#Home At Last (The Stein Residence)

[ask-the-friendly-ink-demon]

“mE aNd a CeRTaIN sOutHERnERr DeMon hErE WaNNa Wish Ya’LL aN hAPpy vALeNTine;’S dAy, DoN’T Be gLooMY If YA aloNE. tHeRe’s AlwaYS sOMeoNE oUT tHERe fOR yA, wHEneveR It Be PlAtONic, Or RoMaNTic, NobODY’s TrUlY AlOne, LoOk aT uS fOR eXaMplE, eY yEEhAw DeMON?” @ask-the-demon-of-joey-studios​

[mariacallous]

North Carolina removes 747,000 from voter rolls, citing ineligibility

North Carolina’s State Board of Elections has removed 747,000 people from its list of registered voters within the last 20 months, officials announced Thursday in a press release.

The State Board of Elections in the release said the majority of those stripped from the rolls were deemed ineligible to be registered because they had moved within the state and did not register their new address, or because they did not participate in the past two federal elections, prompting an inactive status.

Other reasons for removal included death, felony convictions, out-of-state moves and personal requests for removal, the board said.

North Carolina is one of seven swing states likely to decide the presidential election between Vice President Harris and former President Trump. Only one Democrat this century, former President Obama in 2008, has won the state in a presidential contest, but Harris has been polling close to Trump.

The state is also home to a tough gubernatorial contest between Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson and Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein.

The purge comes just a few weeks after North Carolina Republicans filed a lawsuit that said the state had failed to act on complaints about ineligible people on voter rolls.

In the GOP lawsuit, a Wake County resident in North Carolina claimed that voter registration forms in that county did not included driver’s license and Social Security numbers. 

“By failing to collect certain statutorily required information prior to registering these applicants to vote, Defendants placed the integrity of the state’s elections into jeopardy,” the GOP lawsuit read.

Republicans also filed a lawsuit recently raising concerns after state approved digital IDs issued by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as a valid form of voter ID. That claim was rejected by a local judge.

The state now has around 7.7 million registered voters. The Hill has reached out to the North Carolina State Board of Elections for comment.

[xtruss]

Kayaking The Waters That Shaped New York City

As NYC Turns 400, One of the Best Ways of Understanding What Propelled the City's Astronomical Growth is by Paddling the Rivers that Built it.

— Eliot Stein | Wednesday 11 September 2024

Credit: Markley Boyer & Eric W Sanderson, from Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City

Somewhere near Inwood Hill Park, home to the last native forests on the Island of Manhattan, the jackhammering racket of the city softened and an orchestra of crickets trilled in unison. I paddled closer to the water's edge, where a tangle of gnarled tree roots gripped boulders deposited during the last Ice Age. Just then, a great blue heron swooped low, landing on a small sandy cove before disappearing into the reeds towards the last remnant of the original salt marshes that once surrounded Manhattan.

"Finally," I thought, after spending the day kayaking around one of the most man-made places on the planet. "Maybe this is something the island's original residents might recognise."

This year marks the 400th anniversary of the founding of New York City – or, more accurately, The Dutch Settlement of New Amsterdam that would grow to become one of the world's greatest cities. It's a complicated milestone, and for years officials have been grappling over what, if anything, they should do to observe the event.

According to historian Russell Shorto, the founding of New Amsterdam 400 years ago is when America began. Credit: Getty Images

As Russell Shorto, author of the best-selling book The Island at the Center of the World explained, this tiny Dutch settlement effectively birthed "The World's First Modern City" – a place powered by pluralism and capitalism under the promise that anyone, regardless of where they came from, could make something of themselves.

"If what made America great was its ingenious openness to different cultures, the small triangle of land at the southern tip of Manhattan island is the birthplace of that idea: this island city would become the first multiethnic, upwardly mobile society on America's shores, a prototype of the kind of society that would be duplicated throughout the country and around the world,'' he writes. More so than Boston, Plymouth Rock or Jamestown, "Manhattan Is Where America Began."

At the same time, the Dutch created this multiethnic society by removing Native people from their lands and importing enslaved Africans to build much of Lower Manhattan. "They brought tolerance and intolerance; capitalism and colonialism. We have to process both of these things in a nuanced way that acknowledges their achievements and failures," Shorto told the BBC.

"Manhattan Is Where America Began."

As a result, the few events honouring the city's quadricentennial have tried to carefully balance how this settlement forever shaped the nation with its dark legacies of land dispossession and slavery. "We're viewing this anniversary more as a commemoration as opposed to a celebration," said Sarah Cooney, the executive director of the Holland Society of New York, which is co-sponsoring a picnic on 14 September at Governors Island, where the Dutch Landed in 1624 before permanently settling in southern Manhattan soon after.

Those early immigrants never could have foreseen that the far-flung fur trading outpost they established would one day rise to become the most linguistically diverse city in history, nor that it would play host to a remarkable experiment that continues to this day: to see whether all the peoples of the world could live together in a single place.

New York City is believed to be the most linguistically diverse city to have ever existed. Credit: Getty Images

In many ways, Manhattan stands as the ultimate triumph of man over nature. But while it may be tempting to view it today less as an island and more as a cement reef covered by steel skyscrapers and manicured parks, the story of how this relatively small 23-square-mile enclave grew to become the economic capital of the world is directly attributable to a natural phenomenon many New Yorkers have long forgotten: its access to water.

"It's all about the water. The entire city is about the water," said Captain Jonathan Boulware, the president and CEO of the South Street Seaport Museum in Manhattan. "The growth of New York into the city we know today as a global capital, a cultural capital and a multicultural city, every single aspect of its identity is rooted in water and its connections to the rest of the world."

And so, as the city reflects on the many things that have made New York "New York" over the last 400 years, I lowered myself into a kayak and set out on a 30-mile circumnavigation of Manhattan in hopes of better understanding the one thing that made it all possible. It turns out that this nine-hour journey isn't just one of the most unique ways of seeing New York City, but a dramatic reminder of how Manhattan is rediscovering its relationship to the very rivers that shaped it.

A Front Door Into The New World

In 1609, Henry Hudson, an English explorer hired by the Dutch to find the fabled Northwest Passage to Asia, steered his ship from the churning waters of the Atlantic into an immense protected bay. He pushed 150 miles upstream on the mile-wide river that would one day bear his name, hoping it led to China. It didn't. But while Hudson had failed to find a faster route to the riches of the East, he stumbled on one of the world's largest natural harbours.

Sheltered from the sea's wrath by Staten Island and Long Island and stretching across a 770-mile network of navigable waterways extending into the continent's interior, this geographical gem wasn't just "a safe and convenient haven, wherein 1,000 ships may ride in safety", as the Dutch chronicler Adriaen van der Donck wrote in 1650, but a front door into the untapped resources of the New World.

The Dutch settled Manhattan because of its incredible access to (and protection from) the sea, and its network of navigable waterways into the interior. Credit: Getty Images

"The harbour of New York is like no other. It's a marvel. It's wide, it's so deep it rarely freezes and it serves as the nexus for two bodies of water [the Hudson and East rivers] that come together to transport goods," said Dr Louise Mirrer, president and CEO of the New-York Historical Society.

This immense commercial potential is what attracted the Dutch to Manhattan from the start. At a time when the most efficient way to move cargo over long distances was by water, the Dutch Republic catapulted from relative obscurity to become one of the wealthiest and most powerful nations in the world by controlling maritime trade. It's also what made Manhattan distinct from other early US settlements. Unlike the Puritans who founded Boston, the Quakers who came to Philadelphia and the Catholics who arrived in Maryland, the Dutch didn't settle Manhattan to worship in peace; they came to make money.

"The Dutch basically created a colony dedicated to capitalism. They didn't really care about religion; they were open to anybody involved in commerce," said Dr Gretchen Sorin, a historian and the director of the Cooperstown Graduate Program at the State University of New York at Oneonta. "And so from the very beginning, New York has always been an incredibly diverse place." According to one document, by 1646 the island was home to some "400-500 men of different sects and nations" speaking about "18 different languages".

But as Shorto explained, "Manhattan was a cultural crossroads long before Europeans arrived there. It wasn't just the Lenape who used it to fish and exchange goods, but also the Shinnecock and other [Native Algonquin] peoples from the whole region who came to take advantage of the harbour and rivers."

Before the Dutch arrived, Mannahatta was an incredibly biodiverse island. Credit: Markley Boyer & Eric W Sanderson, from Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City

After the Dutch purchased Mannahatta or "Island of Many Hills", as it was known, from the Lenape in 1626, more and more seafaring entrepreneurs poured into the harbour to navigate up these rivers, shipping beaver pelts, tobacco and grain from the continent's interior back to Europe. The Dutch eventually declared the settlement a free-trade zone in 1640, and by the time the British took it at cannon point in 1664 and renamed it after the Duke of York, this ambitious, polyglot little seaport had planted the seeds of religious tolerance, individualism and enterprise that would eventually spread across the nation.

Mannahatta: An Ecological Oasis

When the Dutch arrived on Mannahatta, it was a stunningly biodiverse place. In his book Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City, landscape ecologist Eric W Sanderson details that in 1609 the island was home to 66 miles of rivers and streams, 233 species of birds, 32 types of reptiles and amphibians, 70 kinds of trees, 24 species of mammals and 55 different ecosystems – which is more, per acre, than Yosemite and Yellowstone or a typical coral reef or rainforest of the same size. "If Mannahatta existed today as it did then," he writes, "it would be the crowning glory of American national parks."

The British soon surpassed the Dutch as the greatest maritime empire on Earth and Manhattan became a nexus point for the flow of goods and people around the globe. Coopers, blacksmiths, sailmakers and shipbuilders began flooding to the island city, and by the 1770s, New York had become "the breadbasket of the Atlantic", shipping wheat and timber to Britain and importing rum, molasses and sugar – as well as enslaved people – from the Caribbean and Africa. The city would burn at the end of the American Revolution, but over the next few decades, it would become the largest place in the western hemisphere – all thanks to water.

In 1795, New York replaced Philadelphia as the country's main port, and as more ships from around the world flooded in and out of the harbour, the city expanded north from the southern tip of Manhattan at astonishing speed. Old Dutch farms and English estates were quickly carved up into smaller and smaller plots until DeWitt Clinton (arguably the greatest or worst New Yorker in history) spearheaded two ideas that would forever change Manhattan.

The first was to level the entire natural geography of the island to accommodate its growing seaport. In 1811, the city filled in its marshes, paved over its spring-fed ponds and levelled the oak and hemlock forests where wolves and bear once roamed, replacing it all with a massive 11,000-acre street grid that turned this "island of hills" into an island of rectangles.

By 1900, New York harbour was the busiest port in the world and Manhattan was the centre of a new global supply chain. Credit: Alamy

The second was the construction of a 363-mile-long ditch connecting the Hudson River to the Great Lakes. When the Erie Canal opened in 1825, it not only paved the way for Manhattan to become an industrial juggernaut by giving it direct water access to the Midwest, but transformed the young nation by allowing the mass movement of goods, ideas and people across the country. The city was on its way to becoming the busiest port in the World and the centre of a new global supply chain connecting the continent with the rest of the globe. As Manhattan exploded with industry and became the place to do business, so many immigrants steamed into the harbour that according to Census records, by 1860 nearly 70% of adults in New York City were born outside the US.

Manhattan: America's Emporium

The book Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 reveals that by 1836, 62% of all imports to the US came through Manhattan, and on a single day that year, 921 boats on the East River waited to dock on South Street, while an another 320 waited on the Hudson.

"If you look at aerial photos of Manhattan [in the late 1800s and early 1900s], it's so completely ringed with piers that it looks like a porcupine," Boulware said. "These ships were coming from all over the world to load and unload cargo, and there were a lot of entrepreneurs trying to creatively turn $5 into $6 on those docks. It was an early example of the New York hustle. This is the DNA of the city and the port and water is the core of it."

As planes started replacing passenger liners and container ships were diverted to New Jersey in the 1950s, Manhattan's maritime industry began to collapse. Over the coming decades, piers and warehouses were abandoned, docks fell into decay and New York Harbor, which had been one of the most diverse and dynamic environments on the planet when the Dutch showed up, became a de facto dump.

But in the last decade, billions of dollars have been pumped into cleaning up the city's waterways, a string of ambitious projects have transformed Manhattan's rusting piers into landscaped green spaces and the city's once-derelict waterfront has become a model of urban renewal. As a result, more than four centuries after Hudson's crew reported that waves of Lenape came out to greet their ship in "great canoes" as they approached the island, Manhattan is returning to its water-bound roots, and quickly emerging as one of the US's most unique paddling destinations.

Many boathouses now offer free kayaking all over New York City. Credit: Alamy

"There's no place like it in the country," said Suzy Basu, managing partner of Manhattan Kayak Co, which offers hourly rentals, classes and guided tours around the city – including a 30-mile lap of Manhattan. "So many people here don't even realise Manhattan is an island, but when you paddle around this magnificent, man-made mountain range of towers shooting into the sky, it changes your whole perspective of the city. You'll see."

Kayaking Manhattan

Pushing out of Pier 84 and into the Hudson's swift tidal flow, it quickly became clear that the key to navigating Manhattan's waterways on your own power is something the island's Indigenous residents understood long ago: it's all about the current.

The original Algonquin name for the Hudson River was Mahicantuck or "river that flows two ways". That's because, like the East River that rings Manhattan's opposite end (which isn't actually a river but a tidal strait), its current changes direction every few hours as it flows in and out of the ocean. Therefore, our floating parade of 14 kayakers and four stand up paddleboarders would travel counterclockwise around the island in a perfectly timed route designed to take advantage of the rivers' shifting currents.

Accompanying us were three guides armed with two-way radios whose job was to safely navigate us through the rush of ferries, barges and sightseeing cruises – one of whom was Eric Stiller, Manhattan Kayak Co's 64-year-old founder, who estimates he's circumnavigated the island 80 to 100 times. He explained that back in the 1980s, there was no access to the water for paddlers anywhere, so he used to jump fences and launch his foldable kayak in the Hudson from rotting piers. As word of his exploits spread, people started paying him to lead them out into the rivers where no one else dared go.

"My first paying customer was [American singer] David Lee Roth, followed soon after by John F Kennedy Jr," he said, as we paddled towards the glimmering pinnacles of the Chrysler and Empire State buildings in the distance. "We used to wheel kayaks out [in the Meatpacking District], jump the fence and paddle out to Ellis Island. That's how this all started."

Fast-forward to today and the New York City Water Trail connects paddlers with 160 square miles of navigable waterways, dozens of launch sites dot the city and many of Manhattan's newly opened boathouses now offer free kayaking.

As the current carried us south along the 550-acre Hudson River Park that runs along Manhattan's western shore, the island's recent waterfront revival unfolded in front of us. Since first opening in 1998, the park has been slowly transforming many of the collapsing piers that once propelled the city's growth into creative urban oases – all while paying homage to Manhattan's maritime past and incorporating native ecosystems that thrived here 400 years ago.

We soon paddled past Little Island, a $260m "floating park" rising like a bouquet of tulip-shaped concrete columns from the Hudson that opened in 2021. Built atop the former Cunard Line dock that shipped people and goods between Manhattan and the British Empire (and next to the pier where the survivors from the Titanic landed in 1912), it's home to 350 species of flowers, trees and shrubs that Mannahatta's early residents would recognise today.

Moments later, we drifted past Gansevoort Peninsula, where novelist Herman Melville spent years working as a customs inspector at the wharf after writing Moby Dick. Opened in 2023, the park features a restored marsh, native grasses and a 1,200-ton sand beach designed to mirror those that lined the island's western shore when the Dutch arrived.

The $260m Little Island park now rises from the nubs of Manhattan's commercial piers. Credit: Getty Images

Tribeca's 2.5-acre "ecologically themed" Pier 26 then came into view, where a newly planted woodland forest, coastal grassland and maritime scrub is designed to mimic the river's original coastal habitat. A brand-new "Estuarium" opened in January 2024 featuring a playground inspired by fish species that thrived in the Hudson before European colonisation, and as I looked to my left, I spotted children climbing into the gills of a colossal Atlantic sturgeon.

Work is underway on the other side of Manhattan, too, where the East Midtown Waterfront project is part of a grand vision to close the loop and provide New Yorkers with continuous waterfront open space around Manhattan once it's completed in 2026.

As we approached the southern tip of Manhattan where the Dutch settled, a sudden "Hold!" command from Stiller thrust me back into the present. Four centuries later, these waters remain Manhattan's busiest maritime throughfare. With boats and barges rumbling all around us, Stiller explained that once he gave the signal, we had exactly 10 minutes to round the island's southern point before the next Staten Island ferry stormed by.

I glanced over at the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island on my right, One World Trade Center on my left and snapped a quick picture with my phone. Then, one of our guides, Tommy Montgomery said, "You're going to want to secure that now before we get to Hell Gate."

"Before we get to what?" I asked.

But before he could reply, Stiller shouted, "Now, now, now!"

Top: Paddlers pass under 21 bridges when circumnavigating Manhattan, including the Brooklyn Bridge. Credit: Eliot Stein Bottom: One thousand ships every year used to crash at Hell Gate, and when officials blew up its bedrock in 1885, the explosion was heard 50 miles away. Credit: Alamy

Paddling as hard as we could, our crew quickly crossed the channel, caught the East River's flood tide and shot north on an 11-knot (12.5 mph) highway past the last 19th-Century cargo sailing ship still docked at the historic South Street Seaport and under the Brooklyn, Manhattan and Williamsburg bridges. At one point, I noticed we were zipping past a kid biking along the East River Greenway. As we neared the northern tip of Roosevelt Island, Montgomery looked back at me.

"Okay, this" he said, "this is Hell Gate. Stay to the left and paddle hard."

Coined by the Dutch (Helle Gadt) and known as the most notorious stretch of the city's complex waterways, Hell Gate is the swirling, churning, narrow tidal strait where the Harlem and East rivers meet. It's also the final resting place of hundreds of ships. But because successfully traversing it could save merchants sailing from New York Harbor to New England days of travel, so many sailors tried to run its gauntlet that in the 1850s, an estimated 1,000 ships ran aground here every year. In 1885, at the height of Manhattan's maritime might, officials determined that subduing this treacherous passageway was so crucial to the nation's economy that the US Army Corps of Engineers blew up its bedrock with 300,000 lbs of explosives in the largest planned detonation before the atomic bomb.

Today, the confluence remains chaotic and unpredictable – akin to "paddling through a whirlpool", as Stiller later told me – but with the currents working in our favour, we were soon beached at Randall's Island.

One of the consequences planners likely didn't consider when they paved over Manhattan's natural topography is that there are virtually no places people can feasibly stop when kayaking around it – even for a bathroom break. A rocky beach on Randall's Island is one of the few exceptions. So as the other paddlers downed their energy bars and I tucked into my Bodega Sandwich, I took a moment to meet them.

Of the group's 17 other paddlers, 11 were women and only one other person had never completed "the circ". There was Nick Avrutin, who said he spends so much time on the water with Manhattan Kayak Co that he now stores his kayak at the boathouse; Stacey Hull, who was attempting her first circ on a stand up paddleboard after many in a kayak; and Giandomenica Becchio, who travels from her home in Turin, Italy, to New York every summer to lap the island.

"When you get on the water, it really gives you a different perspective of what the city is," said Eva Rivlin, looking down at a crab that had washed up on the beach. "Our shorelines are these incredible, diverse ecosystems, and to see it from this perspective, you really understand not only the scale of the city but how it all fits together."

As we chatted, a family waded into the water nearby. Officials maintain that after decades of neglect and abuse (and a more-than $45bn restoration effort), the city's waterways are now cleaner and healthier than they've been since the Civil War. In fact, many experts agree that it's generally safe to swim in the Hudson, and I even spotted a swimmer tearing through the river later that day. Rivlin pointed across the river to one of the 700 outfalls that dump billions of gallons of sewage into the city's waterways each year, but she also pointed towards a rusting pier reclaimed by the Billion Oyster Project, whose ambitious goal is to restore the 220,000 acres of oyster reefs that sustained the Lenape and nourished the Dutch.

"People still have this perception that the water is dirty and not safe, and it's still dirty, but it's incredible the developments in the last 15-20 years that have changed it by leaps and bounds," Rivlin said.

A 1,000-Year-Old Rock in Inwood Hill Park marks the site where the Dutch allegedly purchased Manhattan. Credit: Alamy

Two hours and 13 bridges later, we had finally paddled our way out of the Harlem River's modern industrial sprawl and reached the island's northern tip at Inwood Hill Park, where Mannahatta's primordial past still defies Manhattan's paved presence. It's perhaps fitting that here, just a few steps from a series of caves used by the island's Native inhabitants for millennia, a 1,000-year-old rock marks the site where the Lenape purportedly sold the island to the Dutch four centuries ago.

Moments after I watched the heron vanish into the reeds, the trilling of crickets was swept aside by the whooshing traffic and whirring helicopters of the city. My fleeting glimpse of Mannahatta was gone – or so I thought.

As we waited for the Hudson's current to shift so it could carry us south towards the soaring skyscrapers of Midtown, it occurred to me that for as much as this island had changed in the last 400 years, one part of its natural landscape remained the same – and it had been guiding me around Manhattan all day.

[butch-bakugo]

Anyway here's your reminder that people on this website are ok just straight up fucking lieing to you half the time and the only chucklefucks who still bring up kamala's stance on Palestine, despite her saying MULTIPLE TIMES over the last few months AND DURING THE DEBATE her intention is an immediate ceasefire and two state solution with a stop on sending more weapons to isnotreal, are just trying to basically make you feel bad for doing what most oppressed people have had to in this country for the last hundred years: the best option over all even if it isnt perfect.

This weirdo's main point is " why hasn't she done anything to stop the genocide already >:(" cause shes the VICE PRESIDENT, DUMBASS, they don't fuckin make laws, they don't make decisions, she has litterally no control or power over genocide joe. Even if she was nudging that corpse awake and point out what she already had on the campaign trail, Biden in particular has a fondness for Isnotreal that Kamala could more than likely never shake. She has no real political power unless someone pulled what they supposedly did on Trump and didnt miss. For fucks sake, please understand the powers of a specific political position before you start spouting off about what they are or arnt doing.

The only point of posts like this are to sow disaffection with the best, most qualified and most competent person the democratic party has had in 2 decades. Do you not think this is on purpose on such a politically polarized site like Tumblr. Tumblr, the home of " if you do not 100% align with everything I've ever believed, you must be a raging Nazi bigot the likes the world has never seen because you don't believe in he/him lesbians. The only way to atone for your horrendous actions is to to kill yourself." Type takes. Russian bots, psyops and people with hidden views are horrific rn. They will spout all the wrong things in PC language just right so you think they are one of us. They are not one of us. They are not your friend. They were the origin of the horrifically stupid take that was popular for so long of "protesting voting". I can not believe so fucking many of you fell for it and STILL FUCKING ARE. WHY ARE YOU WILLINGLY GIVING UP ONE OF YOUR RIGHTS TO INCREASE YOUR OTHER RIGHTS OVER A SINGLE ISSUE THAT WILL ONLY BE MADE WORSE BY YOUR STUBBORN REFUSAL. Voting isn't a fucking testament to your "stubbornness to stop a genocide and protest what's been allowed to fester 😒". It doesn't make you a more moral person cause you didn't vote for one singular reason. In fact, if the history of "online activists" is to be believed with how little y'all actually volunteer or vote in your local elections or donate or do fuck all but reblog reblog reblog, y'all probably wouldn't of voted anyway cause you're fuckin lazy.

Idk how to tell you there's really only 4 options in the upcoming election and only one actually reduces harm for us here in the states and the Palestinians.

Option 1: Vote for trump. Your a shitty racist cause trump wants to " finish the job" aka complete the genocide. He also will enact project 2025 and sucks Putin's dick. He will happily kill you. You are a fucking idiot.

Option 2: Vote for Kamala. She wants to stop it and is the most progressive person we've had on the ticket and potentially could be the first female, biracial black president in us history. There is litterally no reason not to. She's stated at least 8 times on the trail she wants a fucking ceasefire.

Option 3: Vote third party. Dosent really matter the reason, wether trump is a little too extreme or not extreme enough for you or your stupid and dont realize 0 pple outside of your state know who your resident popular independent is. Jill stein should die. Wether trump or Kamala are too moderate or extreme for you, in our current climate, it's basically the same as throwing your vote away cause there's 0 chance in hell they will win. One vote less for Kamala might as well be a vote for trump or lack of vote. This does nothing for Palestine.

Option 4: Don't vote. Throw away your own voice to scream it on social media where it won't make any material difference. Sure you can scream about Palestine but you intentionally did not do one small free thing you could do to materially help them, like voting for a candidate that vocally wants a ceasefire.

The literally only option that helps Palestine in any major way is option 2. Dose she "both sides" the issue? Yes, abit. But grow a fucking brain and actually listen to her. She litterally, word for word, stated that the children of Palestine are being mistreated and killed in unprecedented numbers and a ceasefire and two state solution is the only way forward. That's what she fucking said. Imma be a realist again and some people will be mad but as much as I'd love for all of Palestine to be restored, Isnotreal to be completely dissolved and force Israelis to step out of their little white bubble and realize you can't just force your way onto a land without consequences, its not gonna happen. What will most likely happen, best case scenario, Palestinians will get part of their land back and be forced to reforge their own nation from the ground up mostly alone without much help. Which fucking sucks but it's better than ethnic cleansing and hotels built on mass graves.

Please disregard any of the nasty shit you " suddenly" learn about Kamala until the end of the election. Russian bots are also literally making up ai images and fake journalism websites claiming Kamala hit and ran a 13 yr old in 2011 and paralyzed her with a news title that did not exist on a website made only 3 days prior to posting only that story. We know it's fake because if it was real, all the conservacucks wouldn't of just discovered it now, they would of brought it up when she was running with biden. The local cops had to discredit the story as it was completely and utterly false with the picture of the car being from a bad crash in Ghana, the video of the " victim" being a victim of DV in fucking North Carolina and supposed x rays of her body being from medical journals talking about chest decompressions from car accidents and hip injuries having different symptoms between adult care and pediatrics. They are claiming Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, a place very close to my own fuckin home town, are eating cats and dogs... trump said it during the fucking debate... the Springfield police department and city manager had to come out and say it's not happening and they have zero reports. It's believed the lie got started when russian bots dug up the body cam footage and story of a white american born woman with severe mental issues in Springfield ate a cat on the street in 2013-2015... It's getting insane y'all, please be EXTRA FUCKING THROUGH with your sources and be suspicious of anyone still trying to split the party this close to the election.

Do not allow it and call out these moral purity dumbasses who straight up lie about candidates takes to make you feel bad over a singular issue. Kamala stands with Palestine, they are either intentionally lieing to you or that fucking stupid and didn't see the fucking debate they are claiming to paraphrase. I did. This is just stupidity. Please be more fucking critical than this.

[nataliesnews]

---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Natalie Ginsburg <natanyag@gmail.com> Date: Wed, Dec 6, 2023 at 3:51 PM Subject: nofim and the evacuess, Fatma and I am glad for her that she died before being chucked out of her home. what is happening on the West bank To: Zianda Goldstuck <Zianda.goldstuck@gmail.com>, Warren Goldstuck <warren.goldstuck@gmail.com>, Amy Stein <amylaurenstein@gmail.com>, Ros and Jack Todes <jtodes@hotmail.com>, Arthur Goldstuck <arthur.goldstuck@gmail.com>, Jayna Goldstuck <goldstuckjay@gmail.com>, Natalie Ginsburg <natanyag@gmail.com>, Shirley Goldstuck <goldstuc@iafrica.com>, Charles Goldstuck <cgoldstuck@gmail.com>, Daniel Goldstuck <daniel.goldstuck@gmail.com>, Daphne Miller <milstein@worldonline.co.za>, Glenn Stein <glennmarcstein@gmail.com>, Kelly Goldstuck <kelly.goldstuck@gmail.com>

The story of the evacuees from the south in "Migdal Nofim" continues to unfold. Among the evacuees we also hosted the Shahar family, Shimon and Tzipi, and their son Tzachi. Although the son is not "our age", out of understanding and consideration of the situation, he is welcomed with open arms. It turns out that Tzachi was gifted with a talent for painting and from the moment the family arrived in "Nofim" he painted every day. At the initiative of the resident Ella Amitai, the curator of "Nofim", an exhibition of his paintings was set up. Nofim residents and Tzachi's family members were invited to the opening ceremony. Ella the curator presented the paintings and he spoke, told about himself, and among other things said: "From the moment I arrived at "Landscapes" I painted every day for three weeks. When I had to move by order of the state to a hotel a short distance from Manofim, I didn't draw any pictures... I see this as a compliment to "Migdal Nofim" whose people make the place and provide inspiration." It turns out that the war that caused a change in world order, created connections that would not have existed in the days of corrections

I had been going to start my letter very differently as I woke up with such a feeling of despair. I had gone to sit with the families for a while in the afternoon...this after having gone with Shlomiet to Ricardo where we used to buy when we went to the DCO. She suggested next week we go even though we know that few people can get there just to see if there is anything we can do. We saw how the villages have been closed off and locked. The only way people can go in and out is on foot and even at Ricardo their shelves were pretty empty because the only way they can bring in produce from many of the suppliers in the occupied areas is back to back. but to go back to yesterday.  

This is the way that all the villages are blocked off. 

 Opposite them, as if it is not enough what the families are going through, this animal whose mouth is straight out of the sewage comes to tell them that they are to blame for the war because of Oslo and I guess what he means by the other saying that releasing prisoners with blood on their hands is dangerous. I wish he was one of the kidnapped. And  also Netanyahu....we could be sure that any information he gives them will only be lies because that is all that comes out of his mouth......such as saying "That  is life" when a hilltop youth murders an Israeli man who killed terrorists and who is unarmed and on his knees. And, as I wrote this, the murderer is to be released this evening because the evidence is too vague. He has  bullets in him. They can't prove whose bullets these were?  And that  is also what will happen when someone on the right kills one of the demonstrators. And in the meantime Ben Gvir is handing out arms to the settlers and every idiot as if they were sweets at a Barmitzvah....see the PDF 

I see I have gone from one thing to another. 

And Fatma, the woman for whom we demonstrated for so many years died last night of a heart attack. I am happy for her. A better ending than that she should b e thrown out of her house. I am sure that the government will use the war to carry out the threat to give the house to the right

Thelma Admon (Anat Gonen) writes about Fatma Salem of Sheikh Jarrah, who passed away last night: "Fatma Salem died of cardiac arrest last night. The strength of the brave woman, who fought for her house in Sheikh Jarrah against many forces stronger than her, was reduced to zero. Fatma was born in her parents' house in Sheikh Jarrah, and lived there for more than seventy years, gave birth to children and raised grandchildren there. For years she suffered abuse from settlers at her doorstep and in the courts. The settlers longed for her home, and she did not give up. Determined and strong she stood in front of them. "I have nowhere to go," she repeated at the Friday demonstrations in the neighborhood. "How are you?" she would ask in the hug. and kisses on both cheeks, and thanks a lot of warm words for her support. A previous illness had caused a disfigurement in her face, but the evidence of this was erased at the moment of the personal meeting with her. To each and every one she gave private, warm and noble attention. Fatma left the evil Israeli world in the middle of a terrible war. Her death marks the limit of human inclusiveness. Now I hug Fatma Salem one last hug. I wish justice would come and stand by her up there, in a place where there is no entry for the wicked. " Photo: Zipi Menashe

 I am putting in several PDFs so that, if you are interested, you can see what is going on in the occupied territories.  And you won't be surprised to hear that the families of the kidnapped are verbally attacked every day by those on the right where they sit. They are told by these hate filled people that their children will die because of them. 

[cornerstonefulfillmentservice]

Home-Made Fulfillment

“A nation’s culture resides in the hearts and in the soul of its people.”  ~ Mahatma Gandhi Last weekend it was showery. But it was filled with the harvests of intentional living bringing a mix of fulfilling things to do beginning on Thursday at a lecture and slide show given by Adrienne Stein and Quang Ho at the fabulous Ladew Topiary Gardens. On Friday evening, The Maryland Center for the…

[azpaintingltd]

Top Footwear Stores in South Slope, BC

South Slope, sometimes referred to as Southern Burnaby, is a mainly single-family neighborhood in Burnaby in British Columbia, Canada, just southeast of Metrotown. It borders Suncrest, an all-single-family home neighborhood to the west, and goes as far east as Edmonds. Although the northern boundary of South Slope is Rumble Street, many residents north of the street consider themselves living in South Slope, including South Slope Elementary, and Burnaby South Secondary School. The neighborhood gets its name from the steep slope it is located on. The neighborhood is one of the oldest parts of the city, which can be seen in Nelson Elementary, which is over a hundred years old, and dozens of Heritage Homes. Painters in Vancouver.

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[pauszkopkodo]

Az ugye minden kedves nézőnek megvan, hogy ez egy teljesen fake fotó?

Picasso 1973-ban halt meg. Jean-Michel Basquiat 1960-ban született, és tinédzser korában, a '70-es évek elejéig Brooklyn egyik negyedében lakott a családjával, mígnem '74-ben vissza nem költöztek Puerto Ricóba. Aztán '76-ban újra vissza Brooklynba, és a lázadó kamasz elszökik/elmenekül otthonról, pláne, miután apja rajtakapja, hogy kannabiszt szív, ezután parkokban alszik és a kanna után az LSD-t is kipróbálja: Basquiat's family resided in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Boerum Hill and then in 1974, moved to Miramar, Puerto Rico. When they returned to Brooklyn in 1976, Basquiat attended Edward R. Murrow High School. He struggled to deal with his mother's instability and rebelled as a teenager. He ran away from home at 15 when his father caught him smoking cannabis in his room. He slept on park benches at Washington Square Park and took LSD. Eventually, his father spotted him with a shaved head and called the police to bring him home. via wikipedia

1979 körül a SOHO-ban fest pólókat (Warhol későbbi naplóbejegyzése), árul képeslapokat egy barátjával, és ott meglátja Warholt egy étteremben, majd egyik képeslapját sikerül Warholnak eladnia: He also made postcards with his friend Jennifer Stein. While selling postcards in SoHo, Basquiat spotted Andy Warhol at W.P.A. restaurant with art critic Henry Geldzahler. He sold Warhol a postcard titled Stupid Games, Bad Ideas. via wikipedia

A '80-as években indul Basquiat karrierje, ekkor gyakori látogatója másokkal együtt Warhol Factory-jának, aki ekkor viszont még nem igazán kedveli a fiatal feltörekvőt: The story begins in the early 1980s, when the teenage Basquiat frequented Warhol's New York City studio, The Factory, in an effort to infiltrate its social scene. At first, the Warhol regarded the ambitious Basquiat with aloofness. In late 1982, Swiss power-dealer Bruno Bischofberger set up a lunch between them, and Warhol started paying attention. via sothebys.com

Warhollal először pedig 1982. októberében találkozik, a harmadik egyéni kiállítását Zürichben megszervező Bischofberger műkereskedő és műgyűjtőnek köszönhetően, ő hozza őket össze egy közös ebédre: Bischofberger gave Basquiat a one-man show at his Zurich gallery in September 1982, and arranged for him to meet Warhol for lunch on October 4, 1982. via wikipedia

Warhol naplóbejegyzése 1982. október 4-ről, amiben lazán leírja, hogy csinált egy Polaroidot (valószínűleg kettejükről), majd Samo (Basquiat) egy-két óra múlva visszajött egy kettejüket ábrázoló festménnyel, ami még meg sem száradt: Down to meet Bruno Bischofberger (cab $7.50). He brought Jean Michel Basquiat with him. He’s the kid who used the name 'Samo' when he used to sit on the sidewalk in Greenwich Village and paint T-shirts…he was just one of those kids who drove me crazy…he’s black but some people say he’s Puerto Rican so I don’t know…And so had lunch for them and then I took a Polaroid and he went home and within two hours a painting was back, still wet, of him and me together.” via sothebys.com

Basquiat: Dos Cabezas, 1982

Szóval Basquiat csak 1982-ben találkozott igazán személyesen Warhollal, így Picassóval sem találkozhatott soha, se koránál, se élethelyzeténél fogva. Warhol Dalíval kétszer találkozott, egyszer 1965-ben NY-ban:

Salvador Dali and Andy Warhol at the St. Regis Hotel. New York, circa 1965 _via_

Aztán 1978-ban, egy vacsora alkalmával:

Warhol and Dalí, Shot by Jade Albert in New York in March of 1976 _via_

Maga Warhol sem találkozott soha Picassóval. De első párizsi kiállítása után nagyon büszke volt: After that first show in Paris, Andy Warhol left very happy. With all the publicity in the French press he was sure, so he wrote in POPism, that “Picasso must have heard of us at last.”

Pablo Picasso, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol and Salvador Dali

[alexandrakrolikowska]

Chasing the deer shadow Analog photography, haiku 2022 

Implemented within Dereenacappera artist residency in County Cork, Ireland

During the art residency in Ireland I created a photo series called “Chasing the deer shadow”. It is a collection of visual poetic images of nature, each of which is accompanied by haiku. A “Chasing the deer shadow” photo series appeared as a result of poetic connection to nature, research of Irish mythology and history, and reflection on philosophical concepts. 

I was exploring fundamental questions, such as cyclicality and the wholeness of nature, its healing and mythological aspects, identity, notion of home and migration. 

Through taking the soft, dreamlike analog photographs of nature I explored a therapeutic effect of life in a remote village among the Caha mountains, near the Atlantic ocean. After seeing the news about the injured female deer in the Kyiv region last spring I came to County Cork with the idea to make a project dedicated to deer mythology. So I went to Killarney National Park to be able to take photographs of deer in their natural environment there. 

Besides that, I was doing research on the similarities of the Irish and Ukrainian historical contexts, and found some parallels: there was the  Great Irish Famine in 1845-49, and Holodomor in Ukraine in 1932-33, and also both countries' fights for independence are quite similar. Analysing this postcolonial discourse, part of the photo series I dedicated to the subject of Famine, the crucial role of potato culture in Ireland, and sad remembrance of the Law of spikelets in Ukraine. 

Since I was also exploring some of the philosophic and literature concepts of the 20 century, I did weave some profound quotes of the American philosopher Gertrude Stein* and the Irish writer James Joyce** within the haiku and visual photographic narrative. Also the concept of Golden Age, theory of primordial soup and Carl Jung’s theory of archetypes became a material for the inspiration. 

The final project has an intimate form of photo album, which, filled with the photographs and hand-written haiku to each of the images, became rather an art book. If there will be any opportunity to publish it, I will make it exactly in this way, copying the original form. In case there will be exhibitions in future, I can display separate photographs from the album, printed in large.

This art residence in Ireland was very meaningful to me. All the puzzle – very kind people on my way, financial support from the Artist at Risk program, sunny weather in Ireland and opportunity to stay in nature – was complete within this journey. I was able to work from a very different perspective, than I could make it in Ukraine or somewhere else in Europe.

* “Forget grammar and think about potatoes” and “Rose is a rose is a rose...” (1913)

** about the red and white roses, regarding possibility of everything in imagination and limits of the material world from his novel “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” (1916)

[memethebum]

Sooo I had wanted to write some okakuri a little while ago which spiraled out of control and ended up being another SE AU hehe

Summary: Finding a dead body hadn’t been a part of Maka Albarn’s plan for the day. Dying hadn’t been a part of Soul Evan’s plan for the day either. However, one small text message rewrites such an event and ultimately brings their paths together. Now it’s up to Maka to decide where the events they’ve faced together lead them (steins;gate au)

————————————————————-

Maka couldn’t help but wonder how tedious her life could get at certain times.

Lamenting over a broken air conditioner in the two-room apartment she resided within seemed a bit dramatic, but the young woman could hardly ponder over such a situation due to being too irritated by the blaring noise of the electric fans stationed throughout her home and the thin layer of sweat that had settled onto her skin as the hours without a proper cooling system further increased.

“Is the last question over tectonic plates?” Kid asked Black*Star as they huddled around his laptop, which was perched onto a small office desk in the far right corner of the living room.

“Bingo, I can just see the 100 right now,” Black*Star added as he began to tap the laptop’s touchpad with a lofty sneer.

Maka didn’t even have the energy to comment upon the blatant act of academic dishonesty that she was fully viewing from her seat on the living room couch. However, the summer heat hadn’t kept the young woman from muttering a witty remark about Kid being a glorified Quizlet when it came to unprepared college students taking an online test.

What I need to do is get out for the day. There’s really no reason for me to keep sitting around here when the AC repairman isn’t coming until tomorrow she decided before picking up her phone and searching up a list of academic conferences that would be occurring at Shibusen University within the next few hours.

Maka then found herself passively scrolling through each of the scheduled conferences until running across a pair of names which elicited her eyebrows to slowly furrow towards one another.

The Legitimacy of Timetravel: An Analysis By Aneirin Evans and Selwyn Evans she read on her phone screen before letting out a small huff in indignation.

“Seriously Kid, how’d you learn to do stuff like this?” Black*Star shouted as Maka read over the conference announcement once more.

“Oh it’s really not that hard, all you have to do is find a website with a locked answer key, pull that website up on your phone, and then figure out some coding-“

“YAHOO 100! I COULD JUST KISS YOU RIGHT NOW,” the blue-haired man cherred over Kid’s explanation, although the call for celebration seemed to be completely disregarded as the words Black*Star had just uttered began to permeate through the uneasy silence that had settled between them.

“I-uh,” Kid started as the entire span of his face and neck began to flush in a deep shade of red.

“S-sorry, kissing p-probably mixes up a lot of germs and it-it was a stupid thing to blurt out-“

“NO!” he suddenly exclaimed before Black*Star could finish any more of his statement, prompting Maka to roll her eyes at how her childhood friend seemed to be battling against an even stronger blush of red across the span of his face than Kid seemed to be.

“W-what I meant to say is-is that I wouldn’t be against kissing you OR W-WAIT THAT DIDN’T-“

“Ugh, you two need to either get a room or read this,” Maka added onto the conversation, causing both young men to zip their heads in her direction immediately after she finished uttering out the first part of her interjection.

She then walked closer towards them and laid her phone onto the office desk.

“What’s so interesting about some conference?” Black*Star questioned as his eyes began to trek their way through the paragraph displayed on her phone screen.

“Look at the names on the bottom idiot,” Maka snorted before angling a finger towards the portion which had piqued her interest.

“Evans? As in the famous musician family?” Kid questioned, causing Maka to beam at his deduction.

“That’s what I’m assuming. So, what could a bunch of hotshots that thrive on over-the-top musical performances and new followers for every social media site you can think of be doing at some scientific conference,” she hummed before her smile spread even further across her face.

“Well, Father has told me that many wealthy families like to sponser certain scientific endeavors. It seems that’s the case with the Evans, but to have the family members lead conferences just makes it seem as if-“

“They’re trying to pass off the research as their own. And here I was worried about academic dishonesty with a geology exam,” Maka giggled before shifting her gaze from Kid to Black*Star.

“Yea yea, a god like me will spare you of any more convincing. I’ll come watch some rich people act like assholes if that’ll keep us distracted from the heat until the sun finally goes down,” Black*Star added before offering Kid a meek smile and heading towards the apartment’s front door.

“Do you wanna come too, Kid?” Maka asked the other young man before glancing towards the front door where Black*Star idly stood while humming lowly to himself.

“No, I think I’ll have to pass. Patty wanted me to play a new idol game with her, so I’m going to wait until the Thompsons finish their shift at Deathbucks,” he explained.

“Oh well, have fun with that! And I’m sure you guys will follow all of Spartoi’s guidelines, member 003?” Maka replied before beginning to walk towards the front door.

“Of course, we’ll make sure to not trash the place and only allow authorized members of Spartoi into the apartment,” Kid added, causing the young woman to let out a sigh and languidly turn the door knob.

“Alright, I’ll fill you in on anything juicy when me and Black*Star get back,” she added before walking out, leaving Black*Star to give Kid a wave in farewell before quickly following after her.

——————————————

Soul was sure that his life was a never ending cycle of one completely miserable thing after another.

However, having to tag along with his father for a three-month trip across America alone and bare without the safety net of Wes had to take first place on his list of shitty experiences.

Shoulda’ known he wouldn’t be above pulling a stunt like this Soul grumbled to himself as he begrudgingly opened the folder he was carrying and took a quick glance through the “script” his father had typed out for an academic conference that was clearly about gaining a greater amount of publicity in the states and had absolutely nothing to do with advancing the field of scientific research on time travel.

The young man’s mood had only seemed to lighten up once he flipped to a loose page which listed the scientists Wes had reached out to about joining Soul and his father for the academic conferences they had planned throughout the rest of their extended tour.

Soul had used his renewed momentum as a sign to quicken his reluctant pace towards the conference hall, causing him to almost run into someone as he walked down the end of the staircase and into a long hallway.

“Oh-uh sorry-“

“Soul?” the person gasped, causing him to pause in his hasty apology.

The young man took a moment to fully regard the stranger. He assumed that she was about a year or two younger than him after a quick glance over her facial features. His gaze had then became more focused on how the young woman’s ashen blonde hair appeared to heighten the vibrant hue of her mossy-green pupils as her eyes became fixed upon his own.

“Have we…met before?” he questioned, causing the young woman’s pupils to widen a bit before her expression wistfully deflated.

“No-no we…haven’t but I-“ she answered before leaning forward to close the distance between them.

Soul then began to take a few hesitant steps backwards, only to be stopped in his tracks when the young woman silently raised her hands towards his face.

“I-I just,” she murmured right when the young man jolted backwards and lost his grip on the folder he had been holding onto.

Soul’s initial reaction was to quickly grab all of the paperwork that was haphazardly tossed onto the ground, but his mind seemed to have been cornered into a standstill once noticing how the young woman’s eyes had smothered any form of brightness he discerned from them throughout the beginning of their interaction.

The texture of paper against his shoe had suddenly brought the young man back into motion, causing him to break his gaze from the young woman and lower his body towards the tiled floor.

“Um-you…ok?” Soul questioned while continuing to locate all his forms and line them up into a clean stack.

He then began to stand once more, only to find the area in front of him to be completely empty.

What…was that all about? Soul couldn’t help but wonder as his eyes scanned the area for any evidence of the young woman he had been talking to just mere moments ago.

[zemkzone]

When Lightning Hits Ice: Ch27 (on AO3)

FULL FIC LINK HERE

Eight days later, Barry was still reeling.

Len hadn’t iced him out. But he didn’t spend time alone with him anymore either. He was never at the loft when Barry was there, and it was impossible to predict which safehouse he’d sleep at on any given night. (There were probably several that Barry didn’t even know about.) He either vanished into the underground tunnels after teaming up with Barry or patrolled alone. At STAR Labs, he sat through tests with Caitlin or Shawna or discussed security measures and the particle accelerator investigation with Dr. McGee and her team. At the underground base that they’d started calling the Waystation, he kept company with Cisco, Hartley, or Ronnie, and tinkered with his bike. That or he drilled the team on different emergency plans in case of power failures, a Reverse-Flash sighting, mass prison breakouts, or hostage situations at CCPD. When he wasn’t doing any of that, he was on the phone with Felicity or Eddie or even Joe.

And now there was another place for him to use other people as a barrier between himself and Barry. Firestorm officially joining Team ColdFlash meant that the Stein residence had become their unofficial third base of operations. Professor Stein wanted to spend more time with Clarissa, so Hartley and Cisco had set up a secure workstation in his home office. Ronnie split most of his time between there and Caitlin’s apartment, since he was still keeping a low profile.

“I’m happy for you,” Cecile had said when she’d met the separated Firestorm. “But as the lawyer terminating a missing person hunt and reversing a death declaration? I hate you both.”

Firestorm wasn’t the only new addition to the group. Even though Dr. McGee’s investigation of the particle accelerator explosion was over, she’d decided to lend her assistance (and the facilities at Mercury Labs) in their research on metahumans. Dr. Quale wanted to stay in the loop to monitor Professor Stein and Ronnie.

“After the last several months, I think walking away would be a mistake,” he’d said. “If you encounter any metahumans with powers as volatile as Martin and Ronnie’s, I’d like to help.”

The expanded team was a good change, Barry thought as he leaned against the open sliding doors of the study and sipped at a glass of iced tea. He watched Cisco and Eddie talking with Hartley and the three older scientists about their visit to the former Allen residence. On his other side, Caitlin and Ronnie moved around an impressively long expanding dining table, calling out their own commentary in between rearranging the platters that Shawna teleported from the kitchen. Barry hadn’t realized until then how well sound carried in the Steins’s house. Every few minutes, Joe and Cecile would peek out the kitchen door to interject with questions. Clarissa was in there with them, putting the finishing touches on lunch.

But Len hadn’t arrived yet. And Barry was anxious to see him.

READ THE REST OF THE CHAPTER HERE

[ask-the-friendly-ink-demon]

piss in the abyss

congrats, you are now dead. nice knowing ya anon. Alpha is covering brittany's eyes as he watches his stepsister just tear apart the grey-face, blinking rapidly as he gulped, this is why no one gets on her bad side.

[talkstothemoonandstars]

Mark Meadows removed as North Carolina registered voter

Hey, Republicans! Found your voter fraud!!

An elections board in a North Carolina county has removed Mark Meadows, a former chief of staff to President Donald Trump, from its list of registered voters after documents showed he lived in Virginia and voted in the 2021 election there.

He was removed Monday by Macon County's Board of Elections.

Public records show he cast an absentee vote in Macon County during the 2020 general election.

Questions had already arisen last month about Meadows when North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein's office asked the State Bureau of Investigation to look into his voter registration, which listed a home he never owned as his legal residence.

[auroraluciferi]

if anyone in this time of deep concern of his health is interested about what a worthless piece of shit Prince Philip is, here is a very brief list of 90 racist, sexist, and incredibly ignorant things the man has said in the last century:

1. "Ghastly." Prince Philip's opinion of Beijing, during a 1986 tour of China.

2. "Ghastly." Prince Philip's opinion of Stoke-on-Trent, as offered to the city's Labour MP Joan Walley at Buckingham Palace in 1997.

3. "Deaf? If you're near there, no wonder you are deaf." Said to a group of deaf children standing near a Caribbean steel drum band in 2000.

4. "If you stay here much longer, you will go home with slitty eyes." To 21-year-old British student Simon Kerby during a visit to China in 1986.

5. "You managed not to get eaten then?" To a British student who had trekked in Papua New Guinea, during an official visit in 1998.

6. "You can't have been here that long – you haven't got a pot belly." To a British tourist during a tour of Budapest in Hungary. 1993.

7. "How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to pass the test?" Asked of a Scottish driving instructor in 1995.

8. "Damn fool question!" To BBC journalist Caroline Wyatt at a banquet at the Elysée Palace after she asked Queen Elizabeth if she was enjoying her stay in Paris in 2006.

9. "It looks as though it was put in by an Indian." The Prince's verdict of a fuse box during a tour of a Scottish factory in August 1999. He later clarified his comment: "I meant to say cowboys. "I just got my cowboys and Indians mixed up."

10. "People usually say that after a fire it is water damage that is the worst. We are still drying out Windsor Castle." To survivors of the Lockerbie bombings in 1993.

11. "We don't come here for our health. We can think of other ways of enjoying ourselves." During a trip to Canada in 1976.

12. "A few years ago, everybody was saying we must have more leisure, everyone's working too much. Now that everybody's got more leisure time they are complaining they are unemployed. People don't seem to make up their minds what they want." A man of the people shares insight into the recession that gripped Britain in 1981.

13. "British women can't cook." Winning the hearts of the Scottish Women's Institute in 1961.

14. "It was part of the fortunes of war. We didn't have counsellors rushing around every time somebody let off a gun, asking 'Are you all right - are you sure you don't have a ghastly problem?' You just got on with it!" On the issue of stress counselling for servicemen in a TV documentary marking the 50th Anniversary of V-J Day in 1995.

15. "What do you gargle with – pebbles?" To Tom Jones, after the Royal Variety Performance, 1969. He added the following day: "It is very difficult at all to see how it is possible to become immensely valuable by singing what I think are the most hideous songs."

16. "It's a vast waste of space." Philip entertained guests in 2000 at the reception of a new £18m British Embassy in Berlin, which the Queen had just opened.

17. "There's a lot of your family in tonight." After glancing at business chief Atul Patel's name badge during a 2009 Buckingham Palace reception for 400 influential British Indians to meet the Royal couple.

18. "If it has four legs and it is not a chair, if it has got two wings and it flies but is not an aeroplane and if it swims and it is not a submarine, the Cantonese will eat it." Said to a World Wildlife Fund meeting in 1986.

19. "You ARE a woman, aren't you?" To a woman in Kenya in 1984, after accepting a gift.

20. "Do you know they have eating dogs for the anorexic now?" To a wheelchair-bound Susan Edwards, and her guide dog Natalie in 2002.

21. "Get me a beer. I don't care what kind it is, just get me a beer!" On being offered the finest Italian wines by PM Giuliano Amato at a dinner in Rome in 2000.

22. "I would like to go to Russia very much – although the bastards murdered half my family." In 1967, asked if he would like to visit the Soviet Union.

23. "If a cricketer, for instance, suddenly decided to go into a school and batter a lot of people to death with a cricket bat, which he could do very easily, I mean, are you going to ban cricket bats?" In a Radio 4 interview shortly after the Dunblane shootings in 1996. He said to the interviewer off-air afterwards: "That will really set the cat among the pigeons, won't it?"

24. "Oh, it's you that owns that ghastly car is it? We often see it when driving to Windsor Castle." To neighbour Elton John after hearing he had sold his Watford FC-themed Aston Martin in 2001.

25. "The problem with London is the tourists. They cause the congestion. If we could just stop the tourism, we could stop the congestion." At the opening of City Hall in 2002.

26. "A pissometer?" The Prince sees the renames the piezometer water gauge demonstrated by Australian farmer Steve Filelti in 2000.

27. "Don't feed your rabbits pawpaw fruit – it acts as a contraceptive. Then again, it might not work on rabbits." Giving advice to a Caribbean rabbit breeder in Anguilla in 1994.

28. "You must be out of your minds." To Solomon Islanders, on being told that their population growth was 5 per cent a year, in 1982.

29. "Young people are the same as they always were. They are just as ignorant." At the 50th anniversary of the Duke of Edinburgh Awards scheme.

30. "Your country is one of the most notorious centres of trading in endangered species." Accepting a conservation award in Thailand in 1991.

31. "Aren't most of you descended from pirates?" In the Cayman Islands, 1994.

32. "You bloody silly fool!" To an elderly car park attendant who made the mistake of not recognising him at Cambridge University in 1997.

33. "Oh! You are the people ruining the rivers and the environment." To three young employees of a Scottish fish farm at Holyrood Palace in 1999.

34. "If you travel as much as we do you appreciate the improvements in aircraft design of less noise and more comfort – provided you don't travel in something called economy class, which sounds ghastly." To the Aircraft Research Association in 2002.

35. "The French don't know how to cook breakfast." After a breakfast of bacon, eggs, smoked salmon, kedgeree, croissants and pain au chocolat – from Gallic chef Regis Crépy – in 2002.

36. "And what exotic part of the world do you come from?" Asked in 1999 of Tory politician Lord Taylor of Warwick, whose parents are Jamaican. He replied: "Birmingham."

37. "Oh no, I might catch some ghastly disease." On a visit to Australia in 1992, when asked if he wanted to stroke a koala bear.

38. "It doesn't look like much work goes on at this University." Overheard at Bristol University's engineering facility. It had been closed so that he and the Queen could officially open it in 2005.

39. "I wish he'd turn the microphone off!" The Prince expresses his opinion of Elton John's performance at the 73rd Royal Variety Show, 2001.

40. "Do you still throw spears at each other?" Prince Philip shocks Aboriginal leader William Brin at the Aboriginal Cultural Park in Queensland, 2002.

41. "Where's the Southern Comfort?" On being presented with a hamper of southern goods by the American ambassador in London in 1999.

42. "Were you here in the bad old days? ... That's why you can't read and write then!" To parents during a visit to Fir Vale Comprehensive School in Sheffield, which had suffered poor academic reputation.

43. "Ah you're the one who wrote the letter. So you can write then? Ha, ha! Well done." Meeting 14-year old George Barlow, whose invited to the Queen to visit Romford, Essex, in 2003.

44. "So who's on drugs here?... HE looks as if he's on drugs." To a 14-year-old member of a Bangladeshi youth club in 2002.

45. "You could do with losing a little bit of weight." To hopeful astronaut, 13-year-old Andrew Adams.

46. "You have mosquitoes. I have the Press." To the matron of a hospital in the Caribbean in 1966.

47. "The man who invented the red carpet needed his head examined." While hosts made effort to greet a state visit to Brazil, 1968.

48. "During the Blitz a lot of shops had their windows blown in and sometimes they put up notices saying, 'More open than usual.' I now declare this place more open than usual." Unveiling a plaque at the University of Hertfordshire's new Hatfield campus in November 2003.

49 . Philip: "Who are you?"

Simon Kelner: "I'm the editor-in-chief of The Independent, Sir."

Philip: "What are you doing here?"

Kelner: "You invited me."

Philip: "Well, you didn't have to come!"

An exchange at a press reception to mark the Golden Jubilee in 2002.

50. "No, I would probably end up spitting it out over everybody." Prince Philip declines the offer of some fish from Rick Stein's seafood deli in 2000.

51. "Any bloody fool can lay a wreath at the thingamy." Discussing his role in an interview with Jeremy Paxman.

52. "Holidays are curious things, aren't they? You send children to school to get them out of your hair. Then they come back and make life difficult for parents. That is why holidays are set so they are just about the limit of your endurance." At the opening of a school in 2000.

53. "People think there's a rigid class system here, but dukes have even been known to marry chorus girls. Some have even married Americans." In 2000.

54. "Can you tell the difference between them?" On being told by President Obama that he'd had breakfast with the leaders of the UK, China and Russia.

55. "I don't know how they are going to integrate in places like Glasgow and Sheffield." After meeting students from Brunei coming to Britain to study in 1998.

56. "Do people trip over you?" Meeting a wheelchair-bound nursing-home resident in 2002.

57. "That's a nice tie... Do you have any knickers in that material?" Discussing the tartan designed for the Papal visit with then-Scottish Tory leader Annabel Goldie last year.

58. "I have never been noticeably reticent about talking on subjects about which I know nothing." Addressing a group of industrialists in 1961.

59. "It's not a very big one, but at least it's dead and it took an awful lot of killing!" Speaking about a crocodile he shot in Gambia in 1957.

60. "Well, you didn't design your beard too well, did you? You really must try better with your beard." To a young fashion designer at a Buckingham Palace in 2009.

61. "So you're responsible for the kind of crap Channel Four produces!" Speaking to then chairman of the channel, Michael Bishop, in 1962.

62. "Dontopedalogy is the science of opening your mouth and putting your foot in it, a science which I have practiced for a good many years." Address to the General Dental Council, quoted in Time in 1960.

63. "Tolerance is the one essential ingredient ... You can take it from me that the Queen has the quality of tolerance in abundance." Advice for a successful marriage in 1997.

64. "I never see any home cooking – all I get is fancy stuff." Commiserating about the standard of Buckingham Palace cuisine in 1962.

65. "I suppose I would get in a lot of trouble if I were to melt them down." On being shown Nottingham Forest FC's trophy collection in 1999.

66. "It makes you all look like Dracula's daughters!" To pupils at Queen Anne's School in Reading, who wear blood-red uniforms, in 1998.

67. "I don't think a prostitute is more moral than a wife, but they are doing the same thing." Dismissing claims that those who sell slaughtered meat have greater moral authority than those who participate in blood sports, in 1988.

68. "Ah, so this is feminist corner then." Joining a group of female Labour MPs, who were wearing name badges reading "Ms", at a Buckingham Palace drinks party in 2000.

69. "Cats kill far more birds than men. Why don't you have a slogan: 'Kill a cat and save a bird?'" On being told of a project to protect turtle doves in Anguilla in 1965.

70. "All money nowadays seems to be produced with a natural homing instinct for the Treasury." Bemoaning the rate of British tax in 1963.

71. "It is my invariable custom to say something flattering to begin with so that I shall be excused if by any chance I put my foot in it later on." Full marks for honesty, from a speech in 1956.

72. "Why don't you go and live in a hostel to save cash?" Asked of a penniless student.

73. "In education, if in nothing else, the Scotsman knows what is best for him. Indeed, only a Scotsman can really survive a Scottish education." Said when he was made Chancellor of Edinburgh University in November 1953.

74. "If it doesn't fart or eat hay, she isn't interested." Of his daughter, Princess Anne.

75. "They're not mating are they?" Spotting two robots bumping in to one another at the Science Museum in 2000.

76. "I must be in the only person in Britain glad to see the back of that plane." Philip did not approve of the noise Concorde made while flying over the Buckingham Palace.

77. "The only active sport, which I follow, is polo – and most of the work's done by the pony!" 1965

78. "It looks like a tart's bedroom." On seeing plans for the Duke and then Duchess of York's house at Sunninghill Park.

79. "Reichskanzler." Prince Philip used Hitler's title to address German chancellor Helmut Kohl during a speech in Hanover in 1997.

80. "We go into the red next year... I shall probably have to give up polo." Comment on US television in 1969 about the Royal Family's finances.

81. "Bugger the table plan, give me my dinner!" Showing his impatience to be fed at a dinner party in 2004.

82. "I thought it was against the law these days for a woman to solicit." Said to a woman solicitor.

83. "You're just a silly little Whitehall twit: you don't trust me and I don't trust you." Said to Sir Rennie Maudslay, Keeper of the Privy Purse, in the 1970s.

84. "What about Tom Jones? He's made a million and he's a bloody awful singer." Response to a comment at a small-business lunch about how difficult it is in Britain to get rich.

85. "This could only happen in a technical college." On getting stuck in a lift between two floors at the Heriot Watt University, 1958.

86. "I'd much rather have stayed in the Navy, frankly." When asked what he felt about his life in 1992.

87. "It looks like the kind of thing my daughter would bring back from her school art lessons" On being shown "primitive" Ethiopian art in 1965.

88. "You're not wearing mink knickers, are you?" Philip charms fashion writer Serena French at a World Wildlife Fund gathering in 1993.

89. "My son...er...owns them." On being asked on a Canadian tour whether he knew the Scilly Isles.

90. "Well, that's more than you know about anything else then." Speaking, a touch condescendingly, to Michael Buerk, after being told by the BBC newsreader that he did know about the Duke of Edinburgh's Gold Awards in 2004.

[jafreitag]

Grateful Dead Monthly: Gaelic Park – New York, NY 8/26/71

Fifty years ago today, on Thursday, August 26, 1971, the Grateful Dead played a concert at Gaelic Park in New York City.

Gaelic Park is located at West 240th Street and Broadway, five miles north and east of Yankee Stadium, in the Bronx. In 1926, the Gaelic Athletic Association purchased it to host the Gaelic Games. What are Gaelic Games? I’m a sliver Irish (just learned that a few years ago from a cousin who did some DNA stuff), but I didn’t know about such games until I asked the Google machine. Here you go, from the Wiki:

“Gaelic games (Irish: Cluichí Gaelacha) are sports played in Ireland under the auspices of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA). They include Gaelic football, hurling, Gaelic handball and rounders. Women’s versions of hurling and football are also played: camogie, organised by the Camogie Association of Ireland, and ladies’ Gaelic football, organised by the Ladies’ Gaelic Football Association. While women’s versions are not organised by the GAA (with the exception of handball, where men’s and women’s handball competitions are both organised by the GAA Handball organisation), they are closely associated with it.”

Some to unpack there. What’s Gaelic football? It’s basically rugby. (The rules are probably way different, but this is a music blog, so don’t judge.) And hurling? Rugby with a small ball and sticks that look like sporty pizza paddles. (Again, don’t judge.) Gaelic handball? Racquetball, except you use your hands and you’re outside, not in some bougie health club from the ’80s. Finally, rounders? It’s actually alot like baseball. Pretty cool.

Why were the Dead there? A 9/2/71 piece in the Village Voice by Carman Moore, now archived on the Grateful Dead Sources blog, said that Gotham promoter Howard Stein, a Bill Graham competitor who booked the Dead to play at the Cap Theater in Port Chester, NY and the Academy of Music in NYC, had turned “the drab little Riverdale soccer field … into a summer rock mini-festival.” (Check out the poster above.) Moore’s writing has an early-70s sizzle, and he refers to his colleague, now-legendary rock scribe Robert Christgau. Here’s an excerpt:

“Last week’s Grateful Dead concert up at Gaelic Park was a usual Dead session, meaning that the band-to-fan-to-band electro-chemical process for which rock music is famed was on like high mass at Easter. Although I think I know most of the time what they are doing musically (Christgau will like this notion); I don’t quite understand them electro-chemically. Like the New York Knicks of two seasons ago, they can do excellent things together though they are not a group of deathless superstars. Garcia gets his songs across, but he can’t sing, and Bob Weir’s voice rises to about average…maybe better when he gets to screaming and the music sweeps him along. I still find it difficult to recognize the Dead songs that aren’t “Truckin'” or “St. Stephen” one from the other. I am not one of their fans, but seem to be one of their admirers. Their music speaks in a special language to their live listeners, and that language has the vocabulary of everybody else, but a convoluted syntax all its own. The note sequences are not completely dependent upon musical factors but are also dictated by how involved the band feels and also upon what kind of heat the audience is giving off. I’m trying to get to some essences of this thing.

The drama of a Dead concert revolves around the fact that wherever the band plays they know that a certain number (several tons) of their partisans will be there and that their crowd knows the Dead potential to excite them, but they also know that the Dead may not get into gear until the crowd begins to apply some heat, and so forth. Both parties also know that the concert will be long enough and informal enough for anything to happen on either side of the footlights, and so audiences improvise (smoke, go to the hot dog stand, kiss and snuggle, cheer, dance, listen like star-struck fools) just like their musician friends on stage (who play light and funny for awhile, retire backstage awhile, stand around, or get lost in a piece and turn on the heavy jets). Like good lovers, the Grateful Dead know the secrets of good foreplay, taking your time, surprising the partner for awhile, and then just reacting for a spell.”

The timing of the show seems odd. The band was on the East Coast in July, but began August back in Cali – LA, SD, Berkeley – before a three-night run at Chicago’s historic Auditorium Theater. Then they trekked back to NYC. Our resident Deaditor ECM explains that aspect: “This show was supposed to be played the day before the Yale Bowl concert on July 30, but some issues with the equipment trucks and/or weather prevented it from happening from the scheduled date. There are a few stories on the web about people who didn’t get the message (no twitter back then!) and dropped some acid only to show up to an empty stadium. Haha!”

Moore said that the show reminded him of “a high school stadium I used to know – low stands, unfulfilled infield grass, mud holes here and there, beer sold at one end in some quantity.” He continued:

“The formal shape of the concert was a general crescendo, light at the beginning and heavy-groovy at the end – not a shooting-star, call-the-law finale, just a heightened physical-emotional climate…the goods delivered as promised…sort of like good preaching in a church known to be a happy place. I did not enjoy their country-westernish opening tunes; maybe they didn’t either, because the pieces were awfully short. But by the three-quarter mark they had involved themselves, the crowd, and me too.

First they got the rhythm engaged and finally, courtesy of Jerry Garcia’s lead and interplays with Lesh and Weir, they went into the soloing and jamming which are the real magic music territory of this band. Much is made of the Dead soloists, but it became clear to me by last Thursday that bassist Phil Lesh plus those two drummers create the atmosphere that makes the Dead thing possible. The drummers were exceptionally understated, but Lesh kept bopping and thrumming away, heavily at all times, until his patterns were consistently getting the other players off. In the middle of “St. Stephen” there was a special coming together: Lesh had found a nice ambiguous but compelling set of licks; Garcia eased into a solo; Weir strummed a cross-time lick over all of it; it built; it quieted; Garcia started to play strange classical kind of lines; the drums dropped out; the audience got quiet; nothing at all could be predicted for a minute or so; then Lesh began to grope his way out with two chords and rhythms which began to regularize; audience began to jump and then to clap; guitars began to straighten out; the band came home to the cheers of the fans. Good music-making. The listener goes home without a little tune to whistle, but he hears music. As if they were finishing off some personal solos based over the last riffs heard, the fans went out of Gaelic Park without a thousand encores and without a lot of fuss on the streets outside.

It’s all very interesting, surprising, and I guess mystifying as before. All I know is that the Dead, or their fans, or the combination of both lure you into planning to return when they’re all assembled and back in town again.”

Apparently, there was some grief about bootlegs at this show. The GD Sources blog has a post that archives a 10/6/71 piece by the excellently-handled Basho Katzenjammer (Basho, the 17th Century Japanese haiku master; Katzenjammer, the German word for hangover) that gripes about an army of 200# “muscle freaks” at the direction of tour manager Sam Cutler liberating a handful of tapes from 100# weakling Johnny Lee. It’s a truly fun read. An excerpt:

“The biggest piece of shit spewing from Cutler’s mouth is about the reasons the Dead have for being so pissed off: they don’t like the quality (remember Garcia’s line in “I Got No Chance of Losin”? He says, “I’m only in it for the gold.” Yeah, music has a way of being more honest than the artist intends it to be at times…) The “quality”? Anyone who has bought a bootleg recently will know and agree that the bootleg stereo album called “Grateful Dead” is one of the best underground products yet. The tape was taken from a concert the group did at Winterland, on the coast a few months back. Yeah, Garcia fucks up a bit on “Casey Jones,” and Pigpen’s ego may have been deflated a bit by his voice coming over poorly on “Good Loving” but that was a concert. You do a concert and you stand by your performance, good or bad. That’s show business.

This effete artistic bullshit doesn’t matter anyway … When you’re out to get all the money you can out of your gigs, like the Dead seem to be (like all the groups seem to be) you might be accused of being a bit piggish; when you use strong-arm shit to insure that you get every last penny that you deserve — by making Amerikan standards — you are a Pig. Jerry Garcia, is that you?

Nobody buys that anti-bootleg shit about the artistic integrity of the artist in saying what goes out. One, you stand by your performance; two, even if you don’t want to, Jerry, somewhat, and say “all your private property is fair game for your brothers (especially when they sell records of concerts that don’t compete with coming releases) and your brother (who’s gonna continue to dig you as we live off your comets we’re gonna keep ripping you off because it is possible. As simple as that.” If you and Cutler and Stein continue your shit, though, we’ll just have to sing the song the same old way, you guys being put in the position of being the same old reactionary establishment that we’re all ripping off. It’s all around. You break your back playing gigs for ten years and suddenly success is staring you in the face. Bread: lots and lots of bread. You turn your back on your poor, ripping ’em off roots and start to tighten up. You’re in the biggest rip-off industry around, but no one cares as long as they’re having fun.

Money. That’s the whole story, isn’t it? If these were other times, in another land under a different set of rules maybe you could justifiably complain about the people who want to give your recorded performances out free because you didn’t screen them and pick out the sections you didn’t like and do them over for the cat, ’cause no one charges for their music, and because the means of production belong to the people, and they can turn out all the good sounds they can, and you have a natural right to screen all releases. But we’re here. Now. You guys are making millions — or soon will be. Money is power, especially as the concept of money is crumbling nation-wide and power freaks like Stein are cornering the market on it. The channels that the green-power the Dead bring in travel aren’t the healthiest for the generations of revolution to come. Stein is one of these hopeful images of a freak with a chance to change things positively gone sour, who uses all his power to consolidate his power; who’ll go to any extremes to insure the natural expansion of that power. Fuck him. Fuck you.”

Speak, Basho! Quaint that the beef about bootlegs back then was sound quality, rather than copyright. Stuff got figured out at some point, I think. Like when Bobby shut down the LMA, lmao.

Ed featured part of this show in the 2016 edition of his epcot 31 Days of Dead project. Here are his listening notes, which are typically spot-on (and better than than the not-quite-on-the-bus commentary from Mr. Moore): 

“Less than three weeks after Pigpen’s definitive performance of Hard To Handle at the Hollywood Palladium (8/6/71), the Grateful Dead play the final date of their summer tour in 1971 at Gaelic Park in the Bronx. It will be Pig’s last show until December and the last time the band will ever perform in their original quintet configuration of Jerry, Phil, Pig, Billy and Bobby. By September, Keith will be rehearsing with the band to assume a full-time role on the keys. Perhaps anticipating his absence, Pigpen leads the band through 6 of his songs including the rarely-played Empty Pages and the last Hard To Handle. It is also one of the last performances of Saint Stephen, until the band revived it in 1976 with a major facelift, never to be played the same way again. When you consider these historical milestones along with the departure of Mickey Hart and the closings of the legendary Fillmore East and West earlier in the year it makes you realize that this concert carried a little more weight than anyone could have ever foreseen at the time. It truly was the end of a chapter in the life of the Grateful Dead. As you listen to each song you can’t help but feel a certain degree of nostalgia.

For me, the hidden gem of the show is the outstanding version of Uncle Johns Band. Jerry’s first guitar solo is an absolute joy to hear. His notes sing with irresistible melody and happy sunshine which perfectly capture the nostalgia of those carefree early years. If you listen closely you can hear Pigpen playing the wood claves.”

Speaking of Pig, this show features the second and final performance of Empty Pages. The NYS Music blog, which has a nice write-up of this show, describes it as a McKernan original that “pairs his traditional crooning style with a slow blues jam that’s nicely peppered with fiery guitar licks from Garcia. It’s a true rarity and a shame that the band wouldn’t be able to further develop this one.”

I feel like this was a try-hard post. It might be tl;dr, idk. Here’s the true goodness…

Transport to the Charlie Miller remaster of the soundboard recording HERE.

More soon.

JF

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[mhdiaries]

Wave 4 Robecca Steam Diary

19 September - Then

Our show tonight was a rousing success. My rocket boots worked to perfection after the adjustments father made and I was able to complete the trick in such a way that it elicited gasps from the audience yet remained perfectly safe for me. Father was so pleased that he is allowing me to take tomorrow’s train instead of the one tonight so that I may stay and engage in a round of roller maze. I am so excited my boiler is near to bursting! My only regret is that father was not able to adjust my internal clock before he departed. Well, it is not to be a worry tonight and I am sure he will be able to resolve the problem when we are reunited on the morrow.

20 September - Then

Frost my firebox was I vexed this morning! I missed yet another appointment due to the inability of my internal clock to keep the correct time. Now to be sure there are appointments and there are appointments, and one is to be forgiven if fashionable lateness allows for a grand entrance in the former; but when exacting punctuality is required of the latter, such as catching a train that leaves promptly at noon and your arrival is thirty minutes after the departure of said train, vexation will rule the day. Thus I found myself standing on the station platform with steam raising from my ears and baggage piled high around me. From a distance it must have looked as if some monster had fashioned a cabin of suitcases on the platform and upon finishing their labor celebrated by lighting a fire in the stove. I was obliged to send father a telegraph informing him of my situation and assuring him that I would be on time for tomorrow’s train even if I had to spend the night on the platform. Fortunately, it did not come to that as the gargoyle that drove me from Miss Kindergrubber’s boarding house to the train station was still available to convey me back. My tardiness at the train station will, however, make it possible for me to attend the gala birthday ball being thrown in honor of a Miss Draculaura. She is the daughter of a very famous, and well-to-do vampire, named Dracula. I am excited to have the opportunity to make both of their acquaintances. I was delighted to learn that Dr. and Mrs. Stein had arrived in town on the very train that I missed! Dr. Stein is one of my father’s most respected acquaintances, both he and his lovely bride will be attending the ball and have offered to act as my chaperones so that I do not have to present myself as unattended.

21 September - Then

The party was grander that I could have imagined. Every creature was dressed in their finest and I saw many famous monsters and digniscaries. Draculaura could not have been a more kind or gracious host. I do not know how she knew I missed my train but she did, and was very genuine in her expression of sincere concern for my predicament. I was immediately pulled into her social circle as she introduced me to her friends with such rapidity that I hardly remembered a soul when she was through. Several of them had seen me perform however and were quite keen on hearing my tales of daring to. Eventually I excused myself in order to reunite myself with Dr. and Mrs. Stein, as I did not wish to appear ungrateful or rude for the kindness they had shown in escorting me to the party. I did not see either of them in the crowd so I made my way toward a group of guests where a lively discussion seemed to be under way about what made one a true monster. The most vocal of the group was rather corpulent goblin with pince-nez, prominent teeth and absurdly hairy ears;

Well of course she isn’t and how could she be? A wonder of modern mad science? Perhaps. A true monster? Never. Fashioning the flotsam and jetsam of a laboratory into some semblance of a creature does not make that creature a monster any more so than kittens born in an oven makes them scones. Do you know the old crackpot, genius though he may be, insists on calling her his daughter? Even more preposterous is that she refers to him as her father. As if steam could replace screams. 

I felt as though some monster had thrown a handful of sand into my gears and I thought, “Is this what every monster believes?” I was about to turn and quietly slip back into the crowd when I felt a very large but gentle hand on one shoulder and a smaller but reassuringly firm one on the other. Then a voice, at once calming to me and challenging to the speaker said, “Perhaps Herr Goblin would care to pronounce us either kitten or scone then.” I suppose it was un-lady like that I should have enjoyed the panic I saw on his face, as he looked from Dr. Stein to Mrs. Stein to me, but I did. The goblin quickly stammered an excuse and unceremoniously fled the room. Later, Dracula found us and offered his sincere apology. “Miss Steam I regret not that you heard such an insult to your monsterhood but that it was uttered at all. It is not an opinion shared in this house. Please accept our sincere apologies.” We conversed several more minutes and he left to attend other guests. He is indeed a true gentle-monster and the remainder of the gala was so delightful that it all but eclipsed the one brief moment of unpleasantness.

22 September - Then

Today as I was packing to leave under the punctual eye of Miss Kindergrubber, we received word from the railroad station that sometime in the night a very large and rather belligerent dragon had taken up residence in the main train tunnel between here and where I was to meet father. Owing to the dragon’s size and coloration it is believed that it might be preparing for hibernation. If that is indeed the case, I could be stranded here until the spring. Even though plans were being made to send for a dragon whisperer there were no guarantees. Clog my gears and rust my bearings! What shall I do now?

1 October - Then

I passed much of today in the good company of Dr. and Mrs. Stein. I had supposed that Dr. Stein’s scientific curiosity would be drawn to the nuances of my mechanical nature but aside from some polite questions regarding energy consumption most of the conversation centered around my relationship with my father. They had many questions on the resulting challenges of one day waking up as a fully formed monster in her teenaged years and how we dealt with those challenges as a family. I admitted that while the road was not always made for smooth traveling we were learning to navigate the more arduous portions of it together. Several times during these conversations it appeared to me that Mrs. Stein gripped the doctor’s hand more tightly and several times he seemed to be hesitant to ask certain questions. I excused myself at one point to add water to my boiler, as I was feeling a bit low. I returned to hear Mrs. Stein ask Dr. Stein in their native German: “Werden wir jemals ein eigenes kind haben?” to which he replied “Wenn die Zeit gekommen ist, das verspreche ich dir, werden wir es.” I could tell that I had interrupted a private moment so I attempted to change the subject by asking Dr. Stein if he might have an idea why my internal clock could not keep proper time. He laughed at my request and for a moment I felt embarrassed until Dr. Stein said, “It has been my experience that no amount of adjustment is sufficient to make a ghoul run on time.” For this Dr. Stein received a playful tap from Mrs. Stein and he continued, “Besides that, your father is the foremost mechanical mad genius in the world and it would be arrogant of me to speculate.” We ended our time together with a promise to meet again. I am already looking forward to that. 

15 October - Then

I received a telegraph from my father this morning informing me that he was joining a team set to explore a newly discovered area of the catacombs. I miss my father and look forward to that dragon moving on so we may be reunited. Tonight however, I shall skate in the maze with a local club against a team of gargoyles with a rather unsavory reputation. I am confident we shall prevail.

20 October - Now

I remember everything that happened to me right up until the last time I skated in the maze. It has been all I could do to daily resist the urge to let my life go to rust. The most difficulty has come from my father not being here. The team of explorers that he joined never returned from the catacombs. It has been a hundred years since any monster has seen them but I know they are still trying to find their way home because Ghoulia Yelps, as amazing and intelligent a ghoul as ever was, has been following any and all news about the team since before I was discovered and reassembled. She says that it is a great mystery and that there have been many books written about their mysterious disappearance. She also told me that six months ago a message was found written on the wall of a previously undiscovered cavern. It read simply, “Forward to our families. Onward to our hope.” It was signed by my father and dated three months prior to the cavern’s discovery. Ghoulia also helped me find my father’s old lab where I was delighted to find Captain Penny, the mechanical penguin father built for me. Poor thing’s fire had completely gone out and when I got him restarted he was so excited that he almost blew a heart gasket. I am still living at Miss Kindergubber’s, who is not a teacher at Monster High, and it was she convinced me to enroll. Even though I feel rather old fashioned and I am unfamiliar with much of current technology my new friends have been very accepting and are... scary sweet.

15 November - Now

I have become reacquainted with Dr. Stein and his bride through their daughter Frankie. Dr. Stein was sincerely apologetic for not being able to reassemble me after the accident. “You are a very complicated ghoul and I feared I would damage you further.” I assured him that I carried no grudge and I do not. Dr. Stein even interceded on my behalf with Headless Headmistress Bloodgood when she told me that I could not perform my scaredevil act at the middle school carnival as she thought it was too dangerous. I do not know what Dr. Stein said but the Headmistress relented and I was able to give two performances with an encore. It was truly an epic way to bring some old school to the new and shake off some of the rust in the process.