#1972 Observer

[littlequeenies]

3rd September 1972 - Marsha Hunt modelling special make-up for dark skin, from Observer magazine.

Our scan.

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Writing Notes: Children's Dialogue

Language is extremely complex, yet children already know most of the grammar of their native language(s) before they are 5 years old.

BABBLING

Babbling begins at about 6 months and is considered the earliest stage of language acquisition

By 1 year babbles are composed only of the phonemes used in the language(s) they hear

Deaf babies babble with their hands like hearing babies babble using sounds

FIRST WORDS

After the age of one, children figure out that sounds are related to meanings and start to produce their first words

Usually children go through a holophrastic stage, where their one-word utterances may convey more meaning

Example: "Up" is used to indicate something in the sky or to mean “pick me up”

Most common first words (among the first 10 words uttered in many languages): “mommy,” “daddy,” “woof woof,” “no,” “bye,” “hi,” “yes,” “vroom,” “ball” and “banana”

WORD MEANINGS

When learning words, children often overextend a word’s meaning

Example: Using the word dog to refer to any furry, four-legged animal (overextensions tend to be based on shape, size, or texture, but never color)

They may also underextend a word’s meaning

Example: Using the word dog to refer only to the family pet, as if dog were a proper noun

The Whole Object Principle: When a child learns a new word, (s)he is likely to interpret the word to refer to a whole object rather than one of its parts

SYNTAX

At about two years of age, children start to put words together to form two-word utterances

The intonation contour extends over the two words as a unit, and the two-word utterances can convey a range of meanings:

Example: "mommy sock" = subject + object or possessive

NOTE: Chronological age is NOT a good measure of linguistic development due to individual differences, so instead linguists use the child’s mean length of utterance (MLU) to measure development

The telegraphic stage describes a phase when children tend to omit function morphemes such as articles, subject pronouns, auxiliaries, and verbal inflection

Examples: "He play little tune" or "Andrew want that"

Between 2;6 and 3;6 a language explosion occurs and children undergo rapid development

By the age of 3, most children consistently use function morphemes and can produce complex syntactic structures:

Examples: "He was stuck and I got him out" / "It’s too early for us to eat"

After 3;6 children can produce wh-questions, and relative pronouns

Sometime after 4;0 children have acquired most of the adult syntactic competence

PRAGMATICS

Deixis: Children often have problems with the shifting reference of pronouns

Children may refer to themselves as "you"

Problems with the context-dependent nature of deictic words: Children often assume the hearer knows who s/he is talking about

AUXILIARIES

In the telegraphic stage, children often omit auxiliaries from their speech but can form questions (with rising intonation) and negative sentences

Examples: "I ride train?" / "I not like this book"

As children acquire auxiliaries in questions and negative sentences, they generally use them correctly

SIGNED LANGUAGES

Deaf babies acquire sign language in the same way that hearing babies acquire spoken language: babbling, holophrastic stage, telegraphic stage

When deaf babies are not exposed to sign language, they will create their own signs, complete with systematic rules

IMITATION, REINFORCEMENT, ANALOGY

Children do imitate the speech heard around them to a certain extent, but language acquisition goes beyond imitation

Children produce utterances that they never hear from adults around them, such as "holded" or "tooths"

Children cannot imitate adults fully while acquiring grammar

Example:

Adult: "Where can I put them?" Child: "Where I can put them?"

Children who develop the ability to speak later in their childhood can understand the language spoken around them even if they cannot imitate it

NOTE: Children May Resist Correction

Example: Cazden (1972) (observation attributed to Jean Berko Gleason) – My teacher holded the baby rabbits and we patted them. – Did you say your teacher held the baby rabbits? – Yes. – What did you say she did? – She holded the baby rabbits and we patted them. – Did you say she held them tightly? – No, she holded them loosely.

Another theory asserts that children hear a sentence and then use it as a model to form other sentences by analogy

But while analogy may work in some situations, certainly not in all situations:

– I painted a red barn. – I painted a barn red. – I saw a red barn. – I saw a barn red.

Children never make mistakes of this kind based on analogy which shows that they understand structure dependency at a very young age

BIRTH ORDER

Children’s birth order may affect their speech.

Firstborns often speak earlier than later-born children, most likely because they get more one-on-one attention from parents.

They favor different words than their siblings. 

Whereas firstborns gabble on about animals and favorite colors, the rest of the pack cut to the chase with “brother,” “sister,” “hate” and such treats as “candy,” “popsicles” and “donuts.” 

The social dynamics of siblings, it would appear, prime their vocabularies for a reality different than the firstborns’ idyllic world of sheep, owls, the green of the earth and the blue of the sky.

MOTHER'S LEVEL OF EDUCATION

Children may adopt vocabulary quite differently depending on their mother’s level of education.

In American English, among the words disproportionately favored by the children of mothers who have not completed secondary education are: “so,” “walker,” “gum,” “candy,” “each,” “could,” “wish,” “but,” “penny” and “be” (ordered starting with the highest frequency).

The words favored by the children of mothers in the “college and above” category are: “sheep,” “giraffe,” “cockadoodledoo,” “quack quack,” the babysitter’s name, “gentle,” “owl,” “zebra,” “play dough” and “mittens.” 

BOYS / GIRLS

One area of remarkable consistency across language groups is the degree to which the language of children is gendered.

The words more likely to be used by American girls than by boys are: “dress,” “vagina,” “tights,” “doll,” “necklace,” “pretty,” “underpants,” “purse,” “girl” and “sweater.”

Whereas those favored by boys are “penis,” “vroom,” “tractor,” “truck,” “hammer,” “bat,” “dump,” “firetruck,” “police” and “motorcycle.”

Tips for Writing Children's Dialogue (compiled from various sources cited below):

Milestones - The dialogue you write should be consistent with the child's developmental milestones for their age. Of course, other factors should be considered such as if the child has any speech or intellectual difficulties. Also note that developmental milestones are not set in stone and each child is unique in their own way.

Too "Cutesy" - If your child characters are going to be cute, they must be cute naturally through the force of their personality, not because the entire purpose of their existence is to be adorable.

Too Wise - It’s true kids have the benefit of seeing some situations a little more objectively than adults. But when they start calmly and unwittingly spouting all the answers, the results often seem more clichéd and convenient than impressive or ironic.

Unintelligent - Don’t confuse a child’s lack of experience with lack of intelligence. 

Baby Talk - Don’t make a habit of letting them misuse words. Children are more intelligent than most people think.

Unique Individuals - Adults often tend to lump all children into a single category: cute, small, loud, and occasionally annoying. Look beyond the stereotype.

Personal Goals - The single ingredient that transforms someone from a static character to a dynamic character is a goal. It can be easy to forget kids also have goals. Kids are arguably even more defined by their goals than are adults. Kids want something every waking minute. Their entire existence is wrapped up in wanting something and figuring out how to get it.

Don't Forget your Character IS a Child - Most of the pitfalls in how to write child characters have to do with making them too simplistic and childish. But don’t fall into the opposite trap either: don’t create child characters who are essentially adults in little bodies.

Your Personal Observation - To write dialogue that truly sounds like it could come from a child, start by being an attentive listener. Spend time around children and observe how they interact with their peers and adults. You can also study other pieces of media that show/write about children's behaviour (e.g., documentaries, films, TV shows, even other written works like novels and scripts).

Context - The context in which children speak is crucial to creating realistic dialogue. Consider their environment, who they're speaking to, and what's happening around them. Dialogue can change drastically depending on whether a child is talking to a friend, a parent, or a teacher. Additionally, children's language can be influenced by their cultural background, family dynamics, and personal experiences. Make sure the context informs the dialogue, lending credibility to your characters' voices.

Sources and other related articles: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Writing Notes: On Children ⚜ Childhood Bilingualism More: Writing Notes & References

[corneille-moisie]

for real, like for all the movie with dracula in the title, about 1/4 are actually based on carmilla and dont involve dracula at all

also there is barely any movie about carmilla titled carmilla

isnt that funny ?

[odinsblog]

NEW YORK (AP) — Peter Buxtun, the whistleblower who revealed that the U.S. government allowed hundreds of Black men in rural Alabama to go untreated for syphilis in what became known as the Tuskegee study, has died. He was 86.

Buxtun died May 18 of Alzheimer’s disease in Rocklin, California, according to his attorney, Minna Fernan.

Buxtun is revered as a hero to public health scholars and ethicists for his role in bringing to light the most notorious medical research scandal in U.S. history. Documents that Buxtun provided to The Associated Press, and its subsequent investigation and reporting, led to a public outcry that ended the study in 1972.

Forty years earlier, in 1932, federal scientists began studying 400 Black men in Tuskegee, Alabama, who were infected with syphilis. When antibiotics became available in the 1940s that could treat the disease, federal health officials ordered that the drugs be withheld. The study became an observation of how the disease ravaged the body over time.

In the mid-1960s, Buxtun was a federal public health employee working in San Francisco when he overheard a co-worker talking about the study. The research wasn’t exactly a secret — about a dozen medical journal articles about it had been published in the previous 20 years. But hardly anyone had raised any concerns about how the experiment was being conducted.

“This study was completely accepted by the American medical community,” said Ted Pestorius of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, speaking at a 2022 program marking the 50th anniversary of the end of the study.

Buxtun had a different reaction. After learning more about the study, he raised ethical concerns in a 1966 letter to officials at the CDC. In 1967, he was summoned to a meeting in Atlanta, where he was chewed out by agency officials for what they deemed to be impertinence. Repeatedly, agency leaders rejected his complaints and his call for the men in Tuskegee to be treated.

He left the U.S. Public Health Service and attended law school, but the study ate at him. In 1972, he provided documents about the research to Edith Lederer, an AP reporter he had met in San Francisco. Lederer passed the documents to AP investigative reporter Jean Heller, telling her colleague, “I think there might be something here.”

Heller’s story was published on July 25, 1972, leading to Congressional hearings, a class-action lawsuit that resulted in a $10 million settlement and the study’s termination about four months later. In 1997, President Bill Clinton formally apologized for the study, calling it “shameful.”

The leader of a group dedicated to the memory of the study participants said Monday they are grateful to Buxtun for exposing the experiment.

“We are thankful for his honesty and his courage,” said Lille Tyson Head, whose father was in the study.

(continue reading)

[auroraluciferi]

Our Breakfast for Children program is feeding a lot of children and the people understand our Breakfast for Children program.

We sayin’ something like this—we saying that theory’s cool, but theory with no practice ain’t shit. You got to have both of them—the two go together. We have a theory about feeding kids free. What’d we do? We put it into practice. That’s how people learn.

A lot of people don’t know how serious the thing is. They think the children we feed ain’t really hungry. I don’t know five year old kids that can act well, but I know that if they not hungry we sure got some actors.

We got five year old actors that could take the Academy Award. Last week they had a whole week dedicated to the hungry in Chicago. Talking ’bout the starvation rate here that went up 15%. Over here where everybody should be eating. Why? Because of capitalism.

What are we doing? The Breakfast for Children program.

We are running it in a socialistic manner. People came and took our program, saw it in a socialistic fashion not even knowing it was socialism.

People are gonna take our program and tell us to go on to a higher level. They gonna take that program and work it in a socialistic manner. What’d the pig say? He say, “Nigger—you like communism?” “No sir, I’m scared of it.” “You like socialism?” “No Sir, I’m scared of it.” “You like the breakfast for children program?” “Yes sir, I’d die for it”. Pig said, “Nigger, that program is a socialistic program.”

“I don’t give a fuck if it’s Communism. You put your hands on that program motherfucker and I’ll blow your motherfucking brains out.“

And he knew it. We been educating him, not by reading matter, but through observation and participation. By letting him come and work our program.

Not theory and theory alone, but theory and practice. The two go together. We not only thought about the Marxist-Leninist theory—we put it into practice.

This is what the Black Panther Party is about.

You Can Murder a Liberator, But You Can’t Murder Liberation

- Fred Hampton (1972)

[haggishlyhagging]

The more women are paid, the less eager they are to marry. A 1982 study of three thousand singles found that women earning high incomes are almost twice as likely to want to remain unwed as women earning low incomes. "What is going to happen to marriage and childbearing in a society where women really have equality?" Princeton demographer Charles Westoff wondered in the Wall Street Journal in 1986. "The more economically independent women are, the less attractive marriage becomes."

Men in the '80s, on the other hand, were a little more anxious to marry than the press accounts let on. Single men far outnumbered women in dating services, matchmaking clubs, and the personals columns, all of which enjoyed explosive growth in the decade. In the mid-80s, video dating services were complaining of a three-to-one male-to-female sex ratio in their membership rolls. In fact, it had become common practice for dating services to admit single women at heavily reduced rates, even free memberships, in hopes of remedying the imbalance.

Personal ads were similarly lopsided. In an analysis of 1,200 ads in 1988, sociologist Theresa Montini found that most were placed by thirty-five-year-old heterosexual men and the vast majority "wanted a long-term relationship." Dating service directors reported that the majority of men they counseled were seeking spouses, not dates. When Great Expectations, the nation's largest dating service, surveyed its members in 1988, it found that 93 percent of the men wanted, within one year, to have either "a commitment with one person" or marriage. Only 7 percent of the men said they were seeking "lots of dates with different people." Asked to describe "what concerns you the day after you had sex with a new partner," only 9 percent of the men checked "Was I good?" while 42 percent said they were wondering whether it could lead to a "committed relationship."

These men had good cause to pursue nuptials; if there's one pattern that psychological studies have established, it's that the institution of marriage has an overwhelmingly salutary effect on men's mental health. "Being married," the prominent government demographer Paul Glick once estimated, "is about twice as advantageous to men as to women in terms of continued survival." Or, as family sociologist Jessie Bernard wrote in 1972:

“There are few findings more consistent, less equivocal, [and] more convincing, than the sometimes spectacular and always impressive superiority on almost every index—demographic, psychological, or social—of married over never-married men. Despite all the jokes about marriage in which men indulge, all the complaints they lodge against it, it is one of the greatest boons of their sex.”

Bernard's observation still applies. As Ronald C. Kessler, who tracks changes in men's mental health at the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research, says: "All this business about how hard it is to be a single woman doesn't make much sense when you look at what's really going on. It's single men who have the worst of it. When men marry, their mental health massively increases."

The mental health data, chronicled in dozens of studies that have looked at marital differences in the last forty years, are consistent and overwhelming: The suicide rate of single men is twice as high as that of married men. Single men suffer from nearly twice as many severe neurotic symptoms and are far more susceptible to nervous breakdowns, depression, even nightmares. And despite the all-American image of the carefree single cowboy, in reality bachelors are far more likely to be morose, passive, and phobic than married men.

When contrasted with single women, unwed men fared no better in mental health studies. Single men suffer from twice as many mental health impairments as single women; they are more depressed, more passive, more likely to experience nervous breakdowns and all the designated symptoms of psychological distress—from fainting to insomnia. In one study, one third of the single men scored high for severe neurotic symptoms; only 4 percent of the single women did.

-Susan Faludi, Backlash: the Undeclared War Against American Women

[livingforstars]

The Barren Moon - October 31st, 1996.

"The above photo, taken as the Apollo 17 astronauts orbited the Moon in 1972, depicts the stark lunar surface around the Eratosthenes and Copernicus craters. Many similar images of a Moon devoid of life are familiar to denizens of the space age. Contrary to this modern perception, life on the Moon was reported in August of 1835 in a series of sensational stories first published by the New York Sun - apparently intended to improve the paper's circulation. These descriptions of lunar life received broad credence and became one of the most spectacular hoaxes in history. Supposedly based on telescopic observations, the stories featured full, lavish accounts of a Moon with oceans and beaches, teeming with plant and animal life and climaxing with the report of sightings of groups of winged, furry, human-like creatures resembling bats! Within a month the hoax had been revealed but the newspaper continued to enjoy an increased readership. Though barren, the Moon remains a popular setting for science fiction stories and extra-terrestrial adventures."

[lonestarflight]

"The Skylab Orbital Workshop is shown in the High Bay Area of the Vehicle Assembly Building in preparation for mating with the S-II Stage of its Saturn V launch vehicle. NASA will place an embryonic space station- the Skylab cluster-into Earth orbit in 1973. The Skylab Program objectives are to carry out a broad spectrum of experimental investigations and to gain a better understanding of the requirements for a permanent man-made platform in space. Emphasis is being placed on a series of medical experiments associated with the extension of manned space flight, a group of high resolution solar astronomy experiments at the short wavelengths not directly observable from the surface of the Earth, and a series of Earth survey experiments."

Date: October 4, 1972

NASA ID: 72-H-1340, 108-KSC-72P-428

[ambi-kiko]

AAAAA TMAGP THEORY TIME

so yall know how the institute burnt down in the 1980s if im not mistaken? so i was listening to mag 60 Observer Effect and (well spoilers) so pretty much the statement giver finds something of her brothers and now cannot shake the feeling of being watched. her brother apparently often came to the institute. she claims to feel especially watched in the archives. the next few years are seemingly not that documented but probably uneventful.

BUT THEN. one day, randomly (?), she finds a delivery truck (who was providing the institute with paper i think at the time), kills the driver and fills the trunk with barrels of oil. EXCUSE ME? why would some normal lady randomly murder someone?

heres the kicker: that statement was given in 1972. THE DATES LINE UP. IT ALL LINES UP. JOHNNY THIS CANNOT BE A COINCIDENCE

[she-is-ovarit]

Has anyone actually looked into trans suicide rates?

This Amsterdam study, which ranged from 1972–2017 and included 8263 referrals, explored the overall suicide death rate and the stage in transition that suicides were observed.

Out of that big number across 48 years, only 42 transwomen (out of 5107) and 8 transmen (out of 3156) died by suicide.

While the suicide rate didn't increase over time, it still was higher than the general population and occurred at every stage of transitioning (pre-treatment, during hormonal treatment, surgical phase, post-treatment).

Trans rights activists are urgent to usher kids into gender identity clinics, but there was actually less suicide for youth in pre-treatment than for adults:

Four suicide deaths occurred in individuals who were referred to the clinic before the age of 18 (0.2%), which is a lower risk than in adults (0.7%, P = 0.010)

The study mentions that suicide rates for transwomen post treatment decreased slightly but for transmen transitioning made no difference in their suicide rate.

In trans women, suicide death rates decreased slightly over time (per year: HR 0.96, 95% CI 0.93–0.99), while it did not change in trans men (per year: HR 1.10, 95% CI 0.97–1.25). Adjustment for age at the first visit did not change these numbers.

So this population of people was essentially scared mongered that if they didn't transition they would kill themselves and yet trans-identifying youth pre-treatment actually committed less suicide than adults, transwomen adults had high risk of death by suicide which tracks for the male sex as a whole, and transitioning had zero positive impact on transmen's suicide rates.

[dougdimmadodo]

Groove-Billed Ani (Crotophaga sulcirostris)

Family: Cuckoo Family (Cuculidae)

IUCN Conservation Status: Least Concerned

While many species of cuckoos are brood parasites that trick other birds into incubating their eggs and raising their young, the 3 species of large-billed, black-feathered cuckoos in the genus Crotophaga, known collectively as Anis, are not, and the Groove-Billed Ani (notable for being possibly the most common Ani species) is no exception: every Groove-Billed Ani lives in a small social group consisting of 4-10 individuals, with the number of individuals in a group always being even. This even numbering is the result of the way the flock is organised, as each flock is made up of 2-5 pairs of mates, and while each individual will only breed with their mate all individuals in the group work to establish and defend a shared territory and to construct a large, cup-shaped shared nest into which every female in the flock will lay eggs. Found in grasslands, shrublands and other open habitats, the Grooved-Billed Ani is native to much of northern South America and southern North America (although on occasion it may be observed as far south as northern Argentina and as far north as Canada as a vagrant) and feeds on fruits, seeds, insects and small vertebrates, with its large and extremely powerful beak being well suited to breaking hard seed shells as well as the exoskeletons and bones of prey. Throughout the majority of its range this species is resident (non-migratory), but in the northernmost extremes of its North American range it may seasonally travel south to avoid cold weather and low resource availability during the winter. 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------  

Image Source: https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/1972-Crotophaga-sulcirostris

[deadpresidents]

I don't understand why news stories about JD Vance keep mentioning that he's the most unpopular non-incumbent VP candidate since 1980. Unless they're talking about John Anderson (maybe? who knows?), that would've been the Reagan-Bush ticket, and they won! Maybe the VP choice really doesn't have that much impact on elections?

I think they're just using 1980 as a starting point, not as a comparable example. George H.W. Bush was an excellent choice as Reagan's running mate. He brought ideological balance to the ticket, was extremely qualified, and unified the party (he was Reagan's closest challenger for the nomination in the 1980 Republican primaries). The better example for a horrible VP pick would be, as I have seen mentioned in some places, George McGovern's disastrous choice of Thomas Eagleton in 1972, which ultimately resulted in Eagleton being dumped for Sargent Shriver eighteen days later.

Dan Quayle was a very questionable pick when he first was chosen as George H.W. Bush's running mate in 1988 because people just didn't know who he was. Even though Quayle had served in the House and the Senate up to that point, he had made so little of an impact that his selection was pretty shocking to many observers. I think the bigger problem with Vance, however, is that he's just plain unlikable. Even Quayle had a certain attractive quality to him because he was a youthful pick who brought a different kind of energy to that ticket once people got over the shock of him being picked. Vance hasn't added anything to Trump's ticket, and it's easy to argue that he's actually had a negative impact on the campaign, which is the one thing a Vice Presidential nominee should never do.

In retrospect, Sarah Palin was obviously one of the worst VP picks in American history, but she revitalized McCain's campaign in 2008 and there were moments were she really shined. If she had been actually qualified or prepared for the role she would have been a different story. I was working on the Obama campaign in 2008 and remember watching her give her acceptance speech at the 2008 Republican National Convention and we were all thinking, "Oh shit...they might have something here!" And then she started having to do interviews and it immediately became apparent that there was nothing under the charisma. We went from being scared that she might be good to being scared by how extraordinarily unqualified and ill-prepared she was.

There have been misfires on the other side, as well. Joe Lieberman was one of the least-inspiring choices of my lifetime. John Edwards, one of the slimiest American politicians of the 21st Century (which is quite an accomplishment), was as much of an empty suit under big hair as Sarah Palin was. And Tim Kaine may have been well-qualified for the job, but I don't know anybody who was excited when he was Hillary Clinton's choice. I don't even remember Hillary Clinton being excited about picking Tim Kaine. Kaine wasn't a net negative to Hillary Clinton's campaign, but I didn't think he added anything, either.

When it comes down to it, I think it's more likely that you're correct about the VP selection not having that big of an impact on the election. It's still an important inflection point in a campaign because it's the Presidential nominee's first big decision and EVERYBODY is paying attention. And, sometimes, it's an indication of the type of team the President is going to build around him when he does govern. But there hasn't been a running mate that really made a difference for geographical reasons since LBJ was nominated in 1960 and helped JFK narrowly win Texas. Yet, geographical balance is always one of the most-talked about aspects of building a ticket.

The most important thing is to pick somebody who is qualified to be President if necessary and doesn't take anything away from the ticket. Ideological, demographic, or regional balance is always good, but not necessary. One of the better tickets of my lifetime was Clinton/Gore and Clinton was a young, Southern Governor who decided to double-down and chose an even younger, Southern Senator as his running mate. Clinton chose someone who he thought could help him govern. And one of the other best tickets of my lifetime was a losing one: Romney/Ryan in 2012. There was more of a demographic/ideological/regional balance with that ticket, but Romney chose Ryan because he wanted an active partner in governing and Ryan had the legislative experience that Romney lacked.

Again, it's probably less important to the general election results than it seems, but the whole "Veepstakes" deal is always fun for political junkies, so we'll never stop talking about it!

[arthistoryanimalia]

For #InternationalChameleonDay :

Maurits Cornelis Escher (Dutch, 1898-1972) Stars, 1948 wood engraving on Japan paper, 32 x 26 cm

"Two chameleons are contained within the cage-like shape of the central compound; Escher writes that they were chosen as its inhabitants 'because they are able to cling by their legs and tails to the beams of their cage as it swirls through space.' The chameleon on the left sticks out his tongue, perhaps in commentary; H. S. M. Coxeter observes that the tongue has an unusual spiral-shaped tip."

image © The M.C. Escher Company B.V. - Baarn-Holland. [educational use]

[senka-mesecine]

Could you write for yandere Barnes finding a lost hiker-type in the woods? Maybe she was sweet to him and called him sir or she was so stubborn it grabbed his attention, whatever you want!!

Hiker in the Shed.

Robert Barnes x Reader.

---

(I'll be damned if this won't end up seeming like the plot of Deliverance (1972) so any similarities are intentional.)

---

He could already see the newspaper titles vividly in his mind;

Hiker lost on Appalachian trail.

Hiker presumed kidnapped.

Hiker's body never recovered.

And while it was all so abundantly easy to predict, what Barnes never counted on rotating back into the world that this new wave of hippies would be so braindead and hellbent on discovering themselves with any number of stupid shit and stupid activities like pot, strumming them guitars and hiking up mountains that half of them would end up in his neck of the woods, lookin' for God and the meaning of life or some shit, most of them the most loud, obnoxious, way-in-out-of-depth sons of bitches he's ever met and he's met quite a bit of those; perhaps why the presence of you in the middle of the forest came as such a pleasant surprise --- all quietude and focus, repacking your backpack set down on the grass, so immersed in what you were doing you never even noticed that he effectively walked in on you doing it and continued watching you well over ten minutes before he deliberately decided to make his presence known, choosing to step on a nearby twig and letting it crack in rehearsed mid-movement, making it seem like he was walking the entire time and not merely standing in place and observing, the cliff giving him a perfect vantage point and the upper ground need to get a spectacular view of you. Your back bend towards the ground, scurrying with the contents of your duffel.

-"Hello!?"-

You speak up, yelling, surprised and caught off guard, head swinging around desperately to assess the source of the sound you didn't know was tactically premeditated, your shoulders finally dropping once you catch his form looming from the nearby precipice, smoking. Your eyes shoot up, like a deer's. A woman alone in the mountains. And a beauty to boot. He allows his mouth to coil around his cigarette, lips pressing down on it so he'd avoid showing even the faintest shadow of a grin, deciding instead of keep his visage firm and stiff. -"Sir? Sorry, sir! I think I'm a little lost!"- You announce the obvious, standing up, dusting your knees off once the presence on the cliff proves to be human. A little lost? Just the right amount of lost, more like. Barnes chooses to say nothing, inhaling the tobacco smoke, feeling something hitch in his throat at the moniker of 'sir' and all the ways it tickled, letting you speak. It was oddly fun, actually, watching you try to make pleasantries and break the ice in the middle of nowhere with an absolute stranger. You wave to get his attention. Thinking he didn't hear or see you the first time.

Oh. He did. He's heard you forty five minutes ago from the other side of the valley.

Could almost smell you through the foliage.

Why he came down here in the first place.

-"Hello, there! Good day. You live here by any chance?"-

You ask, placing your arms on your hips inquisitively, shouting up.

-"Eyup."-

Is all he bothers saying, clipped and pleased.

Holding his cigarette between his index finger and his thumb.

Balancing it there lazily.

A hiker in his shed.

Now there was a thought.

Hiker in his bed.

Now there was another.

Well, he'll be damned, it even rhymed.

-"Do you think you could tell me which way back to the trail? I'm a little off track it seems."-

You explain, lifting up your arm at one point and raising it over your forehead at one point like a visor intended to shield your eyes from the fading sun, your hands doing most of the talking, like you were nervous, trying to cover it up being a tad bit over animated. All he does is wordlessly point --- out into the distance and your eyes follow the trail of his hand, vaguely, through the thick, blackened line of trees, your mouth agape, trying to gage the direction he was keeping intentionally indeterminate and unclear. -"What, that way? Alright, thanks."- You assess, politely but speedily, like you were already late to somewhere and off schedule, taking his word for the pathway like you wanted to scurry off as fast as possible and being too civil to show it too obviously, everything about your manner and airs reminding him of a newborn fawn walking across a frozen lake --- all fidgetiness and nerves. First impressions being first, you were sweet. Peach and honey sweet. Sweet but afraid. -"Thank you most kindly."- You say again, lifting up your rucksack's straps and slinging them over your shoulders, flashing him a brief smile. That is when he decides to speak. When you've already turned to leave, buying himself a moment. -"You've been done strayed straight into the wilderness. Head north-west and y'should be right back to where you ought to be."- He explains, standing on his precipice. Telling a bold faced lie. -"Across the creek and then straight on."- He adds --- you head out across the creek and you'd be walking around in circles on an oval cliff that stretched on for miles; too big for you to effectively notice you were goin' nowhere. You honestly buy that shit because you clearly didn't know any better, blind and crippled in the fog of war, lifting your hand up in an eager, warm goodbye and turn deeper towards the pine woods. -"Thank you! Please take care of yourself!"- You yell and that's when Barnes allows himself to chuckle, privately, so quietly even he could barely sense himself doing it, relishing it, watching your back disappear into the pine trees, nicotine smoke engulfing his vision.

Him? You were telling him to take care of himself?

Bless your heart.

The sky is low and overcast on the horizon and he smells rain.

---

Thing is, he lived by this belief that what you catch is yours to keep.

A creed that was well understood in the war; trophies were inherently the soldier's unofficial loot, be it an NVA buckle belt, weapon caches, scalps, flags, teeth, bones, fingers or gook ears. Barnes thought himself a man with a predilection for those and he's captured more than he can account for during four full years in-country --- so you stumbled into his territory. His mountain. His hill. His backyard. His particular neck of the woods. Pouring down from the devil's asscrack with the a shower, who was to have the guts to come tell him collecting you too wasn't his right? Vermucci's words come to mind, unbidden then, like an old, bygone ghost hovering in the wet, drenched foliage, along with all the figurative newspaper articles he's imagined when he's first spotted you. Ten years for killing an enlisted man. Ten years climbing the walls, man. He wasn't going to kill you and it sure wasn't illegal and against the law to offer someone shelter. In fact, it was a particularly homegrown gesture, if anything. Hospitality and all. It's just that you didn't have to know you weren't leaving it, is the whole thing. He could almost visualize it now, two or three years down the line the same group of hikers you came in here and got separated from with stumbling upon this very same patch of wilderness again and they spot you by the cliffside with him, barefoot and pregnant, all while they thought you were dead and gone, lost forever, eaten and consumed by the mountain.

Finding your tent is child's play then.

Sticking out like a sore thumb, practically in the middle of the clearing.

Flimsily erected, too small, slick and shiny with beating rainwater. No tactical cover.

You could be picked off like a lame, blind, deaf sitting duck.

You should've been lucky it was him and not a boar.

But you jump just the same.

-"You!"-

You're startled and nearly explode out of your own skin as he practically walks around the cover of your windswept dome, strolling in from its back and showing up at the slit of the canopy you were huddled in, your knees hugged against your chest in the tightly confined space you were tucked away in, your hood up, zipper up to your neck, wide eyes downcast and your body relatively dry, regardless, you look properly miserable after several hours outdoors have gone and done their toll; a red nose and a shivering mouth right at he center of you. A stray strand of soaked hair lining your forehead. Eyup. Figured so. You trailed around the wrong directions for so long that you got caught by a storm. He allows himself a tiny half-grin. Taunting. Only just a little. -"Out for a dip, ma'am?"- He inquires, his rifle's strap slung over one shoulder, not intending to hide he was armed, in fact, he wanted you to see it the same way he wanted you to see him. His woods, after all. You genuinely looked like a partially soaked beastie. To his most internal of surprises, a soaked beastie excited to see him of all people. What were you on? Were you high or sum' shit? Another pothead? A tourist? You recover from your fear-soaked disposition well enough to get on your feet, huffing and puffing in the process, all smiles, like the joy of seeing another living soul sent the blood down into your cheeks. Everything Barnes caught was Barnes's to keep. That was reality.

-"God, what a chance running into you again!"-

He catches the desire for you to reach out and grab his shoulder in gratitude and relief; maybe shake his hand quickly in a greeting, tap him on the forearm, introduce yourself and receive an introduction back --- anything --- a desire caught and interrupted halfway through completion even as the rain beat down on you once you undoubtedly realized that you didn't know if you should; Barnes finds you staring at his scar only briefly now that he was close enough to be face to face instead of being high up on a cliff and he measures the gesture, staring at you right back. You observed it but had enough reasoning not to come off like someone gawking. He tells as much. You avert your eyes. Barnes sure as hell doesn't avert his. You ramble, yelling out against the loudness of the cloudburst, crossing your arms around your torso protectively like a shield, genuinely maintaining pleasantries with an armed, scarred man out in the badlands during a squall. -"I really have the lousiest luck! Got lost and got caught by the rain! Can you believe this!?"- Sure could. He did this to you, in part. He stands there, leaning on one leg, legitimately letting you rant, taking it in, not minding how the rain pelted down on him not unlike a million fucking torrential needles during monsoon season. -"What is this weather, honestly!"- You chuckle, all friendly like, briefly gazing up at the sky, eyes squinting against the raindrops falling like bullets.

Your voice manifests in the form of a warm fog meeting the crisp air.

-"It came out of nowhere!"-

You add, shouting from under your tent, your gear behind you, obscured and dry.

Their owner sweet, polite and nervous; a beaut.

Yep.

Barnes saw everything he needed to see.

Just like that, he turns around to go back from whence he came from.

As suspected, you wail out again, not catching a hint.

-"Hey!"

You call out after him, worry lacing your tone.

Like the idea of being left here alone caused you undisputed distress.

If you were smart, you'd do as you're told.

-"Y'comin'?"-

He says abruptly, casually, in stride, once he finds you needed to be told to follow along. -"Where to!?"- You shout your inquiry, brows furrowed, genuinely confused, but already in movement before an answer was even given; he could hear the rustling of the tent wing, the crackling wet leaves underneath your bootheels and sashay of the rucksack promptly grabbed and thrown over your shoulders in a haste from behind him. -"Home."- Is all Barnes responds with, not stopping, keeping a straight direction through the mud and he understood you didn't realize then how prophetic those words would be.

Everything he catches, he keeps.

He digs his fingers into the red star adorned metal belt buckle under his jacket.

[wilbury-sam]

Observer covers- 1966 / 1972

[haggishlyhagging]

It would take Diane Joyce nearly ten years of battles to become the first female skilled crafts worker ever in Santa Clara County history. It would take another seven years of court litigation, pursued all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, before she could actually start work. And then, the real fight would begin.

For blue-collar women, there was no honeymoon period on the job; the backlash began the first day they reported to work—and only intensified as the Reagan economy put more than a million blue-collar men out of work, reduced wages, and spread mounting fear. While the white-collar world seemed capable of absorbing countless lawyers and bankers in the 80s, the trades and crafts had no room for expansion. "Women are far more economically threatening in blue-collar work, because there are a finite number of jobs from which to choose," Mary Ellen Boyd, executive director of Non-Traditional Employment for Women, observes. "An MBA can do anything. But a plumber is only a plumber." While women never represented more than a few percentage points of the blue-collar work force, in this powder-keg situation it only took a few female faces to trigger a violent explosion.

Diane Joyce arrived in California in 1970, a thirty-three-year-old widow with four children, born and raised in Chicago. Her father was a tool-and-die maker, her mother a returned-goods clerk at a Walgreen's warehouse. At eighteen, she married Donald Joyce, a tool-and-die maker's apprentice at her father's plant. Fifteen years later, after working knee-deep in PCBs for years, he died suddenly of a rare form of liver cancer.

After her husband's death, Joyce taught herself to drive, packed her children in a 1966 Chrysler station wagon and headed west to San Jose, California, where a lone relative lived. Joyce was an experienced bookkeeper and she soon found work as a clerk in the county Office of Education, at $506 a month. A year later, she heard that the county's transportation department had a senior account clerk job vacant that paid $50 more a month. She applied in March 1972.

"You know, we wanted a man," the interviewer told her as soon as she walked through the door. But the account clerk jobs had all taken a pay cut recently, and sixteen women and no men had applied for the job. So he sent her on to the second interview. "This guy was a little politer," Joyce recalls. "First, he said, 'Nice day, isn't it?' before he tells me, 'You know, we wanted a man.' I wanted to say, 'Yeah, and where's my man? I am the man in my house.' But I'm sitting there with four kids to feed and all I can see is dollar signs, so I kept my mouth shut."

She got the job. Three months later, Joyce saw a posting for a "road maintenance man." An eighth-grade education and one year's work experience was all that was required, and the pay was $723 a month. Her current job required a high-school education, bookkeeping skills, and four years' experience— and paid $150 less a month. "I saw that flier and I said, ‘Oh wow, I can do that.’ Everyone in the office laughed. They thought it was a riot. . . . I let it drop."

But later that same year, every county worker got a 2 to 5 percent raise except for the 70 female account clerks. "Oh now, what do you girls need a raise for?" the director of personnel told Joyce and some other women who went before the board of supervisors to object. "All you'd do is spend the money on trips to Europe." Joyce was shocked. "Every account clerk I knew was supporting a family through death or divorce. I'd never seen Mexico, let alone Europe." Joyce decided to apply for the next better-paying "male" job that opened. In the meantime, she became active in the union; a skillful writer and one of the best-educated representatives there, Joyce wound up composing the safety language in the master contract and negotiating what became the most powerful county agreement protecting seniority rights.

In 1974, a road dispatcher retired, and both Joyce and a man named Paul Johnson, a former oil-fields roustabout, applied for the post. The supervisors told Joyce she needed to work on the road crew first and handed back her application. Johnson didn't have any road crew experience either, but his application was accepted. In the end, the job went to another man.

Joyce set out to get road crew experience. As she was filling out her application for the next road crew job that opened, in 1975, her supervisor walked in, asked what she was doing, and turned red. "You're taking a man's job away!" he shouted. Joyce sat silently for a minute, thinking. Then she said, "No, I'm not. Because a man can sit right here where I'm sitting."

In the evenings, she took courses in road maintenance and truck and light equipment operation. She came in third out of 87 applicants on the job test; there were ten openings on the road crew, and she got one of them.

For the next four years, Joyce carried tar pots on her shoulder, pulled trash from the median strip, and maneuvered trucks up the mountains to clear mud slides. "Working outdoors was great," she says. "You know, women pay fifty dollars a month to join a health club, and here I was getting paid to get in shape." The road men didn't exactly welcome her arrival. When they trained her to drive the bobtail trucks, she says, they kept changing instructions; one gave her driving tips that nearly blew up the engine. Her supervisor wouldn't issue her a pair of coveralls; she had to file a formal grievance to get them. In the yard, the men kept the ladies' room locked, and on the road they wouldn't stop to let her use the bathroom. "You wanted a man's job, you learn to pee like a man," her supervisor told her.

Obscene graffiti about Joyce appeared on the sides of trucks. Men threw darts at union notices she posted on the bulletin board. One day, the stockroom storekeeper, Tony Laramie, who says later he liked to call her "the piglet," called a general meeting in the depot's Ready Room. "I hate the day you came here," Laramie started screaming at Joyce as the other men looked on, many nodding. "We don't want you here. You don't belong here. Why don't you go the hell away?"

Joyce's experience was typical of the forthright and often violent backlash within the blue-collar work force, an assault undisguised by decorous homages to women's "difference." At a construction site in New York, for example, where only a few female hard-hats had found work, the men took a woman's work boots and hacked them into bits. Another woman was injured by a male co-worker; he hit her on the head with a two-by-four. In Santa Clara County, where Joyce worked, the county's equal opportunity office files were stuffed with reports of ostracism, hazing, sexual harassment, threats, verbal and physical abuse. "It's pervasive in some of the shops," says John Longabaugh, the county's equal employment officer at the time. "They mess up their tools, leave pornography on their desks. Safety equipment is made difficult to get, or unavailable." A maintenance worker greeted the first woman in his department with these words: "I know someone who would break your arm or leg for a price." Another new woman was ordered to clean a transit bus by her supervisor—only to find when she climbed aboard that the men had left a little gift for her: feces smeared across the seats.

In 1980, another dispatcher job opened up. Joyce and Johnson both applied. They both got similarly high scores on the written exam. Joyce now had four years' experience on the road crew; Paul Johnson only had a year and a half. The three interviewers, one of whom later referred to Joyce in court as "rabble-rousing" and "not a lady," gave the job to Johnson. Joyce decided to complain to the county athrmative action office.

The decision fell to James Graebner, the new director of the transportation department, an engineer who believed that it was about time the county hired its first woman for its 238 skilled-crafts jobs. Graebner confronted the roads director, Ron Shields. "What's wrong with the woman?" Graebner asked. “I hate her," Shields said, according to other people in the room. "I just said I thought Johnson was more qualified," is how Shields remembers it. "She didn't have the proficiency with heavy equipment." Neither, of course, did Johnson. Not that it was relevant anyway: dispatch is an office job that doesn't require lifting anything heavier than a microphone.

Graebner told Shields he was being overruled; Joyce had the job. Later that day, Joyce recalls, her supervisor called her into the conference room. "Well, you got the job," he told her. "But you're not qualified." Johnson, meanwhile, sat by the phone, dialing up the chain of command. "I felt like tearing something up," he recalls later. He demanded a meeting with the affirmative action office. "The affirmative action man walks in," Johnson says, "and he's this big black guy. He can't tell me anything. He brings in this minority who can barely speak English . . . I told them, 'You haven't heard the last of me.'" Within days, he had hired a lawyer and set his reverse discrimination suit in motion, contending that the county had given the job to a "less qualified" woman.

In 1987, the Supreme Court ruled against Johnson. The decision was hailed by women's and civil rights groups. But victory in Washington was not the same as triumph in the transportation yard. For Joyce and the road men, the backlash was just warming up. "Something like this is going to hurt me one day," Gerald Pourroy, a foreman in Joyce's office, says of the court's ruling, his voice low and bitter. He stares at the concrete wall above his desk. "I look down the tracks and I see the train coming toward me."

The day after the Supreme Court decision, a woman in the county office sent Joyce a congratulatory bouquet, two dozen carnations. Joyce arranged the flowers in a vase on her desk. The next day they were gone. She found them finally, crushed in a garbage bin. A road foreman told her, "I drop-kicked them across the yard."

-Susan Faludi, Backlash: the Undeclared War Against American Women