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warsofasoiaf · 4 years ago

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The Celtic Tiger - A Kaiserreich Ireland AAR Chapter 5: The Red Hand and the White Dove

A good general never let his successes linger too long. The key to winning a war was never stopping until the final objective was secured, which meant that no soldier could afford to celebrate his success.

2 October 1939 - Home of Michael Collins, County Cork, Ireland

The Irish had successfully repulsed multiple combined invasions from two great powers, and had successfully maintained the territorial integrity of their island. Britain had shifted their attention to the Low Countries and France had placed most of their forces along the German border or along the south of France in Marseilles. It had been days since a single Union plane or ship had come anywhere close to Irish territory. The unity that such a feat had engendered had been nothing short of exceptional. Some foreign workers had evacuated, but plenty had stayed behind to continue to help provide much needed manpower for Ireland in the face of invasion. Wealthy Irishmen bought war bonds by the armful, older men volunteered to help man civil defense spotting towers to supplement the radar stations, and workers had seamlessly integrated a full three-shift rotation to speed production along. Yet this unity had not been total, and one faction began to cause more problems.

It had been no secret that the Orangeists in Ulster had been agitating for a return to the British in Canada. To hear the rhetoric, Ulsterites needed to do everything they could to allow the exiled Windsors to return to their throne. Ireland was an ideal staging ground for the Entente, an unsinkable aircraft carrier capable of sending the entirety of the Entente’s aerial forces against the Union and the Communards. G2 had done wonders in infiltrating the Union, and the Irish Republican Army was one of the most experienced forces in the world, certainly when it came to fighting Mosley. All of that value, they argued, must have been put to use in the service King Edward. Once the United Kingdom had been restored, Ulster could be returned to the Crown, and all would be well, if you asked the Orangeists. The Unionists were seeing attendance at their rallies steadily grow and grow, before long the entirety of the Six Counties would be UUP.

The notion of joining both the Entente and the Reichspakt had been floated in the Dail. It made practical sense to join one of them, and gain the support of large and powerful armies and economies at the Irish back. Collins had exhausted plenty of political capital to shoot down those proposals, reading the refusals of the Kaiserreich and the exiled British government when the Mosley first declared war. Collins didn’t like it, it gave too much red meat to the na hAiséirghe crowd and could embolden their efforts against his immigration reforms, but it gained him a reprieve from those demanding that Ireland join one of the two European factions. Joining one would invite the Union to continue bombing and invading to prevent exactly the scenario that the Ulsterites hoped to come to pass.

With the war on, it was the perfect time to move. If it wasn’t such a threat, Collins would appreciate the irony, since the Weltkrieg was what had enabled Irish independence in the first place. He now sat in the same position as the British Empire did twenty years ago. The moment had made his mouth taste like metal, almost an involuntary moment of revulsion. The promises of 1921 seemed to be coming true at the worst possible time. The confirmation of Ulster would have to take place, one way or the other.

Now that the bombings were over, and life was attempting to return to normal, agitation against the Irish government had returned. James Craig had viciously denounced the Collins government, declaring that Collins had hoped to hobble Belfast, and that the Northern Irish would be kept out of the riches of Collins’s economic policies. The Saorstat Brewery, the Open for Business Initiative, the agricultural reforms in Connacht, the zinc mines in the center of the country, it was economic prosperity for Catholics only, Craig had made a grand show to a roaring crowd of Unionists and Ulster Volunteers. Collins’s ultimate goal, so Craig spelled out, was the economic subservience of the Northern Irish, to let them wither until they surrender who they are.

“Everything I’ve done for Belfast and it’s still not enough. The steelworks, the Short Brothers, none of it will ever be enough for James Craig.” Collins grumbled to an empty room.

---

16 November 1939 - Belfast, Ireland

The latest news wasn’t good. The Unionists, citing unequal treatment by Catholic employers, had planned to stage a large-scale sympathetic strike, which threatened everything from small restaurants all the way to Harland and Wolff. The Ulster Shipwright and Marine Workers Association, by far the largest labor union in Belfast and de facto head of any large-scale labor activity, had misgivings about striking in the middle of a war, and had strongly pushed a compromise plan. Smaller businesses unrelated to the war effort like restaurants and other service industries would institute a general strike, while shipyards, airfields, and other critical war industries would stress work-to-rule behavior and malicious compliance. As a token of good faith in their statement of grievances, the workers promised that they would maintain all repair facilities for the An tSeirbhís Chabhlaigh and the An tAerchór at full functionality; they would do nothing that would critically endanger Ireland’s defense in the wake of Union aggression. Despite this, the plan ultimately was for naught. A fight broke out between the Unionists and a large group of unknown men shouting that they were betraying the war effort. No one had been seriously injured, merely cuts, broken bones, and a bunch of filled beds at Belfast Medical.

Rumors had abounded at what exactly happened and who was involved. Collins received his share of the blame, plenty believed that he had ordered the strikebreaking action to intimidate the Ulster Volunteers under the veneer of plausible deniability. Even more outlandish conspiracy theorists suggested that Collins had organized the labor action itself, to give his strikebreakers the reason they needed to kick a couple of teeth in without actually causing significant damage to the war effort and delegitimize the Ulster Volunteers and the labor unions in one fell swoop to prevent reaching out to the Dominion or the Union. The Catholics loudly protested that it must have been the Ulster Unionists who struck the first blow, hypocritically demanding the right to protest but denying it to the Irish nationalists in a rehash of the old Irish Penal Law system. Most however, thought it was just strikebreaking, squads hired by business owners to break up the labor action. Either way, it wasn’t good for the Collins government.

This had come not long after the bank of Ireland had been robbed in Belfast, gaining plenty of money to continue to fund dissident activity within the Six Counties. The Gardai had been unable to find where the money had gone, it had almost certainly been laundered through businesses in the North. No one could prove that it was the Unionists who had robbed it, but everyone was convinced that it was the case. With the Irish budgets already stretched thin, the loss of the cash reserves in Belfast had stung deeply. Angry Irish citizens had demanded that the government guarantee their account holdings and punish those responsible. Collins sympathized, but inflation was a dangerous beast to wrestle with already, he couldn’t imagine the headache he would have to deal with if he started securing private holdings during the war.

No matter the truth of everything that had happened in Ulster, it was bad for Collins. This sort of thing could only hurt the war effort. The last thing he needed was James Craig hoping to secure himself by latching on to the Union, or declaring war on Ireland and inviting in the British crown. “Tighten restrictions, offer the usual sympathies, promise an investigation. Let’s make nice before this gets any worse.” Collins ordered, hoping to stave off catastrophe.

---

20 December 1939 - County Antrim, Ireland

It was starting to look as if it would be an armed conflict after all.

Derry had seen the first problems. A prominent Unionist activist had been stabbed in the night and left to bleed in a gutter, dying in the pre-dawn hours of a cold December morning and undiscovered until a morning street-cleaning crew found him during their shift. The Gardai had no leads, which had only mobilized the Unionists further. There had been no leads because there had been no investigation. The Gardai fully supported the murder of prominent Unionists; it allowed them to subjugate the population without fear of uprising or uproar. No doubt, had a Irish Republican loyalist been murdered, the perpetrator would have been found, arrested, and sentenced to death under wartime emergency measures.

Orangeists had been seeing a steady increase in support from Protestants in the North. Intelligence reports from police units had noted steady increases in recruiting and donations. Hardliners were urging the police to crack down on the movement, but absent evidence of a specific crime, Northern Irish advocacy groups had been a right guaranteed in the 1925 Constitution. The Gardai had to contend themselves with attempting to trace the money from the Bank of Ireland robbery and seeing if they could identify the specific groups that were causing trouble. If the perpetrators could be discovered, the Ulster Volunteers would have to disavow them and perhaps cause distress within their own movement.

The Irish nationalists despised Collins’s plans. It was war and the Ulster Volunteers were committing treason against the state. If the Ulster unions took the strikebreaking as a means to invite Mosley in, he’d have a secure beachhead, or James Craig might reach out to King Edward and slowly invite a peacekeeping force in. Neither idea seemed particularly feasible to Collins, but the fear of such possibilities was creating a lot of doomsaying, and that was enough. His success against Mosley had taught a valuable lesson: impression could mean far more than reality.

A concert hall in County Antrim saw the next bloody episode. Masked men shouting pro-Ulster slogans opened fire, killing members of a Dublin band and concert-goers alike who had been playing a Christmas benefit. No one from that crime was caught, as sympathetic Ulsterites had been able to smuggle the men underground. Investigators hadn’t yet been able to discover who the gunmen actually were. The pictures reminded Collins uncomfortably of what he saw in Galway and Sligo, how long would be before Irish would be doing the same to Irish? Rounding up and executing them in a field like they were sheep or cattle, it sickened Collins to his core. Craig had remained silent on the matter, but the Irish Catholics in the North were incredibly frightened. Even the foreigners were frightened of being caught in the crossfire, and that led Collins to one inescapable conclusion: he was losing control.

“Institute a stronger curfew, devote more money to investigations. Also let’s see if we can’t do something to undercut the Volunteer’s support among the Northerners, make them focus their efforts on fighting the Union. Take out loans if you have to; this needs to end now.”

---

17 January 1940 - Belfast Ireland

It was a grim day, and the dark clouds had seemed to be a herald for bad omens.

After the concert hall massacre, the Ulster Unionist Party had quieted down, but only for a short time. No progress had been made, and rumors had circulated that the UUP weren’t going to send any sacrificial lamb even if they disagreed with the action. The Unionists had sought to organize a large-scale march in Belfast. Plenty within Collins’s government urged him to quash it entirely under emergency war powers, a large assembly could be considered too great a risk from aerial bombardment. Yet with the threat of British bombardment being reduced, Collins had opted not to give the Ulsterites more reason to call him an unconstitutional tyrant.

When the news of it reached the Catholic minority in Belfast, they predictably demanded an extra defensive precaution. The sporadic outbreaks of violence meant that the Catholics feared that the march would become a riot, and the Ulster Unionists, while not proven to be connected to the murders in Antrim, were almost certainly guilty of abetting it. The Gardai hadn’t been able to stop the violence, and with the march they would be woefully outnumbered and unable to protect anyone if anything got out of hand. Collins had ordered the 3rd Limerick Rifles to strategic points, with Eoin O’Duffy at the command center. The 3rd Limerick was a mix of O’Duffy’s old guard, men that had served him since 1917 which now comfortably resided in senior leadership and NCO positions, and young recruits that had signed on near the beginning of the Internationale War, out of training and dispersed to different combat units so that they might benefit from the veterans that had been fighting in the war from the outset and absorbed the new techniques and methods of waging war.

The latter category was populated by Dean MacCabe, a fresh recruit among many. He was greener than his uniform, and had been nervous about fighting the war. Rather than wait to be drafted, Dean had signed up for the infantry to serve his homeland. In truth, he’d rather have been in a coastal fort on Clew Bay, but his country needed him here, making sure that nothing happened during the protest march. Fortunately so far, the worst that seemed to happen was a bit of name-calling. Dean himself would have been happy to have given as good as he got, but he needed to keep his cool. Level heads were needed, and he needed to prove himself worthy of the uniform.

The rain had already hampered visibility greatly, and with everyone wearing long coats it was almost maddening to tell who, if anyone, was concealing a weapon under their raincoat. With so many people on the street, it was next-to-impossible to pick out faces of known Ulster Volunteers or militant UUP’ers in the crowd. Sometimes people spoke to each other and pointed at the 3rd Limerick. Were they pointing them out in signal for an attack, or just commenting on the fact that they were there? A woman walking by with a baby carriage stopped to play with the infant inside. Was that genuine, or was it a signal pointing out the best angle of attack? Dean started to sweat out of fear, mixing with the rainwater that was snaking its way inside his own raincoat. Everything could be a signal for a waiting attack, everyone could be an enemy. He had orders to fire if fired upon, but felt so exposed that he wouldn’t get a chance to fire second.

Periodic glances to his pocketwatch gave him grounding but seconds ticked on agonizingly slowly as he kept watch. His fellows were just as worried as he was, he could see in their faces. The old NCO’s seemed to be surer, but that could just be the experience in their eyes. This was not so much war as it was psychological torture, young men signing up to placed in the rain to fear when the next sudden outbreak of death could come, and it could come from anywhere. It had only been six minutes since he last looked at his watch.

Bottles and rocks started to be thrown at the 3rd Limerick’s position now, but was it testing their readiness, or merely rowdy Unionists too deep in their cups? And how quickly could the latter turn into a full-blown attack. All it took was one man to draw, and Dean MacCabe could be dead on the ground. Every time he saw something suspicious, he debated looking to his comrades for guidance, but if he had, would that mean that he would leave himself exposed, and he, or one of his brothers in the unit, could be killed? Even a moment’s lapse of concentration could be lethal, and so Dean MacCabe needed to maintain focus. Finally, the drunks had either run out of bottles or found something else interesting to do, the bottles gradually tapered off from two in the air, to one, to none. MacCabe looked at his watch. Nine minutes.

“Eyes front, we’ve got something,” came the gruff voice of the sergeant, and Dean snapped out of his reverie. There was movement in the crowd, a group of toughs approaching square to the Limerick Rifles position. Dean’s nerves were fraying, and Dean did not plead for what was before him to be something genuine or a false alarm. All he wanted was this wretched duty to be over, to go back to the barracks, drink himself into a stupor, and forget that this day had ever happened. The toughs began to chant, and MacCabe stole a second to look at his watch.

Two minutes.

---

18 January 1940 - Áras an Uachtaráin, Dublin, Ireland

Bloody Wednesday. That’s what the papers were calling what had happened at Belfast. Only a handful dead, more wounded, but it didn’t matter if no one was hurt: the Irish Republican Army had fired on Ulstermen. Weapons were found on the bodies, but eyewitnesses swore they saw mutually contradicting versions of events as they unfolded.

Collins made a public speech expressing sorrow for the loss of life, and vowed to discover what had happened. Only one man, above all else, could be trusted to treat the matter with the integrity that such a matter required. Richard Mulcahy, Ceann Foirne na bhFórsaí Cosanta, temporarily ceded his command position as Marshal of the Defense of Ireland to Liam Lynch, to take up a commission to investigate the matter. James Craig had wanted nothing to do with it and refused to offer any official support. Luckily for Collins, the Lord Mayor of Belfast had offered his full support for the commission provided Belfast police could participate, almost certainly committing political suicide in the process. One mayor seemed to stand between the country and civil war, and that mayor was a damn welcome sight to Collins eyes. The UUP depended on local support in Belfast, a mayor supporting the Commission would mean that until he was inevitably ousted in a no-confidence vote, Collins could act to head off any potential war.

It wouldn’t be long coming if he didn’t act quickly. G2 had intercepted comminiques to the Dominion of Canada that were almost certainly conducted on Craig’s behalf. Nothing sinister on its own, mere expressions of concern for Irish Unionists in the wake of the events of Bloody Wednesday. More concerning were the trade unions reaching out to the Union across the Irish Sea. Only the fringe socialists campaigned for syndicalism after Mosley’s invasion, but that crowd started to gain more support among the trade unions after the strikebreaking action, and it would only get worse if the common man in the North figured that Mosley was the lesser evil.

“Go on, and come back with what you can. Spend whatever money you need, do whatever you can to make peace. We aren’t going to survive any more invasions if we’re fighting in the Six Counties.”

---

1 Feburary, 1940 - Special Session of the Dail, Dublin, Ireland

The Mulcahy Commission had returned surprising, and utterly damning results.

O’Duffy had asserted in his after-action reports that the Unionists had initiated violence, taking advantage of a minor street altercation to ambush a stationed unit. After receiving fire, O’Duffy had reinforced his men. Once the Ulsterites had started to take fire, they fled into the crowds, which quickly had become chaotic. The entire mess had taken less than 30 seconds, but they were 30 seconds of absolute madness.

Mulcahy’s findings concluded the opposite. He had stated that it had appeared that one of O’Duffy’s men fired the first shots, the Ulsterites had responded, and had placed weapons among the dead to minimize the risk that any could have been identified as an unarmed civilian. No one in the IRA detachment that had been fired upon would come forward to support Mulcahy’s findings, and most credible witnesses were unable to determine whether one or the other was true; most were paying attention to the parade and saw the firefight only after the first shots were fired.

The implications for the Irish Republican Army was huge. If O’Duffy was guilty, it would mean that a high-ranking member of the IRA had conspired to attack Protestant Irishmen. Before now, the government had not been involved in violence against citizens in the North in ten years, since the Northern Campaign. Now, it could have confirmed that there would be no regularization of their status, that they would always be second-class citizens in the Republic, and their only choices were rebellion or slow destruction.

“We respect the Commission and its findings. The Republic of Ireland owes a debt of gratitude to Richard Mulcahy, the Right Honorable Lord Mayor of Belfast Crawford McCullagh, and the investigators who have worked many hours to discover the truth.” Collins announced on the steps of the Dail. “There is nothing that can bring back those poor men and women who died that fateful day. All we can do is labor on in their stead. The Republic of Ireland will compensate the families of those lost, hold trials of the perpetrators, and hold them in our prayers. We cannot undo this, but we can endeavor to build something from this.”

The Bloody Wednesday trials, as they came to be known, were largely simple affairs. Testimony was mercifully brief; there was no need to be lurid or voyeuristic in The young men in the division, who had followed the orders of their superiors, were convicted of manslaughter. The officers and NCO’s on scene, who were of higher rank and ordered the shooting, had higher sentences. That only left Eoin O’Duffy himself, who adamantly maintained his innocence and dismissed the evidence against him arranging any sort of conspiracy as spurious. The prosecution had attempted to cite him for command responsibility, but the Hague Conventions had been rather vague on the notion, and the Peace With Honor had looked to avoid punishing soldiers for their actions near the end of the Weltkrieg. No one could argue that opening fire on civilians and placing weapons on them to cover up the crime wasn’t beyond the scope of normal command duties. If there wasn’t ironclad proof, the IRA would see it as Collins betraying his own for the sake of making nice with Ulster, the corruption of Collins the soldier to Collins the politician who threw his soldiers under the bus.

“They were your soldiers too, Eoin! You trained them! You’re the one betraying them. The Ulsterites are Irish too.”

Ultimately, O’Duffy was sentenced to life imprisonment, after being cashiered from the Irish Republican Army. Collins didn’t see it as a victory. If he had sent Mulcahy instead of O’Duffy, how many more lives would have been saved? What could he do, to build a united Ireland in the wake of such bloodshed.

“Call Mr. McCullagh. This is my last shot to avoid losing Ireland.”

---

14 September 1940 - Belfast, Ireland

“With the establishment of the Parliament of Ulster and the transformation of the Republic into the Federal Republic of Ireland, all Irish people can truly be thought of as being weavers of the grand Irish tapestry. We thank the government of Michael Collins for establishing this institution to ensure that the Northern Irish and Protestant peoples of this great country can show and share their ways of life, and the distinct traditions that have become part of our life can become part of Ireland’s. The Cultural Unity Commission represents a tangible step on the path to the vision of our great flag. One nation, Catholic and Protestant, with the eternal flag of peace between them.” -Gerald McCullagh, First Minister of the Ulster Parliament

It was a pretty speech, but McCullagh had quieted down the UUP protests. There had almost been a complete schism between McCullagh and Craig, and Craig’s advanced age had not helped him maintain control of the party. A younger generation had been able to portray McCullagh as out of touch, wanting to reunite with a land that had fled to Canada to escape the syndicalists. Worse, they hadn’t come to support Ireland when she called for support, but Michael Collins had fought, and fought well.

Collins had established the Ulster-Scots as its own language along with English and Irish Gaelic. It had been a nightmare to organize during wartime, at one point he had joked that he spent more time trying to figure out how to translate official government manuals than he had in pursuing the fight against the Union of Britain in the past month. The gesture had surprised the moderates in the UUP, and got them to the negotiating table when the timetable for phasing in the new language was given to them. Economic gestures hadn’t worked, but Collins saw more success with political measures meant to promote Ulsterites in Ireland, first with the establishment of their own language and then with the establishment of the Cultural Unity Commission. The resolution of their status, the question that had been on the table since 1925, was being sorted. Ireland would not simply tolerate her Protestant citizens, but celebrate them. This had enraged the Irish Catholic League and other populist Catholic movements, but Collins hadn’t been worried; they had been fringe groups to begin with and banned from the Irish Republican Army.

The last step had been to federalize Ireland into four regional areas with four Parliaments, Connacht, Leinster, Munster, and Ulster. Dublin would still be the centralized seat of the national government, responsible for matters of national interest such as the military, foreign policy, and inter-province commerce, but more domestic matters would be ceded to the local Parliaments. The full resumption of federal duties would be brought into effect when the war was over, but as a gesture of support, Collins had reshuffled the War Cabinet to include ministers from each of the four provinces. Oddly, this development had been celebrated with greater fanfare within Connacht and Munster than in Ulster itself, the two provinces had seen themselves receive less in terms of investment than Dublin or Belfast, and they welcomed the added jobs and local autonomy. The success of the IEAA and the war industries had made the country bloom, and if a little autonomy was lost for maximum unity, so much the better. For the first time since this war had begun, Collins began to feel optimism.

The same couldn’t be said for the world situation. The Russian Vozhd had begun to push deep into White Ruthenia and the Kingdom of the Ukraine. Japan and Germany had turned the Southeastern Asian peninsula into a massive stretch of small battles and the Pacific into a warzone, and Japan had offered its support to the Princely Federation to attack the British Dominion of India, putting the Co-Prosperity Sphere at war with the Entente. The Zhii Clique and the Fengtian government had also gone to war in support of their respective Great Power patrons to turn northern China into a proxy war between Germany and Japan, and Cheng Jiongming had taken the opportunity to take over Hunan and Siuchan mostly peacefully, espousing Chinese democratic federalism. The war in China had prevented Japanese land reinforcements, forcing them to rely heavily on their Siamese allies. Savinkov, sensing weakness, had declared war to seize Transamur, and had invaded Japanese Siberia to take back the tiny province. Entente naval invasions hadn’t made much progress in mainland France, and the Low Countries were struggling with a British seaborne invasion and French attacks along the border.

“This is the final struggle.” Collins addressed the nation in a radio speech. “Ireland cannot know peace until the menace that has been the Union of Britain is defeated. We have maintained our borders, but it is not enough to simply seek détente with those who sought to enslave us. The Union of Britain is a threat to the entire world, and there will not be peace until we have taken it in our hands and shown it to the world. The Irish Republican Army will go across the sea, and we will rid ourselves of those who seek to deny us our own country.”

It was a pretty speech, and it brought the country together, but that’s all that it was. Collins needed to find a way to provide a unified front against the Internationale. For all that Deat and Mosley loathed each other, they had coordinated exceptionally well and presented a unified front against the Reichspakt. The Entente and the Reichspakt had offered non-aggression pacts between each other, but coordination had gone no further. If Collins wanted to win the war, he would have to solve that problem. If he couldn’t, then he would face annihilation.

An impossible problem? The risk of death? Every problem seemed to have such unimaginable stakes, and each time one was solved another rose in it’s place. But that was necessary. These were the times that they were in.

---

Images

Unionists Hold Massive Rally

Unionists Mobilize

Unionists Planning an Uprising?

Clash at Unionist Worker Strike

Bank of Ireland Robbery

Murder in Derry

Antrim Concert Hall Attacked

Ulster March Begins

The Mulcahy Commission

Eoin O’Duffy’s Trial

Ulster at Peace

The New Ireland

The Final Struggle

Alright everyone, this is the latest chapter. I’m not in love with this one as much as I am with some of the others, but I was happy to be able to present some of the deployed grunt experience with Dean MacCabe; there’s a little bit of my friends who went to Iraq in it, and I wanted to relay the intensity and paranoia that they felt, even if it was just for a few paragraphs.

Did what I could to ensure that these antagonists (in terms of a character that provides an obstacle to our protagonist, not a ‘villain’) came across as reasonable; one of my many faults when I write is that I have a tendency to focus more upon protagonists, so I wanted to ensure that the Ulster Unionists came across as mostly reasonable with extreme elements. I think I pulled it off well enough, but let me know what you think of it.

I’m not a fan that peace was so easy to achieve, because I think that cheapens the very real long-term efforts that these sorts of efforts entail. That’s a function of the game mechanics in HOI4, the same thing is present in the base game in Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. Even the ideas in those foci would take a long time to implement, but it’s an AAR, so I have to reflect the mechanics of the game in the writing and make some vague allusions that it’s going to be a long process. Such as it is, I’m afraid.

The Second Weltkrieg continues on, the next chapter will be much different, as rather than taking place in one year over a series of events, it will take place over a few days at the Halifax Conference, and it will be a dialogue-driven chapter. We will have several bigwigs making their appearance, like Kaiser Wilhelm II and King Albert I (our King George VI), and some callbacks to earlier chapters. Hope you’ll enjoy it.

-SLAL

#kaiserreich #creative #celtic tiger

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aewd2812 · 2 years ago

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Day 9: Coffee Shop

Hello, today's prompt is a classic coffee shop. I actually struggled a bit on this one... Not sure why. I hope you still enjoy. I think I'm writing a bit too much about Matthew... Well, there is a bit about another characters of mine. Feel free to write your own charts or ideas about the characters.

Masterlist

On the 9th of August, Matthew was on a mission. With the latest batch of newbies, many had their backgrounds checked by the best experts. But no matter how professional one may be, mistakes can always be made and most often than not, it was when someone least expects it. Since then, Matthew had decided to personally check on them by himself. In his opinion, one of the most suspicious individuals was Angeline Windsor.

In the report sent by George during an all-nighter shift, Angeline was a woman of 19 years old with a happy family of four. With her parents of old age and a little brother she had to take care of, she worked as a waitress in a coffee shop to pay for their living expenses. There had been more details about her house and all her relationships during the recent years in the folder but the only place she really did visit was her workplace, situated in one of the sidestreets of the capital. With all the concurring shops, it was weird how it was bustling with clients. It was why Matthew decided to investigate the place.

At first glance, the shop was like any other one. From the outside, he could see red bricks adorning its façade, big windows allowing the sunshine to come in and an oak door. On the street, there was nothing much similar. It was like the only shop on the street. All concurring ones were on the main road, making it easy for the passing civilians to notice it. Under the mercilessly blazing sun of this humid summer day, anyone would fall into the trap of a well-furnished and climatised store like this one.

When he pushed open the nicely polished door, the chirpy bell hanging on the top of the door greeted him, while a waitress welcomed him in. The nice cooling wave of the aircon fanned at him within his first step. Inside the shop, walls were adorned with wallpapers of soft warm tones. Soft typical music was the nice finishing touch of this shop’s charm.

As he was left with a nice “Take your time”, Matthew was still deeply investigating his surroundings. The sits were all cushioned couches covered by plaids – probably much easier to replace than the whole couch in case of stains.

Since entering this place, Matthew could smell the sweet and warm fragrance of the freshly roasted beans. Closing his eyes, he could even smell the soft familiar frosty layer of milk. For someone like him – even with the sight as his speciality, he could even smell the lighter scent of green tea. It was probably for those who prefer to drink tea rather than coffee, like a certain cute leader of them.

Chuckling lightly at his thought, Matthew was taken aback when the familiar blonde he was supposed to investigate placed a warm mug in front of him with a soft noise. He had not yet ordered anything. After curtsying, she spoke up with a smile on her lips.

“Welcome Sir. I hope I’m not intruding on you. I had been hoping to offer you this coffee on the house.” She seemed to have recognised him. “Of course, you can still order something else if you want.”

She bowed a second time before leaving to attend to other customers, leaving Matthew sitting on his seat astonished. In all of his short but fulfilling career as a spy, he had never been left without being able to hide anything. Of course, he came here under the disguise of a passing customer, so being recognisable was in his range of prediction, but losing sight of a target and being surprised by one was not. For him, it was all the proof he needed. How could a newbie be able to surprise him to such an extent? Either she was a talented newbie or a spy. Moreover, was she able to guess his tastes?

Placed in front of him was a mug of macchiato coffee with hazelnut syrup with no hazelnuts. Matthew really loved the hazelnut taste but could never eat some as he was allergic to nuts. It was an embarrassing fact he hid from everyone except a few. There was just no need to convince him more. He needed to find her real codename and affiliation.

***

A few days later, Matthew was passing through a corridor of the headquarters, having had no luck so far with the investigation. Just as he was about to turn to his main area, he stopped on the spot, ears picking up on a discussion.

“… You think Sir Matthew is suspicious of me?”

It was none other than the blonde woman he was investigating for the last few weeks. While it was a good opportunity for him to find out more about her identity, it was not good if she were to become aware of his suspicions.

“Yes. Well I’m only saying this to you as your cousin, but it can end pretty messily. Especially as he wants to be the leader, he needs to suppress all kinds of dangers we may overlook.”

“So… he is not the leader? I didn’t know who the leader was, but I definitively thought he was one of the high ranks for sure, if not the leader themselves.”

“Haha… I’m sure he would be happy to know that.”

That day, Matthew removed Angeline’s name from the list of suspicious people. He was sure of that; newbies really were the best.

#au gust 2022 #au_gust_2022 #au #writing #writing challenge #short prompt #k-board #coffee shop #au gust

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orbemnews · 4 years ago

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Two dead, including 3 year old, in pair of Hartford shootings HARTFORD, CT (WFSB) – Two people are dead, including a three year old boy, after a pair of shootings that happened about a mile apart Saturday in Hartford. The city is reeling from these killings. Both shooting victims are boys, ages three and sixteen. Two people are dead, including a three year old boy, after a pair of shootings that happened about a mile apart Saturday in Hartford. We’re learning that the capital city is deploying all of its resources to curb the violence. “Sad tragedy of a young, innocent kid life being taken away,” Hartford resident Thomas Lumpkin tells us. The first shooting happened around 2:20 p.m. on the 100 block of Nelson Street. A 3-year-old boy has died after being shot Saturday afternoon in Hartford. Officers initially responded to the area after being alerted to a ShotSpotter activation. As they were on scene, investigators were notified that a 3 year old boy suffering from a gunshot wound had arrived at an area hospital. Police say the boy, later identified as Rondell Jones of Enfield Street, eventually died from his injuries. Police & city officials address the public after two people, including a 3-year-old boy, were shot and killed in Hartford Saturday. Dash camera footage obtained by police showed that a black Honda Accord had stopped along side another vehicle on Nelson Street prior to the shooting. That’s when the passenger in the Accord fired several shots at the opposite vehicle before taking off. The vehicle involved in the shooting was later found unoccupied. Police said that the car had been reported stolen out of Windsor Locks. After the shots were fired, the victim’s vehicle headed west down Nelson Street. The intended target appeared to be a male passenger and had fled the scene on foot after the shooting. While police investigated the Nelson Street shooting, Eyewitness News watched police jump into high gear. Our camera captured the moment ShotSpotter alerted police of another shooting on Magnolia Street, which was less than a mile away. “Upon arrival, a male victim was located unresponsive,” Hartford Police Lt. Aaron Boisvert explained. Police said crews rushed two teenage boys to the hospital. 16-year-old Jamari Preston of New Britain died from the shooting, while the other victim’s injuries are unknown. We learned multiple shooters and firearms, including a rifle, were involved. #UPDATE: Magnolia Street shootingHartford police say officers responded after ShotSpotter detected multiple shots- a male victim died- another victim is at a hospital with unknown injuries- multiple firearms and shooters involved@WFSBnews pic.twitter.com/Z5GtlhRHNu — Shawnte Passmore (@ShawntePassmore) April 10, 2021 Throughout the afternoon, sirens rang out in the capital city. The violence seen today typically is common during warmer weather. Prior to the shootings, the city’s top cop shared the department already staged officers throughout, both plain clothes and uniformed. “We had preplanned details tonight with the Department of Motor Vehicle and with the Connecticut State Police so they are now out there with us as well,” Hartford Police Chief Jason Thody said. Hartford Police say the officers’ mission will focus on any potential retaliation. Police tell us there’s no indication the shootings are related at this hour. As for the Nelson Street shooting, police are looking for multiple suspects in that case. Police say it appears the boy sat in a vehicle with his siblings when the shooting occurred. 3 year old shot and killed in Hartford. A memorial is set up to honor baby boy Rondell Jones. Rest In Peace ❤️ @WFSBnews @CityofHTFD @MayorBronin @HartfordPolice pic.twitter.com/ROEFfCMI8r — Christian Colón (@ColonCJC) April 11, 2021 We do know the mother was in the car with her children, ages three, four and five. “I am heartbroken and I am angry,” Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin said during a press conference Saturday night. This is a painful day for our city. This afternoon, a three year old child was shot and killed on Nelson Street and a young man was killed on Magnolia Street not long after. Our whole city is grieving tonight. pic.twitter.com/ZJt8x3wp6f — Luke Bronin (@MayorBronin) April 11, 2021 Senator Chris Murphy also weighed in Saturday, saying: “The response from government to this cannot be nothing. A 3 year old is dead. Do not let yourself believe this is inevitable. And the flow of illegal guns into places like Hartford is made possible by the holes in our background checks system.” Police are still looking into whether these shootings are related. Refresh this page and stay with Eyewitness News for updates. Copyright 2021 WFSB (Meredith Corporation). All rights reserved. !function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s) if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function()n.callMethod? n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments); if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0'; n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0; t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)(window, document,'script', 'https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js'); fbq('init', '471524917159477'); fbq('track', 'PageView'); Source link Orbem News #blockquote #camera #Crime #Dead #eyewitness #footage #Hartford #hartfordpolice #including #investigator #military #news #Officer #oldboy #pair #Police #shooting #shootings #shot #update #Vehicle #weaponry #Weekend #Year

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remember-wim-faros · 7 years ago

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Episode 2 - Genius and Location

[voice echoing] When a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it… It makes a sound!

Ladies and gentlemen, we are so close! Can you feel it, Rosemary Hills? Can you feel the tugging, the suspenseful adrenaline crackling through the dried grass of the fairway, as we wait together in tense anticipation for the music?

Hello and welcome to the second episode of “It Makes a Sound”. I’m Deirdre Gardner, your host, and you’re listening to the only show ever solely dedicated to the music and legacy of Wim Faros, resident genius of our Rosemary Hills.

In our first episode, I had the unique privilege of announcing the near miraculous discovery of a cassette tape containing Faros’ lost 1992 concert. Likely the first time he played for a public audience. And it is only here, with me, on “It Makes a Sound”, this show, that you’ll be able to hear these precious tracks. And that will happen very soon, very soon.

Today I remind myself .. of the great archeologist Howard Carter, who after years of looking, came across the steps of the tomb of King Tut. Now do you, do you think, I mean he wasn’t able to just bust in there all at once. There was a bit of a process, some red tape to get around, important people to bring over to help, some planning as to how the heck to open an ancient thing. This is very common with monumentally Earth-shattering finds.

And also it’s the reason that it’s urgent that you contact me if you are in possession of a working cassette tape player. You can reach me at [email protected].

In the meantime, here on the table before me, the cassette tape sits. Like the stairs in the sand of the valley of the kings. The treasures contained within its… small plastic sarcophagus, it is yet not ready to be reveal.

Well, I trust the tape, I trust that it will be played when when it is ready be played. And I believe that the object is, is actually gifting us, with time to prepare. And on today’s show, I will pave the way for that music and help each of us carve out a space that is worthy of one of the greatest of our generation.

The best art historians tell us that in order to fully crack open and contextualize the meaning behind the moment of creation, one must look to the environment in which the artist is creating. Thus it is essential, as we ready our brains for this musical reckoning, that we turn to fellow residents of Rosemary Hills circa 1992. For instance, persons who perhaps find themselves having returned to the town after a duration of time. Who are uniquely qualified to reflect on local historical events. So I have gathered for us… some.. [paper rustling] more select material from the town archives. It’s a cross-sectional study, if you will, for us to sift through and examine. Together, we’ll look at the timeline of 1992 and how that relates to the social studies of Rosemary Hills. In order to come to a greater understanding of the how and the why Wim Faros created what is quickly becoming known colloquially, as the Attic Tape.

Location, location, location. Historians before me have asked: what would Edith Piaf be without Paris? Charles Dickins without London? What would Nazareth be without Jesus? What would Tucson be without Linda Ronstadt? We at “It Makes a Sound” ask: what is Rosemary Hills without Wim Faros? What would Wim Faros be, if not for Rosemary Hills?

I give you – 1992. An overview. I have… I have… [papers rustling] some bullet points here. [pause] Rosemary Hills was flush with new money and in the midst of an unprecedented population boom and total identity transformation. An economic upturn and the commercial development rush of the late 1980’s, led to an incorporation of a large area of surrounding wildlife acreage. Transforming much of the humble forest village into a golf resort community and retirement Mecca. Separated from the old parts of town with gates and barbed wire fences.

Reflecting this change, the tallest structure in our town, the water tower, was completed in 1992, announcing boldly in royal blue cursive: “World’s Golf Capital”. What a vision. But this was premature. That water tower still overlooks the land of Wim Faros, now faded and rusty.

A new school opened Rosemary Hills Junior High, with classes in progress, even though the construction of the building was never finished because of enrollment difficulties as the average median age in the town was 60.

Back in the 1992, as my mother used to say, you could definitely swing a dead cat without hitting a kid in Rosemary Hills. You could tie a bunch of dead cats together and swim them and still hit nothing.

And now, let’s turn to the news. How did current events affect Wim’s home town? Well, I have found a pile of saved newspapers from the era. [paper rustling] Now, they have faded into a sepia tone, dry and cracking. Yet still, they proudly relay the important message of their day. I rhymed. Let’s dive into the research.

[pause, paper rustling] OK well, it was an election year, and the options were George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. But as you recall, only the third party candidate Ross Perot was featured on Wim Faros’ bedroom mural.

[pause, paper rustling] Ah yes! The Mall of America had just opened in Minneapolis. So that would be just a few years after the ribbon of the Rosemary Hills mall was cut. And also, all the corporate-owned strip malls sprawled across the new side streets, with hope that the surging population of a golf course community would have an insatiable itch for sensible shoes, windbreakers, what else? Soup in bread bowls and electric can openers, wicker, so on.

Wim Faros, of course, was critical of consumer capitalism.

The NicoDerm patch is released, oh that’s interesting. Wim Faros was a non-smoker. But of course [chuckles], we will remember Park Song, who came from Korea and was hands down the best golfer living in Rosemary Hills. She, she wore four NicoDerm patches in a window sill shape on the bicep of her right arm. Nobody knew what they were at the time, we just thought it was a thing that great Korean golfers wore on their arm.

She lived in one of the largest houses near the club house, alone I think. But as we all know, she kept two domesticated peacocks as pets. Thank you, Park Song. Those peacocks and her talent made her an intimidating community presence. She called children “sugarplum”, but in a tone that was not sweet.

[pause, papers rustling] Prince Charles and Princess Diana officially separate. Well, get in line your highnesses, because so had the parents of basically every student enrolled at Rosemary Hills Junior High. And the whole school was like a Rainbows Program. Do-do we still have that Rainbows Programs, for kids whose newly single Mom or Dad had to move in with a more financially stable grandparent trying to live out retirement in the golf course. [sighs] The school spirit that united the kids was like – a wide-eyed stare of betrayal. Should have tried to make that into the mascot.

Wim Faros, however, did not attend Rosemary Hills Junior High, and parental figures were never seen around him. Who were his parents? Where were they? What did they like? What does he have in common with the princess of Windsor? We don’t yet know.

[paper rustling] The top of the box office, “Aladdin”. And the highest rated TV show is “America’ Favorite Funniest Home Videos”, oh boy. There is no evidence that these entertainments had any significant influence on Wim Faros’ art.

[paper rustling] The average price of a gallon of gas was a dollar and five cents. Well OK yes, speaking of cars, we should note that sometimes seen parked in a cul-de-sac outside of Wim Faros’ two-story bungalow was a Chrysler LeBaron convertible. Now the details of the car may have been hard to discern from afar, but if you were standing near the barbed wire fence that separated the golf course from the wilder unincorporated area of Rosemay Hills, you could see its faux-wood covering and sheepskin covered seats and steering wheel. And a green little tree car freshener hanging from the rearview mirror. And there was a peeling rusty Jones sticker on the passenger seat window and it was stickshift.

Around that time, that is in 1992, when gas cost just over a dollar, it is said that a significant dent appeared on that fence. To most, this dent may have gone unnoticed, as it was covered by overgrown weeds. But the dent happened to peel up the bottom of the fence upwards, so that theoretically, there could be enough space for, say, a medium-sized animal to crawl through. Soon after, the LeBaron was seen with a smashed-in white headlight. Whether or not there was a correlation between that headlight and that dent in the fence reminds a mystery to this day.

I’m Deirdre Gardner, and this is my show, “It Makes a Sound”. We are investigating the social and historical context of the time in which Wim Faros wrote the songs disovered on the Attic Tape. We have been looking at headlines from the newspapers of 1992. We’ll put these over to the side right now and move on to our next site of, hey this one’s Halloween. Pope John Paul the second lifted the edict against Galileo Galilei, which was made during the Inquisition, and apologized on behalf of the Catholic church.

Well, this strikes me. Galileo. A misunderstood genius, recognized only centuries after time. On October 31 1992, residents of Rosemary Hills were sitting on their Lazyboys, stuffing themselves with candy, and watching the 10 o’clock news as the Pope pronounced the mea culpa for the sin of overlooking Galileo’s truth. While we had a potential prophet in our own midst. Do you see, listeners? Quite a coincidence.

We-we have to turn to more eyewitness accounts and comb through the documents to see if more historical connections can be made to that Halloween. [paper rustling] Where is it? Shit. (--) [whispering] downstairs.

[door closes, quick footsteps running in the stairs]

Old lady: Who’s there? I’m in a hole. Yes I’m in the 16th hole, if you can find, wind and dime it. [claps hands] I am the hole, holy smokes! The little girls go down the hole and they can’t get out because of the caterpillars and (bimbob), do you see? Hip hop hap, the ting tong tang, that’s a guitar. Do you remember (--) Miranda? Do you remember (-) Deirdre? We’re by the 16th hole. She keeps me here and she won’t let me go!

[footsteps] We’ll hide back here, hide in seek, with the Christmas and Santas! Shh, it’s a secret!

Deirdre [panting]: I found it! I found something! I have it. Ooh ah, OK, now I have it. Now, it’s just a few pages, handwritten on wide ruled paper in a purple velveteen diary. But it is an authenticated document testifying to events that took place on October 13, 1992.

I’m Deirdre Gardner and this is “It Makes a Sound”. We are deep into the archives, way in there.

OK. Now. This document appears to be written in first person present particible, interestingly. Whoo! OK, for today’s segment of a portrait of the artist as a young man… I will read it aloud to you now. October 31, 1992. “Part one. The loneliest trick-or-treated. The pillow case is tattered at the top. It’s full of Werther’s hard candies and Rolos. It’s a conspiracy of Werthers and Rolos this Halloween, the most mediocre candies of all. Halloween is the dumbest here. But it’s even sadder to stay home and, so like last year and the year before that and the year before that. I get Mom’s long gold-lamé dress out of a box in the mothy corner of the attic, safety-pin it at the back because it still totally sags around my stupid chest, weave a string through a large scarab medallion that I got from a fourth grade trip to the Natural History Museum, and tie it around my head. Then I sharpen a stub of a coal-black eyeliner pencil that’s been in the bathroom drawer in the left hand side for as long as I can remember, like from when I was a toddler. Weird, because whose is it? Mom has never ever worn eyeliner. But I trace the rim of my eye with the pencil, and then the rim of that rim, and then the rim of that rim. Again and again and again and again. I am, of course, Cleopatra.

Then I have an idea and I draw a squiggly snake on my arm. That’s new. It can’t be like an official rule, but no one trick or treats on the ground of our townhouse. Like as if one of the werid privileges of living in a gated golf course community is that you’re excluded from the obligation of giving handouts to hooded children once a year. So my Halloween means trekking up and down really long driveways by myself and figuring out dumb intercom systems at the front door. And then, if someone answers, waiting several awkward minutes, while they find their way through like a thousand rooms to the door. And then hearing like a thousand locks being unlocked. And houses are very far from each other. So I average like 1.2 houses every ten minutes.

So like four houses down, two blisters in, the sky turns split pea and starts to pour, duh, of course it does. So I turn off the street and I drag my gold lamé dress back over the golf course, taking my shortcut back to the townhouses where I live. I decide to see how many Rolos I can fit in my mouth at once to pass the time. The answer’s 9. I dab the pillowcase on my face to dry it, and I realize that the eye makeup has totally melted all the way down my face, neck, and chest. The pillowcase has a weird watercolor imprint of my Cleopatra face on it. Like those Monet lilies you see in postcards, but in a horror movie. Like if Monet was a psycho killer. The thing that was a snake on my arm now looks like 30 cigarette burns. The scarab medallion is sliding down my nose into my mouth like a bug. I’m disgusting. I pop the tenth Rolo in my mouth to confirm this, and it’s true.

And that’s when I see him. Well, that’s when I see the small figure in red coveralls and battered snake skin boots sitting high atop an oak tree branch swinging his feet, his head covered in a furry wolf mask. Next to him is a pumpkin painted entirely neon blue. Suddenly, an enormous bolt of lighting strikes the green sky backlighting the teen wolf. It is Wim Faros.

I start choking on the Rolos. The sky turns black.

Part 2. Electrified.

The next thing I know, I’m sitting upright on a beach. On my lap is an unopened bag of Twizzler Cherry Nibs, my favorite candy. So I know I must be dead. Then I realize it’s not a beach, of course, I’m just propped up against the lip of a small greenside sand bunker, a trap for the golfers. The Werthers are gone. The pillowcase remains.

I turn to get my body out of the sand trap and I kick something that rolls, so I kneel down to pluck it out of the sand. And it is now that I totally know that I am dead. Because it’s the neon blue pumpkin. I swear to God. Freshly singed into it, piercing all the way true, its neon painted flesh is the shape of a lightning bolt. [whispers] I swear.

But I am not dead. I am alive. I have Twizzlers Nibs, sand caked in my hair. I ring out the pillowcase, tie it like a snake around my arm. I am Cleopatra, and Wim Faros saved me.”

[sighs] [moved, excited tone] Oh my God. If you are just tuning in, well you’ve missed everything really. This is “It Makes a Sound” and I’m Deirdre Gardner, and oh my God, I just read for you a firsthand testimonial regarding a profound encounter with Rosemary Hills’ native genius Wim Faros. I mean… I wish you could see the goosebumps. I forgot about goosebumps in this moment? I mean, we must all be united by our raised human flesh. Isn’t it wonderful that goosebumps are a thing? What a phenomenon of the living! Maybe we’re making a world record right now with synchronized goosebumping!

[sighs] I still have them. Listeners, don’t you see? If the standalone history of Wim Faros is such a jolt to the soul, such an envigorating rush of creative replenishment, just imagin what you will feel when you listen to his music.

[talks very fast] Rosemary Hills, it’s happening, it’s happening! This is what we set out to do today. This is precisely how we ready ourselves for the music. This, this is how we center ourselves, and get in touch with inspiration, and make way for the sacred. We’re unpacking the attic! In fact, let’s create a new segment. It’s called “Unpacking the Attic”. Here’s the first assignment, we will journal. Um, find a piece of paper, find a notebook, find a napkin, I dunno whatever, find your favorite writing untensil – and take ten minutes to write about the last time you can remember having goosebumps like this. Not the creepy kind, but the awestruck kind. When were you so struck by awe that it changed the composition of your epidermis? Freerwite, take this opportunity to remember yourself. Ten minutes, go!

OK.. Oh god, where’s my pen? Where is my pen? Oh god. OK, actually, OK I realize this is not maybe the best thing to do during the show, so I will leave you to do this meaningful reflection on your own, and I will also. And I look forward to you joining me next time, Rosemary Hills, from this place of presence and alertness.

I’m Deirdre Gardner, your fellow townswoman, urging you to unlock your full potential, to appreciate beauty, and to relish in the things that make a sound. I think you’re doing great. This is my show, “It Makes a Sound”. It’s the only show in the world dedicated to the legendary Wim Faros. There is music, and I promise you, you will hear it. We will hear it, next time.

Oh hello I’m back, sorry! I almost forgot something very important because of all the goosebump excitement, but I have an update. I’ve been working on something. Guess what it is? What’s something everybody loves? Peace of mind? Clear consciences? Great literature? Not quite, it’s websites apparently and guess what, now I have one. I made it myself, so do something productive with your screen time and go to www.itmakesasound.rocks. There you wll be able to replay episodes of “It Makes a Sound”. I’ll work on that, I just um, think it’s like a tab. And, you also have access to important information about the artist Wim Faros, and where some day soon, you can listen to each newly discovered track from the Attic Tape as I release them.

And if you have any pertinent information about the artist that you’d like to share, or hey, if you’d like to submit your “Unpacking the Attic” assignment to me for extra credit. [chuckles] (--) teacher. And especially of course, if you or someone you know has access to a high quality cassette tape player, now you can use the “contact me” tab on the site, which I will add. That me being me, Deirdre Gardner. So off you go, til next time, goodbye!

[alarm sounds] Oh my god! [footsteps in stars]

Old Lady: Deirdre!

“It Makes a Sound” is written by Jacquelyn Landgraf, co-directed by Jacquelyn Landgraf and me, Anya Saffr. Sound design and mixing by Vincent Cacchione. Original music composed by Nate Weida. Deirdre’s music box song today was Dance Macabre by Camille Saint-Saën.

With Jacquelyn Landgraf as Deirdre and featuring Annie Golden as the other voice in the attic.

“It Makes a Sound” is a Night Vale Presents production. For more information on this show and other Night Vale podcasts, go to nightvalepresents.com. We hope you’ll rate and review “It Makes a Sound” on Apple podcasts, that you’ll follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Please spread the word through the land to listen to the show, to consider goosebumps, and to remember Wim Faros.

#it makes a sound #episode 2 #genius and location

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justsimplylovely · 5 years ago

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US president to use state visit to promote House of Trump as he doubles down on Brexit bet Trump with the Queen in Windsor last summer. Next week, the monarch will greet Trump ceremonially in the gardens of Buckingham Palace. Photograph: Pablo Martínez Monsiváis/AP Donald Trump’s state visit this week to the UK is being promoted as a celebration of a close alliance tempered through war. It could be more accurately described as a personal lap of victory for the US president, performed largely at the expense of his hosts. Trump arrives in London having survived Robert Mueller’s last blow, a verbal recap of the special counsel’s finding that the president could neither be charged with crimes nor exonerated. The president is now on the counter-attack and may well use his visit to repeat his claim – called “utterly ridiculous” by GCHQ – that UK intelligence helped spy on his election campaign. The rich pageantry that the British monarchy supplies will not only distract from the lingering clouds of suspicion, but send a bright red, white and blue message of reassurance to the Trump faithful that, while his domestic enemies might yap at his heels, he is still treated like royalty in foreign capitals. “What he wants is the adulation,” said Thomas Wright, the director of the centre on the US and Europe at the Brookings Institution. “He wants the protocol and the grandeur and to be at the centre of it all. It is how he sees global diplomacy. It’s going from palace to chancellery, meeting leaders and looking the part.” For that purpose, the UK visit could not be more perfect. On Monday, the Queen will greet Trump ceremonially in the gardens of Buckingham Palace. He will inspect a guard of honour and there will be royal gun salutes fired from Green Park and the Tower of London. There will be afternoon tea and banquets and then, in Portsmouth, the martial grandeur of the Royal Navy. Trump is bringing his extended family, including the heirs to his fortune and political power, Donald Jr, Eric and Ivanka. The most powerful of them, Ivanka, will attend a “business leaders” breakfast on Tuesday with her father in the company of Theresa May and the Duke of York. Travelling Trumps When Donald Trump and his wife, Melania, arrive for a state visit to the UK on 3 June, they will reportedly be joined by the president’s four adult children and their spouses. Here's who is in the family entourage: Ivanka Trump Ivanka is Trump’s oldest daughter and works in the White House (unpaid) as an adviser to the president. Trump has relied on her often for overseas diplomacy, including sitting in for him briefly at a G20 summit, and he said he had considered naming her to head the World Bank. She has visited Ethiopia and the Ivory Coast on behalf of the administration to promote women’s rights. Before her father’s presidency, Trump ran her own fashion line. Jared Kushner Trump’s son-in-law is a White House senior adviser and the administration’s envoy to the Middle East (also unpaid). With his wife Ivanka he has also been the subject of a host of controversies – with a whistleblower alleging they were granted sensitive security clearances over the objections of career security experts. He has also been accused of conflicts of interest over his family’s sprawling real-estate empire. Kushner wears many hats in Washington. He is supposed to come up with a Middle East peace plan, as well as US immigration policy. Donald Trump Jr Trump’s eldest son and his brother, Eric, run their father’s business empire while he is in the White House. Officially, Trump Jr is executive vice-president of the Trump Organization. It was Trump Jr who met a Russian lawyer in an infamous Trump Tower meeting in New York in 2016, after the Russian offered him election ‘dirt’ on the Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Kushner also attended. Although accepting campaign help from foreign nationals is illegal, the special counsel Robert Mueller said after investigating that there was not enough evidence to prove meeting participants knew they were breaking the law. Trump Jr may be accompanied by his girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle, a former Fox News host. Eric Trump Eric Trump is the co-leader of the Trump Organization during his father’s presidency. He has defended his father from accusations of racism, and called the president’s critics “not even people”. He is parodied on the weekly US satirical comedy TV show Saturday Night Live and elsewhere as the not-so-sharp Trump brother, though supporters call this portrayal inaccurate. Most recently, a watchdog group has been pressing to find out how much it cost taxpayers when Eric and members of one of the family’s golf clubs travelled to Scotland to play the links. Lara Trump Lara Trump is a campaign adviser to Donald Trump’s re-election campaign and wife to Eric. A vocal defender of her father-in-law, she recently made headlines by saying the decision to let in large numbers of migrants fleeing war- and poverty-torn countries for Europe was “one of the worst things that ever happened to Germany”. Tiffany Trump Tiffany is the lowest profile of Trump’s adult children and his only child with second wife Marla Maples. She headed to London ahead of the rest of her family. The 25-year-old is a graduate student at Georgetown Law in Washington DC. She travelled to the Cannes film festival earlier this month with her wealthy boyfriend, in a trip that has drawn scrutiny over its cost to taxpayers in terms of security for the presidential daughter. The scenes will eventually be marketed by his business empire and his re-election machine in the same way: the House of Trump and the House of Windsor, the top luxury brands of their respective nations, sitting down to make deals in the most sumptuous settings. In effect, the British royals will be serving as co-stars and extras in stock footage for Trump’s 2020 re-election ads. The only royal with experience of acting for a living, Meghan, the American-born Duchess of Sussex, is thought to be staying away. She is on maternity leave after having baby Archie, but she has called Trump “divisive” and “misogynistic” in the past. In return, he declared her “nasty” in a pre-departure Sun interview. Trump’s progress will be triumphal in other ways. May – who told him off for sharing far-right videos in 2017, and whom he has taunted mercilessly ever since for failing to deliver Brexit – will be in her last days as prime minister. The former Conservative foreign secretary Boris Johnson, whom Trump has consistently backed over May, and who he has said would do “an excellent job”, is tipped as most likely to succeed her. The Brexit party leader, Nigel Farage, another Trump favourite, emerged victorious from the European elections, while the hardest of all Brexits remains a likelihood. The US president is winning all his bets in the UK, and it would be out of character if he did not remind the hapless outgoing prime minister of that fact. Johnson and Farage were expected to attend a banquet thrown at the US ambassador’s London residence, Winfield House, on Tuesday night, though Farage claims he has been banned from meeting the president by the May government. Trump was coy on whether he would meet them but gave them a resounding shout-out last Thursday as “two very good guys, very interesting people”. In an interview with the Sunday Times, Trump called on Britain to leave the European Union without a deal if Brussels refuses to meet its demands, and urged the government to send Farage into the negotiations. The state visit is an opportunity for Trump to double down on his bet on Brexit, with the ultimate aim of striking his own bilateral trade deal with an amputated and weakened Britain. After arriving in the UK on Air Force One on Monday 3 June, US president Donald Trump will be formally welcomed in a ceremony in the gardens of Buckingham Palace. It will be attended by the Queen and Prince Charles. The president will then attend a private lunch at the palace, which is expected to be attended by Prince Harry, but not his wife, who Trump recently described as 'nasty'. Following a wreath-laying ceremony in Westminster Abbey, Donald Trump will join Prince Charles for an afternoon tea at Clarence House. The Queen, Prince Charles and Prince Harry will then host a state banquet in the evening, which will be attended by prominent US citizens who live in the UK, as well as political and civic leaders. On Tuesday 4 June the visit includes a breakfast meeting with Prince Andrew, and then talks and a press conference with prime minister Theresa May at Downing Street. On the Tuesday evening Trump hosts a dinner at the residence of the US ambassador. On Wednesday 5 June Trump will take part in commemoration services in Portsmouth to mark the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landings. The day ends with the Queen formally bidding farewell to the US president. Trump’s entourage will also include two identical seven-seat black armoured limousines nicknamed ‘The Beast’, and a number of presidential helicopters. The president has at his side at all times one of five rotating military aides who carry the nuclear ‘football’ which can trigger a missile strike - equipped with communication tools and a book with prepared war plans. “This is not about seeing where the UK is vulnerable in a post-EU environment and buttressing it; I think this is using US trade leverage to get as many gains as possible,” said Heather Conley, director of the Europe programme at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. That leverage will be used to peel the UK away from EU regulations to fall in line with US standards on food, healthcare and banking. The US president will be coming to press home his advantage. “Trump is pursuing a predatory approach to Brexit,” Wright said. “It’s an opportunist strategy to take advantage of Britain’s vulnerability.”

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Amadou Bah-Former Maxim Securities Group Broker-Barred From Industry-Subject of $200K Customer Suit-Cleveland, Ohio

March 2018 The FINRA records of Amadou Bah, a former stock broker who was last employed employed by Maxim Group LLC disclose a regulatory matter resulting in a bar from the securities industry and a currently pending customer dispute. The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) is the agency that licenses and regulates stockbrokers and brokerage firms. FINRA requires brokers and…

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