#also one of my lecturers was helping to build a museum for a small village in that area because they had a perfectly preserved old village

[lightsmortalenemy]

An explorer to my area known as John Rae demonstrates the benefits of listening to the locals and not believing yourself to be the exception as he was searching to know what happened to the Franklin Expedition and took the locals advice on how to survive that region and also listened to their story on what happened to the expedition, and believed them. For reporting the truth he was belittled and harassed by the news (Charles Dickens was involved weirdly) because of the reputation of the empire and the attitude of superiority of the English community, and this exceptionalism came down on the Inuit population overall and on Rae because truth does not thrive where power wants perfection.

been seeing homies get deep into "the terror" and making me want to rewatch SO i spent two hours in the dead of night reading the wiki/the subreddit/other linked articles and like. one of those articles was deadass fucked up

there was a woman who spoke inuktitut who was writing a book containing a lot of inuit oral histories, and in nunavut she was able to hear passed-down recollections of when survivors from the franklin expedition were passing through

and like. i can't imagine being an inuit family/group, knowing that europeans exist but having never seen them, seeing 8-9 shambling, blue-skinned, cold-to-the-touch out-of-their-minds white men come wandering by. they invited the men inside their igloos for warmth, for food, to be hospitable. the men refused to eat, refused to speak, and when trade was offered, clutched their possessions close and refused to entertain the idea of trade. this was, offputting, to say the least. the group set them up in their own igloo, with their own fire, and left three whole seals for them to eat. and then they fled cause what the FUCK get out of there. they came back in a few days to check on the strangers. the three seals were completely untouched, while all of the men had killed and eaten each other

i mean. fuck dude. there are obviously pretty dark angles to view the franklin expedition from– honestly can't think of a good angle, it's pure colonialism and british exceptionalism– but that specific interaction, that inuit group who were living lives as normal until a dozen fucking walking dead showed up and did cannibalism. no wonder that story got passed down, i'd be shitting my pants if i saw that

[monster-bait]

Silly question, but for the characters of Weekend (boys and girls), favorite smells and why? Stuff like that always tell so much about a character and their past, i just think it's neat :)

“Silly question” they said! More like “the literal best question that’s shown up in my inbox in over a week!”

Ris: coastal smells of the little sea side village where her parents took her on vacation every year growing up. They wasn’t a lot of money for extras after her private school was paid for, but renting a small cottage on the ocean was a tradition they kept. Salty air, sea weed and drift wood, the fishy smell of the tide rolling out—it smells like comfort and nostalgia

Ainsley: the smell of old books, new books, used books, thrifted books...his apartment is just STACKED with books. He’s got nothing against ereaders, but he likes the tangibility and feeling of permanence of a leather binding: he is now a part of that book’s history, and if it had a story to tell, he would be included. 

Also: the curious mix of industrial floor cleaner, starched uniforms, and a whiff of old stone—the museum where his mother worked when he was growing up and the endless hours he spent there.

Lurielle: a candle she bought shortly after moving into her house in Cambric Creek. It’s nothing remarkable, just a run of the mill mall store candle—coriander and jasmine and lavender—but she burned it every day. When it ran out, she bought another one, then another one and another one. When the candle store discontinued the fragrance, she was bummed, but moved on to something new...but there’s something about that blend, coriander and jasmine and lavender, that smells like home. Her home, her reclamation of her life, her independence, the first step on her road to self love. She’d love to be able to find that candle again.

Also: the smell of Khash’s closet. It’s stupid how much she likes putting his clothes away, but she can’t help herself. She lectures him about sending his clothes to a service, rolls her eyes at his insistence that taking advantage of the dry cleaning and laundry service in his building’s lobby saves him valuable time that he spends with her, but she loves the smell of the crisply pressed shirts and double-starched collars, the expensive leather of his shoes and smooth wool of his suits, and the smell of him, permeating everything.

Khash: clay dust and sweat and pipe tobacco; wood smoke and ceremonial herbs being burned in a brazier; the clean aquatic smell of fishing holes surrounded by towering pines — basically all smells of his childhood and upbringing: his grandfather coming home from the mines, clan gathering around huge bonfires, telling the stories of their forebears and burning the sacred herbs, fishing with his cousins in the back woods.

Also: the kitten-soft cashmere throw on Lurielle’s sofa, that always smells like her soft perfume and a yippy little dog

Silva: the soft Oriental perfume that lived on the dressing table in her grandmother’s room when she was just a little elf — it was heavy and regal and she would spend so long staring at it that her grandmother would give in and dab a tiny bit behind her long ears. Spicy and floral and entirely too heavy, she would feel like a queen the rest of the day. She would never in a million years wear something like that now as an adult, but the smallest whiff takes her back to childhood.

Also: the undefinable smell of Tate’s skin. She’s sniffed a dozen different colognes and aftershaves and skin tonics, and nothing comes close: he uses sandalwood-scented products, but there’s something else there when she pushes her nose to his neck, something that makes her feel as though she’s standing in a open field under a wide, blue sky, just at the precipice of a great forest. It’s wild and free and entirely unique to him, and she’s completely addicted to it.

Tate: a little more complex, because scent and taste are his big memory triggers and every single thing on the Clover menu evokes something, but beyond that:

The ancient wood of the Pixie, worm-eaten, water-damaged cellar and all. He loves the clean smell of the bar, the oiled and sealed floors, the way she smells after it rains—earthy and damp. She’s the only thing in the world that’s entirely his, and he loves the smell of every inch of her.

Old fashioned violet dusting powder. It’s powdery and soft and smells like safety and love.

Silva’s hair. She smells like summer rain and forbidden happiness, and he will stay awake long after she’s fallen asleep to bury his face in her hair and inhale.

💖💖💖

[jaxsteamblog]

Cave of Two Lovers

Click here to read the full fic on AO3

The next pick-up day, Katara woke up and didn’t want to get out of bed. The days after Zuko’s birthday party had been weird, to say the least. When she pictured him bringing in cookies, or clipping thorns, it was impossible to then imagine him standing next to that woman, Mai.

It didn’t occur to her that incessantly thinking about Zuko was the actual problem.

She just didn’t like it when things didn’t fit, she supposed. While Mai hadn’t been outright rude to her and Suki, she certainly wasn’t the type to be nice. Zuko was nice.

Putting her hands on her face, Katara groaned.

Katara stopped for coffee on the way in, wanting to avoid the whole tea situation. When she got to the flower shop, she didn’t see Sokka’s car. Slightly concerned, Katara got out and jingled her keys in her free hand.

There was a note taped to the back door.

The tape pulled free with a pop and she opened the hastily folded note while sipping her coffee.

Kat- Had to leave for a slight emergency. Can’t text, running to car. Close up after Z gets flowers. Love, Sokka.

Frowning, Katara put the note in her mouth and used her key to get into the shop. It was dark in the back room and the hum of the air conditioner sounded like the call of an ocean animal. Putting down her keys and coffee, Katara fished her phone out of her purse and unlocked it as she walked to the front.

What’s going on? Call me.

Katara shed her purse by the workroom door and slipped her phone into her pocket. As she turned on the light and walked to the counter, she finally pulled the note from her lips. She read it again, hoping that if it were something serious he would have let her know.

With the shop being quieter, Katara could hear the van pull into the alley. She sighed and went back through the workroom, getting to the door just as Zuko hopped out.

“I just got here and Sokka is out for,” Katara paused as she thought. “Something.”

“Is everything okay?” Zuko asked, walking to the door. Katara shrugged.

“Honestly, I don’t know. I’m waiting for him to call.” She replied. Zuko nodded and rubbed the back of his neck. He started to say something just as Katara turned to the back door.

“It looked like a small order though. We should be okay.” She said.

“Yeah. After how much the party was, Uncle felt like scaling back a bit this week.” Zuko said. They walked inside and Katara helped Zuko with the vases, filling them as he went back inside and to grab the flowers. It didn’t take long at all to get everything loaded and secured.

“Hey, since the shop will be closed, do you have some free time this afternoon?” Zuko asked and slid the van door shut.

“I mean, yeah. Why?” Katara asked.

“There’s a new exhibit at the art museum downtown. I’ve been wanting to go but I need someone to take with me so I can lecture them about art styles.” Zuko answered.

“Okay, but I need to go grocery shopping first.” Katara said, shifting on her feet.

“Can I get your number?” Zuko asked. Katara bit the inside of her lip and nodded, watching as Zuko pulled out his phone from his pocket. She took it, just entering her number to let him add her name. When he got it back, his fingers moved deftly over the screen.

Her own phone dinged in her pocket.

“Alright, text me when you’re done?” He asked, replacing his phone and smiling at her. Katara’s fingers stretched wide for a second down by her leg. She nodded.

“Yeah.” She replied and Zuko’s smile widened briefly. She watched him get into his van and salute her before driving off.

Katara watched the van disappear around the corner and went back inside to lock up.

“Everything’s fine.” Sokka reassured her as Katara cradled her phone between her cheek and her shoulder. She scanned her groceries at the self checkout and glared down at her milk carton.

“You still haven’t told me what happened and it’s irritating me.” She hissed into the phone.

“Only because you’ll be mad.” Sokka replied.

“I’m already mad.” Katara jammed her card into the payment pad and entered her PIN.

“I went back to the flower market because I heard that Jimmy’s friend had a source coming in from the eastern provinces with a small shipment of panda lilies. You know how much I can sell these babies for?” Sokka explained in a rush.

Picking up her tote and sliding it over a shoulder, Katara moved her phone to her free hand.

“You ran out and couldn’t call me for panda lilies?” She retorted. After a brief pause, she continued. “Wait, you got them?”

“Three-quarters of the shipment! I couldn’t afford all twelve.”

Katara nodded to herself as she exited the store and went out to her car. “Are you going back to the shop?”

“Absolutely not.” Sokka answered firmly. “I don’t want to get robbed.”

“How cutthroat is the flower business?” Katara unlocked her car and placed her groceries in the backseat. All of Sokka’s clothes from the party were still in there; luckily the summer heat baked away any smell and now they were just limp.

“The best flowers bloom in blood.” Sokka said with theatrical menace. He cleared his throat and went on. “But seriously, there are a lot of people in the area who would want to move these. I’m going to try and find a buyer today.”

“Make sure to take Suki with you.” Katara said and got into the driver’s seat, immediately turning over the engine to get the A/C started.

“Hey, I am fully capable of protecting myself,” Sokka said. “But yes, I will be bringing Suki.”

Katara snorted and said her goodbyes before leaving the grocery store parking lot. While she waited at the side street, waiting for a pocket to open in the cross traffic, Katara chewed the inside of her cheek.

“Okay Booble, text Zuko.” She said and turned.

---

Katara waited outside of the museum and stared up at the large posters strung up across the face of the building. There were advertisements for the exhibit Zuko had been talking about and it looked fairly interesting. However, after standing in the afternoon sun, Katara was mostly looking forward to air conditioning.

“Have you been waiting long?” Zuko’s voice came up behind her and Katara turned. The lack of visible sweat on him made him seem cool, and Katara shivered at the thought.

“Yes, can we go in now?” She replied hastily. Distressed, Zuko walked quickly to the museum steps. They rushed to the ticket booth and Zuko bought two entrance passes. It being the beginning of the week and with little activity at such a hot hour, Katara supposed there weren’t many people staffed. Unsurprisingly, the ticket salesperson also punched their passes.

“Here you go.” Zuko said, handing Katara her pass. Her fingers brushed against his hand; he was cooler than she.

“You’re lucky, we’re getting the vents fixed so we’ll be closed the rest of the week.” The woman in the ticket booth said.

“The vents?” Katara repeated.

“Yeah, the air conditioning went out on us this morning. We got out some industrial fans but that’s just to get us through today. Enjoy!” The woman said.

Katara looked reproachfully at Zuko, who looked decidedly away from her.

The museum itself was grand, with ceilings that towered over her as practically far away as the sky. The stone around her was cool and offered some relief from the heat; the biggest problem was the lack of air circulating. She could hear various fans humming away like a hybrid of cicadas and jet engines. Just a constant, irritating wash of white noise.

“Have you ever been to Omashu?” Zuko asked. Katara shook her head and Zuko started walking to the side gallery.

“I’ve wanted to go see the cave there.” He added.

“The Cave of Two Lovers?” Katara asked.

“Yeah. Do you know the legend?”

“No, it’s just what the posters said.”

“Oh.” Zuko looked momentarily dumbfounded and they walked into the gallery in silence. There was a massive box fan at the door, angled to blow air into the room. Two large oscillating fans were standing like sentries at either end; both of them looked like they could take down a child if they fell.

The art on the walls, however, was simply breathtaking.

Done in a traditional style, watery brush strokes moved across multiple large canvases.

“Oma and Shu belonged to two different villages who had always fought each other. The war raged on for so long because a mountain separated them, making it difficult for either side to claim victory.” Zuko said as they stopped in front of the first canvas. As they moved around, he narrated the story. How the two lovers met atop the mountain, how they learned earthbending from the badgermoles to make a maze of tunnels, and how Shu was killed in the war between their homes.

As Zuko related Oma’s grief and how she used her earthbending, something the others had never seen another human being do, Katara felt goosebumps ripple over her skin and tears stung her eyes.

Finally, Omashu was created and an entire city-kingdom lived peacefully, laying on the foundation of stones carved out by a grieving woman.

Sniffling, Katara dabbed her nose with the back of her hand.

Zuko looked at her and then glanced around the room. “The whole exhibit is about them. Want to see the other pieces?”

They walked through a few more galleries with Zuko in fact talking about art styles and historical periods. Artist names popped up as frequently as place names and Katara stopped trying to discern the two types.

“Are you sure art isn’t your thing?” Katara asked at one point. Zuko laughed but didn’t respond.

After making it through four rooms, Katara was hot and tired. She said as much to Zuko and he turned about, looking around the room.

“Look, there’s a dark room there. We can at least cool down while I pull a map up on my phone.” He said, pointing to a door that was propped open across from them.

Katara looked in and saw paint cans in the dim light.

“It doesn’t look like this room’s finished.” She said.

“Want to go somewhere else?” Zuko asked.

“No. It has a bench. None of these other rooms have had a place to sit.” Katara said, feeling her feet start to throb as she stood still.

“Okay.” Zuko replied and they both entered. Zuko held out his phone with the flashlight on and they saw that this exhibit was far from being done. Drop cloths were haphazardly draped over painting supplies and a large ladder leaned against a wall. A push broom and large dust mop rested against the door frame and they jostled as Katara stepped in, pushing the door in a bit.

As she moved to sit on the bench, Zuko paced around the room, holding up his phone.

“I cannot get a signal.” He said. Katara watched as he stretched himself upward, leaning precariously over piles of hidden tools and paint to point his phone at the top of each wall. Noticing the lack of a tremble, Katara realized he must be very limber.

“Does this place not have wifi?” Katara asked, now taking her own phone out. There was a loud wooden clatter and the room darkened, causing her screen to illuminate a bit more.

Then there was the sound of metallic clatter.

“Well, that’s not ideal.” Zuko said.

Katara stared at the x over her bars on her cell phone screen.

“Zuko.” She said.

“Yes.”

“Did you knock over the brooms?”

A hesitation. “Yes.”

“And it closed the door?”

“Mmm.”

“And it’s locked?”

Silence.

“Zuko!” Katara whirled around and saw Zuko standing at the door, both hands wrapped around the doorknob.

“I’m sorry!” He said.

“We need to get out of here! What if they close up and we’re stuck in here all week?” Katara asked, panicked.

“Look, that won’t happen. If it, uh, if it comes down to it, uh,” Zuko let go of the doorknob and started pacing in front of the door.

“Can’t you freeze the hinges or something?” He asked.

“This place is too dry! Where am I supposed to get the water from?” Katara asked. Zuko, his hand hovering in the air over his hair, stopped and looked at her.

Katara recoiled, blushing. Seeing her reaction, Zuko held up his hands, blinding her with the flashlight.

“No! Oh no, I’m sorry. No, I didn’t mean, I’m sorry. Katara, I thought.” Zuko walked briskly to her and she swatted at him.

“Turn that stupid thing off before it drains your battery.” She snapped. Zuko obliged and spun a flame from his fingers, holding it in the palm of his hand.

“I was just trying to figure out how much we’d have to, I don’t know, spit on it. But that was also a stupid idea.” He said. Katara gaped at him, dumbfounded, before the corners of her mouth started to pull upwards and she laughed.

Chuckling, Zuko moved around and sat next to her, finally running his free hand through his hair.

“How are you so dumb?” Katara asked through her laughter.

“Azula is the prodigy. I was just lucky to be born first.” Zuko remarked. The bittersweetness in his voice stopped her mirth. Looking at him, she noticed how the shadows from the fire made his face look thinner.

“You’ve got that kind of family huh?” Katara questioned. Zuko nodded.

“Is that why you’re with Mai?” She went on. Zuko faced her, looking confused.

“What do you mean?”

Oh spirits he’s with her by choice. Katara thought and was glad that the dark room hid the tells of her embarrassment.

“It’s just, you two seem pretty different.” She clarified. Zuko sighed and focused on the flame. He started to fidget, shaping it with both hands.

“We didn’t use to be. I was just as emotionally drab as she is. Then this happened,” Zuko said and gestured to his face. “And then the end of the war. I don’t know.” His hands returned to the flame and he pulled on it, making the orange ball grow larger. “I wanted to look forward to things and enjoy them, the way my uncle enjoys his tea.”

At the mention of the war, Katara’s throat dried and she shifted away from him. Sensing the movement, Zuko leaned over a bit to look at her.

“Are you okay?” He asked.

Katara nodded; she balled one hand into a fist on the bench, the other went to the necklace sitting snug at her throat.

“I lost a lot in the war.” She replied, her voice husky.

“Sokka told me about it. I’m sorry for your loss and, well,” Zuko suddenly sounded tense. “I know you might not want to hear it from the enemy but, I lost people I loved too.”

Another question jumped up from her chest but Katara caught it in her teeth, biting down and catching the tip of her tongue with it. He was as old as Sokka and would have been that young during the war. But they had both been young when they had done what they did.

And so Katara couldn’t bring herself to ask because she didn’t want to know the answer.

“You’re not the enemy Zuko.” She said.

“Well, I did get us locked in here and we might die.” He replied. Katara huffed out a breath that might have been a laugh and stood. Walking slowly to the opposite wall, she squinted at the paint.

“I think something’s here. Bring the light over.” She said. Zuko walked over and Katara stepped back as the image expanded in the light.

“It’s the curse.” Zuko said.

“What curse?” Katara asked in alarm.

“The tunnels the lovers made were created to entrap those that would follow them. Basically, it says that you will be trapped if you don’t trust in love.” He said.

“So how do you trust in love?” Katara asked. Zuko frowned as he thought, his gaze lingering on the large painting before trickling down to the floor.

“The rest of the myth talks about how the love is the brightest in the dark. How in the worst of times, the two found the greatest love.” He said.

Katara looked at the painting. Two figures knelt across from each other, kissing. In the middle of the war, far below the earth, literally in the most impossible place, two people were free to love each other.

“Or.” Katara started. Zuko faced her and she turned to him. “Or we just remember that badgermoles are blind.”

“And?” Zuko asked. Silently, Katara stepped forward and placed her hands on the backs of Zuko’s. Rolling his fingers inward, he extinguished the flame and they stood in darkness.

His hands were warm.

“Look.” He whispered. Unable to see him, Katara still turned around. The open room seemed vast, but a faint spill of green made her look up. Dots like hanging crystal, glowing in green light, illuminated a path. It ended at the locked door, but began behind the ladder.

They shuffled slowly to the ladder and pulled it past the edges of the green path. Their eyes, having adjusted to the faint light, picked up the lines of a door in the edge of their vision. Zuko pried it open, disrupting more paint cans, and they were suddenly in an alcove. A man coming out of the bathroom across from them jumped at their sudden appearance before scowling at them and walking off.

Sheepish, Zuko and Katara hurried out, closing the door behind them.

“You owe me lunch.” Katara said. Zuko laughed and rubbed the back of his head.

“Deal.”

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

[starryrogue]

So some people said they wanted my extended Blathers/Tom Nook story. 

I haven't written anything like this in years. But it was a nice exercise.(its pretty rough)

So blow the cut an Idea Blather/Tom Nook, childhood friends to???

When they were boys they would stay up into the night dreaming of the opportunities of city life. The success and sophistication. The chance to grow where the same festivals happened season after season, where weeds popped up more than people. Tom Nook knew he could get out here no sweat. He’d been hacking as long as he could remember. Taking food from the unsuspecting and odd jobs where he could just to get by. Blathers never worried about that with his family but he never seemed to worry about what was in front of him. He was either focused on the tiniest of details on a hermit crab or the vastness of history behind, never on how to act on day to day. It was the most annoying quality to someone who used all his energy to survive and to plan, but it was also the most admiring. Tom could give him something as simple as an interesting rock and it was like giving his friend the universe. He would sit back and lose himself in the facts and figures that would gush out after and pretend he could be part of that universe forever. 

The one thing Blathers could never get right was astronomy, but when they lay in his back yard, Tom could weave stories in the spaces between. Quick thinking and connections. He’d always been envious of that cleverness. But what did it matter when it belonged to someone so close. He could sit back and learn about how Tom saw the world too. The knowledge way just as valuable 

Tom knew he couldn’t bear to stay in the town any longer and soon left. He was sure Blather’s who saw entire worlds in everyday life could be fine, even happy despite being. For someone as detailed oriented as Blather’s it wasn’t hard to spot when a large absence appears where your best friend used to be.

Life with Redd was exciting. It was everything Tom Nook thought he wanted. Making big money. Scamming fools for profit. Succeeding in the big city. Parties and Clubs and Fun. Art heists, back alley dealings, con after scam after ruse and bells…lots and lots of bells... And the charming devil may care fox he could spend the thrills of thievery and the late nights of drinking and partying with. A rush of a man who would help him with any of his desires in life, form the finical, to the late night personal. After a youth in poverty in a small backwater town, the money was what mattered.

Not for everyone. Blathers who prized intellect over success. Who valued passion, over profit. Who spent all night studying everything from history to entomology (the stuff of nightmares, but at least it kept him awake into the early hours). Knowledge and experience has value that bells couldn’t buy. Teaching a little sister the stars. Helping his friend start a small coffee shop. Applying over and over for universities, and grants and materials. And despite the rejection, and there were many, the study of life itself could outweigh any small inconveniences  

When Tom ever needed to get away from the hustle and bustle, or away from an unsatisfied “customer” he would always make a point to drop in on old friends. And he knew just who would want to hear his storied and who he could turn to for peace of mind. Hand him a gift and let the words wash over you and it will be like you never left. However when he went to visit Blather he could only see everything he’d run away from. The cramped apartment he shared with his sister, 2 cots separated by a wall of shared book. His closet of an office acted as a second wardrobe and workspace and sometimes a bedroom after late nights of research. The underfunded museum’s café was more often his kitchen than not, not that the barista minded the company or the small impromptu lectures on archelogy and anthropology. 

Tom thought Blathers deserved so much better. Who could live like this? Scraping by in a town whose population dwindled each year, where the donations had stopped coming in. Blathers was so smart and clever, he could be working anywhere he wanted. why stay here? He hoped his gift of a Wistful Painting would be a consolation and an invitation. A glimpse at the wealth he could have. He deserved the world. A proper library instead of a stack of second hand torn textbooks. Proper equipment and an assistant to take care of those nasty bugs, to have the bags disappear from under his deep intelligent eyes. To rest, to be rich, to be happy. 

The night before he was set to return to the city, Blather was waiting in his office by his request. It was hard to move between the clutter, the extra person and the painting.  This had been a hard one to acquire and the reason behind his latest trip from the city. The danger even leading him to flee from his safe house and split with Redd, taking his prize to safest place he knew, where no one would look and with the person he trusted most. 

Pressed up next to his friend, he watched closely for the excitement and happiness upon the opening of his gift. And while it started with the bright eyes excitement Tom had grown to admire, it swiftly shifted to confusion, to realization, to the kind of sweating fidgeting horror as if Blathers was face to face with a tarantula. 

What was supposed to be a sweet moment, a gift for a dear friend turned into an interrogation. “Where did you get this? It’s been all over the news?!” A pause and a conclusion drawn “Was it you?” More an accusation than a question.  Tom tried to justify himself, not even getting to invite Blathers into his world of wealth while on the defensive. It became clear he had not brought a prize to share, but crossed a line. He couldn’t lie to the face of his most honest friend admitting to what he had done to steal and take, how great it was to have wealth and room to grow and to be far away from this dying village in the middle of nowhere. 

Those large eyes studied him as if he were an ant, a mix of fear and curiosity instead of the enthusiastic awe tom had hoped for. Blather was unable to look away at this puzzle he needed to solvee. His eyes shifted back to the stolen goods where he found another curiosity more interesting than his dear friend turned thief.

“This isn’t even the real one.” 

“…What?”

“Does that look like a Pearl Earring to you?”

It wasn’t possible. He had removed it from the gallery wall himself. Had it stashed with him for the last week under his old bed in his childhood home (more like a shack) and no one here was bold enough to leave town, let alone steal. Only one other person knew where the painting was. Redd

He left that night, leaving Blathers with the fake painting and unanswered questions. Back at the safe house, it was clear he lost more than one painting. The place had been emptied out. Every fake watch and ID, the tools of the trade but also the things that had made this a home. The furniture gone, the silverware filched, each poster and cushion and every scrap of food disappeared. All that was left was his stripped bed, half of his clothes, a half empty bell bag and a single gingko leaf resting on the bare mattress. 

The Museum had long since closed. Paintings had been moved or sold to private bidders, the specimens had been relocated. The fossils had been the most painful. It had taken so long to finish the exhibit and it had only taken a week to take it all down. Brewster had helped him make ends meet when he wasn’t subbing a class. Blathers tried to make learning fun, but students weren’t like the patrons who had volunteered to learn. The kids would just sit and not even pretend to listen over their worksheets. Between looking for a more permanent job and the long hours at the café, there had been no time to further his studies. On the upside, this was the most sleep he had gotten in years, but it was never restful. Celeste had left for college and now grad school and so he had more space to spread out, but it just felt empty even with the piles of unread books filling the leftover space.  Behind the stacks propped on the wall, the girl with the …Star earing stared at him. He hadn’t been able to let it go but didn’t want such an insult to art looming over his home. 

Flipping through his mail of would-be bookmarks and bills, a hand written letter. His name scribbled on the top by childish hand. An invitation and brochure? The note offered him a spot as curator and surveyor of an island, a chance to run a museum of his own on a tropical get away! This was too good to be true but it made his heart flutter none the less. A place to put his specific degree and interest to the test. The whole letter smattered with personal details about his life only ignited his curiosity. Signed at the bottom T&t&t N. The enigmatic initials only another mystery to be solved then he turned to the more professional looking brochure, for a tropical getaway. A beautiful view stamped with a name that he thought he’d buried behind, but like the portrait squirreled away behind his book, he knew it was always there  

What a beautiful scam. A promise at a new start. A blank slate for those who could help build a new community. A low price in exchange for free labor? On the back, an older version of a thief, who looked as if he’d gotten away and grown fat and happy. No doubt at someone’s expense... He almost dismissed the whole thing out of hand but looking further down showed two mini versions of himself on either side. Family? Children? And further still surrounded by a smattering of smiling faces, all looking a little burnt, and a smidge filthy, with dirt under their nails and wrinkles in their clothes, but beaming ear to ear. The mark of honest fulfilling work. 

His buzzing phone pulled him out of his curiosity. 

“Hello, who may I ask is calling?”

A boy’s well practiced voice

“Hello Mr. Blather sir..sir. We are calling on behalf of Nook Inc…Inc”

A brochure. A promise of a new life. A call. A promise at a fresh start. There are no such thing but what did blathers have left to lose. At the very least it would be a nice vacation with a chance to study the local wildlife. And maybe fill that absence that always lingered in his collection of knowledge. “What happened to him?”

When he arrived, Tom saw, under years of stress, and the bags under his eyes heavier than the ones in his hands, an old friend and a chance to make amends. Blathers could see the work a former thief who was clearly trying in to right wrongs. That was clear as the pilot saluted as he left the vigor that those twins to his bag  A tent has been set up with all his equipment, right next to the amenities provided by resident services. 

As Blathers unpacked, the sun sunk low over the horizon. The cool night air breeze alerting him to someone entering. Tom, with two mason jars full of something tart with cherries and something strong to help with the vacation. A small toast, to fresh starts and new arrivals. Blathers no longer saw the thief he had given up on but a leader and a friend, who needed forgiveness. More from himself than from his friend. If he was being honest, Blather’s had stayed mad b/c it made the distance easier to bear if he could justify it. But as he was handed another drink and single. No a few. No a dozen! Specimens including a fossil.  He knew his friend has come home. 

They sat side by side on the brand new cot (only the best for the new arrival). Blather’s went on and on about each cage and tank, Tom nook felt the same wave wash over him in the pouring of word’s he hadn’t heard in years. And with each drop of knowledge that came, more of that anger leaked out of Blathers. Before he knew it he was ready to sleep, the earliest he’d felt in a while, it couldn’t be past midnight, but travel and drink and forgiveness can really where a person out. What was more pressing was the warm mass pressed into his shoulder. Tom had drifted off somewhere between the sea angel and the squid. He probably should wake him up, but resident services was all the way a few yards over, and besides, it had been years since they slept side by side under the stars. Before closing his tent for the night, he looked up at a new sky and couldn’t recognize the consolations. It was ok, they could make some up together tomorrow.

[rikionpd]

Top Travel Trends: WHy, Where, and How People are Traveling in 2019

This is a paper I wrote last year in my college class. So many people have asked to read it, that I've decided to post it here, sans references, in case any who are coming up in the program behind me get desperate.. ------------------------- People travel for many different reasons. They travel for business and they travel for pleasure. Sometimes they do both at the same time. They travel to feel, see, and do. This is why, where, and how people are traveling in 2019, and perhaps a little of travel in years to come. WHY Micro Travel Micro Travel, also known as Micro Tourism, or Short Stay Travel, consist of short trips from one to two days. These trips are usually centered around an event, like a concert or sporting event, and visiting sites in the area while there. Micro travel is seen as more affordable, as you would only need to book one or two nights accommodations, and there isn't a necessity for air travel. It can be as simple as getting in the car and driving a few hundred kilometres and finding local places to explore. Exploring the less tourist-oriented areas you may find similar attractions to the high tourist areas at a much more affordable price. If you still choose to fly and are diligent, you can watch fares and keep an eye out for seat sales that can bring down the price of your trip. One of the features of micro travel is being able to immerse yourself into the culture of a destination. Instead of hitting all the big attractions, you stick to one or two and spend more time experiencing them. You can do things like go to poetry readings, watch local performers in a park, or learn how to cook traditional foods. There are also self-guided tours that allow you to see what you want to see at your own pace.   Conscious Travel and Purpose Trips Conscious Travel is a mindfulness for the world and it's people who we encounter upon our travels. It is changing our thinking about the way we travel and seeing a destination through a local's eyes. Conscious travellers try to be aware of any negative impact they may have on the local environment and economy. They will stay at smaller inns, b&b's, and homestays. They will eat at local restaurants. They will shop at local shops for souvenirs. This ensures that their money will stay in that community instead of going to large international companies. Conscious travellers may also avoid countries with authoritarian governments, human rights abuses, or other political or social issues that they do not agree with. Purpose trips take this one step further. Not only are they aware of any negative impact their trip may have, but they wish to do something specific that will leave a positive mark as well. They volunteer with local and international charities and not-for-profit groups to do things like help build schools, conserve local wildlife, and clean up after natural disasters. Sustainable Travel The World Tourism Organization defines sustainable tourism as “development [which] meets the needs of present tourists and host regions while protecting and enhancing opportunity for the future. It is envisaged as leading to management of all resources in such a way that economic, social, and aesthetic needs can be fulfilled while maintaining cultural integrity, essential ecological processes, biological diversity, and life support system.” Basically, what this means is that sustainable tourism is visiting and enjoying a destination without causing harm to the environment or culture. Sustainable travelers are more aware of the pollution levels caused by travel and how that affects the environment and local wildlife. Tourism relies on burning fossil fuels, which contributes to climate change. It’s predicted that 40% of the world’s carbon emissions will be generated by tourism by 2050. To try to offset this, sustainable travellers will walk, ride bicycles, or use public transportation. They will also stay in locally owned or green certified accommodations, and eat at local restaurants that source their ingredients locally. WHERE Peru Peru has much to offer, from museums, shopping, and night life of Lima, to the old world buildings and narrow streets of Cusco, a UNESCO World Heritage site. The Incan city of Machu Picchu, one of the new 7 Wonders of the World, is a favorite of visitors. For those who wish to get off the beaten track and away from the commercialization of Machu Picchu, there is the Incan city of Choquequirao. This city has yet to be fully restored, and is only accessible by foot. Being 2000 feet higher in altitude than Machu Picchu, getting to Choquequirao is not easy. G Adventures offers 6 or 12 day trekking tours that take you to both Choquequirao and Machu Picchu, neither for the faint of heart. The Peruvian Government has announced plans to rebuild the ancient Incan road between Machu Picchu and Choquequirao and build a cable car to make it easier for people to get to the smaller Incan city, cutting the time to get there from two days, to 15 minutes. The prospect of seeing a ‘lost’ Incan city before the road and cable car make it accessible to the throngs is one of the things making Peru a top destination of 2019.   Germany Germany is marking several anniversaries in 2019. There is the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall, the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Bauhaus art movement, and the 300th anniversary of the birth of Leopold Mozart, the father of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Berlin is celebrating the anniversary of it's reunification with many events going on through the year, ending with a festival from November 4-10. This festival will have lectures, readings, contemporary witness talks, poetry slams and film screenings. The festival will conclude with the entire city becoming the largest concert stage in the world, featuring renowned musicians, orchestras and bands. The Bauhaus art movement started as a small art school in the state of Thuringian in central Germany. The artists of this school had grown disillusioned by the cookie cutter design of mass production of the early 20th century. In 1925, the school moved to the city of Dessau, and later relocated to Berlin in 1933. The political pressures of the Nazis and a lack of funding caused the school to close soon after. The Bauhaus artists wanted to meld art into the every day. Their designs and art pieces continue to influence the designs of everything from buildings to furniture. In Thuringia, The Bauhaus Museum Weimar will be opening on April 5, 2019 and there will also be two new exhibition spaces opening for Bauhaus in Berlin and Dessau. Leopold Mozart was a musician and composer who worked for the Archbishop of Salzburg, first as a court musician and later as an assistant chapel master. He was the father of two musically gifted children, Marie Anna and Wolfgang Amadeus. Most of Leopold's compositions have been lost, but he did edit many of his son's compositions. Of his compositions that do exist, the most popular would be his Trumpet Concerto in D Major. The City of Augsburg, Leopold Mozart's birth city is planning many different festivals and concerts throughout the year including the opening of the Mozarthaus, a museum in Leopold's birthplace, and the German Mozart Festival in May. Ethiopia Ethiopia is probably not the first place that you would think of as a trending tourist destination. Most people would probably think of drought, famine and revolution, along with health and communication issues. In recent years, however, Ethiopia's economy has turned around. The government has put efforts into building new infrastructure, like highways, new and updates to older airports, and a light rail system in Addis Ababa, which is the first in Africa. Some sites of interest are the Babile Elephant Sanctuary, The Blue Nile Falls, and the castles and churches of Gondar. The Babile Elephant Sanctuary is an animal reserve for not just elephants, but the Black-maned lion, Leopard, Cheetah, the Hamadryas Baboon, Menelik’s bushbuck, Soemmerring’s Gazelle, and over 200 bird species. The 698,200 hectare sanctuary is located 560km east of Addis Ababa and 25km south of the city of Harar. Tours of the park are available. For hikers, the 5km walk to see the Blue Nile Falls is worth the trip. Not as large as other waterfalls, the 42m falls throws up mist and rainbows as the water hits the pools below in a two or three prong falls, depending on the time of year. The hike takes you through small villages and across the 17th century Portuguese bridge, the first bridge to span the Blue Nile. This can be done as a day trip from the city of Bahir Dar, which is 30km away. For history buffs and religious travelers, the Debre Berhan Selassie church in Gondar is a must see. From the outside, it seems very plain, but inside the walls are covered with murals of biblical scenes and saints. The ceiling has 123 angels looking down, representing the omnipresence of God. Above the curtained door to the Holy of Holies, where a copy of the Ark of the Covenant is kept, there are icons of the Holy Trinity and the Crucifixion. Mahdist Dervishes of the Sudan sacked the city of Gondar in 1888, and burned down every church in the city except Debre Berhan Selassie. According to local legend, when the soldiers approached the church, a swarm of bees descended and kept them away and the Archangel Michael guarded the wooden gates with a flaming sword drawn. HOW Air Travel At any given moment, there are about 10,000 planes in the sky, carrying about 1.3 million people. According to AAA, air passenger travel will grow in 2019 by 5.4%. What this means is that airlines and airports will be looking for new and faster ways to get people around airports and onto planes. Biometrics, like iris scanners, are already in place in many airports to help people get through security faster. Delta Air Lines is the first to open a biometric terminal in the US for international flights, at their hub in Atlanta, and American Airlines and JetBlue are also working on their own facial recognition programs. Not only will these programs help you to get through security faster, but it will also get you on the plane faster, as it will use your face as your boarding pass. Cruise Travel Cruising has grown away from the stereotype of being only available to wealthy seniors. The cruise industry is projected to continue to grow throughout 2019 with an estimated 30 million travelers expected to cruise, up 6% from 28.2 million in 2018. The Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA) says that 18 new ships are on order for it's member cruise lines and a total of 272 CLIA-member ships are projected to be in operation by June 2019. One of the trends that the CLIA is watching for 2019 is restorative travel. Restorative travel are trips or tours that seek to rejuvenate the body and mind. These trips help you to relax and unwind from the daily grind of life. The cruise line industry is responding to this trend by offering spa experiences, onboard oxygen bars, and healthy menu choices. They also offer rejuvenating excursions like swimming with dolphins or relaxing in a natural mineral spring. Vehicle Rentals As with the airline industry, the vehicle rental industry is embracing technology and changing the ways they do business. Many have started on-demand car sharing programs which, through a mobile app, customers can rent cars on an hourly or daily basis. With the environment and sustainability being a factor in tourism, car rental companies have stepped up to the plate, offering fully electric or electric hybrid vehicles as parts of their fleet. Places to charge these vehicles are becoming more common as well, with seven of them in the Charlottetown area alone, and more in six other communities across Prince Edward Island. Future Space Travel NASA has announced plans to build an orbital lunar space station, called the Lunar Gateway, with construction set to begin this year and for the station to be launched in 2022. However, that timeline may be pushed back by the Trump Administration's promise to have man on the moon again by 2024. Politics aside, this station could be a stepping stone to commercial development on the lunar surface for lunar tourism, or even human habitation on the surface of the moon. As younger generations continue to change the world, they will continue to change the reasons why, where, and how we travel. This could be new ways to see their neighborhoods, new countries, or even new planets. The possibilities are endless.

[onluana]

Wallace

How the Yorkshire Dales are reviving cheesemaking traditions

Cheesemaking has been part of the rural and cultural landscape in the Yorkshire Dales for centuries, with recipes passed down over the years from medieval monks to dairy farmers. Today, traditional skills that were once thought lost are being revived thanks to passionate small businesses who want to spread the flavour of Yorkshire’s bucolic hills and hay meadows.

A selection of tempting cheeses at the Courtyard Dairy © Lorna Parkes / Lonely Planet

‘Gromit, that’s it! Cheese! We’ll go somewhere where there’s cheese!’

When Britain’s Aardman Animations created an unlikely national treasure with a strong Northern accent and an ardent passion for Wensleydale cheese, it brought new-found fame to one of Yorkshire’s oldest foods. Yet, ironically, as Wallace & Gromit’s international star ascended, the Wensleydale Creamery was fighting for its survival. In April 1992, a year after Wallace & Gromit’s first Academy Award nomination, the last creamery in Wensleydale producing Wensleydale cheese shut down and production was slated to be moved to a newer facility in…Lancashire (Yorkshire's arch rival). Local protests ensued in the pint-sized Dales village of Hawes, where the creamery had existed in one form or another since 1897, and within six months, it was back up and running thanks to a buyout by a team of ex-managers and local businessmen. It became a true community enterprise and today is one of the Yorkshire Dales’ most popular attractions, with 300,000 visitors in 2018. There’s a museum (complete with Wallace & Gromit displays, of course), a cafe serving Wensleydale-based dishes, cheesemaking demonstrations, and a shop with truckle-loads of tasters.

Adding salt to the cheese at the Wensleydale Creamery © Wensleydale Creamery

‘When I used to come when I was younger, it would be one room where you’d see into the factory and you’d taste the cheese,’ says Saffron, a 23-year-old cheesemaking demonstrator at the creamery. Originally from Essex, she has been coming to the Dales all her life on family holidays and moved here permanently a year ago.

Over that time she has noticed a growing interest in cheesemaking among visitors. ‘It’s amazing how many more people are getting involved with cheesemaking at home. I have so many people come in and ask me about the intricacies. A lot of them are young people,’ she says.

Return to the farm house

Indeed, small-scale cheesemaking is having a resurgence in this area. Artisan shops are proliferating and the Yorkshire Dales Cheese Festival will celebrate its third year on 14-15 September 2019. Its base is the Wensleydale Creamery, with satellite events across the national park such as open farms, tasting competitions and a guided whey walk.

Near Settle, on the southwestern edge of the Yorkshire Dales National Park, theCourtyard Dairy is a cheesemonger and cafe in a cluster of old stone buildings, running cheesemaking courses and housing a small on-site museum about the history of caseiculture (as it’s formally known) in Yorkshire. Its raison d’etre is to support individual farms that still make raw-milk cheese on their own properties.

Learn about caseiculture (that's cheesemaking to you and me) at the Courtyard Dairy © Lorna Parkes / Lonely Planet

‘100 years ago there was probably about 200 farms making Wensleydale cheese, and the good thing is that every one would have been different,’ says co-owner Andy Swinscoe, who has witnessed – and helped encourage – the return of British farmhouse cheesemaking, which all but died out after the Second World War. ‘On my counter I do 30 raw-milk traditional cheeses, and 27 of them have only been going since 2005.’

What the monks did for Yorkshire

New creations aside, cheesemaking in Yorkshire goes back centuries. The skills were thought to have been spread across Europe by the Romans, but it was the French who carried the original Wensleydale recipe into the Dales. Specifically, it was Cistercian monks who settled near Aysgarth and then founded Jervaulx Abbey in 1156 AD.

‘The monks brought over a number of different things from France, one being the white horses. Another being this recipe, which is what started as Wensleydale cheese,’ says Anna Burdon, whose family runs Jervaulx Abbey today. ‘The Wensleydale cheese you know now is the white crumbly cheese, but originally it wasn’t like that, it was more of a blue cheese,’ she explains.

Jervaulx Abbey is now a beautiful ruin but it was once a hive of cheesemaking activity © Lorna Parkes / Lonely Planet

Today, Jervaulx Abbey is a lovely, rambling ruin with a tea room, surrounded by meadows that the monks’ sheep would have once fed on. Originally, Wensleydale would have been made with ewes’ milk instead of cows’ milk. The sheep would have also provided wool, and both these products would have been sold at local markets to finance the monastery – along with other staples that have become synonymous with Yorkshire, like beer.

Evolution of Wensleydale

When the monasteries were dissolved under Henry VIII, cheesemaking was passed on to Yorkshire farmers’ wives. There, the know-how remained, etched into the daily routines of barnyard milking, for hundreds of years. Right up to the 1930s, after the Industrial Revolution broke many of Britain’s cottage industries, Wensleydale was predominantly a farmhouse cheese. Back then it was a moist, soft creation with blue veinings that could almost be spread like butter.

This September the Dales Countryside Museum in Hawes will launch an exhibition titled Dairy Days, exploring just how deep Yorkshire’s farming and cheesemaking roots go. It was World War II that sounded the death knell for farmhouse cheese production in the Dales. Cheese rationing was introduced and lasted until 1954. During this period only certain types of cheese were legally allowed to be made: Cheddar, Cheshire, Dunlop (a Scottish version of Cheddar), Leicester and Wensleydale. Efficiency was paramount, and these cheeses could only be made to a specific government recipe that fundamentally changed the flavour and texture of the cheese.

The lush Wensleydale countryside has changed little over the years, even as cheesemaking has had to adapt © Photos by R A Kearton / Getty Images

‘We lost a lot during the Second World War,’ says Andy. ‘The producers that were still making it at farmhouse level couldn’t make Wensleydale how they’d been making it all their lives. They had to make it to this government method, which was fast and produced an acidic, sharp flavour. Which is why between Wensleydale, Cheshire, crumbly Lancashire, when you taste them, there’s very little difference these days.’

The new cheese vanguard

Within the cool confines of Andy’s limestone-walled barn deli, there is anything but homogeny between the truckles of Fellstone, Yorkshire parmesan, Moorland Monster, Hafod Cheddar and Kirkham’s Lancashire. They are members of a growing tribe of British farmhouse cheeses that are uniquely of the place where they are produced.

For Andy, the beauty of British farmhouse cheeses is found in the nuances that come with terroir and technique. ‘If you look at Wensleydale in the early 1900s, farmers were following a broadly regional recipe but each one tweaked it. Then they had slightly different equipment, slightly different cows, and slightly different pasture,’ he explains. ‘The Yorkshire Dales' hay meadows are protected. Per square metre, there’s something like 30 different species of grass and herbs and things like that – and that is your flavour.’

The local cheesemaking community is as diverse as the grass and herbs, but one thing the producers have in common is that they’re all tiny operations. Gillian, a radiography lecturer at Bradford University, makes goat’s cheese with eight pedigree Anglo-Nubian goats near Hebden Bridge in West Yorkshire. Italian Mario produces Yorkshire pecorino, parmesan and blue in a Leeds suburb. Tom and Clare of Whin Yeats Farm make a Wensleydale-style cheese called Fellstone that’s aged for three months until it is nutty, complex and mellow – try it paired with rich fruit cake (a delicious Yorkshire tradition) in the Courtyard Dairy’s cafe. And Sam, currently working behind the deli counter in the Courtyard Dairy, is about to start making his own cheese by borrowing a handful of sheep from a farm down the road and equipment lent by Andy.

Andy’s support of local producers is partly down to a battered hand-written book housed in a glass case in the Courtyard Dairy’s small museum. ‘My great grandmother found her mother’s notes on how to make double Gloucester, and these are them. We thought, if my great grandmother has kept that by chance, there’s other people who will have stuff like that that’s been passed down through their family.’

The discovery of some family cheesemaking tips helped Andy at Courtyard Dairy indulge his passion for cheese © Lorna Parkes / Lonely Planet

This discovery sparked Andy and his wife Kathy’s drive to unearth and share traditional recipes and methods of cheesemaking. They are now working with a farm in Nidderdale to try to recreate how the local cheese would have been made in the early 1900s, using notes they have found in farmers’ attics and barns. And they are spreading the knowledge they’ve accumulated with anybody who takes an interest.

‘It’s about trying to improve what we’ve got here in the Dales and recreate what we once had, so that when people come to the Dales they have a taste of what would have traditionally been made here,’ says Andy. The monks of Jervaulx might not recognise Wallace’s Wensleydale or even Fellstone, but they’d undoubtedly appreciate the cheesemaking legacy they helped establish.

[harrietsfineart]

1/10/19

Today we looked into art in Liverpool, specifically Pre-Raphaelite art. I found today’s lecture really interesting and after 3 years of not really learning anything, it was so refreshing to finally take in some new knowledge about art and different movements. We spoke about many different artists and I found all of them quite interesting. These were my favourites and the ones that I wrote the most notes for and will be looking further into.

Gustave Dore, Slums of London 1850, engraving. French Artist. The piece we looked at was about the issue of overcrowded living conditions in London around the peak of the Industrial Revolution. Cholera, malnutrition and no sewage were all big issues at this time and they are all present within the piece. A steam train is also visible in the background, further pushing the evidence of horrible living conditions with the dirty smoke flowing over the top of the buildings. Even though this piece was based in London it still reflects all big cities in the UK at this time. This piece made people question living conditions and think back to medieval times when living conditions were better. During the 1700’s in Liverpool there were 7000 people in the small fishing village. By 1800 there were 78,000 and in just 40 years the population had reached 343,000 in 1841.

William Holman Hunt. The Scapegoat. 1855 Oil on canvas. Held at The National Museums of Liverpool. I really enjoyed looking at this piece and understanding more about the meaning behind it and how it was created. The painting has a surrealism look to it and it has a hand crafted, large gold frame with text engraved around it. The story of this piece is from The Old Testament and it shows how a goat is brought and all blame and sins are passed onto this goat and it is then taken to the desert to get rid of everyone's sins. Jesus in The New Testament is seen as The Scapegoat. The piece is made up of 4 essential parts being, the mountains, the sea, the salt and the goat. These parts help to understand that the goat is at The Dead Sea and the bones around the goat further push this idea. Hunt actually went to The Dead Sea for 2 weeks with his family and a goat to really understand the environment. The red headband on the goat represents the goats sacrifice to further solidify the idea that it is from The Old Testament.

Patronage in Liverpool. Frederick Layland was a very wealthy ship owner in the transatlantic trade. All his money came from slavery. He was the owner of the Speke Hall and when he died his widow sold “The Peacock Room”. The work has now been shipped to the US and is held in the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington. James McNeill Whistler was the man who painted the whole room in gold leaf and gold paint and covered every piece of woodwork within the room. Leyland was not happy with what he had done and paid him very little for it. I imagine Leyland also wasn’t very happy when he later on found out that Whistler was having an affair with his wife.

The Art’s and Crafts Movement began when people became fed up of the Royal Academy only accepting art that was either easel based, painted or a sculpture. Anything other than those were not accepted at all and not classed as art. William Morriss began this movement when he started accepting all art as equal. Morriss created beautiful textile work and tapestries. The Della Robia Pottery by Cassandra Walker and Alice Jones were also n important part of the Art’s and Craft’s movement. Their work consisted of two lizard-handled jugs with moulding from 1903 that are now held in the Williamson Art Gallery, Birkenhead.

Arthur Ballard ‘Punch and His Judy’, Olympia, 1973. Atkinson Art Gallery. Ballard stayed in Liverpool his whole life and people tend to believe that is why he didn’t grow as an artist or become as big as other artists. This piece focuses on the male viewer and ‘The Male Gaze’ as around this time it was the rise of feminism and this piece was challenging the fact that women were always looked at. In the pieve Judy is seen to be laying naked in the same exact pose as seen on Olympia and Punch is seen behind her pointing at the viewer as if to say “oi what are you looking at” or “stop looking at my wife” to pull your gaze away from the woman and on to the man. This piece really intrigues me and I definitely would like to do some of my own research into it and further understand what it means.

These were all the pieces I really picked up on during the lecture this morning and will be doing further research into to help develop my understanding more on Pre-Raphaelite work.

[hallhub6-blog]

13 Things to Do in NYC This Week: November 8th – November 15th, 2018

Image via Flickr, gigi_nyc

Whether you want to dive into New York City’s jazz scene, film scene, history or marine life, there is an event for you going on this week. As we head into the middle of November, here are our Untapped Picks for things to do this week in New York City:

Photograph Courtesy of The River Project

Help return marine life to the water at the River Project’s Release of the Fishes, a beloved annual event that marks the winter closing of The River Project’s Wetlab. This year, visitors will have a rare opportunity to see Big, the largest oyster found in New York Harbor in some 100 years! Guests can also touch crabs, snails and other native invertebrates, look at plankton under a microscope, and see blue mussels. This is a free family event, with refreshments and raffles, that will take place at the end of the south side of Pier 40 at Houston and West Street in Hudson River Park from 4:00p.m. to 7 p.m.

Join journalist Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! and leading youth activists Brea Baker, Ramon Contreras, and Hebh Jamal at the Museum of the City of New York’s “Activist New York: The Next Generation,” where they will discuss the key mobilizations of our moment—from gun control to immigrant rights—and how they draw on a long history of protest. The discussion will be followed by a reception with a performance by Carnegie Hall’s Future Music Project Ensemble. If you are an Untapped Cities Insider, you can attend this event for free!

Revisit the 19th century Upper West Side at Landmark West!’s illustrated lecture “Nevermore: The UWS of Edgar Allan Poe with Esther Crain.” Crain skillfully weaves together historical facts, anecdotes, and imagery of the time to paint a picture of Poe’s Manhattan and examine his journey from Greenwich Village to the fields of the Upper West Side. If you are an Untapped Cities Insider, you can attend this event for free!

Photograph by Nir Arieli

Attend a live jazz concert as part of the Kingsborough Lighthouse’s Jazz at the Lighthouse series. Blues and the Golden Age of Jazz will feature vocalist Nicole Zuraitis and the Israeli MusicTalks Jazz Quartet who will perform nostalgic blues and jazz standards by such legends as Duke Ellington, Charlie Bird, Miles Davis, and Billie Holiday while you enjoy the music, wine and cheese, and views of the sea from the lighthouse’s floor-to-ceiling windows.

Image courtesy of Rob Fruchtman and Steven Lawrence Rob Fruchtman and Steven Lawrence

Catch a documentary screening at DOC NYC, a weeklong film festival that celebrates the various genres of documentary film, from reportage, memoir, history and more and encourages further boundary pushing and collaboration. One film to look out for is The Cat Rescuers, a documentary about four Brooklyn volunteers who are working to save the hundreds of thousands of feral cats that roam the streets of New York. The Cat Rescuers will screen on November 10th and 15th.

Image Courtesy of the Alice Austen House

Celebrate the art of vintage cameras at Vintage Camera Day at the Alice Austen House. Get your hands on real vintage cameras, learn about your own vintage camera from “Camera Doctor” Eric Mayr, take part in a hands-on demonstration of the platinum-palladium print process, and learn how to improve your own photography skills. This event is free and open to the public!

Be an urban explorer for a day as you venture into the abandoned hospital complex at Ellis Island. Closed off to the public over sixty years ago, this 22-building complex used to be the standard of American healthcare. Now, you can gain access to the site on a Behind-the-Scenes Hard Hat Tour. Explore the off-limits contagious disease wards, morgue, former laundry facility and other spaces, and see pieces of the site specific art installation Unframed by world-renowned artist JR, all while learning the history of the complex and stories of the immigrants who flowed through it.

Behind-the-Scenes Hard Hat Tour of the Abandoned Ellis Island Hospital

Image via Flickr, gigi_nyc

Uncover the secrets of Central Park and maybe catch a sighting of the mysterious mandarin duck on Untapped Cities’ Secrets of Central Park walking tour. Learn about the curious origins of the Central Park Zoo, uncover the hidden meaning in Bethesda Terrace’s sculptures and the forbidden love that inspired the park’s most famous statue, see the secret bolt left behind from the creation of Manhattan’s street grid, discover the secret navigational device that keeps pedestrians from getting lost on the park’s winding paths and so much more!

Secrets of Central Park Walking Tour

Photograph by Carly Gaebe / Steadfast Studios

Test how good your eye sight is with the intricately detailed artworks in the International Print Center New York’s exhibition Edge of Visibility. This exhibit presents over 50 elusive works that are intentionally difficult to see and consequently challenging to reproduce in the medium of printmaking. The pieces range from the 17th century through the present and contain features like laborious micro-engravings, subtle watermarks, and evanescent images printed with UV-reactive inks. ICPNY will be providing magnifying glasses, iPad digital enlargers, and special lighting for enhanced viewing, and to encourage viewers to slow down and uncover the hidden messages within these works.

See artwork that spans Andy Warhol’s entire career at the first retrospective on his work in thirty years. Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again opens today at the Whitney Museum. The exhibit features work from his early days as an advertisement illustrator to his experimental films, his iconic movie star screen prints and everything in between. Admission is by timed ticketed entry, so reserve your spot now!

Compare and contrast the film genres of comedy and horror at the Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies program, “Ha! Aaah! The Painful Relationship Between Humor and Horror.” The class will be taught by the Emmy-nominated writer of the sitcom of Mork & Mindy, David Misch. The class will examine horror’s relationship with philosophers’ explanations of comedy, explore the mechanics of both film genres and see how they both exhibit a love for a loss of control, anarchy, the breakdown of rules and conventions and a mordant view of our relationship to pain.

Image via The Skyscraper Museum

Hear from Gary Hack, author and Professor Emeritus of City and Regional Planning at the University of Pennsylvania, at a Skyscraper Seminar Book Talk inside the Skyscraper Museum. Hack’s new book, Site Planning: International Practice, is a summary of his life’s work, and a comprehensive, lavishly illustrated state-of-the-art guide to the subject. Hack will discuss how sustainability can be achieved through the development of sites from small to large, emerging technologies in resource management, and the implications of new mobility technologies on the planning of sites. You must RSVP to this event to programs@skyscraper.org!

Explore renowned choreographer Jerome Robbins’ relationship with New York City at the exhibit Voice of My City: Jerome Robbins and New York at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center. The exhibit traces Robbins’ life and dances alongside the history of New York, inspiring viewers to see the city as both a muse and a home.

See the full lists of Untapped Cities Insiders Tours and our upcoming Public Tours!

 central park, Ellis Island, events, New York City, NYC, things to do, top 10 events, Top 10 NYC Events

Source: https://untappedcities.com/2018/11/08/13-things-to-do-in-nyc-this-week-november-8th-november-15th-2018/

[ciathyzareposts]

Missed Classic: A Mind Forever Voyaging – Jewel of the Quad-State Area

Written by Joe Pranevich

A Mind Forever Voyaging isn’t like any game that I have played before. It takes its time introducing you to the characters and the plot, encouraging you to explore rather than setting out a stream of puzzles for you to solve. It is content to follow its own rules. I absolutely love that Infocom is unafraid to experiment with their conventions; it makes their games a joy to experience for the first time. If you think back on how different Deadline and Suspended were from the puzzle-adventures that preceded them, you have an inkling for how I feel experiencing this game for the first time. It might even be a game that is best experienced in a second playthrough. As I wrap up another five or so hours of playing, I am just now seeing the shape of the game that Steve Meretzky has built and it is impressive. I’m just not sure yet how it will play out as an “adventure game” and whether I will run out of patience before I run out of game. Only time will tell.

As we left off last week, I had just entered the 2031 simulation for the very first time with a set of tasks to complete, nine events or places that I need to make recordings of, and return them to my boss/creator, Dr. Perelman. I had mapped out 30 locations, but it was only the tip of the iceberg. This is a big game, the first that has come close to the 150+ rooms of the original mainframe Zork. Welcome to Rockvil, the “Jewel of the Quad-State Area”!

Even without obstacles, this took several hours to map.

Talking about this game will be more difficult than most. At least so far, the setting rather than the puzzles or the characters is the most important aspect of the game. Most games can be discussed chronologically, even if we skip some of the details to help the narrative flow. This game has its plot beats, but much of how I am coming to feel about it is based on the softer experience of a world begging to be explored. A less capable designer would not have been able to pull this off. Meretzky took the way I felt slowly exploring the abandoned base in Planetfall and expanded on it. It’s not a lonely world, it’s one that is full of little moments and characters going about their days. And yet, I’m not sure that I can convey this experience as well as I could if it were a plot-based game.

I spent hours mapping out every location in the city. I count just shy of 150 distinct locations, but I may have missed some here or there. The map that was included with the game helped a great deal, but it was designed to be insufficient. For one thing, the map is of Rockvil in 2021, but the simulation takes place a decade later and some features have changed somewhat. It also fails to document the majority of the stores and alleyways in the game, the warren of pedestrian passages through skycar lots and parks, and all of the other twists and turns that are so critical for getting from place to place quickly. Was mapping all of this necessary? I honestly have no idea. The manual recommends mapping so I am treating this like a traditional adventure, but it remains to be seen how I will use it as the game progresses.

Let me walk you through the city as I came to explore it, starting in the center, heading southwest, and then working clockwise:

The game opens in Kennedy Park, a green space in a downtown business and administrative district. This is where we find “Main Street”, city hall, a hospital, a post office, a courthouse, and a public library. There are also restaurants as well as buildings that we cannot (yet) enter. The eastern side of the area includes Rockvil Mall and “Heiman Village”, an enclosed mixed-use residential/retail area. Although we have a mall, we can’t seem to buy anything there although there are “joybooths” that I can play around with later. 

A college district, Halley University, is off to the west and includes low-cost restaurants for students and places to hang out. We can visit the dorms and a lecture hall, but there’s not too much to do. It is bordered to the north by Halley Park and a museum. 

North of there and a bit clockwise, we reach a district with entertainment options including a zoo, a stadium (with three skycar parking lots!), and an aquarium. In the outskirts of town, we also find an overcrowded prison and a high school. Despite what my 1985-self may have thought, those two are not the same thing. The school has its own large athletic field nearby. Also hidden away in this area is a Methodist Church and a dental school. 

In the far northeast of the map is a military base that I cannot enter and the international airport before it reaches the river which makes the eastern boundary of the simulation. The river incidentally is the Little Missouri River, a real river in the Dakotas. More on that in a bit. This northern part of the river is home to a cultural district including a symphony, several theaters, and a cinema overlooking a river park. This is also the location of “Bodanski Square”, the only place in the city where you can buy a newspaper. At the southern edge of this area is St. Michael’s church and a large cemetery. 

The southeast and south sections of the city are “the other side of the tracks”, literally. A seedy pier area contains a bar and a pool hall, while further south is the power station, industrial areas, and warehouses. Houses here are row houses in the north, but quickly becoming run down tenements as you head further south. There is also a strangely-nice used bookstore tucked in here, the only bookstore in the city. The text even remarks on how strange it is to find such a great little bookstore in such a seedy area. 

They don’t have Google Maps in 2021.

Although the environment is huge and very well-built, it’s also shallow. Nearly every place that you visit is in a single “room”: the post office, the stadium, etc. You need to use your imagination to see these are lived-in places, but the descriptions are evocative enough that you your mind’s eye can fill in the details. Infocom really did put their graphics where the sun didn’t shine! The game would have been even more unwieldy if every interior location had a half-dozen rooms and this feels like a necessary compromise. Only a handful of locations are given more than one room. Off the top of my head, I can only think of the mall and the hospital, both with two rooms.

Although we explore Rockvil in 2031, Meretzky keeps the sci-fi to a minimum. It’s not retro enough to be retro-futurism, instead just a light coat of future-paint on top of 1985. Cars are largely replaced by aircars, although our character doesn’t appear to own one and the streets are still designed for terrestrial vehicles, including a highway to the west. Cash transactions are gone, entirely replaced by credit cards. Even the city’s stock market is closed thanks to the advent of electronic trading. And yet, that’s pretty much it. My character (as we will see in a bit) doesn’t own a computer and still uses a standalone word-processor which must have seemed quaint even in the 80s. This makes the environment feel relatable even though it is 46 years later, although some of the choices are mildly distracting to someone in 2018. Overall, it comes together to good effect.

Alas, I doubt we will have flying cars by 2031, but at least we have the Internet.

My apartment is located in the southwest portion of the city, a short walk from the college district. I have to use my key to get in and I remember to set up my recording because that was one of my goals. Inside is Jill, an artist with a partly-completed painting in our (?) living room. She was Perry’s girlfriend in virtual 2021 in the manual; it looks like we’ve become much more in the last ten years. She asks whether I’ve heard back from my agent, but I say no. The apartment is small, but there’s a surprise inside: a baby in a crib tucked away in our bedroom. It really pulls on the heartstrings. As a father, I’m going to be very upset if this virtual baby in this virtual world gets hurt. I hope Mr. Meretzky doesn’t go there for a cheap emotional response.

This both confirms some things and confuses some others. The “future” 2031 is an extrapolation of my (Perry’s) life had he continued living in the simulation to 2031. He has a wife and a kid. Was Jill a real person? Is she a conscious AI like Perry is? Or just a construct? If it took 10 years to simulate Perry to his 20th birthday, and this is a continuation of that original simulation, how did they get to 2031 in such a short time? Does Perry have memories of the last ten years? Or is he just as surprised as I am to find that Jill is his wife? How does he feel knowing his girlfriend is not real? How does he feel knowing his baby is not real? There are a ton of implications in this exchange that I cannot even begin to fathom.

With the city mapped, I start gathering up the rest of my recordings. For the most part, they go quickly:

My first goal is to attend a court in session, but it just underscores that I’m not sure I’m doing the recordings properly. Once at the courthouse, there is a woman there being charged with petty theft. I cannot talk to her or the judge as they are (naturally enough) pretty busy. Do I need to stay for the whole trial? How much of it do I need to record? I wait around and it does not appear to be a scripted event, so I just make a recording for a few turns and leave. I hope that is sufficient. 

I find a government official to talk to at City Hall. He seems happy about the way things are going. 

I head up to Bodanski Square next and the city’s only newspaper stand. I buy the paper and record myself reading it. It seems that President Ryder (!!) has ushered in a decade of amazing prosperity and economic growth. 

I watch “Upbeat Patrol II” in the cinema, or at least the first 15 minutes of it. Apparently it is too boring to sit through. I hope that is enough. 

I do the “riding public transit” goal next and record a trip on the subway. In the process, I realize that I missed several of the subway stations. I end up riding both the Red and Brown lines to the end and marked several Tube stations on my map. 

For the “eating a meal” goal, I pick a fancy restaurant off of Bodanski Square. I have to request a table and sit down before I order. Other than payment in advance (and like $65 for a soybean salad), the recording is easy to capture although the whole event took too long. I should have grabbed some fast food. 

The Church Elder at St. Michael’s is thrilled how church attendance is climbing and the moral fiber of the country is improving. 

Finally, I visit the power station. Strange that there are no workers or anyone to stop me from looking around, but I capture a recording of it anyway. Good thing I’m not a terrorist or something; they really should hire some guards. 

Just as I finish, I get a message that the recording buffer is full. Whew! Made it just in time. I’m not sure what would have happened if I did not capture all of them in one go; I would hate to have to do them all over again.

I abort the simulation and return to the project site. I have to wait around a long while as there was nothing new in any of the locations I could access, but eventually Dr, Perelman informs me that they are reviewing my recordings. This time I try to sleep to make it go faster. Dr. Perelman wakes me up to tell me that I need to visit his office.

He has good news! Everything is great! My research shows that the Plan is going to work and Senator Ryder will be passing it into law soon. The President is still against it, but our efforts will have convinced him to sign it. We won!… right? Well, not quite yet at least. Now that we’ve run through it all, the Simulation Controller was able to make the environment even more accurate. All this sounds very fishy to me, as if the books are being cooked. Was the first simulation rigged in Senator Ryder’s favor? If so, by whom?

How many parts do you think there are?

Part II begins with a new splash screen and a quote from Edgar Allen Poe. I like that the game is doing something different with these splash screens, but it also feels a bit like Meretzky is trying a bit too hard for this game to be taken “seriously”. I check the clock and it is only twelve hours later and not a huge time-skip. As before, I have to wait around for anything to happen– I explore the whole base over again, but there’s nothing new– and eventually I am brought into Dr. Perelman’s office for a series of psychological tests. Dr. Grimwold wants to do a basic “ink blot” evaluation on me and all I need to do is respond with the first words that come to mind. Simple enough, but I hope I don’t have to remember my responses to all of these for a puzzle later.

OMG! ASCII art!

These tests are presented in ASCII art. The first one, in my opinion, looks like a flower. He accepts that as the answer and moves on to a different design. I know the real question on your minds is whether this will be enough to qualify for the much-desired “pity point” in the Sound & Graphics category, but I’ll decide later once I see how else they use this new feature of “Interactive Fiction Plus”. The next several pass quickly: a butterfly, a vase, a tornado… do these answers even matter? At the end Dr. Grimwold leaves and I’m left alone with Dr. Perelman. He eventually forgets that I am around because he calls his family and I overhear him apologizing to son that he’s unable to get out of work on time. Once that is done, I try grilling him about Grimwold, but he doesn’t say anything that seems important. Are we going to get new tasks soon?

Answer: No! I wait long enough and Perelman tells us that the Plan has been approved… but he has a funny feeling about it. Something doesn’t sit right. Unfortunately, he’s too busy to assign me any tasks right now and just hopes that I am keeping busy. That attitude sums up my experience with this game nicely

With nothing else to do, I re-enter the simulation and this time I am given a choice: I can select to “visit” either 10 or 20 years into the future. I return to the 10-year / 2031 simulation first to see how it might be “more accurate” than before, but I do not find any differences. After a bit, I abort and switch to 2041 instead.

Time passes.

2041 is surprisingly mostly the same as 2031, but with a handful of adjustments. The courthouse, for example, has a man facing the death penalty for attempted rape rather than petty theft. Is crime up or sentencing harsher? I’m not sure. There are no longer joybooths in the mall, although I forgot to check out what those did when I was in 2031. The Church Elder is worried about the Church of God’s Word and the erosion of religious tolerance in the city. Speaking of which, the disused train station near Bodanski Square is now the Church of God’s Word World Headquarters which may explain why they have such a presence in the city. When I visit the university, I wander into a police drug raid on campus. At the airport, there are more guards there, plus signs that read “Our security procedures exist to protect YOUR country and YOUR way of life.” I’m impressed that Meretzky managed to predict the TSA so accurately!

I couldn’t keep myself from checking up on Jill and the baby. I arrive to find that our “baby” is now 11 years old and playing on an electric toy. Our apartment doesn’t have enough bedrooms and he sleeps in a curtained-off area in the living room. Just like last time, Jill is painting and she asks about whether I heard from my agent recently. Moments later, the door is burst down and the Border Security Force raids the apartment. They overturn everything, leaving the house in shambles, but they find no illegal aliens. They apologize and leave, but Jill is shaken. I comfort her as best I can and clean the room a bit. This gets her back to normal, but it’s hard. Protections against illegal searches appear to have been weakened in favor of a zero-tolerance policy against undocumented immigrants.

What am I supposed to be doing exactly? Should I gather all the same data again? Wait for additional instructions? With absolutely no idea what to do, I follow the same list and make the same recordings as before. While some things like the restaurant and power station are more or less the same, there are some differences. The newspaper has an article about how there is lower than expected food production due to environmental problems, plus it seems slimmer than usual with less actual news. President Ryder still has a 71% approval rating, although no mention is made that he’s been in power now for more than a decade. I learned last time that “The Plan” included extending Presidential terms to eight years and I expect that must be how he’s held onto power. I still have some recording time left when I am done, so I also capture the new Church of God’s Word headquarters and informational pamphlet, plus the drug bust at the university. I abort the simulation to see what happens.

I emerge from the simulation and it’s evening; Dr. Perelman has gone home for the night. I “sleep” and dream of Jill. I suppose that having an 11-year old son you never met before is emotional even for an AI. Or am I supposed to think he now has memories of his kid growing up? I’m very uncertain on that point. It almost seems mean-spirited that he’s in love with, and had a pretend kid with, someone that doesn’t really exist. In the morning, I receive a notification that there is now an IRS auditing system installed in the PRISM system, although I have absolutely no idea why. Maybe now that I’ve helped them approve the plan, I’m going to be an AI with a second career as a tax auditor?

Once Perelman arrives for the day, I tell him about the recordings and he agrees to look at them. A few hours later, he grabs me and tells me that he and the others are concerned. They want me to collect more data from the simulation and report back. It sounds like I discovered the plot! Even better: the simulation is now open to 2061. I wonder how much worse it will be then…

Time played: 5 hr 50 min Total time: 8 hr 00 min Inventory: <nothing>

The course of the Little Missouri River.

Where is Rockvil?

As you are no doubt already aware, Rockvil, South Dakota isn’t a real city. In our reality, there are no large cities in northwest South Dakota although Mr. Meretzky did give us a few clues to help us pinpoint where the city would be. The most critical of these is the river that borders the simulation to the east, the Little Missouri River. This is a real river, although small enough that it isn’t even labeled on Google Maps for its entire course. That river runs from south to north from its head in Wyoming, through Montana and South Dakota, before joining the “real” Missouri river in North Dakota. Despite being the longest river in North America, the Missouri never receives as much acclaim as its cousin the Mississippi. I mostly know of it from the folk song “Oh Shenandoah”. Give it a listen!

Little Missouri River near Camp Crook, SD. (Image from Google Maps)

At the approximate location in South Dakota where the game takes place, the Little Missouri is not a huge river. It is neither wide nor deep enough to accomodate the shipping traffic that would have supported the growth of a mighty inland city. At this point in the water’s course it is a bit of a muddy creek. It’s not even wide enough to support the pier, let alone the seedy pub-and-billiards neighborhood on the bank.

This looks vaguely familiar…

That said, I have a theory. While the game was likely not patterned off a specific city, it has some superficial resemblance to Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Instead of the “Little Missouri River”, Sioux Falls has the “Big Sioux River”. Looking at a map of the city, we find it has an airport in the north, is bordered by an Interstate in the west (I-29 instead of the fictional I-27) and a river-front park in the east. The zoo is also in approximately the right location. There is an equal amount that doesn’t fit (at least using a 2018 map), but I’d be willing to wager that Sioux Falls was on Meretzky’s mind when he was building the layout for Rockvil. Do you think I am on the right trail? Do you have your own theories on the origins of Rockvil?

Next week, I’m off to 2061. I’m not sure how many time periods we are going to explore, but I look forward to finding out.

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/missed-classic-a-mind-forever-voyaging-jewel-of-the-quad-state-area/

[zsazsa93-blog]

 Day 1: The chaotic Marrakesh

Yesterday we arrived in Marrakesh around 9.30. The airport was a stunning architectural building. We were pretty surprised how new and clean it was.

Marrakesh Airport 2018

After a never-ending queue at the border, we couldn’t find our driver to the Rijad, but there was a very helpful girl who called him and he finally came to pick us up.

The Moroccan driving style is quite the same as the south Italian one with a difference that there are camels and donkeys crossing the streets. The way from the airport till the Riad was very unexpectable. Clean and beautiful road with palm trees, luxurious mansions and the view of the snowy Atlas Mountains. After that, we headed to the Medina and our driver left us with a very old man who carried our backpack with a trolley till our accommodation. We felt bad because he seemed very weak. La Medina was crowded with people, shops, crazy drivers. All in all, it was a proper Moroccan chaos, but also very authentic. Our Riad was in a tiny and dark street, it was kinda creepy, but when we entered it was like a small palace of Aladdin. 

  Riad Dar Soukaina

The guy from the reception was very kind and he invited us for a Moroccan tea and also explained to us where to buy a SIM or where to change money. Then he also gave us a name. I was Aisha,and my friends Fatima and Laila :D. The Rijad is called Dar Soukina and we paid 50€/night/3 pax. The brekky was included and the transfer from the airport was 15€.

After the tea, we headed to the city. We bought an orange SIM card with 3GB data for 60DHM~ 5.5€. The guy helped us to activate it. You can buy it in every small shop. I really recommend it because of navigation and security reasons.

Things to see in Marrakesh:

Djemaa El Fna Plaza: The market square where you can buy fresh and delicious fruit juices for 4-10DHM. You can find there basically everything you need, from the cobra and monkey hypnotizer to the street-food and ATM-s.

Djema el Fna and their fresh smooth stands

  El Badi Palace: A nice ruin of an ancient Palace with Atlas Mountain views.

  Koutoubia Mosque: A beautiful mosque in the middle of the Medina.

  Zocos – Marrakesh Market (Souk) and Medina: a chaotic district with narrow streets, full of local shops, handicrafts, street-food and crazy scooter drivers.

  Kasbah Mosque: another stunning mosque.

  Saadian tombs: entrance costs 10 DHM, it is basically an ancient cemetery which looks like a hidden palace.

Our plan was visit everything in 1 day, but the problem was that all places are closing at 5 pm. Therefore we couldn’t make it to enter these places:

-Menara Gardens

-Majorelle Gardens

-Bahia Palace

-Medersa Ben-Yussef

-Yves Saint Laurent Museum

Day 2: Ouzoud Falls.

Our day started in a little rush because our receptionist told us that the driver is coming at 8.30 am. He came at 8.00 am … So we couldn’t have a proper brekky, but we had a nice smoothie at the big square for 10 DHM. We booked this tour with our Rijad (Dar Soukina) because it was easier for us that the driver comes directly to pick you up, instead of looking for the van in the middle of the Medina.

We were waiting for the group and we headed to the Ouzoud Falls through the Atlas Mountains. It was a 2.30 h drive from Marrakesh. We were so surprised because everything was so green with the snowy Atlas in the back, and the temperature was almost 35 C°. We didn’t expect that. It was beautiful. You could see some hidden Riad-s in the middle of nowhere, people using donkeys like public transportation or working hard on the plantations.

The tour costs 27€ and then there are some optional fees for the tour guide (30 DHM), lunch menu (100 DHM) or a boat ride below the waterfalls (20 DHM).

Our tour guide was a Moroccan Berber and he spoke in 5 different languages. They told us that they grew up in the desert learning from the Koran and their grandfathers showed them how to write. They didn’t go to college, but they know more things about life than us, they speak in more languages and they didn’t have the opportunity to study at an expensive University, not even High School. When we were talking to Aladdin from our Riad, he told us the same. It was very touching. You know, when you listen to this kind of interesting people, you start to appreciate what you have. The main message of this day was that we are studying and working hard to be competitive, but they are doing all of those things just to survive and to have clear water at their home. We are worried about our phone battery or other senseless things. Sometimes It would be a better lecture for everyone traveling to third world countries and learn from the local people, than sitting on the school chairs listening some useless subjects, that you are not even gonna use in the future.

The tour to the waterfall was amazing, I would really recommend it to everyone. Especially if you have more time in Morocco.

After the tour, we went to Hotel Mamounia, a stunning luxury hotel, and then we decided to have a nice dinner in Nomad.

You have to make a reservation, and it’s in the middle of the Souk, so it’s not really recommended to walk there and back during the night for three girls, but if you do it, just dress up properly and it’s gonna be fine, or you can take a door to door tuk-tuk for 30 DHM. The food was very delicious there, and the sunset was beautiful from the rooftop. Nomad is a high-quality restaurant in Marrakesh, so you have to expect also higher prices. We paid 160 DHM each and we had a main course, dessert and, fresh smoothies.

Day 3: On our way to the Sahara

Itinerary: Marrakech – Ait ben Haddou – Ouarzazate – Dades Valley.

We said goodbye to Aladdin and we headed to the Sahara. We were picked up close to the Rijad by Omar and Hassan, our Berber local tour guides for the next couple of days.

I would 100% recommend this tour for everyone. Here you can see the link to the agency:  Kasbah Luna del Sur

If you contact me directly I can give you the direct contact, Nuria, who can assist you with everything.

We drove through the High Atlas Mountains and stopped at Morocco‘s highest point Tizi en Tichka (2.260m) and we also visited some local Berber villages till we arrived in Kasbah de Ait Benhaddou (declared as Cultural Heritage site by UNESCO in 1987). Some famous movies were also filmed there such as:

Now the Kasbah is a touristic souvenir and handicraft village. No people living there anymore.

After we headed to the Dades Valley through Ouarzazate and the impressing Palmeral of Skoura. It was incredible how the landscape was changing from the snowy mountains, to the green fields and the orange desert. We didn’t expect that.

Entrance to the local Moroccan movie industry in Ouarzazate in Morocco with a blue sky and a perfect light

We stopped in a supermarket to buy some snacks and beers, which was pretty funny because we asked Hassan about Muslim religion vs. drinking and his answer was: You know Aisha(that was my Arabic name), there is Marlboro light, Coca-Cola light and, Muslim light. I‘m a Muslim light so I can drink.:D He was great, and exceptional.

Hassan is a nomad Berber guy who grew up in the Sahara, speaks 4-5 different languages, didn’t go to school and he knows much more about life than all of us. He never travelled anywhere of Morocco, and he doesn’t want to because as he told us: ” Everyone is coming here, I learn from tourists, I don’t need to travel when I can travel with them by just listening to their stories. I also have to add that for Moroccan people is pretty difficult to get a travel Visa because some of the special requirements make it impossible for them to cross their border. 

At the end of the day, we arrived in the Rijad in the valley, where we got an amazing dinner. The accommodation was super big and clean, the food was good and the views were amazing.

Day 4: Dades Valley- Todra-Merzouga

The next day, after a Moroccan breakfast (kinda bread with bread …😅), we continued our route through many Berber villages. We visited the Gorges of Todra with the possibility of eating there, and we also took advantage to see the impressive place with tranquility. We also had the opportunity to buy some handmade local stuff from a Berber nomad family. Omar helped us to bargain a little bit, he was very great.

Once the visit was finished, we went directly to the golden dunes of the Erg Chebbi, where we started our dromedary excursion, making a stop to watch the sunset, until reaching the heart of the desert.

Upon arrival to the desert camp, we had an excellent and refreshing tea with an exquisite Berber dinner, all enlivened by the music of the tam-tam (drums). We also tried sand-boarding, which was so much fun. I really recommend that for everyone. The crazy thing was that the tents were fully equipped with everything, we also had shower and toilet in our tents, which was incredible.

We enjoyed a unique and unforgettable night watching stars in the middle of the desert. We felt so small out there, it was breathtaking. One in a lifetime experience, for sure.

Day 5: Sunrise in Merzouga-Fez

Today, our Berber friend, Mustafa woke us up at 5.45 am because we had to get ready for the sunrise camel ride. After that, we arrived in the hostel when we left our stuff the day before, for breakfast and shower. After the brekky, we had to say goodbye. We were almost crying with the girls because they made our trip memorable. They are such an amazing people, that you won’t find everywhere. 

So the group headed back to Marrakesh, and we caught a taxi with another 3 people to Fez for 250 dirhams/person. It was a 7-8 hours drive with short stops. 

Finally, we arrived in Fez. We decided to book a night at the Marriott Hotel Jnan Palace, as I have the employee discount, we thought: “Why not? Tonight is our last night!”. We paid 35 euros/person/night with dinner and Hammam included. So, I think it was a pretty good deal. The rest of the day, we chilled at the Hotel and we planned our last day in Fez.

Day 6: Fez – Barcelona

In the morning when I did the check-out, I talked to the Front Office Manager. he was amazing, but they really wanted to sell us the tour guide for 250 dirhams (which is pretty expensive in Morocco), because they told us that is very dangerous for three girls to go to the middle of the Madina and get lost. First, I wanted to discuss it with the girls what they want to do in that case and finally, we decided to not taking the tour guide because it can’t be worst than in Marrakesh… and we were right at the end. 

First, we took a small red city “Petit Taxi” to the Royal Palace. It was incredibly cheap. We paid 80 dirhams for a 4 km-s drive (not even 80 cents). The driver was so funny and he loved us. I have to add that we realized that everyone loved us. Not because we are blond, pretty or just different, but we also learned some Moroccan words and they appreciated it so much.

After we took another red taxi to the famous Bab Boujeloud (Blue Gate) where you can access Talaa Kebeera – a massive street which is going into the middle of the Medina. You will find lines of souks, shops, arts & crafts will feast your eyes while the experience itself is like stepping into a time machine, whisking you right back to old Fez with immense charm. 

We had an amazing brunch in Cafe Clock for 44 dirhams with an amazing staff and atmosphere. the place was spened by a former maître d’ in London, Briton Michael Richardson has created a great resting place for travelers in the heart of Fez’s medina. Café Clock offers Arabic classes, cooking classes, traditional Moroccan music concerts and film screenings. Best of all, it has Wi-Fi!

After the brunch, we started to spend our dirhams that we had left in the Medina. We bought some souvenirs and we started our visit.

Top things to see in Fez medina in 1 Day:

Kairaouine Mosque: Some consider this the oldest university in the world, while this is definitely one of Africa’s largest mosques with the ability to host 20,000 people during prayer sessions. A Tunisian refugee Fatima el-Fihria established Kairaouine mosque established in 859. It was later expanded by Almoravides during the 12th century. Today, the mosque has been recently restored but non-Muslims cannot enter the mosque, so you can simply peek at its courtyard from the main door.

Al Attarin Medersa: Built by Marinid sultan Uthman II Abu Said in 1323-5, Attarin Mderesa is a beautiful house where you can see gorgeous tile-work, carvings of Arabic woodwork and calligraphy on walls.This is a peaceful and lovely experience if you’re a fan of architecture and Arabic craftsmanship. Unfortunately, it was under construction when we arrived there.

Chouara Tannery & Fes el Bali: It’ll be a stinky experience but a total must-do! Bring a scarf or find a local who will bring you one of the rooftops and give you some mint for the smell. Fez is famous for its leather goods and the sight of tanneries has become a renowned must-see in every guidebook. Chouara Tannery is located 20-30 minutes by foot from the Blue Gate.

During our visit we saw a lot of nice fountains, mosques, museum, rijads and, places that you can’t really find on the internet. Fez Medina has 200 small narrow streets, it is easy to get lost, but if you follow your route then it isn’t that difficult to find your way back. If we could make it, then you can make it too. Sometimes, we also asked some locals in the small shops, and they were very helpful. You can ask them, but just don’t ask the random people in street. they will probably ask tip from you. You also have to avoid the fake tour guides. You will find a couple of them close to the blue gate.

Overall, we felt that Fez is much more relaxed and safe than Marrakesh. We were also dressed up properly with a pashmina and probably we also got used to the confusing or even rude comments on the streets. I can affirm that we were more careful with everything, but we also felt that the people are nicer and more helpful than in Marrakesh. The Medina was also very chaotic and overcrowded with people, donkeys, cats and, horses, but at least there weren’t any scooters like in Marrakesh. That was crazy. 

Money: 1 euros= 11 dirham (more or less). It is better if you pay everything by dirhams, and you can also withdraw cash from the local ATM-s. You can’t really pay anything by credit card, si i would recommend you to have enough cash with you. 

Useful Moroccan and Berber phrases:

English Transcribed Moroccan Arabic Moroccan Darija in the Arabic Alphabet Yes Iyyeh / ah / wah إييه/ آه/واه No Lla لا Please (addressing a singular) 3afak عافاك Thanks Shokran شكرا I love you (addressing a singular) Kanbghik كنبغيك I miss you (addressing a singular) Twe77eshtek توحشتك A lot Bezzaf بزاف A little Shwiya شوية Okay Wakha واخا Now Daba دابا Not now Mashi daba ماشي دابا Or Awla أولا And W و It’s not a problem / It’s okay Mashi moshkil ماشي مشكل (It was) not me Mashi ana ماشي أنا I want… Bghit… بغيت… I don’t want… Ma bghitsh… …ما بغيتش I am done / I finished Salit ساليت I am not done / I did not finish Ma salitsh ما ساليتش Beautiful (masculine, singular) Zwin زوين Bad/ugly (masculine, singular) Khayb خايب Good (masculine, singular) Mezyan مزيان

… and of course, our favorite one was: “Yalla, yalla! ” means let’s go, come on or hurry up.

In a couple of days, I will also upload an after movie of our trip.

For further questions, please contact me!:)

Let the unicorn be with you!🦄

Yalla,yalla Morocco Desert Experience: Marracesh-Sahara-Fez  Day 1: The chaotic Marrakesh Yesterday we arrived in Marrakesh around 9.30. The airport was a stunning architectural building.

[rhysford]

Guest Author Blog Post: Setting the Mood By Jeri Westerson

Setting the Mood By Jeri Westerson

One of the reasons I’ve never gone in for writing screenplays is that I love writing the narrative prose of a novel. I love the descriptions, setting the tone and mood of a piece. I’m a prose whore, and nothing gets me all a-tingle like some well-written sentence, or a paragraph or page that puts me in another world.

And you must sense it, too, because the readers of this blog love to sink into these different worlds, different places.

I was once in conversation with another author about world-building. We know the masters of it; J.R.R. Tolkien, JK Rowling, George R.R. Martin—they take what we know from history, from the world around us, throw in a smattering of mythology, and make a perfectly reasonable alternative reality to what we know. But my contention was that every book has some measure of this world-building, even in the historical mysteries that I also write, because readers need to be re-introduced to medieval London, to the everyday life and customs of such an intimate society. And the same is also true of paranormal novels. It’s the writer who must set the world first in a reality that the reader can relate to before she can expand upon that foundation. Only when that foundation is firmly in place can you use it as a jumping off point.

And then there is the author’s personal reality of the world she has built. With Anne Rice, her vampires are sexy but deadly and dangerous, and most definitely do not go out into the sun. But in Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight world, vampires sparkle in the sunlight, and long to live among humans, not dine upon them. At least the good ones.

Similarly, my world of BOOKE OF THE HIDDEN involves demons and mythological beasts mostly found in England and Europe. My demons have a certain character, a certain list of do’s and don’ts, of what they can do and what they can’t. It makes the drama more interesting if they have weaknesses to exploit, and they can’t solve every problem with magical powers. And once that is established, readers go along with it. And woe to the writer who cheats or somehow dismisses all she has established before. Readers have a sharp eye. They know the details of these worlds. How many times have I corrected someone in a conversation that “a Dementor can’t do that”?

These series of six books that I have embarked upon take place in the weeks leading up to Halloween. And since we are in New England, and my favorite time of year is fall, I get to have as many fall leaves around me as I want! And that is saying something from this southern California gal.

In fact, you can always tell at what time of the year I write the coldest scenes, where it is the rainiest, windiest, most autumny. It is bound to be smack in the middle of summer where I live, sixty miles east of Los Angeles without even the memory of a sea breeze. It’s hot. One hundred plus degrees hot, even through October, so you’d better believe I pour all my descriptive powers into writing the most fall-like scenes you’ve ever read. You can almost taste that pumpkin spice latte.

Besides, cold fall evenings are perfect times for a warm and crackling fire in the fireplace, of snuggling down in your sweater and woolly socks next to a handsome man…even if that man is a demon.

My little New England village of Moody Bog is a conglomeration of villages I have seen in Ohio, Indiana, and North Carolina (though ironically, not in Maine). Don’t we all have those places in our mind’s eyes where we fantasize about living; the New England of our collective nostalgia? Robert Frost’s snowy woods and birches. White clapboard houses with porches and elm-lined streets. A picturesque church with a tall steeple before a village green. A quaint market, and friendly neighbors. We long for a place most of us have never been and maybe doesn’t exist. But it is always in these particularly idyllic places that danger and evil seems to lurk. Where the smiling faces of your neighbors are not always about being friendly, but harbor secrets instead, secrets you’d rather not know.

This is my Moody Bog. The perfect little small town…with a deadly secret.

Preorder Booke of the Hidden on Amazon now.

Booke of the Hidden by Jeri Westerson After a relationship gone bad in California, Kylie Strange moves to rural Maine for a fresh start. But she gets more than she bargained for when she finds a supernatural book bricked into the wall of her new tea shop. As soon as she opens the Booke of the Hidden, the quiet town of Moody Bog suddenly becomes a lot more interesting. First the mysterious and handsome Erasmus Dark shows up unannounced, claiming to be a demon and warning Kylie of untold destruction. She waves him off, until a museum proprietor turns up dead, and the sheriff targets Kylie as a suspect. With the help of Erasmus and a ragtag group of local Wiccans, Kylie unravels the Booke’s secrets, and they begin to believe the culprit is someone—or something—much more sinister than a run-of-the mill human murderer.

“Subversively clever, Westerson creates an utterly believable history of witches, demons, and magic for her claustrophobic New England village…including a heroine with enough spark, smarts, and stubbornness to keep both the bad guys and the deliciously dangerous love-interest on their toes.”

 –Kat Richardson, author of the GREYWALKER series

Award-winning author Jeri Westerson writes her new paranormal series, BOOKE OF THE HIDDEN, in the comfort of her home office, her own imaginary small town. Her book will be released on Halloween! See her “booke” trailer, her Pinterest page, friend her on Facebook, or read an excerpt on her website BookeoftheHidden.com.

Los Angeles native and award-winning author JERI WESTERSON writes the critically acclaimed Crispin Guest Medieval Mysteries, historical novels, urban fantasy (including the upcoming BOOKE OF THE HIDDEN series), and the Skyler Foxe LGBT Mysteries. To date, her medieval mysteries have garnered twelve industry award nominations, from the Agatha to the Shamus. Jeri is the former president of the SoCal chapter of Mystery Writers of America, and frequently guest lectures on medieval history at local colleges and museums.

    from Guest Author Blog Post: Setting the Mood By Jeri Westerson