#Back Chat: Good Weekend letters to the editor

[eponymous-rose]

Friday!

Whew, here we are! Answered some emails on the bus again - mostly responding to students who had some questions about their homework assignment due next week (so proud that they're not leaving it to the last moment!) and assuring them that we'll have a little time in class to go over stuff today. Invitation to act as editor of a special issue of a scientific journal, but it's one of those more-than-borderline-predatory journals so no thanks. Set up a time to grab lunch with some of my professor friends in other departments..... in March. Ah, academic calendars. Another title and abstract for the seminar series I'm running that I passed along to our admins to add to our website (no, I don't have edit permissions on our department website; yes, it's annoying for everyone involved). Apart from that, just some reminders of instrument downtime and whatnot.

Time for class! I get a little scattered at one point but drag myself back from the brink of confusion and I think it's a pretty fun class overall. We finish ten minutes early so I answer the student questions about the homework ("Yes, the equation really is supposed to be that long, but don't worry, it works exactly the same way as the shorter version."). One student asks how exactly they get data from their weather stations. That is 100% something my former co-instructor managed and I did not, so that's a really good question, student. Offered to get back to everyone on that and sent a slightly panicked email to the previous instructor. No word back yet. Alas.

No seminar this afternoon so I'll probably head out early, but it's time to do all the stuff I've been putting off this week. Awkwardly reach out to the head of a federal research lab in Europe to see if he could put in a good work for me to finagle an "invited" seminar in May while I'm in Europe anyway for a conference. Send a message to a prospective graduate student that I think I'm going to hire - we've got to set up some time to chat to make sure she's really interested in what I'm proposing to do. Do some of the annoying pre-hire financial paperwork stuff so it's ready to go and send that off to the department chair.

Back to email! Someone reaching out to see if they could give a seminar in my seminar series, which is full to the gills at this point except for one day in March, so maybe that'll work? It will? Great! Shocked I was able to pull in 9 different speakers so easily - filling these seminar slots is usually like pulling teeth.

What else have I been putting off? Wrote the final two reference letters for student internships, which was fun. And... that might be it, really. I didn't do much (anything) in the way of research this week, but I've cleared the way for the rest of the month to be free of some time-consuming things like paper reviews and recommendation letters. On to the long weekend!

If anyone read all this, thanks for coming along - having the little push of accountability really helped me make sure I was getting things done, and the diary style made it easier to go back and check that I really was completing the things I'd promised. I'll probably keep this up for my own benefit, although I likely won't inflict it on Tumblr anymore.

ONWARD TO D&D NIGHT.

Something I wanted to do in the New Year is be more aware of how I'm spending my time at work, so I think I'm gonna try to do little summaries here of what each day entails. Hopefully also kind of interesting/useful if anyone's interested in academia?

For reference: we're on the quarter system, classes started on the 3rd, and I currently teach one class per quarter (heavy research-focused department, so very light teaching load). I also currently supervise 1 PhD student, 2 Master's students and 2 undergraduate research interns.

Monday!

Checked email on the bus to work, which mainly consisted of me seeing a colleague had received an endowed professorship, me writing her an effusive congratulatory message, and then me editing back the message a bit so it was less embarrassingly over the top. Also sent my students a reminder about their homework due on Wednesday and our little field trip tomorrow morning and accidentally sent it to last quarter's class, whoops. Luckily a former student quickly notified me of my mistake and I got it fixed!

Class was great - lots of flipped-classroom stuff that worked well even with only two students in the room (it's a conference week, everyone's traveling). I knew from previous years that the students had really, really struggled with this one equation, so I had them do a couple of examples in class and after working through the first one together, they both nailed it on the second try. Had to cancel a meeting with one of my undergrad research interns after class because the other members of our research team are out of town this week. Where is everyone? Well, at a conference and doing a two-month-long field campaign on the east coast. Forgivable. She offered to send me some of the work she's done thus far, so that's handy!

Went to check email after class and found that apparently a new remote meeting had popped on my schedule for immediately after class with an old peer mentoring group of mine (fellow 4th-year assistant profs in tangentially-related fields - we all did a professional development course last year together). Luckily it was cameras off so I could snack and decompress a bit while we caught up and made some strategic plans for the quarter.

Okay, FINALLY time to check email in earnest before my next meeting. 36 new messages since I checked last. New software package I need to bookmark and keep in mind for later work. Updates from the conference I'm technically attending virtually this week. Reference letter request from an undergrad student; add to calendar! Title and abstract to get added to the website for a seminar I'm hosting in a couple weeks. Reminder that the Zoom recording of my class is available to put online (which I promptly did). Triple-check with our tech guy that we're good to go up on the roof tomorrow to set up instrumentation for my class's term projects (all good!). Time flies, so here's the email with research progress from my undergraduate research intern and a handful of questions, we'll answer those and see how she likes jumping into a new dataset. New grant opportunities, job listings, a bunch of easy stuff to mark off. An essay about allocating time each week into the categories of Teaching, Research, and Service and strictly adhering to the percentages laid out by your tenure/promotion committee. Got a few minutes before my next meeting so I'll try it this week? Ish? Maybe? Looked sidelong at the new schedule, sure, we'll try that this week. Sent an email to my collaborator who's on a field project to see if we can do a remote meeting tomorrow to chat about a couple research proposals. Queued an email for next week's seminar speaker to see if he can send me the title and abstract for his talk/PhD entrance exam next week - no sense freaking him out before Wednesday, so we'll do a scheduled send.

Next up, meeting remotely with my former postdoc advisor! We've set up these meetings to "work on research projects" together but honestly this week it was just listening to him tell a very entertaining story about his car breaking down in rural Missouri and also listening to him describe a truly tragic tale of his very fancy sandwich getting thrown out of the office fridge by accident. That's scientific collaboration, baybee. We did talk research for a bit and he mentioned wanting to collaborate on a paper (he offered to pay for it out of the much more substantial research funds that come with his 30 extra years in the field) so I'm gonna come up with something for that by our next meeting in two weeks. I like working with him - we've published a couple papers in some pretty high-impact journals and he's always let me take the lead and go for first authorship without butting in, only providing support - so this is a fun prospect! I do have to submit an abstract this week for a European conference that'll be happening this spring, so maybe I can go ahead and lean into that idea a little.

It's now getting a little dark and rainy and I'm flagging a bit but I still have an hour before the afternoon seminar, so probably time to do a little course prep. Did some "grading" (just checking completion certificates for an introductory module the students had to go through). Fixed a mistake in Wednesday's lecture (why is there an anemometer when I'm talking about thermometers???). Reviewed some of the more complicated topics in Wednesday's lecture to make sure I'm not totally lost (some thermodynamics I haven't looked at in a while, thermocouples, semiconductors). Replacement slides uploaded to our course management system.

Aha! Email back from collaborator, she's going to be on a research flight tomorrow and won't be able to meet. All good, I don't have much to report anyway. That frees up an hour tomorrow, woohoo.

Okay, students have a homework assignment due a week from Wednesday, so I'm gonna post it this Wednesday. I have a good homework assignment prepared, I just needed to go in and write up a nice answer key. Got that done (along with some sample Python code to provide them with) and the homework assignment is scheduled to be posted, so it's time to look at next week's lectures. I've inherited this class from someone whose course notes can be a little scattered, so this is usually a bit of a process. Only two lectures to prep for next week, though!

Took a break from lecture prep to go to today's seminar, which purported to be about a really dodgy geoengineering scheme (redundant descriptor, am I right?) but in fact just rigorously tested said scheme and demonstrated it would actually have the opposite effect. Super fun and interesting seminar!

Okay, back to working on lectures for next week. Somehow got both of next week's lectures done before the end of the day, so those should just need a little polish and they'll be ready to go! Uploaded them to the course management system but sneakily and they won't appear to students until I've checked them over.

Tomorrow: going to the roof with my students to set up their term projects, then tons of sweet, sweet, meeting-free office time carved out. Hope this doesn't come back to bite me with a million meetings on Wednesday (...it will).

Important: work is done by 5PM. I try very hard to adhere to "leave work at work", which is not as much of a pipe dream as it seems, even for R1 tenure-track.

[kamandzak]

Into the Great Night - Chapter 2

I started writing this book about a year ago and finished it ~7 months ago. Performing a big rewrite and this chapter is so dismally beautiful I can’t keep it to myself.

Context: Andrew Garland’s boyfriend of eight years has passed away and he is struggling

Recommended listening: Compass and Miracle by Two Steps from Hell

     It was foolish of me to think it would be any better at Tessa’s house. Merely leaving the place Greg and I had cohabitated didn’t mean our past would leave me; that my grief would leave me.

    It was no better sitting on Tessa’s couch as opposed to my own.

    It was still lonely. It was still joyless.

    It was still too cold.

      If that was my new normal…. If that was the life of which I would be forced to live for the rest of my days, I preferred to die.

      Tessa was worried. Beth was worried. Sara and Clara were worried. They all had the right to be. Mom and Dad still hadn’t reached out. I couldn’t say I was mad about it.

      For the first month I carried the same daily, depressive routine: Wake up, shower, watch videos, eat, shower again, sleep. Wash, rinse, repeat. Nothing to disrupt the morose mentality I held from the moment my eyes opened until they closed. Even in my dreams I continued being sad. I couldn’t escape – trapped forever.

    Jake’s constant messages of concern did nothing but send me sinking deeper and deeper into hazy nothingness. Peppered with queries about when I planned to emerge onto the gaming scene, along with the occasional ludicrous statement about how he understood my stuffy brain, each message was deleted as it was read. There was no reason to have those hanging around, reminding me why I was in Reno and not where I had once dreamed of making a life for myself.

      Whenever I closed my eyes, Greg’s face appeared in the dark. Maybe I was napping; maybe I was finally sleeping fully through the night; maybe I was simply blinking. Always, he was there.

    Sometimes it was a fleeting glance of what used to be the best part of my life. Sometimes I dreamed of things that had already happened, or things I wanted to be that would never come to light.

    One night, I dreamed we got married. Waking up was almost as painful as watching him die.

      Tessa was worried I’d off myself. It wasn’t like we talked about it or anything, of course, but I could hear her and Beth sitting over tea every weekend, hushed mutterings coming from her dining room table or her room or her little porch. My grief had thrown a wrench into the lives of those around me, Beth worrying about my life when she normally would work on lesson plans for her rambunctious class of first graders. When she was feeling brave, Tessa would ask why I kept my secrets down deep for so long. That right there was why.

    I had suffered from depression before but what I was feeling wasn’t just unadulterated sadness; it was a fierce, far more complicated set of emotions leading me to exist in a far more dangerous mindset than I had ever been in before. Instead of having an urge to kill the part of me that is making me feel so unbelievably yet nondescriptly sad, I wanted death. Death, full stop.

    Mom and Dad and Sara and Clara and Beth and Tessa weren’t good enough reasons to stay alive, and all I wanted was to see Greg just for another minute. I wanted to give up a life with my own flesh and blood just to see him again. I would have given up all the time in the world for one more night of SNL and inside jokes with a man who made me feel like so much more than who I actually was; a unextraordinary nerd with awkward social tendencies and difficulty communicating. With Greg I felt like I was more than just me; without him, I didn’t know who I was anymore.

    “Andrew! Your phone!” A crumpled ball of paper bounced off my head as Tessa’s voice cut through my outer shell, the sounds of my phone following her words. My phone beeped loudly, the tell-tale sign of a Facetime call on it’s way, and I dragged my finger across the screen to accept before I read the name. Each bodily movement seemed to take ten times longer than Before. I was living seconds behind reality.

    “Garland.”

Jake’s face popped onto my screen. 5… 4… 3… 2… 1….

    “Hi.”

    “You look like hell.”

Jake’s mouth stopped moving before I even put together the string of letters that made up his blunt statement.

    “Mm,” I managed.

    “You in Reno?” I nodded. “I’m heading out that way this weekend. Never been to Vegas believe it or not. Figured I’d go explore. Have you seen anyone since everything happened?

    “Andrew, want anything from the gas station?” Tessa stood in her door frame and as I shook my head she left without another word.

    “I’ll take that as a no?”

    “Yeah, no. No, I haven’t seen anyone. I don’t want to see anyone.”

    “What if they came to you? So you didn’t have to leave where you are?”

    “I’m not about to let a stranger into my sister’s apartment.”

    “We’re not technically strangers at this point, right?”

    “Why are you so hell-bent on meeting face-to-face?”

Jake paused, inhaling loudly, wheezily, in a way that reminded me of Greg; then again, everything reminded me of Greg whether it had anything to do with him or not.

    “The best thing that came out of the worst time in my life is now I can be empathetic to other people going through the same thing.”

The tiniest part of me wanted to know what he’d been through but the larger part didn’t have the brain power to care because what actually mattered didn’t exist anymore. I didn’t think Jake was purposely jabbing at open, festering wounds for the sake of cruelty; he was just caring for me.

    I didn’t want his caring. I only wanted one person’s caring and couldn’t get past the knowledge that I'd never have it again.

    “Let me know if you want someone to talk to. I’m only in Nevada for a couple of days. I won’t mind stopping. Really.”

    “Mm.”

    “I gotta go. Message me.”

The screen went black. Please Rate the Quality of your Call, a prompt stated, with the outlines of five stars beneath. I did no such thing.

    I wasn’t about to message him, even if I had a reason to do so. I wasn’t going to be messaging anyone because all conversations led back to Greg. How was gaming going? Was I still in Los Angeles? Was I still going to be on YouTube? All questions would eventually wind up being about him and the more I talked, the more I would have to remember. The more I would have to remember, the more I would have to feel, the more I would hurt.

    It started happening when I arrived at Tessa’s; my need for answers led me to the internet and introduced me to the term dissociation; I would simply leave my body. Up to the ceiling I seemed to float as if filled with helium, watching what was taking place below. Tessa waking up and making breakfast before going to her gaming room; her video editor Reese chatting with her about her upload schedule; Beth coming and going; myself sitting in the same spot on the same couch day in and day out.

    I didn’t know why it was happening, the only reasonable explanation being that I so desperately didn’t want to exist but was too much of a damn coward to kill myself. In the end, dissociation seemed like the best option. Just remove myself painlessly from my surroundings. Was certainly better than the alternative. It was peaceful, exiting the current plane and living somewhere else if only for just a few minutes.

    Live. That was the key word. I was still technically alive, my heart still beating and my stomach still digesting and my eyes blinking and lungs expanding with each breath. The human being my brain commanded was still moving. My mind was developed enough to operate on autopilot, doing the dumb things it had to do to keep everything in stasis. I ‘lived’, for lack of a better word.

    When I did gather the courage to look up what I was feeling on the internet, nothing made sense. Nothing could be remotely tailored to fit my situation. I could relate to none of it. These people with their inspiring stories and memoirs written in loving memoriam, and benches dedicated to loved ones… their experiences seemed to minimize what kept me awake at night. How were they able to do that? How could those strangers make me and my emotions feel trivial without even knowing me and without me actively posting in detail what was happening in my head? As hard as I tried to imagine those brave widows and widowers and left-behinds feeling the way I did, their stories always wound up being of getting over that tremendous loss.

    I didn’t want to get over it. If I got over it I would lose Greg forever. I’d already lost him once.

    The grocery lists of things I could do to help myself mocked me as I read the advice of people who claimed to know how to recover from the un-recoverable. Write them a letter, authors would write in silly, curly-cue fonts before giving me a whole page to write the letter, as if I was going to sit down and put pen to paper and tell Greg about something I saw that reminded me of our first date. List all the good times, one said, with bullet points for me to fill out five moments, as if every moment we had together wasn’t the best of my life. Find someone to talk to, another whimsically suggested as it reminded me that keeping my feelings inside was dangerous. As if I didn’t already know it was ripping me apart from the inside.

    They didn’t tell me how to start a letter to Greg where all I could do was say how much I missed him. They didn’t tell me how to find someone to talk to when I didn’t want to talk to anyone about anything. They gave me five fucking spots to talk about good times as if our six-year relationship could be reduced down to that many moments and no more.

    They said all of it was doable; they said that when the lost their husband or wife or boyfriend or girlfriend or best friend or grandparent or dog or whatever, those were the steps they took to recovering and moving on.

    They weren’t me, though. They weren’t me and they weren’t Greg and they weren’t the set of circumstances under which we had lived. Even if half of the equation was there, the other wasn’t. Maybe their loved one was sick. Were they sick with the same ailment, or one that carried similar stigma? Did they purposely risk illness for the sake of their significant other or family member or friend? Did their risk become reality because fate can be an unnecessarily cruel mistress? Did they love the other person so much they shortened their own life?

    The door opened and couch shifted as Tessa’s hands landed on the sides of my face.

    “Andrew”

I cracked at her voice, her icy hands wrapping around my head and pushing me against her. Worming my arms under hers, I clung to her small shoulders, weeping into her jacket sleeves. Eyes screwed shut I gasped for air, seeing Greg in the darkness as he mirrored the same breathy sounds. While mine were of sadness, his were of death – the only sound of him I could manage to remember despite being together for so long. Tessa pulled at my non-resisting body and we sat together, tangled in a heap of coats and scarves and unwashed hair. Much like when we were young – when we didn’t understand what the world was about or why we were with the people we were with – and Tessa would protect me, we sat close, her love drowning out the pulsing drone of fear and hatred and sadness and anger rushing through my mind as it struggled to comprehend the incomprehensible.

    For several minutes, we sat in silence.

    “Andrew.”

    “Mm.”

    “I love you.”

    “I know.”     “And,” she finally pushed me off her body, holding me in front of her. Cold air hit my hot face, adhering the salty wash of tears to my skin, “And you can talk to me about anything you need to. I know you don’t want to. I know you think you’re strong enough. Maybe the only way to become strong is to not be.”

    “Where do I s-start?” I hiccupped.

    “Let’s get the team together,” she began, rising slowly and pulling me up with her. “Maybe they can help.”

    “But-.”

    “No one knows you like we do.”

      Hours later, beneath the door of Tessa’s bedroom, I heard her. I heard them.

    “You guys have to get here as soon as you can. Please.”

    “What’s the matter, Tess?”

    “I think it’s happening…. I think the numbness is wearing off. He’s starting to feel things again. It’s not that I don’t want to be here when it happens. I just don’t want to not have you guys here with us. I don’t know what do to.”

Greg’s death wasn’t supposed to be affecting my sisters as the sounds of their video call trickled through the under-crack of the door. It wasn’t supposed to be affecting Jake or anyone else but me and the Davis’.

    It was a stupid thought and their voices continued, muffled by my sense of inadequacy. Of course it would be affecting other people. It started doing so the moment Tessa posted my video. It started affecting the girls the second I told them I was having an emergency and they needed to come see me. What I hadn’t wanted was exactly what I had dug myself into when I welcomed other people into the hell-circle I was stuck in.

    I didn’t want them to come see me. I didn’t want Beth to take time off and Clara to leave Frank and Sara to leave Duncan to come take care of me. I was twenty-four. I should have been able to take care of me.

      The front door opened several hours later and I looked up with a faux look of surprise. Out, I sent them telepathically. Please go.

    “Why are you here?” Tessa rolled her eyes at my question.

    “Boy, don’t pretend like you weren’t listening on my Zoom call with them,” she cracked a smile before reading the room and immediately coming back to our reality. “You know why.”

    “We’re just afraid that there’s more to address than just your changing grief,” Beth began and bile began rising in my throat. It was only a matter of time really, before they put two and two together. I guess I had thought it would take a little longer. Her hand landed in the middle of my back, leading me to the same sofa where Tessa and I had broken down together.

    “Don’t worry about me,” I began confidently. “I’m just-.”

    But then I coughed. I coughed and coughed and the more I tried to regulate my breathing, the harder it was. Choking; gasping.

    Hands rubbed my back while others pushed me down and a another lowered a glass of water into my field of vision. Sip, choke, swallow, repeat until I could finally shakily inhale with difficulty.

    Looking down at me were four sets of beautiful, worried eyes with which I could barely stand to keep contact.

    Clara spoke,

    “Stage three.”     “What?”

    “That’s what you’re in, isn’t it? Frank just… just lost a patient and when I asked him, especially when Tessa told me about all of your shakes and fevers, he said he thinks it's stage three. I think I believe him.”

I was at a complete and utter loss. In my molasses-filled, sloths-paced brain, grief at the loss of Greg drifted beside my own secrets and the suffering of my sisters, bouncing off of one another like oil and water.

    “You don’t understand,” I finally said.

    “Don’t understand what, exactly,” Tessa asked pointedly, further questions and opinions trapped behind pursed lips. I could practically see them stabbing her mouth, begging to be released.

    “Everything!” I exploded. I hadn’t been truly angry yet; up until then anger had taken too much effort. What energy grief didn’t zap from my system the HIV stole for its own selfish purposes. “It’s all connected, isn’t it?” I asked, huffing out laughs like a mad scientist whose madness had taken over the scientist within. “I can’t tell the world about me and Greg because I’m afraid of people finding out I’m not straight. Then I’m with Greg and he’s so afraid of never having love and I love him more than I’ve ever loved anyone in my life, so then we take a risk and guess what? Protection fails. The risk becomes reality and I get HIV but I can’t talk about the love or the disease because it’s been ingrained in me since I was a child that people who get sick with this illness get it as recompense for their actions. I don’t believe it when I look at Greg but when I stare at myself in the mirror all I can hear is Dad’s voice. I go to clinics occasionally but only outside of town and without people I even sort of know because I’m afraid subscribers who have never seen my fucking face will recognize me and assume I’m going there for a reason I don’t want anyone to know about and guess what? They’re right! I don’t want them to know about going to get HIV treatment because I’m afraid of people finding out I’m not straight.”

    “Andrew-.”

    “We keep loving each other because hey, once I’m sick, we might as well, right?”

    “Andrew-.”

    “And then Greg dies. Greg fucking dies and I can’t tell anyone because I don’t have anyone and the only reason I don’t is because I spent the first seventeen years of my life having it ingrained in my mind that if I don't date, marry, and have a family with a beautiful woman, I’m damned to a life of eternal suffering.”

    “But we-.”

    “I can’t tell the gaming community because then Dad could find out. I can’t tell you guys or Mom because I feel bad that I kept it a secret for so long but I had to keep it a secret so I could stay safe and love the man I loved because I knew he didn’t have all the time in the world. So now I’m one serious infection away from dying because I didn’t do serious enough treatments to start with because I was so afraid of people finding out I’m not straight,” I nearly screamed, throat raw, standing up and spinning around to face my audience. “How the fuck am I supposed to deal with all of this?”

From all four sides, warm sweaters hit my torso as each sister came from a different angle and held on tightly, two of them shaking against me with emotion. Long nails raked through my hair, hands rubbed my back and arm and nape of neck; hair tickled my nose. Cold, dry lips pressed against my forehead.

    When I dared to observe who was directly in front of me, Sara had tears running down her slim cheeks.

    “This is why I didn’t want to tell you,” I whispered. “All it’s doing is making you sad.”

    “I would have been sad when you first told me, Andrew. Nothing keeps human emotion from happening. But you’ve kept it in for so long, and the longer it builds up the more explosive it is when you finally release the valve. If you told me six years ago that you were in love with a boy and were scared, I would have been so proud. I would have supported you in whatever you wanted to do… however you wanted to live your life. If you told me whenever you found out about being sick that you were sick, I would have been devastated. I still am. It’s just… complicated now,” she petered off as the others nodded in agreement.

    “I’m not mad at you, in case you think that,” Clara spoke. “I don’t think any of us are. In a way it’s nice to finally know all your dirty laundry so we can be here as a family. I know you have your reasons for doing what you did. We all do. There’s a lot to sort out. A lot to do. A lot of catching up that has to take place.”

    “There’s no timeline for this stuff,” Beth began and before I could stop myself, I opened my mouth,

    “AIDS, Beth. A. I. D. S.”

    “Grief, Andrew. G. R. I. E. F.”

    “Awesome,” I mumbled. “How am I supposed to do this?”

    “Not alone. We need to get you a doctor here,” Tessa said with a sad expression that, for a brief moment, I wanted to smack off of her face. “I haven’t seen you go since we moved. You don’t want to, but we don’t want to lose you.” I wanted to lose me but that was beside the point so I kept the words inside. “I can’t lose you,” she managed and faint sounds of stifled sadness cut through the quiet.

    “I know you want to go,” Beth said as Clara and Sara ushered Tessa away from the scene. “Not to the doctor, but to him. You want to go to Greg. Right now what we say won’t change that. Nothing we say will change how you feel. Nothing feels worth living for right now and I know that. When you go through something like this, you can tell other people you really do know what they’re going through. We aren’t worth living for right now and I understand that. There isn’t much we can do, but what we can do is make sure you’re eating and at least taking some medication. There isn’t much more to do right now than sustain yourself. Let us help.”

    “Okay.”     “You loved him. I understand that,” Beth whispered, wrapping her arms around me. “And you both did what you could with the time you had. Life’s unfair. I don’t know why things happen to people the way they do. I’m sorry.”

    “Why wasn’t my best good enough?”

    “Oh, Andrew. It was. I promise. There are just some things we can’t control. It’s horrible, isn’t it?”

[batmansymbol]

some stream-of-consciousness rambling about how i’m doing, mostly depressing

the good: my mom got off the immigration list and is going back to malaysia (under quarantine for the first two weeks) for proceedings and that’s the most important thing. she’s traveling there on very empty planes. i’ve been scared that they wouldn’t let her back in because she had to surrender her malaysian citizenship to get US citizenship because my country is built on arrogance disguised as patriotism. anyway - whatever - this is good news.

i went for a run for the first time today in my new neighborhood and baked chocolate chip cookies a couple days ago off my favorite recipe, which is a recipe that one of my closest friends wrote, and which i use whenever i want to feel a bit at home. she also sent me a care package over the weekend, which was lovely of her and has made me feel a little less isolated.

so - i’m up and about, even if my sleep is freshly wrecked. i’m in this weird numb place where i’ll drift around my apartment and feel sort of mismatched to my surroundings. sometimes something will spark a memory (an old red packet i kept bc it was pretty, a recorded voice on a speaker) and i’ll just start crying, and then soon afterward i’ll have this sensation of placement, where i’m very aware of my body’s posture and situation in whatever room i’m crying in, and it sort of shocks me out of crying, and then i straighten up and don’t know what to do.

i’ve been having weirdly normal text conversations with friends who don’t know anything has happened. i just don’t know how to bring it up but i feel like i’m lying when i don’t. i think it’s partially because of this that i’ve been feeling lonely, although i am glad this all happened after i moved into my own place, because i think it would be even more stressful to feel that i need to manage my emotions in order not to constantly depress a roommate.

TV and movies haven’t been helping, but reading has, interestingly. i guess with books there’s a mixture between immersion and action that feels helpful to me, as opposed to film, which washes over me and has been giving me almost a feeling of helplessness, certainly restlessness. there’s a book called the priory of the orange tree, an amazing standalone epic fantasy, that i highly recommend if anyone wants a (giant) new read. really helped knock me out of things for a bit.

i’ve begun to have these moments of fear before falling asleep that i’ll die in my sleep and no one will find my body for days because i’m not very good at communicating, so me not replying to someone’s text wouldn’t be that notable. i keep thinking about my poor health due to nutrition and lack of exercise (thus the run) and anticipating that i’ll be diagnosed with cancer or die of a heart attack. you would think the pandemic would factor into some of this, but i have barely thought about it beyond today, when i was running and trying not to breathe within six feet of passersby.

when i got back to my apartment after my run, my cute neighbor was just coming inside and we had a short conversation about the nearby parks. i thought about how it was unrepresentative for him to see me coming back from a run and he will probably think i am more responsible with my body than i actually am. i also thought about how that was the first in-person conversation i’ve had since friday. i went back inside and looked at my face in the mirror for two or three seconds and felt like i couldn’t really see or understand any of my features. i felt like i’d written that exact scene before.

writing. weird fucking time for that. i was supposed to receive my edit letter for Alone Out Here yesterday, but my editor hasn’t been in touch. i had to cancel a virtual appearance/workshop yesterday, too, and that was definitely the right call, i find myself with weird aversions to things i’m not usually averse to - i don’t want to video chat, i haven’t wanted to be seen. probably why it felt so strange to suddenly have a conversation with my neighbor. i was watching Dark on netflix yesterday and there was an operation scene that made me queasy, which was also unusual. i had to actually look away from the screen; can’t remember the last time i did that.

mostly i go around with the feeling that i’ve forgotten something, even when i’m the most acutely aware of circumstance. feelings of selfishness and disconnection and guilt and alienation cycle in and out. i feel absentminded and scatterbrained, i go from minor task to minor task with something like incomprehension. the dishes i have to do in small groups. same with bringing boxes down to the recycling bins. i have felt anger toward the united states for not engendering a sufficient feeling of belonging in me after 26 years of life here - i think if i felt at home, or like i was meant to be here, this wouldn’t have affected me so much. instead i feel as if for 26 years i’ve been making an incorrect choice to cleave toward western individualism rather than to foster a connection to my roots, and i feel as if the concept of the individual, who i am, is revealing itself to be increasingly ephemeral and unimportant. then i do things like write or take photographs of myself and think about what a narcissist i am.

i’ve been looking at apartments in dublin or london, thinking about how wonderful it would be to feel among family. but in considering moving overseas i catch myself also considering laughably pathetic things - chiefly i think about some man in ireland who stopped replying to my texts a year ago and design elaborate fantasies where we meet again and understand each other, and then i think about how i have never been able to love in the right way, how i unnerve myself with the volume of my own feelings, and then i’m back in this pit of the individual. i think about leaving the united states and immediately i’m trying to form fictional narratives about displacement and expatriation - how can i use this, that, or the other, how can i appropriate everything into fictional use. i think about how i am not honoring my grandfather’s memory and all this shit i’ve been doing is about my own precious fucking feelings. maybe it’s good that my edit letter is on an apparent delay, because the act of writing has never seemed more egocentric to me. what i really feel that i should do is shut up, yet here i am, i keep doing this, i keep going.

[spellnbone]

Edgar writes the Theatre & Arts Column for the Daily Prophet. His philosophy is that if someone has a voice, they have to use it to do good; this means that on the one hand one has to push art to its limits or even further, and on the other hand one has to make those voices heard which don’t have a platform yet.

Edgar’s Introduction to Theatre

Much like most families with comfortably filled wallets, the Bones would take their children to the theatre on the weekends quite often. Most of the children adored it but also took it somewhat for granted -- which made the culture shock of moving to England only worse. There are theatres in Hastings, yes but they are small and not at all as dramatic and colourful as what the Bones had grown to know in Mexico. They lacked imagination! And since there was no theatre club at Hogwarts either, it was only on his first trip to London at the age of thirteen that Edgar rediscovered his love for this art.

After that, he began reading and loving play-scripts more than novels, eventually writing down his thoughts, comparing, analysing, interpreting with fervor and a very new, strange sensation growing within him: passion. For someone who found interest in literally anything he encountered (except Quidditch), it was a surprise to many to see Edgar so into something (though one might not forget that his new love for theatre came around the same time as he was beginning to grow apart from Amelia). His friends from school might still remember that one of the best ways to get Edgar talking in a social situation was by expressing a badly thought-out opinion about theatre. Suddenly the shy boy who so often was accused of boot-licking would throw himself into passionate speeches about love, death and every other grand topic of life inbetween.

(One of his favourite topics, that is, urban legends he loved to ramble about for hours was Mundungus Fletcher. Each and every article covering the fiasco was bought six times and each and every time Fletcher’s photograph was cut out and glued to various surfaces; Edgar’s notebooks, the under-side of the topbunk above him, the walls in his room at home. It was the same grotesque-fascination-turned-unstopple-obsession that the Muggle play Cats had about ten years later).

It was during this time also that Edgar began reading the news. Initially he only ever snatched the arts section (despite its terribly boring focus on mainstream theatre), he’d eventually also begin reading the other articles, finding himself growing more and more educated and opinionated about political topics, too.

His passion ended where the stage began, though. He never tried to direct a play, write one himself, or -- Morgana forbid! -- tried to star in one. He was quite content to be but an observer. However, after graduating and leaving England to finally go back to Mexico, he fell in love with an actress of a small travelling troupe (and shortly after with her brother, the director), and before he knew it, he was travelling around the world with them.

When he came back to England, he wrote for the hebdomadal East Sussexian Wizarding paper, simply because the owner was a good friend of the Bones family and needed someone to fatten up the paper with some think-pieces. Edgar neither saw his calling in that nor ever made a name for himself, he was mostly just passing his time, trying to figure out what he really wanted to do with his life. It was only when he met up with Ainsley Abbott again around his 19th birthday that he began considering journalism as a proper career. She’d told him that the Daily Prophet was looking for a new arts columnist and remembered that he had always had a thing for theatre.

London’s Theatres

Contrary to movies, most other Muggle art isn’t completely disregarded by the Wizarding World. Of course one will always find some bloodpurists who think that all magicless art isn’t worth their time, but the more commonly agreed upon opinion is that when it comes to old-fashioned art, Muggles aren’t all that bad at it. The Daily Prophet has therefore always covered the Wizarding Westend as well as the Muggle Westend productions, giving the former more attention but never discriminating between them all too much. They are, after all, similar in many regards: the leads will most likely be traditionally good-looking, born and raised in this country and culture, and introduced to the director by personal connections. The themes of the plays perpetuate conservative values and ideals and have to please the broadest audience possible, therefore not contain any smut or controversial themes.

They’re usually even located in the same buildings as the Muggle theatres, either in magically hidden back halls or underground:

“Two, reserved on the Daily Prophet.”

The lady behind the counter, despite looking just like the other ticket vendors next to her, gave it a nod and handed them their keys. They were small little copper things, meant for a one time use of a door that was titled: “Staffs Only”.

Muggles had this thing to believe that theatres were haunted. The possibility of that, considering just how few people actually died in such places compared to normal apartment houses, were slim, and the idea absurd once you knew what truly caused the mysterious whispers, the unexplained floor-board creaking, and distant moaning: A second theatre down below. Wizarding. Vibrant, crowded, cheerful.

Not having even yet reached the first floor below, the music already met Edgar and Amelia. The chit chat was lively, and unlike the Muggle theatre above, time had not changed the customs of exhibitions and shows here: Roasted-nut sellers were walking around with their goods on a tray hanging down their neck, a fire-spitter was entertaining a group of kids in a corner, and on the stage stood one of the actors, cheering and shouting blurbs about the play in an attempt to motivate the audience. No seats but on the upper balconies, were ladies sat whose robes were so fluffy and wide that their companions for the night attempting to sit next to them probably needed to shout to have their words heard.

The idea to even pay attention to those independent artists who always seem angry or angsty, who always seemed so desperate to speak up about issues that no respectable Wizard would care about? It was unheard of by the general Wizarding Public who didn’t have a great variety of news outlets.

It was only when Edgar accepted his job as the new arts columnist that the ‘Off Westend’ productions -- that is, the exhibits shown in garages, the plays held on rooftops, the stories told by otherwise drowned voices -- were finally given a platform through and by the Daily Prophet.

Edgar’s Own Private Resistance

For about eight years now, Edgar’s been publishing little articles of about 300 to 500 words a day which are usually reviews and recommendations, as well as longer think-pieces on the Sunday edition. They’re all signed E.V.Bones (or at times solely E.V.B when the space is spare), much like his letters, so it all depends on the wit of a person whether they know who is writing the column or not. It’s earning him 6 to 10 galleons per piece, that is 40 to 70 galleons a week, which (at least in modern equivalent) is 210 to 350 pounds a week, so he’s not poor but also far from becoming rich with this. As of now, he never considered changing his job, though. Partly due to the fact that he gets to see all sorts of plays for free, partly because he usually does all his work at the office only once a week (usually a 12 hour work day) and has the rest of the week to deal with Order business. But most importantly he’s still at the Daily Prophet because it allows him to fight this war in his own, quiet terms.

Upon reviewing a play, Edgar always asks two questions: how does this further the progress of art, and how does this further the progress of society? While the opinions in his writing are always expressed quite subtly (as otherwise, Edgar’s arch nemesis Kenny Mack, his editor and son of the Daily Prophet’s current owner, will simply censor out what might be too controversial for the general readership), they’re never suppressed or gentle, certainly never excuse conservative, problematic productions.

(It was because of one of those harsher reviews of his that he met the then-adored Lydia Avery, who he had equated to a piece of morning toast -- something you thoroughly enjoy in the moment itself but would never crave if hungry or a somewhat interesting person. Most of his review had been about the blatant racism of the play, though, and and yet, while up until this day Lydia might still be upset about it, Edgar never left their conversation with anything other than appreciation for her. He’s well aware that actors are a symptom of an ill society, not the illness itself.)

The idea that he could use his job for something bigger, something good, came the night after Ainsley had suggested he take the job at the Daily Prophet. “Me?” he had asked over a cup of tea, not even 20 years old then, not yet in the Order, not yet jaded and made brave by war, not yet used to the idea that every helping hand counted, “Reviewing art for the whole of Britain? Why would anyone care about what I have to say?” “They don’t,” Dell had replied in this earnest way of his, “but it’s not about you anyway. It’s about them. There’s people out there who have no one who listens to them, even though they have something to say, even though so many others want -- no! need! -- to hear what they have to say. It’s not about you. It’s about them. And you’re the one who’s going to make sure they’re heard.” “But the Daily Prophet? It’s so conservative.” “Not your column, it won’t be. Not if you write it.”

What his brother Dell was saying and what Edgar grew to understand over the years, was that there are so many Muggleborns and Halfbreeds out there who never see themselves represented in a positive, hopeful light in stories, or at least by the actors telling those stories. The mainstream theatre productions simply do not care to show such representation, to tell such diverse stories. It’s the back-alley theatres that dare to break the rules of what is acceptable, to break the norm, to help society and art evolve. And Edgar hopes that by writing about this, more people will be able to realise that they’re not alone. That there’s others like them, out there, everywhere. That despite the way the (relatively neutral) Daily Prophet reports it, Voldemort doesn’t have that many people on his side, at least not compared to just how many people are against him. By drawing attention to those smaller plays and their values, he helps to grow and foster a community where like-minded people can meet and share their opinions and realise that they’re not alone at all.

And thus, Edgar had accepted the job, his agenda of political nature, safely tucked between 8 and 11pm, and sometimes also during matinées.

[johnnygsanto]

Back Chat: Good Weekend letters to the editor, February 9 - Sydney Morning Herald

Back Chat: Good Weekend letters to the editor, February 9  Sydney Morning Herald

Send us a picture or Instagram one of Good Weekend in your life, using the hashtag #goodweekendmag. We will choose one each week to publish here.

Originally Published here: Back Chat: Good Weekend letters to the editor, February 9 - Sydney Morning Herald

[cdelint]

Photo by Al Bogdan

On the first weekend in November 2018 I received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the World Fantasy Convention. Great though the honour was, initially I was reluctant to make the trip down to Baltimore to receive it in person due to the political climate in the US. But MaryAnn and various friends wore me down until I finally agreed to go. I’m glad I did.

I saw little of the pettiness and bullying that the current White House administration espouses except from one particularly obnoxious TSA agent as we were leaving the country. Most of my time was spent in the cocoon of the convention hotel where the civility and warmth of the attendees was the rule. I got to spend time and chat with so many wonderful readers and my peers—most of whom I hadn’t seen since the WFC in Saratoga Springs back in 2015.

Highlights were hanging with Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Evonne T., Charles Vess & Karen Shaffer, Ellen Klages and Leslie Howle throughout the weekend. Making music with the vastly talented Sarah Pinsker. A visit to the aquarium and the walk we took to Evonne’s recommendation of Faidley’s where we had the very best of crab cakes. Watching Greg Manchess do a live portrait of Michael Swanwick. Being surprised by Sara Felix flying up from Austin for Saturday night just to see us. Making new friends such as Linda Addison and Clarence “Zig Zag” Young. A dinner with Betsy Wolheim, another with Joe Monti. Sharing a table at the banquet with Joe & Gay Haldeman. Finally meeting Jonathan Strahan after so many years of only electronic communication.  Receiving my award from my editor at The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Gordon Van Gelder. Being able to cheer for Ellen Klages when she won her award for her book Passing Strange and Greg for his win as Best Artist. The opening speech by Linda Addison and the acceptance speeches by Fonda Lee and Natalia Theodoridou.

Here’s the speech I gave when accepting my award:

First of all I’d like to thank the judges for this honour—it’s an especially good year for it to happen since I’m sharing it with Betsy Wolheim, the heart behind DAW Books. I’ve been enjoying DAW Books from when they first burst upon the scene with their distinctive yellow spines to the present day where they still publish some of my favourite writers such as Tanya Huff and Seanan McGuire.

I’d also like to send out my appreciation to the con committee for all their kindness and help.

No one wants to hear a long rambling acceptance speech—less is more, after all—but an honour such as this only comes around once in a lifetime and there are a number of people I really need to thank for their help and support in making my career what it is.

The impulse in a situation such as this to name and thank everyone who has ever been a part of this journey I embarked on back in the seventies when I stopped being the person who wrote simply for fun and the need to tell stories and became someone who still loves and appreciates his career but also wants to make a living doing it. So I do want to thank everyone who has supported me through the years. All of the editors I’ve been lucky enough to work with—and especially Tom Doherty, Patrick Nielsen Hayden and all the folks at Tor who gave my books a home for so many years. My peers and friends for their support and my agent Russ Galen who’s treated me so well and is always ready to try something new.

And of course all the readers who continue to make my career a viable possibility. I have the best readers in the world and because of them I have the best job in the world.

But I would like to specifically thank a few people who made a real difference.

My buddy Rodger Turner has been along on this journey since the very beginning. We both started out as readers. While I went on to write, Rodger has been more behind the scenes, owning an indie book store for a while, doing a little publishing, serving on the WFC executive and doing websites for the likes of World Horror, The Magazine of F&SF and authors like Tim Powers and myself. He’s been a support through all the ups and down of my career and we still get together to talk books once a week.

Terri Windling started out as my editor and became a friend who, if I get to pick a family of choice, is definitely my sister. In terms of my writing she’s the one who encouraged me to keep telling stories in a contemporary setting and, especially in the early years, gave them a home. She also taught me more about writing and my own voice than any number of writing tutorials and editors combined.

When I first started writing dinosaurs still roamed the world and we communicated by writing letters. That’s how I met Charles Vess and it’s how we knew each other for many years. We were in pretty much the same place with our respective careers and cheered each other on in amidst yakking about the books, art and music we loved. Since those early days we’ve collaborated on a number of projects but the thing I still like best is hanging around with him and his wife Karen—who I might add, is a trickster, so be careful what you wish for around her. A hundred years from now they’ll be telling Karen stories in the Virginia hills just as they tell Jack stories now.

Nina Kiriki Hoffman hasn’t been as much an influence on my writing as on my life. She lives every day to its fullest and I can assure you that you won’t go wrong in a confusing situation to ask yourself, what would Nina do? If it’s not always the right thing it’s invariably the most fun.

I also count Leslie Howle among the dear friends that came my way through my writing. I know many of you have experienced her generous hospitality and encouragement first hand. We should all have such steadfast friends cheering us on.

Lastly I want to thank my wife MaryAnn although saying thanks seems so inadequate. She should be standing up here with me. We’ve been a partnership for decades and without her participation in my career I probably wouldn’t be in front of you accepting this honour. So this one’s for you, dear heart, and may we keep making stories for many years to come. And we might even share a few of the ones that get written down.

We live in a divisive and perilous time—not simply in this country or my home province of Ontario, but all over the world. To my American friends, I hope you’ve registered to vote. And if you have I urge you to go out and exercise that right on Tuesday.

Remember that democracy is not a free ride but a responsibility.

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Welcome to FiveThirtyEight’s weekly politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

sarahf (Sarah Frostenson, politics editor): Special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election is at long last over. After nearly two years, we have a summary of Mueller’s report from Attorney General William Barr, and that summary, in a letter to Congress, says that the Trump campaign did not coordinate with Russia. What’s less clear is where Mueller landed on the question of obstruction of justice: Barr’s summary says that the special counsel didn’t reach a conclusion, and we still don’t have the report.

This means we can expect a political fight until the full report is released, but how should House Democrats proceed in light of what information we do have? And how this could affect the 2020 election?

nrakich (Nathaniel Rakich, elections analyst): I don’t think it will affect 2020. None of the Democratic candidates was really hammering the Trump-Russia thing. And it doesn’t seem to be a major focus with voters either. In a recent CNN poll, respondents were asked to name what issue will be the most important to them in deciding whom to support in 2020, but not a single respondent mentioned the Russia investigation. And as for the campaign trail, Elizabeth Warren recently said to reporters that she wasn’t getting questions on the Mueller report from voters during events in Iowa and New Hampshire.

sarahf: I don’t know if it’s quite fair to say that 2020 candidates haven’t hammered the Trump-Russia thing at all. Beto O’Rourke did accuse President Trump of collusion with Russia in the 2016 election in a speech he gave on Saturday (before Barr’s letter was public).

natesilver (Nate Silver, editor in chief): Are you saying that it won’t affect the 2020 general election? Or the 2020 Democratic primary?

nrakich: The primary.

There’s more of a chance it affects the general election. But attitudes do seem pretty baked in at this point.

natesilver: On the primary, I tend to agree, although the counter-factual where Mueller finds some huge smoking gun … it seems like things might be different then. At the very least, Democrats would have to stake out a clearer position on impeachment.

It is somewhat telling that none of the 2020 candidates had made the special counsel investigation a particular focus of their campaigns. Maybe you have someone like Beto who has talked about it, or maybe even said a few things he might consider walking back, but it’s not like it’s “Beto O’Rourke, the Russia candidate.”

Eric Swalwell sort of has tried to run on that in the invisible primary, and there doesn’t seem to be much interest in his campaign.

And Michael Avenatti was sort of running on that basis before he encountered … uh … other problems. And there wasn’t much of an appetite for an Avenatti campaign either, with him polling at 1 percent or so back when he was included in surveys.

nrakich: Yeah. Democratic congressional candidates in 2018 won largely by running on bread-and-butter issues, like health care. The 2020 candidates understand that.

And speaking of health care, Trump may have already stepped on his good-news surge from the Mueller report by bringing up Obamacare repeal again.

natesilver: Yeah. I mean, there’s just sort of so much that Trump is putting into the washing machine that both good stories and bad ones sort of all come out in the wash. (I think I butchered that metaphor.)

It’s not crazy to think that the Affordable Care Act could be more consequential to 2020 than the Mueller report. I don’t think I think that, but it’s not crazy. Rank-and-file voters care a lot about health care.

sarahf: But don’t you think that if House Democrats continue to pursue an investigation-heavy agenda, they risk alienating voters?

natesilver: I mean, I think the Michael Cohen testimony was fairly effective for Democrats. It was pointed and dramatic, and it took a day, rather than dragging on for months.

nrakich: And there are other investigations of Trump going on, including those over allegations of campaign-finance and emoluments clause violations.

natesilver: So, like, Democrats have to pick their shots. And maybe the threshold is higher, post-Mueller. But I don’t get the notion that they can’t pick their shots fairly effectively. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi seems to have pretty good control of her caucus.

sarahf: But I guess that’s my question. Will the American public have the same appetite for those investigations? Or do Democrats risk their investigations being viewed in too partisan of a light?

nrakich: I just don’t know that it will matter one way or the other.

natesilver: Remember that the Mueller report itself has not been released. And even though I’m quite skeptical that what’s in the Muller report can be that much worse for Trump than what’s in Barr’s summary, it will affect public perceptions quite a bit if Republicans are slow to release the Mueller report.

sarahf: That’s true — that could work in the Democrats’ favor. (House Democrats have demanded the Justice Department turn over the full report by April 2.)

perry (Perry Bacon Jr., senior writer): Some of the Democrats in Congress are suggesting that the party should broadly back off of Trump-related investigations (not just the Russia probe) and focus more on policy. I think that’s an important internal debate where there will be different views in the caucus. Some members from purple/red districts have never been that excited about an anti-Trump focus, and I assume that the Mueller report news from last weekend will push them even further in that direction.

nrakich: Perry, I would agree with that if I were advising a presidential candidate, but I’m not sure that it’s going to matter what Congress does.

natesilver: Part of me wonders whether House Democrats will investigate Trump more than they “should” in the sense of it being politically optimal just because they have a lot of time on their hands.

They can’t really pass much legislation that’s going to get through the Senate and through Trump. But they sure as hell can investigate.

nrakich: It’s pretty normal for the House to ramp up the investigations under divided government.

And just glancing at the data, it doesn’t seem that the party in control of the House at that time suffered political consequences for it later on.

The strength of the candidates at the top of the ticket is probably what’s going to dictate if those red-district Democrats keep their seats in 2020.

perry: I do think the “release the report” argument from Democrats is important. Media reports that Trump tried to stop or stall the investigation are different from an official Justice Department report saying it and giving lots of details.

I think the Democrats can only gain from the Mueller report’s release. I’m not saying that it will change anyone’s vote in 2020 necessarily, but it will be useful for the Democrats to have the details out there.

sarahf: But OK, what does this mean for Republicans? How will they use the investigation in 2020?

perry: One way to look at it is that the results of the investigation weren’t great news for someone like Maryland’s Republican governor, Larry Hogan, who has been hinting that he is open to challenging Trump in a GOP presidential primary.

Not that Hogan had much of a chance to begin with, but this closes one potential avenue for a GOP challenger to Trump.

nrakich: Yeah, basically the only prayer for Bill Weld or another Republican hopeful was for Trump to be indicted, AND the economy to tank, AND the pee tape mentioned in the Steele dossier to come out … it had to be a perfect storm.

natesilver: I do want to push back at something Perry said first. Clearly, Democrats would not gain from the report being released if it’s extremely skeptical about anything resembling collusion.

perry: I felt like Barr’s summary was already pretty skeptical, so it’s hard to imagine the full report being even more skeptical.

natesilver: I just think there’s a middle ground where Barr can probably spin things a bit, but if he spins too much, it’s very risky if the report eventually gets released or if details surface through other means (i.e., leaks).

perry: In terms of the Republicans, I think Trump and his allies were going to attack the Justice Department officials who were involved in the Russia investigation and the media outlets that covered the investigative intensely no matter what. But that instinct to attack the media and the group of people who started the Russia investigation will be reinforced by this report.

I think a big part of Trump’s 2020 campaign will be an anti-institutional argument. Which he was making in 2016 too, I suppose, but the anti-media, anti-“deep state” part will be even more aggressive.

natesilver: It’s a thin line, though, for Trump to attack the media while also getting relatively friendly coverage about the Mueller report. And I’m not sure that I trust the White House to walk that line effectively. Like, I think they’ve been dunking a bit too much and not using this report to maximize their standing with swing voters.

sarahf: But just think of the chant at the rallies: NO COLLUSION!

natesilver: It will be “WITCH HUNT!!” “NO COLLUSION!!” like the old “TASTES GREAT!!” “LESS FILLING!!” commercials (dating myself here).

perry: I’m not sure this is a good election strategy. I just think it’s likely to be what happens — hating the media and the “deep state” is going to become a bigger part of GOP politics now.

natesilver: Yeah, and as I wrote a couple of days ago, Trump could stand to gain among Trump-skeptical Republicans who are also skeptical of the media.

sarahf: A key demographic to watch will also be independents and how they respond. As Nathaniel wrote previously, there was some polling that showed independents weren’t against the investigation. But I wonder if that changes or shifts now.

natesilver: Also given the timing of this … the Mueller report is coming early enough that if it had been really bad, Republicans could have considered taking an off-ramp from Trump.

But suppose, hypothetically, that there’s some new scandal. It’s going to take a lot of time to metastasize into something. And it’ll be too late for Republicans to nominate someone else for 2020, most likely.

So they’re probably fairly committed to Trump as their nominee at this point, and that’s likely to start affecting their behavior right away. Not that there was ever much of a chance that Republicans would nominate someone else, but if there was just the slightest bit of daylight, there’s less now.

perry: And you’re already seeing signs of that. Republicans like Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse, who used to criticize Trump a lot, are now trying to portray themselves as more pro-Trump.

Will it be harder for elected Republicans to criticize Trump when he does more outlandish things? I think so.

Trump has gained more and more control of the GOP over the past two years. And I think he’s strengthened by the ending of the uncertainty that surrounded the Mueller investigation while it was underway.

natesilver: So maybe that’s the simplest effect. It will increase the degree of party unity behind Trump.

perry: Jumping back to the Democrats, there are basically two camps among the presidential candidates. One group says that Trump is bad, but the country’s problems are much broader — rooted in the unequal power that the wealthy and elites wield. (Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders fall into this camp.) The other group says the problem is Trump and to some extent the Republican Party. (Most of the other candidates fall into this group.)

Because Trump has not been implicated by the Mueller investigation (at least based on Barr’s summary of the report), I think we’ll see Democratic primary candidates move toward the Warren-Sanders view. And that’s important.

I’m not sure if Warren or Sanders will win the primary, but it will be interesting to see if their broader vision takes hold within the party.

natesilver: My initial instinct, FWIW, was the opposite — that if the Mueller report has any effect (it probably/might not), it would help the more centrist candidates because Trump will be seen as more formidable now and therefore a higher premium will be placed on “electability.”

nrakich: It’s not a single spectrum, though. Perry is right that, say, Kamala Harris and Kirsten Gillibrand have been running more explicitly anti-Trump campaigns than Sanders and Warren have. But they’re all still lumped together as “progressive.”

natesilver: What about the Booker/Buttigieg/Beto gang, who have been running on a more upbeat, optimistic message?

perry: Electability is a huge focus of this primary. Full stop. But I also think the day-to-day exchanges in this campaign are about policy, and even people like Booker/Buttigieg/Beto

are moving toward more aggressive ideas like getting rid of the filibuster and the Electoral College.

It’s complicated. I feel like the primary is moving to the left on policy but is also really shaped by electability.

natesilver: It does seem like there are four quadrants. On the one hand, there’s “everything is going to hell” vs. “everything is going to be OK.” On the other hand, there’s “Trump is the biggest problem we’ve got” vs. “Trump is just a symptom of larger issues.”

sarahf: OK, so it sounds as though we think the effect of the Mueller report could be felt in two key ways in 2020:

There will be greater party unity behind Trump, regardless of how he chooses to spin the report’s findings (and setting aside the question of whether that’s a good strategy for winning swing voters).

Democratic presidential hopefuls might redirect their focus from Trump to saying the problem is bigger than Trump.

What else would you add?

nrakich: I’d just qualify No. 2 by saying that I don’t really think the Mueller report will have any effect on the primary. Primary voters are already partisan Democrats and have made up their minds about how shady Trump is.

natesilver: I don’t know. There was a mainstream media perception post-midterms, post-shutdown (Remember the shutdown? It wasn’t that long ago!) that Trump was in deep trouble and wasn’t so Teflon after all. Now you literally have headlines saying “TEFLON DON” and scoldy media people scolding other people in the media for underestimating Trump again. So the background climate changes a little bit.

Does it precipitate a change in behavior from the Democratic candidates? Maybe not.

nrakich: Yeah. Maybe it makes Democratic voters more concerned about the issue of electability in the short term. But “electability” means different things to different people. And in the long term, who knows?

natesilver: I’d just say that the Mueller news cycle already feels pretty different 48 hours later. You have some crazy stories — Avenatti, Jussie Smollett. You have the Justice Department taking a new position on Obamacare. You have this controversy over when and whether the Mueller report itself is going to be released. The news cycle moves on pretty quickly.

nrakich: Exactly.

I look forward to summer 2020 when we’re all talking about the political implications of Oprah giving every American a universal basic income.

[orbemnews]

Billion-Dollar Paydays in a Pandemic These managers made bank Today, Institutional Investor unveiled the 20th edition of its Rich List, one of the most watched rankings of hedge fund managers’ performance. Every year, financial tycoons pore over the magazine’s estimates of whose fortunes are up the most. Last year, the top 25 managers earned $32 billion even as the economy crashed and markets wobbled. Over all, hedge funds returned 11.6 percent last year, according to Hedge Fund Research, their best performance in a decade but not enough to keep pace with the S&P 500, which was up 16 percent. “It may not be seemly, but it remains fact,” the magazine’s editors wrote. Here are the top earners, according to the list: Izzy Englander of Millennium Management, who earned an estimated $3.8 billion and whose flagship fund produced a 26 percent return. Jim Simons of Renaissance Technologies, who earned $2.6 billion and whose flagship generated a 76 percent return (but whose fund open to outside investors lost big). Chase Coleman of Tiger Global Management, who earned $2.5 billion and whose top fund returned 48 percent. Ken Griffin of Citadel, who earned $1.8 billion and whose main fund returned 24 percent. (The firm has made headlines for other reasons, too.) Steve Cohen of Point72 Asset Management and David Tepper of Appaloosa Management both earned an estimated $1.7 billion. The rest of the best: Philippe Laffont of Coatue Management ($1.6 billion), Andreas Halvorsen of Viking Global Investors and Scott Shleifer of Tiger Global (both $1.5 billion), and Bill Ackman of Pershing Square Capital Management ($1.4 billion). HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING New restrictions for the Paycheck Protection Program. For two weeks beginning on Wednesday, only businesses with fewer than 20 employees will be eligible to apply for loans from the glitch-prone emergency aid program. Separately, the Small Business Administration will revise how it calculates loans to help self-employed individuals. Boeing calls for grounding another of its airplane models. The company recommended a worldwide halt to flights using its 777 model with a particular Pratt & Whitney engine. The move came after a United Airlines flight suffered engine failure over Colorado, shedding debris over neighborhoods before landing safely in Denver. Texas’s energy markets come under scrutiny. The state’s uniquely independent and largely deregulated electrical grid has been criticized for being ill-prepared for last week’s severe winter storms and for saddling some customers with thousands of dollars in power bills. Good news for Pfizer and BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine. Data from Israel showed that just one dose prevented 75 percent of infections, potentially bolstering arguments for delaying second shots. (The research didn’t determine how long single-dose protection lasted.) The drug companies also announced that their vaccine could be stored safely in standard freezers for up to two weeks, which might mean it can be deployed more widely. A security breach highlights Clubhouse’s weaknesses. An unidentified user streamed audio from several chat rooms on the increasingly popular social network to a third-party website. The Stanford Internet Observatory, which first highlighted concerns about privacy on Clubhouse, warned that users should assume all their activity on the app is public and being recorded. Exclusive: Traeger fires up a sale The high-end grill maker has interviewed investment banks in recent weeks for what could be either a sale or an I.P.O., DealBook hears. Traeger, which has about $160 million in operating earnings, is growing quickly: Sales rose more than 20 percent last year. The company is hoping for a valuation that tops $3 billion, which may be too high for a buyer but could match public market appetite. The private equity firm AEA Investors, which acquired control of Traeger in 2017 for an undisclosed amount, declined to comment. Grill sales soared during the pandemic, as people stuck at home lit up the barbecue. Traeger’s wood-pellet-fueled grills can run into the thousands of dollars and come outfitted with Wi-Fi (“WiFire”) technology to adjust heat settings from a smartphone. At-home grilling could slow as economies reopen and people spend less time at home, but in that case, Traeger also sells accessories and grills made for travel. Traeger is the latest company looking to capitalize on a pandemic bump, testing the lofty premiums that investors are willing to fork out. McCormick paid $800 million to buy Cholula hot sauce as home cooking pushed spice sales, and Hormel paid $3.35 billion to buy Kraft Heinz’s once stalled Planters business as consumers sought comfort foods. Shares of Yeti, a maker of fancy coolers, have more than doubled over the past year, giving it a market capitalization of $6.5 billion. “When the pandemic ends, cash could be unleashed like melting snow in the Rockies.” — The Times’s Ben Casselman on the rising expectations among economists that a supercharged economic boom may come at the end of the pandemic. Tesla’s Bitcoin bet is paying off The price of Bitcoin set another record over the weekend, briefly rising above $58,000 per coin. And Elon Musk tweeted about it, cementing his status as one of crypto’s highest-profile backers. Tesla is set to make more profit from buying Bitcoin than selling electric cars, according to a research note by Daniel Ives at Wedbush Securities. A few weeks ago, the company said it had bought $1.5 billion in Bitcoin in order to diversify its balance sheet. The rapid rise in Bitcoin since then implies a gain, on paper, of roughly $1 billion; that’s more than Tesla earned from selling cars last year, the first time it turned a full-year profit. (Tesla also made more from another tangential business, selling renewable energy credits to other automakers.) Will more companies now follow its lead? Gaudy numbers like this might make C.F.O.s think twice about the cash and low-yielding bonds on their balance sheets. “It’s clearly been a good initial investment and a trend we expect could have a ripple impact for other public companies over the next 12 to 18 months,” Mr. Ives wrote. He expects less than 5 percent of public companies will shift corporate cash into cryptocurrency, which would still be a big jump. The week ahead The House is expected to pass President Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus bill at the end of the week, probably in a party-line vote. The Senate may take it up shortly after. The Fed chair Jay Powell testifies before Congress on Tuesday and Wednesday, and will most likely emphasize the need for more economic stimulus. On Tuesday, HSBC reports earnings, and the bank may also announce steps to move top executives from London to Hong Kong, The Financial Times reports. Other earnings highlights include Home Depot on Tuesday, Nvidia on Wednesday, Airbnb and Salesforce on Thursday, and Berkshire Hathaway on Saturday, when Warren Buffett’s widely followed annual letter on the state of business, markets and politics is also expected. THE SPEED READ Deals Today in SPACs: Elliott Management, Michael Dell and the former Xerox chief Ursula Burns have all filed to raise blank-check funds. And Asian tycoons are also eager to get into the game. (Bloomberg, WSJ) A group of activist investors is reportedly seeking nine of 12 board seats at the department-store chain Kohl’s. (WSJ) LVMH is buying half of Armand de Brignac, Jay-Z’s Champagne brand, in a bet that the “superluxury” market — a bottle can cost up to $65,000 — will bounce back from the pandemic. (NYT) Politics and policy The Trump administration quietly and unusually lifted sanctions on the Israeli mining magnate Dan Gertler in its final days, after lobbying from the likes of Alan Dershowitz. (NYT) Tech The venture capital firm Sequoia told investors that it had been hacked, and that some of their personal and financial information may have been stolen. (Axios) Hosts unhappy with Airbnb’s pandemic policies are taking their business elsewhere. (NYT) The British antitrust regulator has told American tech giants to expect a series of investigations into their business practices this year. (FT) Best of the rest The scale of short-selling positions in U.S. stocks has fallen drastically since the meme-stock frenzy. (Axios) McKinsey is facing criticism over its role in France’s slow vaccine rollout. (NYT) “The Boredom Economy” (NYT) We’d like your feedback! Please email thoughts and suggestions to dealbook@nytimes.com. Source link Orbem News #BillionDollar #Pandemic #Paydays

[schmidtchristmasmarket]

With even local trails getting clogged, our editor has some advice for you that he hoped he’d never have to give.

We can’t help ourselves: A hiker’s gonna hike. Hiking is good for your body and soul, and both need nourishment now more than ever.

But this isn’t about you, it’s about the health of others and the bandwidth of first responders, and it’s time to stay home. I know that’s a tough pill to swallow because I feel it, too.

Overflowing trailheads with minimal regard for social distancing isn’t what we need right now. I support the parks and trail systems that have chosen to close because that’s the only way to keep folks at home. And that’s the only way to ensure we’re protecting vulnerable populations and not unnecessarily taxing the limited infrastructure most small outdoor towns have.

I live in a town of about 2,000 in the foothills in between Boulder and Estes Park, Colorado. I moved here for one trail in particular, my favorite mountain bike trail. It doesn’t hurt that there’s a couple trout-filled rivers nearby as well as a few lifetimes of rock climbing. Naturally, it’s a popular weekend destination. It’s now seeing peak summer levels of traffic and taxing local law enforcement and first responders (I’m a volunteer firefighter, and I see it every time I work a shift).

For now, I’m not hiking or biking area trails. I’m turning to home-based stuff like the below. I urge you to do so, too. Frankly, it’s been pretty fun.

Work Out

I love training, and it’s benefits are endless. Stronger bod and lungs are up there, as are fun and camaraderie, but most pertinent right now, in my opinion? Stress relief. An hour in my driveway or garage working up a sweat while blasting Beastie Boys is an hour out of my house and out of my head. Here’s a sample workout from my friends at Boulder Athletics that you can do at home.

Put some weight in a day pack (15 to 20 pounds), then:

5 Rounds for time of

20 Backpack lifts from ground to overhead

15 Burpees, jumping over backpack

4 Rounds for time of

40 Backpack Russian twists

30 Second plank hold

Need a little motivation? Follow along with our recording of a live workout with coach and athlete Jason Antin. Heck, you might just come out of this thing stronger. Train hard now, hike easy later.

Zen Out

Take a few minutes to clear your mind and appreciate where you are and what you’ve got. You can do it on your own simply by sitting quietly with your eyes closed for 10 minutes and focusing on your breathing. Or you can download any of a host of apps. I’ve used Headspace for years and love it. We’re hosting our own guided meditation for our Basecamp membership program.

Read

To learn. To escape. To grow. To travel the world while not moving an inch. We have a few lists of our staff’s favorites here. I turned to Gretel Erlich’s Solace of Open Spaces and am cracking Peter Heller’s The Dog Stars next.

Write a Letter to a Hiking Partner

Take a minute to thank an old friend for an amazing trip, to reminisce about that one time it all came together perfectly, and you hiked with ease, ate well, didn’t see another soul, did see a moose or a griz or the biggest shooting star of your life, and enjoyed it all amidst golden weather. Or commemorate the hard times, that trip you toughed it out together and staggered back to the car grinning. I remember a late summer trip to West Virginia’s Cranberry Wilderness with my college roommate Glen. It was a little of both: We had torrential rain, and Glen had somehow forgotten his shell. I’d decided to forgo my canister stove for an alcohol stove I'd made from a Coors can. Our progress was slow, but that afforded us time to shoot the shit and solve all the world’s problems while drinking just the right amount of Jim Beam. Handwritten is the way to go for style, but email works too.

Address Your Maintenance Backlogs

My favorite sleeping pad, an old Therm-a-Rest NeoAir XLight, has a slow leak, which I’ve learned the hard way at least three times. But after each of those trips, I shoved the pad back in my gear closet bleary-eyed without fixing it. Today’s the day. I’m also going to wash my most-used sleeping bags, refresh waterproofing on my boots and gloves, and address long term inattention my cooking and water purification kits have suffered. Might even unbend some tent stakes, if it comes to that.

Video Chat Someone for Fun

Yes, I said fun. You may already be swimming in a sea of video-conferencing. Even my kid has Zoom meetings. But add one to your week with people you’re dying to see, that you miss. Toast to their health. Have a campfire. Human connection, even with a device in between, will do you good. A phone call works too.

Get Hooked on a Podcast

We’re biased for sure, but we have a brand new story from our Out Alive series that’s just dying to explore your headphones. It’s armchair entertainment and educational at the same time.

Learn Something New

If you don’t come out of quarantine with a new hobby, skill, or side-hustle it’s not for lack of time but for lack of desire. Just chillin’ is fine too, if that’s what you need, but make that a conscious decision. But if you and your family are well, consider this unstructured time the rare chance to learn the banjo, practice your conversational Spanish, or master your camp chef skills. And we’re giving this Essential Knots course away free. Grab some cord and show us a bowline or a taut line hitch.

Plan Your Next Trip

This pandemic grounded trips I had on the calendar for the country of Georgia, Colombia, and Oregon. It cancelled a few conferences I was stoked to attend. It closed the ski resorts and climbing gyms. It closed Rocky Mountain National Park. You get it, and I’m sure you have your own unfulfilled list you wish to realize. Use this downtime to plan (or replan) your next great escape. I have some pent up energy and can’t stop thinking about fly fishing and pack-rafting in Alaska, biking a section of the Great Divide, maybe finally hiking the JMT, or climbing in the Wind Rivers. As my friend and 2013 National Geographic Adventurer of the Year Mike Libecki says (cheesily, yet guilelessly), “Dream big, and climb those dreams!”

Written by Shannon Davis for Backpacker and legally licensed through the Matcha publisher network. Please direct all licensing questions to legal@getmatcha.com.

[legojacques]

Legojacques’ Tumblr Fics Masterlist

Hey, you! Yes, you!

Are you interested in reading fics where Kenny P accidentally adopts a dragon? Or, fics that feature his dark-haired teammate with the ambiguous basketball nickname? Or, how about multiple fics from his cat’s point of view? Or, even just some good, ol’ positive fics featuring our favourite Las Vegas captain because you’re sick of the hate in the tags. It’s all here!

Parse not your jam? No problem!

I’ve got some classic Zimbits for you. AU fics where Jack is a little shit who pretends he can’t speak English? I’ve got that! How about the softest of fics where Jack and Bitty take the baby out for a drive? You betcha! A fic where Bitty is the face of Samwell and suddenly Jack is interested? Yup!

I’ve got so many fics and headcanons for you, featuring rare pairs such as: Whiskey/Dex, Jack /Ransom, and yes, even the very brief post that helped launch Bitty/Johnson.

So come on down to my newly organized master list of my writing! Waiting for you are bite-sized ficlets and posts that are all organized by pairing and labeled for all your fic-finding needs!

* = Personal favourite and recommended reading

–

Bitty/Jack (Zimbits)

*-Jack and Bitty makeup after a fight

-Jack likes to take Bitty to museums

-Jack interferes when Bitty is trying to film his cooking show

*-It’s Always Been You (Ao3) - AU, Jack and Bitty accidentally swap phones.

*-Jack and Bitty both own bakeries and Jack can’t stop sneaking over to Bitty’s (AU)

-Jack as a parent (Bullet points, ZimmerKids)

*-Bitty eats his icecream and Jack can’t look away

*-Bitty’s bakery has a break in and Jack is the cop on the case (AU)

*-Bitty models for Samwell promotional material (AU where Bitty is not on the hockey team)

-Domestic, quiet mornings with Jack and Bitty

-Bitty is the bachelor on a dating show (AU)

-Bitty accidentally gets sent back in time (Back to Future AU)

-Bitty feeds Jack (slight nsfw suggestions, bullet points)

*-Jack gets back into bed on Christmas morning (ZimmerKids)

-Bitty make an innuendo about Santa and the group chat explodes

-Jack is building a deck and Bitty calls Alicia

-Jack misses Bitty

*-The baby won’t stop crying until they put her in the car and drive around (ZimmerKids)

*-Jack is a writer and Bitty is his housekeeper. Jack pretends he doesn’t speak English. (Love Actually AU)

-Jack wants Bitty to model for his photography class (AU)

-Jack is turned into a cat and Bitty takes care of a stray that he found (AU)

*-Bitty is an Apple store employee and Jack broke his phone (AU)

*-Jack loses his kid in a game of hide and seek (ZimmerKids)

*-Jack catches his kids making a mess in the kitchen (ZimmerKids)

*-Bitty works in a grocery store is annoyed that Jack won’t put anything back in the right place (grocery store AU)

*-Grocery store AU bonus innuendos (Bullet points)

*-Bitty is a cookbook writer and Jack buys his book (AU)

-Jack has a panic attack and hides in the same closet as Bitty

-Jack has a minor anxiety break down and calls Bitty

*-Jack stops for fast food with his twin kids

*-Jack shows his affection by bringing Bitty small gifts

*-Bitty gets snowed in and trapped in a small town

-Bitty is forced to visit a museum and Jack is a historical reenactor

*-Jack is an undercover spy at a party

-Jack has a photography exhibit but then the police show up

-Bitty’s thoughts on chicken tenders

*-Bitty, Jack, and their twin toddlers celebrate Easter

Bitty/Jack/Kent OT3 (Pimbits, PB&J)

-Kent can’t stand Bitty’s fannypack

-Kent and Bitty get bored of Jack’s documentaries

*-Jack and Bitty come to see Kent (Kit POV)

-The boys go fishing (Bullet point)

Bitty/Kent (Bittyparse)

-Anything Can Happen (AO3) - Kent invites Eric to spend the weekend with him in Las Vegas.

*-Bitty feels bad that Kent is drinking all alone at the bar (AU)

-Bitty and Kent go shopping for things in their apartment

-Bitty returns Kent’s cat (AU)

Kent/Jeff Troy a.k.a Swoops (Parswoops, Troyson)

-Kent gets in an argument with Swoops

-Kent and Swoops watch rom coms

*-Kent stresses over what to get for Swoops’ birthday

*-Kent and Jack compete against each other (background Zimbits)

*-Jeff is a photographer for the Aces (AU)

-Kent makes sure the baby is okay in the middle of the night

*-The Aces play matchmaker

*-Kit is Kent’s (reluctant) guardian angel and brings him a boyfriend (Kit POV)

-Kent shows Swoops pictures of Kit in a bar

*-Everyone draws the wrong conclusion from a picture Kent posts online

-Swoops shows up unexpectedly on Christmas morning

-Kent and Swoops are at the olympics where they meet a famous figure skater 

Nursey/Dex (Nurseydex)

-Nursey finds out he has to interview the guy he slept with last night (AU)

-Nursey wakes up in the hospital

-Dex gets a bloody nose and Nursey takes care of him

-Nursey gets a bit jealous and possessive

*-Nursey keeps writing love poems for someone and Dex gets jealous

-Nursey has a public sex kink (slight nsfw suggestions, bullet points)

Kent/Tater (Patater)

-Tater keeps saying “I ship it” incorrectly (Tater/Kent)

-Tater and Kent visit Kent’s mother and look through his childhood photos (Tater/Kent)

-Tater and Kent have rival restaurants (Short summary, Bob’s Burger’s AU, Kent/Tater)

-Kent has a hairless cat and Tater has a pug; they bond over ugly pets

-Kent and Tater keep their relationship a secret

-Kent is learning Russian when Tater gets traded to the Aces

Other Pairs

-Tango sees Bitty for the first time (one-sided crush, Bitty/Tango)

*-Shitty is the best art critic (Shitty/Lardo)

-Holster thinks Jack is trying to steal his best friend (Jack/Ransom)

*-Whisky keeps breaking things to get Dex to fix them (Whiskey/Dex)

-Whiskey and Dex can’t agree when their anniversary is (Whiskey/Dex)

-Kent runs into his childhood best friend (Kent/OMC)

-Bittyholtz musings (Bullet points)

-Kent misses Jack (one-sided, Kent/Jack)

-Dex kisses Holster at a party (Dex/Holster)

*-Kent writes a letter to Jack (Kent/Jack)

-Johnson realizes he’s not meant to end up with Bitty (Johnson/Bitty)

-In which Bitty ends up with Shitty (AU, short summary, Shitty/Bitty)

-They both hate hockey team (Editor in Chief/Fry Guy)

-Bob has a twin brother and through a mix-up, Alicia thinks he’s his twin (Bob/Alicia)

-Jack’s birthday brings back memories for Kent (Kent/Jack)

-Ransom and Holster propose to each other (Ransom/Holster)

-Bob buys Alicia hot chocolate

-Holster comforts Ransom after he’s hurt (Ransom/Holster)

Non-Pairing

-If Bitty were on a Great British Bake Off-esque kind of show (Bullet points)

-Jack as a children’s author (Bullet Points)

-Holster and Ransom play Calvinball

-Jack and Ransom smuggle Canadian snacks (Headcanon)

-Senor Bun’s POV (Bullet points)

-SMH’s childhood toys (Bullet points)

-Lego Bitty meets Lego Jack (Bullet points)

-Hockey mom Lardo (Bullet points)

-Headcanon of Holster as an actor

-Headcanon of Holster as an actor pt 2 (Bullet point)

-Headcanons for Swoops (Bullet point)

-Roll Up the Rim is back; Jack and Ransom are excited

-Jack shows Tater how to Roll Up the Rim

-Jack shoots a heartwarming Amazon Prime commercial

-Bitty and Tater are private detectives (AU, bullet points)

-Tater and jam (headcanon)

*-Little Jack falls asleep on Bob

*-Holster and Ransom’s new Friday night routine

-Ransom discovers Holster can be a coral reef sometimes

Kent Parson Centric, Non Pairing

-Mama Parson thoughts (Bullet Points)

-Kent cries over cats he wants to adopt (Short headcanon)

-Kent and Bitty as Lilo and Stitch

-Kent and the rookie player

-Kent is shocked to find Swoops’ real name from Johnson

-Kent shoots a heartwarming Amazon Prime commercial

-Johnson shows up with a new cat for Kent

-Kent stumbles home drunk and upset

-Kent babysits for his teammate and plays kittens

Kit Purrson Centric

-Kent smuggles his cat and gets caught (Short headcanon)

-Kent and the Purrito

-Kate Pawson, Kent’s other cat (Bullet points)

-Kit and her bow tie collection (Bullet points)

*-How to (Kind Of) Train Your Dragon Pt 1 - Kent accidentally acquires a dragon

*-How to (Kind Of) Train Your Dragon Pt 2 - Kent is a dragon dad now

*-Kit goes missing (Sixth Sense AU, Warning: off screen animal death)

*-Kit is a witch’s familiar (Kit POV)

-Kent saves a kitten at a kid’s birthday party

*-Kit wants to come along on Kent’s trips

*-Kent is sad and Kit wants to cheer him up (Kit POV)

*-Kent’s childhood cat, Snowball (cat POV, off-screen animal death)

-Kit climbs the Christmas tree

Kit and Junior the Puppy Series

*-Kit and Junior: the new puppy

-Kit and Junior: the monster in the house

-Kit and Junior: Junior asks too many questions

-Kit and Junior: Swoops comes to visit

-Kit and Junior: Junior is afraid of fireworks

-Kit and Junior: Junior breaks something

-Kit and Junior: Kent and Swoops finally admit they like each other (Parswoops)

-Kit and Junior: Kent gets sick (Parswoops)

[zoobus]

I didn’t grow up in Hollywood. Far from it. But I did grow up a girl, and I remember. Because who can forget? We are in the park. Someone has “told” us about a funny man at the bus stop. We don’t know what this means really. We are 10. He comes over and starts chatting. He unzips his trousers and gets his penis out. We stare for what feels like a long time. Screaming, we run away. Next day he is outside our school and we are not sure who to tell because we think we shouldn’t have spoken to him.

I get a Saturday job in a supermarket. It’s great. I start off on fruit and vegetables, with the ambition of moving to cold meats. This means I have to go to the backroom to get sacks of potatoes. The owner of the supermarket is always in there in the gloom. He puts his hand up my skirt.

“Don’t go in there on your own,” say the other girls. I don’t want to lose my job so I just try to avoid him, but he catches me telling customers that there are no more potatoes.A teacher at school praises me because I like poetry. He is wild and alternative. Sometimes we just roll dice to get marks, he says. He talks to me about painting. He asks if I will go camping with him for the weekend. Just me and him. He doesn’t believe in official school trips. I am 14 and a half and I excitedly tell my mother. She gets herself dolled up and goes into school, finds this teacher and shoves him up against the wall. “If you want to interfere with her,” she says, “you have to interfere with me first.” I am mortified. Interference is my mother’s word for sex.

At 17, I leave home and hitchhike everywhere. This is iffy and I know it. Conversations swerve uncomfortably. Sometimes they lock you in the car. In France, I make one lorry driver drop me and a friend off after he starts talking about porn. We jump out in the middle of nowhere. He starts wanking. “What shall we do?” says my friend, panicking. I have a brainwave. “Let’s just eat our sandwiches.” The man’s erection wilts despite his frantic efforts.

Such “luck” runs out soon after. I get raped. That happens. Anyway, I was taking a risk, wasn’t I? All that “on the road” stuff I was into? Well, it’s different for girls.

In another crappy shop where I am selling cheap diamond and sapphire rings to excitable girls and their disinterested boyfriends, the manager is a “groper”. We all hate him and sometimes he brings his wife in. We decide to tell her. Somehow, though, none of us dare.

The Yorkshire Ripper is in the news. It’s scary. A bloke exposes himself on the way back from the pub. “Come here and I will bite it off,” screams my mate. I envy her boldness.

In the basement flat I am living in, someone is pushing porn through the letterbox and watching us. The police say there is nothing they can do unless he is caught doing it. He breaks in and takes all our letters and photographs. Everyone says that we are lucky we weren’t there. We move to a towerblock. We come home one day to find “Prostitutes” spray-painted on the door.

As I become more politically active, I become aware that anarchists and communists are as likely to harass you as any other man. This is only really a small disappointment.

In the US, though, I meet another woman who fights back. She is a waitress in the club in New Orleans where I work. When some creep says something to her, she picks up the candle in a jar on the table and pours the hot wax over his head. She is immediately fired.

By now I am becoming an old hand at dealing with sexual harassment and I apply to college, a polytechnic, at the age of 24. All is going well when a member of staff decides to exploit his power over me. “The thing is,” he says, “I have a wife and a mistress but what I am really looking for is a girlfriend.” I never have another meeting with him.

At eight months pregnant, I find men are still whispering sexual threats in the street. By the time I have my eldest daughter in a pushchair I live in an area where there is a lot of prostitution. A man stops me with a tenner. “I don’t mind the child, love,” he says, gesturing at my toddler.

Actually, though, life is good. I work on a magazine where men think feminism is talking to you for hours about problems with their sperm count. I have a flat and a baby, and then I get a job on a newspaper. Now surely I am in the safety of a middle-class world where women are taken seriously. However, there is inevitably one guy who touches up women as they bend over the photocopier.

I start writing about some of the big sexual harassment cases, such as Anita Hill. It’s a concern. The editor calls us all together. “Dreadful business, this sexual harassment,” he says. “I am glad it doesn’t happen here.”

[am052760]

Back Chat: Good Weekend letters to the editor, August 3 https://ift.tt/2LXLpWk

[blacklodgemusictx]

Taking off to Mars...

Bear with me.  I haven’t written a music review since covering a Midnight Oil show for my college paper in 2001.  Personally, I thought I had a unique perspective as no one else seemed to go to shows while busy being studious, but one response was an anonymous letter to the editor: “No one cares about a date Liz Green had to see a band no one has heard of.”  Fair enough, callow youth, fair enough.

Two things you need to know about me:  

 1.)  I live for music - it’s how I relate to other people.

 2.)  I reside in a town where everything I want to see or do it a minimum of 3 hours in any direction.  Every now and then something cool will happen, but there’s usually a 3-5 year gap between these cool occurrences.   You want something amazing to happen you either go find it or you make it happen yourself.  I made it happen once.  And it was stressful … and expensive.  So we prefer the seeking.

I had the good fortune to meet an older boy with similar sensibilities.  I always bemoaned the fact that there were no songs with my name in them:  Elizabeth has too many syllables, Liz not enough.  Up until this moment, I’d had to adopt “Beth” by Kiss.  He gave me a Hex song with my first AND last name in it, “Elizabeth Green, deep and serene.”  So I gave the boy my heart and he gave me his name.  Together we go out in to the world looking for the things that set us on fire.

The giving of songs is how I express myself.  Though I have a literary side, my degree is in business and my logical side tells me that someone has probably already described the things I’m thinking or feeling and has probably done it a lot more eloquently than I ever could.  The right song is out there for every situation... you just have to know where to look.  

A fight, the silent treatment from my husband, an uncomfortable car ride:  Rush’s “Open Secrets” on my iPod: “I never meant what you’re thinking.  That’s not what I meant at all.”  A friend dealing with heartache and a lying lover?  “The Wreckers” also by Rush.  Another friend’s husband passed away.  I gave her “Take my Heart” by Caroline’s Spine.  “Just in case I lose this race, I’ll always be there watching over you…”  Even if the song didn’t quite hit them the way it hit me, to accept the giving of a song is to accept the giver.

Seven months ago, two friends in tow and tickets to see Marty Willson-Piper in hand, we sped toward Fort Worth.  We were late.  A thing that often happens when work and driving and days of the week get in the way.  “It’s ok,” I assured my husband, “There are two openers.  We have plenty of time.  We won’t miss anything.”  Ha.  Prepare to eat your words in 3…2…1…

The order was Salim Nourallah, “Laish” (a British band fronted by Danny Green.  The band was absent due to the financial constraints of intercontinental travel so I started thinking of Danny as Laish sort of like Bono or Cher), and Marty Willson-Piper - Mr Willson-Piper being the former lead guitarist of the Church - my husband’s favorite band and consequently a band we’d been seeing together since 2002.  We only had tickets to that show, but after we were blown away by each performance in Fort Worth, we noticed the tour was EIGHT Texas shows long.  NO ONE gives that much love to Texas.  No one.

We proceeded to attend three more: Cactus Cafe in Austin and the two shows at the Palo Santo Galactic Headquarters - words that held zero meaning to me until I actually went there: it’s a space Salim set up next to his recording studio in Dallas.  The space accommodates about 30 and is the perfect location for comfortable, intimate shows.  Palo Santo is the independent record label founded by Salim and the similarly incomparable Sarah Henry.  

During this run of shows, I got to talk to Salim both in person and on Facebook.  I learned that he was not an “opener” for Marty Willson-Piper, he was the mastermind that made the whole tour happen.  I signed up for his mailing list and even if the name is tongue in cheek - The Cult of Nourallah - it’s spot on.  Salim is the most charismatic person you will ever meet.  If he thinks you should listen to a certain artist or album, it will appear on your chosen music player.  If he really did want to start a cult, you’d go buy whatever color shoes he instructed.  And he does it all with a calm, quiet, reassuring presence that lets the music speak for itself.

After these shows, I started listening to Salim’s albums.  All of them.  A lot.

No really… a LOT.

His style is simple, clean and straight forward.  The songs are heartfelt and often autobiographical.  Though coming from a musical background of performance and recording with his brother Faris, Salim’s solo career began in 2004 with the album “Polaroid” and has spanned the next prolific fifteen years to 2018’s “Somewhere South of Sane.”

I quickly assimilated the music from his albums in to my personal first aid kit of songs.  I recently helped a friend through a painful divorce and played Salim’s “It’s Ok to Be Sad” for her.  The idea is often something overlooked in adulthood and though it seems simplistic, the act of permission can be profound.  It’s ok to be sad.  It’s ok to mourn.  Things don’t work out.  

I ended up giving that friend Salim’s entire “Somewhere South of Sane” vinyl set.  SSOS is an album that I digested in pieces myself .  The songs feel so personal - the songwriter’s own heartbreak on public display - the act of musical consumption feels like voyeurism.  Spying through a window at people hurting each other.  It reminded me so much of my own first marriage - at a much too early age - and divorce that it was difficult to hear.  I felt well armed in that moment and profoundly grateful that Salim gave me something that I was able to pass on in the name of healing through the acceptance of grief.

While I put my arms around my friend at the local courthouse and held her through the end of her marriage, I struggled in my own personal life with a health scare that could possibly change everything.  I held on to Salim’s “Don’t Be Afraid” at this time and probably listened to it twenty times.  I’ll try not to be afraid.  I’ll try.  I’ll try to be brave… still, Salim, keep telling me.  It’s nice to hear.  Ultimately, after an agonizing length of time (agony and length only felt by the person in it), I learned I was ok.  Here I appreciate Salim’s “Goddamn Life” (Hit Parade, 2012.)  I’m so in love with my goddamn life.  It may be scary and it may hurt at times, but look at the alternative… right?

There’s a certain degree of uncertainty in being a member of the human race.  We all secretly think we are doing it differently and most probably wrong.  We toil next to each other in silence and the great tragedy is: we’re all doing it pretty much the same, but we don’t know that.  To be unsure of this, but to put it in song anyway and then present for the world to hear takes bravery I cannot even comprehend.  Trying to describe love is like trying to describe the color blue.  You put your song out there with the secret fear: what if that���s not love?  What if that’s not blue?  What if I’m doing it wrong?  What if everyone else sees things differently?  What if there’s something wrong with me?

* * *

Fast forward to last weekend - Saturday May the 4th.  I had the honor of gathering with Salim and his friends to celebrate with a retrospective show at Palo Santo.  

“If I really had to break it down,” Salim told us when announcing the event, “the one that thing that has meant the most to me is writing songs.  So it seemed fitting to spend my upcoming birthday not only with my real family but also with my ‘other’ family: my family of songs.  I'm sure you've probably heard songwriters refer to their songs being almost like children.  It's a hard thing to describe…”

But he does describe it in “Stranger in My Own Skin” (Constellation, 2009), “I’m gonna take some pain and stick it to a tune so you can sing along, get the words all wrong.”  And he did.  He stuck pain to a lot of tunes.  Pain, laughter, love, heart break, friendship, desire, despair, betrayal...  He stuck feelings to 15 years worth of tunes and more and on Saturday he indulged us in tastes from each album to commemorate another year of his existence on this planet.

The vibe was laid back and friendly - Palo Santo is like no other place you will ever experience.  It’s more like going over to Salim’s house, his face lights up and he says “Here, let me play something for you…”

The configuration was different this time than others I had been in attendance there.  Chairs were arranged on three sides, a seat and a guitar against the wall in the middle.  When Salim took his place in front of us, the small crowd immediately fell silent - not like fearing the wrath of a teacher chiding students for talking, but more like the anticipation of watching a magician about to perform a magic trick.  

And there was a magic trick of a sort:  projected on the wall above Salim’s head was suddenly the album cover of “Polaroid.”  Salim chatted about this cover and each subsequent one as he told stories about each and sang the songs he chose to represent that album and period in his life.  We were instructed to sing along and we did so - almost reverently - with Salim’s guidance.

Set one covered: Polaroid, Beautiful Noise, Snowing in My Heart, Constellation and Hit Parade (2004-2012).  We then took a break to share a fabulous cake, chat and sing Salim “Happy Birthday.”

Set two then covered: Friends for Life, Skeleton Closet, The Travoltas, NHD (Salim’s project with Billy Harvey and Alex Dezen) album And the Devil Went up to Portland, and finally Somewhere South of Sane (2012-2018).

Though Salim got to what was supposed to be the final song from SSOS, “Rainbow Dolphins” was then brought up by an audience member.  Salim just grinned and assured us he could play that too.  And he did.

I didn’t want the evening to end.  We all filed out of Palo Santo in to an absolutely beautiful, cool Dallas night.  We chatted with each other and eventually goodbyes were said and people began to wander away.  I yawned one too many times and may or may not have enjoyed just a touch too much wine.  My husband, Doug, eventually took my hand, we thanked Salim and drifted away ourselves.

The magic doesn’t have to end quite yet as Salim has put up part two of the birthday retrospective for sale next weekend (a few tickets remain and can be acquired here: https://www.prekindle.com/event/26257-birthday-retrospective-salim-nourallah-2nd-show-dallas).  This was a singularly unique event and though lightning isn't supposed to strike twice, if anyone could make that happen, it is Salim.  Next weekend will be just as magical.

Links of interest:

https://www.instagram.com/palosantorecords/

https://www.instagram.com/salimnourallah/

http://salimnourallah.com/

https://palosantotx.com/

https://www.facebook.com/salimnourallah/

https://www.facebook.com/palosantotx/

[geraldfierst]

HERE’s TO YOU

December 2016 Dear Friends,

I am sitting in an apartment overlooking the Acropolis.  My friend Judy Trotter and I hopped over to Athens on our way to Birmingham and the Limmud conference.  As my friend Wallace Norman often exclaims, “Not shabby!”  

This past summer, Wallace, who founded and directs the Woodstock Fringe Festival, directed Happy Days by Samuel Beckett.  The production was one of the most extraordinary pieces of theatre I have ever experienced, proving that great directing and acting can fill a simple space with transformative emotion and poetry.  Not shabby.  

As I sit here, I am thinking of all the connections that take us on our life’s journey, and how so many of them have affected me this past year and will continue into 2017-  new paths opening thanks to old ties.  

Judy and I first met about twenty years ago in Oxford when Andrew Gilbert, (whom I had previously met at CAJE, a conference I would regularly attend with my great friend and mentor Peninnah Schram)  invited me to Limmud which at that time was less than 500 people meeting in Oxford. This year Limmud will be at the National Exhibition Center with about three thousand attendees.  I describe Limmud as the TED conference for Jews.  Since that first time attending, I have been blessed to have been invited to present at Limmud every few years, and I have watched the conferences grow and have experienced the extraordinary people who come from all over the world to share their expertise on everything from politics to religion to art to cooking.  

Last summer, my childhood friends Shelley and Ken Gliedman introduced me to the Pine Tree Foundation whose funding made possible a wonderful project this school year at Today’s Learning Center, a school with parallel programs for general and special needs children from pre-K through high school.  Last spring, my friend Terry Burnett with whom I exercise at our local Y,  had introduced me to Pushcart Theatre, a local children’s theater company, and I had begun talking about developing educational programming for them;  meanwhle, my wonderful dog Bianca had introduced me to two dog walking neighbors, Jessica Lederman and Tara McAlister (humans to Harley and Atticus) who teach at TLC and had talked to me about their work.  So, I put all the pieces together to create a year long pilot project that we hope will be adopted in other school settings, using Terry’s puppetry, my storytelling, and Pushcart’s performances, to offer new ways to create educational communities and enhance literacy in ESL, special needs, and general populations.  I have often been frustrated by the dismissal of a teaching artist residency as no more than enrichment  programming, instead of the recognition of how essential the arts are to developing higher level thinking especially in elementary and middle school classrooms. Working at TLC, especially with special needs children, I again and again see how great teaching comes from teachers who use body, mind, and imagination, to reveal and amplify  their curriculum-  finding multiple ways to excite students, no matter their learning styles.  

I often think of how years back, when Remi Barclay Bosseau Messenger and I worked at the Whole Theatre Company, Bob Alexander of the Living Stage taught us “We are all geniuses.  The teacher’s job is to bring out the genius in all of us.”    Genius, like a genie (or djin) is the energy of the imagination that enables great thinkers to understand what is there that everyone else overlooks.  And teachers who inspire bring out that spirit in all of us.  My friend Margaret Read MacDonald as an author, storyteller and children’s librarian has been such a teacher.  Margaret has invited me over many years to accompany her to many wonderful places in the world.  I have always been delighted to be her entourage.  Eight years ago, while driving up a mountainous road in Malaysia, I suggested that we distract ourselves from the frightening twists and turns and make up a story about Big and Little to tell.  Many years passed, and this year, Margaret, who never gives up, offered that story to Liz Smith Russel, our old friend from August House.  Liz is starting publishing again with the founding of Plum Street Press and was delighted with our story which will be published next fall as Bye, Bye, Big! with illustrations by Kitty Harvill.  As Liz and I talked, I also sent her Imagine the Moon, a lyric poem listing the folkloric names of each month’s full moon.  Liz, who is a brilliant editor, suggested that I create a second tier of information to parallel each month’s verse, so I wrote accompanying text for the educational market based on the core curriculum philosophy of STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Math)  Imagine the Moon with wonderful illustrations by Leslie Stall Widener will be released late spring, 2017.  

Meantime, my friend Karen Shafer, who I first hired to manage the Whole Theatre Company forty years ago, has asked me to help on an advisory board to develop Aunt Karen’s Farm, her visionary dream.  Over decades, Karen has bought and renovated four houses along a road in Mt Vision, NY, near Cooperstown.  With space for twenty-two guests, Karen sees Aunt Karen’s Farm as a developmental artist retreat.  Dance, theatre and film companies have already used the facilities to work on projects. Last spring, I invited a company of a dozen storytellers, many of whom I first met three decades ago when Marie Winger and I organized the MidAtlantic Storytellers Conference, to join me for a long weekend.  This community of storytellers, including me,  had recently been working as an ensemble with Ray Gray in a series of collaborative performances at the Mercer Museum.  Inspired by the weekend at Aunt Karen’s Farm, Phil Orr, Luray Gross, Bill Wood, and I, have continued to collaborate, creating On the Road With Orpheus, a musical storytelling performance piece which riffs on the Orpheus myth by layering folktales, personal stories, and current events into a two act play.  We will be performing the show  June 14, 2017, at the Grapevine in Washington DC.

My friend Steve Zeitlin published a wonderful book this year The Poetry of Everyday Life.  In it he writes, “In the babble of mothers and their babies, in the inscriptions of teens in their yearbooks, and in the jump rope rhymes and expressions shared among family members lies a world of unselfconscious artistry and poetic expression that is always available to lift our spirits and inspire our creative expression.”   This sense of life’s poetry immediately made me think of my own Anjel, now eleven, who began middle school this year.  Watching her flourish in sixth grade reminds me of the great teachers I had at that age, particularly Marjorie Bull and Colin Reed.  Each of them invested me with a sense of my ability to create and own the world, and, now, I see Anjel discovering those strengths in herself. Both practical and empathetic as well as filled with imagination, she is a wonderful writer, a delicious companion.  I have often asked her opinions as I edited my own books.  I have no greater joy than to sit side by side with her ( actually, Bianca, my beloved dog, usually likes to snuggle between us) as we read and work and chat.  Her presence is my greatest pleasure, my fullest, most beautiful moments.  Sheer poetry.

At home in Montclair, we continue inviting artists to present their work in our living room.  In recent years, my friend Gladys Grossman has pulled me along to hear Monique Owens at the Village Gate.  Monique was a student at Demarest Middle School where I did playwriting residencies year after year thanks to Gladys.  I am friends with Monique’s whole family, so I was overjoyed to host Monique Owens and Friends at a house concert in the fall.  Then, on December 1, Jean Rohe and Liam Robinson continued their tradition of bringing their holiday show to our home with a wonderful performance of traditional and original music to bring a finale to 2016.  I always fondly recall that first afternoon when Jim Rohe (who had become my friend as  part of a storytelling class I was teaching at the Montclair Adult School) invited me over to the little house in Nutley.   There, I first met Jean and her brother Dan sitting in their high chairs singing Baby Beluga.  Ah, how the years go by!  

2017 looms before me- and let me be frank-  brings with it lots of personal and political trepidation, and I am wondering if the answer lies in trying to tend my own garden or in trying to change the world, but I am thinking of the opening second act image from Wallace’s production of Happy Days.  There is  Winnie (superbly played by Bette Carlson ) buried up to her neck, but as the lights come up, she opens her eyes, smiles and exclaims, “O Happy Day.”  It would be so easy to list the failures and disappointments that seem about to bury us, but in writing this end of the year letter,  I want to acknowledge how good it is to awake in a world that always brings opportunity for something new to be born.  I send this letter out to you because you are important to me, a part of my life, and even if much time passes before we are together again, you are here, not just in memory, but in the now.

I heard this story on a TED talk.  Alexander the Great coming over the Himalayas meets a naked yogi sitting on a rock  “Where are you going?”  the yogi asks .  Alexander replies, “I’m going to conquer the world!”  The yogi silently thinks Alexander is completely nuts.  " What are you doing?” Alexander then asks.  “I am trying to find nothing,” the yogi replies, and Alexander thinks the yogi is completely nuts.   No one can foresee the future, nor restore the past;  only in the constantly disappearing now is the song at the center of our story.  

Marge and I send our love to all of you.

With hopes for health and happiness AND, as my mother used to say, Money isn’t everything, but it doesn’t hurt.

Gerry

[ladystylestores]

The ‘Defund’ Conundrum – The New York Times

Want to get The Morning by email? Here’s the sign-up.

Good morning. Some white voters are souring on President Trump. Global health officials are worried about virus counts. Let’s start with the debate over “defund the police.”

Advocates for police reform are making the case that the phrase “defund the police” doesn’t mean what many people think it means. “Be not afraid,” Christy E. Lopez, a Georgetown University law professor, wrote in The Washington Post. “‘Defunding the police’ is not as scary (or even as radical) as it sounds.”

What it actually means, these advocates say, is reducing police budgets and no longer asking officers to do many jobs that they often don’t even want to do: resolving family and school disputes, moving homeless people into shelters and so on. Instead, funding for education, health care and other social services would increase. (For more detail on the movement’s agenda, you can read this Times explainer.)

The challenge for advocates is that many people equate “defunding” with a major reduction in policing — and they don’t like that idea. Reducing police budgets is arguably the only high-profile reform idea that’s not popular:

This situation reminds me of several other political issues in the Trump era, like health care and immigration. On all of them, progressives are pushing for multiple policy changes that are popular with voters (like expanded Medicare, the end of migrant-family separation and more police accountability). These changes are typically much more popular than President Trump’s positions on the same issues.

But many progressives have also adopted one big idea in each area that is decidedly unpopular with voters: Get rid of private health insurance. Abolish ICE. Defund the police.

The combination explains much of the political response you’ve seen in recent days. Joe Biden, Cory Booker and other Democrats have distanced themselves from the phrase “defund the police,” while Trump has highlighted it. “They’re saying defund the police,” he said last week. “Defund. Think of it.”

At the same time, some Republicans have begun signaling their openness to other parts of police reform, which is a big change. John Cornyn, a conservative senator facing a tough re-election campaign in Texas, yesterday tweeted the following: “I’m dedicated to rooting out racial injustices so no other family has to experience what George Floyd’s family has. It will require bipartisan commitment across the country & listening to the voices of those who have been most affected is the first step — we must not fail to act.”

A shift: A majority of Americans (57 percent) now believe the police are more likely to use excessive force against African-Americans. In 2014, the share was only 33 percent. “In my 35 years of polling, I’ve never seen opinion shift this fast or deeply,” Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster, said.

THREE MORE BIG STORIES

1. Trump’s base is fraying

Polls have also been shifting on Trump in recent weeks and show him to have fallen about 10 percentage points behind Biden. Why? Partly because some white working-class voters have soured — at least for now — on the president, according to Nate Cohn, a Times polling expert. Trump’s lead among white voters is down to around five percentage points, compared with his 13-point margin among whites in 2016.

“Incumbent presidents usually have an advantage in seeking re-election and that makes his deficit all the more striking,” Nate says. Past candidates have made up big deficits from the summer before the election, but the last incumbent to mount such a comeback was Harry Truman in 1948.

2. The policy debate on policing

Lawmakers around the country continued to consider new policies on policing. New York legislators defied police unions and began to approve a package of bills targeting police misconduct, including a ban on chokeholds. In Congress, Democrats unveiled legislation that would make it easier to prosecute police officers for misconduct, and require law enforcement agencies to report data on the use of force.

Trump denied that systemic problems existed, declaring that as many as 99.9 percent of police officers are “great, great people.”

Differing accounts: Attorney General William Barr contradicted Trump on Monday and confirmed that the president was taken to an underground bunker last month because of security concerns over street demonstrations outside the White House.

3. How to be safe in a pandemic

By now, many of the key rules for reducing your coronavirus risk are familiar: Wash your hands frequently when you leave the house. Wear a mask. Avoid close conversations. Minimize your time in indoor spaces.

But there’s one rule that probably deserves more attention: Adjust your behavior based on where you live. Virus rates vary significantly by state.

Our colleague Tara Parker-Pope has published a list of five rules to live by during a pandemic. Rule No. 1 is “Check the health of your state and community.”

In other virus developments:

Here’s what else is happening

The S&P 500 has recovered all of its losses on the year. But stocks opened down in Europe this morning, suggesting American markets may fall as well.

Reports of child abuse in New York City have dropped sharply since the pandemic began, which could be a sign that the system to protect children has fallen apart.

Adam Rapoport, the editor of Bon Appétit magazine, resigned after a 2004 photo of him resurfaced on social media, drawing condemnations for a stereotypical depiction of Puerto Ricans.

Lives lived: He was known as Brother Ah (born Robert Northern), a master French horn player (and Washington D.J.) who hopscotched between jazz and classical music before embarking on a solo career making music that defied categorization. He has died at 86.

BACK STORY: New York awakens

Christina Goldbaum, a Metro reporter, reflected on New York City’s first day of eased restrictions:

On Monday morning, New York seemed to be slowly waking up from its 100-day hibernation. The streets were still absent the usual crowds and cacophony of car horns. But the return of around 400,000 people to some urban routines offered some sense of normalcy.

Commuters wearing face masks hopped onto freshly scrubbed trains that smelled like lemon-scented cleaning supplies. Even the more crowded train cars still carried only a dozen or so riders.

By midday, local shops had unlocked their doors for curbside pickup. In the East Village, a half-dozen construction workers who had been home for months chatted and laughed as they lined up to have their temperatures checked.

Other parts of the city remained at a standstill: In SoHo and on Fifth Avenue, where many stores were looted last week, marquee shops were still boarded up. But graffiti on the plywood offered encouragement: “LOVE NYC” was a common motif and, at one store, “STAY STRONG.”

PLAY, WATCH, EAT, HUNT

Embrace tiny fish

Seafood from a can gets a bad rap — dismissed as survival fare that gathers dust in the back of many people’s pantries. But you can do a lot with tinned fish, says the cookbook author David Tanis.

You can make anchovy crostini, tuna-stuffed peppers or a big plate of spicy pasta, spruced up with canned baby clams, bacon and peas. Tanis suggests splurging for high-quality anchovies and tuna if you can. If not, work with what you have.

Finding the virtual action

With real-life sports mostly on hiatus, gamblers are flocking to the competitive video-game matches known as e-sports. Since early March, half of all sports betting in Europe has reportedly been on video games.

Bettors can wager on players trying to shoot each other in games like Call of Duty, or facing off in sports games like FIFA 20 or Madden NFL 20. Some sports books even offer betting on completely automated matches — that is, computer versus computer.

At least someone’s having a good day

It sounds like a plot lifted straight from Hollywood. A decade ago, a New Mexico art collector named Forrest Fenn buried treasure in the Rocky Mountains and self-published a book challenging people to find it. According to Fenn, the chest — filled with gold, gems and artifacts — is worth around $2 million. Over the weekend, he said, someone found it.

“I do not know the person who found it, but the poem in my book led him to the precise spot,” Fenn wrote on his website. He created the treasure hunt after recovering from kidney cancer.

At least two people died trying to find the treasure, and Fenn still refused to retrieve the chest. “If someone drowns in the swimming pool we shouldn’t drain the pool,” he said in 2017. “We should teach people to swim.”

Diversions

Games

Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Netflix selection (four letters).

You can find all of our puzzles here.

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David

P.S. The word “fancams” — videos by K-pop fans featuring their favorite singers, recently used in support of the Black Lives Matter movement — appeared for the first time in The Times yesterday, as noted by the Twitter bot @NYT_first_said.

You can see today’s print front page here.

Today’s episode of “The Daily” is about proposals to defund police departments in the U.S. And in the latest episode of “Popcast,” two former editors of The Source, a hip-hop magazine, retell how the publication covered the 1992 uprisings over the beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles.

The Times is providing free access to much of our coronavirus coverage. Please consider supporting our journalism with a subscription.

Ian Prasad Philbrick and Sanam Yar contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com.

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[corpasa]

Holiday Gifts for Teachers

Holiday gifts for teachers are a challenge. If your child has many teachers, it’s difficult to find a personalized gift for each that is both affordable and valued. For me, as a teacher, I am always happy with a gift certificate that works anywhere but there are time-proven ways to get more creative than a gift that sounds like “money”.

When I chat with teacher friends, here are the most popular gifts they’ve gotten over the years. Many are free and others allow you to spend only what you can afford while still giving a gift the teacher will love.

Most popular gifts

Let’s start by stipulating that what defines a great teacher gift is subjective. It depends upon the teacher’s subject, how long they’ve taught, their personal style, and so much more. The seven suggestions below provide ample ways to provide a gift your child’s teacher will love regardless of how well you know them.

A Helping Hand

Probably the most popular gift with most teachers is the gift of time. Sure, money is nice but when parents are willing to give of themselves to organize class events, chaperone, help out on lesson plans, or any number of other activities, that’s priceless.  As a tech teacher, my ideal is to have two parents for every K-2 class I teach. That’s a lot of helpers and a huge commitment from parents. I rarely found that many so was thrilled whenever parents offered to assist.

Compliments to the Administration

Happy parents often forget to share their joy with the teachers’ administrators. Too often, Principals hear from parents only when they’re angry about the teacher or some class activity. Providing unsolicited good news about the teacher’s effectiveness is a wonderful treat for both the teacher and the school’s administrators.

A Thank You Letter

Handwrite a note to the teacher telling them how much you and your child appreciate what they do. There’s little more valuable to a teacher than the acknowledgment from stakeholders that what they work on nights and weekends is working.

Tech Help

If you’re geeky and know your way around a computer, iPad, or Chromebook, offer to help your favorite teacher with either training, debugging, or problem-solving. While some teachers are comfortable chatting with a computer, many others aren’t. How nice to gift her/him with a personal guru available either in person, through a remote connection, or virtually with a program like Google Hangouts.

Holiday Food

This includes any foods that the teacher can use at their holiday celebrations. That might be cookies, candies, cider, alcohol, spiced nuts, or Chex Mix. By providing holiday foods for their parties, they work less and enjoy their guests more.

One last point: Your mother always told you the best gifts are those that can be used up. This one fits that category perfectly.

Gift Cards

While this feels impersonal, it is a great gift. Let teachers use whatever amount you’re comfortable giving on whatever they need most, often something you wouldn’t have thought of. Gift cards can be a general card like an American Express or MasterCard Gift Card, available for use wherever that card is taken, or store-specific like a movie theatre, Amazon, Scholastic, and Starbucks. Gift Cards are one of my favorite gifts because I enjoy them for month’s afterward.

A Gift from Teacher Wish List

It’s becoming popular for teachers to have an online wish list of teaching materials they need. You may remember these from Scholastic books or back-to-school supplies. They’ve grown up and now cover all kinds of teaching and classroom resources. Take the time to find out if your teacher is registered online with an organization. Or, help them do this.

Most Unpopular Gifts

Wondering what to avoid? Here’s a list I curated from online “worst teacher gift” sites. It’s worth noting that I have received all of these and actually liked them, so take this list with a grain of salt:

candles (teachers got their fill of these their first few years teaching)

mugs (like candles, teachers have plenty of these)

I Love Teacher stuff (they already have as much as they can ever use)

homemade food (lots of people worry about how well these are made. Me, I’ve actually gotten food poisoning from homemade food)

intimate gifts (teachers just don’t know you enough for this)

jewelry (what’s beautiful to you might not be to the teacher)

cheap stuff — these are gifts that are poorly-made and will not last. Better to spend the same amount of money on a well-made lesser-priced gift.

Remember: You don’t have to give gifts. Often, a heartfelt greeting or holiday card is as meaningful as a bar of expensive soap or a holiday ornament for the tree. One of my favorite gifts was a framed Thank You to me from a student. I displayed that for years, until I retired and now it has a place of honor in my home office.

Whatever you give, make it from your heart, with your love, and carrying a personal meaning.

–published first on TeachHUB

More on holidays:

December Subscriber Special

Holidays

16 Holiday Projects

Jacqui Murray has been teaching K-18 technology for 30 years. She is the editor/author of over a hundred tech ed resources including a K-12 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-8 Digital Citizenship curriculum. She is an adjunct professor in tech ed, Master Teacher, webmaster for four blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice, CSTA presentation reviewer, freelance journalist on tech ed topics, contributor to NEA Today and author of the tech thrillers, To Hunt a Sub and Twenty-four Days. You can find her resources at Structured Learning.

Holiday Gifts for Teachers published first on https://medium.com/@DLBusinessNow