#At the very least- SOME of his secretaries had to have left on suitable terms.

[theflowerofthecommonwealth]

Omg- I thought that I had imagined this line of dialogue because I haven’t gotten it in my last playthroughs of Fallout 4!!!

But I found it after digging through Nicks game dialogue!!!

But now I have the question… How many secretaries DID walk out on Valentine during his career as a Detective in Diamond City? How many times has Nick come home after a long, hard case only to find his office completely empty and abandoned? That the person that he trusted with his beloved cases and work had just packed up and moved on?

Did he start telling himself to not get too attached to any hired help after this happened a few times? Did he start repeating to himself that his secretaries leaving him was nothing personal because they needed a consistent job to survive?

How well did that work in comforting him? Or did it still tug at his heartstrings a bit each time he thought about how many people once occupied that secretary’s desk?

Did Nick get a feeling that Ellie would be a different kinda gal from day one when he met her? Did he have an internal conflict to not dote on the quippy and spunky kid running his errands and setting up his appointments?

How many times did he walk into his office and expected Ellie to be gone? Did he always try to prepare himself for the heartbreak of retuning to yet another empty office, only to be surprised with the fact that Ellie was faithfully waiting for him?

How long did you think it took him to realize that Ellie would never leave him like that? That things were different now?

Plz give RoboDad a hug.

[lubdubsworld]

Falling for you ( Falling from grace) Jungkook x OC

Rated : 18 +

Warning : . Fuck buddies? Or rather enemies that have sex. They just really hate each other but also can’t keep their hands off each other.

Chapter 1   Chapter 2    Chapter 3   Chapter 4   Chapter 5

Chapter 6

“Are you sure you want to head back to work today, Areum? Hoseok told me that he would give you the rest of the week off if you like... That bruise on your face is looking pretty nasty.” My sister commented mildly, her eyes worried as she watched me dab concealer on the mottled purpling skin on my jaw.

“I need to finish a couple of reports by the weekend. And Namjoon oppa told me he wanted me to be there when we viewed the CCTV footage later today. It’s going to help getting that bastard fired.” I flinched at how bad this side of my face looked. 

The bastard. 

“He’s not fired yet?” My sister made a noise of outrage.

“Of course he is. There’s a restraining order against him. But formally he needs to be terminated and Namjoon wants to do it in a way that it goes on his record permanently. Especially considering he’s already out on bond.” I wrinkled my nose. 

There wasn’t much chance of Junho going to prison over this but I definitely did not want him within fifty feet of me, ever again. 

“Jungkook’s busy with his practice is it? I haven’t heard from him...” My sister prompted and I nodded.

“His big match is coming up on Sunday. That's like four days away ...he’s probably cooped up in that gym of his.” 

“I know... Seokjin works out there too... its a great place...how come you’re never there?”

I frowned .

“He actually has me blacklisted. I’m not allowed inside the establishment. ” I muttered. 

My sister’s eyes widened.

“What? Why?”

I shrugged. The memory was a good one and worth reliving. In fact i relived it quite often when I was particularly horny with only my own hands for relief. 

“I seduced him against his favorite punching bag once and he had to get rid of it because the cum stains wouldn’t come off. He’s a petty jerk.” I grinned at my sister enjoying the way her eyes went wide as saucers. .

She stared at me slack jawed. And then she shook her head in disbelief. 

“You talk about him this way but you always look like you're half way in love with him. I don’t know what is going on in your head when it comes to Jungkook.”

I laughed.

“I love him. Of course I do.... I’m pretty sure he cares about me too, “ I remembered how warm and content I’d felt when he’d held me, how the police officer had immediately concluded he was my boyfriend, simply from the concern radiating off him, “  But, I’m not going to push for anything. I like how we are ...now.”

“Friends with benefits.?”

“I prefer the term enemies who fuck” I winked and she groaned. 

“Whatever you say. But remember, you’re going to have to DTR at some point and I hope you don’t get a shock if he isn’t on the same page. “ 

“Unlikely. Now go distract mom so I can slip out of the back door.” 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“That looks pretty fucking bad.” Hoseok winced when he saw me and I groaned.

“Don’t remind me. I ran into Namjoon on the way up and he swelled like a bullfrog. Is Jungkook in today?” I asked him brightly.

Hoseok frowned.

“you guys are awfully chummy these days ....Need I remind you about the clause on interpersonal relationships in the office?” 

I flushed.

“We’re...not....I mean. We’re friends. “

“I thought the term was enemies who fuck.” Hoseok said thoughtfully and I jumped.

“What-?”

“Jungkook told me, you little brat. I asked him why he went over to the police station and broke Junho’s fucking jaw and he spilled...”

My own jaw came unhinged.

“ He what?!”

 “He posted the bond money for the bastard himself to get him out and then apparently punched him hard enough to land him in the hospital.”

“Oh my God...is he in trouble?” 

Hoseok sighed.

“Of course not... Mr. Jeon had it taken care off at once but I knew something was up . He’s too old to play knight in shining armor , unless there was something between you guys...” 

I sighed.

“We’re in a purely physical relationship yes with of course a splattering of affection for each other. But nothing that deserves a label or close scrutiny from the HR dept. Please Hobi oppa, just let me be. “ I fluttered my lashes and he rolled his eyes. 

“Just as long as you know that Jeon Jungkook is a chaebol. He’s not going to make a honest woman out of you.” Hoseok gave me a pointed look and I wondered if I really did wear my heart on my sleeve. 

Apparently, everyone could sense that my feelings for Jungkook ran deeper than just lust and I wasn’t sure if it was a good thing. 

“Anyway, yo answer you question, yes. He’s in his office right now.”

I made to turn away but Hoseok grabbed my wrist.

“You have thirty five memos to answer and seventeen appointments to schedule. Your desk is this way, I suggest you head in that direction.” His eyes glinted in a way that told me he was incredibly serious. 

I pouted.

Fine... I’d wait for lunch to go meet Jungkook.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jungkook had a secretary of his own , the smitten Miss Lee and she gave me an angelic smile, telling me that Jungkook was out to meet someone in the marketing department. If there was anything important, I could leave it with her.

Declining the offer and thanking her, I made my way to the fireescape and the back stairwell. One of the doors opened to the emergency exit in Jungkook’s office and it took me a little bit of running around but I managed to locate it easily enough. 

Jungkook had left the door open and less than ten minutes later , I was in his office, staring around in mild awe. 

Weirdly enough, I’d never been here. before, mostly because Jungkook himself wasn’t in here all that much. But there was no mistaking that he actually did take his work seriously . I peered around the expensive drawing Tablet and the three or so monitor screens , the stylus tossed about. 

It was probably a huge breach of his privacy but I couldn’t help but click on the mouse, watching his monitor come alive. 

I blinked in disbelief when I realized what I was staring at. 

“Oh my  fuck...”  I

I felt my face flood with heat as I stared at the screen. 

It was a drawing of me. 

I was completely naked , reclining against what looked like a thick white fur rug , with countless plush cushions scattered all around me. The snow white fur set off the golden glow of my skin and I noticed the attention to detail, the tiny mole in the corner of my hip, the small half moon scar on the edge of my collar bone and of course an impressive collection of hickeys on my neck and my inner thighs. 

I looked the way I usually did when I was mouthing off at him, a little angry and rebellious, my eyes blazing with a challenge and my lips parted in annoyance . I had one hand resting right between my legs, two fingers pressed against the labia while the other two disappeared into me. The other hand lay on my breast, fingers tweaking one hard nipple . 

I turned away quickly, breathing harshly as I realized that Jungkook had literally drawn an incredibly accurate drawing of me masturbating , purely from memory.

Not entirely sure if i should be angry at this or not, I tried to clear the hazy cloud of arousal that was beginning to settle all over me. I wasn’t angry. 

I was just ridiculously turned on. 

And incredibly curious if he had other pics of me. 

I whirled back around to the computer and then nearly jumped out of my skin when I realized that Jungkook was leaning against the doorway, watching me with an amused smile on his face. 

“Oh, fuck...” I clutched at my heart which felt like it was going to give out. 

“Pretty sure your desk isn’t here, Areum. Are you lost?” He drawled, stepping away from the door and stalking over to me. 

I stepped back quickly, the action purely instinctive. 

“Did you punch Junho?” I asked sharply.

Jungkook gave me a small smile.

“That is a very mild way to put it yes. He’s gonna be eating through a straw for a couple of months , yes.”

I glared at him. 

“What if you got arrested.” I folded my arms.

He laughed.

“Baby, come on. fucker had it coming. Anyway enough about that loser. Why are you hovering near my desk. Corporate espionage is generally frowned upon baby... Am i gonna have to spank you, you naughty girl?” He waggled his eyebrows. 

I rolled my eyes before walking up to his desk and turning the screen around to show the lewd artwork . 

“how long have you been drawing me like that?” I pointed at the screen and Jungkook looked surprised. 

Surprised but not particularly bothered. 

“Ah... i love that one... Did you see the way I only drew four of your fingers between your legs baby, your thumb is supposed to be rubbing on your clit.... I was working on it when I got called away earlier....” He looked apologetic. 

I felt like I had turned the exact shade of the marron carpet under my foot. 

“Jungkook how long have you been drawing me naked...” I snapped. 

“ Oh... probably the first time you let me see you naked.” He said nodding lightly and I stared at him.

“How come I’ve never heard of this?” I hissed and he gave me a grin. 

“Because it’s for my own personal...use.” He grinned. 

I glared at him.

“How many....?” I demanded.

Jungkook shrugged.

“50...? 60? Definitely at least fifty.” He said casually. 

I stared at him.

“I wanna see them.” I said sharply. Jungkook sighed, like I was being a pain , which was so unfair it made me want to scream. 

“Areum, I-” 

“Jungkook?” A soft voice called from the outer office and I frowned when Jungkook startled. 

“Oh, hey... Sana..... Come in.” His voice had shifted into something mild and pleasant and I felt my hackles rise. 

“Oh..hello... Areum ssi...” The girl gave me a confused smile and I resisted the urge to fold my hands and demand what she was doing there. Instead , I moved away from behind Jungkook’s desk, grabbing a file. 

“Good afternoon Sana ssi.” I smiled.

“I’m sorry, I missed lunch, Sana.... I wanted to give you this. “ Jungkook pulled out a small envelope from his jacket, smiling an absolutely angelic smile at her. 

Sana looked suitably enthralled, her eyes trained greedily on his perfect face as she took the envelope.

“Oh.. are these--?”

“Tickets to my match on Sunday yes...” He smiled. “ I’m hoping you’ll be there.” 

I felt my lungs expand as I took a deep breath to calm myself down. The urge to screech like a banshee was increasing by the second. 

“Oh, I’ll be there for sure. I’ll be cheering you on from the front row, Jungkook !!” She all but bounced on her feet, looking positively giddy with excitement as she bowed to both of us and literally floated away. 

I waited till she was fully gone before turning on him. 

“There better be another envelope in there with my name on it.” I gritted out. 

Jungkook grinned wide at that, eyes dancing with mirth. 

“In my jacket? Not really. But there’s something much better in my pants with your name on it. Want me to whip it out for you baby?? “

He grabbed the edge of his belt buckle, tugging the leather out of the hoops and I glared at him. 

“You are out of your mind if you think I’m going to be okay with you letting everyone watch you fight but  me. That is just unfair and uncalled for.” I snapped. 

Jungkook was still tugging on his belt, but he paused to give me a look.

“What’s in it for me?” He said softly. 

I frowned.

“What?”

“I’m not going to enter a deal without an equitable pay off....Its obvious that you’re really turned on by the thought of watching me fight . So unless you give me something I’m thirsty for.... I’m not going to indulge you,” He said casually. 

I laughed in disbelief. 

“There is literally nothing I’ve denied you in bed , you're crazy to even suggest -”

“I haven’t fucked your ass yet.” He said casually. 

I could feel myself turning red.

“No.” I hissed. “ Absolutely not.”

“Why the hell not?” He frowned.

“Because it fucking hurts. I’m not going through that again.” I snapped. 

Jungkook groaned like he was in actual pain. 

“Baby, its hardly my fault you’ve never slept with a real man before me, is it? Why should I deprived the pleasure of fucking your ass just because those buffoons didn’t know how to do it right?” Jungkook’s voice was dangerously close to a whine and I resisted the urge to throw something at him. 

“I don’t fucking care...its a no. So drop it. ” 

Jungkook narrowed his eyes. 

“Fine. I’ll drop it. For now.” He muttered and then made a big show of thinking, “ alright fine. How about you let me tie you up.”

I stared at him.

“You literally do that every time we have sex.” I pointed out. 

“And I get to use my toy box.” 

I blinked.

“Your toy box.” I said , confused. He grinned mischievously. 

“You know the one...Big mahogany box  underneath my bed. The first time I showed you, you kind of screamed and called me a monster?” He grinned wide.

i had a brief flashback of an assortment of whips, floggers and gags. 

I shuddered. 

Nope. 

This wasn’t working. 

“How about this.... Either you get me those tickets or you don’t get to fuck me. At all.” I smirked.

Jungkook hummed.

“Why would you punish yourself like that love?” He drawled. “ You can’t live without my dick, the sooner you accept that the easier life is going to get for you.” 

The audacity of this bitch. 

I walked right past him , ready to stalk out,  but his hand shot out, gripping my elbow and pulling me into his embrace.

I struggled against his hold, but he brought both arms around my waist, flexing his muscles so I could feel just how futile it would be to try and break free. 

“Come on baby, walking out in the middle of negotiations...that’s just really poor etiquette. Think of the poor hostage....” He pouted , doe eyes wide and I nearly caved. He had no fucking business being sexy  and  cute. 

I laughed in disbelief.

“Hostage??....are you talking about your fucking ego....?” I stared right up at him , tilting my face when he moved to kiss me. His lips latched on to my jaw instead, tongue licking the skin there gently as he hummed . 

“No...I’m talking about my dick.” He grabbed both my elbows, swinging me around like I weighed nothing, one arm holding me in place as he pressed up against my back, hips rolling so I could feel the hardness of his dick right against the swell of my ass. “ Dude’’s feeling pretty darn trapped right now. Poor thing just wants to get inside you and ruin you baby, why you making it so hard for him...?” 

I elbowed him sharply, vindicated when the sharp edge of it caught something hard and fleshy. Jungkook grunted in discomfort but didn’t let go of me. 

“My little hellcat. “ He bit down on the juncture between my neck and shoulder, “You know why my dick is hard?”

“To match your cold unfeeling heart?” I snapped and he moaned in mock hurt. 

“Not fair baby...I have the kindest heart... Soft heart, hard dick....That’s literally my entire persona.” Jungkook nuzzled my neck .  

I fought the urge to laugh . 

“So why then? Because I’m within ten feet of you? Isn’t that all it takes usually?” I muttered, wincing a bit when his teeth sank in a little deeper.

Jungkook let out a soft chuckle.

“Normally I’d agree but today... I’m so fucking hard because you looked like you wanted to claw Sana’s face off when I gave her those tickets....” 

I flushed.

“Well, I just don’t think I should be the only one not allowed to see you fight.” 

“Or maybe you just hate the idea of any one else getting to touch my dick...because like I said...it’s got your name on it right baby?” Jungkook laughed against my ear and I blushed . 

“I still think its rude that you don’t let me come to your matches.” I grumbled. 

“And why do you think that is, baby? Why do you think I’m so adamant about you not being anywhere near me when I have something important to do...”

I didn’t reply, eyes fluttering shut when he suckled on the skin near my neck. 

“Its because I��ll probably lose..” He growled into my ear, “ Don’t wanna get knocked out in the first round because I was too busy staring at your pretty, pretty face and delicious fucking body... My only distraction, my  favorite  distraction.”

  I felt myself melt like an ice cream cone in the fucking sun. 

“Oh, fuck you....you honey-tongued son of a bitch...” I choked out, unable to fight the wide grin that was taking over my face. 

Jungkook chuckled in victory, hugging me tighter.

“So tell me.... Can I tie you up tonight? Get some of my favorite toys...Want to play in your sandbox....” He leered and I laughed despite myself. How could this man make the most innocent of phrases sound so fucking sexy.... 

“Only if you let me pick the toys.”

Jungkook let go of me and gently turned me around. He was frowning deeply. 

“Babe you don’t even know what their called.” He complained.

“But I can gauge how much damage they’ll do and that’s more important to me.” I pointed out. 

Jungkook gave me a thoughtful smile.

“Hmm....fine... But I get to offer the choices. “ He said softly. 

I narrowed my eyes at him.

“Okay, in that case you need to let me see every single drawing you’ve made of me... right now.” I smiled.

Jungkook grinned, already grabbing my wrist and tugging me back to his desk.

“Deal...but I’m gonna need you to sit on my cock and keep it warm while I show them to you..... okay?” 

I glared at him but he was already moving to the wide , comfortable chair behind the desk. He sat on the chair, manspreading and unbuckling himself before wriggling the slacks down past his waist and tugging his boxers down. 

I watched him reach in to pull out his hard cock ,  pumping the hard length of it a couple of times before smiling at me expectantly. 

“Horny bastard.” I muttered under my breath, before letting him maneuver me into his lap, fingers slipping up my skirt and tugging my panties aside , before lining himself up against my center. 

“Ready baby?” He kissed my cheeks fondly and I nodded lowly. He pressed a couple of fingers against my slit, dipping in just enough to make sure I was wet enough. I wasn’t dry per se, but it still stung a bit when he drove himself in with one swift stroke. 

“Oh, fuck...” I groaned when he entered me , the rock hard length of him cleaving my insides and making my tongue go dry. I clenched down on him, thighs beginning to tremble already. I gripped the edge of the table in front of me. 

“Maybe I should call Sana in now.? Huh baby...that’ll show her who this dick belongs to, right , angel?” He whispered against my ear and I moaned, a gush of arousal staining my thighs at his words., Jungkook laughed knowingly, wrapping an arm around my waist to keep me still before rolling his hips gently and settling inside me. 

“So baby, which ones do we start with.... Solo shots? ones with me....? There’s one of me fucking your pretty pink hole, maybe that’ll change your mind about letting me take you in the back...”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Author’s Note : I’m stopping here because the next chapter is just like 5k of porn and I wanted it to be a standalone chapter. 

Comments are love , Feedback is really appreciated. Send me your thoughts, ideas or even just scream about how hot Jungkook is....anything works. 

taglist : @veronawrites @aamxxrii  @brooky95

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@ladyartemesia

@yoongisdragon

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ if you guys wanna be on the taglist just lemme know...

[alexsmitposts]

Sinking Ships Deserting Rats Before They Are Eaten Away We have all heard the phrase, “like rats deserting a sinking ship”. It signifies that when a cause is failing, the least committed members of it leave very quickly to protect themselves, leaving others behind to face the consequences. We do not often hear that “the sinking ship is deserting the rat.” But that is what we are seeing right now. One ship is the US Republican Party, and the other the UK Conservative Party. It is therefore blindingly obvious who the rats are, which is why their ships are deserting them—and why now! Rats versus Goats Political parties always look for scapegoats. It is always someone else’s fault if things go wrong, not theirs or their supporters. If they have to face the fact that they mucked up themselves, one or two individuals are identified as “rogue operators” and the rest disassociate themselves from these to try and limit damage to the organisation. Think of the vilification still being heaped on Richard Nixon, by those who were happy to profit from his crimes in various ways until he was caught. But this process occurs when the party, the ship, thinks it can remain in power. By throwing out the king rat before the rest jump, it thinks it can save itself. It rarely happens that the ship is happy to scuttle itself and leave the rat in place, in the hope that the rat will drown without the ship and the ship can rise again from the bottom of the ocean. But that is what we are seeing now – wilful sabotage of great political parties, because that is the only way that they can be saved from their rats. Many Republicans and Conservatives are now quite happy to vote against, undermine and destroy their own ships because they are rapidly being left with no other option. They have to get out and build another ship because the rats have taken over the old one so completely that it has become impossible to sail. Throwing the rats out is no longer an option, because the ship cannot get rid of the smell they leave behind. Rats versus Elephants It has always been known that a lot of Republicans, including some senior figures, do not agree with the presidency of Donald J. Trump. Not only do we know this, we should all be grateful that we know this. The US system of primaries means that party divisions are examined in public, in elections, until the candidate most suitable to most party members emerges, at least in theory be held in secret, and then become subject of secret deals, are aired in public in the US, so the US electorate has a much better idea of where politicians actually stand than those of most countries. Nevertheless, the primary system generally results in losing candidates declaring their support for the winner and their platform, or keeping silent. It is unusual to find a leading member of the same party criticising its candidate, whatever their private opinions are, and even more so when the candidate is a sitting president. There is now quite a litany of prominent Republicans who have taken their distaste for Trump so far that they intend to vote for his opponent in November. George W. Bush, the previous Republican president, is widely believed to have voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016. John McCain didn’t vote for Trump either, or Jeb Bush, or Mitt Romney, if you believe reports. Since then we have had a stream of lies, stunts, scandals and mishandlings which have further eaten away at Trump’s internal supporter base. It is not so much that Republicans disapprove of what Trump has done, but that they feel targeted by it. Trump won the 2016 Republican nomination, and subsequent presidential election, on an “us and them” platform. But the “swamp” he promised to drain wasn’t simply a Democratic one, but contained the whole political establishment. A prominent part of it has always been occupied by more traditional Republicans, and often are ones who don’t agree with Trump. Initially it was Trump himself who largely made this distinction to garner support from voters who felt disenfranchised. But as time has gone on, “Trumpism” has become a thing, a term of abuse used by members of his own party. A “Reaganism” was either an unintentional reference to the Third World War or a grandfatherly reassurance, such as that heard after the Challenger disaster. A “Bushism” was a mangling of the English language such as “They misunderestimated me”. “Trumpism” is a whole raft of policies and positions which the US State Department defines as “racism” or “fascism” when they are applied in countries the US doesn’t like. He calls Covid-19 either the “Chinese virus” or “foreign virus,” institutes travel bans on black and brown people fleeing the very governments he is objecting to, violates the Constitution daily and wilfully discriminates whenever he can to draw distinctions between “good” and “bad” people, which equate precisely with whether he thinks those people will vote for him or not. Many Republicans feel that Trumpism is alien to them, a disfiguring of what their party and they as individuals stand for. Former General Colin Powell, who is probably more popular than any politician and served as Secretary of State under George W. Bush, has announced he will be voting for Democratic nominee-presumptive Joe Biden in November. Two former House Speakers a former Defense Secretary and a former White House Chief of Staff have also joined an anti-Trump faction. This is now so significant that Biden’s campaign is considering establishing a specific “Republicans for Biden” group nearer to polling day. What will turning on Trump achieve? It is unlikely that these dissident Republicans will regain control of their party. Those who do stay loyal, out of conviction or reluctance, will not welcome traitors, as they would see them, to leadership positions once the dust has settled. Dissident Republicans are not seeking to save their party but to destroy it – by leaving it purely in the hands of the Trumpists and then making it unelectable. Then they will have the basis of a new organisation, perhaps calling itself the Republican Party and perhaps not, which will unashamaedly reject its current President and candidate to reflect the views of those who feel wounded by his appropriations of their values. The US has changed its party system before – though there has always been a binary choice at the highest level, the Federalists of George Washington and Whigs of Abraham Lincoln are long gone. The Federalist colour was black. The Republican ship is now, almost unthinkably, quite happy to desert its rat in order to remove the blackness covering it and reveal its natural red, or red white and blue, again, even if this means building a new ship out of the battered driftwood of its planks. Rats versus Snakes The UK Conservative Party has some claim to being the largest and most successful political party in the democratic world. With Theresa May, who regarded herself as “liberal” as leader, it came fifth in the 2019 European Parliament elections, by far its worst performance ever in a national election. Yet Boris Johnson led it to an unexpected and mould-breaking victory in the parliamentary election a few months later, and led the UK out of the EU, the issue which had hurt Theresa May’s premiership the most. The victory was mould-breaking because the Conservatives actually fell back in their traditional areas of support, the better off suburbs and rural areas. BoJo the Clown owes his large majority to capturing many traditional Labour seats, some of which had never elected a Conservative before, but contain large numbers of Brexiteers spooked by the “intellectual elitist radicalism” of former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. Johnson makes the same pitch as Trump – people versus politicians. He has also conducted ruthless purges of his own party, whose traditions long predate his own unfortunate arrival in its midst. Soon after taking over as Prime Minister he removed the party whip from 21 of his own MPs, whilst running a minority government, because they would not back him over Brexit. Many of these then left parliament at the subsequent election, enabling BoJo to fill his new Cabinet with what one of his own senior party members calls “the nodding dogs,” who will support him come what may on the most controversial issues. So far BoJo has largely got away with recasting the Conservatives as the anti-political party. But like Trump, he has delivered a blustering and inadequate performance when confronted with the Covid-19 crisis, and indeed many other things. Even then he has retained much support, partly due to opposition weakness. Now however that very majority, obtained by wooing non-Conservatives, is turning into the biggest threat to the Conservative ship. Like Trump, BoJo first tried to make out that Covid-19 wasn’t real, another establishment conspiracy. With death rates mounting, and scientists contradicting his claims that he was being guided by their advice, he belatedly adopted a lockdown strategy, at a time when the British economy was already reeling from Brexit. Nevertheless, people in serious danger of losing their livelihoods and homes, and more danger of losing their lives than in any other country largely did as he told them to. They stayed at home, not able to visit sick relatives or attend weddings and funerals if that meant travelling more than a few miles away. Then they were treated to the sight of Dominic Cummings, the Prime Minister’s unelected spin doctor considered the true architect of these rules, driving over 200 miles with his family to find childcare when he should have been in isolation and then making another trip of 30 miles to “check his eyesight” and see if he was fit to drive back to London. All in direct contravention of the rules imposed on the rest of the population. This was explained away by both BoJo and Cummings himself as “what any father would have done.” Thousands of others would, had they been allowed to, but felt obliged to obey the rules. Naturally and rightly, they expected Cummings, as a government insider, to do the same. Ministers have been ordered to defend Cummings, and either resigned or been forced out if they don’t, even when they are ardent Brexiteers Every current minister owes their job, and their parliamentary seat, to being a Johnson loyalist, and had to agree to support him, rather than the party as a whole or its principles, when they stood for election in 2019. But now BoJo is pushing his own acolytes into the opposite intra-party camp, over an unelected adviser, both he and they have nowhere to go. Traditional Tories have given up on saving their party. Most have either left parliament or resigned altogether. Johnson loyalists owe their seats and survival solely to him. But with Johnson rapidly becoming more toxic than Covid-19 and chlorinated chicken, they will have to find a new ship, unassociated with this rat, to come out of this self-inflicted national tragedy in one piece. UK parties don’t change much either – the same big two have held those positions since 1918. But Johnson has so successfully remade the Conservatives in his own image that most of his own supporters will have to become something else to have any future, and can only do this and retain credibility by scuttling their existing ship, deliberately, and constructing a new, ratless one. Rats versus Humanity There are always those who disagree with the leaders of their chosen political party. Generally they try and win internal arguments. If they can no longer support their leader, they either opt out or vote for, or join, another one. It is very rare that we see a situation where members of a party feel they are better off destroying it and starting a new one. It happened to the United Australia Party, once the main party of the centre right in Australia, and the Progressive Conservatives in Canada in more recent times. But in these instances the whole party had become moribund, too many rats having already left. They were not run by rats, for rats, and left with no other members but rats who were unable to connect with people any more. It was always inevitable that populism would fail when led by billionaires and Old Etonians. The only question is what comes after it. Thanks to Covid-19, the whole world is now being faced with this question. But very few will want to the “new normal”, whatever else it may be, to be run by rats rather than people determined to forget they have ever seen a rat. People need to start smelling a rat too!

[ikesenhell]

Paper Battles

This is the Hostile Takeover series: Part Six. For all other parts and additional IkeSen works by me, see here.

Note: APPARENTLY this series has decided it is going to be highly NSFW as a whole… which is ironic, cause a lot of it is about work… Be warned.

The conference was scheduled for two days from then. Reporters swarmed eagerly outside of Chatelaine Bank, braving the rain for a chance at a juicy story.

“God,” the Director sighed, staring out the window. “That’s a lot of people.”

Nobunaga didn’t answer that. He instead set the tiny box in front of her on the table. She arched her brow at it. 

“What’s that?”

“What do you think?” He half-laughed. 

“You...” Her voice faltered. “You didn’t have to do that. That’s a lot of money to spend.”

“You don’t know how much I spent,” he answered smoothly. “And if the money concerns you, think of it as a long-term investment in Chatelaine Bank. You can return it to me afterwards.”

She cracked the box lid and stared at him from under her brows. “You spent a lot of money on this.”

Nobunaga frowned at her. “First of all, I’ll not have anyone believing that I’d give someone I wished to marry anything less. Secondly, I wasn’t about to be cheap about this. If you’re going to be wearing it for a few months, it should at least be suitable.”

With a deep, long sigh, she slipped it onto her finger. The three diamonds sparkled bright in the light, rubies around the rest of the band. “I feel ridiculous doing this.”

“It’s for your business.”

“Mr. Akechi got the rest of what he needed to pull this off, correct?” She asked, suddenly worried. It was all over her face. “If he didn’t--”

He held up his hand. “Mitsuhide is an expert. He’ll handle it beautifully. Shall we?”

They walked as a unit down the steps and into the front lobby, where Sasuke and Mitsuhide met them in crisp suits. 

“Ready?” Sasuke asked. 

“No.” She laughed. “Let’s do this.”

As soon as the front doors opened, cameras sparked and flashed. Mitsuhide took the stand in front of a bevy of microphones, clearing his throat. 

“Thank you for attending,” he announced smoothly. “I’m going to be sharing a joint statement from Azuchi and Chatelaine Banks on the recent headlines. As you all have reported, there was a photo that placed the CEOs of our respective banks together in what appeared to be a compromising position.”

“Oh, god,” the Princess mumbled, her veneer still solid. 

“As their privacy has been breached,” Mitsuhide continued, cameras flashing, “they would like me to formally announce that they have been engaged for roughly four months.” 

A collective gasp rolled through the crowd. Sasuke stepped up beside Mitsuhide, spreading out his own sheets. “For those with Chatelaine Bank, you need not be concerned. We hold to our standards of transparency and honesty, and even through the courtship, we have continued to keep our policies and business models entirely separate from Azuchi Bank. There are no plans for a merger, nor is that on the table, or even under consideration.”

“Additionally,” Mitsuhide added, a grin spreading on his lips, “We should take a moment to call out those that saw to breach the privacy of our CEOs. I’ve been in contact with the reporters who first broke this story, and I would like to state publicly: it is a shame on the Uesugi-Takeda Bank that they would seek to so smear the names of two happy people for financial gain.”

A hand shot up. “Do you have proof to the assertion that U-T Bank is behind the breach of the story?”

“I do.” Mitsuhide looked almost smug, but it was only a hint. “We’ll be passing out the formalized statement, as well as proof of the emails and attachments sent from Shingen Takeda’s personal secretary. I would like to formally admonish the Uesugi-Takeda Bank for inserting themselves into the private affairs of those they consider rivals.”

The Director turned her head, cocking a brow at Nobunaga. “Very cutthroat of him.”

“It’s the best way to throw out the smokescreen,” Nobunaga whispered back to her. “The scandal isn’t on you anymore. It’s on why Takeda feels it’s necessary to spread gossip about you.”

“Mm.” She apparently hadn’t decided how she felt about that, so she turned her head away and smiled politely at a reporter. 

Azuchi Bank’s phones were ringing off the hook. 

“It’s Kenshin Uesugi,” the secretary advised Nobunaga. “He wants to talk to you.”

“Tell him I’m in a meeting,” Nobunaga answered, picking through his lunch. 

“Yes, sir.”

“What would he want?” Hideyoshi asked, befuddled. 

“Don’t know. He’s always been an odd one.” Nobunaga turned on his computer and sorted through the news results, smiling at what he saw. “It looks like this has bounced back nicely onto U-T.”

“Yes. Shingen Takeda was forced to make a formal address on his part in the news release and basically own to releasing the photos.”

Buzz. Buzz. He flicked on his phone screen and checked the text. It was from the Princess, just a single photo of her television, news conference with Shingen on, and a single finger raised at the screen in defiance. He snorted. “Somehow I don’t think that will placate her.”

“So...” Hideyoshi eyed Nobunaga. “What’s the timeline on keeping this ‘engagement’ going?”

“Until it dies down.” He texted back a simple He’s having to eat quite a bit of his own words and shoved the phone back into his desk. “The current plan is that we can say that the stress and high-profile nature of being thrust into the public and shamed caused the dissolution of the engagement, though we maintain a fondness for each other. This could be a five month to two year plan, depending on the level of media interest.”

“Sounds fair.” But his vice-president paused. “You do realize that the policies you’re having us put through do mirror many of those of Chatelaine Bank.”

“Of course I know that.” He frowned right back. “Why?”

“I just was asking. I think some of our stock holders are growing nervous. They think that we might be changing our bottom line to a smaller profit threshold, and I don’t think they’re fond of that.”

“Azuchi Bank will always be its own entity,” he scoffed. “They’ll stop quailing soon enough. Never let it be said I turned down a good idea in the name of quelling fears.”

They started lunch dates in the name of appearances. He would drive to her office, more often than not, but she didn’t want to ride in his car. They would walk down the street instead, arm in arm, and settle in at a humble Mom-and-Pop bistro that served surprisingly good sandwiches. 

“Never would have thought to come here,” he admitted, peeling open his chips bag. She fixed him with an amused, steely stare until he had to roll his eyes. “You don’t have to say it.”

“Don’t I?” She asked, the teasing lilt in her voice. “We’re not going to talk about your bougie tendencies?”

“No.” He chomped down on a chip, and she laughed. 

“Are you pouting?”

“Not at all. If you choose to believe that, that’s for you to wrestle with.” 

He shared an umbrella with her on the walk back, rain scattering around their shoes and drenching his pant hem. He didn’t mind so much. Lunch was at least interesting now. It felt like some of the magic from the Innovator’s Conference had followed her home, wrapped itself in the cuticles of those manicured fingernails and the swoop of her neck, and he was nothing if not interested in seeing where else it lay. He didn’t have to escort her back to her office door--it wasn’t necessary, after all--but he felt like it, so they walked through her office and talked about interest rates and upcoming legislation. 

“Miss Director?” Her secretary interrupted them, peeking her head in the office. “You have a visitor.”

“Oh?” She glanced at Nobunaga. “Well, I’ll talk to you later.”

“Alright.” He turned on his heel to leave, but--oh. A familiar blonde man emerged in the doorway, mismatched eyes surveying the cozy office, and suddenly Nobunaga was loathe to leave. “Ah. Kenshin.”

“Nobunaga.” Mr. Uesugi looked only slightly surprised. “Congratulations on your upcoming nuptials.”

“Thank you.” 

“Mr. Uesugi?” The Princess paused, then fixed on her professional smile. “Hello. We’ve never met.”

“No, we haven’t.” He answered shortly. His voice was rich and thick, but he was also notoriously brusque and harsh. “I understand my associates got you into a bit of trouble.”

There it was; that sharp, daggerlike glint in her eyes. Nobunaga nearly laughed himself hoarse. Who would win in a fight: the iron maiden Director, or the God of Corporate Warfare himself? “You might say Mr. Takeda caused me a bit of distress, yes.”

“I came here to formally apologize.” He produced a bottle of sake, setting it on her desk with little ceremony. Nobunaga wondered just how humiliated Kenshin was to go this far. “His tactics were disgusting and reprehensible, and the distress and resulting dishonor he caused all of us in no way is endorsed by me. You have my utter sympathies.”

“Well, that’s very kind of you.” She examined the bottle, looking a little confused. “You needn’t apologize for something another person did.”

“But I do. He did it in the name of Uesugi-Takeda Bank, and therefore, it’s my problem as well.”

“Well, that’s appreciated.” She smiled at him. “Thank you very much. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“Not at present. Simply wished to grant you that.” And with a nod to both of them, he turned on his heel and left again. 

“Well.” Nobunaga stared after the other man. “Now that was downright nice of him.”

“Definitely not what I’d expected after hearing so many stories.” She uncorked the sake and sniffed it. “Ooh. This is good stuff. I’ll have to share it for an event or something.”

“Maybe your engagement party?” Nobunaga laughed. She picked up a piece of paper, crumpled it, and flung it at his head. He swatted it away. “Come now. You don’t want to start a war with me in here. I’ll win.”

“Oh, yeah, right.” 

“Don’t test me.” He lunged for the printer paper and she laughed, snatching up a few sheets of her own and diving behind the desk. Nobunaga spun a chair around and used it as his own barricade. 

“This is war!” He shouted, lobbing paper balls over the edge. Her laughter spilled from under the desk. 

“Oh my god, you’re gonna ruin my office!”

“You shouldn’t have started this!”

A paper ball smacked him square on top of the head and he cackled. “I will get you for that!”

“Bring it!”

Two could play at that. Nobunaga charged from around the chair and behind her desk; she screamed in surprise as he snatched her up and flung her over his shoulder. 

“Put me down! You ass!” She beat at his back, laughing. He swept her onto her back on her couch. “Ah! Jesus!” 

Planting a knee onto the edge of her couch cushions, he grinned mercilessly down at her. She was smiling still, her hair messed and undone, cardigan askew and skirt hiked up a little too far to be professional. “Admit defeat.”

“Never.” She stuck her tongue out at him. 

“Bah. There’s no way for me to escalate against that kind of treachery in your office.”

They both fell silent, the unspoken next step surging between them. Oh. It felt as if a magnet were linked between their bodies, only just now activated and attracting, and--

“I should go.” Nobunaga straightened up.

“Right.” She fixed herself. “Um, have a good day.”

“Thank you. You as well.” And he turned on his heel to walk out the door, ignoring the terrible, growing desire in his stomach to stay and make good on what he wanted to do. 

[wineanddinosaur]

An Ode to Old Overholt: The ‘Workhorse’ Rye With Centuries of History

Said to be America’s oldest continually maintained whiskey brand, Old Overholt celebrated its centenary in 1910 — a full decade before Prohibition. More than 100 years later, what is known and what is told about the brand’s history often blurs the lines of fact, speculation, and unsolved mystery. As whiskey brands go, it’s a tale as good as any.

Despite its historical significance, the Pennsylvania-born rye seldom gets the recognition it deserves from mainstream drinkers. Many may not even know it at all. The fact that Overholt occupies a place that, if not on the bottom shelf, is then at least not quite eye level in liquor stores, surely doesn’t help.

For dedicated rye drinkers, Old Overholt’s flavor profile may also be a stumbling block. While the brand doesn’t disclose what’s in the mash bill, it must contain at least 51 percent rye by law. Overholt’s light and sweet profile suggests it barely exceeds that figure, with the influence of sweet corn almost as pronounced as the spicy bite of rye. If ever there were a rye that seems tailor-made for bourbon drinkers, this is it.

But all familiar with the brand would agree it encapsulates the very idea of a “workhorse” whiskey: versatile, affordable, and approachable if lacking the nuance of more expensive bottles.

That reputation could yet change with some recent upgrades to its core lineup. Meanwhile, a pair of imminent limited-edition releases seems poised to pique the interest of hardcore whiskey geeks. Put simply, there’s likely never been a better time to become acquainted with “Old Abe” Overholt.

The History of Old Overholt

Established in West Overton, Pa., by Abraham Overholt in 1810, Old Overholt remained a family-owned brand for almost a century. During this time, it grew to become one of the largest whiskey producers in America, aided by new large-scale facilities at the original West Overton site (which remains intact to this day) and in nearby Broad Ford (which sadly does not). The brand gained its now-iconic “Old Overholt” name in 1888, following a rebrand from “A. Overholt & Co.” that also saw the late Abraham’s scowling portrait added to the label.

Old Overholt slipped from family control in 1919 when Abraham’s grandson, Henry Clay Frick, passed away. But it remained in good hands, especially with Prohibition on the horizon. In 1921, then-majority owner Andrew Mellon was sworn in as U.S. Secretary of the Treasury. With that position came the privilege of granting “medicinal” whiskey licenses to select distilleries, allowing them to sell their existing stocks during Prohibition and fire up the stills with the federal government’s permission. It was no surprise, then, when Overholt’s Broad Ford facility was among the few that received a license. (The fires under the original West Overton facility’s stills would sadly never reignite.)

Multiple milestones throughout the 20th century marked the slow decline of Old Overholt and the rye category in general. Keys to the Broad Ford distillery changed hands more times than those of a used Toyota. The whiskey’s proof and age statement bobbed up and down with fluctuating demand and the fickle tides of drinking trends. Production at the Broad Ford distillery finally ceased in 1951, though the whiskey continued to be made in Pennsylvania for a few more decades. To this day, neither drinks historians nor Old Overholt representatives are exactly sure where.

When current owner James B. Beam Distilling Co. (now part of Beam Suntory) acquired the brand in 1987, Old Overholt packed its bags and left the Keystone State for good. It wasn’t long before the Pennsylvanian rye picked up a Southern drawl. After dropping the proof from 86 to 80, Jim Beam ramped up the sweet corn in the mash bill and dialed down the spicy rye to what most aficionados believe is around 51 percent. All that remained of Old Abe’s legacy was his name and face on the label. By this point, the signature scowl had already softened to a frown.

New Beginnings for Old Abe

Little changed with the brand in the 30 years following the Jim Beam acquisition, until a bottled-in-bond (BIB) release arrived in 2018. For the first time in over 50 years, drinkers could once again enjoy 100-proof, four-year-old Overholt. Even more exciting announcements arrived this year.

First, and perhaps least importantly, was a packaging upgrade. The bottle’s plastic black cap would change to red, while the portrait of Old Abe would regain a grumpier appearance flanked by the terms “Born in PA” and “Made in KY.” More significantly, the standard Old Overholt was bumped to 86 proof, and both this and the BIB release are now non-chill filtered, retaining some of the esters and fatty acids that were previously lost.

“It’s for historical reasons but also to make a better liquid for bartenders to help with cocktail creation,” says Bradford Lawrence, rye whiskey specialist for Beam Suntory.

More exciting still was news of two limited-edition releases: a 114-proof, four-year-old rye and a 92.6-proof, 11-year-old bottling. Both are expected to drop this fall (September or October) and will be sold exclusively in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Brand representatives say the 11-year-old is a one-off release, but the 114-proof release may yet return with wider availability.

The Ubiquitous Appeal of Old Overholt

The news no doubt caught the attention of whiskey collectors and turned the heads of drinkers who have overlooked OG Overholt because of its “inferior” ABV content. Bartenders, by contrast, have long been on Old Abe’s side. In interviews for numerous VinePair articles, industry pros have consistently praised Old Overholt for its versatility, affordability, and suitability in cocktails such as the Old Fashioned and Manhattan.

And it’s not just talk. Along with über hip amari and barely palatable regional spirits, Old Overholt can count itself among America’s numerous “bartender’s handshakes” — especially in its home state of Pennsylvania.

Located in the heart of Philadelphia, BAR is a popular post-shift hangout for servers and bartenders. The bar sold “a ton” of Old Overholt on any given pre-Covid night, according to bar manager Ricky Powell. “We offer a 16-ounce High Life and a one-ounce cowboy shot of Overholt Bonded for $7, all day every day,” Powell says. “Last year, we sold 2,000 shots of Overholt, and most of those were with a beer.”

It’s a deal that makes sense for both bar and post-shift bartender. “An industry kid will come in and put a $10 bill on the bar. He’ll rip a shot, crush a beer, and he’s in and out for 10 bucks,” Powell says. “The bar’s happy — we made money — and I’m happy because I made a decent tip. So it’s a win-win-win situation.”

While a compelling argument for Old Overholt’s affordable appeal, by no means should the rye be viewed as just a shot to enjoy with beer. Powell himself insists you can make great quality cocktails with Overholt. “Not only is it affordable, it’s approachable,” he says.

In some markets, this particular quality has proven to be key.

Kurt Hernon, owner of Lorain, Ohio’s Speak Of The Devil, estimates his bar would have sold its 1,000th bottle of Old Overholt by June 2020, but for temporary coronavirus closures. The bar only opened in late 2017, meaning it averages a bottle of Overholt per day under ordinary circumstances. In a city whose population is 40 times smaller than Brooklyn’s, that’s no mean feat at all.

Perhaps even more impressive is the fact that when he and wife Page opened Speak of the Devil, craft cocktails were still a foreign concept in Lorain. A mid-sized, post-industrial city, the only other watering hole in the town’s downtown neighborhood at the time was a sports bar. “We were told we were absolutely insane,” Hernon says.

If anything could win locals over to the concept of craft cocktails, though, it would be Overholt. “There’s nary a bar in Eastern Ohio or Western Pennsylvania that you don’t see Old Abe staring back at you,” Hernon says. Rather than simply serve the spirit neat, he uses the soft, approachable rye as the base for classics like the Old Fashioned and Manhattan, and proprietary riffs like the 6/4/74 (a rye-based Mai Tai).

That Overholt is relatively low proof compared to most modern whiskeys also worked in his favor, Hernon says. It offers the chance to serve cocktails with an accessible profile, ideal for those switching from beer or wine for the first time. And for those who previously sipped straight bourbon, the high-corn mash bill of the rye whiskey was surely a familiar friend.

“It literally is the brand that built this bar,” Hernon says.

The article An Ode to Old Overholt: The ‘Workhorse’ Rye With Centuries of History appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/old-overholt-rye-whiskey-history/

[johnboothus]

An Ode to Old Overholt: The Workhorse Rye With Centuries of History

Said to be America’s oldest continually maintained whiskey brand, Old Overholt celebrated its centenary in 1910 — a full decade before Prohibition. More than 100 years later, what is known and what is told about the brand’s history often blurs the lines of fact, speculation, and unsolved mystery. As whiskey brands go, it’s a tale as good as any.

Despite its historical significance, the Pennsylvania-born rye seldom gets the recognition it deserves from mainstream drinkers. Many may not even know it at all. The fact that Overholt occupies a place that, if not on the bottom shelf, is then at least not quite eye level in liquor stores, surely doesn’t help.

For dedicated rye drinkers, Old Overholt’s flavor profile may also be a stumbling block. While the brand doesn’t disclose what’s in the mash bill, it must contain at least 51 percent rye by law. Overholt’s light and sweet profile suggests it barely exceeds that figure, with the influence of sweet corn almost as pronounced as the spicy bite of rye. If ever there were a rye that seems tailor-made for bourbon drinkers, this is it.

But all familiar with the brand would agree it encapsulates the very idea of a “workhorse” whiskey: versatile, affordable, and approachable if lacking the nuance of more expensive bottles.

That reputation could yet change with some recent upgrades to its core lineup. Meanwhile, a pair of imminent limited-edition releases seems poised to pique the interest of hardcore whiskey geeks. Put simply, there’s likely never been a better time to become acquainted with “Old Abe” Overholt.

The History of Old Overholt

Established in West Overton, Pa., by Abraham Overholt in 1810, Old Overholt remained a family-owned brand for almost a century. During this time, it grew to become one of the largest whiskey producers in America, aided by new large-scale facilities at the original West Overton site (which remains intact to this day) and in nearby Broad Ford (which sadly does not). The brand gained its now-iconic “Old Overholt” name in 1888, following a rebrand from “A. Overholt & Co.” that also saw the late Abraham’s scowling portrait added to the label.

Old Overholt slipped from family control in 1919 when Abraham’s grandson, Henry Clay Frick, passed away. But it remained in good hands, especially with Prohibition on the horizon. In 1921, then-majority owner Andrew Mellon was sworn in as U.S. Secretary of the Treasury. With that position came the privilege of granting “medicinal” whiskey licenses to select distilleries, allowing them to sell their existing stocks during Prohibition and fire up the stills with the federal government’s permission. It was no surprise, then, when Overholt’s Broad Ford facility was among the few that received a license. (The fires under the original West Overton facility’s stills would sadly never reignite.)

Multiple milestones throughout the 20th century marked the slow decline of Old Overholt and the rye category in general. Keys to the Broad Ford distillery changed hands more times than those of a used Toyota. The whiskey’s proof and age statement bobbed up and down with fluctuating demand and the fickle tides of drinking trends. Production at the Broad Ford distillery finally ceased in 1951, though the whiskey continued to be made in Pennsylvania for a few more decades. To this day, neither drinks historians nor Old Overholt representatives are exactly sure where.

When current owner James B. Beam Distilling Co. (now part of Beam Suntory) acquired the brand in 1987, Old Overholt packed its bags and left the Keystone State for good. It wasn’t long before the Pennsylvanian rye picked up a Southern drawl. After dropping the proof from 86 to 80, Jim Beam ramped up the sweet corn in the mash bill and dialed down the spicy rye to what most aficionados believe is around 51 percent. All that remained of Old Abe’s legacy was his name and face on the label. By this point, the signature scowl had already softened to a frown.

New Beginnings for Old Abe

Little changed with the brand in the 30 years following the Jim Beam acquisition, until a bottled-in-bond (BIB) release arrived in 2018. For the first time in over 50 years, drinkers could once again enjoy 100-proof, four-year-old Overholt. Even more exciting announcements arrived this year.

First, and perhaps least importantly, was a packaging upgrade. The bottle’s plastic black cap would change to red, while the portrait of Old Abe would regain a grumpier appearance flanked by the terms “Born in PA” and “Made in KY.” More significantly, the standard Old Overholt was bumped to 86 proof, and both this and the BIB release are now non-chill filtered, retaining some of the esters and fatty acids that were previously lost.

“It’s for historical reasons but also to make a better liquid for bartenders to help with cocktail creation,” says Bradford Lawrence, rye whiskey specialist for Beam Suntory.

More exciting still was news of two limited-edition releases: a 114-proof, four-year-old rye and a 92.6-proof, 11-year-old bottling. Both are expected to drop this fall (September or October) and will be sold exclusively in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Brand representatives say the 11-year-old is a one-off release, but the 114-proof release may yet return with wider availability.

The Ubiquitous Appeal of Old Overholt

The news no doubt caught the attention of whiskey collectors and turned the heads of drinkers who have overlooked OG Overholt because of its “inferior” ABV content. Bartenders, by contrast, have long been on Old Abe’s side. In interviews for numerous VinePair articles, industry pros have consistently praised Old Overholt for its versatility, affordability, and suitability in cocktails such as the Old Fashioned and Manhattan.

And it’s not just talk. Along with über hip amari and barely palatable regional spirits, Old Overholt can count itself among America’s numerous “bartender’s handshakes” — especially in its home state of Pennsylvania.

Located in the heart of Philadelphia, BAR is a popular post-shift hangout for servers and bartenders. The bar sold “a ton” of Old Overholt on any given pre-Covid night, according to bar manager Ricky Powell. “We offer a 16-ounce High Life and a one-ounce cowboy shot of Overholt Bonded for $7, all day every day,” Powell says. “Last year, we sold 2,000 shots of Overholt, and most of those were with a beer.”

It’s a deal that makes sense for both bar and post-shift bartender. “An industry kid will come in and put a $10 bill on the bar. He’ll rip a shot, crush a beer, and he’s in and out for 10 bucks,” Powell says. “The bar’s happy — we made money — and I’m happy because I made a decent tip. So it’s a win-win-win situation.”

While a compelling argument for Old Overholt’s affordable appeal, by no means should the rye be viewed as just a shot to enjoy with beer. Powell himself insists you can make great quality cocktails with Overholt. “Not only is it affordable, it’s approachable,” he says.

In some markets, this particular quality has proven to be key.

Kurt Hernon, owner of Lorain, Ohio’s Speak Of The Devil, estimates his bar would have sold its 1,000th bottle of Old Overholt by June 2020, but for temporary coronavirus closures. The bar only opened in late 2017, meaning it averages a bottle of Overholt per day under ordinary circumstances. In a city whose population is 40 times smaller than Brooklyn’s, that’s no mean feat at all.

Perhaps even more impressive is the fact that when he and wife Page opened Speak of the Devil, craft cocktails were still a foreign concept in Lorain. A mid-sized, post-industrial city, the only other watering hole in the town’s downtown neighborhood at the time was a sports bar. “We were told we were absolutely insane,” Hernon says.

If anything could win locals over to the concept of craft cocktails, though, it would be Overholt. “There’s nary a bar in Eastern Ohio or Western Pennsylvania that you don’t see Old Abe staring back at you,” Hernon says. Rather than simply serve the spirit neat, he uses the soft, approachable rye as the base for classics like the Old Fashioned and Manhattan, and proprietary riffs like the 6/4/74 (a rye-based Mai Tai).

That Overholt is relatively low proof compared to most modern whiskeys also worked in his favor, Hernon says. It offers the chance to serve cocktails with an accessible profile, ideal for those switching from beer or wine for the first time. And for those who previously sipped straight bourbon, the high-corn mash bill of the rye whiskey was surely a familiar friend.

“It literally is the brand that built this bar,” Hernon says.

The article An Ode to Old Overholt: The ‘Workhorse’ Rye With Centuries of History appeared first on VinePair.

Via https://vinepair.com/articles/old-overholt-rye-whiskey-history/

source https://vinology1.weebly.com/blog/an-ode-to-old-overholt-the-workhorse-rye-with-centuries-of-history

[isaiahrippinus]

An Ode to Old Overholt: The ‘Workhorse’ Rye With Centuries of History

Said to be America’s oldest continually maintained whiskey brand, Old Overholt celebrated its centenary in 1910 — a full decade before Prohibition. More than 100 years later, what is known and what is told about the brand’s history often blurs the lines of fact, speculation, and unsolved mystery. As whiskey brands go, it’s a tale as good as any.

Despite its historical significance, the Pennsylvania-born rye seldom gets the recognition it deserves from mainstream drinkers. Many may not even know it at all. The fact that Overholt occupies a place that, if not on the bottom shelf, is then at least not quite eye level in liquor stores, surely doesn’t help.

For dedicated rye drinkers, Old Overholt’s flavor profile may also be a stumbling block. While the brand doesn’t disclose what’s in the mash bill, it must contain at least 51 percent rye by law. Overholt’s light and sweet profile suggests it barely exceeds that figure, with the influence of sweet corn almost as pronounced as the spicy bite of rye. If ever there were a rye that seems tailor-made for bourbon drinkers, this is it.

But all familiar with the brand would agree it encapsulates the very idea of a “workhorse” whiskey: versatile, affordable, and approachable if lacking the nuance of more expensive bottles.

That reputation could yet change with some recent upgrades to its core lineup. Meanwhile, a pair of imminent limited-edition releases seems poised to pique the interest of hardcore whiskey geeks. Put simply, there’s likely never been a better time to become acquainted with “Old Abe” Overholt.

The History of Old Overholt

Established in West Overton, Pa., by Abraham Overholt in 1810, Old Overholt remained a family-owned brand for almost a century. During this time, it grew to become one of the largest whiskey producers in America, aided by new large-scale facilities at the original West Overton site (which remains intact to this day) and in nearby Broad Ford (which sadly does not). The brand gained its now-iconic “Old Overholt” name in 1888, following a rebrand from “A. Overholt & Co.” that also saw the late Abraham’s scowling portrait added to the label.

Old Overholt slipped from family control in 1919 when Abraham’s grandson, Henry Clay Frick, passed away. But it remained in good hands, especially with Prohibition on the horizon. In 1921, then-majority owner Andrew Mellon was sworn in as U.S. Secretary of the Treasury. With that position came the privilege of granting “medicinal” whiskey licenses to select distilleries, allowing them to sell their existing stocks during Prohibition and fire up the stills with the federal government’s permission. It was no surprise, then, when Overholt’s Broad Ford facility was among the few that received a license. (The fires under the original West Overton facility’s stills would sadly never reignite.)

Multiple milestones throughout the 20th century marked the slow decline of Old Overholt and the rye category in general. Keys to the Broad Ford distillery changed hands more times than those of a used Toyota. The whiskey’s proof and age statement bobbed up and down with fluctuating demand and the fickle tides of drinking trends. Production at the Broad Ford distillery finally ceased in 1951, though the whiskey continued to be made in Pennsylvania for a few more decades. To this day, neither drinks historians nor Old Overholt representatives are exactly sure where.

When current owner James B. Beam Distilling Co. (now part of Beam Suntory) acquired the brand in 1987, Old Overholt packed its bags and left the Keystone State for good. It wasn’t long before the Pennsylvanian rye picked up a Southern drawl. After dropping the proof from 86 to 80, Jim Beam ramped up the sweet corn in the mash bill and dialed down the spicy rye to what most aficionados believe is around 51 percent. All that remained of Old Abe’s legacy was his name and face on the label. By this point, the signature scowl had already softened to a frown.

New Beginnings for Old Abe

Little changed with the brand in the 30 years following the Jim Beam acquisition, until a bottled-in-bond (BIB) release arrived in 2018. For the first time in over 50 years, drinkers could once again enjoy 100-proof, four-year-old Overholt. Even more exciting announcements arrived this year.

First, and perhaps least importantly, was a packaging upgrade. The bottle’s plastic black cap would change to red, while the portrait of Old Abe would regain a grumpier appearance flanked by the terms “Born in PA” and “Made in KY.” More significantly, the standard Old Overholt was bumped to 86 proof, and both this and the BIB release are now non-chill filtered, retaining some of the esters and fatty acids that were previously lost.

“It’s for historical reasons but also to make a better liquid for bartenders to help with cocktail creation,” says Bradford Lawrence, rye whiskey specialist for Beam Suntory.

More exciting still was news of two limited-edition releases: a 114-proof, four-year-old rye and a 92.6-proof, 11-year-old bottling. Both are expected to drop this fall (September or October) and will be sold exclusively in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Brand representatives say the 11-year-old is a one-off release, but the 114-proof release may yet return with wider availability.

The Ubiquitous Appeal of Old Overholt

The news no doubt caught the attention of whiskey collectors and turned the heads of drinkers who have overlooked OG Overholt because of its “inferior” ABV content. Bartenders, by contrast, have long been on Old Abe’s side. In interviews for numerous VinePair articles, industry pros have consistently praised Old Overholt for its versatility, affordability, and suitability in cocktails such as the Old Fashioned and Manhattan.

And it’s not just talk. Along with über hip amari and barely palatable regional spirits, Old Overholt can count itself among America’s numerous “bartender’s handshakes” — especially in its home state of Pennsylvania.

Located in the heart of Philadelphia, BAR is a popular post-shift hangout for servers and bartenders. The bar sold “a ton” of Old Overholt on any given pre-Covid night, according to bar manager Ricky Powell. “We offer a 16-ounce High Life and a one-ounce cowboy shot of Overholt Bonded for $7, all day every day,” Powell says. “Last year, we sold 2,000 shots of Overholt, and most of those were with a beer.”

It’s a deal that makes sense for both bar and post-shift bartender. “An industry kid will come in and put a $10 bill on the bar. He’ll rip a shot, crush a beer, and he’s in and out for 10 bucks,” Powell says. “The bar’s happy — we made money — and I’m happy because I made a decent tip. So it’s a win-win-win situation.”

While a compelling argument for Old Overholt’s affordable appeal, by no means should the rye be viewed as just a shot to enjoy with beer. Powell himself insists you can make great quality cocktails with Overholt. “Not only is it affordable, it’s approachable,” he says.

In some markets, this particular quality has proven to be key.

Kurt Hernon, owner of Lorain, Ohio’s Speak Of The Devil, estimates his bar would have sold its 1,000th bottle of Old Overholt by June 2020, but for temporary coronavirus closures. The bar only opened in late 2017, meaning it averages a bottle of Overholt per day under ordinary circumstances. In a city whose population is 40 times smaller than Brooklyn’s, that’s no mean feat at all.

Perhaps even more impressive is the fact that when he and wife Page opened Speak of the Devil, craft cocktails were still a foreign concept in Lorain. A mid-sized, post-industrial city, the only other watering hole in the town’s downtown neighborhood at the time was a sports bar. “We were told we were absolutely insane,” Hernon says.

If anything could win locals over to the concept of craft cocktails, though, it would be Overholt. “There’s nary a bar in Eastern Ohio or Western Pennsylvania that you don’t see Old Abe staring back at you,” Hernon says. Rather than simply serve the spirit neat, he uses the soft, approachable rye as the base for classics like the Old Fashioned and Manhattan, and proprietary riffs like the 6/4/74 (a rye-based Mai Tai).

That Overholt is relatively low proof compared to most modern whiskeys also worked in his favor, Hernon says. It offers the chance to serve cocktails with an accessible profile, ideal for those switching from beer or wine for the first time. And for those who previously sipped straight bourbon, the high-corn mash bill of the rye whiskey was surely a familiar friend.

“It literally is the brand that built this bar,” Hernon says.

The article An Ode to Old Overholt: The ‘Workhorse’ Rye With Centuries of History appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/old-overholt-rye-whiskey-history/ source https://vinology1.tumblr.com/post/626342170130038784

[commedias]

            hello, i'm finally poppin' back in here to post my first official headcanon/self-para/extensive blurb which i had a poll on a week ago to see which muses y'all wanted to be featured in. the results turned out to be oh hongbin, lee kyungri, and bae 'sunny' seunghee, aka the gang that went to dartmouth together and then went down their paths of life from there ! i recently hit three hundred followers and today was the TWO month milestone for my blog, so i wanted to do this in celebration instead of a traditional follow forever. thank you to everyone who voted and i'd love to make this a regular thing if people would be interested !

present day.

            nimble fingers swift over the office desk to reveal a film of dust. since securing the election as governor of nevada, he's been whisked away to countless conferences with the press. his hectic schedule hadn't allowed a spare moment to perch up at his desk and pore over casework. he emits a faint sigh, the room cast in darkness as all the lights have been switched off. as part of his new position, he has to relocate to a more spacious office that will accommodate the increased workload. his staff has been dismissed for the day, hongbin once again pensively reflecting in his office. only one person remains: his newly hired secretary, bae seunghee, or 'sunny' as she asked to be called. he hears the click of her heels in the distance, their syncopated rhythm eerily reminiscent to the louboutins his former secretary, lee kyungri, sported on a daily basis.

            both women had been part of his days back at dartmouth, the dim period of early adulthood that marked itself with a streak of sunrise. since then, he had known nothing but sunset, the orb sinking behind the sky, eluding him, as he kept chasing after it. it had started when his mother had a negative reaction to her prescribed medication for her schizophrenia, prompting him to leave university to tend to her. since then, the sunny brilliance of youth had been nothing more but a remote memory, hongbin only familiar with the darkness of his mother's spiraling condition and his own mental fortitude within politics.

            even so, his own pure conviction remained intact. that hadn't changed from his college days. the same change he championed for back on the grassy campus of dartmouth still held a place in his heart as he rose to a status which could finally enact said change. now the fate was in hand, whether he could bring the sun back into full radiance with his agenda for goodwill or whether it would descend below to the horizon into an unspeakable place, only leaving the pitch-black sky that was the true nature of politics. with such a destiny on his shoulders, the burden proved almost unbearable, speculating whether the man he had been back in his time as a student had been a lunatic or not.

            the steady movement of his secretary's heels jolt him back into focus. he smoothes his tie over and hovers over his desk in imitation of studying some important files. he doesn't even have the spirit to reprimand her, the secretary nowhere close in terms of talent as lee kyungri. she had dutifully served him for seven years up until the precipice of heartbreak, the woman harboring an unrequited love for him the entire time. her work had always been impeccable, continued to be until her very last day, but her eyes grew weary and hair mussed from sleepless nights since he procured a sugar baby. since then, him and the sugar baby had parted ways, but he had loved her with every ounce of his being — a love which kyungri coveted for herself to the point where she couldn't remain working for him.

            seunghee enters without knocking per usual, her liberal character leading her to neglect such etiquette. a silk blouse hugs her voluptuous chest, neckline concaving to reveal a generous fraction of cleavage. he flits his gaze upwards, mimicking as if he had just finished reading over the fictional files, before blinking vacantly at the sight. he groans in exasperation knowing that she had donned the shirt intentionally to seduce him — a failed venture on his part. her coquettish nature hadn't changed since college apparently, recalling how starkly her and kyungri contrasted each other. his relations with both women had been brisk, perfectly innocent, but given the choice, he would take kyungri's reticence over seunghee's bold behavior any day. however, he keeps her around, kyungri adamant that she would be a suitable replacement for her position though seunghee had yet to demonstrate enough skill to confirm her friend's conviction.

           ❛ sir, i found something you might want to keep, ❜ cherry red lipstick paints the secretary's lips, in accord with her signature style, but the tone is more solemn than her usual lilt  he tilts his head in inquiry, unsure of what would compel her to act so formally towards him. perhaps she's begun to shape up as a secretary, exhibiting the proper work etiquette as she should be. she inches closer, steps scored by the heel hitting the floor, to hand him a framed photo of the three of them together back at dartmouth. he knew the photo had been installed at his desk at one point, but must have wandered around the office due to prying staff wondering about his days back at dartmouth. the trio all have beaming visages, hongbin merrily stuck in the middle with arms slung around both girls. to his left, seunghee sports a low-cut black camisole, decolletage accentuated by the silver locket strung around her neck. to his right, kyungri's petite frame has been sheathed in an oversized sweatshirt, glasses threatening to slide down the slope of her nose. twenty-something oh hongbin dons a crisp-button up and khaki pants despite the occasion: their first party together.

seven years ago.

            the pair bounce along unsuspectingly to their first party per request of kyungri's sorority sister, bae 'sunny' seunghee. both of them aren't in any position to deny, kyungri obligated to fulfill her duties as an honorary member of alpha phi and sunny stressing to hongbin that he would be DEAD if he dared let kyungri go without a date. despite his seniority over her, sunny's imposing nature had instilled a chord of fear even into him, the third-year revered on campus as the future steve jobs. besides, some mutual friends from a fraternity he socialized with (though never joined, too distracting for his studies) had egged him on, insisting that it was a crime against nature that a third-year had never attended a college party. his nose had been so buried in textbooks up until now that he didn't even consider a social life. kyungri, on the other hand, was eagerly attempting to form one, hence her inititiation into a sorority. growing up in the midwest as a minority, she always faced racial stigma that prevented her from befriending many. now the both of them would be thrust into a social setting where retreating to their books would be IMPOSSIBLE.

            hongbin links arms with kyungri, not noticing the shade of coral which deepens in her cheeks from the gesture. most jaws would slacken at the sight, the first-year student bearing a strong hatred against any and all men. oh hongbin, however, was an exception to this. since rescuing her from some misogynistic students on campus and elaborating on his ambitions to promote the asian-american identity and mental health reform, she had become smitten with his nobility. little did she know in years to come that her infatuation would become the driving force for her career, the woman accompanying an up-and-coming politician right until the peak of his success. for now though, they were simply college kids dressed far too formally for the occasion and in for a surreal experience.

            they thread their way past drunken guests, nearly spilling someone's cup in the process. kyungri's nose prunes at the foul stench of alcohol permeating the air. fortunately, hongbin has no intentions of offering her a drink, preferring to abstain himself. shielded by hongbin's guard over her and the sweatshirt which didn't do justice to her shapely figure, she had nothing to fear for. only in later years would men start to approach her, once the sweatshirts were swapped for designer clothes, the glasses traded for expensive accessories she bought with her earnings as oh hongbin's secretary. as for hongbin, plenty of greetings are issued his way, the man somewhat esteemed on campus. he's breezed through all of his courses effortlessly, teachers lauding him for his performance and making it known among fellow students. he's amicable, a part of his natural civility, allowing most people to procure a fondness for him.

            kyungri hadn't experienced such luck. society constantly willed against her, at least it seemed so. raised in a small rural town, she was subjected subjected to the discrimination of her peers. countless slurs had been slung her way, the girl taunted for being a "chink." her academic accomplishments went without recognition due to the asian stereotype which preceded. those who did take notice mocked her, claiming a female couldn't amount to much, let alone ascend to the same status as a man. since then, she had subverted their beliefs through her participation in national science competitions. however, her heart was firmly rooted in law, determined to restore the world to its proper balance of justice. with such a reputation from her previous feats, she attracted a fair number of attention though not all positive. many upperclassmen ridiculed her just as she endured in high school. those who did approach her with more friendly intentions were met with a menacing glare and an awkward air, her social skills poorly developed.

            the few pats on his back hongbin receives upon entering the party don't go without a raised eyebrow, dumbfounded on why he would attend the event with a first-year. women whom have admired him from afar cast envious glances at kyungri, sipping conspicuously on their mixed concoctions. in the center of it all, sunny stands on a couch, dancing heedlessly to the heavy trap music blaring in the speakers. in her hand, a near empty bottle of beer tips precariously, on the verge of dousing the carpet at any moment. she's perfectly sober, the beer unable to produce much of an effect. but she's drunk on the energy she's absorbed from the room, from her vivacious nature and the boys fawning over the attractive first-year. her lids flutter open, previously closed in a trace from the music, as the tempo shifts to settle upon hongbin and kyungri. she gracefully descends from her spot on the couch, lounging on the furniture as if it's positioned there for her use alone.

           ❛ i'm glad you two could make it, ❜ her voice comes out in hushed thunder, as if she's anticipating some swell of ardor to sweep her back into the music, the energy, the aura that fits her like a glove. she combs her fingers through long tresses (which in later years will be cropped short), twirling around a single thread before leaning forward to face kyungri. she plants a gentle peck on her cheek, leaving a trace of bright red lipstick on her skin. kyungri dampens her thumb with her tongue, fervently wiping away at the residue. in doing so, a blush floods her cheek just as deep a shade of red as the lipstick which has stained her. seunghee pulls away with a melodic laugh, surveying the both of them as the bottle of beer sways back and forth haphazardly. ❛though you two look like you're going to class instead of a party, ❜ a few men flock around her, one of them offering a brownie in light of the celebration. she intially declines before brows raise in revelation, plucking one of the treats and presenting it to the pair standing before her.

            ❛ i'm sure you two are HUNGRY, come and take a bite, ❜ kyungri's eyes widen in alarm. even in her short time as part of alpha phi, she's already fallen victim to making such a mistake. her lips part to warn hongbin, only to find that he's already shoveling the brownie into his mouth. ❛ mm, delicious, ❜ he murmurs, hand guarding his mouth in light of him speaking with his mouth full. he bows his head reverently, indicating his apology for the lack of manners, though that should be the least of his concerns. she grants seunghee a reproachful look, teeth slated as she doesn't want to start a confrontation. instead, she ushers hongbin to a secluded area of the room. the packed capacity of the place puts kyungri in discomfort. she's inadequate in terms of social skills, hence preferring the solitude of her dormitory over the space of the party. hongbin shares similar sentiments, already equipped with water bottles for the both of them in lieu of alcohol.

            the two remain within their own circle, absorbed in their own chatter to where everyone else in the vicinity drowns out. she wishes it could continue like this, that the night would peacefully tide over with them talking and nothing more. but seunghee had to place the brownie into the situation, flourishing off the gesture with an encouraging wink as kyungri dashed off with hongbin before she could incite further trouble. they're lounging on the couch not even an hour after seunghee had offered him the brownie when the shift occurs, hongbin desperately downing more of the water they had nearby. ❛ my mouth is so dry, ❜ he comments, taking another gulp no sooner than he had finished the last. kyungri extends her hand supportively towards him, flinching once she realized what she had tone. she demures, face averting downwards. he only looks at her absently, mildly surprised by how prominent her touch feels. he's oblivious to his condition, only knowing that the sensation of her skin against him brought with it a profound depth.

            he strokes his thumb over her hand, fascinated by how the texture of it felt. his eyes flit up towards her, tinted red from his influenced state. the sight elicits a laugh from the girl, lips curving in a simper. when he entreats her to tell him what's so funny, she only declines with an ambiguous smirk. the impulse comes over hongbin to remove her glasses, the bulky frames obscuring a full view of her face. he reaches forward without forethought, his action unveiling a pair of rich brown hues burning with suspicion from his sudden gesture.

           ❛ w-what are you doing ? ❜ she stammers, taken aback by the spontaneity of it all.

           ❛ i just wanted a closer look at you  ❜

           ❛  there's not much to look at, ❜

           ❛  sure, there is, ❜

           ❛  like what ? ❜

           ❛ well, there's this, ❜ his hand grazes against the scar lining her cheek, so faded at this point that many mistook it for a beauty mark.

           and that was the story she told upon question. most people wouldn't believe the alternative anyhow, that she had received it from a beating of a schoolyard bully back in middle school. it was only one of the many reminders of her isolated childhood in which she had no one to confide in. nothing like how it was now, with him, the man sitting across from her with eyelids drooping and a lazy smile written on his features. ❛ it's a beauty mark, hongbin. ❜

           his hand doesn't falter, still gliding across the blemish on her skin. she doesn't have the courage to ask him to stop, nor the willpower. ❛ you're lying. ❜

           ❛  it's a secret, ❜ she offers instead, not willing to elaborate on its true origins.

           ❛  don't keep secrets from me, kyungri, ❜ his lips form a petulant pout, the cannabis inducing him to appear far more child-like in his mannerisms than he normally composed himself. his hand cups her jaw completely, suspended in a pleasant haze from the intensified sense of touch. she's about to counter, to change the subject, but hongbin's already being lulled into a drowsy state. he hadn't received much sleep the past few days, anxiously studying for a round of exams, to where it would have been in his best interest to forgo the party entirely. but he had went for her sake, accompanying her per sunny's request and his own concern for her. he nestles into the pillow created by the folds of her oversized sweater. she releases a shaky breath, not accustomed to the close proximity between them.

           ❛ i'm tired, let me lay here for a bit, ❜ he pleads. she obeys his request, legs folded cross-legged on the sofa with hongbin burrowed into her lap. in moments such as these, she found him boyish, as if sleep was his way of catching up on the childhood robbed of him from rigorous studies of law and regular visits to his mother at the psych ward. kyungri lets him rest, not wanting to disturb him from one of the rare chances he permitted himself to sleep. the man had plenty to awake to, more than enough to occupy him in the obscure hours of the night when he should be reprieving his body. from then on, she took it upon herself to not let him do it alone, able to sympathize with a childhood lost. yet both of them in adulthood had an endless amount to gain, a victory best experienced together.

[autodidact-adventures]

Culinary History (Part 24): History of Measuring

During Anglo-Saxon times, the Winchester measure was established in England (Winchester was the capital at the time). It was based on the Winchester bushel, which was 64lb (29kg) of wheat.  It was better to use wheat than flour, because the density varies less.  The Winchester measure was the volume that a Winchester bushel took up.  It was then subdivided down into:

bushel = 4 pecks

peck = 2 gallons

gallon = 4 quarts

quart = 4 pints

So, there were 128 pints in a bushel.  A pint is 473ml, and a bushel is 35.24 litres.

There is a old saying, “A pint's a pound the world around”.  A pint of wheat is actually half a pound (as there are 128 pints in a bushel, and a bushel of wheat is 64 pounds).  But a pint of water weighs a pound (i.e. twice as much as wheat).  Hence the saying.

The Winchester gallon was also called the corn gallon. And it wasn't the only type of volumetric measurement!  There was also the wine gallon (about 3.79 litres) and the ale gallon (about 4.63 litres).  The difference between them may have been because ale was drunk in larger volumes than wine.

The lack of standardization was a problem, both for customers and for the state, because it mucked around with the duty charged on goods.  In 1215, the Magna Carta tried to fix it: “Let there be one measure of wine throughout our whole realm; and one measure of ale; and one measure of corn.”  It didn't work.  From 1066 to the end of the 1600's, there were over twelve different gallon measurements, some for liquids and some for solids.

The wine gallon was also called the Queen Anne gallon (from the 1700′s).

In the 1790's, after the French Revolution, the French began to establish the metric system.  The metre was meant to be one ten-millionth of the Earth's meridian (an imaginary line between the North & South Poles), but it's actually a bit smaller, because of a miscalculation.

The French were now measuring everything in tens.  (There was even an attempt at a ten-day week, the décade). The new measures were laid out in a law of the 18th Germinal.  They would use litres, grams and metres, and throw out the old chaotic measurements.  This was to show how rational and scientific France now was.

In 1790, George Washington asked Thomas Jefferson (Secretary of State) to work out a plan for reforming weights and measures.  They already had decimal coinage.  But Congress couldn't agree on either of Jefferson's reform proposals, and for the next several decades they couldn't decide on a solution.

In 1824, the British Parliament voted to use a single imperial gallon, for both dry and liquid measurements.  This was defined as “the volume occupied by ten pounds of water at specified temperature and pressure”, which ended up as 277.42 cubic inches, or 4.55 litres. This was close to the old ale gallon (and bigger than the corn gallon).  The other measurements (peck, etc) were shuffled to fit.  Now the saying was:

A pint's a pound the world round

Except in Britain where

A pint of water's a pound and a quarter.

The imperial gallon was in place for the whole British Empire.

In 1836, America finally reformed their measurements (somewhat).  But they weren't going to follow Britain.  Instead, they used the old corn gallon for dry goods, and the old wine gallon for liquids.

Because of the two different systems, Britain and America have had problems with understanding each other's cookbooks.  In 1969, Britain officially adopted the metric system, and this just made things harder.  Nowadays, only America, Liberia and Myanmar still use the imperial system.

Measurements of size, as well as of volume, were non-standardized for a very long time.  Since the middle ages, recipe-writers would write things like “finger-breadths of water”, “butter the size of a pea”.  Of course, medieval cooks had no rulers, digital scales or measuring jugs.  So they had to rely on comparisons that other people would understand.

The also left out things that they assumed the reader would already know. Hannah Wolley wrote The Queen-Like Closet, or Rich Cabinet in 1672.  In it, she gives a recipe to make “pancakes so crisp as you may set them upright.”  The recipe goes:

Make a dozen or a score of them in a Frying-pan, no bigger than a Sawcer, then boil them in Lard, and they will look as yellow as Gold, and eat very well.

This is barely a recipe at all.  It gives no details on how long to cook them, how much lard to use, or how hot they should be cooked at.  It wasn't intended for a beginner cook, but rather for someone who already knew how – more of a memory aid.

Frontispiece of The Queen-Like Closet.

Back further, in the time of Ancient Rome, the situation was the same. It's very difficult to reconstruct old recipes because of this.  A recipe by Apicius for “another mashed vegetable” goes:

Cook the lettuce leaves with onion in sode water, squeeze, chop very fine; in the mortar crush pepper, lovage, celery seed, dry mint, onion; add stock, oil and wine.

Measurements have often been based on the body, because so long as one person is doing the measuring, the ratio works out just fine.  The Sumerians used the width of the pinky and of the hand; and the distance between the pinky-tip and thumb-tip on an stretched hand.  The basic Greek measurement was the daktylos (width of a finger), and 24 of them made a cubit. The Romans used the daktylos but called it a digit.

The finger was a common kitchen measurement.  Martino de Rossi (1400's Italian culinary expert) said, “take four fingers of marzipan”. Pellegrino Artusi (late 1800's cookbook writer) began one of his recipes with, “Take long, slender, finger-length zucchini”.

Handfuls were also used.  Many Irish cooks still use handfuls of flour to make soda bread.

Moving away from the body – the walnut was a very common measurement, from France, Italy and England to Russia and Afghanistan.  It's been used at least since the Middle Ages.  This is because walnuts tend to be about the same size, and they were seen often enough to remember how big they were.  There are some small varieties, such as the French noix noisette (about hazelnut size).  But the common walnut is what the comparison is for.  It is usually 2.5-3.5 in diameter.

The walnut (Juglans regia) was imported from Persia to Ancient Greece, and reached China by 400 AD.  It was an important crop in medieval France, but didn't reach Britain until the 1400's.

Butter was often measured walnut-size.  In 1823, Mary Eaton used a piece of butter “the size of a walnut” to stew spinach.  In 1861, Mrs. Beeton said to use a walnut-sized butter for grilling rumpsteaks.

There were many other objects used for measurements.  Peas were common, and so was the nutmeg (about a modern teaspoon).  In the 1600's, bullets and tennis balls were used.  Various coins were a reference too, which is how you have the silver-dollar pancakes in America.

Nutmeg.

Yelena Molokhovets (b.1831) was a Russian cook.  She wrote the famous A Gift to Young Housewives, which had over 20 editions and sold over 295,000 copies.  She cut ginger the size of a thimble, and dough the size of a wild apple. Butter was, again, walnut-sized.

The modern kitchen term “dice” come from when cooks like Robert May (1558-c.1664) cut beef marrow into “great dice” and “small dice”.

The clock began to be used in the kitchen by the 1700's.  But before that, recipes usually gave cooking times in prayers.

For example, a medieval French recipe for preserved walnuts says to boil them for the time it takes to say a Miserere (which is about 2min).  The shortest measurement of time was the Ave Maria (about 20sec).  Everyone knew how long these prayers took, because they chanted them together in church, at the same speed.

The usual way to test the heat of an oven was by simply sticking your hand in it.  You'd tell from the level of pain how hot it was, and if the oven was ready for baking loaves, which needed the fiercest heat.

The paper test was used often by confectioners in the 1800's.  The purpose of this test was to follow the decreasing levels of heat as the oven cooled down.  Cakes and pastries, because of their high butter & sugar content, could catch fire if they were put in at a too-high temperature.

A piece of white kitchen paper was put on the oven floor, and the door was shut.  If it caught fire, it was too hot.  10min later, another piece of paper was put in, and if it charred, it was still too hot. 10min more, and if the paper turned dark brown (without catching fire), then it was “dark brown paper heat”, suitable for glazing small pastries, which needed a high heat.

Then there was “light brown paper heat”, a few degrees lower, for vol-au-vents, hot pie crusts, timbales, etc.  “Dark yellow heat” was a moderate temperature, for larger pastries.  And finally there was “light yellow paper heat”, a gentle temperature, for meringues, manqués and génoises.

The flour test was similar.  A handful of flour was thrown onto the oven floor, and you waited for 40sec.  If the flour slowly browned, then it was the right temperature for bread.

The earliest thermometers were invented in the 1500's, mostly for measuring air temperature.  The Fahrenheit scale was invented in 1724, and the Celsius scale in 1742.  But even in the late 1800's, measuring heat in the kitchen was done with the old methods.

Thermometers (mid-1600′s) that go up to 50°.  Black dots mark each degree, and white dots mark each 10°.

Around the turn of the century, cooks began realizing the usefulness of thermometers.  A new American oven called the “new White House” had an oven thermometer included, “in order to keep...strictly up to the minute.”

In 1915, the first gas oven with a fully-integrated thermometer appeared on the market.  By the 1920's, electric stoves with electromechanical thermostats were being produced.  However, it was easier to just buy a separate thermometer and get it fitted to the oven, if you didn't want to go out and buy a new one.

[aion-rsa]

Perry Mason Ending Explained

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This Perry Mason season 1 finale piece contains spoilers by legal definition.

Perry Mason made its closing arguments for season 1. While the jury was deadlocked on whether Emily Dodson (Gayle Rankin) murdered her own baby, Charlie, or not, the verdict was a triumph for the defense attorney and the series named after him. A hung jury may not be a clear win, but it is a victory. It means Perry Mason’s (Matthew Rhys) first case was not a full on winner. Mason made mistakes. He is learning, probably to make more mistakes, but his education will turn him into legal legend. If the series closed its opening with a decisive win, it would have been a cheat.

Not that Mason is above cheating. That is evident in how he sets Peter Strickland (Shea Whigham) off on a job to bribe a juror. He didn’t have to do it. Two other jurors were swayed by Mason’s presentation in court. He started off coughing and mumbling, but he wrapped it up with an emotional call to arms for the jury. He asked for bravery, which in this case meant being strong enough to look past the obvious sins and stolen temptations the god-fearing suspect brought to trial and still put truth before justice. Mason proved to at least two, and paid for one, to accept that one had nothing to do with the other and cast their vote with the damaged woman on the stand. It is not a win. It is reasonable doubt. While it is more than imaginary doubt, there is no moral certainty of the existence of guilt.

Emily is a free woman now, in spite of the promises District Attorney Maynard Barnes (Stephen Root) made to retry her case. Besides the historical fact that most cases don’t do well the second time they come before a court, we know this because Barnes verbally, and almost physically, attacked a reporter who insinuated he’d lost the case. Barnes is the master of insinuation and for him to be outdone by a stringer on a concrete step is a death sentence for his character, something he couldn’t sell to a jury about the accused. His outburst also signifies this is the end of his run for Mayor and his tenure in the District Attorney’s office.

Barnes’ place will be taken by Hamilton Burger (Justin Kirk) in the upcoming season, and Burger is going to be Mason’s legal nemesis. He’s got Strickland doing his detective work for him and this means next season is going to be fun. Strickland ate Mason’s shit for six episodes and was still picking his teeth when he bribed the juror, so having him back up the guy who will go toe-to-toe with Mason will bring in a new game. Competition works wonders in shows like this. The very last we see of Strickland, Burger is grilling him on the stand about all the dirt he found against the Assembly of God Church. We don’t know the verdict, but we can guess some of the elders will be growing very old in jail.

Emily is sentenced to live and take care of another new life and new testament in the Book of Sister Alice (Tatiana Maslany). When Emily accepts the baby she knows is not hers as her own, it means she is a lifelong victim of circumstance. When she cradles the baby in public at the Church of the Newborn, it means Birdy McKeegan (Lili Taylor) is a ruthless evangelical voice. It begs at least one question. Where did the baby come from? Was some infant stolen, bought or otherwise purloined from some unfortunate mother? Charlie Dodson had been kidnapped, was his replacement found in some overnight delivery bin at some local orphanage or left in a basket in the bulrushes like Moses? Birdy McKeegan certainly makes a grand exodus on her journey into religious fraudulence.

Sister Alice truly believed she worked for God, even as she had some idea it was all a self-deluded illusion. Tatiana Maslany has been a joy to watch, dipping into Alice’s memories and fears for a vibrant and active characterization. While we probably won’t see her in season 2, her line about being lonely implies we may not have seen the last of her. Perhaps she’ll fill the romantic need Lupe Gibbs (Veronica Falcón) provided while Mason lived on her terrain. Those two may continue their on again and off the ropes grappling in season 2, but it will probably be cut down to very infrequent visits. If the series is anything like the Erle Stanley Gardner’s books, Mason’s going to have to get an apartment upstairs from the office to keep up with the cases he’ll be seeing.

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TV

Perry Mason Episode 8 Review: Chapter Eight

By Tony Sokol

The ending means we won’t be seeing much of Perry Mason the detective, something District Attorney Hamilton Burger notes in the book series. While we can be sure he will be on each case from investigation to litigation, he has a more than suitable proxy. Former Officer Drake turned in his badge to take this job. That means he is free to mess with bad cops on the clock. Drake had an eventful arc. He dipped a toe in corruption and came up clean. Drake is truly angry the second the second time he meets Perry Mason and beats the shit out of him on the street like a dog. He is also already anguished. He knows he’s doing the wrong thing at the right time. The guy searching for the truth hurled an ugly opening salvo and deserved the beat-down for it, but Drake knows the importance of truth. He’s not going to get it while he’s wearing a uniform. He’s getting scammed by his superiors, taking in short-term cash to bury a long-term problem. He’s getting bullied, hassled and manipulated and Chris Chalk doesn’t let a thing get by him.

As Drake, Chalk has to walk a fine line between what is revealed and what is kept under wraps. The actor’s eyes accuse his superiors for the benefit of the audience, while escaping detection by the detectives accused. He doesn’t reserve this merely for fellow cops. He gives a disappointed glare at his wife, a whole series of reactions to what he sees as Mason’s antics and a strong gleam of support for Della Street. Mason’s confidential secretary, associate and someday partner groomed the attorney while he wasn’t looking and Juliet Rylance brings a calm assuredness to the role. Everything about her portrayal is understated. She is not only the smartest person in the room but the strongest. Both Drake and Street were introduced in Gardner’s first Mason novel, The Case of the Velvet Claws, from 1933.

The death of Detective Ennis means we will be losing one of the most interesting characters on the series. This guy was complicated, to say the least, and yet, very simple. He could have been one of the great villains of cable TV, and we are robbed of his further exploits. This was a bad, bad cop, who kept getting worse. He was sentenced to death by his own partner. The District Attorney wouldn’t even put him on the stand. Ennis never gets to excuse, redeem or even explain his actions. Mason will never get to face off against him and he is quite the nemesis. Because we won’t be seeing him again next year, Andrew Howard should be commended on a bad job, well done. Not only did he bring a nuanced maniac to life, he captured the series’ time period in a way no other actor could.

Ennis is a 1930s hard ass. He could have been played by Barton MacLane, though he evokes the actor Joseph Sawyer. Howard captures not only the timing of the patter, but the old-school method of acting as laid out by James Cagney: Look the other guy in the eye and say your lines. But mean them. When Ennis tosses off his snide asides on Mason’s imagined stand, eviscerating Mrs. Dodson, he is fully 1932 American. Howard is Welsh, or maybe another foreigner taking American jobs, his character might say. Ennis busted heads to keep the U.S. safe from commies. Howard also played on a 2013 episode of NBC’s short-lived Ironside remake. It seems he can’t get away from the shadow of Raymond Burr. 

Perry Mason has already distinguished itself from the series which ran on CBS starting in 1957. It did it by dipping further into the novel series to get to the root of what makes Mason tick. HBO’s series isn’t absolutely hardcore about being a faithful adaptation. The iconic series and later novels mention Mason served on a Navy minesweeper during World War II. The HBO series places Mason in the trenches of World War I, where he got a “blue ticket” discharge. It is implied early that he got this for some sexual scandal, but we learn he killed wounded members of his own squad to spare them a horrific death by poison gas and flamethrower.

The ending scene, where Mason and his team are assembled and taking on their first client, means this particular trio will continue to go after the least winnable cases. The woman walks in and says she’s in trouble. Everything about her looks troublesome, except the retainer which she can pay upfront. Whatever her crime, the trial sequences which get her off will be very engaging. Television law is a game of chess, sometimes the defense is on top, but usually the prosecution is in charge. The ending of Perry Mason means the balance will be tipped. 

The post Perry Mason Ending Explained appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[aleesblog]

My Foreword for Hardy Tree by J. Warwick Sweeney the story of Doctor John Dent

                     During my final year of medical apprenticeship at The London Hospital, Whitechapel I entered into a Mephistolean pact with William Seward Burroughs. The ‘Pope of Dope’ agreed to leave me alone until I had qualified provided I paid attention to what he had written about bad doctoring, dangerous scientists and institutional corruption. Later he became an invisible mentor in my quest to find a cure for the shaking palsy.

                       In April 1956 William Burroughs had arrived in London hooked on synthetic opioids. It was his good fortune to be referred on to Dr John Yerbury Dent, a medical practitioner who had gained a reputation for the treatment of alcohol dependence. When Burroughs knocked on the door of 34 Addison Road, in West London he was at the end of the line and desperate for a quick fix for his junk sickness Previous detoxication attempts in Tangiers had all ended in failure. At their first meeting Dent persuaded Burroughs to be admitted for treatment to his clinic at 99 Cromwell Road for apomorphine treatment.

                   Apomorphine was first synthesised in the middle of the nineteenth century by Matthiesen and Wright two English chemists working at St Bartholomew’s Hospital by heating opium with hydrochloric acid in anaerobic conditions. Despite its structural similarities to morphine it had negligible narcotic properties but was a potent emetic. It was first used by veterinary scientists to treat behavioural vices in farm animals and then introduced into medicine as a treatment for acute poisoning. It was later employed as a sedative, a treatment for palpitations, chorea and hysterical seizures and at the beginning of the twentieth century it had been used to treat delirium tremens. In France up until the nineteen seventies it was marketed as a treatment for sexual deviation including homosexuality and later was licensed in Europe and the United States as a treatment of erectile dysfunction under the trade name of Uprima.  

                      Dent’s two nurses injected apomorphine into Burroughs every two hours round the clock. He was also permitted heroin injections and alcohol during the first two or three days of acute opioid withdrawal and given very small doses of insulin. Dent also used suggestion to reinforce the pharmacological effects of the drug. Within a week his patient was ‘clean’ and ready for discharge. Before Burroughs left London he continued to see Dent who made it clear that the onus of travel beyond a tomorrow free of pain and junk lay firmly on his patient’s shoulders.

                            On August 3 four months after Burroughs had left 99 Cromwell Road he wrote to Dent from Venice;

 Dear Doctor,

Thanks for your letter. I enclose that article on the effects of various drugs I have used. I do not know if it is suitable for your publication. I have no objection to my name being used.

No difficulty with drinking, No desire to use any drug. General health excellent. Please give my regards to Mr…… I use his system of exercises daily with excellent results.

I have been thinking of writing a book on narcotic drugs if I could find a suitable collaborator to handle the technical end.

 Yours truly,

William Burroughs

      Opioid withdrawal and apomorphine facilitated Burroughs dream recall, retrieval of the lost subconscious and formative memories and created a vividness in his perception that is reflected in some of the phantasmagorical imagery that bears a remarkable similarity with Bulgakov’s Master and Margerita and Coleridge’s opium fuelled word hoards..Burroughs became a champion of the ‘junk vaccine’ and hoped to get the ‘shrinks’ at the Federal Medical Center in Lexington interested in the treatment. Much later he wrote that without Dr Dent’s help he would never have managed to assemble the contents of Naked Lunch. Apomorphine remained a Schedule 2 drug in the State of California until 2010 (drugs with established medical use but with a high potential for abuse, with use potentially leading to severe psychological or physical dependence).  Although ending up on a methadone programme in Burroughs wrote that maintenance therapy was like treating an alcoholic with whisky and that apomorphine was a far better approach.

                   Five years after Dent’s death apomorphine was shown to stimulate dopamine receptors in the brain but despite growing evidence apomorphine treatment faded away as its last advocates in Scandinavia and Switzerland died or retired. Science had confirmed Dent’s hunch that apomorphine was a metabolic stimulant with actions on the hindbrain and that it was not an aversive therapy for addiction like antabuse. Despite mounting evidence that the dopamine pleasure and reward circuits may be an important final common pathway in the neurobiology of addiction by the late nineteen seventies apomorphine had faded away in its last strongholds of Scandinavia and Switzerland

                      By this time the honeymoon period of L-DOPA was long over and many of my patients were experiencing a chaotic roller coaster ride, which some of them incorrectly attributed as a tolerance to their medication. Through the nineteen eighties I intensified my search for a cure for this incapacitating ‘on off syndrome’ that was ruining lives. I   re-read Deposition: Testimony Concerning a Sickness where Burroughs had described the ‘algebra of need’ and how apomorphine had helped him kick heroin. A few nights later the structural formula of apomorphine floated by me in a dream.

                        This triggered a series of experiments at the Middlesex Hospital, Mortimer Street first on myself and then on volunteers with Parkinson’s disease that now looking back I consider my most lasting achievement in medicine.  Delivery of apomorphine by a mini-pump smoothed out the patients’ oscillations and returned their independence. A man who was barely able to walk or speak for six hours each day told me that apomorphine had turned the clock back five years. Not long after our paper had been published in The Lancet apomorphine returned once again to the British Pharmacopoeia.

                             It was around this time that I was contacted by two of Doctor Dent’s daughters, Ann Rubinstein and Jane Sweeney. On our first meeting Ann handed me a copy of her father’s book Anxiety and its Treatment first published in 1940 and an article written by one of his patients, the Macmillan publisher Alan Maclean, brother of the Russian spy Donald which began:

 I’d heard of an eccentric elderly doctor called John Dent who was said to offer a swift chemical treatment with no psychiatric strings. He’d successfully treated the film director Anthony Asquith, the uncle of Mark Bonham-Carter, who’d been observing my drinking habits with increasing alarm. At least he didn’t sound like the pin-striped proprietor of some expensive torture chamber with panoramic views across London from Harrow-on-the Hill. So I rang him up and got my head bitten off. When I mentioned Asquith’s name he said he didn’t discuss his patients. Who was I? and What did I want? I said help was what I wanted and that at last seemed to be the right answer

               Dent opened the door in his braces. Short, portly, shaggy white hair and moustache to match, he wore a Savage club tie loosely knotted halfway down his front. He looked like an old dog… and had ‘the loudest laugh of any man in London’.

                   I joined Ann and Jane in their campaign to encourage more research into addiction and a re-investigation of their father’s notion that very anxious people were particularly susceptible to substance dependence. Echoing Dent, Burroughs had drawn comparisons between the need of diabetics for insulin and junkies for dope. There were also similarities between the treatment approaches we were using to help Parkinson’s disease and those our colleagues in endocrinology were using to help brittle diabetics. Unfortunately the highly conservative and politicised world of drug addiction remained unresponsive to our campaign despite the fact that success rate in the treatment of alcoholism remained low and the use of methadone as maintenance therapy was involved in the death of hundreds of heroin addicts.

                   Twenty years later I met two of their children Warwick Sweeney and Antonia Rubinstein, both of whom were as passionate as their mothers had been about the lack of progress in the management of alcoholism and drug addiction. Warwick told me, ‘For me it goes much deeper still. I am interested in the politics of addiction.  I also share my grandfather’s taste in literature. All his books filled my home growing up, Sterne, Swift and Wells. Everything is environment. It was inevitable that he rubbed off on me.’

Antonia later confided in me over a drink at the Groucho Club in Soho that within the family Warwick was considered John Dent reincarnate, sharing both many of his views and his physical appearance.

                        When I was writing Mentored by a Madman: The William Burroughs Experiment I entered into an intense and fruitful epistolary exchange with Warwick and learned a great deal about his grandfather, some of which I included in my own fanatasia. In a world where inebriety was a shameful weakness, gay sex a criminal offence and abortion illegal  Dent had been  prepared to treat individuals at the point of need using a ‘Robin Hood’ business model to run his practice before the National Health Service was founded.

Despite his lack of political nous and distaste for public office he had also served dutifully as the Secretary of the Society for the Study of Addiction from 1944-47 and was in the middle of a second term of office when he treated William Burroughs. He had also been the Editor of the British Journal of Inebriety since 1941 (now the British Journal of Addiction).

He believed strongly that the British Government’s decision to severely restrict medical practitioners using heroin to treat addiction was wrong. In 1955 he wrote:

 .....if doctors are forbidden to prescribe heroin or prevented from obtaining it very soon they will not be able to treat their patients except with medicines prescribed from Whitehall. or the American Bureau of Mr Anslinger’ (the first commissioner of the US Treasury Department’s Federal Bureau of Narcotics and an advocate of the prohibition and criminalisation of drugs).

 If alive he would also have condemned the 1968 policy change that put an end to the unique ‘British system’ that had allowed GP’s to keep addicts away from dealers by prescribing them hard drugs.

                      I feel sure he would also have supported the work of the Welsh psychiatrist John Marks whose prescription of heroin on a Home Office licence in his drug dependency clinic in Widnes between 1982 and the early nineties markedly reduced crime, prostitution and drug related deaths including those from AIDS on Merseyside . His harm reduction approach also reduced the actual number of addicts and killed off the pyramid selling schemes. Marks received support and protection from prominent members of the Drugs Squad including Bing Spear, the Chief Inspector of the Government’s Drug Inspectorate but eventually the Government manoeuvred him out and like Dent’s apomorphine his successful experiment was expunged from the history books.

                  Both men were at the end of the line when Burroughs consulted Dent. Burroughs was hooked on junk and unable to write while Dent was denigrated by his profession as a maverick. Almost all Burroughs’ previous consultations with doctors had been disappointing. The New York psychiatrists who had misdiagnosed him with paranoid schizophrenia and then tried to straighten him out with Freudian analysis and hypnotherapy were well meaning frauds while the ‘croakers’ who had supplied him with dope on the upper west side of Manhattan were no better than drug pushers. Dent and Burroughs were both iconoclasts with a strong distaste for consumerism and globalisation. They fed on one another, exchanged stories and discussed subjects of mutual interest like the Maya civilisation and cats. Although Dent’s approach to Burroughs was formal it was fraternal and less patronising or unequal than most of the consultations he had experienced up until then. Most importantly Dent’s approach was non-judgemental. The two men shared a fierce integrity and brutal honesty as well as a moral indignation at the vested interests of corporations, drug cartels and Big Pharma that profited from stoking anxieties. Dent was also a good writer who had published two books so was in a position to advise and encourage Burroughs in his writing.

In the end Burroughs, at a pivotal moment in his life, came to trust and like Dent.

                     Anyone who has read Willliam Burroughs’ books will know that they are full of frightening doctors who epitomise power and control. The amoral Doctor Benway in Naked Lunch may have been Burroughs’ revenge for the corruption that he felt defined contemporary doctorhood:

 Now, boys, you won’t see this operation performed very often and there’s a reason for that . . . You see it has absolutely no medical value . . . I think it was a pure artistic creation from the beginning’.  

      And from the legendary sketch with Dr Lymph in Naked Lunch:

You young squirts couldn't lance a pimple without an electric vibrating scalpel with automatic drain and suture. All the skill is going out of surgery, all the know how and make do. Ever tell you about the time I performed an appendectomy with a rusty sardine can? And once I was caught short without instrument one and removed an intrauterine tumor with my teeth. The was in the Upper Effendi and besides the wench is dead.

Then there is Dr Tetrazzini who starts his list by throwing a scalpel across the room into the patient and then making his grand entrance like a ballet dancer. The discovery of a tumour throws him into a temper’, fucking undisciplined cells’ he snarled advancing on his target like a matador.

               Whether Dent ever told Burroughs medical anecdotes is unknown but Underhill the incompetent honorary visiting surgeon at Dudley Guest Hospital during Dent’s training has close similarities to both Benway and Tetrazzini:

Underhill peered into the man’s abdomen.

‘NOW, what’s this, eh?’

‘A kidney, sir?’ suggested Dent, astounded at what was unfolding.

‘Are we sure?’

‘Quite sure.’

‘And this?’

‘The other kidney, sir, most definitely,’ said Dent. Dalton cursed under his breath.

‘So, this is the appendix?’

‘No, sir,’ said Dalton, ‘I think you’ll find that that is the spleen.’

‘The spleen. Good God! What the devil’s it doing here?!’

‘There’s the appendix,’ indicated Dalton, pointing to a perfectly healthy organ.

‘But can we be sure? London?’

‘There’s no doubt about it, sir; Dalton is correct, that is the appendix.’

‘Wonderful, SO, my boy, we’ve located the offender and now the punishment. We’ll cut the blighter out, right out! Save this poor man, in the nick of time by the look of it. Scissors. SCISSORS, Nurse, come a-long!’

    Burroughs was hypochondriacal, adept at self-medicating and frequently advised his friends and acquaintances on medical matters. His relationship with doctors was complex and ambiguous. He saw himself as a sort of healer among his associates and had enrolled for a medical degree at the University of Wien in the hope of one day becoming a psychiatrist.

            Much of John Dent’s medical career occurred before the formation of the National Health Service. Doctors had far more power and professional freedom than is the case today. The main pre-occupation of the General Medical Council was with breaches of confidentiality rather than medical mistakes or incompetence. Dent was prepared to break convention if his conscience told him he was doing the right thing. He was a charismatic persuasive force for good and also a cute judge of what he could get away with. He believed in what he did and also why he was doing it and there can be no doubt that this rubbed off on his anxious and addicted patients who desperately wanted and needed him to succeed.

                         Driven by opportunist Members of Parliament, a series of scandals and the media, doctors now find they face opprobrium and a degree of regulation that is neither logical nor necessary. Growing distrust of the medical profession has led to a number of undesirable complications including an increasing reluctance by patients to accept ‘a wait and see’ approach often leading to over-investigation. ‘Do no harm’ has been replaced by ‘Watch your back, cover your ass and harm be damned’. A growing disrespect for medical science and the institutions of medicine has also encouraged alternative practitioners, government officials and the fourth estate to feel comfortable attacking doctors even to the point of perversely further undermining medical care. The new breed of NHS doctor will be well trained in communicating but only able to provide formal, contractual services, from an agreed menu of options, as requested by the consumer patient. Creativity and imagination will be displaced by a system of smiling doctors working to protect their contractually defined interests rather than rebelling against the indignities of disease.

          In the current climate and despite his reputation as being one of the ‘best around’ for treating alcoholics Dent would have been given a hard time by the new incumbents at the Home Office. His use of diminishing doses of heroin during the acute withdrawal phase would have probably involved him going for a period of retraining (‘brainwashing by ‘The Maudsley Mafia’ as he would have called it ) and he would be forced to submit to a paper mountain of mind numbing red tape.

                  Alcoholism kills millions of people every year and iatrogenic synthetic opioid dependence has reached epidemic proportions in parts of the United States yet Western governments continue to shy away from investigating alternative non-maintenance approaches to the management of addiction.  Although John Yerbury Dent was considered an outdated fossil by the new medical establishment his ability to communicate on an equal footing with his patients about their illnesses and its management and his willingness to go that extra distance if he felt it was in his patients’ interest put many of them to shame. He also merits posthumous fame, even though he would never have sought it, for his early warning of how medicine was in danger of being corrupted into an instrument of social control, a view shared and promulgated in Naked Lunch by his most famous patient William Burroughs. Hardy Tree is a book of contemporary relevance. It reminds us that medicine is a calling not a business and an art not a science.

[alexsmitposts]

US “Color Revolution” Struggles in Hong Kong The Western media has been boasting over recent protests in Hong Kong. Western headlines have claimed the protests have “rattled” Beijing’s leadership. The protests have been organized to obstruct Hong Kong’s elected government from moving forward with an extradition bill. The bill would further integrate Hong Kong’s legal system with that of mainland China’s, allowing suspects to be sent to the mainland, Taiwan, or Macau to face justice for crimes committed anywhere in Chinese territory. The protests oppose the extradition bill as a wider means of opposing Hong Kong’s continued reintegration with China – arguing that the “One Country, Two Systems” terms imposed by the British upon Hong Kong’s return under Chinese sovereignty in 1997 must be upheld. Uprooting the Last Vestiges of British Imperialism The story of Hong Kong is one of territory violently seized by the British Empire from China in 1841, being controlled as a colony for nearly 150 years, and begrudgingly handed over to China in 1997. The “One Country, Two Systems” conditions imposed by the British were a means of returning Hong Kong to China in theory, but in practice maintaining Hong Kong as an enduring outpost of Western influence within Chinese territory. The West’s economic and military power in 1997 left Beijing little choice but to agree to the terms. Today, the Anglo-American international order is fading with China now the second largest economy on Earth and poised to overtake the US at any time. With economic and military power now on China’s side, it has incrementally uprooted the vestiges of British colonial influence in Hong Kong – the extradition bill being the latest example of this unfolding process. Beijing has reclaimed Hong Kong through economic and political means. Projects like the recently completed Hong Kong high-speed rail link and the Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macao Bridge have helped increase the number of mainlanders – laborers, visitors, and entrepreneurs – travelling to, living in, and doing business with Hong Kong. With them come mainland values, culture, and politics. Hong Kong’s elected government is now composed of a majority of openly pro-Beijing parties and politicians. They regularly and easily defeat Hong Kong’s so-called “pan-democratic” and “independence” parties during elections. It is the elected, pro-Beijing government of Hong Kong that has proposed the recent extradition bill to begin with – a fact regularly omitted in Western coverage of the protests against the bill. US Color Revolution Masquerades as “Popular Opposition” Unable to defeat the bill legislatively, Hong Kong’s pro-Western opposition has taken to the streets. With the help of Western media spin – the illusion of popular opposition to the extradition bill and Beijing’s growing influence over Hong Kong is created. What is not only omitted – but actively denied – is the fact that the opposition’s core leaders, parties, organizations, and media operations are all tied directly to Washington DC via the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and corporate foundations like Open Society Foundation. Hong Kong’s opposition has already long been exposed as US-sponsored. This includes the entire core leadership of the 2014 so-called “Occupy Central” protests, also known as the “Umbrella Revolution.” Western media has portrayed recent anti-extradition bill protests as a continuation of the “Umbrella” protests with many of the same organizations, parties, and individuals leading and supporting them. The Western media has attempted to dismiss this in the past. The New York Times in a 2014 article titled, “Some Chinese Leaders Claim U.S. and Britain Are Behind Hong Kong Protests,” would claim: Protest leaders said they had not received any funding from the United States government or nonprofit groups affiliated with it. Chinese officials choose to blame hidden foreign forces, they argued, in part because they find it difficult to accept that so many ordinary people in Hong Kong want democracy. Yet what the protest leaders claim and what is documented fact are two different things. The New York Times article itself admits that: …the National Endowment for Democracy, a nonprofit directly supported by Washington, distributed $755,000 in grants in Hong Kong in 2012, and an additional $695,000 last year, to encourage the development of democratic institutions. Some of that money was earmarked “to develop the capacity of citizens — particularly university students — to more effectively participate in the public debate on political reform.” While the New York Times and Hong Kong opposition deny this funding has gone to protesters specifically, annual reports from organizations opposition members belong to reveal that it has. Hong Kong’s opposition leaders receiving US support include: Benny Tai: a law professor at the University of Hong Kong and a regular collaborator with the US NED and NDI-funded Centre for Comparative and Public Law (CCPL) also of the University of Hong Kong. In the CCPL’s 2006-2007 annual report, (PDF, since deleted) he was named as a board member – a position he has held until at least as recently as last year. In CCPL’s 2011-2013 annual report (PDF, since deleted), NED subsidiary, the National Democratic Institute (NDI) is listed as having provided funding to the organization to “design and implement an online Models of Universal Suffrage portal where the general public can discuss and provide feedback and ideas on which method of universal suffrage is most suitable for Hong Kong.” In CCPL’s annual report for 2013-2014 (PDF, since deleted), Tai is not listed as a board member but is listed as participating in at least 3 conferences organized by CCPL, and as heading at least one of CCPL’s projects. At least one conference has him speaking side-by-side another prominent “Occupy Central” figure, Audrey Eu. The 2013-2014 annual report also lists NDI as funding CCPL’s “Design Democracy Hong Kong” website. Joshua Wong: “Occupy Central” leader and secretary general of the “Demosisto” party. While Wong and other have attempted to deny any links to Washington, Wong would literally travel to Washington once the protests concluded to pick up an award for his efforts from NED subsidiary, Freedom House. Audrey Eu Yuet-mee: the Civic Party chairwoman, who in addition to speaking at CCPL-NDI functions side-by-side with Benny Tai, is entwined with the US State Department and its NDI elsewhere. She regularly attends forums sponsored by NED and its subsidiary NDI. In 2009 she was a featured speaker at an NDI sponsored public policy forum hosted by “SynergyNet,” also funded by NDI. In 2012 she was a guest speaker at the NDI-funded Women’s Centre “International Women’s Day” event, hosted by the Hong Kong Council of Women (HKCW) which is also annually funded by the NDI. Martin Lee: a senior leader of the Occupy Central movement. Lee organized and physically led protest marches. He also regularly delivered speeches according to the South China Morning Post. But before leading the Occupy Central movement in Hong Kong, he and Anson Chan were in Washington D.C. before the NED soliciting US assistance (video). During a talk in Washington titled, “Why Democracy in Hong Kong Matters,” Lee and Chan would lay out the entire “Occupy Central” narrative about independence from Beijing and a desire for self-governance before an American audience representing a foreign government Lee, Chan, and their entire opposition are ironically very much dependent on. NED would eventually release a statement claiming that it has never aided Lee or Chan, nor were Lee or Chan leaders of the “Occupy Central” movement. But by 2015, after “Occupy Central” was over, NED subsidiary Freedom House would not only invite Benny Tai and Joshua Wong to Washington, but also Martin Lee in an event acknowledging the three as “Hong Kong democracy leaders.” All three would take to the stage with their signature yellow umbrellas, representing their roles in the “Occupy Central” protests, and of course – exposing NED’s lie denying Lee’s leadership role in the protests. Additionally, multiple leaked US diplomatic cables (here, here, and here) indicate that Martin Lee has been in close contact with the US government for years, and regularly asked for and received various forms of aid. Other opposition leaders have been literally caught meeting secretly with US diplomats including Hong Kong opposition leaders Edward Leung and Ray Wong in 2016. Delaying the Inevitable Despite the supposed size of the protests it should be remembered that similar protests in 2014 and 2016 were also large and disruptive yet yielded no concessions from either Hong Kong’s elected government or Beijing.The extradition bill will pass – if not now – in the near future. The process of reintegration it represents will continue moving forward as well. The longer the US wastes time, resources, and energy on tired tactics like sponsored mobs and political subversion, the less time, resources, and energy it will have to adjust favorably to the new international order that will inevitably emerge despite Washington’s efforts. During this year’s Shangri-La Dialogue – an annual forum discussing Asia-Pacific security – the US would reiterate its designs to encircle and contain China. For an added twist, the US would include nations like the UK and France in its plans – specifically because of Washington’s failure to cobble together any sort of alliance of actual Asia-Pacific states. China’s growing influence and its style of international relations built on investment, infrastructure development, and non-interference contrasts so favorably with Washington and Europe’s coercive neo-imperial foreign policy that despite a century headstart – the West now finds itself being left behind. The protests in Hong Kong are organized to delay the inevitable end to the West’s “primacy” over Asia and in particular its attempts to dominate China. In the process, these protests will continue to expose Washington’s methods of fuelling political subversion and the Western media’s role in deceitfully promoting and defending it – compromising similar operations being carried out elsewhere across Asia-Pacific and around the world.

[onlineworkyou2b]

Investigations Into The Personal and Political Mount For Trump

Under two years into Trump's administration, his business partners, political counselors and relatives are being tested, alongside the acts of his late dad.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Investigations currently snare Donald Trump's White House, crusade, progress, initiation, philanthropy and business. For Trump, the political, the individual and the profoundly close to home are for the most part under examination. Under two years into Trump's administration, his business partners, political consultants and relatives are being tested, alongside the acts of his late dad. On Saturday, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke turned into the fourth Cabinet part to leave under a moral cloud, having started 17 examinations concerning his activities at work, by one guard dog's check. The majority of this with the main unique insight examination against a president in 20 years hanging over Trump's head, turning out charges and solid equipping blameworthy supplications from subordinates while keeping in anticipation whether the president — "Singular 1" in examiner Robert Mueller's coded legalese — will wind up blamed for criminal conduct himself. The extent of the investigation has formed Trump's administration, demonstrating an unfaltering diversion from his overseeing plan. Up until this point, a lot of it has been propelled by administrative examiners and government guard dogs that shun partisanship. The force is sure to increment one year from now when Democrats expect control of the House and the subpoena control that accompanies it. In spite of the fact that Trump rejects the examinations as politically roused "witch chases," his high-octane Twitter account often double-crosses exactly how devoured he is by the investigation. He's likewise said to watch long periods of TV inclusion on achievement days in the examinations. "It saps your vitality, redirects your consideration and you can't lead in light of the fact that your rivals are quite agitated against you," Cal Jillson, a Southern Methodist University political specialist and student of history, said of the investigation. "It debilitates your companions and encourages your foes." Midway through his term, Trump is attempting to convey on his focal battle guarantees. He may end the year without a Republican-drove Congress giving him the $5 billion he needs for an outskirt divider. What's more, he's reviewed couple of administrative needs for 2019. Regardless of whether he had, it's impossible the new Democratic House lion's share would have much impetus to help a president debilitated by examinations pile on wins as his very own re-appointment battle approaches. Maybe not since Bill Clinton felt harassed by a "huge conservative trick," as Hillary Clinton put it, has a president been under such coercion from examination. This danger has accompanied Trump's gathering responsible for Congress and the Justice Department driving no less than three separate criminal examinations. They are the Mueller test investigating conceivable plot, hindrance of equity or other bad behavior in contacts between the Trump battle and Russia; the New York crusade back case including quiet cash paid to Trump's supposed darlings; and now a case from New York, first detailed by The Wall Street Journal this previous week, looking at the funds and tasks of Trump's debut panel and whether outside premiums made unlawful installments to it. Behind those issues is a battery of claims or request from state lawyers general and different gatherings attached predominantly to Trump organizations. Best case scenario, the examinations are eclipsing what has been sure monetary news. Even under the least favorable conditions, the tests are a danger to the administration, Trump's family and his business advantages. The profound jumping will just develop in the new year when Democrats assume control over the House. They are relied upon to dispatch their very own examinations and could seek after indictment, however party pioneers alert they could confront a political reaction by making that stride. Regardless of whether Trump stays away from reprimand, the Democratic examinations will make migraines. Organization authorities will be called to affirm under the watchful eye of Congress and legislators will look for a trove of records, most likely including Trump's expense forms, which he has declined to make open. A stripped down White House staff may battle to keep up. A count by the Brookings Institution discovers in excess of 60 percent of Trump's best assistants have left in the initial two years, a turnover rate surpassing the past five presidents. Moreover, 10 Cabinet secretaries have withdrawn, more than Barack Obama, George W. Shrubbery and Clinton lost in two years. The shake-ups now have left Mick Mulvaney, Trump's spending head, carrying out twofold responsibility uncertainly as the president's head of staff. That blend makes it difficult to envision a president viably occupied with strategy, regardless of whether — as on account of Clinton — the attracted out examinations lead to an indictment that neglects to evacuate the president. "The cutting edge administration is exceptionally unpredictable and requesting so you require the president's complete consideration," Jillson says. "Where your consideration ought to be, you're likewise contemplating gathering with your legal counselors." As the examinations mount, couple of Republicans have separated themselves openly from Trump. Yet, secretly, a few legislators do stress that the examinations will harm his re-appointment prospects and their very own odds in 2020 House and Senate races. The government battle back test has put GOP legislators in an especially unbalanced position. Investigators — and in addition Trump's long-lasting individual legal counselor Michael Cohen and a newspaper organization that has for some time been a partner — declare that Trump guided quiet installments to keep ladies close-lipped regarding affirmed issues in the end a long time of the 2016 crusade. Such an installment would disregard battle back laws. Cohen was condemned this previous week to three years in jail. Underscoring the exercise in careful control for Republicans, active Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah at first expressed that he didn't much think about Trump being ensnared in Cohen's wrongdoing, at that point reconsidered his words. "I made remarks about charges against the president that were unreliable and a poor reflection on my extensive record of devotion to the standard of law," Hatch said in an announcement Friday. Five individuals in Trump's circle have confessed to charges in the proceeding with Mueller test. Among them, Paul Manafort and Rick Gates were Nos. 1 and 2, separately, for a period in Trump's presidential crusade. George Papadopoulos, a lower-level battle consultant, was condemned to 14 days in jail and is out. The others are Michael Flynn, who was Trump's first national security guide in office and is to be condemned Tuesday, and Cohen, who is relied upon to start his sentence in March. Likewise, the uncommon guidance's office says Flynn, in giving 19 meetings and turning over a heap of records, has aided a criminal examination that presently can't seem to be uncovered. At the end of the day, there's no imaginable closure. Trump is additionally presented to lawful hazard past that from government examiners. Among the claims or examinations: — Democratic lawyers general in Maryland and the District of Columbia and congressional Democrats are testing the Trump Organization's business exchanges with remote and state government interests, for example, those at his Washington lodging, refering to the protected prohibition on presidents taking installments from such sources without congressional assent. — Summer Zervos, when a competitor on Trump's TV appear, has sued Trump for criticism for blaming her for lying. She affirmed in 2016 that he reached her. He's fizzled a few times to wreck the case. — New York impose authorities are investigating whether Trump or his beneficent establishment distorted expense obligation. What's more, the New York charge office said it is "vivaciously seeking after every single suitable road of examination" after a New York Times report discovered Trump and his family, returning to exchanges by his dad, Fred Trump, undermined charges for a considerable length of time. The report said Trump got the identical today of in any event $413 million from his dad, quite a bit of it through questionable expense moves. Trump called the report "an extremely old, exhausting and regularly told hit piece on me." — New York experts claim in a claim that Trump unlawfully tapped his altruistic Trump Foundation to settle legitimate question, help his crusade for president and cover individual and operational expense, including the buy of an actual existence measure picture of himself for $10,000. Stanley Renshon, political researcher at the City University of New York and a psychoanalyst, says the majority of that means many individuals, not simply the left, "endeavoring to make his administration unsound." It is, maybe, vaster than the conservative "intrigue" the Clintons persevered, Renshon says. "I consider it the everyone connivance."

[euroman1945-blog]

The Daily Thistle

The Daily Thistle – News From Scotland

Friday 13th July 2018

"Madainn Mhath” …Fellow Scot, I hope the day brings joy to you….The end of the working week, and Saturday just around the corner, promise of good weather for the week end, but before we get to Saturday we have The Daily Thistle to read first, so much to read about today, it’s a long read, but Boy! Have the dug some good stuff up this week….. You get on reading, I’m off out with Bella for a second walk,…

EARLIEST EVIDENCE OF HUMAN PRESENCE IN SCOTLAND FOUND…. An assemblage of over 5,000 flint artefacts was recovered in 2005-9 by Biggar Archaeology Group in fields at Howburn, near Biggar in South Lanarkshire, and subsequent studies have dated their use to 14,000 years ago. Prior to the find, the oldest evidence of human occupation in Scotland could be dated to around 13,000 years ago at a now-destroyed cave site in Argyll. Dating to the very earliest part of the late-glacial period, Howburn is likely to represent the first settlers in Scotland. The flint tools are strikingly close in design to similar finds in northern Germany and southern Denmark from the same period, a link which has helped experts to date them.  The hunters who left behind the flint remains at Howburn came into Scotland in pursuit of game, probably herds of wild horses and reindeer, at a time when the climate improved following the previous severe glacial conditions. Glacial conditions returned again around 13,000 years ago and Scotland was once again depopulated, probably for another 1000 years, after which new groups with different types of flint tools make their appearance.

REMAINS OF IRON AGE 'LOCH VILLAGE' FOUND IN SCOTLAND…. Archaeologists have discovered the remains of an Iron Age "loch village" in Wigtownshire, the first of its kind to be found in Scotland. The dig has found remains of a "loch village", thought to be the first of its kind discovered in Scotland. Experts believe it could be "Scotland's Glastonbury", a reference to the lake village in Somerset. The excavation was part-financed with £15,000 from Historic Scotland. Culture Secretary Fiona Hyslop described the village discovery at Black Loch of Myrton as "an exciting and unexpected find". The dig was carried out this summer by AOC Archaeology Group, which hopes to use the pilot excavation as the starting point for a broader programme of archaeological activity. It is one of 55 archaeology projects to receive more than £1m in funding from Historic Scotland.  The Wigtownshire dig was a small-scale pilot excavation of what was initially thought to be a crannog in the now-infilled Black Loch of Myrton, which was under threat of destruction as a result of drainage operations. However during the excavation, AOC - which worked on the dig in conjunction with local volunteers - discovered evidence of multiple structures making up a small village. What initially appeared to be one of a small group of mounds before excavation was revealed to be a massive stone hearth complex at the centre of a roundhouse. The timber structure of the house has been preserved, with beams radiating out from the hearth forming the foundation, while the outer wall consists of a double-circuit of stakes. The most surprising discovery was that the house was not built on top of an artificial foundation, but directly over the fen peat which had gradually filled in the loch. Rather than being a single crannog, as first thought, it appears to be a settlement of at least seven houses built in the wetlands around the small loch. This type of site is currently unique in Scotland and there are few other comparable sites elsewhere in the British Isles. Similar lake villages - including Glastonbury and Meare, which is also in Somerset - have been found in England, but this is the first "loch village" to be uncovered in Scotland. Experts hope that its discovery will help to improve knowledge and understanding of Iron Age Scotland.

SCOTLAND’S BURIED HERITAGE LOOTED BY TREASURE HUNTERS…. SCOTLAND’S rich archaeological heritage is being plundered by treasure hunters who fail to declare their finds in the national interest, authorities have warned. A new report by Crown officials raises concerns over “serious under-reporting” by the lucky few who stumble across buried artefacts. Professor Ian Ralston, chairman of the Scottish Archaeological Finds Allocation Panel, said: “If you look at the amount of stuff found in Northumberland and Cumbria compared to the south of Scotland, there has to be a suspicion that there is a significant number of undeclared finds.” The problem is brought to light in the Scottish Treasure Trove annual report, published yesterday by the Queen’s and Lord Treasurer’s Remembrancer. In Scotland, any finds classed as treasure, including items such as axe heads and stone carvings as well as gold and jewels, must be declared to the Crown, which will pass them on to museums or other suitable collections for public display and study. The finder is entitled to a courtesy payment, with sums ranging from £10 to £2000 handed out for individual discoveries within the past year. In England, however, the portable antiquities scheme – introduced in 1996 – allows treasure hunters to keep all but the most valuable finds. English law counts only gold, silver, large groups of coins and certain ancient artefacts as treasure, whereas in Scotland “virtually anything” can count, according to the Crown Office. Mr Ralston said the English model had led to “spectacular increases” in finds being declared, while people in Scotland may keep theirs to themselves for fear of losing them. However, with treasures remaining in the hands of finders, the scheme south of the Border is seen by some critics as selfish. Whereas Scottish artefacts are displayed in the public interest, those in England often end up in private collections or sitting on mantelpieces. Nonetheless, there remains little incentive for English archaeologists and hobbyists to hide their finds from authorities, whereas Scots will have theirs seized if they declare them. In the Treasure Trove report, Mr Ralston highlights long-term problems with undeclared finds in Scotland. “The Panel remains concerned, as it has been for a number of years, that there seems to be serious under-reporting of archaeological finds from Scotland,” he said. There are around 100 members of Scotland’s two metal detecting clubs, according to Alastair Hacket, secretary of the Edinburgh-based Scottish Detector Club, with at least 100 more who pursue the hobby independently. Numbers have risen in recent years thanks to high profile successes like that of David Booth, the novice from Stirling who found £1 million-worth of gold in 2009 on his first outing with his new metal detector. The safari park worker received a £462,000 reward. Most discoveries in Scotland involve small artefacts like coins, but the Treasure Trove report warns that expertise in this area is now lacking due to the retirement of the country’s leading numismatist. The National Museums of Scotland has not replaced its coin expert, the report said, meaning that officials face the prospect of bringing a coin-dealer up from London to handle Scots finds. Other items uncovered during the last year included a neolithic stone axehead near Perth, dating from 4000-2200 BC, and Anglo-Scandinavian sword pommel near Abington in South Lanarkshire. The pommel dates from the 9th to 10th centuries, and is noteworthy because it was found outside the cultural area thought to have created it.

'VIKING AGE DESTRUCTION' FOUND TO HAVE PRESERVED KEY PARTS OF SCOTLAND'S LARGEST PICTISH FORT…. When one of Scotland's most powerful Pictish forts was destroyed by fire in the 10th century - a time when Vikings are known to have been raiding the Moray coastline - it brought to a rapid end a way of life which had endured for centuries. But archaeologists from the University of Aberdeen have now discovered that while the tenth-century fire razing of the fort, which is often attributed to advancing Vikings, may have spelled the end for Pictish life on the promontory, it has preserved material from the site that would normally have rotted away hundreds of years ago – offering them a unique insight into its history. The team, led by Dr Gordon Noble head of archaeology at the University, returned to Burghead near Lossiemouth, in April to continue excavations at the fort – the largest of its kind in Scotland. Although Burghead’s significance as a seat of Pictish power is well known, little archaeological work has been undertaken there as it was believed all significant evidence of its earlier life was destroyed when the building of the modern town commenced in 1805. The Aberdeen team began excavations in 2015 and their efforts have already yielded significant finds including a Pictish longhouse and Anglo Saxon coins of Alfred the Great. This time they were granted scheduled monument consent to dig in the lower citadel for the first time and at the seaward ramparts of the upper citadel. In the lower citadel their excavations uncovered a huge timber laced wall which would have stood more than six metres high and in the upper citadel remarkably preserved timbers. The complexity of the fort defences was documented in the 19th century work of archaeologist Hugh Young but Dr Noble said his team had expected little trace to remain. Instead they found the defensive structure preserved in amazing detail. Dr Noble explains: “We are fortunate to have the descriptions of the site written by Hugh Young in 1893. He describes a lattice work of oak timbers which would have acted as an enormous defensive barrier and must have been a hugely complex feat of engineering in the early medieval period. Read More: https://www.facebook.com/groups/LandCalledScotland/

EARLIEST USE OF STEEL IN BRITAIN UNCOVERED…. Archaeologists have identified examples of the earliest use of steel in the British Isles from a site in East Lothian. The site, an Iron Age hill fort known as Broxmouth, was excavated in the 1970s, however the discoveries are only now being published. As part of the re-examination of the findings at Broxmouth, new analysis of some iron artefacts has found that they can be dated to 490-375BC. Made from high-carbon steel which had been deliberately heated and quenched in water, the artefacts are the earliest evidence of sophisticated blacksmithing skills in Britain. Experts are heralding the discovery as particularly significant for the insight it offers into not only the early development of such advanced manufacturing skills, but what it may tell us about social organisation at this time. Technical skills at this level would only be achievable by specialist metalworkers who devoted their lives to perfecting and developing their craft – some might say the first example of a Scottish ‘knowledge economy’. Such specialisation could only have happened with the practical support of the wider community at Broxmouth and beyond. It is a poignant start to the story of steel manufacture in Scotland, one of the great industries of the 20th century. Broxmouth was occupied from the early Iron Age right through to its abandonment during Roman occupation, nearly 1,000 years later. Remarkably well-preserved roundhouses, elaborate hill fort entrances and an exceptionally rare Iron Age cemetery are among the other exciting discoveries made at the site. One of the most comprehensive excavations of any Iron Age hill fort in Britain, a generation of Scottish archaeologists learned their trade at Broxmouth. The near-total excavation of the site marked one of the first major rescue projects in Scotland; it is now entirely gone, with a cement works in its place. Like many projects of its time it remained unpublished until now.

On that note I will say that I hope you have enjoyed the news from Scotland today,

Our look at Scotland today is of The Flying Scotsman arriving at Kings Cross London,

A Sincere Thank You for your company and Thank You for your likes and comments I love them and always try to reply, so please keep them coming, it's always good fun, As is my custom, I will go and get myself another mug of "Colombian" Coffee and wish you a safe Friday 13th July 2018 from my home on the southern coast of Spain, where the blue waters of the Alboran Sea washes the coast of Africa and Europe and the smell of the night blooming Jasmine and Honeysuckle fills the air…and a crazy old guy and his dog Bella go out for a walk at 4:00 am…on the streets of Estepona…

All good stuff....But remember it’s a dangerous world we live in

Be safe out there…

Robert McAngus #Scotland #Travel #Highlands #Archeology #News #Blog #Spain

[collymore]

White and therefore always right!

By Stanley Collymore

  You’re white and, evidently in your case, totally useless!

And not just as it happens to society generally but also,

quite specifically and rather obvious too, to yourself.

However, for all of these appalling circumstances

and, as far as it can objectively be discerned or

properly understood from closely observing

you, you’re furthermore firmly and even

emphatically of the extremely and also

unambiguously fiery estimation that

as far as each one of the numerous

and distinctly dissimilar races who’re

currently and collectively living on this Planet Earth

that we mutually call home, and that together and

for the most part fall exactly under the sensed

and generally accepted judgement of being

labelled human, it’s only your own, and,

moreover, as you see it too, the added

benefit of your most treasured and

enormously revered skin colour,

that conjointly and acceptably

guarantee that you and your

white kind aren’t only and decidedly but also

correspondingly too, enormously superior

in all facets - that one can immediately

call to mind - to all other races and

ethnicities globally; regardless, it appears to be,

how evident and unquestionably transparent

is the authoritative conclusion which that

exceptionally ludicrous and definitely

discriminatory deduction of yours,

in faultless juxtaposition no less,

with recognizably concurring

persons who think and act

as you do, is undeniably

and idiotically wrong.

  Nevertheless, in your obsessive and utterly idiotic

lunacy, you ceaselessly persist to still puke out

and most amazingly believe your ludicrous

and incredibly senseless contention, that

simply because you’re a woman and

happen to have been born a white

Caucasian – handily omitting to

acknowledge in your errantly

twisted and delusional observations that you are

a pretty pathetic, on top of you likewise being

manifestly and breathtakingly a poor excuse,

if ever there was one, for a human being –

that by dint of being born white doesn't

automatically, as you acutely believe,

of itself unassailably confer on you,

either forever and so decisively, a

matchless and, to all intents and

purposes, an elite and premium

brand of exceptionalism, that,

of course, then translates as

fundamentally individual

concerns, to instinctively

and also exclusively too

transform for you into

that prized category

you're wont to see

as clarification of

an enduring and

cast-iron white

supremacism.

  © Stanley V. Collymore

9 July 2017.

    Author’s Remarks:

This poem and the accompanying article of the same name and nature that I’ve written and accordingly am presenting here for your personal examination, succinctly, unambiguously and most unapologetically sum up, and rather fittingly too even if I say so myself, my distinctly firm and objectively held views on the matter that I’m accordingly highlighting and, if anything, is an opinion that’s convincingly reinforced by the sickeningly evil and pathetically lowlife actions of JEMMA BEALE, a fantasist rape victim, who is now finally and publicly acknowledged as such, and following her recent court conviction for officially having made some FIFTEEN bogus rape accusations to the British police that resulted in the imprisonment of her entirely innocent victims and her even being compensated from the public purse with a sum of £11.000 Pounds Sterling in one instance for merely saying that that particular, and now known never to have taken place, rape had left her “totally devastated”, has finally been publicly exposed as the pathological liar that she is, fittingly convicted for the lying and multiple bogus rape accusations that she had made against her randomly selected male victims plus additional proven charges against her of wilful acts of perjury under oath in a court of law, and is presently, as I write, remanded in custody awaiting sentence for her disreputable, persistent and pernicious criminal behaviour.

  All well and good you may say and might even suitably agree that Jemma Beale is getting what she truly deserves and, consequently, that ought to be the end of this matter. But should it? For frankly, I don’t think so. And, what’s more, am firmly and conclusively of the belief that a significant portion of the overall blame in relation to this perfidious calamity should and must be directly laid at the feet of the local police force that incredibly, so incompetently dealt with this woman’s multiple false rape accusations. And in tandem with them too the Department of Public Prosecutions (DPP) that saw fit to recklessly and most idiotically submit over a sustained period of time some 15 distinctive and alleged rape allegations from this same woman, and solely on her own word, to the British courts’ attention where in turn they all led to successful prosecutions.

  This without seemingly, in the least, being curious about any of them; bothering to scrutinize these multiple allegations of hers to ascertain for themselves that they actually happened or, for that matter, in their specific case, quite patently too dim-witted to take cognizance of the proverbial penny having dropped that this evil lowlife and an exceedingly poor excuse for a human being was most cynically and deliberately conning all of them while, at the same time, purposefully and psychologically abusing, as well as intentionally and maliciously setting out to irretrievably ruin the reputations, job prospects and even the personal lives of those whom she’d sadistically and dementedly decided must be and, therefore, accordingly had chosen to be her hapless victims.

  Significantly too in all of this sickening charade Jemma Beale was quite well known to both her local police force, the DPP and one could even argue the courts that she attended to make her scurrilous and lying rape allegations against her innocent victims. And it’s not beyond the wit, one would have imagined, of all these various and highly paid public officials for at least one among their number to ask the obvious question of why is this woman being so routinely raped and furthermore by different men totally unknown to each other in any way and also on distinctly separate occasions and different locations? But evidently nothing of the kind didn’t cross the minds of these collective morons who seemingly couldn’t without instructions being given to them navigate their way out of a sodden paper bag. Nor did they ask, what to anyone with even a half-functioning brain would spontaneously have done, is why a woman who to all intents and purposes would have been massively outdone in every department, and simply for beauty alone, by the rear end of an elephant was such an irresistible draw for lecherous men who, without knowing her, nevertheless had this compulsive fixation to rape her?

  But cogent issues or persuasive arguments like these ones didn’t matter to the police, the DPP and their lawyers or even the courts involved, since they’d all made up their minds where guilt laid and had done so from the very start without even bothering on their part to assess the so-called evidence provided by JEMMA BEALE, prejudicially working on the longstanding tried and tested, racist white European and, particularly, British, system and that even an extremely dim-witted moron like Jemma Beale was completely aware of: “Who do you think the police, the DPP, the juries, the judges and per se the courts and white society generally are going to believe, you a Black or otherwise non-white person or ME a white, Caucasian woman?"

  And JEMMA BEALE was absolutely right in her assessment for having chosen her bevy of non-white victims to castigate as her rapists, with the police, DPP and the courts dutifully and quite faultlessly, and in step with their institutionalized racism, for there’s absolutely no other way that any sensible or rational person can describe the outcome, completely unprofessionally, with not a trace of legal or ethical impartiality and furthermore at every term fully with their backing and blessing bent over backwards in their bigoted hostility to accommodate in every respect the delusional, narcissistic and markedly prejudicial lunacy, attendant with their own, of Jemma Beale. Attesting to their mutually held and sick concept that being white, and irrespective of what the evidence is to the contrary, automatically and at all times makes you the consummately proud and worthy possessor of that racial identity both unquestionably and naturally unchallengeably too, right!

  Anne Marie Morris claims that her racist remarks were “unintentional”. Which prompts the very obvious question, to those who aren’t dim-witted that is, of how can something which you consciously and deliberately said, not in the heat of an argument or some unexpectedly provoked situation be ever unintentional? But we all know what Anne Marie Morris means. It was unintentional on her part and that of the other white trash lowlifes who were congregated with her for her racist remarks to ever find their way into the public domain. But they have! And as a Black man I really don’t give a fuck now, any more than I did when BORIS KAMAL: The Yid, Nazi-Zionist and incumbent UK regime Foreign Secretary, referred to Black people as “piccaninnies with watermelon smiles.”

  But no Black person with a worthwhile life would have risen to Boris Kamal’s utterly childish and deliberately provocative abuse and therefore retaliatorily and similarly insultingly refer to him and his kind as “snipped-dicks, Oedipus Rex fixated, obsessively money-grabbing, incestuously in-breeding and consummately delusional pillocks”, would they? And for the very simple reason that Blacks have heard these kinds of repetitive, boring and abusive remarks emanating from white trash Caucasians for a number of centuries, and we’re still here; and it’s like water off a duck’s back to us. But when you are as pathetic as these mother-fuckers are and of the ilk of ANNE MARIE MORRIS and BORIS KAMAL what they in their vitriol puke out towards us says more about themselves than it ever does or can about us.

  For essentially, although physically in the 21st Century, they’ve nothing whatsoever to positively contribute to it, and whether they recognize this or not their only salvation as they perceive it is to psychologically, and even physically in their rather sick and delusional minds, transport themselves to what they nonsensically regard as the unchallengeable and halcyon days when whites, in their demented minds, were the only people on Planet Earth that mattered and as a result determined and controlled everything on it that happened. In short, the Master Race and consequently didn’t have to worry about anything, because whatever they chose to think and subsequently did was, as far as they were concerned, the only things that mattered.

  Principally and for lowlifes like Jemma Beale, Boris Kamal and Anne Marie Morris, who are all markedly and from every psychological perspective lacking in genuine self-worth, a most ideal situation, since they can all enthusiastically rely on their race and skin colour, which to everyone else, apart from themselves and others like them who observably think and act the same way, are evidently characteristics that they certainly had nothing at all to do with in determining, in relation to themselves; just as everyone else, regardless of their race or colour, are equally in the same situation. But don’t tell them that as they’re too thick to actually comprehend what you’re really saying to them! And for some in the mainstream media to excuse the behaviour of Anne Marie Morris and Boris Kamal by saying that they went to Oxford University, my own reaction to that is: so what? And not least so because I know of several people who eschewed the offers for them to attend this privileged-elite-attracting cesspool, because they preferred to attend REAL universities and deal with NORMAL students and lecturers there.

  And even though it’s patently obvious that Jemma Beale, unlike Boris Kamal and Anne Marie Morris, didn't attend Oxford University the demonstrably obvious mind-set between the three of them is unmistakably obvious. Collective white trash blowing in the wind!