it a pleasing sense of continuity.
Forsyth appears to have begun by asking himself: if the President of the USA asked his people to STOP the cocaine trade, what would it involve? He sketched out all the steps and operations which would be required – and then placed them in the hands of a couple of tried & trusted characters from a previous novel, to implement.
The novel is divided into four sections, named with typically tongue-in-cheek humour: Coil, Hiss, Strike, Venom.
1. Coil (pages 17 to 74)
The grandson of a servant of the US President dies of a cocaine overdose in a Washington slum. The old servant weeps at an important State dinner. The First Lady goes to comfort her. She and the Prez can’t sleep that night: ‘Is there nothing we can do about this curse of drugs?’ In the early hours, the Prez phones the head of the Drug Enforcement Agency: I want a briefing about cocaine in three days.
The narrative includes this briefing, a characteristically interesting summary of the production and sale of cocaine in the US and Europe (though obviously out of date if you Google the subject). The Prez asks the Director of Homeland Security, ‘Can we abolish the cocaine trade?’ DHS says, I’ll need a man who used to work for the CIA. They called him The Cobra, lol (of course they do).
This turns out to be Paul Devereaux, the highly educated Boston-born Catholic who we last saw masterminding a two-year project to assassinate Osama Bin Laden in the novel before last, Avenger. He was (unwittingly) foiled by one-man seize-and-kidnap operator, Cal Dexter, formerly a Tunnel Rat in Vietnam, now known as The Avenger.
So the head of Homeland Security calls Devereaux and asks if it can be done: Devereaux thinks about it for a month and then says, ‘Yes’,on the following conditions: $2 billion of funds, no record of the project, the recategorisation of cocaine as a terrorist threat, and if he can hire Cal Dexter. He then phones Dexter, who mulls over the offer before saying Yes. Reuniting these old characters is either a) lazy and unimaginative or b) has the same humorous impulse as reuniting the original cast of The A Team or Mission Impossible for one last mission. This is not Henry James; it is thrillerland.
Forsyth cuts and pastes entire paragraphs from the earlier book to describe first Devereaux then Dexter’s biographies. This also could be described as lazy – but it also has a slightly avant-garde feel.The exact repetition of previous text is like the re-use of the same conflicts and wars which recur as backdrops in Forsyth’s fiction. You could think of them like a pack of cards containing the same limited number of ‘characters’ and ‘conflicts’, which is cut and dealt out anew in each novel.
— To give a sense of the ubiquity of these illegal drugs, the text is interspersed throughout with descriptions of shipments of cocaine arriving in Hamburg, Portugal, California and Vancouver, and in West Africa, in different boats, using different smuggling methods – a steady drip of scenes designed to give a sense of the vast scale and the unrelenting nature of the cocaine smuggling, going on every day,day and night, as I write and you read this review.
2. Hiss (pages 77 to 255)
Forsyth claims that, after years of chaos following the death of Pablo Escobar, recent years have seen the emergence of a ‘super-cartel’, the Hermandad. As far as I can tell, this is entirely fictional. Part two commences with a summit meeting of the various members of this ‘Hermandad’, led by Don Diego Esteban, held at one of his vast haciendas, the Rancho de la Cucaracha.
Procedural We watch Esteban convening the members of the Brotherhood; cut to the British Prime Minister consulting with his chiefs of staff at his country house (Chequers) and asking whether the UK should join the US’s crusade (yes). Then go with Dexter round the City of London where Forsyth demonstrates his knowledge of merchant shipping to show how Dexter goes about buying two grain cargo ships which can be converted into anti-drugs boats. Also the purchase and building of a secret airstrip on the Cape Verde island of Fogo…
In fact, Forsyth sets quite a few strands running in parallel, enough to become a bit confusing:
The priesthood Devereaux meets the Father Provincial of the Jesuits in Colombia and suggests he distributes throwaway mobile phones to every priest in the land with the invitation to anonymously phone in any information about drug smuggling which they might learn in confession.
Guinea-Bissau Dexter flies to the failed state of Guinea-Bissau with two black SAS men to spy on cocaine being smuggled in by boat to the coastal region of the Bijagos (p.127)
Letizia Arenal Spanish police send the team full lists of people leaving and entering the country, and computers flag up oddities of behaviour. Thus the Cobra learns about a Colombian lawyer, Julio Luz, who makes monthly and unusually short visits to Madrid. Dexter flies in with a team of CIA spooks. They break into Luiz’s hotel room and ferret through his correspondence (p.140). They tail him and observe that on every trip Luz exchanges not only attaché cases (full of smuggling details) but meets a pretty young woman and exchanges letters. Dexter establishes she is Letizia Arenal and, by palming a cup with her saliva on, gets a DNA test and establishes she is the daughter of Roberto Cardenas, one of the Don’s inner circle. In a long sequence she is seduced by a handsome, art-loving young man into a love affair. They get engaged, then he says he has to return to New York, can she fly out to join him? Ignoring all her father’s orders, Letizia does and is promptly pulled over in Customs who find a brick of cocaine in her baggage, obviously put there by Dexter’s people. Tearfully, Letizia is hauled into court and faces 20 years in a state penitentiary. The handsome man disappears and she realises she’s been framed. At this point the Avenger smuggles a letter into Luz’s luggage to carry back to her father, Roberto Cardenas, in charge of the Brotherhood’s logistics, arranging a tense meeting in a hotel in Cartagena. Here Dexter confronts the evil, violent man and simply says: tell us what you know, and she goes free. Some weeks later a flashdrive arrives with names of corrupt officials across Europe and their bank accounts in the Cayman Islands etc. Dexter arranges for a fall guy to be caught in Spain (temporarily), who confesses to planting the cocaine in Letizia’s baggage. The court in New York dismisses charges. She is released and deported back to Spain. The Cobra has his List, the ‘Rat List’.
The two Q ships The two grain ships are extensively converted into anti-smuggling warships in a pestilential shipyard south of Goa, India. Each will contain a deck just big enough for a small helicopter and a brig to keep prisoners in. They are MV Balmoral, crewed by Royal Navy and Special Boat Squadron and MV Chesapeake crewed by US Navy SEALs.
Captain Francisco Pons flies a converted Beech King aircraft loaded with a tonne of cocaine from Brazil to an isolated airstrip in Guinea-Bissau.
Juan Cortez Father Isidro uses one of the throwaway phones to inform on one Juan Cortez, a master welder who creates smuggling places inside steel hulls. Dexter, using the Cobra’s limitless powers, co-opts a Hercules transport plane and six Green Berets who first stake out Cortez’s daily commute, then stage an elaborate mock road smash, kidnapping and chloroforming Cruz, putting a recent (American) corpse of an unknown drifter in his car dressed in his clothes, with his ring, watch and wallet, then set the car alight. Cruz is airlifted back to the States; his family are told through official channels that Cruz died in a car smash and is tearfully buried. Then, a few days later, Dexter turns up at their house with a tape recording and photos proving Cruz is still alive but can never return – the Cartel would murder him and his family. Faced with no alternative, his wife and kids pack up, leave a message saying they’ve decided to emigrate (!) and are secretly flown to rejoin Cruz in Miami. Now reassured as to the safety of his family, Cruz starts to ‘sing’, and gives the name of some 78 cargo ships which he helped adjust to create concealed smuggling places. The Cobra has his list of drug ships.
Forsyth continues his description of the route of the cocaine after it lands in Guinea-Bissau, being broken up into smaller packs and driven various routes north across the Sahara. From the north African coast it is shipped in knackered steamers like the Sidi Abbas to Calabria, under the control of the ‘Ndrangheta mafia, to be watered down and sold on the street.
The fighter pilot Dexter recruits Major João Mendoza, ex-Brazilian Air Force, to fly the vintage Buccaneer jet fighter he’s had re-engineered to become a drug buster. We meet the team of engineer enthusiasts who’ve carried out the retooling and his (woman) instructor, Commander Colleen Keck (p.193).
Global Hawks Dexter supervises the repurposing of two spy-in-the-sky flying probes, to watch shipping in the Caribbean and off the coast of Brazil. They operate BAMS – Broad Area Maritime Surveillance, and will monitor all shipping from the Latin American coast, either heading north to the States or East to Africa. Humorously, Dexter names them after the wives of the Prez and the UK Prime Minister – Michelle and Sam.
3. Strike (pages 259 to 354)
The Prez’s Chief of Staff, Jonathan Silver, phones the Cobra to say, You’ve had your nine months of planning: is everything good to go? ‘Yes,’ replies the Cobra. What follows is a sustained and co-ordinated attack on the Cartel’s activities, which Forsyth describes in documentary detail.
1. The spies in the sky identify all shipping heading north or east from Latin America. When they identify a ship on either Cortez or Cardenas’s lists, they flash the news back to the hi-tech project headquarters in Anacostia, a neighbourhood of Washington DC. The nearest of the two MV boats is dispatched. The small helicopter appears out of nowhere with a sniper pointing a rifle at the captain’s head. It is followed by fast dinghies containing the SEALS or SBS men. They board and hood the crew and locate the cocaine. By this time the big MV boat has arrived. Crew and coke are transferred to the brig/prison and hold, respectively. This is repeated scores of times, as Project Cobra clobbers the smuggling boats. Crews and coke are taken back to the Cape Verde island, then flown to the other base, Eagle Island, we saw being constructed in the middle of the Indian Ocean. There they will be held forever without trial.
2. At the same time, Dexter meets with Customs authorities across the States and Europe and shares the list of corrupt port officials. One by one these are caught in ‘sting’ operations, along with the deliverers and the receivers, thus trapping the maximum number of people along the chain.
3. In the third strand, Major Mendoza scrambles from his base in the Cape Verde islands, and flies his retooled Buccaneer to intercept suspicious planes, suspicious in that they’re unusually small to be making the trans-Atlantic flight (but are able to, as Forsyth explains, because of extra fuel tanks with fuel often pumped manually by Latino peons). Mendoza simply blows them out of the sky.
Thus, within a few weeks Don Esteban realises his operation is under co-ordinated assault. In usual style he tortures and murders a number of ‘suspects’ to find out who the ‘traitor’ is: various unfortunates along the pipelines – either in Colombia or Guinea-Bissau – are tortured to death, chopped up with chainsaws, decapitated, or have their noses, ears, fingers and genitals removed to make them talk. Forsyth doesn’t stint on describing the really super-brutal methods of the cartels. Eventually Esteban establishes Cardenas as one of the leaks, and he is gunned down in a mass raid on his remote jungle hideaway.
But the Cobra still has the Rat list and the ship list and the devastation of the Brotherhood’s operations proceeds apace. Eventually the gangs down the supply chain become restless with the Cartel. Black gangs in Africa, the mafias of Italy and Spain, all the suppliers in Mexico who pass on to the US, all these middle men gangs are suddenly not receiving wholesale shipments. They start complaining to the directors of the Cartel responsible for distribution, they start wondering if the Cartel is favouring other gangs, they start looking round for other suppliers. Forsyth, with his usual documentary authority, describes the visit of one Cartel rep to the gangs of North America, and one to Europe, in both giving breakdowns of the races and ethnicities of the gangs.
The sting Then we find out why the Cobra has been so careful to seize and not destroy the cocaine shipments. In elaborate sting operations, the Cobra arranges for some of the ‘missing’ coke to be bundled in with shipments which they do let through. Then organises police raids, carried out with the usual publicity and lots of photos in the newspapers. Photos which show the consignment numbers of the jute-wrapped packs (for everything in this highly organised industry is numbered and monitored). Then arranges for the raids to be given maximum publicity.
As intended, the information gets back to Don Esteban and his lieutenants: the information that some of the bales from the boats and planes which disappeared did in fact get through. The disinformation that this sends the Cartel is that someone, somewhere is betraying them on an industrial scale: ‘disappearing’ planes and boats then stealing the shipments. Vengeance will be awesome.
4. Venom (pages 397 to 447)
Having planted the suspicion in Don Esteban’s mind that he is being double crossed, the Cobra now manufactures evidence suggesting the culprits are some of the key gangs who control the trade in Mexico. The Don carries out punishments, which lead to revenge attacks, and soon the Cobra’s campaign of disinformation has sparked a massive and very bloody war among the Mexican drug gangs.
In fact this is just the opening of an extensive campaign of lies and deceptions – spearheaded by a blog the Cobra sets up, which carefully mixes accurate info about the drug seizures with inflammatory posts carefully assigning blame to the numerous heavy duty drug gangs in Europe and the US — until all these strategies have prompted a major outbreak of public violence in US cities second only to the street shootings of the Prohibition era. The public outcry, the newspaper headlines, politicians screaming, a groundswell of protest escalates up to the Senate and then the Prez himself.
The Cobra explains it all very clearly and cynically to Dexter. This is what he aimed for all along: for the only people who can ultimately defeat the drug gangs are the drug gangs themselves, fighting themselves to extinction, wiping out the infrastructure for a generation. The Cobra delivers what sounds very much like an Author’s Message – that the comfortable societies of the West are happy to dole out violence abroad (and Dexter’s career alone has given us eye-witness accounts of just fractions of the appalling bloodshed caused in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq) but don’t like the reality when they see it on their own streets. (This sounds like the traditional soldier’s contempt for cosy civilians who have no idea what real combat is about – a timeless complaint).
The Prez is a democratic politician, coming up for re-election, and he asks his Chief of Staff to tell the Cobra to stand down the operation. Right on the brink of success. These final pages have a bitter flavour, as the elected politicians turn out not to have the balls to see the job through (and all because civilians are getting injured and killed in the epidemic of violence which has rampaged across the States.)
In a puzzling final section, the Cobra flies to Colombia to meet the Don, in a Catholic church. He candidly reveals that his country (the US) has betrayed him by cancelling the operation. He has 150 tonnes of cocaine hidden. He will deliver it to the Don in exchange for $1 billion, which will allow him to disappear and live out his life in luxury. I found this bewildering because the Cobra had up to this point been portrayed as a man of inflexible rectitude. He flies back to Washington and calls Dexter in to tell him:
a) The entire operation is being stood down: the two ships handed over to their respective navies, the soldiers and special forces returned to their units etc.
b) He orders Dexter to fly to a tiny coral atoll in the Bahamas, there to find and torch the 150 tonnes of cocaine. Dexter does so, arriving with instructions which are actually carried out by the Marines on the spot. But as they’re being splashed with petrol, Dexter cuts into a bale and takes a taste. It’s cooking soda. He allows the Marines to proceed, but asks them what ship brought the bales. He pieces together the evidence that there’s another steamer, which has been dumping these fake bales and keeping the real ones. Reacting fast, he calls the Project computer headquarters and quickly identifies the steamer which must be carrying the missing cocaine. Just as quickly, he gets through to Major Mendoza on Cape Verde and tells him there is one last job. He tells the Major (whose brother died of a cocaine overdose and so takes the mission deadly seriously) to fly out across the Atlantic, identify the steamer carrying the coke to Colombia as part of the Cobra’s deal with the Don, and sink it. Which – in a bravura passage giving documentary description of an air force strike – he does.
In the Epilogue Dexter returns to the sleepy New England town he left nine months earlier, to resume his quiet, unassuming existence as a small-town lawyer. And reads in his paper that locals found the body of Paul Devereaux in his Washington mansion. He and his housekeeper had been brutally murdered. The last words are, ‘Nobody treats the Don like this.’
This ending really puzzled me: I was expecting the fake cocaine ploy to be a subtle last cunning strike by the Cobra – like, maybe the cocaine he was sending back to Colombia would be poisoned or booby-trapped. But it seems not. So are we really to accept that the shining beacon, incorruptible good guy, Cobra, at the last minute made a sell-out deal with the head of the world’s cocaine industry? Really? And that Dexter’s spotting that the cocaine in the Bahamas was fake, then quickly dispatching Mendoza to blow up the real shipment, in effect condemned his boss and the man he’d come to respect so much, to certain assassination? Dexter doesn’t seem very upset when he reads the news in his paper. Is that because he has discarded Devereaux – despite the immense feat he pulled off of nearly ending the world’s cocaine trade – as a broken reed, as turning out-to-be-corrupted?
I’ve reread the last chapter twice and am still surprised and puzzled by what happened and what I’m meant to make of it.
This novel is a fantasy of what the existing forces of law and order (or FLO, as Forsyth calls them) could do if they abandoned ‘political correctness’ and ‘human rights’ and all the other namby-pamby concerns for legal process which, in Forsyth’s view, clearly hamper them. It is a ‘right-wing’ fantasy of how an upright and pure police force could stamp out this massive social problem.
Given the epic scale of the crime now associated with drug smuggling, it is a beguiling fantasy, not least because:
a) It’s not that serious. Like all Forsyth’s novels – despite the blizzard of factual research into recent conflicts and geopolitical history, into official and illegal organisations, the detailed accounts of ranks and structures of army, navy and air force and their precise weaponry, as well as factual backgrounds on international crime and terrorism, of organisations or technologies (preceding the text is a list of no fewer than 27 acronyms and abbreviations) – despite these mountains of research, there’s a simple-minded cartoon feel to the whole enterprise.
b) The serious question of to what extent civil liberties can be suspended in the war against terror or the war on drugs, is something that can be debated forever by moral philosophers and lawyers, politicians and columnists – and never reach an actual conclusion. But The Cobra is a fiction which, despite the weight of research behind it, in origin is similar to the creation of countless other fictional vigilantes and crimefighters-without-the-law, from Dirty Harry to Batman (b.1939). Gotham City/San Francisco/the Western world is overwhelmed by crime. The police are too corrupt or overwhelmed to cope. Into the breach steps a superhero – Dirty Harry/Batman/the Cobra, prepared to use unconventional methods to get the results we all deeply desire. Same stable.
Forsyth’s novels are crisply written, full of fascinating background information and the cardboard heroes – just like the heroes of a thousand movies and TV cop series – always get their man. We live, for the few days we read it, in a simpler, fairer world, a world of violence and immorality and illegality, where the good is unquestionably Good, and if it also behaves violently and immorally and illegally, behaves thus in a good cause and so we should cheer it on. Come on the good guys!
What more do you want for your £6.99?
The Cobra by Frederick Forsyth was published by Bantam Press in 2010. All quotes and references are from the 2011 Corgi paperback edition.
The Cobra on Amazon
The Cobra Wikipedia article
Frederick Forsyth Wikipedia article
Forsyth’s column in the Daily Express
Mexican drug wars Wikipedia article
Forsyth’s books
1971 The Day of the Jackal – It is 1963. An international assassin is hired by right-wing paramilitary organisation, the OAS, to assassinate French President, Charles de Gaulle. The novel follows the meticulous preparations of the assassin, code-name Chacal, and the equally thorough attempts of the ‘best detective in France’, Commissaire Lebel, to track him down. Surely one of the most thoroughly researched and gripping thrillers ever written.
1972 The Odessa File – It is 1963. German journalist Peter Miller goes on a quest to track down an evil former SS commandant and gets caught up in a high-level Nazi plot to help Egypt manufacture long-range missiles to attack and destroy Israel.
1974 The Dogs of War – City magnate Sir James Manson hires seasoned mercenary Cat Shannon to overthrow the dictator of the (fictional) West African country of Zangaro, so that Manson’s mining company can get its hands on a mountain virtually made of platinum. This very long novel almost entirely amounts to a mind-bogglingly detailed manual on how to organise and fund a military coup.
1975 The Shepherd – A neat slick Christmas ghost story about a post-war RAF pilot whose instruments black out over the North Sea but who is guided to safety by an apparently phantom Mosquito, flown by a pilot who disappeared without trace during the war.
1979 The Devil’s Alternative – A Cold War, geopolitical thriller confidently describing machinations at the highest levels of the White House, Downing Street and a Soviet Politburo riven by murderous factions and which is plunged into emergency by a looming grain shortage in Russia. A plot to overthrow the reforming leader of the Soviet Union evolves into a nailbiting crisis when the unexpected hijacking of an oil supertanker by fanatical Ukrainian terrorists looks like it might lead to the victory of the hawks in the Politburo, who are seeking a Russian invasion of Western Europe.
1982 No Comebacks Ten short stories combining Forsyth’s strengths of gripping technical description and clear fluent prose, with his weaknesses of cardboard characters and improbable plots, but the big surprise is how many of them are clearly comic in intention.
1984 The Fourth Protocol – Handsome, former public schoolboy, Paratroop Regiment soldier and MI5 agent John Preston, first of all uncovers the ‘mole’ working in MI5, and then tracks down the fiendish Soviet swine who is assembling a tactical nuclear device in Suffolk with a view to vaporising a nearby US Air Force base. the baddies’ plan is to rally anti-nuclear opinion against the Conservatives in the forthcoming General Election, ensuring a Labour Party victory and then (part two of the plan) replace the moderate Labour leader with an (unspecified) hard-Left figure who would leave NATO and effectively hand the UK over to the Russians. A lunatic, right-wing fantasy turned into a ‘novel’.
1989 The Negotiator – Taciturn Clint Eastwood-lookalike Quinn (no first name, just ‘Quinn’) is the best negotiator in the business, so when the President’s son is kidnapped Quinn is pulled out of quiet retirement in a Spanish village and sent to negotiate his release. What he doesn’t realise is the kidnap is just the start of a bigger conspiracy to overthrow the President himself!
1991 The Deceiver – A set of four self-contained, long short stories relating exciting incidents in the career of Sam McCready, senior officer in the British Intelligence Service, as he approaches retirement. More gripping than the previous two novels, with the fourth and final story being genuinely funny, in the style of an Ealing comedy starring Alec Guinness.
1994 The Fist of God – A journalistic account of Saddam Hussein’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait and the ensuing US-led ‘Desert Storm’ operation to throw him out, complete with insider accounts of the Western military and intelligence services and lavish descriptions of scores of hi-tech weaponry. Against this backdrop is set the story of one man – dark-skinned, Arabic-speaking Mike Martin who goes undercover posing as an Arab, first in occupied Kuwait, then – even more perilously – in Baghdad itself, before undertaking a final mission to locate and assist the destruction of Saddam’s atom bomb (!) and the Supergun designed to fire it at the Allies. Simultaneously gripping in detail and preposterous in outline.
1996 Icon – Hot shot CIA agent Jason Monk is brought out of retirement to foil a fascist coup in post-communist Russia in a novel which starts out embedded in fascinating contemporary history of Russia but quickly escalates to heights of absurdity, capped by an ending in which the Russian people are persuaded to install a distant cousin of our very own Queen as the new Tsar of All The Russias! Sure.
2001 The Veteran – Five very readable short stories: The Veteran, The Art of the Matter, The Miracle, The Citizen, and Whispering Wind – well engineered, sleek and almost devoid of real human psychology. Nonetheless, the vigilante twist of The Veteran is imaginatively powerful, and the long final story about a cowboy who wakes from a century-long magic sleep to be reunited with a reincarnation of his lost love has the eerie, primal power of a yarn by Rider Haggard.
2003 Avenger – A multi-stranded narrative which weaves together the Battle of Britain, the murder of a young American aid worker in Bosnia, the death of a young woman in America, before setting the tracking down of a Serbian war criminal to South America against a desperate plot to assassinate Osama bin Laden. The least far-fetched and most gripping Forsyth thriller for years.
2006 The Afghan – Ex-SAS man Colonel Mike Martin, hero of The Fist of God, is called out of retirement to impersonate an Afghan inmate of Guantanamo Bay in order to infiltrate Al Qaeda and prevent their next terrorist attack. Quite a gripping thriller with an amazing amount of detailed background information about Afghanistan, the Taliban, Al Qaeda, Islamic terrorism and so on.
2010 The Cobra – Two lead characters from Avenger, Paul Devereaux and Cal Dexter, are handed the task of wiping out the illegal cocaine trade on the authority of Barack Obama himself. Which leads to an awesome display of Forsyth’s trademark factual research, scores of pages building up a comprehensive picture of the drugs industry, and to the detailed description of the multi-stranded operation which almost succeeds, until lily-livered politicians step in to halt it.
2013 The Kill List – Another one about Islamic terrorism. The Preacher, who has been posting jihadi sermons online and inspiring a wave of terrorist assassinations, is tracked down and terminated by US marine Christopher Carson, aka The Tracker, with a fascinating side plot about Somali piracy thrown in. Like all Forsyth’s novels it’s packed with interesting background information but unlike many of his later novels it this one actually becomes genuinely gripping at the end.
2015 The Outsider – At age 76 Forsyth writes his autobiography in the form of a series of vignettes, anecdotes and tall tales displaying his characteristic briskness and dry humour. What an extraordinary life he’s led, and what simple, boyish fun this book is.
by Simon on June 8, 2016 • Permalink
Posted in Adventure, Novel, Thriller
Tagged 2010, Barack Obama, Calvin Dexter, cocaine, Drug Enforcement Agency, Frederick Forsyth, Paul Devereaux, The Cobra
Posted by Simon on June 8, 2016
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2016/06/08/the-cobra-frederick-forsyth/
Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder (2010)
In the middle of Europe in the middle of the twentieth century, the Nazi and Soviet regimes murdered some 14 million people.
In 400 pages of densely packed text, illustrated by numerous maps, backed up by 40 pages of bibliography and 40 pages of notes, American historian Timothy Snyder places the Holocaust within the broader context of the planned and institutionalised mass murder of civilians undertaken by the Soviet and Nazi regimes between 1933 and 1945.
The Ukraine famine He points out that Stalin and the Soviet apparat began killing people in bulk before Hitler even became Chancellor. In fact Hitler’s rise to power in January 1933 coincided with, and helped to conceal from public interest, the vast famine Stalin caused in the Ukraine which led to the deaths of over three million people. Hunger was the most consistent tool used by both dictatorships to kill millions, as many as seven million victims.
The Nazi Hunger Plan I don’t think I knew about the Nazis’ Hunger Plan, a deliberate scheme to starve to death all the Russians in the area they invaded in the first winter of the attack on Russia (1941). Hitler intended to destroy Poland and Russia as states, exterminate their ruling classes and intelligentsia and then, in that first winter of conquest, deliberately starve some 30 million Slavs to death. Tens of millions more would have been killed or enslaved in what would have become permanent slave colonies supplying the Fatherland.
Nazi mass murder of Soviet POWs Snyder calls Operation Barbarossa – the Nazi invasion of Russia – a ‘fiasco’ for the complete dysjunction between plan and achievement: Russia didn’t collapse, the Red Army fought on with growing confidence, and the Nazis didn’t seize vast stocks of food to feed their army and people. But they could starve to death the Russians under their control and so they did. Russian POWs were corralled into prisoner of war camps which were mostly just barbed wire around empty fields, with no toilets or shelter and no food. Here Russian POWs were crammed, sometimes packed so tight they couldn’t move let alone sit, and then left to die, the living skeletons trampling over the growing mound of corpses. Snyder describes these (as all the other killing methods) in unsparing detail. Over three million Russian POWs are estimated to have died of starvation and exposure, as deliberate German policy.
The scale of the killing, the number of individual tragedies encompassed by these numbers, dwarfs anything else in human history until the great disasters of Mao’s China.
A hecatomb of examples
The flower of Belorusia’s literary culture deliberately exterminated: 218 of the country’s leading writers were all executed.
Ten thousand Poles of the officer class executed in the Katyn Forest, followed by mass killing of schoolteachers. The Nazi plan was for Polish children to be brought up to understand enough German to obey orders and to count to 20. Nothing more. A slave nation.
Over three million Ukrainian peasants were deliberately left to starve once it became clear Stalin’s policy of forced collectivisation of farms had backfired and catastrophically reduced, not increased, harvests. Cannibalism became widespread, parents ate their children, children ate their parents, brothers ate sisters. Visitors to the region became used to seeing bloated corpses littering the streets. NKVD and communist officers were given quotas of peasant ‘saboteurs’ and ‘spies’ ie anyone who complained about starving to death – to be captured, interrogated and shot.
More broadly, during the great leap forward of the Soviet collectivisation of agriculture over five million starved across the USSR in 1932 and 1933. Starved to death.
When the NKVD ran low on bullets thy made prisoners sit side by side so one bullet could be fired through two or more skulls simultaneously, then tipped them into the mass graves.
Order 00447 ‘On the operations to repress former kulaks, criminals, and other anti-Soviet elements’ (dated 30 July 1937) led to the execution of nearly 400,000 Soviet citizens in 18 months in 1937 and 1938.
It ran concurrently with order 00485, mandating the ‘total liquidation of the networks of spies of the Polish Military Organisation’, issued 11 August 1937. Quotas were issued to all NKVD offices throughout the USSR to capture, interrogate, despatch to the gulag or just execute a fixed number per week; if you didn’t fulfil your quota you yourself would be arrested. Since there was in fact no Polish Military Organisation, the NKVD had to manufacture networks of spies by arresting anyone with a Polish name, who had Polish relatives, had been to Poland or worked for Poles, then extracting confessions under torture.
Evgenia Babushkina wasn’t Polish, she was a promising organic chemist, but her mother had once been washerwoman for Polish diplomats and so she was arrested and shot. One of millions.
Sometimes more than a thousand death warrants were signed by NKVD authorities per day, and then rubberstamped en masse by their superiors. It was hard to find secure places to execute so many people, and vast areas of mass graves had to be organised outside major settlements throughout the USSR. Work work work.
I gave up listing even random examples. There are too many, too many statistics on every page. 33,761 people, the entire Jewish population of Kiev, was forced to march to the Jewish graveyard, stripped of their valuable and clothes, forced to lie face down on the still warm corpses beneath them, and machine gunned through the head. Then another line. Then another. Then another. For years. In Europe’s killing fields.
He has a way with days:
On any given day in the second half of 1941, the Germans shot more Jews than had been killed in all the pogroms in the whole history of the Russian empire. (p.227)
On any given day in autumn 1941, as many Soviet prisoners of war died as the total British and American POW deaths in the entire war. (p.182)
This book sheds new light on well-known events because:
it brings together into one gruesome continuum Soviet and Nazi killing, usually kept separate
it uses newly accessible and translated archives all across Eastern Europe and Russia to give a detailed account of Soviet mass murder, and to put precise numbers to the Nazi killings
its focus on the Bloodlands – a broad loop of territory from the Baltic republics (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) down through roughly Poland and east through the Ukraine to the Black Sea – unify the story and show how the competing dictatorships learned from each other, shared murder techniques and bureaucratic procedures
It is a transformative book, completely reshaping how you think about these events, placing them in completely new contexts and prompting new thoughts and insights, about the dictators’ aims and strategies and how these changed in the stressed, pressure-cooker atmosphere of the 1930s.
In its thoroughness and its presentation of unstoppable facts and statistics of mass murder, on every page, it drives the reader down and and further down into the deepest pits of hell, till you almost feel like one of the countless thousands, tens of thousands, of children thrown alive into the death pits and buried alive by the bulldozers.
Utopias of blood
But mostly it reinforces the terrible truth that all powerful leaders with utopian visions for transforming societies, always seem to start by having to murder some, then many, and then millions and millions, of their own citizens in order to get to the Promised Land of their dreams – but never do. All they leave behind is mountains of skulls – in Poland, Ukraine, Belarusia, China, Cambodia, Rwanda.
Building a paradise on earth is difficult, given that even building a house is demanding, raising healthy, happy children is well nigh impossible. But burning down houses, villages, entire towns – shooting, gassing and starving unarmed civilians. Easy peasy. The lazy way out.
Snyder’s long concluding chapter engages with various commentators on modernity or the industrial state or theorists of totalitarianism like Hannah Arendt. But maybe it’s just laziness and stupidity: neither Stalin nor Hitler were great thinkers, they were great manipulators of people’s stupid fears and stupid utopian hopes: ‘if only we can get rid of the Jews-kulaks-saboteurs-right deviationists etc, we’ll all be rich, everything will be better, we can sleep safe in our beds.’
Thus they tried to get rid of the bourgeoisie in Mao’s China and the the urban intellectuals in Pol Pot’s Cambodia and the Tutsis in Rwanda and the Croats and Bosnians in Greater Serbia, and now they are trying to get rid of the ‘infidel’ in the ‘caliphate’.
Primitive tribal fear of ‘the other’, shaped by dictators into genocidal violence. And when you’ve killed this lot of suspects and things don’t get better, well, it must be because of deeper conspiracies, of darker forces undermining the Volk or the People or whatever gibberish you’ve manipulated your people into worshiping – so that calls for another round of purges, killing and purification.
The hardest thing for humans seems to be accepting the otherness of other people, other beliefs and other traditions, of living and letting live – but the societies which manage to be truly tolerant and multicultural (the Ottoman empire in its heyday, the Austro-Hungarian empire, the British empire, the vast, diverse federation of American States) seem to be precisely the ones which last longest and give its inhabitants the best lives.
Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin on Amazon
Bloodlands Wikipedia article
New York Review of Books review by Anne Applebaum
NKVD Order No. 00447 Wikipedia article
Generalplan Ost Wikipedia article
The Nazi Hunger Plan Wikipedia article
Katyn massacre Wikipedia article
by Simon on March 24, 2016 • Permalink
Posted in Books, History, Second World War
Tagged 2010, Auschwitz, Bloodlands, Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin, Generalplan Ost, Hitler, Jews, Katyn, Stalin, The Holocaust, the Hunger Plan, Timothy Snyder, USSR
Posted by Simon on March 24, 2016
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2016/03/24/bloodlands-timothy-snyder/
The Seventies Unplugged by Gerard DeGroot (2010)
This is a popular history of an unpopular decade. It doesn’t attempt to be a comprehensive overview but instead looks at the years from 1970 to 1979 through 50 representative stories, told in short sections – hence the sub-title ‘A kaleidoscopic look at a violent decade‘.
It’s a light, easy read, like a sequence of interesting magazine articles. DeGroot has an appealingly open, lucid style. He tells his stories quickly and effectively and doesn’t hold back on frequently pungent comments.
The three opening stories each in their way epitomise the end of the utopian dreams of pop culture of the 1960s:
the Charlie Manson killings (overnight hippies became scary)
the death of Jimi Hendrix (after four short years of amazing success and innovation, Hendrix admitted to feeling played out, with nowhere new to take his music)
the marriage of Mick Jagger to Bianca Pérez-Mora Macias (the street-fighting man turns into a leading member of the jet set, hobnobbing with Princess Margaret in Antibes etc)
These eye-catching and rather tired items are obviously aimed at a baby boomer, pop and rock audience and I wondered whether it would all be at this level…
70s terrorism
But it gets more meaty as soon as DeGroot begins an analysis of what he considers the 1970s’ distinguishing feature: political violence. In almost every industrialised country small groups of Marxists, visionaries or misfits coalesced around the idea that the ‘system’ was in crisis, and all it needed was a nudge, just one or two violent events, to push it over into complete collapse and to provoke the Glorious Revolution. They included:
The Angry Brigade (UK) – bombed the fashionable boutique BIBA on May Day 1971 and went on to carry out 25 bombings between 1970 and 1972.
The Weather Underground (US) 1969-77, carry out various violent attacks, while living on the run.
The Baader-Meinhof Gang / Red Army Faction carried out a series of violent bombings, shootings and assassinations across Germany, peaking in its May Offensive of 1972.
ETA – between 1973 and 1982 responsible for 371 deaths, 542 injuries, 50 kidnappings and hundreds of other explosions in their quest for independence for Spain’s Basque country.
The dire events of Bloody Sunday when British paratroopers shot dead 13 unarmed protesters, a decisive recruiting sergeant for the IRA, which embarked on a 20-year campaign of bombings and shootings, euphemistically referred to as The Troubles leavnig some 3,500 dead and nearly 50,000 injured.
Palestinian terrorists (the Black September Organisation) kidnapped then murdered 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in September 1972.
The May 1978 murder of former Italian Prime Minister, Aldo Moro, by the Red Brigades. During the 1970s Italy suffered over 8,000 terrorist incidents, kidnappings, bombings and shootings.
These Marxist groups:
concluded that, after the failure of the student movements and the May 1968 events in France, non-violent revolution was doomed to failure; therefore, only violence could overthrow the system
modelled themselves on Third World liberation movements, on Mao’s peasant philosophy or Che Guevara’s jungle notes – neither remotely relevant to advanced industrialised nations
were disgusted with the shallowness of Western consumerist society, they thought violent spectacles would ‘awaken’ a proletariat drugged with fashion and pop music, awaken them to the true reality of their servitude and exploitation and prompt the Revolution:
partly because it would make the people realise the system is not all-encompassing, does not have all the answers, is not monolithic, is in fact very vulnerable
partly because violent acts would goad the authorities to violent counter-measures which would radicalise the population, forcing them to choose – Reaction or Revolution
also thought that violent action would purify its protagonists, liberating them from their petit bourgeois hang-ups, transforming them into ‘new men and women’ ie lots of the terrorists were seeking escape from very personal problems
BUT, as DeGroot so cogently puts it – after detailed analyses of these movements – they all discovered the same bitter truth: that political violence only works in the context of a general social revolt (p.29). Terrorist violence can catalyse and focus a broad movement of unrest, but it cannot bring that movement into being. A few bombings are no replacement for the hard work of creating large-scale political movements.
The terrorists thought a few bombs and assassinations would provide the vital catalyst needed to ‘smash the system’, the dashing example of a few leather-jacketed desperadoes with machine guns would be all that the deluded proletariat required to wake them from their consumerist slumber, rise up and throw off their chains.
But the great mass of the people didn’t share the terrorists’ millenarian delusions and so these gangs ended up simply creating fear, killing and maiming people, in Ireland, Italy, Germany and Spain, for no gain at all.
The terrorists were not personally transformed; more often than not they felt guilt – it is quite moving to read the clips from the interviews and memoirs of surviving gang members which DeGroot liberally quotes – some obstinate millenarians to the end, but quite a few overcome with regret and remorse for their actions.
The proletariat did NOT suddenly wake from their slumber and realise the police state was its oppressor, quite the reverse: the people turned to the police state to protect them from what seemed (and often was) arbitrary and pointless acts of violence.
Worst of all, the gangs found themselves trapped on a treadmill of violence, for a terrorist organisation cannot go ‘soft’ or it loses its raison d’etre: ‘an organisation defined by terror needs to kill in order to keep mediocrity at bay.’ (p.155) Often they kept on killing long after realising it was pointless.
It’s 40 years later and none of the terrorist groups listed above achieved their goals. The opposite. They wanted to provoke a reaction from the Right and they did. Along with the broader political and cultural movements of the Left, they did provoke a profound counter-response from the Right, epitomised (in the Anglo-Saxon countries) by the elections of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, leading to and/or reflecting a profound and permanent shift to the right in all the economically advanced countries.
State terror
All that said, terrorist violence was dwarfed by state violence during the period.
I had never read an account of the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971: ie West Pakistan sending its army into East Pakistan/Bangladesh with the explicit purpose of slaughtering as many civilians as it could. It beggars belief that the head of the Pakistan Army said, If we kill three million the rest will do whatever we want. In the event, well over a million Bangladeshis were murdered. 10 million fled to India, before Mrs Gandhi was forced to intervene to put an end to the massacres, and out of this abattoir emerged the new nation of Bangladesh.
On 11 September 1973 in Chile General Pinochet overthrew the communist government of Salvador Allende, who was strafed by planes from his own air force inside the presidential palace, before committing suicide. Pinochet’s dictatorship (1973-90) was characterised by suspension of human rights with thousands being murdered, and hundreds of thousands imprisoned and tortured.
The Vietnam War dragged on and on, the Americans incapable of ‘winning’ but the North Vietnamese not strong enough to ‘win’. Anywhere between 1.5 and 3 million died, hundreds of thousands in America’s savage bombing campaigns. Nixon finally withdrew all US forces in 1974, leaving the South to collapse into chaos and corruption before being overrun and conquered by the communist North in 1975, leaving scars which haunt America to this day. And Vietnam.
Up to 500,000 people were murdered during the brutal eight-year rule of Ugandan dictator, Idi Amin (1971-79).
The brutal military dictatorship of the Colonels in Greece lasted from 1967 to 1974, supported by America while it suppressed democracy, human rights and a free press. The dictatorship only ended when it supported the military coup of Nikos Sampson on Cyprus, designed to unite the island with mainland Greece but which prompted the disastrous invasion of the north of the island by the Turkish Army, leading to the partition of Cyprus which continues to this day.
Between 1975 and 1979 the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia (which the Khmers renamed Kampuchea) murdered some 2 million of its own citizens, a quarter of the country’s population, in its demented drive to return the country to pre-industrial, pre-western peasant purity.
The June 16 Soweto uprising in 1976 saw tens of thousands of black South African schoolchildren protesting against Afrikaans, the language of their white oppressors, being made the compulsory language of education. The apartheid authorities responded by unleashing their dogs and shooting into the crowds, killing 176 and wounding around 1,000. When anti-apartheid campaigner Steve Biko was murdered in the custody of the SA police, a crime which galvanised opinion in South Africa and abroad, leading to the book and film about his life, and an intensification of sanctions against South Africa.
Racism Vast subject. DeGroot concentrates on the UK and mentions Enoch Powell’s River of Blood speech in April 1968. I hadn’t realised Powell remained quite so popular for quite so long afterwards, well into the 1970s he polled as the most popular British politician, and DeGroot points out the regrettable rise of racism in the 1970s, from David Bowie and Eric Clapton to the founding of the National Front (est. 1967), which prompted the response of Rock Against Racism (est. 1976) and the Anti-Nazi League (est. 1977). A lot of marching, chanting and street fighting.
Drugs Year on year, heroin killed more young Americans than the war in Vietnam. Marijuana use had become widespread by the mid-1970s, with one estimate that 40% of teens smoked it at least once a month. DeGroot’s article describes the way all the government agencies overlooked the fact that cocaine was becoming the big issue: because it was predominantly a white middle-class drug, it was neglected until it was too late, until the later 1970s when they woke up to the fact that Colombian cartels had set up a massive production and supply infrastructure and were dealing in billions of dollars. ‘While Reagan strutted, Americans snorted’ (p.271)
Feminism Another vast subject, which DeGroot illuminates with snapshots, generating oblique insights from some of the peripheral stories in this huge social movement:
The high profile ‘Battle of the Sexes’ tennis match between the 55-year-old former world number one and male chauvinist, Bobby Riggs, and 29-year-old women’s number one Billie Jean King. King won and to this day meets women who were young at the time, and who tell her that her example made them determined not to be put off by men, but to go for their dreams.
I had never heard of Marabel Morgan and her hugely bestselling book, Total Woman, which takes a devoutly Christian basis for arguing that the path to married bliss is for a woman to completely submit herself to her husband’s wishes. DeGroot makes the far-reaching point that the weak spot in feminism is that a lot of women don’t want to be high-powered executives or politicians, but are reasonably happy becoming mothers and housewives. Moreover, feminists who routinely describe being a mother as some kind of slavery, seriously undervalue the importance, and creativity, and fulfilment to be gained from motherhood.
This leads nicely into his consideration of the rise of the ‘silent majority’ and then the Moral Majority. The phrase ‘the silent majority’ had been around since the 19th century (when it referred to the legions of the dead). It was Richard Nixon’s use of it in a speech in 1969 that prompted newspaper and magazine articles and its widespread popularisation. Nixon was trying to rally support from everyone fed up with student protests, campus unrest, long-haired layabouts, the spread of drugs, revolutionary violence and the rest of it.
The Moral Majority was founded as a movement as late as 1979, from various right-wing Christian fundamentalist organisations. If you’re young or left-wing it’s easy to assume your beliefs will triumph because they’re self-evidently right. I found this section of DeGroot’s book particularly interesting as a reminder (it is after all only a few short, but thought-provoking articles, not a book-length analysis) of the power and numerical supremacy of the people who didn’t want a violent revolution, didn’t want the overthrow of existing gender roles, didn’t want the destruction of business in the name of some dope-smoking utopia, who largely enjoyed and benefited from capitalism, from a stable society, an effective police force, the rule of law and notions of property which allowed them to save up to own their own home, a large fridge-freezer and two cars.
Space race I was galvanised when I read JG Ballard’s remark, decades ago, that the Space Age only lasted a few years, from the moon landing (Apollo 11, July 20 1969) to the final Apollo mission (Apollo 17, December 1972). As a teenager besotted with science fiction, I assumed space exploration would go on forever, the Moon, Mars, and then other solar systems! DeGroot’s account rams home the notion that it was all a delusion. He is critical of NASA’s insistence on manned space flights which cost hugely more than unmanned missions. The retirement of the Space Shuttle in 2011 was another nail in the coffin into which fantasies of interplanetary flight have been laid.
Environment Through the prisms of the dioxin disaster at Seveso and the major nuclear incident at Three Mile Island, DeGroot makes the point that environmentalism (along with feminism, anti-racism and gay rights) was one of the big causes of the 1970s, virtually non-existent at the start of the decade, enshrined in law across most industrialised countries by the end.
The economy and industry
This is the big, big gap in this book: it’s entertaining enough to read articles about Mohammed Ali or Billie Jean King or the early computer game, Pong – but it’s a major omission in a history of the 1970s not to have sections about the 1973 oil crisis, the resulting three-day week, the extraordinarily high level of strikes throughout the decade, leading up to what many people thought was the actual collapse of society in the Winter of Discontent (1978/79) and, beneath it all, the slow relentless shift in western nations from being heavily-industrialised, heavily-unionised economies to becoming post-industrial, service economies.
Big shame that DeGroot didn’t bring to these heavyweight topics the combination of deftly-chosen anecdote with pithy analysis which he applies to other, far less important, subjects.
I grew up in the 1970s, into awareness that the world could be destroyed at any moment, the world and all life forms on it, destroyed many times over if the old men with their fingers on the button made a mistake. DeGroot goes into detail about the effectiveness of the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction and the sequence of meetings and agreements between America and the USSR – the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks and Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaties – which were reported with breathless excitement throughout the decade.
What he doesn’t convey is the moral climate this created, or rather the immoral climate, of living in a world where you, all your loved ones, and everything you held dear could, potentially, at any moment, be turned to glowing dust.
The threat of complete global destruction provided the grim backdrop against which a steady stream of horrific news about dictators and tyrants, about massacres and holocausts, was garishly lit by the smaller-scale murders and bombings of the IRA or ETA, all creating a climate of violence and futility. Mix in the oil crises of 1973 and 1978, the widespread and endless strikes, the high unemployment and the fundamental economic crises which afflicted all Western countries throughout the 70s, and you have a decade of despair.
Music of anger
My biggest disagreement with DeGroot is about the significance of punk rock (1976-78). For a start, he mixes up the American and British versions, which reflect completely different societies, mentioning Blondie and the Clash in the same breath. The British version was genuinely nihilistic and despairing. Television or the Ramones always had the redemptive glamour of coming from New York; the English bands always knew they came from Bolton or Bromley, but turned their origins in dead-end, derelict post-industrial shitholes into something to be angry or depressed, but always honest about.
Like so many wise elders at the time, DeGroot loftily points out how musically inept most of the self-taught punk bands were – as if rock music should only be produced by classically-trained musicians. He completely fails to see that the music, the look and the attitude were the angry and entirely logical result of growing up into the violently hopeless society which our parents had created and which, ironically, he has done such a good job of portraying in his long, readable, and often desperately depressing book.
The Seventies Unplugged on Amazon
by Simon on May 14, 2015 • Permalink
Posted in History, War
Tagged 2010, Aldo Moro, Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, apartheid, Apollo 11, Baader-Menhof Gang, Bangladesh, Billie Jean King, Black September Organisation, Bloody Sunday, Bobby Riggs, Brigate Rosse, Cambodia, Charlie Manon, Che Guevara, Chile, cocaine, Cyprus, David Bowie, Enoch Powell, environmentalism, Eric Clapton, ETA, Feminism, General Pinochet, Gerard DeGroot, Greece, Henry Kissinger, Idi Amin, IRA, JG Ballard, Jimi Hendrix, Kampuchea, Khmer Rouge, Mao, Marabel Morgan, Medellin cartel, Mick Jagger, Moral Majority, Mrs Gandhi, Mrs Thatcher, Mutually Assured Destruction, Nikos Sampson, Pakistan, punk rock, racism, Red Army Faction, Red Brigades, Richard Nixon, Rock Against Racism, Ronald Reagan, silent majority, South Africa, Soweto, Space Shuttle, Steve Biko, Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, strikes, The Angry Brigade, The Anti-Nazi League, The Clash, The National Front, The Seventies Unplugged, The Sex Pistols, The Troubles, The Weather Underground, Three Mile Island, Three-day week, Vietnam, Winter of Discontent
Posted by Simon on May 14, 2015
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2015/05/14/the-seventies-unplugged-gerard-degroot/
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It takes a lot of people around the world to make Astronomers Without Borders a reality, from the staff and board to volunteers in many countries.
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Helen Schell
Member Since: Mar 2013
I specialise in art projects inspired by space exploration and science of the cosmos. This involves collaborating with scientists and takes the form of mixed media installations, large paintings, smart materials costumes and experimental books. These are created under the auspices of Space Agency and employ optical illusions to express the unknown phenomena of the Universe. This work started in 2007 whilst doing an MA in Glass at Sunderland University. Since then, I have collaborated with scientists in the fields of astrophysics and cosmology including a residency at Durham University’s Ogden Centre for Fundamental Physics. This afforded me the opportunity to meet space shuttle astronauts and visit the UK Dark Matter Laboratory. I am now an ESERO-UK Space Ambassador for education wing of the European Space Agency. Twice, I have been a judge for the NASA Humans in Space Art Competition.
In 2014, I started the year with a residency and workshop for Royal Holloway Astrophysics Department. For this I created 3 large experimental books about extra spatial dimensions, Dark Matter and CERN. This was a continuation of book projects started on a residency for the Festival of the North East where I made a large book called Observatory inspired by telescopes. Later in 2014, I collaborated with choreographer Mehmet Sander to produce a billboard, SUN (Rise): Can you fall up? for a Metal public art project about the Sun and gravity. For the Jotta & Blurb ‘Unbinding the Book’ project, I made Moon Book, which was shown at the London Art Book Fair. I joined NewBridge Studios in 2011, where I began a Lunar Laboratory Project, Moon-Shot: Woman in the Moon. For this project, I created a series of large paintings of a Moon Rocket (10.5 metres high), Full Moon and Lunar Space Station. This solo show was exhibited at Vane and Globe Galleries in Newcastle in 2013.
Undress: Redress. was a programme of exhibitions and workshops exploring smart materials clothing. This brought together Durham University’s NETPark, Science Learning Centre NE, and Arts Centre Washington. I designed and made dramatic ball-gowns; the hi vis Dazzle Dress, and UN-Dress created from thermoplastic which dissolves in water. There was performance at Whitley Bay Film Festival showing it dissolving, which is now a short film. Other costume projects include 'Guardian', where I dressed a 5m high statue of William Wallace as a space-age warrior in 2015. Yellow Giant is a solo show which involves collaboration with solar physicists and exhibits large optical illusion paintings with a huge hi vis ball-gown: 'SUN-Dress for the Yellow Giantess'. An art award from the Pollock Krasner Foundation has enabled me to visit space organisations such as ESA, and Harwell Space Cluster with the object of creating a new body of artworks and education projects.
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The role of language in anti-immigrant prejudice: What can we learn from immigrants' historical experiences?
Kai Wei, Daniel Jacobson López, Shiyou Wu
WATTS: Social Work, School of
Prejudice remains an unpleasant experience in immigrants' everyday lives, especially for those of stigmatized groups. In the recurring struggle of various immigrant groups, historical and contemporary events reveal the important role of language in the creation, transmission, and perpetuation of anti-immigrant prejudice. Living in an anti-immigrant climate, immigrants are frequently exposed to stigmatizing language in both political and social discourse. This may be a more significant and frequent experience for immigrants since the beginning of the 2016 United States presidential election. Although it has long been understood that language is inextricably linked with prejudice, the investigation of the role of language in creating, transmitting, and perpetuating anti-immigrant prejudice remains undeveloped in social work research. This paper provides a theoretical explanation of anti-immigrant sentiment by discussing how stigmatization has allowed for immigrants to be subjected to various forms of prejudice throughout history. Building upon prior theoretical concepts of stigma, this paper argues that being an immigrant is a stigma. This paper reviews historical and contemporary cases of prejudice against immigrants to provide evidence for how stigmatizing language transmits and perpetuates anti-immigrant prejudice in the United States and building upon prior stigma theories, defines one's status of an immigrant to be form of stigma itself. The paper concludes with a call for appreciable attention to the role of language in anti-immigrant prejudice and the need for social workers to advocate for immigrants within higher education and in our communities to reduce such stigma though social work practice, education and research.
https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci8030093
Anti-immigration prejudice
10.3390/socsci8030093
Fingerprint Dive into the research topics of 'The role of language in anti-immigrant prejudice: What can we learn from immigrants' historical experiences?'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.
prejudice Social Sciences
immigrant Social Sciences
work research Social Sciences
stigmatization Social Sciences
presidential election Social Sciences
social worker Social Sciences
Wei, K., López, D. J., & Wu, S. (2019). The role of language in anti-immigrant prejudice: What can we learn from immigrants' historical experiences? Social Sciences, 8(3), [93]. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci8030093
The role of language in anti-immigrant prejudice : What can we learn from immigrants' historical experiences? / Wei, Kai; López, Daniel Jacobson; Wu, Shiyou.
In: Social Sciences, Vol. 8, No. 3, 93, 2019.
Wei, K, López, DJ & Wu, S 2019, 'The role of language in anti-immigrant prejudice: What can we learn from immigrants' historical experiences?', Social Sciences, vol. 8, no. 3, 93. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci8030093
Wei K, López DJ, Wu S. The role of language in anti-immigrant prejudice: What can we learn from immigrants' historical experiences? Social Sciences. 2019;8(3). 93. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci8030093
Wei, Kai ; López, Daniel Jacobson ; Wu, Shiyou. / The role of language in anti-immigrant prejudice : What can we learn from immigrants' historical experiences?. In: Social Sciences. 2019 ; Vol. 8, No. 3.
@article{1eed72c0d6684abc8521e1500fed675e,
title = "The role of language in anti-immigrant prejudice: What can we learn from immigrants' historical experiences?",
abstract = "Prejudice remains an unpleasant experience in immigrants' everyday lives, especially for those of stigmatized groups. In the recurring struggle of various immigrant groups, historical and contemporary events reveal the important role of language in the creation, transmission, and perpetuation of anti-immigrant prejudice. Living in an anti-immigrant climate, immigrants are frequently exposed to stigmatizing language in both political and social discourse. This may be a more significant and frequent experience for immigrants since the beginning of the 2016 United States presidential election. Although it has long been understood that language is inextricably linked with prejudice, the investigation of the role of language in creating, transmitting, and perpetuating anti-immigrant prejudice remains undeveloped in social work research. This paper provides a theoretical explanation of anti-immigrant sentiment by discussing how stigmatization has allowed for immigrants to be subjected to various forms of prejudice throughout history. Building upon prior theoretical concepts of stigma, this paper argues that being an immigrant is a stigma. This paper reviews historical and contemporary cases of prejudice against immigrants to provide evidence for how stigmatizing language transmits and perpetuates anti-immigrant prejudice in the United States and building upon prior stigma theories, defines one's status of an immigrant to be form of stigma itself. The paper concludes with a call for appreciable attention to the role of language in anti-immigrant prejudice and the need for social workers to advocate for immigrants within higher education and in our communities to reduce such stigma though social work practice, education and research.",
keywords = "Anti-immigration prejudice, Contemporary, History, Language",
author = "Kai Wei and L{\'o}pez, {Daniel Jacobson} and Shiyou Wu",
note = "Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2019 by the authors. Copyright: Copyright 2019 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.",
doi = "10.3390/socsci8030093",
journal = "Social Sciences",
T1 - The role of language in anti-immigrant prejudice
T2 - What can we learn from immigrants' historical experiences?
AU - Wei, Kai
AU - López, Daniel Jacobson
AU - Wu, Shiyou
N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2019 by the authors. Copyright: Copyright 2019 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
N2 - Prejudice remains an unpleasant experience in immigrants' everyday lives, especially for those of stigmatized groups. In the recurring struggle of various immigrant groups, historical and contemporary events reveal the important role of language in the creation, transmission, and perpetuation of anti-immigrant prejudice. Living in an anti-immigrant climate, immigrants are frequently exposed to stigmatizing language in both political and social discourse. This may be a more significant and frequent experience for immigrants since the beginning of the 2016 United States presidential election. Although it has long been understood that language is inextricably linked with prejudice, the investigation of the role of language in creating, transmitting, and perpetuating anti-immigrant prejudice remains undeveloped in social work research. This paper provides a theoretical explanation of anti-immigrant sentiment by discussing how stigmatization has allowed for immigrants to be subjected to various forms of prejudice throughout history. Building upon prior theoretical concepts of stigma, this paper argues that being an immigrant is a stigma. This paper reviews historical and contemporary cases of prejudice against immigrants to provide evidence for how stigmatizing language transmits and perpetuates anti-immigrant prejudice in the United States and building upon prior stigma theories, defines one's status of an immigrant to be form of stigma itself. The paper concludes with a call for appreciable attention to the role of language in anti-immigrant prejudice and the need for social workers to advocate for immigrants within higher education and in our communities to reduce such stigma though social work practice, education and research.
AB - Prejudice remains an unpleasant experience in immigrants' everyday lives, especially for those of stigmatized groups. In the recurring struggle of various immigrant groups, historical and contemporary events reveal the important role of language in the creation, transmission, and perpetuation of anti-immigrant prejudice. Living in an anti-immigrant climate, immigrants are frequently exposed to stigmatizing language in both political and social discourse. This may be a more significant and frequent experience for immigrants since the beginning of the 2016 United States presidential election. Although it has long been understood that language is inextricably linked with prejudice, the investigation of the role of language in creating, transmitting, and perpetuating anti-immigrant prejudice remains undeveloped in social work research. This paper provides a theoretical explanation of anti-immigrant sentiment by discussing how stigmatization has allowed for immigrants to be subjected to various forms of prejudice throughout history. Building upon prior theoretical concepts of stigma, this paper argues that being an immigrant is a stigma. This paper reviews historical and contemporary cases of prejudice against immigrants to provide evidence for how stigmatizing language transmits and perpetuates anti-immigrant prejudice in the United States and building upon prior stigma theories, defines one's status of an immigrant to be form of stigma itself. The paper concludes with a call for appreciable attention to the role of language in anti-immigrant prejudice and the need for social workers to advocate for immigrants within higher education and in our communities to reduce such stigma though social work practice, education and research.
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KW - Contemporary
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Home Uncategorized Sydney news: NSW-Victoria border exclusion zone to be extended, bushfire season starts...
Sydney news: NSW-Victoria border exclusion zone to be extended, bushfire season starts early for some regional areas – ABC News
Here’s what you need to know this morning.
NSW-Vic border rules eased for locals
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian will visit Albury today to announce the easing of restrictions for residents and businesses on the NSW-Victorian border, which will come into force on Friday.
At present, Victorian border residents with permits to enter NSW must stay within a 2.5-kilometre zone but that will now be extended back to the original 50 kilometres either side of the border introduced in July.
The changes come after Deputy Premier John Barilaro visited the region last week to gauge local concerns about how the border restrictions were impeding normal daily living and hindering business.
It is understood the Premier has decided to make the change given the reduced risk of community transmission in regional Victoria.
The new permit will allow residents within the border region to enter NSW for certain reasons, including obtaining necessary goods and services, for care or other compassionate reasons and to attend work or education.
COVID-19 alert for Sydney restaurant
The popular Newtown restaurant is closed for cleaning. (Facebook: It’s Time for Thai Newtown)
NSW Health has issued a warning for the It’s Time for Thai restaurant in Newtown after a diner tested positive to COVID-19.
Anyone who has visited the restaurant is considered a close contact and must get tested and isolate for 14 days since they were there.
The confirmed case visited the King Street restaurant on August 28 between 5.00pm and 8.00pm.
The restaurant has been closed for cleaning.
Children, adults escape home shooting
Duration: 1 minute 4 seconds 1m 4s
NSW Police investigate shooting at Bonnyrigg home.
Nine people have escaped injury after shots were fired into a home in south-west Sydney.
Several shots were fired into the Tarlington Parade home at Bonnyrigg just before 11:30pm last night.
There were seven adults and two children home at the time.
Police were told a person was seen fleeing in a white hatchback but so far no-one has been arrested.
Man shot five times
NSW Police said there was another shooting last night in south-west Sydney where a man received five gunshot wounds.
Police were called to Garrong Road in Lakemba just after 8pm last night where they found a man was shot fives times in the stomach, buttocks, thigh and foot.
He had surgery in hospital and his injuries weren’t life threatening.
The man was known to police and the shooting is believe to be targeted.
Bushfire season starts early for 21 regions
A fire burning in Tenterfield in northern NSW last September. (Supplied: RFS Glen Innes)
The NSW Rural Fire Service has brought forward the start of the bushfire period to another 21 areas, as authorities warn of high fuel levels due to rains.
The statutory danger period starts on October 1 each year, but 21 regions will start their season today.
They join another six that already started the period on August 1, including last year’s heavily burnt areas of Glen Innes, Severn and Tenterfield.
Today’s new areas include Port Macquarie-Hastings, Ballina, Byron, Coffs Harbour, Lismore, the Upper Hunter, Bega Valley and Shoalhaven.
Calls for Circular Quay design competition
A design proposal for the redevelopment of Circular Quay. (Supplied: CplusC)
A Sydney architectural firm has argued the $200 million redevelopment of Circular Quay should be open to a public design competition.
Architectural firm CplusC said there was a “serious lack of transparency and public consultation” over the past five years concerning the development.
The firm has argued for an open competition, similar to what was made for the Opera House in the 1950s.
It has released of its own designs for the redevelopment in a bid to convince the Government to involve smaller creative agencies.
Tuesday’s weather
Partly cloudy with light winds.
CBD 10 18
Parramatta 8 18
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If you’ve ever wondered what having a mental-health issue feels like then head down to Help!. Viki Browne takes you on her journey of admitting she needed help – in a sequinned jumpsuit, rat hat, audience participation kind of way...
This Is Your Trial
Improvisation and a cappella groups are two a penny at the Fringe, and it can be difficult to find a unique format with which to entertain the crowds. This Is Your Trial is an improvised courtroom, using the best improvisers and comedians on the circuit at the moment...
Lula del Ray by Manual Cinema
Manual Cinema is a very special kind of company. They are a performance collective specialising in live shadow puppetry. Watching Manual Cinema is an experience and Lula Del Ray is absolutely beautiful...
2 Become 1
2 Become 1 is a standard Jukebox Musical. It has all the elements of a good musical comedy and includes many throwback songs from the 90s of the sort that a young girl might sing along to while brushing her hair and gazing into the mirror...
To be surprised by a show at the Fringe is a rare and wonderful thing. Siren takes us in one direction then knocks us off our feet, making sure we are never sure of where the story is headed next...
Boy meets girl. Boy is an actor, working on a show based around anger and Shakespeare’s text from various plays. Joe Sellman-Leava (writer and performer in this one man show) takes this idea and uses it for the basis of telling his tale, weaving in and out of different personas and voices...
Mars Actually
Assembly Roxy
Three aliens from Mars, fascinated by all things Earthly. They just want to tell us about life on Mars. And tell us they do, in so many weird and wonderful ways.Superbolt Theatre have another hit on their hands with Mars Actually...
Luke Kempner: Take a Long Hard Luke at Yourself
Luke Kempner takes a Luke in the mirror in this gently funny show, poking fun at himself and the impressions he uses to express himself. He is a comedian and impressionist and uses these skills to investigate who he really is...
Wolf Meat
Underbelly, Cowgate
Grandma is a drug dealer. Her grandson appears to be very special and her granddaughter regularly takes medication, seemingly to stop her eyeballs rolling out of her head. There’s also a copper who seems dead set on taking Grandma ‘downtown’...
The Jurassic Parks
Superbolt Theatre’s The Jurassic Parks is ridiculous; in the best way possible. The Park family are showing Jurassic Park in memory of their mum. She died last year, and they’re showing the film at the local community centre for a memoriam...
Imagine William Shakespeare wrote Attack the Block and you get Flesh and Bone, a tale of an East London tower block and it’s residents. We learn their stories as they finally get a voice...
Translunar Paradise
Theatre Ad Infinitum have been a Fringe favourite for years; creating thought provoking and beautiful shows to touch both your heart and your mind. Translunar Paradise premiered here in 2011 and the show presented here is near enough the same...
Joe Jacobs: Ripe
Sweet Holyrood
30th Nov, -0001
In Ripe, Jacobs takes us through the stages of a banana corresponding to the stages of life; through stand-up and rap. Touching on drugs, dogs, success, decline and mental health, he shares with us the struggles he's facing at the moment...
Witness for the Prosecution
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What shared scooters in 2019 brought to Bloomington: $107K and fewer complaints
Dave Askins Bloomington, Local Government January 24, 2020 January 24, 2020 7 Minutes
Bloomington’s uReport system for resident complaints features this item from mid-July last year: “When will the city start removing this debris?”
It was a mordant reference to the “pile of scooters” blocking the 6th Street sidewalk in front of the public library.
Complaints and comments about scooters have diminished since the Bird and Lime companies deployed them in Bloomington, starting in September 2018. But complaints have not completely disappeared. On Friday morning, @indiana_rachel Tweeted a photo of an 8-strong phalanx of Lime scooters parked in a way that blocks sidewalk passage, saying, “Hard to get past this in a wheelchair.” [Added 9:05 a.m. on Jan. 24, 2020, shortly after initial publication]
The number of complaints and comments in the uReport system is one way to track the activity of the shared-use electric scooters in the city.
Other ways include rides taken and fees paid by scooter companies to Bloomington.
Here’s a quick summary of scooter activity in Bloomington, based on UReport data, information from the mayor’s office, ridership numbers provided by scooter companies, and revenue numbers from Bloomington’s financial department:
Overview of Bloomington Scooter Activity
111 uReport complaints/comments since September 2018
0 citations for scooter law infractions
378,137 rides taken on scooters from April through December 2019
$106,733 paid by scooter companies to Bloomington
3 scooter companies licensed in Bloomington
In 2019, about 85 percent of all scooter rides in Bloomington were taken on Lime scooters. The last row of the overview reflects the fact that Bird and Lime, whose scooters have been operating in Bloomington since late 2018, will be joined in 2020 by a third competitor in the Bloomington market.
According to Amy Hesser, director of communications for VeoRide, her company’s scooters will be deployed in Bloomington starting sometime in spring 2020.
The Square Beacon talked with Bloomington’s director of public engagement, Mary Catherine Carmichael, about the city’s future approach to enforcement of scooter laws and how revenue from scooter companies will be spent.
First up, though, is the summarized information from the overview in a bit more detail.
Since shared use electric scooters were first deployed in Bloomington, 111 complaints or comments about scooters have been logged in the city’s uReport system. The most recent one, in early December, was a comment about a New York Times morning email newsletter that describes the “horrific” dangers that scooters pose to pedestrians.
The initial scooter deployment made caused a 3-month-long surge in uReport complaints in fall 2018, peaking in December when nearly a complaint per day was filed. A sharp drop came at the end of the year. The number of complaints grew again each month for the first four months of 2019, then dropped again to a handful per month for the rest of 2019—except for October, when 7 complaints were logged.
About 11 months after initial deployment, Bloomington’s city council enacted legislation regulating scooter use. Bloomington’s local scooter law says, for example, that scooters can’t be parked in a way that interferes with accessibility under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). That means you can’t block ramps for wheelchairs, among other things.
The new local scooter law also requires scooter companies to hold week-long twice-annual safety campaigns, during which they educate riders about the requirements of local law.
The drop in complaints could be chalked up to several factors, including the city’s educational efforts to promote better behavior by scooter reps who stage scooters at the start of the day. Another factor could be that the required scooter company safety campaigns have caused better compliance by riders when they park their scooters at a destination.
But one of those factors is not an enforcement campaign by the city. According to Bloomington’s director of public engagement, Mary Catherine Carmichael, the city has not yet cited anyone for a scooter law infraction. The legislation was enacted by the city council at the end of July and had an effective date of Sept 1.
Carmichael told The Square Beacon the city is taking more of a “carrot” approach instead of using a “stick,” so that scooter riders have a chance to learn, for example, where exactly the dismount zones are, and where scooters are allowed to be parked.
A uReport complaint from mid-October stemmed from a scooter blocking a sidewalk:
As a disabled resident of the Bloomington community I feel as if I am no longer welcome in my home. Scooters are constantly left in the middle of sidewalks, on accessible ramps and entries, and the riders zoom past without regard to the physically challenged members of Bloomington.
Asked how the city addresses such complaints, Carmichael said that if a specific circumstance is identified that can be remedied—a scooter blocking access at a specific location—then the scooter company is notified and the company sends out a representative to move the scooter.
Ridership trends
Under Bloomington’s licensing agreements with scooter companies, various data points have to be provided to the city. Bloomington has made aggregated data for scooter activity publicly available through its website.
Ridership on Bird and Lime scooters for complete months in 2019 is available from May through November. For those seven months, an average of about 48,000 rides a month were taken on electric scooters from those two companies.
Fall months showed significantly higher ridership than late spring and summer months. The top month was November, when just shy of 100,000 rides were taken.
From mid-April to mid-December, the datasets show that 321,926 rides were taken on Lime scooters, and 56,211 were taken on Birds. That translates into a roughly 85-percent market share for Lime.
The number of scooters available from companies varies by day. Lime made available to potential riders an average of 300 scooters a day, compared to an average of 108 scooters a day for Bird.
Each Lime scooter was ridden twice as much on average as a Bird scooter—about 4 rides for every Lime compared to 2 rides for every Bird scooter.
That’s consistent with the average time every scooter was in use per day. Each Lime was serving a rider about 39 minutes each day, Birds about 17 minutes per day.
The data in the tables isn’t perfect. An average trip distance of 19,000 miles for one day seems implausible, for example. Cliff Ingham, the database administrator for the city who handles the scooter data, told The Square Beacon that in the raw data for each of those isolated days with implausibly high average trip distances, there’s a trip of a ridiculous length that skewed the average.
Ingham said he’ll try to get fresh data and see if the odd data is still there. One option is to delete the corrupted trip from the dataset, he said.
A plot ridership by week (from mid-April to mid-December) shows that the seasonal pattern tracks pretty close to the time when Indiana University is in session—except possibly for the two dips in November instead of one that might be expected for Thanksgiving break.
The earlier gap turns out to be a gap in the data. For Nov. 12 and Nov. 13, there’s no data in the table for Lime scooters.
The week-wise plot, as well as anecdotal evidence, suggests that scooter ridership is dominated by Indiana University affiliates. To confirm that, The Square Beacon checked with Lime, which provided some geographic perspective.
According to Russell Murphy, Lime’s communication manager for its North America East division, the majority of trips begin or end on IU’s campus.
In September there were a total of 84,988 rides. Of those 55,126 (64.9 percent) ended on IU campus. A total of 50,736 trips started on campus. It’s also not uncommon to see over 70 percent of the trips for a specific weekday end on campus, according to Murphy.
Revenue to Bloomington: What’s it used for?
Under the licensing agreement that scooter companies have with Bloomington, they pay the city 15 cents a ride. That’s in addition to a $10,000 annual licensing fee. Counting the initial $10,000 that both companies paid under an interim operating agreement, the city received a total of $106,733 in 2019.
Where does that money go? According to Bloomington’s director of public engagement, Mary Catherine Carmichael, it goes into the general fund, but it’s earmarked for expenses related to management of multimodal transportation. The expenditures need to relate to the source of the revenue, Carmichael said.
None of the earmarked scooter money has yet been spent, Carmichael said, because the city wanted to wait until enough money from scooter fees had accumulated first.
One possibility for using scooter money is to invest in additional bicycle parking spots, Carmichael said. Public bicycle hoops are one of the places where scooters can be parked.
It’s also possible to consider using scooter money to invest in scooter-specific parking infrastructure. Carmichael expressed a little caution about that possibility, saying it’s not possible to know if electric shared use scooters will be a part of the landscape five years from now. Whatever infrastructure is put in place now needs to be reversible, she said.
According to an April 2019 article in The Verge, “Ride-sharing is wildly unsustainable, and if the business continues on its current path, it’s entirely possible that these scooters will end up in a mass graveyard like those viral photos from China.”
The topic of scooters is a challenge, Carmichael said, because Bloomington has to be “nimble. That is not something municipal governments have been known for, she said.
One idea for scooter parking that’s been put on hold is to covert on-street automobile parking to parking corrals for scooter and bicycles. The delay, Carmichael said, is because of the 352 fewer downtown parking spaces the city now has, as a result of the demolition of the 4th Street parking garage. The project to replace the garage has been delayed by pending legal proceedings over the city’s related eminent domain action.
The idea of converting any on-street parking spaces to scooter corrals has been put on hold until the 4th Street garage is replaced, Carmichael said.
Scooter money could also be put into better signage to improve scooter rider behavior. On a scooter a lot of a riders’s time is spent looking down, Carmichael said, so one possibility is to put some of the messaging directly on sidewalks, instead of 12 feet in the air, where a scooter rider might not see it.
It’s an idea that’s consistent with this uReport complaint from late August last year:
… I think these signs are too high so riders don’t notice them. I didn’t realize they were there for a while. Why not lower them to eye level so they will be noticed?
Scooter money can also be used on enforcement, Carmichael said, even if enforcement is not yet the approach that Bloomington is taking.
miles per scooter
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6 thoughts on “What shared scooters in 2019 brought to Bloomington: $107K and fewer complaints”
Greg A says:
I used to post uReports about the scooters, and I don’t anymore, for two reasons: there are much fewer of them around town than there were, and uReport never works. You waste 3 minutes fighting with the buggy georeporter android app and then the city does nothing for pedestrians. The plan the council passed relied on the city proactively fining the companies for poor placement. Grumble.
Ben Fulton says:
“the “horrific” dangers that scooters pose to pedestrians.”
Bah. Cars are much more dangerous to pedestrians.
Bill Coulter says:
I have been hit by car on Kirkwood (only a minor injury, driver stopped at stop sign and turned right/south onto one way Dunn Street without looking right/ south on Dunn because there can’t be any cars to hit when you turn right onto a one way street and what are pedestrians anyway?). Only near mlsses for electric scooters (and the sound of motorists yelling at scooter riders for running stop signs at full speed). And no I don’t file a uReport because what flipping good would it do?
Guess I was lucky….
Woman crossing street dies when hit by SUV
By Laura Lane The Herald-Times Feb 10, 2020
“An Indiana University law school student died Saturday after being struck by a sport-utility vehicle as she walked across the road at the intersection of Washington and Third streets.”
I was at the MCPL Sunday and saw one scooter going the wrong way on Sixth Street and another going the wrong way on Lincoln. Then a third whizzed by me from behind as I walked on the sidewalk on Sixth Street.
Andy Alexander says:
The data “gap” on Nov. 12 & 13 is probably due to cold weather. There may have been no riders at 10 degrees.
Dave Askins says:
Good catch. Early on when I was rummaging around with this data set, I put rides and temperature on the same plot, and saw a rough correlation, but nothing dramatic. That was likely because I botched the plot, because at the time I didn’t realize there were two missing dates for rides (not zeros for dates), so the temps and dates were mis-matched for those two days and everything after. Here’s a revised plot. The super cold days that are missing in the data set stand out on that plot. (Halloween was probably bad for rides because as I recall it was pouring down rain most of the day?)
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Japanese Buddhists struggle to win back believers
By HIROKO TABUCHI, Associated Press, October 26, 2006
TOKYO, Japan -- The Kamiyacho Open Terrace cafe in central Tokyo has all the trappings of a trendy establishment - good coffee, homemade dessert, an airy terrace.
But what makes the cafe truly interesting is its setting: inside the Buddhist Komyoji temple, one of many across Japan offering new services - concerts, discos, yoga classes - in a struggle to stay relevant despite an increasingly secular society.
"For Japanese, temples were once a part of daily life," said 24-year-old owner, and monk, Keisuke Matsumoto. "I want Kamiyacho Open Terrace to be a place people can drop in casually ... and perhaps become a little curious about Buddhism."
The young priest will need patience and optimism. More than a millennium after it first arrived from mainland Asia in the sixth century, Buddhism is in crisis.
About 94 million Japanese were registered as Buddhist in 2005, almost three-quarters of the country's population. But for many, the only time they enter a temple is to attend a funeral - driving many of the country's 75,000 temples to the verge of bankruptcy.
"Some priests can't even put food on the table from their temple-related work," said Takanobu Nakajima, an economics professor at Tokyo's Keio University. "Their congregations are so small the priests take second jobs and still barely manage to scrape by."
So young Buddhists like Matsumoto are trying to turn that around by reaching out to new groups - and employing some clever entrepreneurship.
At Matsumoto's cafe, which overlooks a garden dotted with gravestones, visitors don't pay with money, but with prayer. All the coffee, tea and sweets served by robe-clad monks in the open terrace are free. Instead, the monks - all volunteers from nearby temples - suggest patrons put their hands together in prayer at the temple's grand altar before they leave.
Some temples are branching out in other ways.
The Tsukiji Honganji temple in central Tokyo, for instance, offers theological seminars in English for foreigners, and has fitted its main hall with a pipe organ and conducts Western-style weddings to attract young couples who prefer a white dress and tuxedo to a traditional Buddhist ceremony.
Zenshoan temple in central Tokyo streams Buddhist sermons on the Internet, while Higashi Honganji temple aired games from the World Cup in Germany to attract local soccer fans.
In addition to his cafe, Matsumoto's Komyoji temple offers weekly yoga classes. He also spearheads higan.net, a Web-based movement of young monks who organize festivals, discos and meditation sessions, and write daily blog entries on everything from Buddhist cuisine to music.
For priests who are stumped for ideas, help is increasingly at hand.
Hideo Usui, an editor at Gekkan Butsuji, a Buddhist monthly journal, has launched a Web site offering advice for priests trying to modernize their practices. Recent entries include "Buddhist rites for the modern lifestyle" and "Using the Internet to take funeral orders."
"Priests got so used to easy money, so they didn't make an effort to innovate or to recruit new parish members," Usui said. "Now, that's changing."
Indeed, the money troubles are a major comedown for a Buddhist clergy that in the 1980s was known for its flashy lifestyle.
Awash with cash as Japan's postwar economy boomed, temples once extracted huge donations from their congregations and charged exorbitant sums for lavish funerals - often over 2 million yen, more than $17,000 at today's exchange rate.
But the good times ended when Japan's economic bubble burst in the early 1990s, making elaborate funerals and other extravagances a thing of the past. And while Japan's aging population has meant more funerals, the departed now typically have fewer descendants to share the bill, putting a premium on discount services.
Buddhist leaders also face some cultural roadblocks.
Few Japanese strictly stick to one religion, instead picking and choosing as they please from many. A family might celebrate births at a shrine of the native Shinto religion and weddings at a Christian church, for example. Buddhists have specialized in funerals - which hasn't helped their image.
And Matsumoto's cafe, which opened in 2004, hasn't led to many recruits so far. An office worker who often eats her packed lunch at the cafe said while she was now more interested in the religion, she didn't have immediate plans to join the temple's congregation.
"I hadn't even thought of it," said Sayaka Miura, a marketing assistant at a broadcasting company.
Matsumoto is undaunted. He recently put on a free rock concert at Tsukiji Honganji temple for 1,000 twenty- and thirty-somethings who went wild to the beats of the Zazen Boys before settling down for a Buddhist sermon.
"I want temples to become a part of everyday life again," Matsumoto said. "There's a lot Buddhism can offer modern society. ... It's just a matter of what temples are going to do about it."
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Dial-a-monk firm eases funeral cost worries
by Haruka Takahashi, Yomiuri Shimbun, Jul 1, 2008
Tokyo, Japan -- With full Buddhist funeral services at temples typically costing a small fortune, families of the recently deceased now have a cheaper option--pick up the phone and dial a monk to give their beloved the spiritual send-off they deserve.
A company specializing in dispatching Buddhist monks to funeral services was established in Inagi on the outskirts of Tokyo in 2004.
Obohsan.com Co. operates from a small office inside a building near Minami-Tama Station on the JR Nambu Line. (Obo-san means Buddhist monk in Japanese.)
Forty-five monks from seven schools of Buddhism are registered with the company and customers can select the type of sutra they would like to be chanted at the ceremony.
The firm's shaven-headed president, Kazuma Hayashi, shuns the business suit favored by most company bosses, opting instead to sport a navy blue samue--casual or work wear for Buddhist monks.
The 41-year-old monk answers his busy telephone and taps away at his computer keyboard on his desk, which has files and documents strew all over.
On answering a call from a person who lost a relative that morning, Hayashi passes on his deepest condolences and bows deeply, before running through the various price packages.
The type of funeral ceremony performed depends on the particular sect and regional customs.
When a sect is not specified, the company charges 42,000 yen for sutra-chanting at wakes and 84,000 yen at funeral services. Obohsan.com also has four price plans for posthumous Buddhist naming--ranging from 31,500 yen to 157,500 yen
An investigation last year by the Japan Consumers Association into fees bereaved families pay to temples for funeral ceremonies revealed that the national average total paid for sutra-chanting, posthumous Buddhist naming and financial offerings was 549,000 yen.
The joint-stock company offers a special plan for 130,000 yen that in addition to the services mentioned above, has its monks attend memorial services traditionally meant to take place seven days, 49 days, one year and two years after death.
Hayashi was born in a temple in Gunma Prefecture, but it will not be possible for him to succeed as head priest of that temple.
After serving as deputy head priest at a temple of the Tendaishu sect in Tokyo, he established the company "with the objective of providing a comprehensive Buddhist service."
In addition to funeral services, the company dispatches monks to burn wood and lead prayers for the safe delivery of children and on other important occasions; to perform Buddhist wedding ceremonies; and to act as a proxy to people who cannot make it to visit ancestors' graves at designated times of year.
The firm reportedly makes little profit, but still continually aims to slash prices.
"Religion is not about money," Hayashi says. "We hope to perform heartfelt funeral ceremonies and help educate people no matter whether they are rich or poor."
Most of the monks working at the company were not born into a temple, and despite having qualifications and experience will never become head priests. Some are even registered with the company as part-timers while serving at large temples.
A 58-year-old Buddhist nun who joined the company this spring used to be a clerical worker before entering the priesthood at the age of 43.
"I'm a newcomer without a personnel connection [to a head priest] and so I rarely get work within the sect," the nun said.
Enter the kanji for "soryo haken" (monk dispatch) into an Internet search engine, and the name of about seven or eight groups will be displayed. Some of these groups even claim they dispatch monks anywhere in the country.
Increased Internet access, combined with the fact that many people nowadays do not have a family grave at a Buddhist temple, is ensuring there is a market for the monk dispatch business.
And as ceremonies are paid for by friends and relatives who are praying for the departed's soul to rest in peace, clients are finding that the service offers some welcome relief from the added worries of how to pay for a ceremony at such a stressful time.
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Boltz4Life
Top News & Blogs
The Shape of Dance to Come: 15 Visionaries on the Genre’s Future
March 12, 2020 Boltz4Life 0 Comments
While the 2010s were definitively the EDM decade, the boom has started to cool. But dance music continues to adapt and thrive, with new genres, technologies, markets and more.
At the dawn of this new decade, 15 visionaries — from artists to executives to radio DJs — share their predictions for the what’s next for the genre.
DJ, BBC Radio 1
Streaming, streaming, streaming. As the major [digital streaming platforms] mature, I expect dance and electronic music will become more important in distinguishing Apple’s and Spotify’s services too, with the introduction of mixes on Apple [a little over a year ago] being the first example.
Roger de Graaf, and Jorn Heringa
CEO and Head A&R at Spinnin’ Records
Recently, there haven’t been many revolutionary new tools for producers, yet historically this has always been the most important cause of new genres. It’s time for something innovative again, which producers can adopt to create new music.
Gina Tucci
VP/GM, Big Beat Records
This next decade is about artists who grew up with electronic music in their formative years influenced by their own internet culture. Shorter, quicker, pixelated music will come to the forefront, giving listeners a much more dynamic experience with less fatigue. It will also be about how to take this accelerated music onto the main stage in a compelling way.
Artist in RÜFÜS DU SOL
Above all, I predict the furthering of the “self-care in the streets, euphoric breaks in the sheets” mantra. This is the year dance music stands up to the woes of its cultural fabric and reinforces the healthy future of its artists and fans alike.
Cody Chapman
Agent, Paradigm Talent Agency
Artists that innovate and develop their own branded events will thrive. Others will maintain, but accelerated turnover and an influx of new artists grasping fans’ short-lived attention will level the playing ground.
Christie Driver-Snell
Editor of Dance & Electronic for UK & IE at Spotify
Increasingly, we’re curating for trends in culture and lifestyle — local club scenes, the rise in harder and more intense styles of music in bass and techno, festival trends, etc. — across the electronic space.
Toby Andrews
GM, Astralwerks
We’re seeing additional opportunities in the streaming and radio space for more styles of electronic music than ever before. Where it used to be only pop crossover records, now there’s growth in house and other genres.
I see projection mapping continuing to push the visual envelope for DJs and making their shows very immersive and captivating.
Steve Gordon
Co-head of electronic music, UTA
We are going to see the emergence of more singularly focused one-stage festivals that target a specific audience.
Kevin Gimble
Co-head of Electronic Music, United Talent Agency
Live music is going to gain more traction in the EDM landscape, as seen by the success of various electronic artists’ tours in 2019.
Yann Pissenem
Founder/CEO, Night League Ibiza
Virtual reality. Technology will be the base of everything that will be possible in the next 10 years. We will have new tools to create, produce and manage even better event concepts and experiences, while advanced marketing capabilities will enable us to deliver more targeted and personalized communications.
I see new technologies helping us create music, with new synthesizers, or new ways of working on your voice. We will also have new analogue instruments and hardware to create music.
President of North America, LiveStyle
Currently, there are too many people trying to make money off electronic music without the passion or dedication. In the next decade, things are going to go back underground. More real artists will emerge and shake up the music world.
Damian Lazarus
Artist and Founder of Crosstown Rebels
With the world generally in such an ominous situation, I expect there to be an underground revolution where musical perimeters are lost and experimentation returns, at the same time heralding music full of heart and soul.
This article originally appeared in the March 14, 2020 issue of Billboard.
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Copyright © 2021 Boltz4Life. All rights reserved.
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Reflections of a Civil War Historian: Essays on Leadership, Society, and the Art of War
Herman Hattaway
University of Missouri Press, 2004 - 254 pages
Born in New Orleans, Herman Hattaway grew up in the Deep South. While it might not seem such a stretch for him to have become one of the foremost authorities on the Civil War and Southern history, Hattaway was actually at a loss for a career choice when he stumbled into the class of Professor T. Harry Williams at Louisiana State University. Williams's lectures and writings were so inspiring to Hattaway that he became a regular in his classes, receiving his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. all under the professor's tutelage.
This collection of essays is a compendium of Hattaway's writings from throughout his more-than-forty-year career. He is the author or coauthor of five books that were selections of the History Book Club—Jefferson Davis: Confederate President; Shades of Blue and Gray: An Introductory Military History of the Civil War; Why the South Lost the Civil War; How the North Won: A Military History of the Civil War; and General Stephen D. Lee. He is also the author of the text for Gettysburg to Vicksburg: The Five Original Civil War Battlefield Parks.
Hattaway is a captivating historian who always seeks to engage others in the study of history. He has made many important scholarly contributions to our understanding of the Civil War, including new information on the military use of balloons, the relevance of religion in warfare, and the nature of good (and bad) military leadership. This book will appeal to the many historians and others who have been influenced by Hattaway over the years. It demonstrates how he has evolved as a historian and brings to light many essays that were never before published or published only in specialized journals.
34 pages matching cavalry in this book
Civil War Leadership
Lee and the Guns at Second Manassas
P G T Beauregard
Reflections of a Civil War Historian: Essays on Leadership, Society, and the ...
advance American arms army artillery assault attack balloon batteries battle Beauregard became began believed better Board British Brown called campaign cause cavalry chief Civil Civil War command Confederacy Confederate continued corps Davis defeat defense direct division early effective enemy experience Federal field fight fire forces four Georgia going Grant guns Halleck hands important interest James John late later least Lee's Lincoln lines Lost major Manassas March McClellan military militia moved movement never North Northern officers operations organization Owsley Point political position president Press raid rank rebel regular remained result Richmond River Secretary seemed sent served Sherman side soldiers South Southern staff strategy success tactics Tennessee Thomas tion took troops turned Union United University victory Virginia West wrote York
Herman Hattaway is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Author or coauthor of numerous books, he is the recipient of two Jefferson Davis Awards, two Bell I. Wiley Awards, and a University of Missouri Curators' Award for Scholarly Excellence.
Title Reflections of a Civil War Historian: Essays on Leadership, Society, and the Art of War
Volume 1 of Shades of blue and gray series
Author Herman Hattaway
Contributor Frank E. Vandiver
Publisher University of Missouri Press, 2004
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Justin Gaethje invites Tony Ferguson to break his nose, calls UFC 249 matchup ‘a recipe for disaster’
01 Jan Justin Gaethje invites Tony Ferguson to break his nose, calls UFC 249 matchup ‘a recipe for disaster’
Justin Gaethje knows he’s not walking away unscathed as he prepares to fight Tony Ferguson for an interim lightweight title in the main event of UFC 249 on Saturday night.
In fact, the seven-time post-fight bonus winner is actually inviting the kind of violence most fighters try to avoid. And he has a tongue-in-cheek reason for welcoming the ensuing damage.
“I need my nose broken,” Gaethje said rather candidly when speaking during Tuesday’s UFC 249 media conference call. “I haven’t been able to breathe through my nose for like 12 years since wrestling. So hopefully one of them elbows cracks my nose. The UFC’s got to pay for that sh*t. It’s an exciting ass fight.”
That kind of attitude is one of the reasons why Gaethje was selected to replace current lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov after he was forced off the card due to travel restrictions in place due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
Not only is Gaethje considered a top-ranked contender, but he puts on the kind of action-packed fights that typically leave fans with their jaws hitting the floor before a single round has expired.
During his 12-fight win streak, Ferguson has built a similar reputation while leaving a bloody trail of victims in his wake as he rampaged through the lightweight division. Even the opponents who managed to find some success against Ferguson ultimately left with a loss on their record and usually a few stitches in their faces when it was over.
That is exactly the kind of style that Gaethje admires, which is why he called out Ferguson not that long ago and now he finally gets his wish.
“After I think it was my [James] Vick win, I said I wanted to fight Tony because I know we’re both some very f*cking special people when it comes to being able to be comfortable when adrenaline is coursing through your veins,” Gaethje explained. “It’s not something that is natural. That’s something that has been learned. Been worked on. That feeling when it’s going through my veins, it’s the best drug on Earth. I’m telling you right now.
“The feeling of being in a life or death situation and being able to be comfortable, there’s nothing like it. I know that he is the same way. One of us is probably going to get two bonuses, we’re both getting one bonus and I fight for money. At the time when I said that, I was shooting to be the most exciting fighter in the world. Tony is the best opponent to bring that out of me.”
The unpredictability that Ferguson brings into the octagon every time he fights is one of the reasons he’s been so successful with an undefeated run that dates back almost seven years.
It’s impossible to pigeonhole him as a striker or grappler because Ferguson varies his attacks so much, there’s no way to define his particular style. It’s a daunting task to prepare for Ferguson but Gaethje welcomes the chance to try and figure out that puzzle come Saturday night.
“I’m looking forward to the storm,” Gaethje said. “I know that for one, we get to put paychecks in our own pockets. We get to put a paycheck in every UFC employee’s pocket that’s going to work this event. We get to inspire people to not give up right now.
“For me, before I was fighting and after I’m fighting, [Ferguson is] the epitome of an athlete — the UFC athlete. He loves violence. He loves carnage. This is a recipe for disaster and I think we both want to be on that card.”
While Gaethje and Ferguson made it clear neither of them aim to actually cause real harm to the other that could result in a serious injury, both acknowledge that this is the kind of fight where they are likely to leave the cage with a few new scars.
“A fight is a fight and people love violence,” Gaethje said. “That’s what we do best.”
UFC 249 Is Almost Here!
Catch two title fights, loaded card LIVE from Jacksonville on ESPN+.
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Home » Business » Euro gains as ECB holds back 'bazooka,' Sterling falls on Brexit fears
Euro gains as ECB holds back 'bazooka,' Sterling falls on Brexit fears
NEW YORK (Reuters) – The euro rose on Thursday after the European Central Bank disappointed some investors looking for a larger stimulus boost, while sterling fell as the prospect of a no-deal Brexit appeared more likely.
FILE PHOTO: British Pound Sterling and U.S. Dollar notes are seen in this June 22, 2017 illustration photo. REUTERS/Thomas White/Illustration
The ECB expanded its debt purchase scheme and agreed to provide banks with even more ultra-cheap liquidity as long as they keep passing the cash onto companies.
However, “the European Central Bank did not present a big new bazooka,” said Carsten Brzeski, global head of macro at ING. It offered “a well-engineered extension of all well-known instruments to ensure that the current level of monetary accommodation is extended until at least the spring of 2022, hoping for the vaccine to have done its job by then.”
The ECB also said it is monitoring the euro’s exchange rate with regard to its possible implications for the medium-term inflation outlook, after it last week hit a two-and-a-half year high against the greenback.
Analysts and market participants are watching to see if global central banks indicate they may act to stem the relative strength of their currencies as the greenback tumbles.
“It’s the second major central bank to casually note exchange rate developments recently, underscoring the sliding USD,” said Mark McCormick, global head of FX strategy at TD Securities. “We don’t think there is too much the ECB can do to reverse market trends, though they can take some steam off the top.”
The Bank of Canada on Wednesday attributed strength in the Canadian dollar to U.S. dollar’s broad-based decline.
The euro was last up 0.49% on the day at $1.2082. The greenback dipped 0.61% against the loonie to $1.2741 after earlier reaching $1.2708, the lowest since April 2018.
The greenback also weakened after data on Thursday showed the number of Americans filing first-time claims for unemployment benefits increased more than expected last week as mounting COVID-19 infections caused more business restrictions.
Near-term U.S. fiscal stimulus appears unlikely after Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested wrangling over a spending package and coronavirus aid could drag on through Christmas.
Sterling slipped as market participants became more cautious about the risk of a no-deal Brexit.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Thursday there was “a strong possibility” Britain and the EU would fail to strike a trade deal, but vowed to do whatever he could to avoid a tumultuous split in three weeks.
Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey has said a no-deal Brexit would cause more lasting damage to Britain’s economy than the COVID-19 pandemic.
Sterling was last down 0.72% at $1.3305.
The British currency is struggling to get above technical resistance in the $1.35 area, and this is the third time it has failed at this level since December 2019, said Tom Fitzpatrick, global head of CitiFX Technicals.
The Australian dollar hit a two-and-a-half year high on growing optimism that global growth will improve, and that the Reserve Bank of Australia is unlikely to loosen policy further after cutting rates to a historic low of 0.1% in November.
“China’s economy showing mounting signs of strength, that is boding better for a global recovery and I think that’s leading the market to unwind expectations of looser policy from down under,” said Joe Manimbo, senior market analyst at Western Union Business Solutions in Washington.
The Aussie gained 1.26% to $0.7537.
It also bounced against the New Zealand dollar to one-month high of $1.0641, and is up from a seven-and-a-half-month low of $1.0419 on Dec. 1.
U.S. must stand up to China if Biden wins, focus less on trade, Krugman says
As pandemic spurs a tidying-up frenzy, Japan's market for second-hand goods booms
Dash for ash: French cheese Morbier beats rival in EU court
Some expats in S'pore asking for rental cuts
Asia shares pause near highs, eyes on U.S. yields
Posted in BusinessTagged Asia, FOREX, GLOBAL, US
Oil edges lower after jump on U.S. stocks draw
COVID-19: John Lewis suspends click-and-collect as shopping rules tighten
Eroad grows revenue amid pandemic, issues limited guidance
Opinion | Give the A.I. Economy a Human Touch
COVID-19: Matt Hancock confirms Christmas rules reprieve will not apply to New Year’s Eve
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Dispatches from the War: To Dr. Scott Atlas and Dr. John Ioannidis
Jul22 by Jon Rappoport
An idea whose time has come: THE NEW CORONAVIRUS TASK FORCE.
Opposing the one headed up by Tony Fauci.
Will you two men launch it?
Or will you stand pat and play a losing hand?
To my readers: I hope some of you will contact these two doctors and urge them to launch a vitally needed counter-offensive.
These ARE the times that try men’s souls.
I reach out to you two men because you have high-ranking credentials.
And because you know, and you’ve proven, that the COVID story is vastly overblown, and the containment measures are destructive.
You can stand firm with the realization that you’re right; you can also step forward and make a new bold move.
I hope you realize the extent of the economic wreckage America is enduring, and the human destruction which is mounting every day. I also hope you understand the partial reopening of the economy is far from a guarantee for our immediate future.
At the whim and behest of public health officials, who launch one lie after another, governors and mayors could order new lockdowns and new outrageous fines for breaking their rules of conduct.
And so I suggest you gather together distinguished colleagues and form a new coronavirus task force. Which is exactly what you would call it.
Yes, it would be unofficial, but apparently so are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness these days. We scrabble to get them where we can.
After setting up a website, you would launch a counter-offensive against Tony Fauci and his merry band of rabid falsifiers.
EVERY DAY, you would aggressively publish new findings and new criticisms of official positions and data.
I assure you, within weeks, the whole world would be paying attention. Including presidents, kings, and legislatures.
THE NEW CORONAVIRUS TASK FORCE.
The world of science was never actually divorced from the real world—and in these times, the connection is as vital as it has ever been.
Unlike that abysmal failure, Neil Ferguson, and his colleagues in the computer modeling game, who assert their findings are entirely separate from ensuing government decisions, true scientists are willing to come forward and bring fascist political leaders to heel, if they can.
And you can.
Your reach would be a sight to behold.
The country and the world are crashing. We are told 28 million US families have not yet paid their full rents for July, and are on the verge of eviction. And that is just the edge of the disaster.
It is all stemming from a concocted official story about a virus.
At the moment, the US federal government (and many other governments) is captive. A bloodless coup has occurred.
You two men, and the colleagues you assemble, could strike, strike hard, and often.
Some of your strongest allies, if you reach out to them, would be county sheriffs. A sheriff is basically in charge of law enforcement in his territory. Some American sheriffs have refused to enforce lockdowns and other restraining measures.
They stand on the Constitution. You stand on science. The meeting of the two is a very potent force.
I know, and you know, scientists who wouldn’t want to “get their hands dirty” by forming such alliances. This is a tragic mistake, born out of disdain and fear.
These are perilous times. I know that within you live the courage and the desire to protect the freedom on which, of course, the very existence of your scientific work depends.
That freedom was born out of blood and sacrifice and intelligence, over the course of centuries. Standing on all those shoulders, you can make a brave move now.
People of science who can now use their reputations and insight to make their actions count, and try to save society from descending into overt fascism, are of great value.
I hope you understand.
Scott W. Atlas, MD, is the Robert Wesson Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. John Ioannidis, MD, is the co-director of the Meta-Research Innovation Center at Stanford University.
I write all of the above in an effort to reach two men. Obviously, there are others, whose reputations also make them ideal candidates for THE NEW CORONAVIRUS TASK FORCE. They would have to be prepared to step out of their esteemed university chairs and research centers and waylay the interlopers who have stolen medical science and twisted it into weapons of war.
The days of the idyllically protected Ivory Tower are drawing to a close. Academics must come down and enter the fray—not to compromise their findings, but to make them count in the struggle.
THIS is the advantage Tony Fauci is pressing. He HAS come down. He understands weaponry.
The public battlefield cannot be left to him and his ilk.
One of my earliest published articles, in 1982, was an interview with Bill Perry, a bright PR man who had just quit the plumb job of his life at Lawrence Livermore Labs, where they do nuclear weapons research.
Those were the days of the Nuclear Freeze movement. Every morning, Bill watched silent protestors standing outside his building. As the weeks passed, Bill told me, he was surprised to see more people wearing business clothes showing up. The middle class. It was unnerving.
A decisive moment arrived when he passed the desk of a physicist who began complaining about lack of funding. Bill said, echoing the sentiments of the protestors, “Why do you need more money? You can already blow up the world four times.”
The physicist pointed to his desk and his papers. “You don’t understand,” he said. “These are MATHEMATICAL problems.”
They are, when the separation between scientists and the people is as wide as an ocean.
In case you think the comparison of nuclear weapons and the lockdowns is off the mark, what we have been seeing is the equivalent of a neutron bomb. It wipes out the people but leaves the buildings standing.
This entry was posted in Covid and tagged war.
← Dispatches from the War: Dershowitz con, Florida covid hustle
Dispatches from the War: Three men who control corporate America →
27 comments on “Dispatches from the War: To Dr. Scott Atlas and Dr. John Ioannidis”
From Elsewhere says:
You have my support! Plus, I hope, add some strategists and people who built something solid in their lives, businesses or science discoveries and innovations for the greater good.
Piksil says:
“It wipes out the people but leaves the buildings standing.”
Kinda like they’re doing in Portland.
And Trump is gonna send more troops to more cities.
I guess they have to stay ready and trained for when the ‘vaccine’ comes.
helot says:
My neighbor’s wife is so terrified she quit her job and has not left her house since April. I am unable to influence her.
I see children wearing masks being conditioned to fear life and other people. I am unable to influence their parents.
My brother wears a mask inside the house when he visits our parents. I am unable to influence him.
The people here in Iowa are changing. Not in a good way. It’s much more so in the cities. When I go to the countryside, I see hope, but it is fading.
Brett Morgen says:
The destruction of America happened long before this Covid hoax. The hoax simply revealed it.
It’s been really hard on me, both my parents, my 2 brothers, and my sister are all in on the covid lie. It hasn’t been easy but I’ve excommunicated them. They worship a virus and have turned our society into a really disgusting place and promote fear and terror nonstop.
My dad won’t leave the house because he thinks he’ll die of covid even though the old man’s heart barely works, he’s had 2 stints in his heart recently but watches CNN and MSNBC (not that Fox is any different) so he’s been terrorized into submission.
He hates Trump with all his might but is eagerly awaiting Trump’s and Gates’ “vaccine”. He is a truly twisted soul and I pray for him but I can’t be around such a twisted person.
I wish you the best with your psycho family but don’t expect them to suddenly because sensible. They are all-in on the covid hoax and literally worship a “virus” and are not to be trusted.
I think most of us here suffer from the same things-watching people we love buy the nonsense and reject every proof we can offer. It doesn’t matter that I come armed with facts, be them “fringe” or directly from the CDC, they don’t listen.
I am worried for my mother who tries to leave her apartment less than once a week. She also remains unemployed and couldn’t afford her rent before this started because she lost her partner. I am about to watch her lose everything, and she doesn’t even realize it. I can’t help her and she wouldn’t let me if I could. Isn’t that what we’re all going through? I can’t even come close to deciding the worst parts of these tragedies facing us all.
Larry C says:
“They are all-in on the covid hoax and literally worship a “virus” and are not to be trusted.”
Actually, very few people are on the inside of the planned disaster that is being rolled out. The Bad Guys are relying on the misplaced trust that has been engendered in the population via decades of lies and propaganda in every venue you’d care to name: the medical industry; mainstream media; our educational system; religion; television; the best politics money can buy; Hollywood movies that purport to be based on historical events and “documentaries” that are anything but. It has become increasingly difficult to separate fact from fiction and this is where * logic* comes in. (Believe me, you won’t find much of this commodity on the nightly news, no matter how earnestly their spokes-models deliver it.) I’m assuming that most news persons are not on the inside of the putative pandemic…they are merely *true-believers in the Official Narrative…but that doesn’t change a damned thing, does it?
I agree with Jon, when he points out that a bloodless coup is taking place in America. Until recently, I thought of war in terms of sophisticated weaponry, hypersonic missiles and large numbers of invading troops…but no more. There’s not a doubt in my mind…
WE ARE AT WAR.
Congrats i had a twisted evil dad too. Liberal saver of the world-was like a nazi at home, absolutely VILE to his kids.
I am getting increasingly angry at collectivists who seem to think they have a right to tell me what i can think and say and do.
I have a bossy acquaintance who i have known a long time. I always realized she was hypocritical,demanding, and somewhat virtue signalling kinda gal.
Very controlling- most folks know the type.
Anyway, she has stipulated that i am NOT “allowed” to talk about the virus around her (because she finds facts and figures that clash with CNN too upsetting)
AND i am not “allowed” to mention my constitutional and inalienable rights around her..because she told me those are passe’, selfish and we need to get rid of them.
Yes i was shocked..this is how our idiot school system has trained Americans to “think” .
We are in Deep doodoo.
I wish everyones’ stories was shocking or at least uncommon, but I daily suffer the same (or really just as shocking) experiences.
Because of this, I have no hope despite how hard some people like Jon are trying.
I want to ask questions like “Do you believe Jeffery Epistein did even half of what is claimed?” Because most people do, and since they are the SAME people who run everything, it’s just disgusting that people trust those in power given everything they actually do!
Invisible Man says:
These sorts of people are a disgrace to the human race.
It would never occur to them that they are trampling on your rights by demanding mandatory vaccinations and lockdowns.
Nobody is obligated to believe the pandemic is a sham or the vaccines are dangerous. They are, however, obligated to look at the available evidence before arriving at conclusions. Anyone who can’t do that is not fit for citizenship, and should not have the vote.
People say “science” proves the existence of a terrifying Covid plague. But “science” proves no such thing. Dozens and dozens of virologists and epidemiologists have come out against the hysteria and the numbers, many of them gathered by the Off Guardian. People can’t grasp that just because CNN refuses to mention someone’s existence, it doesn’t mean they don’t exist! Those virologists are still real people with real opinions!
For the dumbed down masses, just because the MSM chooses to disregard the naysayer, the naysayers don’t matter, they’re not even real, just phantoms or spectres conjured up by those stupid Anti vaxxers who, like, don’t believe in, like, science and shit, like whatever Saint Fauci says.
Jon, unfortunately the population is so dumbed down that they strap muzzles to their faces, even on a beautiful 85 degree day with no one around.
Things are getting worse and I’m about to lose my job for not wearing a shame muzzle. People are so dumbed down and submissive (mostly because of debt and addiction to 2020 “adult” movies, which are absolutely disgusting and depraved.
They will watch their adult movies then strap a muzzle to their face because they are spiritually dead.
It’s a 21st century retelling of the Pharisee narrative – a compulsion to follow the law and be “clean” according to the law.
New Normal says:
Jon –you forgot somebody who NOT only has taken Fake fauci but also in March told Trump to change course –Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai –MIT Biological Eng. specialization in Systems Biology with expertise in Immunology! Sadly, Trump did Not heed to Dr. Shiva but recently cdc silently sent a memo confirming his approach in a public statement!
All these problems could have been avoided if Trump had acted more like a CEO rather than wide-eyed, over his head no-nothing person!! CEO when confronted with a decision-making in a field that he is NOT an expert –would bring multiple experts who take opposing viewpoints and then analyze the pros and cons of the issues and results of the decisions etc….to come to a decision!
This is what happens when we elect somebody who thinks he knows or who is awed by experts because that person has zero knowledge ….Trump falls in both categories on many issues! Sadly, our country is paying for it …for all the good Trump did -he will go down as a FAILED president!
Just knowing that gates and birks are paid hacks of gates should have made Trump pause –Nope -he did not do any background checks on these two -Trump’s ego let him down again!
Trump even recently reposted a tweet saying the virus is a hoax! Instead of posting someone credible or defending the positions with any facts, he let the MSM walk all over him and play him for stupid and a “crazy conspiracy theorist.” And he might as well have been considering how much he failed!
Except everything that happens is planned and strategic. My guess is that he was giving credence to his supporters when he fully plans on smashing every last hope in the end. He won’t actually DO anything to change.
Yes, Trump has always been a puppet to the banksters who own this country and most of the western nations!
I always refer to the Matrix the movie –we find that in the 3rd movie –Neo was actually programmed by the Matrix –have the same feeling about Trump — that is why they have jared there to control him!
Scott W. Atlas’ contact information – e-mail and snail mail addresses – can be found here:
https://profiles.stanford.edu/scott-atlas
Maybe if he receives enough requests he’ll do something? Being bombarded by (polite) personal requests might work better than an open letter.
And here are a couple pages for John Ioannidis:
https://profiles.stanford.edu/john-ioannidis
https://statistics.stanford.edu/people/john-ioannidis
bleak says:
Thanks for that, Invisible Man. I sent emails to both.
We need mask-burning demonstrations across the country – standing in front of grocery stores everywhere. Organize on Gab where they won’t shut you down.
I agree. But Im seeing it as all the corporations imposing their policy on all. And that seems to be getting the job done. Im in South Dakota. Many watch the tv and go to the stores and wear their mask in a State that says wear them or dont. It is disheartening.
Sean:
Disheartening to us, but it shows ‘them’ how well their fear campaign/propaganda has worked. They’ve done a good job at that.
We can only try to get the truth out. ‘They’ knew that the truth could win, and that’s why there was a big focus on dealing with the truth at Event201 (‘they’ called it dis-information and misinformation).
Thus, the censorship etc that has been happening.
But, the truth is out there.
Hey, that’s kinda catchy…
mary-lou says:
check out Dr. Pamela Popper’s work-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycTC0YlG1HQ
and her website- https://wellnessforumhealth.com/news/
petition to fire fauci-
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/fire-fauci-1
please sign
Message from Ron Paul’s Campaign for Liberty:
http://gold-silver.us/forum/showthread.php?102303-H-R-6666-COVID-19-Testing-Reaching-And-Contacting-Everyone-(TRACE)-Act/page4&highlight=6666
Please read and call those whores in DC and demand they stop this insanity of turning our nation into a medical mafia police state!!!
Also, please consider signing up with Ron Paul’s Campaign for Liberty–he sends you alerts about what’s going on and gives you a quick way of taking action. All of us need to be as active as possible in getting our voices and opposition to this insanity heard!!!
https://fromthetrenchesworldreport.com/5g-technology-and-induction-of-coronavirus-in-skin-cells/271343
5G Technology and induction of coronavirus in skin cells
In this research, we show that 5G millimeter waves could be absorbed by dermatologic cells acting like antennas, transferred to other cells and play the main role in producing Coronaviruses in biological cells. DNA is built from charged electrons and atoms and has an inductor-like structure.
This structure could be divided into linear, toroid and round inductors. Inductors interact with external electromagnetic waves, move and produce some extra waves within the cells. The shapes of these waves are similar to shapes of hexagonal and pentagonal bases of their DNA source. These waves produce some holes in liquids within the nucleus. To fill these holes, some extra hexagonal and pentagonal bases are produced. These bases could join to each other and form virus-like structures such as Coronavirus. To produce these viruses within a cell, it is necessary that the wavelength of external waves be shorter than the size of the cell. Thus 5G millimeter waves could be good candidates for applying in constructing virus-like structures such as Coronaviruses (COVID-19) within cells.
See it here: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32668870/
So what is your take on this? It’s almost like they’re saying 5g can ‘make’ covid. That’s absurd if they are assuming that covid is a real ‘virus’.
However, if they’re postulating that 5g causes damage in cells, that could then be infiltrated by ‘covid’, then there’s a reference for getting rid of 5g.
Or, at least pointing a strong finger at causationof the illness/syndrome known as “Covid19.
DeBBC says:
https://www.stopworldcontrol.com/
https://debataafschecourant.wordpress.com/2020/07/23/the-new-coronavirus-taskforce/
Billy Hill says:
anybody else want to leave or hide before being injected
An mRNA Vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 — Preliminary Report
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2022483
Rick Martin who is a Constitutional Attorney helping people all over America to fight this illegal lockdown.
He has already spoken to over 500 Sheriff Departments. Who will ALL STAND DOWN. The Sheriff can arrest their governor. The SHERIFF has the ULTIMATE power as the oath keeper of the constitution. WE CAN WIN THIS!
https://ssbamerica.com/sheriffs-have-ultimate-control-over-the-constitution-for-america/
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Wii U says Hello to Wii Controllers, Games, Goodbye GameCube
June 9, 2011 etcspectre 18 Comments
While most of us agree that the Wii U is an innovative, possibly groundbreaking console that will no doubt continue making waves until its release in 2012, there’s still plenty of things we just don’t know about it yet. Some new information recently emerged regarding the use of its touchscreen controller as well as what type of disk the system will use.
Ideally, most Wii U titles would be designed around the use of only 1 of the new controllers, with the console possibly not supporting multiple of the new tablet/controller hybrids. For multiplayer, most games will recycle Wii MotionPlus Remotes with one player wielding the sought-after super-controller. At the same time, though, it is possible that use of a 3DS as a controller might be a viable substitute, according to an interview news.com.au had with Shigeru Miyamoto.
Also, the Wii U will be utilizing a proprietary disk format which will store 25GB, on par with a PS3’s single-layer Blu-Ray disk. Since Sony owns Blu-Ray technology, that format was out of the question and led to Nintendo creating their own. It is notable to mention that the Wii U is also compatible with all Wii titles, although they will not be scaled up to HD.
This does come with a bit of sad news, however, as it is reported that although the Wii U is backwards compatible with original Wii titles, it will not play GameCube games; meaning that our cute mini-disks are a dying breed.
(Sources: news.com.au, Nintendo Life)
GameCubeMotionPlusNintendoNintendo GamecubeNintendo WiiNintendo Wii UwiiWii 2Wii UWiiMotion+
Nintendo All-stars II Dec 18-21 for St. Jude October 20, 2020
REsident Evil for Direct Relief October 16-19 2020 July 21, 2020
Mario Marathon July 17-20 for St. jude July 16, 2020
BIG Auction Update 6/12/20 June 12, 2020
The Road to Mario Marathon Update 5/29/20 June 1, 2020
TSG Generations begins! May 1-??? April 30, 2020
Zelda Delayed but other events to come! March 28, 2020
Zelda MArathon July 17-23 2020 for St. Jude January 11, 2020
Retro Pokemon Marathon for St.Jude December 13-17 October 22, 2019
Zelda Marathon for St. Jude is LIVE! July 12, 2019
TSG TV
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(d) What is, or what is not, its state or condition; as, They are happy. We are not happy.
The former is the positive, the latter the negative form of the predicate. The negative form of the predicate includes the adverb ‘not.'
(e) The predicate may ask a question regarding the subject; . as, Did you speak ?
(f) Qr express a wish; as, May he live long. (8) Or a command; as, John, come here.
(h) The predicate may assert of the subject power to do; as, He can sing.
(i) Power derived from permission; as, You may go.
6 Obligation to perform an action; as, You must sing.
ik) Determination on the part of the subject; as, I will do it.
(1) Possibility of an action, state, or condition, on the part of the subject; as, We may see you to-morrow. They may be much injured. He might be very cheerful.
(m) Action, state, or condition, dependent or conditional on another action; as, If they come, we will retire. Though I were rich, I would not buy that.
The infinitive and participial moods of verbs cannot form predicates, since they possess in themselves no power to assert.
It will be seen from the above examples that predicates are formed from the indicative, imperative, potential, and subjunctive moods.
The predicate may be a simple verb; as, Napoleon died at St. Helena.
A verb substantive; as, I am.
A verb substantive and a noun; as, Roger Bacon was a monk.
A verb substantive and a pronoun; as, This is he.
A verb substantive and an adverb; as, He was there. They are abroad.
A verb and negative adverb; as, You did not see this.
A verb and an adjective; as, That appears right. This seemed good. Her story makes me sad.
A verb substantive and a participle, complete or incomplete; as, They are writing. The child is spoilt.
An auxiliary verb of mood with its principal verb; as, I cannot hear. You must depart.
An auxiliary verb of tense with its principal verb; as, I have written. I shall have written. I shall write.
The predicate may be formed of various combinations of verbs, adjectives, nouns, adverbs, and pronouns. Examples—You must be punctual. They will not be here. We may not appear generous. I shall not be working. You may not have finished.
It must be noticed that where the predicate is formed by the verb substantive and a pronoun, adjective, noun, or adverb, the verb substantive still expresses in some degree the idea of existence or being, present to the senses. Thus, 'He was a soldier,' means he lived a soldier. “You are he,' that you exist, identical with he; "We were there,' that we lived, for the time being, there; "That is good,' that goodness is, or exists, in that; “The book is here,' that the book exists, in the sense of being a thing present to the senses, not as possessing life.
The verb substantive used in this way to form predicates, sets forth the idea of existence merely as secondary to the idea expressed by the other part of the predicate. Thus we might say, “The king is dead,' in which case the verb 'to be evidently does not express being in the sense of life, for it cannot mean that the king exists dead. It means that the king is present to the senses or minds of his subjects in a state of death. · The substantive verb may of itself form a predicate; when it does so, it expresses distinctly the idea of life or existence. Examples—We must believe that He is.' 'Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.
The verbs 'seem' and 'appear' have, in general, almost the same meaning as the verb to be. They express with some uncertainty what the verb substantive asserts positively, and when they form a predicate with a noun, such noun is in the nominative position after the verb, as if it followed the verb 'to be.' Examples-He appears a good man; he seemed a soldier. Meaning-He appears to be a good man; he seemed to be a soldier,-in which cases, 'man' and 'soldier' are nouns in apposition, following the verbs 'appeared' and 'seemed.'
The verb 'appeared’ standing alone as a predicate would mean simply, came into view; as in the clauses, The ship appeared. He appeared on the scene. “Seemed,' which is the Saxon synonym for appeared,' is never used in this sense, and cannot alone form a predicate.
When we say “That appeared good,' we do not wish to assert that the thing came before our eyes. The assertion is of goodness, and the predicate is formed of the verb and adjective.
EXERCISE. Taking the predicate to be that which we say of the subject, distinguish the predicates in the following clauses and sentences. Classify them according to what they say under a, b, c, d, etc. :
I am a linen-draper bold. Flowers are earth's jewels. The grass is cut down. Distance lends enchantment to the view. All is well.
Not lighter does the swallow skim
Across the smooth lake's level brim.
Speed, Malise, speed! The lake is passed
Duncraggan's huts appear at last.
Parched are thy burning lips and brow,
Yet by the fountain pause not now;
Herald of battle, fate, and fear,
Stretch onward in thy fleet career.
When lilac 'gins to show her bloom,
We then may say “The May is come.'
If such there be, -go, mark him well.
Long may the tree, in his banner that glances,
Flourish, the emblem and pride of our line.
Hast thou a charm to stay the morning star
In his steep course?
Oh, come ye in peace, or come ye in war?
Thou'rt wrong, my friend, said old King Hal.
Thou’rt wrong as wrong can be ;
For, could my heart be light as thine,
I'd gladly change with thee.
I'll dream no more. By manly mind
Not ev'n in sleep is will resigned.
Can I not view a Highland brand,
But it must fit the Douglas hand ?
No rude sound shall reach thine ear.
Were I so tall as reach the pole,
Or grasp the ocean with my span,
I must be measured by my soul,
The mind's the standard of the man.
I, only I, can ward their fate;
God grant the ransom come not late !
The Object.
The object.—When the predicate consists of a transitive verb, an object is essential to its completion.
Some clauses and simple sentences have thus three essential parts: the subject, the predicate, and the object.
The object of a clause or sentence is the name of that to which the action expressed by the predicate passes over.
Examples—They gathered flowers. Here the action of gathering passes over to the word flowers, which is therefore the object of the sentence.-We enjoy reading. Here the action of enjoying passes over to the word reading, which is the name of that which we enjoy, and therefore the object of the sentence.
Clauses and simple sentences which have intransitive verbs for predicates are complete without an object, their essential parts being subject and predicate only.
The object of a sentence may at once be discovered by asking the question, Whom or what? regarding the action expressed by the transitive verb that forms the predicate ; thus, They feared the people. Whom did they fear? The people (object).—He tried to speak. What did he try? To speak (object).—They like to come. What do they like? To come (object).—The children love playing. What do they love ? Playing (object).
The object of a clause or sentence may be-
A simple noun; as, Love the Brotherhood.
A pronoun; as, We fear him, in which case the objective form must be used. Example—I saw the man whom you befriended, (not who you befriended).
An adjective used absolutely; as, We pity the poor.
An infinitive verb; as, They declined to write.
A participle ; as, She dislikes steering.
In all these cases the object is a noun, or some part of speech equivalent to a noun.
The object may also be a phrase; as, They denied having seen the child. He ignored their being present.
A sentence; as, He answered, “Still waters run deep.'
A clause; as, Call upon whoever will respond. I gave whatever they asked.
Phrases or clauses thus standing in the position of objects to transitive verbs, are called object phrases and noun object clauses respectively.
The terms Direct and Indirect object may be explained as meaning the real and the apparent object respectively.
The term objective case, as applied to a word, means that such word is in the position or relationship of object in regard to the clause or sentence in which it occurs. Object is the name of that to which the action expressed by a transitive verb passes. And in no other case can a word stand in the relationship of object in a clause or sentence.
The object of a transitive verb is sometimes called the direct object, to distinguish it from what appears to be, but is not, the object, and which has been termed the indirect object. Example-She gave the beggar an alms. If we ask what she gave, the answer will be 'an alms,' which is the real object. The word 'beggar' seems to stand in the position of object, but a glance at the meaning of the assertion will show that 'beggar' is not the object or thing which she gave. Nouns or their equivalents in such a position as the word 'beggar,' have been described as indirect objects.
These apparent or indirect objects will be found to be extensions or adjuncts to the predicate, if we inquire into the sense or meaning of the clause or sentence in which they occur.
Thus : They made William king. Here the action of making does not pass over to William ; for in that case the assertion would mean that William was made. They made a king' is the assertion. '(Of) William' tells us the material from which they made the king,' and the phrase of William' extends the predicate, and is an adverbial adjunct or extension of instrumentThe king made him his armour-bearer. Here the word 'armourbearer' is the object; it is the name of that which was made. The king did not make him, but he made an armour-bearer of him. And the extension of him’ is an adverbial adjunct of material, enlarging the predicate 'made.
He made the tough roots his ladder; He made his son a scholar, are examples of the same kind.
Again, in the sentence, We gave him a book, the meaning is that we gave a book, not that we gave him. And the phrase 'to him' limits the action of giving, for we might give a book to each child, or to each member of the household, or school, or class. We therefore describe the phrase "to him’ as an adverbial adjunct of limitation to the predicate.
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Come to Harm
This grisly, twisty psychological thriller from award-winning author Catriona McPherson will keep you guessing right until the last page.
"The weak are meat. The strong eat."
For Keiko Nishisato, leaving Tokyo to study for her PhD in Scotland was supposed to be the adventure, but it's the sponsored accommodation that shows her just how far she is from home. Strange plumbing, strange food . . . and strangest of all, the remote location. The quiet little town of Painchton, far away from the bustling city life of Edinburgh, is not what she expected, and Keiko tries not to feel ungrateful.
Still, she's never met friendlier people than the Painchton Traders, who welcome her as one of their own. Only the Pooles, the butchers downstairs, seem to want to keep their distance - widowed Mrs Poole unwelcoming, and her son Malcolm quiet and standoffish. Malcolm's charming brother Murray, drawn back to Painchton after his father's death, both attracts and unsettles her, promising to keep her safe. Safe from what?
There's a darkness at the heart of Painchton, and Keiko grows determined to find out what it is. But the more she discovers, the less she believes, until she can't tell where her fears end and the real nightmares begin . . .
Catriona McPherson:
Born and raised in Edinburgh, Catriona McPherson left Edinburgh University with a PhD in Linguistics and worked in academia, as well as banking and public libraries, before taking up full-time writing in 2001. For the last ten years she has lived in Northern California with a black cat and a scientist. In 2020 she has been shortlisted for a third Mary Higgins Clark Award, for Strangers at the Gate, and won a Left Coast Crime 2020 Lefty Award for the Best Humorous Mystery for Scot and Soda.
Publisher Name Severn House Publishers
Imprint Severn House Publishers
Publication Date Sep 01, 2020
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Welcome to Campus Store
204-632-2351 Store Hours / Contact Us
Intl Student's FAQ
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Red River College’s ultimate goal is to slowly re-integrate our students and employees to campus, but to do so in a manner that is consistent with advice from public health officials. As a result RRC Campus Stores are still closed for shopping but are open for picking up your web orders. You will be sent an email when your order is ready for pick up. Please do not come on campus until you have received this email.
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Upcoming Guest AMA with Matthew Liu (Co-founder) & Nick Poulden (Senior Engineer) of Origin, the decentralized platform also powering the new Brave Swag Store, on r/BATProject (Apr. 16, 2020)
Jennie on April 10, 2020
Welcome to the next installment in our series of BAT Community-run AMAs! Matthew Liu and Nick Poulden will be on r/BATProject on Thursday, April 16th, 2020, from 10:30-11:30 am Pacific Time to answer your questions. Ask them anything!
Origin is powering commerce on the blockchain. The Origin Platform enables the creation of peer-to-peer marketplaces and e-commerce applications. Origin’s technology allows buyers and sellers of goods and services to transact on the distributed, open web. Using the Ethereum blockchain and Interplanetary File System (IPFS), participants can interact in a peer-to-peer fashion, allowing for the purchase of goods and services without traditional intermediaries imposing exorbitant fees and onerous terms. Learn more at originprotocol.com.
Matthew Liu
Matt is a Co-founder at Origin, focusing on product development and business strategy. Prior to Origin, Matt cofounded PriceSlash (acquired by BillShark) and Unicycle Labs. Earlier in his career, Matt was one of the earliest product managers at YouTube, building the company’s first content partner and monetization products. He also served as VP of Product at Qwiki (acquired by Yahoo!) and Bonobos (acquired by Walmart).
Nick Poulden
Nick is a Senior Engineer at Origin and spearheads Dshop, the decentralized e-commerce initiative that powers the Brave Store. He authored the Origin Marketplace smart contract that processes transactions at the core of the Origin Platform, allowing buyers, sellers, affiliates, and arbitrators to interact via the blockchain, with rules enshrined in code. Originally from the UK where he started his career as a full-stack developer, Nick moved to the San Francisco Bay area in 2010 and Boulder, Colorado in 2014.
Please leave your questions for Matt and Nick in the AMA announcement thread on Reddit, here. Questions will be collected, vetted, and posted by your host, Jennie, during the event (with credit to the OP). Questions that come in live during the AMA will be of second priority.
For more from Origin:
Official Website: https://www.originprotocol.com/en/
Origin Protocol on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/originprotocol/
Origin on Medium: https://medium.com/originprotocol
Origin on Twitter: https://twitter.com/originprotocol
Origin on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/originprotocol
Origin on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/originprotocol
Origin on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/originprotocol/
Official Origin Protocol Telegram group [EN]: https://t.me/originprotocol
Origin on Discord: https://discordapp.com/invite/jyxpUSe
Category: AMA & Interviews, Community, Info, News
Previous: Previous post: The Weekly BAT + Podcast Ep. 36 (Apr. 3, 2020) — Brave unveils new Swag Store powered by Origin Protocol’s new decentralized e-commerce platform (Dshop), Brave hits 13.5M MAU & 4.3M DAU in March 2020, Khan Academy & No Kid Hungry are now fully verified and set up to receive BAT donations!
Next: Next post: The Weekly BAT + Podcast Ep. 37 (Apr. 10, 2020) — New fully rebuilt Brave for Android boosts performance across the board compared to prior versions: 5% battery savings + 3% of both data and CPU savings (blog), Upcoming Guest AMA w/ Origin, Luke Mulks (Director of BizDev) on the Hashoshi Show (video)
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Home/Adobe CS5, Dinosaur and Prehistoric Animal News Stories, Dinosaur Fans, Main Page, Palaeontological articles, Photos/Pictures of Fossils/Wightia declivirostris – A Terrific Tapejarid Pterosaur
Wightia declivirostris – A Terrific Tapejarid Pterosaur
Jawbone Leads to an Isle of Wight Tapejarid Pterosaur
A single, fragmentary jawbone from the upper jaw of a pterosaur found on the Isle of Wight has demonstrated just how diverse and widespread the Tapejaridae family of pterosaurs were. The fossil bone, a partial premaxilla from the Lower Cretaceous (Barremian) Wessex Formation of Yaverland (Isle of Wight), represents a new species, the first record of a tapejarid pterosaur from the Wessex Formation and one of the oldest examples of this pterosaur family to have been found outside of China. The flying reptile has been named Wightia declivirostris.
A Life Reconstruction of Wightia declivirostris (Wessex Formation)
A life reconstruction of the newly described tapejarid from the Lower Cretaceous of the Isle of Wight (Wightia declivirostris).
Picture Credit: Megan Jacobs (University of Portsmouth)
Terrific Toothless Tapejarids
The terrific toothless tapejarids with their reputation for taking head crest development to the extreme, are known from relatively abundant fossil material associated with the Santana and Crato Formations of Brazil. In addition, several members of the Tapejaridae family are associated with the Jiufotang Formation of China. However, fragmentary fossils are known from elsewhere in the world such as Spain (Europejara olcadesorum) and a toothless, rather deep lower jaw tip along with other partial bones from the Kem Kem beds of Morocco suggests that these types of flying reptile may have persisted into the early Late Cretaceous.
Two of the authors associated with this scientific paper, Professor David Martill and Roy Smith (both from the University of Portsmouth), recently published a report on the discovery of a north African tapejarid which was named Afrotapejara zouhrii, one of a spate of recent Moroccan pterosaur discoveries. To read Everything Dinosaur’s article about this: That Fourth Moroccan Pterosaur. It seems that these fancy-crested, edentulous flying reptiles were much more geographically and temporally diverse than previously thought.
A Typical Illustration of a Tapejarid Pterosaur (Tupandactylus imperator)
A scale drawing of the tapejarid Pterosaur Tupandactylus imperator. The Tapejaridae are thought to have all sported flamboyant head crests.
The Isle of Wight Pterosaur is More Closely Related to Chinese Tapejarids
Amateur fossil hunter John Winch discovered a pterosaur snout near the cliff at Yaverland Point in Sandown Bay, in a fossil plant debris layer. The unusual shape and thin bone walls suggested that it was from a pterosaur. The fragment of jaw, although eroded, demonstrates the characteristic downturned tip, with numerous tiny holes (foramina), on the occulsal surface which indicate the presence of minute sensory organs for detecting food.
The Holotype Material Wightia declivirostris
The isolated, partial premaxilla of Wightia declivirostris.
Picture Credit: University of Portsmouth
The jaw fragment was passed to palaeontology student at Portsmouth University, Megan Jacobs, who confirmed it was a rare find and definitely pterosaurian. Analysis of the specimen suggests that Wightia is more closely related to the older and more primitive tapejarid Sinopterus from Liaoning (Jiufotang Formation), than it is to Brazilian tapejarids. The genus name of this newly described flying reptile honours the Isle of Wight, whilst the species (trivial) name means “slanting beak”, a reference to the typically tapejarid morphology of the partial premaxilla.
Both the Wealden Formation and the geologically younger Vectis Formation on the Isle of Wight have yielded pterosaur specimens, although they tend to consist of highly fragmentary remains. The discovery of Wightia declivirostris demonstrates how significant the Lower Cretaceous Isle of Wight sediments are to palaeontologists as they try to plot the radiation of different types of flying reptile during the Early Cretaceous.
The scientific paper: “First tapejarid pterosaur from the Wessex Formation (Wealden Group: Lower Cretaceous, Barremian) of the United Kingdom” by David M. Martill, Mick Green, Roy E. Smith, Megan L. Jacobs and John Winch published in the journal Cretaceous Research.
By Mike| 2020-05-29T15:55:11+00:00 May 29th, 2020|Adobe CS5, Dinosaur and Prehistoric Animal News Stories, Dinosaur Fans, Main Page, Palaeontological articles, Photos/Pictures of Fossils|0 Comments
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Android N Developer 2 Released, Find Out If Google Nexus, Samsung, LG, Sony, Motorola and HTC Devices Will Get It
By Mark Aserit ( [email protected] ) Apr 15, 2016 09:05 AM EDT Comment
Latest on Android Nougat release date
Google rolled out its second preview for Android N earlier this week, and it comes with a bunch of new features that will definitely love by Android users. It is also reported that the second beta program will become available in different mobile devices. Now, here's the latest update about Android N release date for Google Nexus, Samsung, LG, Sony, Motorola and HTC.
Google's April update to its Android 7.0 N beta introduces innovative features and fixes for system bugs. One of the biggest additions is support for the Vulkan graphics API, according to Computer World. This headline feature helps graphics card to decrease the amount of background processing power drawn from CPU. It also boosts the system while users are running intensive 3D apps
Furthermore, the second preview brings new of set of emojis that represent different ethnicities around the globe. It also added Quick Replies feature to the lock screen, enabling users to reply on text and email on the device's lock screen, as per reports from Ars Technica.
As for the availability of Android N Developer Preview 2 to other devices, first-party Nexus devices have an exclusive access to the operating system. However, Google may expand the Developer Preview to other manufacturers' phones. According to Reddit user FUNExtreme, it is possible.
The Reddit user found a cryptic text in the HTML code of Google's Android N Preview page. In the "What's New" section, it states the Android N beta program could land to "more supported devices, including devices from OEM partners". It also added "seamless OTAs for your devices, from initial release to final N release without flashing".
As of now, Google has not yet announced its plans on expanding the developer program to other devices. But if the company decides to do so, the most likely candidates are the phone makers that have "stock" Android builds, such as Motorola.
Nevertheless, Google is expected to release three more build before launching the fully functional Android N system. The final build will be rolled out sometime in third quarter of the year.
For now, Android N preview is available for the Nexus 6, 5X, 6P, 9, and Pixel C tablet. For those who are using these devices under Marshmallow, you can get the update over the air by enrolling in the Android beta program. If you are already using the first developer preview, expect an over-the-air update shortly.
Tags : Android N release date, Android N Preview, Android N rumors, Samsung, Nexus, Google, HTC
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https://celticswire.usatoday.com/2020/12/18/nba-boston-celtics-how-to-watch-stream-brooklyn-nets-preseason-december-18-2020/
Celtics vs. Nets: Live stream, how to watch, TV channel, start time 12/18
The Boston Celtics will face the Brooklyn Nets at their home arena of TD Garden this Friday, Dec. 18 at 8pm ET, and if you’re wondering how you can watch the action live, you’ve come to the right place.
The contest will be the Celtics first home game at the iconic arena since before the pandemic hiatus, and if he plays, it will also be former Boston point guard Kyrie Irving’s first return to the Garden. The Celtics are leaning heavily on the preseason to develop their young roster, so don’t expect competitive basketball for the full 48 minutes of floor time, but it ought to be an entertaining feeling-out process for the two East behemoths even still.
Nets’ Kyrie Irving reportedly likely to play at TD Garden vs Celtics https://t.co/zkOTcqlDDx
— The Celtics Wire (@TheCelticsWire) December 18, 2020
Here’s when you should tune in to see the game:
Time: 8 p.m. ET
TV Channel: YES Network; ESPN2
Probable starting lineups
Jayson Tatum (forward)
Jaylen Brown (forward)
Robert Williams (center)
Javonte Green (guard)
Marcus Smart (guard)
Joe Harris (forward)
Kevin Durant (forward)
DeAndre Jordan (center)
Spencer Dinwiddie (guard)
Kyrie Irving (guard)
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The Miami Heat play the Boston Celtics on Sunday, Jan. 10, and if you're wondering how you can watch the action live today, you've come to the right place.
The Celtics figure to be underdogs coming into this rematch of their Jan. 6 win with much of heir roster either having been diagnosed with COVID-19 (Robert Williams III, Jayson Tatum), out in the NBA's health and safety protocols (Tristan Thompson, Grant Williams) or recovering from injury (Kemba Walker, Romeo Langford). Even so, expect the available Celtics to put up a fight on their home court. Here's when...
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For now at least, the Boston Celtics play the Washington Wizards on Friday, Jan. 8, and if you're wondering how you can watch the action live, you've come to the right place.
While it seems the positive COVID-19 case uncovered by the Philadelphia 76ers Thursday hasn't had a cascading effect on the team they played on Wednesday (the Wiz), the Celtics will be without several important players who are in the league's health and safety protocol. While Washington may clearly be an inferior team in terms of talent, Boston's lack of depth at the moment could result in...
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The Boston Celtics play the Miami Heat in a rematch with their Eastern Conference finals foe on Wednesday, Jan.6, and if you're wondering how you can watch the action live, you've come to the right place.
Both teams have struggled a bit out of the gate as they work to retool their rosters for another deep playoff run. The Heat are 3 - 3, having split a two-game series with the Milwaukee Bucks and losses to the Dallas Mavericks and Orlando Magic that resemble the Celtics' earlier struggles against the Indiana Pacers, Detroit Pistons and the Brooklyn Nets. Here's when...
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Dalai Lama’s Tawang Visit Rekindles Debate
Posted by Josh Rudolph | Apr 7, 2017
The 14th Dalai Lama today reached Tawang, a small Himalayan district which while historically part of Tibet, is today administered by Arunachal Pradesh, India, a border region largely claimed by Beijing. In recent months, Beijing has been increasingly vocal in its opposition to the ongoing trip—the Dalai Lama’s first since 2009 to the region where he rested after fleeing China in 1959. This week, China Daily published an editorial urging “Beijing […] not [to] hesitate to answer blows with blows” for New Delhi allowing the Dalai Lama to “visit Southern Tibet, a historical Chinese territory India has illicitly occupied.”
The region has also long been considered a candidate for the birthplace of the next Dalai Lama, an eventuality that in recent years has become increasingly uncertain. Since 2014, the aging Dalai Lama has repeatedly suggested that he could be the last incarnation in a centuries old political and spiritual tradition; Beijing has countered by asserting its right to name his successor. At The New York Times, Ellen Barry reports on Tawang’s historic relevance to Tibetan Buddhism, on the Dalai Lama’s ongoing visit to the region, and on the political motives that an expert sees in the trip:
At stake on this journey, scholars said, is the monumental question of who will emerge as the Dalai Lama’s successor — and whether that successor, typically a baby identified as the next reincarnation of the Dalai Lama, will live inside or outside China’s zone of influence.
[…] Tawang is home to the Monpa people, who practice Tibetan Buddhism and once paid tribute to rulers in Lhasa, 316 miles to the north. Though the town’s population is about 11,000, officials said they were expecting as many as 60,000 to gather for the Dalai Lama’s appearances at Tawang’s monastery this weekend.
[…] The most treasured lore among the Monpa surrounds Tsangyang Gyatso, who in 1682 became the sixth Dalai Lama. People here make pilgrimages to his childhood home, where a stone is displayed with a faint footprint said to be his, and speak longingly of the possibility that it could happen again.
“That is the dream of many people here, that the next Dalai Lama should be born in Tawang,” said Sang Phuntsok, Tawang’s deputy commissioner. […]
[…] Aging Tibetan Buddhist lamas have, in some cases, visited places where they would later be reincarnated as babies, and the Dalai Lama’s visits to Tawang and Mongolia seemed to fall into that pattern, said Robert J. Barnett, a historian of modern Tibet at Columbia University.
“This is a way of getting under the skin of the Chinese, of probing them, and reminding them that they have no control over where the next reincarnation occurs,” he said. [Source]
If “getting under the skin” of Beijing was the Dalai Lama’s main objective, he appears to have succeeded. Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hua Chunying fielded several questions about the visit in her April 6 regular press conference. After a first question regarding Beijing’s plan to protest New Delhi’s invite (protest has been formally lodged, she said), Hua explained how Beijing views the situation as a questioning of the “one-China policy”:
[…] Q: Is China’s objection to Dalai Lama’s visit to the “Arunachal Pradesh” driven by the view that India is questioning the one-China principle by inviting the Dalai Lama?
A: I want to stress once again that on major issues concerning China’s territorial sovereignty and national security, China’s position is consistent. The boundary question and Tibet-related issues bear on China’s core interests. By extending an invitation to the Dalai Lama and approving his activities in the disputed eastern section of the China-India boundary, the Indian side has breached its commitment on Tibet-related issues, further escalated the boundary dispute, and undermined mutual trust and relations between China and India. The Chinese side opposes the Dalai Lama’s visit to the disputed area and any country’s provision of venues for his anti-China separatist activities. As I have said, the Chinese side has lodged stern representations with the Indian side in Beijing and New Delhi respectively. We urge the Indian side to stop its erroneous act of using the Dalai Lama to harm China’s interests.
[…] Q: You just said that other countries should respect China’s core interests. Media reports say that the reason why India invited the Dalai Lama to the “Arunachal Pradesh” was because China did not respect India’s core interests in issues such as joining the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG). What is your comment on that?
A: We have unequivocally expressed our opposition to India’s approval of Dalai Lama’s activities in the disputed eastern section of the China-India boundary. We will not speculate about India’s motive. What I want to stress is that India has violated its commitment on Tibet-related issues, fueled boundary dispute and hurt China’s interests and China-India relations by arranging Dalai Lama’s activities in the disputed eastern section of the China-India boundary in disregard of China’s concerns. The Chinese side is firmly against that. Mutual respect and mutual accommodation of each other’s core interests and major concerns serves as a foundation for the steady growth of China-India relations. The Indian side should honor its commitment, match its words with actions, stop its wrong moves and do more to increase mutual trust with China and safeguard the overall interests of China-India relations with concrete actions.
As for India’s application for the NSG membership, the Chinese side has elaborated on its position many times. It is a multilateral issue that should be resolved by all NSG members through consultation. The Chinese side supports NSG members in working out, on the basis of thorough discussion, a non-discriminatory solution that is applicable to all non-NPT states through open and transparent inter-governmental procedures. [Source]
For its part, New Delhi has denied that the Dalai Lama’s visit to Arunachal Pradesh is politically significant. The Hindu notes that China Daily’s editorial also evoked the one-China policy, drawing a parallel between Tibet and Taiwan, and also quoted from a Reuters interview with a top Arunachal Pradesh official sure to raise hackles in Beijing:
“New Delhi not only allowed the 14th Dalai Lama to visit Southern Tibet, a historical Chinese territory India has illicitly occupied and refers to as ‘Arunachal Pradesh’, but the spiritual leader of ‘Tibetan independence’ was also escorted on the trip by India’s junior minister of home affairs. To Beijing, that is a double affront,” the [China Daily] edit[orial] said.
[…] The daily took exception to remarks by the Minister of State for home affairs, Kiren Rijiju that, “China should not object to the Dalai Lama’s visit and interfere in India’s internal affairs.”“(Mr.) Rijiju might think himself cute in borrowing a line from Beijing’s diplomatic representations, but he has ignored the fundamental distinction here: Like Taiwan and any other part of China, Tibet is a part of Chinese territory no matter whether New Delhi agrees or not. Southern Tibet, on the other hand, was stolen from China by his country’s former colonial master taking advantage of China’s internal strife.”
Earlier in an interview with Reuters, Pema Khandu, Chief Minister of Arunachal Pradesh was quoted as saying that ,“As far as the boundary issue is concerned, I have also maintained that we don’t share our boundary with China, but we share our boundary with Tibet”. Analysts say that the statement can be interpreted as questioning the “One-China” principle. [Source]
Recently, Beijing has been situating its controversial choice for the Panchen Lama—the second highest cleric in the Gelugpa sect of Tibetan Buddhism overseen by the Dalai Lama—into a higher profile. Last summer, the controversial young cleric oversaw a Kalachakra initiation ceremony in Shigatse, marking the first time the tantric ritual had been held in Tibet since the Dalai Lama left in 1959. More recently, Beijing’s Panchen Lama urged monastic Tibetans to “love the Party.” The boy that the Dalai Lama identified as the 11th Panchen Lama in 1995 disappeared, and Beijing installed its own choice. While Chinese authorities claim that the disappeared Panchen Lama is “living a normal life and wishes not to be disturbed,” calls for the disclosure of his whereabouts continue to resound.
Beijing’s intervention in Tibetan Buddhist affairs—a right it claims to have inherited from its imperial predecessors—reflects an assertive attitude that critics see as exacerbating tensions with ethnic and religious minorities, particularly in Tibet and Xinjiang.
Categories : China & the World,Level 2 Article,Level 3 Article,Level 4 Article,Politics
Tags :Arunachal Pradesh,border disputes,Dalai Lama,diplomacy,India border,India relations,one-China policy,reincarnation,Tibet
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Toe-to-Toe: Professional Fighters League Daytona Preview and Predictions
Bryan Henderson June 27, 2017
Bryan Henderson Editor-in-Chief
Smoke. Beer-fueled yells. The rattle of a chain-link fence. Endurance.
Yes, these things can all be found in mixed martial arts — from the smoke that fills the arena during fighter entrances, to the obnoxious shouts of inebriated fans, to the sound of the cage clattering as two fighters collide and battle for supremacy over the course of a grueling 15 or 25 minutes.
But you know where else you can spot these same things? The Daytona International Speedway — from the smoke of burning rubber as cars peel out or slam into one another, to the shouts of fans who have consumed plenty of beer while tailgating before the race, to the vibration of the chain-link sections of fencing around the racetrack as cars rush past at incredibly high speeds, and to the 250 miles that the drivers must cover to cross the finish line.
The former World Series of Fighting has rebranded itself as the Professional Fighters League, and its first official event will take place in coordination with the Fourth of July weekend festivities surrounding NASCAR’s Coca-Cola Firecracker 250 race in Daytona, Fla. The card will be free to guests attending the race, but it’s also an abbreviated event that contains just four fights.
The bill is topped by a five-round clash between welterweights Jon Fitch and Brian Foster. The supporting cast includes a co-headlining light heavyweight battle between Rony Markes and Smealinho Rama, as well as lightweight bouts pitting João Zeferino against Herman Terrado and Jason High against Caros Fodor.
The action is set to begin after the NASCAR race has concluded. The event will air live on the NBC Sports Network at 10:30 p.m. ET on Friday, June 30. Combat Press writers Dan Kuhl and Bryan Henderson preview the PFL’s inaugural outing in this edition of Toe-to-Toe.
Obviously, the Professional Fighters League is a rebranding of sorts for the old World Series of Fighting. Is this a good or a bad idea for the promotion? Champions won’t be crowned in the new PFL until the end of 2018. This leaves us with a set of non-title bouts, including a five-round headliner. Why should we care about these fights?
Kuhl: After speaking to a few of the fighters myself, I can say that everyone seems to think the rebranding is a good thing, and they are excited for a fresh start with the same talent-deep pool. The WSOF has already sent three champions to the UFC just in the last couple months, so we know the guys fighting for the PFL are gunning for the big show, and most of them will fight their asses off to get there. This makes for very entertaining fights.
For its inaugural event, the PFL is bringing in a handful of UFC vets and a few guys teetering on the fence to make it into the Octagon for the first time. Plus, when you take grizzled vets and those hungry for recognition and combine them into a “new promotion,” they will certainly put forth their best to make headlines with highlight-reel finishes.
As for the five-round headliner, this makes sense, because Brian Foster is making his welterweight return against Jon Fitch, who is technically the incumbent champ. Both of these guys are grinding workhorses, and this could lend to a technical battle. Rony Markes and Smealinho Rama are both coming off tough submission losses — Rama’s causing him to lose the heavyweight strap — so both men are coming in to get back in the win column.
All in all, I feel this will be a great night of fights well worth watching.
Henderson: I’m not quite as sold on this idea. There’s a lot to be said for name recognition, especially in the sport of MMA. To most fans, MMA is still referred to as “UFC.” That’s pretty telling. Ask someone about other organizations that are name brands to us insiders and hardcore fans — Bellator, the WSOF and the Legacy Fighting Alliance, to name a few examples — and most will probably give you a confused look. This means that the PFL is basically starting from square one, with only the additional perk of a TV deal, when building its fan base and brand recognition.
The idea of a fresh start is nice, however. The WSOF launched strong, but it was losing its focus. The new PFL is taking a championship-season approach, adding some novelty and creating a more even playing field. The league is set to pay fighters on a monthly basis and potentially improve overall fighter livelihoods. It could allow some new names to flourish, too, which is great. And that starts with this four-fight card.
Jon Fitch and Brian Foster garner headlining duties in this one. Fitch, while quiet lately, is 5-2 overall since his departure from the UFC and still stands as a borderline top-15 or top-20 welterweight. Can he add Foster’s scalp to his collection?
Henderson: Fitch has undoubtedly seen his stock go down since he was shown the door by UFC President Dana White. The former perennial UFC welterweight contender went 1-2-1 over his final four contests in the UFC, where he fought to a draw with B.J. Penn and lost to Johny Hendricks and Demian Maia. His WSOF debut was spoiled by UFC veteran Josh Burkman, and while he did rebound with victories over Marcelo Alfaya and Dennis Hallman, he was not able to get past Rousimar Palhares. Fitch has recovered admirably, however, to pick up big victories over UFC castoffs Yushin Okami, João Zeferino and Jake Shields.
Now, granted, Fitch can’t seem to get past fighters at the caliber of Hendricks (in his welterweight prime at the time), Maia and Palhares, but his wins over guys like Okami and Shields are evidence enough that Fitch’s grinding style can still be effective against the right type of competitor. Consider Foster to be another example of the proper foe for Fitch.
Foster, a fellow UFC veteran, has had plenty of ups and downs since his last Octagon appearance. He departed the UFC on a two-fight winning streak, but he followed two more regional wins with a loss to Daniel Roberts. Four more wins followed, including a decision nod over Gilbert Smith, before Foster fell to the aforementioned Shields. From there, Foster would win two fights via strikes, lose a fight, win two more via strikes and lose again. However, Foster avenged one of those losses when he defeated Zeferino in their rematch. His only other loss in this stretch came to Justin Gaethje in a lightweight title showdown. Foster is returning to welterweight after more than two years in the lightweight division.
This last detail is a big one. Foster went 3-2 overall while competing as a welterweight under the UFC banner. His losses came via submission to Rick Story and Chris Lytle. If those fighters could put Foster away on the ground, Fitch might even have a chance at scoring a stoppage. OK, maybe that’s going too far, but the patient Fitch will be able to implement his shutdown wrestling style to outwork Foster en route to a decision win.
Kuhl: Here’s the problem with Fitch: if he holds Foster down to grind out a win, he may get a win, but he will get the same rolling eyes from promoters that ultimately sent Ben Askren to Asia. MMA may not be just a striking game, but it is the entertainment business, and nobody wants to watch a guy hold another guy down for five rounds. Unless he goes in there and scores a stoppage, which would be his first in over seven years, his stock will certainly not go up, and I would hardly consider him a top-20 welterweight. At the end of the day, Fitch’s style can be boring as hell, and nobody wants to watch that. Even if he did have a name in the UFC for a while, every “grinding” win just grinds down at the viewers will to watch.
The thing that I like about Foster is that he’s absolutely fearless and is willing to fight anywhere. Just look at his last fight. Firmino is a BJJ black belt, and Foster was a blue belt when he submitted Firmino by triangle. In the fight before that, he stood toe-to-toe with undefeated leg-wrecking machine Gaethje, and, had it not been for a wrecked leg, he didn’t look all that bad. Luis Palomino has 15 knockout wins, and Foster won by TKO in the second round. Do not sleep on Foster as an opponent for anyone.
Everyone knows what Fitch is going to do, and if he gets his way, expect 25 minutes of wet-blanket wrestling. However, Foster is a wild card that never considers himself at a deficit in any one aspect of the game. He knows he’s a well-rounded fighter, and he knows he can win anywhere. If he can avoid the blanket, he has a really good chance of stopping Fitch.
Herman Terrado — do we need to know this name?
Kuhl: Do you like to watch guys who have 14 finishes in 14 wins in 17 fights? Do you like guys that only were stopped once in three losses? Granted, Terrado lost a Bellator welterweight tournament bid against Rick Hawn, and he followed it up by popping positive for straight-up ‘roids against Justin Baesman. This comes as no surprise considering his physique and the fact that he started bodybuilding before he wasn’t even close to driving age.
Nonetheless, Terrado is an exciting fighter from Guam who is making his WSOF/PFL debut against longtime vet João Zeferino, who is coming off a third-round knockout win over Jason High at WSOF 33 in October. Terrado is a very exciting 27-year-old fighter who loves to put on a show. Most of his finishes have taken place in the first round, and Zeferino will be one of his biggest tests to date.
The Guamanian can beat the Brazilian, likely in nasty fashion. Terrado finishes this one by the midpoint of round two.
Henderson: It’s never a great start when a fighter’s biggest headline involves performance-enhancing drugs. However, Terrado’s biggest problems come with his track record in the cage.
Terrado lost to Hawn and fought to a draw with Baesman. He dropped his 2008 pro debut to future UFC fighter Bobby Green and lost a regional fight to Marcio Navarro, a fighter whose head is just barely above the .500 mark. He did beat A.J. Matthews and Chris Brown while in Strikeforce, but his recent victories are far less stellar — five stoppages, yes, but against a set of fighters with a combined mark of 0-24. That’s right, not one win in the bunch.
Terrado can beat scrubs all day, but he doesn’t fare so well when he meets higher-level opponents. Zeferino is going to bring Terrado another dose of reality and send him packing.
Who’s the biggest winner at PFL 1?
Henderson: NASCAR fans. This show is part of a partnership with the Daytona International Speedway during its “Coke Zero 400 Weekend,” and takes place immediately following the Coca-Cola Firecracker 250 NASCAR XFINITY series race. Admission to the event is included in the price of the race ticket. So, NASCAR fans get to come to the race and enjoy some fights as a bonus perk. Sounds like a win.
Kuhl: To me, it’s Brian Foster. He’s been doing well at lightweight and could easily stay there. However, he got offered a chance to fight the WSOF welterweight champ, and he used to fight as a welterweight. If he loses, he can go back to lightweight and string together another win there. If he wins, which would most likely be by stoppage, then he is the first guy to avoid the blanket in a few years, and he also picks up a win in a weight division he hasn’t been in since he face Shields two and a half years ago. To me, he has the most upside potential with the least amount of downside.
Who’s the biggest loser at PFL 1?
Kuhl: I don’t see a lot of downside for anyone in this event. A big win for any of these guys could open doors to the UFC, especially if the company needs someone with a lot of experience on short notice. For those that lose, they just stay right where they are. This should be a big win for fans, as every fighter should have a nothing-to-lose mentality. The only downside for the fighters is that it’s an outdoor event in Florida in the middle of summer. Current forecasts say a chance of thunderstorms, and, hopefully, the NASCAR fumes will chase away the mosquitoes.
Henderson: Rony Markes. The dude just can’t catch a break. First, it was Yoel Romero and Thiago Santos in the UFC. Then it was Cássio de Oliveira in Shooto Brazil and Viktor Nemkov in M-1 Global. Now, it’s Smealinho Rama in the PFL.
On first impulse, I was going to pick Markes to take the victory over Rama, but then I was reminded of how Rama looked at heavyweight and, more importantly, how he looked against Jake Heun in his light heavyweight debut for the WSOF. Markes, meanwhile, went from a highly touted prospect who entered the UFC to the tune of three Octagon wins, to a fighter who dropped his final two UFC fights and then stumbled to a mediocre 2-2 showing through four post-UFC outings spanning four different promotions, including the WSOF.
Rama’s move down to light heavyweight might be a career-booster that receives another boost with a win over a notable name like Markes. The 29-year-old Markes had the potential to be a top light heavyweight, but he doesn’t seem to be on that track anymore. This fight might just provide one more setback for the Brazilian.
Which fight is the sleeper match-up on this card?
Henderson: There are only four fights slated for this card, which doesn’t leave us with a lot of picks. Let’s go ahead and say the sleeper fight is the one that promises the most entertainment value out of these four contests. In that case, sign me up for the lightweight scrap between Herman Terrado and João Zeferino.
Terrado’s nickname of “The Hitman” is very accurate. The dude has not won a fight by decision in his career, instead relying on his fists to deliver eight knockouts and his grappling to execute six submissions. Zeferino has three decision wins, but he, too, has a long list of stoppage wins, including three knockouts and 15 submissions. Terrado has suffered one submission loss and Zeferino has been knocked out four times, so there are decent odds for either man to score the finish.
If any of these fights turns out to be something other than a grinding affair, it’s going to be the fight between Terrado and Zeferino.
Kuhl: I like that Rama-Markes match-up in this one. Both guys are willing to stand and trade, and both of their recent losses are by submission, so neither is likely to want to take it to the ground. Expect a lot of hard punches in this one, as well as a knockout, likely from Rama.
Pair this card with…
Kuhl: Tall cans of cheap beer, hot dogs, gas-station nachos and a white tank top. Get the drift?
Henderson: A NASCAR race. Too obvious? Oh well.
Fight Picks
Fight Kuhl’s Pick Henderson’s Pick
Main Card (NBC Sports Network, 10:30 p.m. ET)
WW: Jon Fitch vs. Brian Foster Fitch Fitch
LHW: Rony Markes vs. Smealinho Rama Rama Rama
LW: Herman Terrado vs. João Zeferino Terrado Zeferino
LW: Caros Fodor vs. Jason High High High
Brian FosterDaytonaJon FitchPFL 1Professional Fighters League
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Building Department Office Hours
New Land Use Office Hours-2020.06.19
Building Department Introduction:
Clinton's Building Official receives building permit applications, reviews building and site plans, assists the applicant with requirements for other agencies, answers questions on the building process and works to protect the Town and the public's general health, safety and welfare.
The Building Department is responsible for monitoring all building activities in Town through the issuance of permits and inspections for all new and renovated buildings, electrical, plumbing, heating, air conditioning, demolitions and gas and oil tank installations and removals. Department files are coded and digitally recorded on the Treeno document management system for future reference. This department is regulated by State Statutes and a close working relationship is maintained with the Fire Marshal's Office.
The Building Department Office is open from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Monday thru Wednesday, 9:00am to 7:00 pm on Thursday and 9:00am to 12:00 pm on Friday.
Call (860) 669-9118 with any questions you may have.
Online Building Permit System
For the convenience of both property owners and contractors, the Town of Clinton employs an online permit system which is accessible via the Town website www.ClintonCT.org . On the homepage click on ‘Department’ to open the drop-down menu. Next, click on Building Department to access our easy to use permitting system. Using that system, you may apply for a building or trade permit, attach supporting documents and/or check the status of a permit.
Before applying for a permit, you should review the Building Department web page to see what documentation is required. Please scan and attach supporting documentation with your completed application. Provide as much information as you can on the form because incomplete applications may cause unnecessary delays.
You can pay any required fees by cash or check, in person or by mail.
To apply for a permit
Permit Fee Increase Effective July 1, 2017
Carol Walter
Building Dept & Land Use Office Hours
Building Permit General Information
On Line Permitting Instructions
On Line Permit Application and Permit Status Check
How to Apply for an IN Ground Pool
Building Code for Pool Safety
How to Apply for an ABOVE Ground Pool
How to Apply for a Solar Permit
Helpful Permit Forms
How to Create a Plot Plan Using the GIS
Work Exempt From Permits (1-2 Family)
Demolition Permit Information
Demolition Permit Forms
Town of Clinton
Town Online GIS
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The secret lives of corncrakes in August - Scottish Nature Notes - Our work - The RSPB Community
Scottish Nature Notes The secret lives of corncrakes in August
The secret lives of corncrakes in August
Allie M
After a busy calling season, corncrakes have gone quiet, but they are still in the fields, raising their broods and preparing to migrate back to Africa. Heather Beaton, Uist Warden, explains some of the challenges they are facing in August.
The summer cacophony has calmed: the nights are quieter, the dawn chorus more relaxed and the days have lost their high energy frenzy that’s the hallmark of early summer. Now, it’s the time for raising broods, fledging them and building up energy for the long autumn migration. And corncrakes are no exception to this rule.
They arrived in a hurry in late April and early May, and the males’ noisy call has been the soundtrack to our summer nights. However, for them, life has now taken on a new priority and although we still hear the occasional call, both males and females are living their lives out cryptically, hiding in the still-long vegetation, and preparing for their mammoth journey.
The females still have broods; indeed, they spend more time with their second brood of the year now that there’s no rush to breed again. And they can be later breeders than we often expect: there have been chicks seen in late August and, rarely, even into September. However, one of the commonest refrains I hear about corncrakes is how secretive they are. Yes, but that doesn’t mean they’re not there and some positive action from us can make a real difference as to how they survive to the following year.
It’s easy to protect the big, the noisy, or the cuddly. But what about this species that has been so vocal, and is now hidden in amongst the late cut silage? If it’s not calling, how are we meant to know it’s there? One of the best things to do is presume its presence. Mow slowly, mow in the wildlife friendly manner - side to side across the field, allowing the birds to escape into long grass and safety. And be patient. Do not good things come to those that wait? If we delay cutting, or cut slower, we increase the chances of corncrakes surviving this summer to return to breed next year and although we may never know if it was our direct action that helped the individual, at least you can be sure it wasn’t causing harm.
For now, they’re feeding up. They eat insects, worms, small amphibians, slugs, snails and arachnids which means our biodiverse meadows are perfect for them and they particularly love the wet ditch edges that teem with small animal life. They need the energy for their migration will not be an easy journey for them. They will fly thousands of miles, stopping off in Europe and western Africa for breaks, prior to reaching their wintering grounds in the Congo. Predation, hunting by humans and collisions, at any point on route, may bring a permanent halt to their journey.
Corncrakes fly at night, presumably to avoid predation from the sky, and join with other birds to form a mixed species flock – quails and spotted crake may be companions in flight. There are no borders for these birds, but that means they may fall prey to hunters in Europe, or predators in the Congo – not all their population problems rest in our hands. That doesn’t mean we cannot do our best, both to provide suitable habitat and to ensure our subsequent actions at harvest protect the population. The grass silage fields would be missing the soundtrack of summer if we allowed corncrake numbers to plunge, for once it’s gone, who would remember the remarkable call and the mysterious presence of the cryptic bird of the cornfield?
RSPB Scotland has launched Corncrake Calling, a four-year project working with farmers, crofters, communities and Scottish Government to safeguard the future of these rare birds. Educational activities, events and a touring exhibition will share the corncrake story. It is supported by a £375k National Lottery Heritage Fund grant.
Michael Betts 4 months ago
Some 10 - 15+ years ago there was a major project to increase the number of Corncrakes breeding in west coast crofting areas, which seemed to be successful. What has happened since, and why is this new project necessary?
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New photos from Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood released
Snag a first look at Al Pacino as Hollywood agent Marvin Shwarz
by Michael Roffman
Brad Pitt for Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood, photograph by Andrew Cooper/©2019 Sony Pictures Entertainment.
We’re about six months out from Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood. So far, we’ve seen an impeccable portrait of co-stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt, in addition to Margot Robbie, who shared her new look as Sharon Tate on her Instagram.
Now, Vanity Fair has gone ahead and kicked the whole marketing machine back into drive for 2019 with a spread of photos that, yes, reveal DiCaprio, Pitt, and Robbie, but also Al Pacino, who plays Hollywood agent Marvin Shwarz.
Take look for yourself:
Leonardo DiCaprio and Quentin Tarantino for Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood, photograph by Andrew Cooper/©2019 Sony Pictures Entertainment.
Margot Robbie for Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood, photo by Andrew Cooper
Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Al Pacino for Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood, photograph by Andrew Cooper/©2019 Sony Pictures Entertainment.
Margot Robbie for Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood, photograph by Andrew Cooper/©2019 Sony Pictures Entertainment.
Leonardo DiCaprio for Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood, photograph by Andrew Cooper/©2019 Sony Pictures Entertainment.
As previously reported, the movie is set in 1969 Hollywood during the height of hippie culture and the Manson Family murders and follows struggling TV actor Rick Dalton (DiCaprio) and close friend and stunt double Cliff Booth (Pitt) as they try to make a name for themselves amid the chaos.
In addition the aforementioned A-listers, the film also stars Damian Lewis as Steve McQueen, Dakota Fanning as Manson follower Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, Emile Hirsch as Tate’s friend Jay Sebring, and Damon Herriman as Charles Manson:.
That’s just a portion of the exhaustive cast list that also includes Kurt Russell, Bruce Dern (who replaces the late Burt Reynolds), Michael Madsen, Tim Roth, James Marsden, Clifton Collins Jr., Timothy Olyphant, Scoot McNairy, Luke Perry, Zoë Bell, Keith Jefferson, Nicholas Hammond, and Julia Butters.
Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood hits theaters July 26.
Damon Herriman
Julia Butters
Keith Jefferson
Michael Madsen
Nicholas Hammond
Scoot McNairy
Zoë Bell
Ozzy Osbourne “coughed so hard” that he ruptured a blood vessel in his eye
Nils Frahm reveals new EP, Encores 2: Stream
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EUROmediCAT signal detection: An evaluation of selected congenital anomaly-medication associations
Medicine - Journal Articles
Name: Given_et_al-2016- ...
Size: 1005.Kb
Name: bcp12947-sup-001- ...
Given, Joanne E.; Loane, Maria; Luteijn, Johannes M.; Morris, Joan K.; de Jong van den Berg, Lolkje T.W.; Garne, Ester; Addor, Marie-Claude; Barisic, Ingeborg; de Walle, Hermien; Gatt, Miriam; Klungsoyr, Kari; Khoshnood, Babak; Latos-Bielenska, Anna; Nelen, Vera; Neville, Amanda J.; O'Mahony, Mary; Pierini, Anna; Tucker, David; Wiesel, Awi; Dolk, Helen
Copyright: © 2016, The Authors. British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of The British Pharmacological Society This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution‐NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.
Copyright information: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Citation: Given, J. E., Loane, M., Luteijn, J. M., Morris, J. K., de Jong van den Berg, L. T. W., Garne, E., Addor, M.-C., Barisic, I., de Walle, H., Gatt, M., Klungsoyr, K., Khoshnood, B., Latos-Bielenska, A., Nelen, V., Neville, A. J., O'Mahony, M., Pierini, A., Tucker, D., Wiesel, A. and Dolk, H. (2016) 'EUROmediCAT signal detection: an evaluation of selected congenital anomaly-medication associations', British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, 82(4), pp. 1094-1109. doi: 10.1111/bcp.12947
Published Version: 10.1111/bcp.12947
Aims: To evaluate congenital anomaly (CA)‐medication exposure associations produced by the new EUROmediCAT signal detection system and determine which require further investigation. Methods: Data from 15 EUROCAT registries (1995–2011) with medication exposures at the chemical substance (5th level of Anatomic Therapeutic Chemical classification) and chemical subgroup (4th level) were analysed using a 50% false detection rate. After excluding antiepileptics, antidiabetics, antiasthmatics and SSRIs/psycholeptics already under investigation, 27 associations were evaluated. If evidence for a signal persisted after data validation, a literature review was conducted for prior evidence of human teratogenicity. Results: Thirteen out of 27 CA‐medication exposure signals, based on 389 exposed cases, passed data validation. There was some prior evidence in the literature to support six signals (gastroschisis and levonorgestrel/ethinylestradiol (OR 4.10, 95% CI 1.70–8.53; congenital heart disease/pulmonary valve stenosis and nucleoside/tide reverse transcriptase inhibitors (OR 5.01, 95% CI 1.99–14.20/OR 28.20, 95% CI 4.63–122.24); complete absence of a limb and pregnen (4) derivatives (OR 6.60, 95% CI 1.70–22.93); hypospadias and pregnadien derivatives (OR 1.40, 95% CI 1.10–1.76); hypospadias and synthetic ovulation stimulants (OR 1.89, 95% CI 1.28–2.70). Antipropulsives produced a signal for syndactyly while the literature revealed a signal for hypospadias. There was no prior evidence to support the remaining six signals involving the ordinary salt combinations, propulsives, bulk‐forming laxatives, hydrazinophthalazine derivatives, gonadotropin releasing hormone analogues and selective serotonin agonists. Conclusion: Signals which strengthened prior evidence should be prioritized for further investigation, and independent evidence sought to confirm the remaining signals. Some chance associations are expected and confounding by indication is possible.
Medicine - Journal Articles [431]
Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as © 2016, The Authors. British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of The British Pharmacological Society This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution‐NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.
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CCC for UNICEF CCC Team How can you help
CCC for UNICEF for every child.
CCC supports UNICEF to help every child dream big and reach their full potential.
SUPPORTING UNICEF
JOIN US TO SUPPORT UNICEF
Paper bag supports UNICEF
Each of us can make a real contribution to improve the lives of children. Choosing a paper bag instead of a plastic one when shopping in CCC stores means you can also support UNICEF. Paper bag is made of recycled materials.
The great power of the blue bracelets
From May 2019, in CCC stores throughout Poland, you will be able to buy a CCC for UNICEF blue bracelet. 100% of the profit from sales of bracelets will be donated to UNICEF programmes around the world including education programmes where UNICEF is helping to build schools and purchase school equipment.
NOW IT’S YOUR TURN
Support UNICEF with a donation
See, what's new
The power of blue bracelets
CCC has been a global partner of UNICEF for a year, to help children reach their potential and to fulfil their dreams and passions. And the evidence is here! Thanks to the support of CCC clients who wear blue bracelets so far, we have succeeded in: ✔providing education for #186000 children in developing countries, ✔ building #155 temporary schools and health centres ✔providing over #930 "School-in-a-box" sets. And the project continues!
Magdalena Różczka at DDTVN talks about UNICEF's work for children
We invite you to watch a part of Dzień Dobry TVN program from 01. 06. 2019, in which Magdalena Różczka, Goodwill Ambassador, talks about UNICEF's work for children.
UNICEF: Special “Diploma” to the CCC Team riders for their support, presented by Renato Di Rocco, President of the Italian Cycling Federation
02 JUNE 2019 – Today, on the occasion of the last stage of the Giro d’Italia in Verona, Mr. Renato Di Rocco, President of the Italian Cycling Federation, presented a special “Diploma” to the CCC Team riders, as an acknowledgement for their support to UNICEF.
We support UNICEF
CCC first global partner of UNICEF from Poland
The CCC Group was the first Polish company to become a global partner of UNICEF. Since 2018, CCC is supporting UNICEF to help every child dream big and reach their full potential.
CCC has always supported charity and now, thanks to the strength of its brand and growing international success, has decided to work with the largest humanitarian and development organisation working for children.
The funds provided by the CCC will be used to support UNICEF programmes to save the lives of children around the world, support their development and fulfil their potential. CCC's significant support for UNICEF will help to save and improve the lives of children around the world, where the needs are most urgent.
CCC Team supports UNICEF
ABOUT CCC TEAM
CCC Team for UNICEF
For nearly 20 years CCC has been supporting cycling and successfully sponsoring CCC Team - the biggest project in the history of Polish professional cycling.
Each blue kilometre cycled by the CCC Team cyclists in races and during trainings is recorded and can be converted to 1USD to illustrate the equivalence of the impact of our partnership and how together we can help every child reach their full potential.
Cyclists will wear blue bracelets and jerseys with the UNICEF logo as a sign of solidarity with the partnership, thereby promoting UNICEF’s mission of driving change for children.
Cooperation with the CCC team is unique because it is the first global partnership in the history of UNICEF with a cycling team.
Meet the CCC Team
UNICEF does not endorse any company, brand, product or service.
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