#although I believe seniority culture is not as strong in my country

[kiutotakulady]

I & my colleague was just having a random conversation with one of the attachment students this morning...for some reason, we just started the 'back in my day' conversation out of nowhere & both of us just suddenly stopped talking & looked at each other intensely...like wow we're at that age now?

[neocatharsis]

NCT 127 Reveal The Hobbies & Obsessions They Can’t Give Up In Their Down Time

In Elite Daily’s series Rent-Free, celebrities unpack the one thought, memory, or unforgettable pop culture moment that'll always live in their head. In this piece, NCT 127 reveals the interests and hobbies even die-hard fans will be surprised to learn about.

In the past year, most musical acts had to cancel their highly-anticipated tours due to the coronavirus pandemic, and NCT 127 was no exception. That’s why its members — Johnny, Haechan, Mark, Taeyong, Jaehyun, Yuta, Taeil, Jungwoo, and Doyoung — have taken every opportunity to get closer to their fans with new music. After dropping their second Japanese EP, Loveholic, in February, the group returned on June 4 with “Save,” their latest single all about making unforgettable memories. Up next? An entirely new era. On July 7 (the group’s fifth anniversary), they announced their next album is coming in September. In celebration of all the exciting things ahead, NCT 127 opened up about how they wind down after a hard day’s work.

NCT 127 tells Elite Daily these past five years as a group have been worthwhile, and it’s all thanks to their fans, called NCTzens, who have supported them throughout their journey. “[We have so many] memories from practicing together pre-debut to our actual debut stage, and also all those times we spent working on our music and performance to meet our fans at our first concert and first world tour as well,” the group collectively says. “Each and every moment we spend on our music is for our fans, and we are working hard to better show ourselves in various different ways, so we hope you’re all excited!”

Fans have impacted the group so much that they’ve become the muse behind NCT 127’s biggest tracks. “The inspiration [behind ‘Save’] comes from wanting to save our precious memories with each other and with our fans,” the group says. And NCT 127 hasn’t let go of a single one. While they haven’t been able to perform in front of a live audience since early 2020, they held their online Beyond The Origin concert in May. They add, “It was new getting to meet fans from every part of the world at the same time.”

While the guys have their hands full recording their next project, they’re making sure to get some much-deserved R&R whenever they can. Below, NCT 127 reveal the interests that have been living in their minds rent-free.

Johnny

Johnny is a major fan of horror movies. “I love how they keep you on the edge of your seat the whole time you’re watching,” he says. His favorite scary movie of all time is Shutter, which is about a couple who accidentally run over a woman and then see her ghost in photographs they develop. “Even though I watched it when I was young, I still remember the movie, and it’s one I think about often. I’ve seen the movie multiple times since I first saw it in high school, and I recall being scared of red-lit rooms for quite some time afterward,” he says.

His most recent watch was The Conjuring franchise. He adds, “After I saw the movies, I looked up some articles about the behind stories. They were pretty interesting!”

Taeil

Taeil keeps music on his mind even after a full day of rehearsals. “Audio speakers really amplify music so you can hear the intricate details of the track, and there’s also that sense of excitement from when you hear a sound you like!” Taeil says, explaining his love for audio. “I like the speaker brand Focal. There’s still a lot I don’t know about speakers, but I find the brand very attractive since you can experience a flat sound that’s similar to what the songwriter intended to create.”

Taeil says the group’s sound has changed a lot since their debut in 2016. He says, “With time, our team color is definitely becoming more distinct and defined. I think the sound we have now is a very captivating one with strong hip-hop and R&B colors.”

Taeyong

The group’s leader enjoys connecting with others, but especially with NCTzens. “[Our relationship] is a very precious and one that I’m truly grateful for. Not only do we enjoy the same things, but we also try to improve and show that to each other. All of this is very special and meaningful to me,” he says. “It’s nice to learn of each other’s culture, and by singing in different languages, it makes me feel as if I’ve grown closer to our fans from those countries.”

Yuta

Yuta loves exercising because it’s very rewarding, and although he doesn’t have a specific fitness routine, he prefers working out at a gym rather than at home. “I like how exercising makes me feel stronger and helps me to build up my strength... which is very helpful when practicing group dances that require attention to body angles,” he says. “We had a short preparation period [to learn ‘Save’], but I was able to learn the choreography quickly and had a fun time preparing.”

Doyoung

Ever since he was cast as Axel von Fergen in the Korean adaptation of Marie Antoinette, which is based on the 2006 musical of the same name that originally premiered in Japan, Doyoung has found a newfound appreciation for theatre. “I find it very precious how you can share emotions through singing and acting,” he says. “It’s been very meaningful preparing for my musical debut, and it’s really all thanks to the amazing seniors and producers! The process in itself has been a very fun one, and I have been preparing with a heart of gratitude.”

Doyoung is set to make his musical debut on July 13 when the production opens at the Charlotte Theater in Seoul.

Jaehyun

Jaehyun says he “fell in love” with tennis in April because it helps relieve stress. “I’ve always enjoyed trying out new sports like basketball, bowling, and boxing whenever I had the chance. But I actually started tennis because my father recommended it,” he says. “I know this is the case for all sports, but tennis isn’t something you can master after a few tries. It requires persistence, and I started to enjoy it even more as I saw myself gradually improving.”

Jaehyun’s favorite tennis player is Jannik Sinner, a 19-year-old Italian athlete who competed in the 2020 French Open as the youngest quarterfinalist in the men’s singles event. He says, “I’d really like to go see a tournament.”

Mark

Lately, Mark is interested in taking better care of his hair. “It’s really important to me because I change my hair color a lot, and because I want my hair and scalp to be healthy,” he says. While he’s experimented with just about every color in the rainbow, there’s one he always loves going back to. He adds, “I think I liked my blue hair the most. It is my favorite color, after all, and I believe my fans liked it as much as I did. I was glad to be able to film the ‘Save’ music video during my blue-haired period. It fit well with all the scenes and the aesthetics!”

Jungwoo

Similar to Yuta, Jungwoo has also had exercising on his mind. “My life has become more lively since I started exercising. More so than exercising to improve my physique, I exercise in order to have a healthier, richer life. Also, it makes me proud knowing I’m spending my day more productively,” he says. “The first thing I do after I wake up is to start off the day with simple stretches that improve body balance... Stretching helps to warm up the body, which reduces the risk of injury, and can also boost your mood! I think this is why when I dance, I’m able to express those movements in more detail.”

Haechan

Haechan is now experimenting with all things fragrance. “I started using perfume since scents can give a sense of self-satisfaction and because I wanted to smell good all the time!” he says, adding he doesn’t have a favorite perfume. “The scent that suits me well, that I personally like, and that will suit me is always different!” However, there’s one scent that will always remind him of a certain memory with NCT 127. “This might sound funny, but I’d have to say the smell of sweat in our practice rooms,” Haechan says, adding it’s “satisfying” because it makes him feel like they worked hard after a long day. As for what draws fans to NCT 127, Haechan credits their “sincere music and performances.”

© Elite Daily

[dramione4e]

Red and Green

Dramione | Marriage Law AU Raiting: T

So this is my first attempt at writing a Dramione fic. Is a One Shot that you can also find here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26831194

~

Draco Malfoy was a lucky man. 

 Seven years ago, he had avoided going to Azkaban; he had been able to clean his family name by donating obscene amounts of money to several charities; he’d gotten a very decent job at the Ministry as a Senior Auror and, as if he deserved it, had a circle of close friends, many of them he could even call family. 

 But, damn, he was going to need something more than sheer luck to get out of this mess free or even alive. 

“I’m not entirely sure this is OK, Weasley,” he half whispered, half shouted while looking at both ways of the empty street with an anxious look on his face while his former enemy and now also Auror partner, worked on removing the wards of the house that belonged to none other than Hermione Granger. 

 “I told you, Malfoy,” said Ron, dragging his words. “She showed me how to enter her house in case of an emergency. Just a few more spells and we���ll be able to get in.”

 The plan that both of them had come up with just an hour ago at the Leaky Cauldron was just to go to her house and talk to her. It made sense at the time but now Draco was sobering up and suddenly it didn’t seem like a good idea so much as breaking and entering.

 “Are you sure she is home?” he insisted. “We’ve been pounding at her door for ages.”

 “Believe me, she’s a heavy sleeper.” 

 That made Draco’s insides cringe a little bit. He didn’t like thinking about how Weasley knew such intimate information. Not like he was jealous or anything, the former Slytherin was just pointing out that he himself didn’t know that.

 He heard a click and the door finally swung open. Ron ushered him inside and followed him into the sitting room. It was very early in the morning so it was still a little dark inside. The place still looked the same as he remembered from the previous time he had been invited over for drinks when the gang was celebrating something he couldn’t ever care about now. 

 His red haired partner went upstairs to look for the witch but came back without her. 

 “She’s not home.”

 Yep. Breaking and entering. Good bye, freedom.

 “I guess we'll just have to sit here and wait for her,” the former Gryffindor announced, plummeting on the couch.

 “Are you mental?” 

 But before he got an answer, the front door was opened and he heard a scream coming from behind him.

“What part of for emergencies was so difficult for you to understand, Ronald?!” Hermione was yelling at both wizards who were now sitting on the couch while she was pacing from right to left in front of them. “Do you have any idea how long it takes me to set up wards like this?!”

 None of them answered. The room was fully lighted now and there was a lingering smell of Pepperup Potion in the air.

 “I could have seriously injured you, you fools!” Hermione kept on lecturing them. Ron had his head down, looking ashamed at the floor but Draco could not look away from the sight in front of him.

 Dear Salazar, what is she wearing? 

 His mental question was rhetorical. Draco was no longer a stranger to Muggle culture, in fact he prided himself on how much he’d learned over the past few years. Hermione had been actually the main source of help as she was now the owner of a company that fussed magic with Muggle technology in a safe and convenient way and said company also provided training and seminars to educate magical beings on how to use appliances, electronics and others.

 Besides attending all of the lectures, he had also expanded his knowledge by asking Hermione for more sources on different Muggle topics and he remembered reading about sports and exercise. Still, one thing was looking at pictures of random strangers in textbooks and a very different thing was to have the Gryffindor princess model the outfit.

 She was wearing high waisted leggings that went from under her belly button to the skin above her ankles, and was it called a sports bra? Whatever it was, it left her flat belly totally exposed and Merlin! he was being hypnotized by the swing of her hips and the drops of sweet that ran down her neck to her chest and disappeared inside her small top. Even though she was mostly covered, that outfit left little to the imagination, in his opinion.

 She’d explained she had gone running very early in the morning, something that perhaps she’d happened to mention she usually did but the two brilliant Aurors, in the state they were, couldn’t have possibly remembered.

 When she finally calmed down and the Pepperup Potion kicked in, the men were able to express their apologies which she begrudgingly accepted.

 “Anyway, why are you here?” her tone was softer, but she had her arms crossed in front of her.

 “Remember when I told you I would keep you informed about the Marriage Law?” Ron asked.

 Ah.

 Malfoy had almost forgotten the reason he was there in the first place.

 Five years after the war was over, the Ministry of Magic came to the realization that the wizarding population in the country had alarmingly decreased. Furthermore, the expected “Baby Boom” didn’t pan out because of a large adoption campaign -founded principally by the only Malfoy heir- to help children who became orphans after the war get a home. 

 Two years ago, the Ministry announced that now witches and wizards of marriageable age had a year and a half to find a suitor or suitress to marry, otherwise the Ministry would assign one based on the results of an old ritual that conjured ‘core matching magic’ and ‘soulmate bonding’ in addition to several compatibility tests that they were all ask to fill -some even under Veritaserum.

 “Why? Did you find out who I was paired with?” She took a seat on the armchair in front of them. “Is it someone bad?”

 “Yes, it’s bad, ‘Mione,” her best friend answered quickly.

 Fucking Weasley. Aren’t we supposed to be friends now?

 Draco had indeed developed a strong friendship with Ron Weasley and subsequently with Harry Potter and Hermione Granger -they were a package deal apparently-. Although the last two he didn’t see that often, with Granger he regularly engaged in pleasant conversations about the recent creations of her company, his most interesting cases as an Auror; also literature, music and films (Muggle and otherwise); their interests and, well, many things. 

 She was a very interesting woman and, in the recent past, he had admitted to himself that they had a lot in common and it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if someday they went out to dinner together, just the two of them, as in a date. Still, he had never thought that they would be a perfect match, according to the experts at the Ministry. The highest one on the list by far. 

 After the initial shock had worn out, he’d felt elated. His co-workers had even patted him on the back as if this was his highest accomplishment. Hermione Granger, The Brightest Witch of Her Age, was his match. His soulmate. He was floating.

 When the high that this information gave him ended, he started questioning if he really deserved it. In his mind, they were perfect for each other. After all opposites attract, right? 

 She was a Gryffindor; he was a Slytherin.

 She was Muggle-born; he was a Pureblood.

 She was a member of The Order of the Phoenix; he was a Death Eater.

 Ugh.

 She was smart, beautiful, kind, honest, generous, brave; he was… 

 Guilt had been eating him all day. Maybe they were not a good match after all. Red and green didn’t go well together, right?

 That’s how he ended drinking with Ron.

 “Well? Who is it?” her apathy had now changed into wariness. 

 “I can’t tell you. All ministry workers signed up a non-disclosure agreement and until the owls are sent to the respective witches and wizards, we can’t say, write, point, mimic, spell-”

 “For fuck’s sake, Ron!” she interrupted and stood up again, her arms akimbo her hips. “Why the hell did you bother coming here if you can’t even tell me?!”

 At this, Weasley smirked, “Luckily for you, ‘Mione, we found a loophole,” he said smugly and pointed to himself and Draco even when it had been the blond Slytherin’s idea at the pub. “If you guess the name of this person, I could nod or shake my head without breaking the contract.”

 That seemed to somewhat relax her.

 “OK, so, I’m guessing is someone we know, must be single, and the age…” she muttered more to herself biting her lip. “And you said it’s bad? Does he work at the ministry?” She looked at the red head for confirmation and he nodded at both questions.

 “Oh, no.”

 Here we come.

 “Is it McLaggen?”

 Weasley shook his head.

 “Is it Smith from finance?” 

 Another head shake.

 “Parry?”

 No.

 “Hodgson?”

 No.

 “Mullins?”

 No.

 “The one that works in the same office as your father?”

 Every name was followed by a head shake and Draco was elated to know he didn’t even make the list.

 “Oh, no,” her eyes opened wide and now Draco was sure he was about to hear his own name. “Is it you?” but she was still looking at Weasley. 

 “Oi!” Weasley countered. “You’d be lucky if that were the case!”

 At this Hermione rolled her eyes and left an exasperated scoff, “I don’t have time for this, I’m gonna be late for work.”

 She dismiss them and disappeared upstairs.

 Malfoy couldn’t fight the smile that crept up his lips.

Draco was waiting outside of Granger, Inc. in Diagon Alley. After he and Ron left her house, he went home and immediately owled the witch to ask if she would be available for lunch. When he got her reply accepting his invitation, he went to bed for a few hours, after all, he’d needed to regain his beauty sleep.

 His head hurt a little and he was sure it wasn’t a hangover. Thoughts about how to best approach the subject swirled in his mind and thoughts about her reaction after she found out tormented him. However, he had come prepared to hear the worst and the best.

 “I’m ready.” The witch had stepped out of her office, bringing him out of his stupor. He noticed she was no longer wearing sportswear. Instead she fashioned a velvet looking set of robes that went from a very dark purple at the bottom to a faded, light lilac at the top. Her hair was pulled back in a low ponytail.

 Apparently leggings were not necessary for him to go into a trance. When the person was Hermione Granger it didn’t matter what she was wearing. That morning she had looked sexy and provocative and now she, only a few hours later, was the picture of elegance and professionalism and he liked both looks the most.

 When he came back to his senses he cleared his throat, “Shall we?” he asked and they walked together towards a close restaurant where they had met in the past with some of their friends.

 After ordering their drinks and meals, the gray eyed man thought he should just rip off the band aid.

 “I wanted to apologize,” he began. “For the incident this morning. Weasley and I shouldn’t have gotten that drunk and acted so stupidly.”

 “Don’t worry about it,” she shrugged. “I was mostly mad at Ron for messing with my wards, I can tell the whole thing was his idea.” At this, the waiter came back with their drinks and put them on the table.

 “So, did you want to talk to me about something or is this just an ‘apology lunch’?” she inquired with a playful tone and then took a sip of her beverage, never taking her eyes off him.

 He was about to answer when he noticed the intentional look she was giving him and her raised eyebrow.

 “You know?” he ventured.

 “I’m not sure if I know,” she corrected. “I thought you just happened to be with Ron when he concocted his stupid plan this morning,” she mused. “But then after I got your owl, I thought that maybe it was you he was referring to.”

 He nodded to answer her implied question and automatically felt the binding lifting from him. Now that she knew, he was free to talk.

 “Why were you in such an urgent state to let me know?” she inquired. 

 “Weasley said you weren’t going to be happy with the news and he thought it was best to warn you as soon as possible,” he explained. “He said you would come up with a way to avoid the match and get a different guy.”

 “I probably could,” she offered and he knew she was so popular and well-connected in the Ministry that even if she couldn’t get herself out of the whole program, it would take no more than an owl asking them to change her match for them to go ahead and do it. “Is that what you want?”

 No. 

 Was this the best case scenario? Of course not. He would have liked to ask her out on proper dates, build up a relationship and eventually take things to a more serious level. He could easily see them becoming more than just boyfriend and girlfriend. So far, he already liked everything about her. He had dived inside her mind several times to know that.

 Not to mention that she got more beautiful by the day, and no, the glimpse of what her body looked like under the robes had nothing to do with it.

 OK, maybe a little. It was a perk.

 Anyways, the witch was waiting for a response. Should he just take the plunge or listen to the Ron Weasley inside his head, telling him he was a bad choice for her?

 “I know it is not ideal,” he answered. “I mean, to start a relationship with what is basically a forced marriage in which we are expected to wait only a year before we start having children. Not even pureblood arrangements work that way.

 “It is not fair for either of us,” at that moment the waiter interrupted him by bringing their plates. 

 Granger had kept quiet so far and just fixed him with a look that conveyed nothing. He’d learned that when she wanted, her face became unreadable, but he was not to be discouraged.

 He took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

 “I would hate to not be the one who marries you,” he dared to say and was pleased to see her cheeks become red. “If we were to do this my way, believe me that I would have courted you the right way. I swear I thought about asking you out many times in the last couple of years and now I feel like a complete idiot for not working up the courage to do it.

 “If you do me the honor of letting me be your husband,” he offered. “I vow to never take you for granted. We will take things slow. As slow as you want. I don’t want this marriage law to get in the way of dating you properly.

 “And you have my word that, if at any point you want out, you’ll be free to do it. I wouldn’t stop you,” he promised.

 She blinked a few times before she reached her hand across the table and put it on top of his.

 “I’d like that,” she answered, her honeyed eyes full of sincerity. “To date you, that is. I’ve also entertained the thought of asking you out a few times,” she admitted blushing even redder. “If in order to date we have to get married, then so be it.”

 He let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding and couldn’t stop the grin on his face. He turned his hand upwards to intertwine their fingers together and then brought her hand to his mouth at the same time he leaned in to plant a kiss on her knuckles. The electrifying feeling of her soft hand was going to be carved in his memory forever.

 “Thank you, Granger,” he murmured. 

 After they finished their lunches he was now walking her back to her office while holding hands. They were met with multiple stares and gasps along Diagon Alley but he didn’t mind one bit and she even made it seem as if she was oblivious to that.

 “So we’re dating now,” she stated, looking up to meet his eyes. 

 “Yes.” He found that just thinking about it made his face feel warm, but not intending to hide it, he looked back at her with what he hoped was a sincere smile. 

 They entered the building that was her business and Draco could see several heads turning to look at them.

 “Can we talk for a minute in your office?” he asked her and she agreed.

 Once the door was closed and locked he got close to her and took both her hands in his.

 “I know it seems like we are not given much of a choice about this, but,” he said feeling his hands getting sweaty with nerves. “In the off chance that you don’t realize along the way, that you are way out of my league and decide to leave me, I want to ask you the right way so we’ll be able to remember this moment forever.”

 Draco pulled out a small box from inside his robes and opened it in front of her. He heard her curse a ‘holy shit’ under her breath at the sight of the red and green tear-shaped tourmaline ring. Turns out that red and green did go well together. 

 He locked his eyes with hers and she gave him a small nervous smile, “Everything I know about you I already like and it would make me the happiest wizard if you let me learn more. I want to discuss not only academia and the news but also learn about your dreams and fears; I yearn to know how you take your tea in the morning and if you have a preferred side of the bed at night. I long for the happy moments, the new adventures, the memories we will create together and even the fights and arguments. I promise I will try my best to make you happy for as long as you have me.” He got down on one knee. 

 “Hermione Jean Granger,” he intoned. “Will you marry me?”

 The witch’s face was soaked with tears but her smile had gotten wider the more she listened to him.

 “Yes,” she croaked, closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She extended her hand in front of her. 

 The wizard happily took it and slipped the ring onto her finger. He then stood up and felt Granger’s soft fingers over his own cheeks. 

 He hadn’t realized he had been crying too.

 “So, we’re really dating now,” she echoed her words from before, moving closer to him and resting her hands on his shoulders.

 “Yes,” he smiled and closed the gap between them, his fingers going up and down her back. “But we’re also engaged.”

 “We’re moving so fast,” she whispered a fake protest, her face only inches from his. 

 He hummed in agreement, his eyes were close now. 

 “And yet,” their noses touched, her voice barely audible. “We haven’t even kissed. That’s not fair, is it?”

 He couldn’t resist anymore. He pulled her closer -if that was even possible- and pressed his lips against hers. She was ready for him and quickly returned the kiss.

 Her lips were the softest and her taste was oh so sweet. 

 What started as slow and tender quickly became heated and passionate. It was new and exciting and yet so familiar. Their lips and tongues moved in a dance as old as time and when they finally stopped for air he opened his eyes to find her staring at him with a warm smile and even warmer eyes.

 She never looked so beautiful.

 Draco Malfoy was indeed a lucky man.

[apenitentialprayer]

Bishop Hassan Dehqani-Tafti (bottom left), with his wife (Margaret, bottom right), and children (daughters Shirin, Sussanne, and Guli; son Bahram). Source. The Right Reverend was the first ethnic Persian to hold to office of Bishop of Iran in the Anglican Church. Dehqani-Tafti was technically a convert to the faith, but Christianity was an interwoven element in his life from before his birth. A gradual process, Dehqani-Tafti’s conversion highlights how blurred the lines Christianity and Islam can be. The outline of this relationship, given below the cut, is derived from the doctoral thesis of Sister Agnes Angela Wilkins, “From Islam to Christianity: A Study in the Life and Thought of Hassan Dehqani-Tafti and Jean-Mohammed Abd-El-Jalil in the Ongoing Search for a Deeper Understanding Between Christianity and Islam,” itself heavily reliant on the Right Reverend’s autobiography.

Childhood and Education

Hassan was the son of Mohammad, an illiterate but pious Muslim, and Sekinah. Sekinah, the daughter of a ‘Mulla Zahra,’ who received that honorary title for being able to read and recite the Qur’an, was a convert to Christianity. She had worked as a nurse with her mother in a missionary hospital, and it was there that she decided to be baptized. She also learned to read and write. After being married to Mohammad, she had three children, the middle one being Hassan. For the first five years of his life, Hassan, despite being raised a Shi‘a Muslim, remembers visits from the missionaries and singing songs with Biblical themes. This changed after his mother died, when he was about five years old. Before her death, Sekinah had requested that a friend of hers help raise at least one of her children to be Christian; this friend, a Ms. Kingdon, spent about a year and a half trying to convince his father to allow it. Ultimately, the boy was allowed, spending about a year in an otherwise all-girls school. There, he learned The Lord’s Prayer and memorized a few psalms, in addition to learning the Persian alphabet. Once he beeccame too old to stay at an all-girl’s school, the boy was sent to a missionary school in the former Safavid capital of Isfahan. It was there that he studied calligraphy, poetry, and Scriptures under the headmaster Jalil Aqa. Jalil Aqa was of Cossack descent, but had fully integrated into the Persian culture of his upbringing. As a young man, he was a Sunni Muslim, but with a strong mystical bend. He converted to Christianity through conversations about the relationship between Christ and the body of believers with missionaries at a hospital. Jalil Aqa represented a kind of Christianity that “digested the best of Persian culture, and then had baptized the whole into [itself].” Nonetheless, the young Hassan would oscillate between the Christianity of his schooling and the Islam of his family life. By the time he was 15, his father wavered over whether he should continue to allow his son to go to school, but ultimately allowed him to; by 17, Hassan had written a list of 77 resolutions he wished to follow; by 18, he was a baptized Christian. Many friends no longer spoke to him, he could no longer eat from the same bowl as his family, and contact with him made his loved ones ritually impure. His father described watching his son convert to Christianity as akin to having his hand cut off.

Crisis

The first few years after baptism were relatively easy. He attended the University of Tehran as a closeted Christian. Most students were more interested in secular philosophy and Western culture to really care anyway, but a couple people that he did tell were supportive or disgusted. When he had to join military service, he had to out himself, and was dismissed by his superior for being untrustworthy for having apostasized from Islam. Problems arose, however, when he considered ordination. His military service had given him a good salary, and his family -who also did not like the idea of the social suicide he would undergo as a pastor- attempted to convince him to remain there. Instead, the local missionaries encouraged him to go to Cambridge University, where he felt a loneliness he had never felt before. He began to resent God for his mother’s death, blame the missionaries for the widening gap between himself and his family, and even consider suicide. This crisis was resolved through forming a relationship with Bishop Stephen Neill, who seems to have taken on a fatherly role to him. Although they only met in person six times, the two would continue to correspond through letters. It is around this time that Hassan developed a strong attachment to the Book of Job, and felt a calling to a deeper sort of repentance, a total reorientation of his life. Though offered a job at Cambridge, he wanted to continue his ministry in his home country.

Returning to Iran

Though he was frequently visited by the Detective Bureau of Police, an frequently dealt with minor harassment, the early years of Hassan’s return were happy ones. In 1949 he was ordained a deacon in the Anglican Church (an organization whose theological leanings Kingdon did not approve of, though she was happy for him). In 1950, he was made a priest, and in 1952 he married the daughter of the current Bishop of Iran (Margaret, pictured above). In 1960, he was consecrated the Bishop of Iran. Hassan’s father died in 1970, and his attempt to attend the funeral only highlighted how large the rift between his family and himself had become. His brother did not want him there, and a group of mullahs refused to let him enter, forcing him to pray for his father outside the mosque. The growth that the Anglican Church in Iran would experience, including the establishment of more hospitals and programs to help make the blind community more self-sufficient, was reversed in the early weeks of the Revolution. Although the land that the hospitals were built on was waaf, a semi-sacred gift under Islamic law, they were seized by Revolutionaries after a senior priest was murdered. His house was ransacked, and threatening messages sent to his house. The anxiety and stress left him bedridden for three weeks. During this time, he decided that taqiyya, pretending to assimilate into the larger religious majority, could not be a strategy for the threatened Christian community: “Christ was almost ruthless about being and showing who you are.” Hassan found inspiration from the life of Saint Thomas Moore, an English Catholic who was killed for refusing to renounce his faith during the Anglican Reformation, and attributed his recovery to a “new infilling of the love of God.” If he were to be killed, then he would be killed; “The important thing is to continue God's work with utmost loyalty to the end.” This was a good attitude to have, because he was soon arrested and interrogated for access to a diocesan bank account. He was forced to stay in a yard where public executions by firing squad happened, he was brought to a revolutionary court, and was the victim of an assassination attempt - an attempt that ended with his wife being shot in the hand after she threw herself in front of him. The two were ultimately sent to Cyprus, with the hope of reuniting with their family. Unforunately, the situation in Iran became too much, and after his son was assassinated (an act that Hassan forgave the killers for), the family was permanently moved to England.

A Persian Christian

The nineteen year exile that lasted from 1979 to his death was very hard on Hassan. The Bishop of Iran was an Iranian who loved his country and his culture. In the early years of his bishopric, he had worked with thinkers like Kenneth Cragg in an attempt to reconcile his Islamic Persian heritage with his Christian faith. In his writings, Dehqani-Tafti wrote for a mixed Christian and Muslim audience. His largest influence in the formation of his faith was a man who did not see Christianity as something at odds with Persian culture. The name of Dehqani-Tafti’s memoir, The Unfolding Design of My World, is a reference to the Naqsh-i-Jahan (Design of the World) Square, a prominent landmark in his beloved Isfahan. His gravestone has a Persian translation of Ephesians 2:19 (“So then you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the holy ones and members of the household of God”) engraved onto it. His pectoral cross has been returned to Iran, where it is displayed in the Isfahan church he spent so much time in.

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Anonymous asked: My granddaughter is 16 and in the us navy sea cadet program here in the USA. She hopes to become a naval aviator. She love reading military books. Any recommendations for her. Her mom says she reads anything military from equipment to history. I could use advice on a reading list to buy books for her. William Law

Thank you William for sending me this. It’s certainly one of the most interesting asks I’ve ever had the pleasure to reply to because it involves my love of Classics and also being a former military aviator.

So I put some thought into it because I can sense a kindred spirit in your grand daughter. She must be a remarkable young girl if she is as focused and committed as you say she is in terms of her life goals. If I may say so she is also blessed to have a grandfather like you who recognises the value of reading books to aid her and inspire her.

I have tried to confine myself to the narrow parameters of recommending books that can appeal to a precocious teenager that have a connection to naval and maritime themes (rather than the landed military) and have a general connection to women in the navy or as aviators. So the list is broken into personal memoirs, naval and maritime history, fictional works, and finally a select Classics list.

If you will indulge me I have included the Classics because I firmly believe a grounding in the Classics (from as early age as possible) is so culturally enriching and personally rewarding. In my experience the wisest military leaders and veterans I have ever had the privilege of knowing were grounded in the Classics.

To my mind Classic history, literature and poetry belongs in any library relating to maritime affairs. It provides a flavour of sea life, helping strategists understand this alien element. Just as important, it enlivens the topic. As you will know, ships and fleets do not make history; people do.

It is by no means a comprehensive list but something to start with. I’ve decided not to give you a bullet point laundry list but add some notes of my own because I found it fun to do - and in doing so I found myself looking back on my teenage years with equal icky amounts of embarrassment, regret, foolishness, fun, and joy. 

1. Personal memoirs

West with the Night by Beryl Markham

‘Poetry in flight’ best describes this 1942 memoir from aviatrix Beryl Markham of bush flying in Africa and long-distance flight, which includes her solo flight across the Atlantic. Lyrical and expressive her descriptions of the adventure of flying continue to inspire generations of women pilots, including myself when I learned to fly.

Markham was a colonial child and was raised by her father on a remote farm in Njoro, British East Africa (present-day Kenya). After a tomboyish childhood spent roaming the Kenyan wilds, she moved upcountry to Molo, becoming a racehorse trainer. There she saw her first plane and met British pilot Tom Black, who became her flight instructor and lover. Soon Markham earned her commercial pilot’s license, the first woman in Kenya to do so, and began to freelance as a bush pilot. Much of West With the Night concerns itself with this period in Markham’s life, detailing her flights in an Avro Avian biplane running supplies to remote outposts or scouting game for safaris.

Since airfields were essentially nonexistent in Africa at the time, Markham’s flights were particularly dangerous, punctuated with white-knuckle landings in forest clearings and open fields. In fact the dangers of African flying claimed the lives of a number of aviators. Markham eloquently describes her own search for a downed pilot: “Time and distance together slip smoothly past the tips of my wings without sound, without return, as I peer downward over the night-shadowed hollows of the Rift Valley and wonder if Woody, the lost pilot, could be there, a small pinpoint of hope and of hopelessness listening to the low, unconcerned song of the Avian - flying elsewhere.”

Markham’s memoir shies away from personal details - she is rumoured to have had an affair with an English prince - and straightforward chronology, instead focusing on vivid scenes gathered from a well-lived life. Rarely does one encounter such an evocative sense of a time and place as she creates. The heat and dust of Africa emanate from her prose. Anyone interested in aviation, in Africa, or in simply reading an absorbing book will find much to like in its pages. Ernest Hemingway, a friend and fellow safari enthusiast, wrote of Markham’s memoir, “I wish you would get it and read it because it really is a bloody wonderful book.”

It is a bloody brilliant book and it’s one of the books closest to my heart as it personally resonated with my nomadic life growing up in foreign countries where once the British empire made its mark.

I first read it on my great aunt’s Kenyan tea farm during the school holidays in England. I got into huge trouble for taking a treasured first edition - personally signed by Markham herself - from the library of my great aunt without permission. My great aunt - not an easy woman to get on with given her questionable eccentricities - wrote a stern letter to the head teacher of my girls’ boardng school in England that the schools standards and moral Christian teachings must be in terminal decline if girls were encouraged to pilfer books willy nilly from other people’s bookshelves and thus she would not - as an alum herself - be donating any more money to the school. It was one more sorry blot in my next school report.

Fly Girls: How Five Daring Women Defied All Odds and Made Aviation History by Keith O’Brien

For pioneering pilots of the 1920s and 1930s, the challenges were enormous. For women it was even more daunting. In this marvellous history, Keith O’Brien recounts the early years of aviation through a generation of American female pilots who carved out a place for themselves and their sisterhood. Despite the sensation they created, each “went missing in her own way.” This is the inspiring untold story of five women from very different walks of life - including a New York socialite, an Oakland saleswoman, a Florida dentist’s secretary and a Boston social worker - who fought and competed against men in the  high-stakes national air races of the 1920s and 1930s — and won.

Between the world wars, no sport was more popular, or more dangerous, than airplane racing. Thousands of fans flocked to multi-day events, and cities vied with one another to host them. The pilots themselves were hailed as dashing heroes who cheerfully stared death in the face. Well, the men were hailed. Female pilots were more often ridiculed than praised for what the press portrayed as silly efforts to horn in on a manly and deadly pursuit. The derisive press dubbed the first women’s national air race “The Powder Puff Derby.”

It’s a brisk, spirited history of early aviation focused on 5 irrepressible women. Florence Klingensmith, a high-school dropout who worked for a dry cleaner in Fargo, North Dakota, and who trained as a mechanic so she could learn planes inside and out but whose first aviation job was as a stunt girl, standing on a wing in her bathing suit. Louise McPhetridge Thaden a girl who grew up as a tomboy and later became the mother of two young kids who got her start selling coal in Wichita. Ruth Elder, an Alabama divorcee was determined to be the first woman to fly across the Atlantic. Amelia Earhart was of course the most famous, but not necessarily the most skilled. Ruth Nichols who chafed at the constraints of her blue-blood family's expectations of marrying into wealth and into high society.

In 1928, when women managed to get jobs in other male dominated fields, fewer than 12 had a pilot’s license, and those ambitious for prizes and recognition faced entrenched sexism from the men who ran air races, backed fliers, and financed the purchase of planes. They decided to organise: “For our own protection,” one of them said, “we must learn to think for ourselves, and do as much work as possible on our planes.” Although sometimes rivals in the air, they forged strong friendships and offered one another unabated encouragement. O’Brien vividly recounts the dangers of early flight: In shockingly rickety planes, pilots sat in open cockpits, often blinded by ice pellets or engine smoke; instruments were unreliable, if they worked at all; sudden changes in weather could be life threatening. Fliers regularly emerged from their planes covered in dust and grease. Crashes were common, with planes bursting into flames; but risking injury and even death failed to dampen the women’s passion to fly. And yet their bravery was only scoffed at by male prejudice. Iconic  oilman Erle Halliburton believed, “Women are lacking in certain qualities that men possess.” Florence Klingensmith’s crash incited a debate about allowing menstruating women to fly.

And yet these women still took off in wooden crates loaded with gasoline. They flew over mountains, deserts and seas without radar or even radios. When they came down, they knew that their landings might be their last. But together, they fought for the chance to race against the men - and in 1936 one of them would triumph in the toughest race of all. And When Louise Thaden became the first woman to win a national race, even the great Charles Lindbergh fell curiously silent.

O'Brien nicely weaves together the stories of these five remarkable women in the spirit of Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff who broke the glass ceiling to achieve greatness.

Thoughts of a Philosophical Fighter Pilot by James Stockdale

Thoughts on issues of character, leadership, integrity, personal and public virtue, and ethics, the selections in this volume converge around the central theme of how man can rise with dignity to prevail in the face of adversity- lessons just as valid for the challenges of present-day life as they were for the author’s Vietnam experience.Vice Admiral James Stockdale, a senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution, served in the U.S. Navy from 1947 to 1979, beginning as a test pilot and instructor at Patuxent River, Maryland, and spending two years as a graduate student at Stanford University. He became a fighter pilot and was shot down on his second combat tour over North Vietnam, becoming a prisoner of war for eight years, four in solitary confinement. The highest-ranking naval officer held during the Vietnam War, he was tortured fifteen times and put in leg irons for two years. It’s a book that makes you think how much character is important in good at anything, especially being a thoughtful and wise leader in the heat of battle.

Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life And Maybe The World by Admiral William H. McRaven   On May 17, 2014, Admiral William H. McRaven addressed the graduating class of the University of Texas at Austin on their Commencement day. Taking inspiration from the university's slogan, "What starts here changes the world," he shared the ten principles he learned during Navy Seal training that helped him overcome challenges not only in his training and long Naval career, but also throughout his life; and he explained how anyone can use these basic lessons to change themselves-and the world-for the better.

Admiral McRaven's original speech went viral with over 10 million views.

Building on the core tenets laid out in his speech, McRaven now recounts tales from his own life and from those of people he encountered during his military service who dealt with hardship and made tough decisions with determination, compassion, honour, and courage.

The book is told with great humility and optimism. It provides simple wisdom, practical advice, and words of encouragement that will inspire readers to achieve more, even in life's darkest moments.

Service: A Navy SEAL at War by Marcus Luttrell with James D. Hornfischer 

Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell is more known for his other famous best seller Lone Survivor but this one I think is also a thrilling war story, Service is above all a profoundly moving tribute to the warrior brotherhood, to the belief that nobody goes it alone, and no one will be left behind. Luttrell returned from his star-crossed mission in Afghanistan with his bones shattered and his heart broken. So many had given their lives to save him-and he would have readily done the same for them. As he recuperated, he wondered why he and others, from America's founding to today, had been willing to sacrifice everything - including themselves-for the sake of family, nation, and freedom.

In Service, we follow Marcus Luttrell to Iraq, where he returns to the battlefield as a member of SEAL Team 5 to help take on the most dangerous city in the world: Ramadi, the capital of war-torn Al Anbar Province. There, in six months of high-intensity urban combat, he would be part of what has been called the greatest victory in the history of US Special Operations forces. We also return to Afghanistan and Operation Redwing, where Luttrell offers powerful new details about his miraculous rescue.

Throughout, he reflects on what it really means to take on a higher calling, about the men he's seen lose their lives for their country, and the legacy of those who came and bled before. I did rub shoulders with the US special forces community out on my time in Afghanistan and whilst their public image deifies them I found them to be funny, pranksters, humble, brave, and down to earth beer guzzling hogs who cheerfully cheat at cards.

The Spirit of St. Louis by Charles A. Lindbergh

Being one of the classics in aviation history, this well written book is an epic aviator’s adventure tale of all time. Charles Lindbergh is best known for its famous nonstop flight from New York to Paris in 1927 as it changed the history of aviation. “The Spirit of St. Louis” takes the reader on an extraordinary trans-Atlantic journey in a single-engine plane. As well as provides insight into the early history of American aviation and includes some great fuel conservation tips!

20 Hrs. 40 mins by Amelia Earhart

How can any woman pilot not be inspired by Amelia Earhart?  Earhart's first transatlantic flight of June 1928 during which she flew as a passenger accompanying pilot Wilmer Stultz and co-pilot Louis Gordon. The team departed from Trepassey Harbor, Newfoundland, in a Fokker F.VIIb/3m on 17 June 1928, landing at Pwll near Burry Port, South Wales, exactly 20 hours and 40 minutes later. The book is an interesting read but I much prefer her other book written in 1932 The Fun Of It. The book is Earhart's account of her growing obsession with flying, the final chapter of which is a last minute addition chronicling her historic solo transatlantic flight of 1932. The work contains the mini-record of Earhart's international broadcast from London on 22 May 1932. Earhart set out from Harbour Grace, Newfoundland on 20 May 1932. After a flight lasting 14 hours and 56 minutes Earhart landed in a pasture at Culmore, north of Derry, Northern Ireland. The work also includes a list of other works on aviation written by women, emblematic of Earhart's desire to promote women aviators.

2. Naval and military history

The U.S. Navy: A Concise History by Craig L Symonds

Symonds’s The U.S. Navy: A Concise History is a fantastic book from one of the doyennes of US naval history. I cannot think of any other work on the US Navy that provides such a thorough overview of American naval policy, navy combat operations, leadership, technology, and culture in such a succinct manner. This book is perfect for any reader - young or old -  just wading into the waters of naval history and not knowing where to start, or for someone who wishes to learn a little bit about each era of the navy, from its founding to its modern-day mission and challenges.

His other distinguished works are more in depth - mostly about the Second World War such as the Battle of Midway and the Normandy landings - but this is a good introduction to his magisterial books. His latest book came out in 2019 called World War II at Sea: A Global History. I have not read this yet but from others who have they say it is a masterful overview of the war at sea.

Six Frigates: The Epic History of the Founding of the U.S. Navy by Ian W. Toll

Before the ink was dry on the U.S. Constitution, the establishment of a permanent military became the most divisive issue facing the new government. The founders - particularly Jefferson, Madison, and Adams - debated fiercely. Would a standing army be the thin end of dictatorship? Would a navy protect from pirates or drain the treasury and provoke hostility? Britain alone had hundreds of powerful warships.

From the decision to build six heavy frigates, through the cliff-hanger campaign against Tripoli, to the war that shook the world in 1812, Ian W. Toll tells this grand tale with the political insight of Founding Brothers and the narrative flair of Patrick O’Brian.

The Pursuit of Victory: The Life and Achievement of Horatio Nelson by Roger Knight

The starting point of Roger Knight’s magnificent new biography is to explain how Nelson achieved such extraordinary success. Knight places him firmly in the context of the Royal Navy at the time. He analyses Nelson’s more obvious qualities, his leadership strengths and his coolness and certainty in battle, and also explores his strategic grasp, the condition of his ships, the skill of his seamen and his relationships with the officers around him – including those who could hardly be called friendly.

This biography takes a shrewd and sober look at Nelson’s status as a hero and demolishes many of the myths that were so carefully established by the early authors, and repeated by their modern successors.

While always giving Nelson his due, Knight never glosses over the character flaws of his heroic subject. Nelson is seen essentially as a "driven" personality, craving distinction in an age increasingly coloured by notions of patriotic heroism, traceable back to the romantic (and entirely unrealistic) depiction of the youthful General James Wolfe dying picturesquely at the moment of victory in 1759. Nor does Knight take Nelson's side in dealing with that discreditable phase in 1798-99, when he is influenced, much for the worse, by his burgeoning involvement with Lady Hamilton at Naples and Palermo. Knight accepts that this interlude has left an indelible stain on Nelson's naval and personal record. But he traces the largely destructive course of Nelson's passion for Emma with appropriate sensitivity.

Nelson was a shrewd political operator who charmed and impressed political leaders and whose advancement was helped by the relatively weak generation of admirals above him. He was a difficult subordinate, only happy when completely in command, and capable of great ruthlessness. Yes he was flawed, but Nelson's flaws, including his earlier petulance in dealing with higher naval authority - only brought fully under control towards the end of his career - pale before his remarkable strengths. His outstanding physical and moral courage and his inspired handling of officers and men are repeatedly and effectively illustrated.

1812: The Navy’s War by George C. Daughan

When war broke out between Britain and the United States in 1812, America’s prospects looked dismal. British naval aggression made it clear that the ocean would be the war’s primary battlefield - but America’s navy, only twenty ships strong, faced a practiced British fleet of more than a thousand men-of-war.

Still, through a combination of nautical deftness and sheer bravado, a handful of heroic captains and their stalwart crews managed to turn the tide of the war, besting the haughty skippers of the mighty Royal Navy and cementing America’s newly won independence.

In 1812: The Navy’s War, award-winning naval historian George C. Daughan draws on a wealth of archival research to tell the amazing story of this tiny, battle tested team of Americans and their improbable yet pivotal victories. Daughan thrillingly details the pitched naval battles that shaped the war, and shows how these clashes proved the navy’s vital role in preserving the nation’s interests and independence. This well written history is the first complete account in more than a century of how the U.S. Navy rescued the fledgling nation and secured America’s future. Daughan’s prose is first-rate, and his rousing accounts of battles at sea will certainly appeal to a popular audience. 

I was given this book as a tongue in cheek gift from an American friend who was an ex-US Marine officer with tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was obviously trying to rib me as good friends do. But I really did enjoy this book.

Among the most interesting insights is Daughan’s judgment on the effect of the American invasion attempts in Canada; all ultimately defeated. Demanded by enthusiastic War Hawks unencumbered by knowledge or experience who predicted that the Canadians would flock to U.S. banners, these incursions became the groundwork for a unified Iraq Canada - Ha!

What I liked was the fact that Daughan places the war in its crucial European context, explaining in detail how the course of the Napoleonic Wars shaped British and American decision making and emphasising the North American theatre’s secondary status to the European conflict. While they often verbally castigated Napoleon’s imperial ambitions, American leaders were in the uncomfortable position of needing Napoleon to keep winning while they fought Britain, and his defeat and (first) exile to Elba prompted an immediate scramble to negotiate a settlement. Despite its significance, few historians have bothered to systematically place the War of 1812 in the context of the Napoleonic Wars, and Daughan’s book does exactly that.

Empires of the Seas: The Siege of Malta, The Battle of Lepanto, and the Contest for the Centre of the World by Roger Crowley

In 1521, Suleiman the Magnificent, the great Muslim ruler of the Ottoman Empire, dispatched an invasion fleet to the Christian island of Rhodes. This would prove to be the opening shot in an epic clash between rival empires and faiths for control of the Mediterranean and the center of the world.

In Empires of the Sea, acclaimed historian Roger Crowley has written a thrilling account of this brutal decades-long battle between Christendom and Islam for the soul of Europe, a fast-paced tale of spiralling intensity that ranges from Istanbul to the Gates of Gibraltar.

Crowley conjures up a wild cast of pirates, crusaders, and religious warriors struggling for supremacy and survival in a tale of slavery and galley warfare, desperate bravery and utter brutality.

Empires of the Sea is a story of extraordinary colour and incident, and provides a crucial context for our own clash of civilisations.

One hundred Days: The Memoirs of the Falklands Battle Group Commander by Admiral Sandy Woodward RN

Written by the man who masterminded the British victory in the Falklands, this engrossing memoir chronicles events in the spring of 1982 following Argentina’s takeover of the South Atlantic islands. Admiral Sandy Woodward, a brilliant military tactician, presents a complete picture of the British side of the battle. From the defeat of the Argentine air forces to the sinking of the Belgrano and the daring amphibious landing at Carlos Water, his inside story offers a revealing account of the Royal Navy’s successes and failures.

At times reflective and personal, Woodward imparts his perceptions, fears, and reactions to seemingly disastrous events. He also reveals the steely logic he was famous for as he explains naval strategy and planning. His eyewitness accounts of the sinking of HMS Sheffield and the Battle of Bomb Alley are memorable.

Many in Whitehall and the armed forces considered Woodward the cleverest man in the navy. French newspapers called him “Nelson.” Margaret Thatcher said he was precisely the right man to fight the world’s first computer war. Without question, the admiral’s memoir makes a significant addition to the official record.

At the same time it provides readers with a vivid portrayal of the world of modern naval warfare, where equipment is of astonishing sophistication but the margins for human courage and error are as wide as in the days of Nelson.

3. Fiction

The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk

The majestic novel that inspired the classic Hollywood film The Caine Mutiny with Humphrey Bogart. Herman Wouk's boldly dramatic, brilliantly entertaining novel of life-and mutiny-on a US Navy warship in the Pacific theatre was immediately embraced, upon its original publication in 1951, as one of the first serious works of American fiction to grapple with the moral complexities and the human consequences of World War II.

The Sand Pebbles by Richard McKenna

It’s a fantastic novel that inspired a Steve McQueen film of the same name. Watch the movie if you haven’t, but read the book. It’s impossible to do a story of this sweep justice in two hours, even with the great McQueen starring.

Naval friends tell me The Sand Pebbles has been a fixture on the US Chief of Naval Operations’ Professional development reading list, and thus all mariners should be encouraged to read. And it’s easy to tell why. Most American seafarers will interact with the Far East in this age of the pivot, as indeed they have for decades.

Told through the eyes of a junior enlisted man, The Sand Pebbles recounts the deeds of the crew of the fictional U.S. Navy gunboat San Pablo during the turbulent 1920s, when various parties were vying for supremacy following the overthrow of China’s Qing Dynasty.

It’s a book about the mutual fascination, and sometimes repulsion, between Americans and Chinese; the tension between American missionaries and the sailors entrusted with protecting them; and China’s descent into chaos following the collapse of dynastic rule.

How do you separate fact from fiction or myth when writing a historical novel. Wisely, McKenna lets the reader to conclude there’s an element of myth to all accounts of history. Causality - what factors brought about historical events - is in the eye of the beholder. The best an author of historical fiction can do, then, is devote ample space to all contending myths and leave it up to readers to judge. Sailors, missionaries, and ordinary Chinese get their say in his pages, to illuminating effect. Authors report, the readers decide.

Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War by P.W. Singer and August Cole 

The United States, China, and Russia eye each other across a twenty-first century version of the Cold War, which suddenly heats up at sea, on land, in the air, in outer space, and in cyberspace. The fighting involves everything from stealthy robotic–drone strikes to old warships from the navy’s “ghost fleet.” Fighter pilots unleash a Pearl Harbor-style attack; American veterans become low-tech insurgents; teenage hackers battle in digital playgrounds; Silicon Valley billionaires mobilise for cyber-war; and a serial killer carries out her own vendetta. Ultimately, victory will depend on blending the lessons of the past with the weapons of the future.

The book’s title, Ghost Fleet, comes from an expression used in the U.S. Navy that refers to partially or fully decommissioned ships kept in reserve for potential use in future conflict. These ships, as one might imagine, are older and naturally less technologically sophisticated than their modern counterparts. Singer and Cole cleverly use this concept, retiring older ships and weaponry in favour of newer versions with higher technological integration, to illustrate a key motif in the book: while America’s newest generation of warfighting machinery and gear is capable of inflicting greater levels of punishment, it is also vulnerable to foreign threats in ways that its predecessors were not. The multi-billion dollar, next generation F-35 aircraft, for instance, is rendered powerless after it is revealed that Chinese microprocessor manufacturers had implanted malicious code into products intended for the jet.

I’m a huge sucker for intelligently written thrillers and I found Ghost Fleet to be a page-turning speculative thriller in the spirit of Tom Clancy’s The Hunt for Red October. The debut novel by two leading experts on the cutting edge of national security, it is unique in that every trend and technology featured in the novel - no matter how sci-fi it may seem - is real, or could be soon.

Master and Commander by Patrick O’Brian (Aubery-Maturin series)

This, the first of twenty in the splendid series of the famous Jack Aubrey novels, establishes the friendship between Captain Jack Aubrey, R.N., and Stephen Maturin, ship’s Irish-Catalan surgeon and intelligence agent, against a thrilling backdrop of the Napoleonic wars. Details of a life aboard a man-of-war in Nelson’s navy are faultlessly rendered: the conversational idiom of the officers in the ward room and the men on the lower deck, the food, the floggings, the mysteries of the wind and the rigging, and the roar of broadsides as the great ships close in battle.

I have the first editions of some of the series and I have treasured them ever since I read them as a teenager. I felt like stowing away on the first ship I could find in Plymouth. The Hollywood film version by Peter Weir with Russell Crowe as Jack Aubrey is a masterful swashbuckling film and perhaps a delightful way into the deeper riches of the other novels in the epic series.

Beat to Quarters by C.S. Forester (Horatio Hornblower series)

Horatio Hornblower remains for many the best known and most loved of these British naval heroes of Napoleonic Age. In ten books Forester recounts Hornblower's rise from midshipman to admiral, during the British navy's confrontation with Revolutionary and Napoleonic France. For readers, the books work as a window into history because of the outstanding details that appear in these books. Through this singular series, according to critics, C.S. Forrester - like Patrick O’Brian - has contributed his own uniqueness to the confluence of fact and fiction.

They are above all ‘ripping good yarns’, with fast-moving plots, stirring battle scenes, lively dialogue, and vivid characters, but they also offer a picture of the British navy during the period; and Hornblower himself is an original and memorable literary creation as fictionally charismatic as James Bond.

Young Hornblower is introspective, morose, self-doubting. He is crippled by the fear that he does not have the qualities to  command other men. He is harder on himself than anyone else would dare to be – and is, simply, one of the most complete creations of character in fiction. This is why many teenagers love Hornblower because they can see something of themselves in his adventures from from chronic self-doubt to soaring swashbuckling self-confidence. Hornblower is much more relatable than the brooding seasoned Jack Aubrey for instance.

I recommend reading the books in the order they were written rather than chronologically. In the first written novel, Beat to Quarters (also published as The Happy Return), we find Hornblower in command of a frigate in lonely Pacific waters off Spanish Central America. He has to deal with a mad revolutionary, fight single-ship duels with a larger vessel, and cope with Lady Barbara Wellesley (who provides a romantic interest to the series).

In A Ship of the Line Hornblower is sent into the Mediterranean, where he wreaks havoc on French coastal communications before plunging into a battle against the odds. Flying Colours is mostly set in France: in it Hornblower escapes captivity and returns to England a hero. In The Commodore he is sent with a squadron into the Baltic, where he has to cope with the complex politics of the region as well as helping with the siege of Riga. And in Lord Hornblower a mutiny leads to involvement with the fall of Napoleon — and brings him to prison and a death sentence during the Hundred Days. Forester then went back and described Hornblower's earlier career. Lieutenant Hornblower is perhaps my favourite of the Hornblower books.

Piece of cake by Derek Robinson

It’s an epic tome covering the opening twelve months of World War Two, from the phony war in France to the hasty retreat back across the Channel and then the valiant stand against the might of the Luftwaffe in what became known as the Battle of Britain.

The book follows the exploits of the fictional Hornet squadron and its members, a group of men who work hard and play harder. Though fiction, this immaculately researched novel based on an RAF Hurricane fighter squadron in 1940 highlights the ill-preparedness of Britain in the early stages of Word War Two.

Its British black humour is on full throttle with its nuanced observations of class politics and institutional ineptness. The manic misfits, heroes and bullies of Hornet Squadron discover that aerial combat is nothing like what they have been trained for. The writing sears the reader’s brain and produces some of the finest writing on the air war ever put to paper.

Be warned, though, this story isn’t about one specific character or ‘hero’. Indeed, just as you get to know a pilot, they are either chopped or killed; such is the nature of war in the air. Even though this is initially frustrating, you soon come to realise just how authentic Robinson’s storytelling is, and that this is exactly what it must have been like to be part of an RAF squadron on active service, never knowing who of your comrades would be alive from day to day. And, although the war proper for Hornet squadron doesn’t start until late in the book, when it does come the rendition of the dogfights in the air are so gripping that you’ll feel like you are actually there, sat next to the pilot in his cramped Hurricane cockpit, as Messerschmitt 109s scream by spitting death from all points of the compass.

All in all, this is a thoroughly entertaining (and educational) novel, and a must read for anyone interested in the RAF and how so few stood against so many. It has the dark humour of Heller’s Catch 22 but with a very distinctive British humour that can be lost on other foreigners. I recommend it as a honest and healthy antidote to anyone thinking of all pilots and the brave deeds they do in some deified light when in fact they are human and flawed as anyone else. Anyone who’s ever been a pilot will recognise some archetype in their own real life in this darkly comic British novel.

Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad

Lord Jim has it all. It's not just a novel of the sea but a work of moral philosophy.

Night Flight by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

In my humble opinion the greatest aviation fiction book ever written. It made the celebrated French aviator famous and Antoine de Saint-Exupery would go on to write the timeless classic The Little Prince.

Saint-Exupéry, though born into French nobility was always the odd one out as a child. Portly but jovial, he had bags of courage and curiosity to match his thirst for adventure and travel. He doggedly pursued his dream of becoming a pioneering pilot. In the 1930s he was an airline pilot who flew the north African and south Atlantic mail routes. During the long lonely hours in the cockpit he had enough time to accumulate experience and reflections which could be fit into Night Flight.

The novel itself narrates the terrifying story of Fabien, a pilot who conducted night mail planes, from Patagonia, Chile, and Paraguay to Argentina in the early days of commercial aviation when it was dangerous and pilots died often in horrendous accidents. The book romantically captures the danger and loneliness of these early commercial pilots, blazing routes in the days before radar, GPS and jet engines.

Night Flight is a good gateway into his other aviation themed books. Each of them are magical in capturing the austere feelings of seeing the world and its landscapes from above. Southern Mail, The Aviator, and Wind, Sand and Stars are fantastic reads.

Night Flight is inspiring for every pilot by sharing a unique magic of piloting an airplane.

These books changed my life as it inspired me to fly as a late teen. I still re-read Saint-Exupery’s writings sometimes as a way to tap into that youthful joy of discovering the wonders of flying a plane and when the impossible was only limited by your will and imagination. I cannot recommend his novels highly enough.

4. Classical

The Odyssey by Homer translated by Emily Wilson

Homer should the read at any age and for all seasons. I’ve chosen Emily Wilson’s recent translation because it’s good and not just because her publication was billed as the first woman to ever translate Homer. Wilson is an Oxford educated Classicist now a professor of Classics at Pennsylvania. Every discussion of Emily Wilson’s Odyssey is prefaced with the fact that hers is the first English translation of the poem by a woman, but it’s worth noting that Caroline Alexander’s Iliad (Ecco 2015) was also published as the first English translation by a woman to much less hoopla (to say nothing of Sarah Ruden’s Aeneid, Yale University Press 2009).

While a woman translating Homer’s epic is certainly a huge milestone, Wilson’s interpretation is a radical, fascinating achievement regardless of her gender. Disregard the marketing hype and the Wilson’s translation of Odysseus’ epic sea voyage home still stands tall for its fast paced narrative.

Compared with her predecessors’, Wilson’s Odyssey feels more readable, more alive: the diction, with some exceptions discussed below, is straightforward, and the lines are short. The effect is to turn the Odyssey into a quick-paced page turner, an experience I’d never had reading this epic poem in translation.

The War of the Peloponnesians and the Athenians by Thucydides translated by Jeremy Mynott

This is the classic treatise about what is essentially rowboats and spears of one of the most important and defining wars of Western civilisation. A long story of people killing one another, cynically justifying their cruelties in pursuit of power, making gross, stupid and fatal miscalculations, in a world devoid of justice. It's a long, drawn out tragedy without any redeeming or uplifting catharsis. If you are not already an extreme pessimist, you will lose all illusions about the inherent goodness of human beings and the possibility of influencing the course of events for the better after you read this book. You will be sadder but you will be wiser. Thucydides called his account of two decades of war between Athens and Sparta “a possession for all time,” and indeed it is the first and still most famous work in the Western historical tradition.

People look at me in a shocked way when I tell them that you can learn 90 percent of what you need to know about politics and war from Thucydides. Maritime strategy falls among the remaining 10 percent. If you want to read about the making of strategy, Clausewitz & Co. are your go-to works. If you want big thoughts about armed strife pitting a land against a sea power, Thucydides is your man. Considered essential reading for generals, admirals, statesmen, and liberally educated citizens for more than 2,000 years, The Peloponnesian War is a mine of military, naval, moral, political, and philosophical wisdom.

Finding the best and most accessible translation (and commentary) is key otherwise you risk putting off the novice reader (especially the young) from ever taking an interest in the Classical world e.g. I would never give the Thomas Hobbes translation to anyone who is easily bored or is impatient with old English. There are many good modern translations to choose from and here you have Strassler, Blanco, and Lattimore that are more used in America. Richard Crawley’s is the most popular but also the least accurate.

My own personal recommendation would be to go for Jeremy Mynott’s 2013 work which he titled The War of the Peloponnesians and the Athenians. Mynott was a former publishing head at Cambridge University Press and emeritus fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge, as well as a leading expert on birds and natural history. Mynott’s aim is to re-introduce Thucydides to the reader in his “proper cultural and historical context”, and to strip back the “anachronistic concepts derived from later developments and theories”. Hence the name of the book: The War of the Peloponnesians and the Athenians, not, as it is usually called today, The Peloponnesian War.

But what is in a name? In this case, a great deal, since it contains Mynott’s mission statement in miniature. He has dropped the conventional name for the work, for which he correctly says there is no evidence from antiquity, in favour of a less one-sided title derived from Thucydides’s opening sentence. This is just one example of the accretions which Mynott’s edition aims to remove, so that the reader can come closer to being able to appreciate Thucydides’s work as it might have been received in classical Greece. In my humble opinion it is a minor miracle that Mynott has achieved in conveying in modern English the literary qualities of this most political of ancient historians.

The Peloponnesian War by Donald Kagan

I’m deliberating ignoring Victor David Hanson’s book on the Peloponnesian War (A War Like No Other) not because it’s not good (because it is in parts) but because I prefer Prof. Donald Kagan’s book.  Professor Kagan at Yale is one of the foremost scholars of Ancient Greek history. He has written a concise but thorough history of the Peloponnesian War for a general audience It's not the least bit dry for those with an interest in ancient history. The book’s an easy read. Kagan’s writing style is clear and straightforward.

Like any scholar worth his salt, Kagan is conversant with the scholarly consensus, with which he is for the most part in step, though he occasionally offers alternative scenarios. Much of the book is simply riveting. Like when the Spartan general Brasidas retakes Amphipolis, or the naval battle fought late in the war for control of the Hellespont. Woven throughout is the longer story of the Athenian turncoat, Alcibiades. Kagan’s analysis of the tactics and strategy of the conflict always seems on target. Interestingly, despite their reputations, the aristocratic Spartans usually come across as vacillating and indecisive while the democratic Athenians are aggressive and usually seize opportunity with successful results. Kagan refrains from drawing analogies to modern politics, although there’s certainly plenty of opportunity for it.

Professor Kagan preceded this one-volume history with a four-volume history of the war that took him around 20 years to write. That four volume series is a much more detailed and academic consideration of political motives and military strategy. But with this single volume, Kagan was able to produce a fast-moving tale, full of incident and colourful description easily readable for the general reader.  

Lords of the Sea by John R. Hale

This book spans the history of the Athenian navy, starting with its founder, Themistocles, and carrying the story through to the fall of Athens - its real fall at the hands of Alexander the Great, not the brief unpleasantness at Spartan hands - in 4th century B.C. Along the way Hale furnishes a wealth of details about naval warfare in classical antiquity. Lords of the Sea profiles Athens' seafaring culture fascinatingly, probing subjects on which Thucydides remains silent. An invaluable companion to Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, and a rollicking read to boot.

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

Meditations is a series of personal writings by Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor 161–180 CE, setting forth his ideas on Stoic philosophy. Marcus Aurelius wrote the 12 books of the Meditations in Koine Greek as a source for his own guidance and self-improvement. It is possible that large portions of the work were written at Sirmium, where he spent much time planning military campaigns from 170 to 180. Some of it was written while he was positioned at Aquincum on campaign in Pannonia, because internal notes tell us that the second book was written when he was campaigning against the Quadi on the river Granova (modern-day Hron) and the third book was written at Carnuntum.

It is not clear that he ever intended the writings to be published, so the title Meditations is but one of several commonly assigned to the collection. These writings take the form of quotations varying in length from one sentence to long paragraphs.

When US Vice-Admiral. James Stockdale was shot down and became a prisoner of war in Vietnam, he attributed his survival to studying stoic philosophies, particularly Marcus Aurelius’ “Meditations.” Aurelius, the Roman emperor, wrote his simple rules for living by candlelight and they have been a source of strength for the thoughtful man of arms or the cultured citizen ever since. I also think teenagers would gain a lot from reading Meditations than endure reading angst-ridden nihilism of many tacky teenage books out there.

SPQR by Mary Beard

Anything by Cambridge Classics professor Mary Beard is worth reading. Everyone loves Mary Beard, fast becoming one of Britain’s national treasure. I’m not just saying all this because she was one of my teachers at Cambridge. I think SPQR is a wonderful book. Ancient Roman history is so very dense and intricate that it can be difficult to teach and learn about. Mary Beard makes it accessible- and she goes through it all, from the early days right up until the present day.

Ancient Rome was an imposing city even by modern standards, a sprawling imperial metropolis of more than a million inhabitants, a "mixture of luxury and filth, liberty and exploitation, civic pride and murderous civil war" that served as the seat of power for an empire that spanned from Spain to Syria. Yet how did all this emerge from what was once an insignificant village in central Italy? Mary Beard provides a sweeping revisionist history to get to grips with this thematic question.

‘SPQR’ is just four letters, but interwoven in those four letters are thousands of years and pages of Roman history. Cicero used to talk about the ’concordia ordinum.’ He said there was a harmony between all the orders in Rome. It’s like a pyramid hierarchy structure. At the top you have the ′senatus′ or the Senate—the aristocrats, the rich men who make decisions. Underneath that you have the ’equites’ who we don’t talk about as much , but they have their own spheres of power. They’ve got a bit of money and are a lower level. And underneath that you’ve got the ’populus’ or the people. SPQR is the harmony between the senatus and the populus and how they work together. That’s where Rome comes from: it’s not just about the Senate. The Senate can’t work without the people and vice versa. So ‘SPQR’ is basically a four-letter summation of the Roman constitution. It’s what it should be, though often isn’t. One of the reasons why - and she writes about this very well - Rome falls apart is because that relationship of harmony and hierarchy does fall apart under Caesar and Pompey in the 1st century BC.

Imperium by Robert Harris

This is one of my favourite novels, even if it weren’t classical, because like all Harris’ books it’s written like a smart thriller. I’m a huge Robert Harris fan. A lot of Robert Harris’ books are quite similar: they have a protagonist and you see the story - all the machinations - through his eyes. In Imperium we see the life of Cicero through the eyes of his slave, Tiro. We know Tiro was a real person, who recorded everything Cicero wrote.

The late Republic is one of my favourite periods of any period of history ever. You get all the figures: Cicero, Caesar, Pompey, Crassus, Octavian, Antony and Cato. Robert Harris paints compelling portraits of these people so nicely that even with Crassus, say, who comes up every so often, you get a sense of who he is. There are actually two more books in the trilogy: Lustrum and Dictator. Once you get to Dictator, you know who Julius Caesar really is, you know why he’s doing it.

[nakamina]

How similar are Hanyu Yuzuru and Katsuki Yuri? - The Never Ending Debate

Hi all,

Nakamina here again with a long blog post. Now before ya’ll get triggered from this title please read the following.

So about a year ago I made a Yuzu fan video (which you can find below) and I have received many comments since comparing him to Yuri from the anime ‘Yuri!!! on ICE’ (YOI) which is a figure skating themed anime that aired in the fall of 2016.

The kind of comments being:

“Yuzu is the real Yuri!“ (<- pretty much got about 10+ of these)

“He is the inspiration of Yuri”

“He looks so much like Yuri”

“He reminds me of Yuri”

“Yuzuru Hanyu and Javier Fernandes look like Yuri and Viktor!”

Now, this is really no surprise since I used the anime’s opening song ‘History Maker’ for this video, although the video itself really does not make any reference to the anime. But it got me thinking…how similar/different are they actually??

DISCLAIMER: I would just like to say that this comparison is purely for fun and I am not here to put down Yuzuru Hanyu nor YOI. I became a fan of Yuzu long before YOI came out and I am also a massive anime otaku. So obviously, I support both fandoms and am not here to discredit one or the other. I thought this would be something interesting since so many people point it out and I genuinely want to nut out their differences and similarities in a neutral and unbiased manner for once, since this topic seems to only ever bring in a cat fight between the figure skating fandom and anime fandom… Let’s change that!

Yuzuru Hanyu vs Katsuki Yuri

SIMILARITIES

Race and Cultural Background

I guess this is an inevitable similarity since they come from the same country and culture. Yes, they are both Japanese and have black hair, black eyes, wears glasses…etc the list goes on. I mean Yuzu probably also likes Katsu-don too (maybe). These similarities are applicable to most Japanese men really, and hence why I think this is the main aspect that a lot of people tend to focus and highlight on.

Idolising a Russian Skater

What a lot of the people also point are the two’s idolisation towards a Russian skater. This is also no surprise. When I first saw YOI I too thought that this was very reminiscent of Yuzu’s idolisation towards Evgeni Plushenko. They both grew up watching their Russian idols on TV and consider them as their ultimate inspiration. Yuzu also has formed quite a friendly relationship with Plushenko since, and has even gone far as to use one of his iconic pieces for his 2018-2019 free program - ‘Tribute to Nijinsky’. Much like how Yuri skates to Viktor’s choice of music and choreography, and wears one of his previous costumes for his short program in the anime. 

Hometown Support

This is probably a less obvious one but in YOI there is a decent sense of “Jimoto ai” - hometown love. There are a number of scenes where it depicts the support Yuri receives from his home town. As many would know Yuzu also receives a lot of support from his hometown in Sendai/Miyagi, and Yuzu himself has also raised many funds for the recovery from the 2011 earthquake. They are both from different prefectures, but their love for their hometown are quite alike.

Relationship with Family

With all that being said, I think the most noteworthy thing the two have in common is their family bond. Yuri is shown to have a strong relationship with his family, and from what I know Yuzu also does with his family, notably his mother. Family & love is a reoccurring theme in YOI. Yuri’s quote from ep 4: “...my family never treated me like a weakling. They all had faith that I’d keep growing as a person, and they never stepped over the line.”.  Yuzu has also stated in an interview after his second Olympic win that the people he feels the most gratitude towards is his family, for their unconditional support throughout his whole skating career. I personally think this is the most significant alikeness between the two that a lot of people seem to undermine. Yuri’s family has unconditionally loved and believed in him (as quoted from the anime), which I think is very similar to that of Yuzu’s relationship with his family.

DIFFERENCES

Track Record

In terms of track record, the two are quite different. Yes, the two are Japan National Champions but when speaking at an international level the differences are apparent. Yuri is more of a late bloomer as a competitive skater while Yuzu is very much an early bloomer. Yuri first medalled at the GPF at age 24 (Re YOI ep12), whereas Yuzu first medalled at the GPF at the age of 17. Also, Yuri first qualified for the GPF at age 23 (Re YOI ep1) while Yuzu first qualified for the GPF at age 16. By the age of 23 Yuzu has also won numerous other international titles such as 2x World Championship golds, 4x GPF golds and 2x Olympic golds. So there are some stark differences in terms of their career progression. Now I know the Olympics and Worlds were not mentioned in the anime; however, judging from the whole tone of the anime and what was heard from Yuri’s monologues, the likelihood of him winning one of these titles in the past is very low. Although I would say Yuri winning the 4CC (Four Continents Championships) is a possibility.  

Side note: Actually looking into their track records has made me realise how rapid and incredible Yuzu’s achievements were… no wonder he is called a living legend. Yuri’s track record by all means is very impressive as well, as it is a lot more than what most figure skaters can ever achieve in their life time.

Personality

Another major difference is their personality. Yes, they are both very competitive and hate to lose, but from what I have seen Yuri easily gets anxious and lacks confidence. We can see that from the way he desperately avoids to even listen to the other performances in episode 7 in order to calm his nerves. Of course this gradually changes in Yuri, and we see that he learns to handle the pressure better in competitions. As for Yuzu, he lives off pressure and gets motivated the more his competitors do well. Yuzu has stated that his “ideal” way of winning is for him to defeat the other competitors when they are are at their best. 

Skating skills/style

Yuzu, at this point in time, can jump the quad salchow, quad toe-loop, quad loop & quad lutz. Yuri is able to do the quad salchow, quad toe loop and…the quad flip, which just happens to be the one quadruple jump (excluding the axel) that Yuzu cannot do. Interesting aye? 

Also, Yuzu is very much an all rounded skater, and has been for the majority of his senior career. He is well renowned for possessing great artistry and technical skills that are on par with each other. Whereas Yuri’s strength leans more towards the components/artistic side of skating (Refer to YOI ep 4). Yuri is very expressive in the way that he performs and interprets music quite well, but he has the tendency to flop when it comes to his jumps. However, this too gradually changes following Viktor’s coaching as he starts to polish up Yuri’s skills in other areas too. 

New York Times Article on Yuzuru Hanyu:

Body Type, Physical Condition   

Yuri, in the anime, is very susceptible to binge eat and gains weight easily. His love for food, especially Katsu-don, is clearly depicted in the anime, and it’s apparent that the act of eating brings him joy. Yuzu on the other hand really has no interest in eating, and suffers from the total opposite concern of being unable to gain weight. 

Another stark difference is their stamina. Yuri’s stamina has always been one of his strengths; whereas Yuzu suffers from asthma and has struggled with stamina especially during his early senior years. 

Final Verdict/Thoughts

So I think we can see that Yuzu and Yuri are somewhat similar in terms of race, background and upbringing, but are quite different in terms of personality, skating skills/style and track record.

I like to actually think that bits of Yuzu’s traits are shown through not just Yuri but multiple characters in YOI. He has the charisma of Viktor, drive of Yurio and love/affection of Yuri. Just like how we see bits of Yuzu in lot of these characters, the character of Yuri was inspired by various iconic skaters; noteworthy ones being Machida Tatsuki and Takahashi Daisuke.

Many people worked hard to create this anime, just like how Yuzu has worked his butt off to get to where he is now. I think it is okay for people to compare the two, just as long as you respect and acknowledge the fact that Yuri is his own character and Yuzu is his own person. I think it is great that a lot of people found out about Yuzu and Figure Skating through this anime. I’m also sure that there are people who got into YOI as they were initially part of the figure skating fandom or were Yuzu fans (like myself!). 

I sincerely hope people have not been offended by this blog. I tried being objective as possible. Adios until my next post! 

[luv-surveys]

38

Put your music player on shuffle and list the first 10 songs.

hungarian march - hector berlioz

by your side (klischee remix) - klischee & tim freitag

memories (drinks bring back) - ajay stephens (cover)

lone digger - caravan palace

confident - demi lovato

rasputin - boney m.

second suite in f major, movement iv - gustav holst

slavonic fantasy - milan rericha

ma vlast, the moldau - bedrich smetana

cinnamon girl (club edit) - [dunkelbunt]

If you could spend a week anywhere in the world, where would it be and why? Would you take anyone with you? i would spend a week in japan with my boyfriend, because i’ve always wanted to visit japan and tokyo and immerse myself in their culture -- it’s so fascinating!

What is your preferred writing implement? (eg. Blue pen, pencil, green pen) black pen.

Favorite month and why? i’m going to say may, because it’s pretty and warm and school is wrapping up (although maybe not this year...).

Do you have connections to any celebrities (even minor)? List them. nope.

Name 3 items you could pick up from where you are. my phone, my water bottle, and my lamp.

What brand logo is closest to you currently? asus.

Do you ever play board games or other non-computer games? Got any favorites? i occasionally play board games, mostly with my family or at my boyfriend’s house. my brother-in-law loves board games so we usually play one when we visit. my personal favorite board game is the game of life.

Name a musical artist you love that isn’t well known. caravan palace! i love electroswing and they’re top-tier. electroswing is a very underrated genre of music in my opinion.

Name a musical artist you love that is well known. i really like the beatles!

What is your desktop background currently? it’s my marching band section from my sophomore year at senior recognition.

Last person you talked to, and through what you talked to them? i last talked to my friend through discord.

First color name you can think of that isn’t in the rainbow? pink lol.

What timekeeping devices are in the room you are currently in? there’s my alarm clock, my phone, and my computer.

What kind of headphones do you use? i use apple earbuds and soundpal sonobass headphones.

What musical artists have you seen perform live? i’ve seen the trans-siberian orchestra perform live... and that’s it.

Does virginity matter to you? it does.

What gaming consoles do you or your family own? we own a nintendo 64, a supernintendo, a playstation, a wii, and a switch.

What pets do you have? i have a dog.

What’s the best job you’ve ever had? i’ve never had a job.

What’s the worst job you’ve ever had? still never had a job!

What magazines do you read, if any? i don’t read magazines anymore.

Inspiration behind your URL? it’s aesthetic and it’s about surveys. and i “luv” surveys.

Inspiration behind your blog title? i don’t have a blog.

Favorite item of clothing? probably my mom jeans, i always feel extra cute when i wear them.

Are you friends with any exes? nope.

Name at least one book you loved as a child. i loved little house on the prarie.

What’s your native language? If that language has distinct regional variations, which variation? (eg. AU English, US English) my native language is american english.

What email service do you use? i use gmail and outlook.

Is there anything hanging on the walls of the room you are currently in? there’s a calendar and posters from marching band and winter percussion.

What’s your favorite number, and why? i like 4. it’s just very simple and even.

Earliest moment in your life you can remember? standing at the window in my dining room and looking at my neighbor’s house. my mom came over and told me that a little girl lived there and i was going to meet her. she was my best friend for 10 years.

What did you have for dinner yesterday? we had chicken fingers, asparagus, and macaroni and cheese.

How often do you brush your teeth? twice daily.

What’s your favorite candy/chocolate? i like heath bars.

Have you had other blogs on Tumblr? Do you have any other blogs currently? yes, i had a blog where i would post “aesthetic” pictures in middle school, and then a studyblr.

If you were suddenly really hungry, what would you choose to eat? right now, i’d probably eat some cheez-its.

What fandoms would you consider yourself a part of? pokemon, legend of zelda, avatar the last airbender, harry potter, puella magi madoka magica. just look at the reddits i’ve joined haha.

If you could study anything, what would it be? music!

Do you use anything on your lips? (eg. Chapstick, gloss, balm, lipstick) yes, i use burt’s bees chapstick.

How would you describe your sense of humour? it’s sarcastic and spontaneous.

What things annoy you more than anything else? mean people, people who aren’t open-minded, dry hands.

What kind of position are you in at the moment? i’m cross-legged on my bed.

Do you wear much jewelry?

nope.

Who is the leader of your country, currently? Any other levels of government with leaders? (State, region, province, county, district, municipality, etc) our current leader is president trump. we have a state and local government but i don’t know the leaders of those.

What do you carry your money in? it’s in my purse.

Do you enjoy driving? Why or why not? it’s okay. i enjoy it but it’s stressful and i keep having nightmares where i’m a terrible driver haha.

Longest drive you have ever been on? we’ve driven about six hours i believe.

Furthest away from home you have ever been? when i went to russia.

How many times have you moved in your life? i’ve never moved.

What is on the floor of the room you’re currently in, not including furniture?

my trash can, my mirror, my hamper, pillows, music, my instruments, my music stand, and my backpack.

How many devices do you own which can access the internet? five.

Is there is anything that is guaranteed to always make you happy? yes, sleep haha.

Is there anything that always makes you sad? watching titanic haha.

What programs do you currently have open? i have chrome open.

What do you associate the color red with? passion.

Last strong smell you can remember smelling? the vanilla mug cake i made earlier.

Last healthy thing you ate? dinner (which was chicken fingers, asparagus, and mac n cheese).

Do you drink tea or coffee, and how much per day? i do not.

What do you associate the color blue with? the ocean.

How long is the closest ruler you can find? it’s probably one foot.

What color pants/skirt/etc are you currently wearing? light blue.

When was the last time you drank water? about 30 minutes ago.

How often do you clear your browser history? maybe once a month.

Do you believe nude photos can be artistic, rather than erotic? yep.

Ever written fanfiction for anything? yes, i wrote neopets fanfiction when i was younger LOL.

Last formal event you attended? my awards for marching band.

If you had to move your birthday to another date, which one would you choose and why? i would choose mid january, because i’m tired of being the youngest in the grade! fall birthdays suck :(

Would you prefer to be at a beach or in the countryside? the beach.

Roughly how many people live in your town? about 15000.

Do you know anyone with the same birthday as you? nope.

Favorite place to shop? Can be a certain store or a place where there are multiple stores a mall about 45 minutes away from my house.

Do you have a smartphone? What kind? If you don’t, do you want one? i have an iphone 8.

What is your favorite colour, and why? my favorite color is yellow, because it’s a happy bright color :)

How do you spell grey/gray? i spell it gray.

Go to your dashboard and describe the image shown in the radar section (below the “Find blogs” link) it’s a cat in a plant! :D

What difference is there between how many followers you have, and the number of blogs you follow? 51 lmaoo.

How many posts do you have? this is my 40th post.

How many posts have you liked? i’ve liked 21 posts.

Do you post mainly reblogs, or your own content? it’s mostly my own content, but i take the surveys from other accounts.

Do you track any tags? i don’t believe so.

What time is it currently? it’s 12:18am.

Is there anything you should be doing right now? sleeping, probably haha.

[siberianchan]

The article makes good points tho.

You can read it here.

"[...]" As a kid in the 1980s, I heard dire warnings from my evangelical elders about the fantasy role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons. It was, we were told, a foothold of the occult.

Although I never played D&D, I didn’t take these admonitions all that seriously, because I reasoned that the same logic could be applied to Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings or Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia.

Now, in the 2020s, I am wondering if my evangelical elders weren’t partly right about the way fantasy role-playing can paganize a culture—just not in the way they expected. "[...]"

Yes, the scare was real and most sane folks looked at it and were like "... sure Jan."

The article then goes on to summarise another article in the Atlantic by Jennifer Senior about Steve Bannon:

"[...]" Senior points to a 2018 documentary in which Bannon explains to a filmmaker how, when working in the internet gaming industry, he was surprised to learn just how many people are devoted to playing multiplayer online games. Bannon interprets this intensity through the grid of a hypothetical man, Dave from accounts payable, in the days after his death.

“Some preacher from a church or some guy from a funeral home who’s never met him does a 10-minute eulogy, says a few prayers. And that’s Dave,” Bannon says. He contrasts this boring, real-life Dave from accounts payable with Dave’s online gaming persona: Ajax. Ajax is tough and warlike. When he dies in the fantasy, there’s a funeral pyre and thousands of people come to mourn Ajax the Warrior.

“‘Now, who’s more real?’ Bannon asks. Dave in Accounting? Or Ajax?” Senior writes. Bannon realizes that “some people—particularly disaffected men—actively prefer and better identify with the online versions of themselves.” "[...]"

Basically, Bannon tapped into the power fantasies of disaffected Americans and went on feeding these fantasies of the lone, strong saviour that can save the degenerating country.

"[...]" Bannon tapped into this, Senior reports, when he acquired Breitbart News and realized that the comments section could become more of a community for certain angry, lonely individuals than “the town they live in, the old bowling league.” He noted that the comments section “could be weaponized at some point in time. The angry voices, properly directed, have latent political power.”

Senior asked whether Bannon considers what he has done in propagating political media and in energizing populist nationalist movements to be “the gamification of politics.” He replied that this is exactly what he’s doing: “I want Dave in Accounting to be Ajax in his life.” "[...]"

The article goes on how this fed right into conspiracy theories, QAnon etc, carried by men who believe themselves the hero of their own story, touching on a bunch of concepts. It's a pretty long read and the author has an... interesting idea about paganism.

But the gist is: right wing media fed disaffected white Americans a ton of crap about how this country needs them for salvation, how they can gain meaning beyond their insignificant little lives.

Something something how the Pagan afterlife is not something to strife for and how Jesus is salvation.

Then another good point.

"[...]" Our culture of fantasy role-playing is leading us to some perilous places. Sadly, we often replicate it even within the church. There are dragons indeed, both within and without. Yet sometimes the dragon is not the one we’re slaying in our fantasies but the one offering us the illusion of belonging, glory, and meaning—the very one that will just chain us up in one more dungeon. "[...]"

Of course the answer to this problem is moar Jesus, but well.

All summed up: people seek meaning and belonging in their lives and want to make sense if the world around them. Doing this via fantasy roleplaying is one way of doing that and it's fine (not as fine as Jesus, tho). But it gave some folks the idea to feed into the dissatisfaction of white right wing Americans. Could have been avoided if they found meaning in their communities and their institutions (a.k.a. church.)

So yeah. Mostly solid article.

Promise?

[nayakwon]

Chapter I

JULY 20, 2011

Orange County, Southern California, USA

“If you have gone through this already, you will most certainly recognize each following word: denial, anger, negotiation, depression, acceptance. Although death is the only certainty of all mankind, no one is ever prepared to go through emotional mourning”. 

Genre - angst, darkfic, fluff, smut

Warnings - [18+ but y’all know anyone actually respects this shit anymore] none, for the moment. Oh, and english is not my first language. I’m looking for someone to help me to edit the chapters. If u r interested, plz, inbox me. 

Words - 2k

She knew that from exactly sixty minutes on, a year would be complete. The girl's brown orbs were almost wide-eyed, fixed on the flashing red points that marked the hours on her digital clock by the bed. Even facing the opposite side, she could feel the look of her twin sister on her back, penetrating her ribs, giving the signal that she was also aware of the approaching date in three thousand six hundred seconds.

If you have gone through this already, you will most certainly recognize each following word: denial, anger, negotiation, depression, acceptance. Although death is the only certainty of all mankind, no one is ever prepared to go through emotional mourning. The intense pain, the feeling of revolt, the deep emptiness. The whole family was aware of all these emotions.

Just over a year ago, Naya Valentini and her family had lost two members of their family tree. Under her precise social perception, her favorite uncle and her younger sister. Matteo Valentini was that uncle that it didn’t matter the situation, he could make every single day better. He was the life of family reunions, and after getting divorced, it felt like he was doing better in life than anyone else in the world. That afternoon, in July 2010, he had taken the triplets Max, Graham and Sophie to the movies. Everyone was excited, talking about the debut of My Favorite Evil. What nobody knew was that when they returned, tragedy awaited them. The white van hit the driver's entire side, including the back.

When her parents arrived at the hospital after being notified, the news that Matteo had died instantly frightened them with the idea of the possible death of their sons hammering in the head. Fortunately, the boys would recover quickly, but Sophie had been rushed to the OR. Naya was not together during the emergency, in fact, she and her other siblings had lagged behind to take care of the new foster child of the family, a newborn.

At home, everything was in chaos, and she remembered the scene altogether, which her brain insisted on displaying in slow motion: Liam trying to make Autie stop screaming that she wanted to have gone along, Ethan almost blowing up the microwave while preparing something to eat. Naya tried to finish helping Devyn in the shower, but the baby's crying deconcentrated her.

With parents away from home and the dread of the idea of younger brothers and uncle being involved in an accident, the four elders were able - with much effort - to bring the heavy mattresses downstairs, where they had decided to spend the night together, with the strategy of getting a better look at the younger ones. It was dawn when her father arrived, finding all the children on the floor of their living room, sleeping, except for Lexi, who still was giving Joey a baby formula. Naya still remembered being awakened, and how her father had tried to be as gentle as he could be when telling that Uncle Matt and Sophie had died.

            "I can’t sleep either." She heard her sister's voice over her shoulder.

And in that simple sentence, it was possible to feel the weight. They both knew how difficult it had been for the whole family, especially the matriarch, who had lost her ground altogether. The situation was ten times worse when Moon entered the fourth and more difficult stage of mourning: depression. They knew that, like everyone else, she was struggling to move on, however, every time she looked at the newborn, the image of Sophie in her arms for the first time came back in flashes. Her father had suffered two losses at one time - his daughter and his older brother. The mornings in the kitchen, once livened up by the children's conversations, suddenly became quieter. The children's mother had just recovered from the last phase, acceptance, and the one-year anniversary had already arrived.

             "What do you think will happen today?" Lexi asked, but the silence was the only answer. "I just hope mom doesn’t freak out”.

Naya turned to her twin sister's side, pulling the blanket close to her face, realizing for the first time that night that they were both in the same position.

             “She will not. She is a force of nature.”  And there was definitely a very strong degree of precision in Naya's response. Her mother really was a very inspiring woman, beginning with her life story. Moon never had any kind of contact with her biological father, the only thing she knew was that he was part of USFK, the American Forces of Korea. After a one-night stand, her mother returned to Busan, where Moon was born and eventually, they moved to the United States only because her mother was deluded with life in a foreign country and the hope of marrying the father of her daughter. They didn’t find him and both spent some time in a homeless shelter. Moon was the one who decided to go to school and learn as much English as she could, teaching her mother on her free time after her first job. She ended up in college and became pregnant at a young age, resulting on a marriage with her boyfriend. Still studying, even if it was a distance program, as her children were born, she never for a second of her life gave up the dream of creating her own line of cosmetics. She started from the bottom, reselling some products in Beaufort, deciding to move to Los Angeles to finally open her store and put into practice what she had learned with a chemistry degree.

Nowadays, Moon had two stores in Southern California, and she did her best every day, always encouraging her kids to do the same. Today would also be a day without class. The family would visit the grave of Matteo Valentini, followed by the urn where Naya’s sister's ashes were. Moon was the one who insisted on cremation after Sophie's organ donation, because it was part of her Korean culture, and technically, the Valentini-Kwon family was 50% South Korean and 50% Italian.

             "Do you think about Sophie?" This time it was Naya who broke the moment of reflection.

             “Honestly?” Lexi turned up, staring at the ceiling before continuing. “Not anymore. Of course, I miss her. It must be a lot worse for the boys, I can’t even imagine what it would be like to lose you.” She referred to the fact that they shared the mother's womb. "But I believe I've been through it. I guess I’m fine now. How about you?”

             "I'm thinking about her now."

             "But that's because it's the death anniversary."

             "Yes. But I thought the same thing when dad came home that day and told us everything. Sophie was seven. She's gone without knowing what high school is like, or what it's like to kiss someone, or drive a car. She never got a chance to live. Unlike uncle Matt.” Naya adjusted a strand of her own hair. "Thinking about that makes me depressed. She could’ve had the world”.

             “I know.”

             "What about us?"

             “Sorry?” Without understanding the question, Lexi frowned.

             "What I mean is ..." The other one sat on the bed, the blanket dropped into her lap, just as her hair fell on top of her pajamas. "We can have the world, Sophie doesn’t. The question is: what are we doing with our lives?

             “Okay, Nay. Relax a little and get out of this life’s philosophy thing for a moment. You and I ... We're only sixteen. School-type things are our biggest concerns.” Lexi followed the twin, but as she got up, she went to sit on her sister’s bed.

            "But that's the point, Lexi. What if we die? I still have so many things that I want to do and we just… Exist. Sophie, she was seven, there wasn’t much she could have done except .... Bring some message to our family.” To say that seemed the correct interpretation. "And it hurts, but I do not want to end up like her, Lexi. I want to live. I want to decide what I'm going to do, challenge myself more. Because I can die tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow. I want to be like uncle Matt. He did everything he wanted.”

Alexia seemed to understand the meaning of that conversation, the reason of her reflective sister.

            "So, what do you want to do? Unrelated to, you know, with what we have now. Boyfriend, dance, friends, taking all of these things away?

The question took her by surprise, but perhaps her unconscious wanted that to be thrown on the table. What Naya wanted to do with her life? Once she finished her senior year of high school next year, what she would do? A small memory small came to when her interest in old movies began to emerge after a summer vacation at the grandparents' farm. After that, she remembered the godfather playing piano, and how he said she had a good voice. Her dream of being a musical actress began from there, along with an entire week only watching the famous Broadway performances. She actually achieved that.

Still with the thoughts turned to her godfather, she wondered if she should believe him. After so many refusals, she wouldn’t have the audacity of calling him and asking for advice, and not even would step on other people with incredible talent and much better than her because of their connection. The way was to try, go through all the phases of her challenge, as well as what her late sister would never have the opportunity to do.

With a smile sprouting just as a year had passed since the accident, Naya looked at her sister before she laid down again.

            “What? Why are you smiling? Naya?”

            "I've figured out what to do."

            "And you’ll not tell me?"

            “You’ll find out.”

So, the girl looked at the digital clock once again, following the moment when he had just shown 4:01, exactly one minute later after her younger sister was pronounced dead. However, the only thing she could do was smile. She had understood one of her sister’s missions in her short life, and hoped the rest of the family would understand soon enough. With a lighter heart, she whispered before falling asleep.

             "Thank you, Sophie.”

[am-molloy]

20 Facts About Me: A.M. Molloy

Hello everyone! Welcome back (or to) my blog.

Today I thought I would share with you all 15 random facts that you may or may not know about me. These factoids may not have to with my writing life, but they’ll help you understand who I am as a person. So! Let’s take a dive into my life.

If you didn't know this already, I have a cat named Sorren. She is my soul-kitty and the love of my life. We’ve barely been apart the 11 years she’s been in my life. I wasn’t going to accept any job abroad unless I could bring her.

I love to travel. In fact, my first big travel was to a summer camp in China when I was 15, way back in 2004.

So far, I’ve been to (in order), China, America, Japan ( x3 ), Korea, (x3 ), Belgium, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Hong Kong, and Thailand. Being Canadian, I’ve obviously been to Canada, though I haven’t travelled as much within my own country. I do plan on visiting more countries soon, but for now, I’m planning another return visit to Japan for my upcoming summer vacation.

I am a 2nd-degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do, although it’s been a few years since I practiced due to financial issues. I would love to practice again, especially as I live in Korea now, but now is not the right time for me. I still have all my equipment and remember most of my forms so perhaps someday!

Side note, back in the day when I did practice, I used to go to competitions and would usually win first or second place. Usually first for forms and second for sparing. I rarely got lower and if I did it was for sparing. Forms were my strong suit.

I used to be an animator. I went to an art school studying animation and graphics and working in my field after graduation. Though if I’m being honest, I was never the best at animation. Still, art was more my thing. So when I worked for Contendo, I eventually gravitated towards mostly audio work and eventually becoming their Senior Audio Editor. I still do art, but it’s now for fun rather work. And let’s be honest, the art I did for Contendo isn’t what you would have expected me to be doing. At Contendo we made training videos for oil and gas companies.

Below is my super old demo reel, and I have improved since 2009 But this is to just show you what I used to do. I was by far the best but I enjoyed doing it all the same.

Note: The video is from my old YouTube channel from college. I do not use that channel anymore. If you want to see more up to date videos and life in Korea, check out my actual YouTube channel: Canadian Abroad: A.M. Molloy.

I have a total of 11 tattoos! (So far). Below is a slideshow from my very first tattoo (the tribal dragon when I was 17) to my latest, number eleven done this year in Korea (Sorren).

I am fluent in English, French, Spanish and I can speak intermediate Japanese (taught myself) and beginner Korean (also teaching myself).

My dad is French (from Quebec) so I learned English and French growing up in my household. I majored in Spanish at university and spent a semester in Spain as an exchange student.

I used to do a lot of cosplay, but I haven’t done so in years. I haven’t cosplayed very much and I reused the same cosplay for many cons (and halloween costumes) but I still enjoyed doing it all the same. I can’t sew so I always had help making them. I still appreciate a good cosplay from other cosplayers.

I love photography, though I’m still learning. I’m far from good but I’m getting better every day. I mostly take iPhone photography shots because I don’t always lug around my Nikon D3200. Honestly, with a bit of practice, anyone can make iPhone pictures turn out great. Featured below are a few of my favourite shots taken with my iPhone 8.

I have a wall of all my shots but my favourite will always be of my best friend, Leila, holding the Polaroid picture I just took of her. The picture of her holding the picture (INCEPTION) was also another iPhone shot.

I made my own language/culture because reasons. Mostly RP though. The language is called Hikaran and is spoken by a race on the planet Spira. I go into full length on said language and people in a previous blog post, so please, go ahead and check it out!

Admittedly, I made most of this up during math class in high school. It’s safe to say I’m not very good at math.

Anyway, instead of going into full detail here (because it’s in the blog post), I’ll just leave this popular Hikaran saying here:

While on exchange to Spain back in the summer of 2016, I met and shook hands with the queen of Spain in what I call a happy accident. One day I was walking around my school and taking a stroll around town and I noticed a blocked road a crowd starting to form where there usually isn’t. So, naturally, I had to get up front to see what was going to happen. Turns out the queen of Spain was in town and she took time to shake hands with people and I got lucky enough to be one of them. Moral of the story: when you see a tent or a barricade and people starting to gather where there usually isn’t, get up front because awesome things are gonna happen.  Unfortunately, I don’t have a picture with her, but I do, however, have a picture of her. (Pictured above).

Back in high school, when it was time for graduation photos, we were told we could bring an item, like a soccer ball or baseball bat, if we wanted for our pictures. Being the cat-obsessed weird person that I am, I legit brought my cat, Marbles (AKA Mibs) in a duffle bag (it was open) to school for my picture. Needless to say, I was the talk of the school for bringing a cat haha.  I lived super close to my school so I took my picture and brought her straight home. She hated going to school but was a good girl and took an amazing picture. 

I’m a huge Harry Potter fan. Literally grew up with it. I was in the 6th grade reading the first three books because that’s all that was published at the time. When the first Harry Potter movie came out, I’ll never forget the experience. It was amazing and I loved every bit of it.

PS: I’m a proud Gryffindor. I also have many friends from all of the houses, but most of them are from Slytherin.

I grew with Pokemon. I was around when it was all first released and Pokemon Red was my first ever game I owned to go with the first ever consul I opened, Nintendo Colour. I buy every game, still collect cards, and I used to watch the anime. Pokemon will always have a special place in my heart.

My new all time favourite game is Life is Strange all other games in said franchise. THAT GAME IS MY LIFE, YO. I mean, if you noticed on fact number 5 that one of my tattoos is Life is Strange themed.

My favourite author is Rachel Vincent.

Literally, anything she writes is golden to me.

My favourite series of hers will always be the Soul Screamers series. I still can’t believe how she ended that series. Love it! I just get so invested in each world that she creates that I feel like I’m right there with the characters and I don’t know what to do with my life when I finish each book.

If you love reading, I highly recommend checking her out.

The origin of my author name: A.M. Molloy is basically the initials to my given name, Alex Molloy. However, in person, I prefer to be called Mina. Mina is my Korean name and to be honest, I was never fond of Alex. Since I live in Korea, everyone here calls me Mina. It makes me happy to hear people call me Mina. :3

My novel is in its third round of edits and beta reader stage. One of my beta readers created SOUTH’s very first meme! I’m so in love with it that I’m sharing it here.

So, my university had this mini ball pit kept in the student center. Once during a society meeting at my university, my friend and I decided to completely organize the ball pit into a rainbow. It literally took us forty-five mins straight but we did it! And then no one wanted to sit in the ball bit for like a week because they didn’t want to mess it up so we had to mess it up again so people would use it again.

During my second visit to Japan, I had the pleasure to meet a real sumo wrestler. It was an honour. I wish I could have seen an actual match but this was still awesome all the same.

I loved volunteering at my university for many things, but my favourite was being an NSO Leader. My last year at uni I had the privilege to be on the best team, Yellow Team, and had the most amazing crew. It was truly the best experience. I loved helping all the newcomers to UPEI and I would do it again in a heartbeat if I was still in school.

Well, you’ve made it this far! Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed learning a bit more about me. For now, this concludes my new post, 20 facts about me.

Take care.

— Mina (A.M. Molloy)

[i-am-very-very-tired]

I was reflecting on the women that through time, I have admired and aspire to emulate. They generally have had an independent streak, an unmatched industriousness, quick wit and the ability to make you straighten your back when they enter the room. They effortlessly occupy their space and cannot be ignored. They get stuff done. I was reminded of Queen Lozikeyi through a casual conversation with a friend. Who is that, I thought? One of King Lobengula’s wives, history has it. I never probed her life or story further and it was only when I started researching about my history, Zimbabwean history and Ndebele history that I was drawn to Queen Lozikeyi: a woman who seemed to embody that very same independent, yet savvy streak, amazing insightfulness and unmatched industriousness. Queen Lozikeyi was King Lobengula’s second senior wife. She married King Lobengula well after his coronation as King. The daughter of Ngokho Dlodlo and uMaTshabalala, she is believed to have been born (a twin) in 1855. Queen Lozikeyi’s story remains little known, and it is not taught in mainstream schools, which is curious considering the key role she played when she stepped into King Lobengula’s shoes following his disappearance. Like her daughters in recent times I imagine her saying “kungcono ngizenzele” (it’ll be better if I do it myself) and just getting things done. Queen Lozikeyi was described by the colonial settlers as a very “dangerous and intriguing woman”. She was a leader, military strategist, counsel to the King, a trusted senior wife and a prominent Queen of the Ndebele people. After the “disappearance” of King Lobengula in 1893, Queen Lozikeyi assumed the role of acting head of state. After the 1893 Matebele war (The British South Africa Company fought the Ndebele) the Ndebele kingdom had been greatly weakened and a significant population displaced. Queen Lozikeyi stepped into the King’s role whilst the issue of succession was being considered. She became Queen Regent and oral tradition credits her for keeping King Lobengula’s subjects united. After the land dispossession of 1893 and the following years, Queen Lozikeyi was resolute in her vision for a reinstated Ndebele kingdom and return of her people’s land. She instructed her twin brother, Muntuwani Dlodlo, to rebuild the Imbizo (King Lobengula’s regiment). In 1896, along with Muntuwani, Queen Lozikeyi led the resistance against colonial rule and land dispossessions of the Ndebele people. This resistance is referred to as Imfazo or The War of the Red Axe (Impi Yehlok’elibomvu). This resistance was the catalyst to what is commonly referred to as the First Chimurenga war. The astute Queen Lozikeyi had carefully stored some of the ammunition which had not been used by King Lobengula and the the Imbizo regiment were able to use this ammunition against the Cecil Rhodes’ forces. Her war credentials were memorialised by the predominantly Ndebele Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA) and they referred to her as the Foremother of ZIPRA. As a show of honour and for good fortune, the ZIPRA forces buried two bullets at her grave years after her death. Queen of Peace By the end of 1896, Rhodes’ forces and the Ndebele army had reached a stalemate. Queen Lozikeyi led the peace initiative through runners and guided the izindaba (negotiations) in the Matobo mountains. This led to an amnesty and ceasefire, although the Ndebele people had already lost their best land and control. Legacy Queen Lozikeyi did not have any biological children. In line with Ndebele culture, when a woman could not conceive, the woman’s family would provide an inhlanzi (surrogate) to birth for her. In Queen Lozikeyi’s case, her inhlanzi was Mamfimfi Dlodlo (her father’s brother’s daughter). Mamfimfi also experienced some difficulty conceiving and only did so after intervention from a traditional doctor called Sidambe. As per customary practice, whenever there was such intervention, the child was named after the traditional doctor — hence Queen Lozikeyi’s daughter (by surrogate) is named Princess Sidambe. Princess Sidambe was recognised as Queen Lozikeyi’s daughter. Queen Lozikeyi established her courts in a plot of land in Bubi District, which today is referred to as iNkosikazi where she is laid to rest. She remained defiant until her passing away in 1919 after she succumbed to influenza. Queen Lozikeyi was a firm, strong-willed, principled, and greatly respected woman. The author Yvonne Vera once referred to her as a: “conspicuous and commanding figure. A big, bold and beautiful woman of ample proportions and clearly the leading spirit among the Ndebele queens. With quick intelligence and ready wit, she was also remarkable among Ndebele women.” Memorialisation What we have here is a remarkable woman who readily stepped in at a time of crisis to be the interim leader or ‘King’ of the Ndebele people. Yet her story remains little known. In Zimbabwe, as with most countries, memorialisation has leaned towards being patriarchal, as evidenced by the naming of significant structures, buildings and roads. There remains an opportunity to reimagine what and who is memorialised and just what this could mean for the psyche of young girls looking for themselves or a woman role model in their history. If you’re interested in knowing more about Queen Lozikeyi, I recommend reading: A Very Dangerous and Intriguing Woman” by Marieke Faber Clarke and Pathisa Nyathi ( biography of Queen Lozikeyi)

[richincolor]

Interview: Patrick Flores-Scott

Today we welcome Patrick Flores-Scott to the blog. He was kind enough to answer a few questions about his writing life and his newest novel, American Road Trip, which is making it's way out into the world today. I loved American Road Trip and reviewed it here last week.

Summary: A heartwrenching YA coming of age story about three siblings on a road trip in search of healing.

With a strong family, the best friend a guy could ask for, and a budding romance with the girl of his dreams, life shows promise for Teodoro “T” Avila. But he takes some hard hits the summer before senior year when his nearly perfect brother, Manny, returns from a tour in Iraq with a devastating case of PTSD. In a desperate effort to save Manny from himself and pull their family back together, T’s fiery sister, Xochitl, hoodwinks her brothers into a cathartic road trip.

Told through T’s honest voice, this is a candid exploration of mental illness, socioeconomic pressures, and the many inescapable highs and lows that come with growing up—including falling in love.

Have you had any memorable and/or life-changing road trips?

Definitely memorable. My parents drove us—me and my sisters—from our Seattle area home to Wisconsin for a reunion when we were all teenagers. Three hormonal teens squished in the back seat of a Ford Fairmont. Middle of Summer. Vinyl seats. No air conditioning. Two out of the three—mortal enemies. Seventeen hundred torturous miles. We camped the whole way. I definitely drew on that trip as I wrote the book.

I’ve actually been through all of the towns and most of the freeways and highways from American Road Trip. I taught in Los Angeles and would drive home to Seattle for the summer. And I also drove from L.A. to visit my sister and her family in El Paso, Texas a couple times.

I’d have to say that most of my road trips up and down the coast (including a trip to the Rose Bowl with friends in college) were as fast or faster than the trip in the book. It was always about getting there. I still feel that pace and those freeways in my bones. Although those experiences ended up being great for the writing, I’d love to do a slow, touristy version of a trip down the west coast with my wife and kids some day.

American Road Trip delves into the issues facing a family who is welcoming someone back after military service. Is this a situation you were familiar with or did it require a lot of research?

There are no vets in my family. I was inspired to start writing this story in 2009, after the housing bubble burst and the economy collapsed. I’m a big NPR listener and at that time there seemed to be so many stories about vets returning from Afghanistan and Iraq. Most of the stories focused on the difficulties of adjusting to civilian life and the tragedy of vet suicide and the treatment vets were receiving at the VA.

There was one story that really launched me into the book. It featured a mom reading a gut-wrenching letter her son wrote to her and his dad before he took his own life. I started researching and listening to all the stories I could. Early on I also was moved by this short movie, Poster Girl. It showed a young vet suffering from PTSD. The thing that got to me—besides watching her battle against the overwhelming demons that followed her back from war—was her support network. This small group of older vets took her in. They counseled her and accompanied her to VA appointments and really seemed to be keeping her alive. Those real-life vets inspired Tio Ed and “The Group” in American Road Trip.

There was a lot of digging through stories online and websites where vets would share their stories, often in search of support and camaraderie. Same with websites for families attempting to find resources to help them cope. I talked to vets and family members and with some folks who work at the VA. My father-in-law is a psychiatrist who has had a lot of experience working with vets so he was a big help as well. I worked on the book for a long time, but there were changes made, even at the last minute, because of feedback I received regarding vets and their care. It was important for me to get that aspect of the story right.

The portion of the experience Manny’s family went through when he came back from war that I connect to personally, is that of being a kid experiencing a family member dealing with mental illness. I feel that in my gut. Also, even though no one dies in the book, the threat of loss hangs over the story like a dark cloud. Much of the time I was writing the book, I was dealing with grief brought on by loss in my family.  So a lot of very real, very strong emotion collided with—and became entwined with—all the new information I was taking in about vets and their families.

I also brought to the writing a profound belief that sending a person to war—whether they go willingly, or not—is the biggest sacrifice you could ask an individual to make, and sending a loved one off to war is the biggest sacrifice you could ask a family to make. So as long as we’re a country that chooses to send people to war, we owe it to them and to our whole society, to meet them with an overwhelming amount of easily accessible care, from the time they return home, for as long as they require it.

I love that you focus on sibling relationships and even go way beyond the nuclear family. How did so many family members become part of this story?

Teodoro is the protagonist. But for some reason, from the very beginning I envisioned Xochitl, the sister, being the person who activates the road trip. She was always the one who believed that Manny—who returned from war unmoored and adrift—could find his bearings via a reconnection to long-lost family. That’s no cure for PTSD, but in the story those re-connections do lead to support that is meaningful for everyone.

Also, at one point, the book was going to be, in part, about the role repeated stories and lore play in unifying families. I made up Avila family stories and wrote them in this heightened style, my attempt at magical realism, and I spread them throughout the novel. Each time I wrote one, it seemed to expand the world of the Avila family. When it became clear that the stories were just too much and I had to nix them, some of the characters from those stories found their way back into the novel. Even some of the stories found their way back in, but in a style that fit the rest of the book.  

Xochitl was a new name for me, but I was happy to find someone online who made a video about her name. It is really beautiful in both sound and meaning. Do you know someone named Xochitl or was this just a random pick related to the family history and culture?

I had a student named Xochitl and I really loved that name. My wife, Emma, picked Xochitl for her confirmation name. You’re supposed to pick a Catholic saint’s name, but she went with Aztec instead. (I think it’s so cool that she did that.) It means ‘flower,’ which is sweet, but the written name looks so strong on the page. I wanted to Xochitl, the character to be STRONG. She needed a name that looked and sounded strong. You say, SOE-cheel. A teacher friend told me she had a student who gave up trying to get folks to pronounce it correctly, so she told everyone, “I am so chill.” Doesn’t quite have the same umph.

The book used to start with Xochitl coercing the guys into the car for the road trip and T describing his sister’s name, telling the reader the pronunciation and saying how that name that starts with an X looks as crazy as his sister is. It was fun writing but eventually it didn’t fit and I’m fine making the reader do a little work to find out how it’s pronounced.

Since writing the book, I came to learn that there is a singer-songwriter, Xochitl, out of Sacramento. She is great. Check her out on Youtube. And Xochitl Torres-Small is now running for Congress in New Mexico. Send her your support, people!

Xochitls are coming on strong. Very soon everyone will know exactly how to pronounce that name.

Change can be a challenge at any time in life even when it doesn't involve trauma. You've made a geographical move and a switch in careers recently. What have you learned about yourself through these shifts?

Wow. It’s been four years since I quit teaching and we moved to Ann Arbor for my wife’s job at the University of Michigan, and I’m still learning. I’ve learned that I need to get out and be social. I have a great and loving little family. But I need to reach out more often to the many people who have opened their arms to us since our move to Ann Arbor. I’ve learned that being a writer and stay-at-home dad seemed to really work for me when my youngest son was in preschool half day. Now that he’s in Kindergarten, it’s a long day and I get stir crazy and I’m feeling like I need to get back to a half day teaching job—mostly for social reasons (but also for added income until this writing thing takes off). I’ve learned that I really need a network of writing friends—and I’m SO LUCKY to have eventually found them here. Don’t tell the whole world, but Ann Arbor is a phenomenal town for connecting with writers.

Do you have a special connection to amazing green chile cheeseburgers?

My wife is from Las Cruces, New Mexico. We go down there with our boys twice a year. About ten years ago, my in-laws took my wife and me to the town of Hatch, and to Sparky’s restaurant, the barbecue and burgers place I write about in the book. That first Sparky’s cheeseburger is what started my addiction to green chile, and specifically, to green chile cheeseburgers. I recommend that everyone travel to New Mexico and eat their way through that state. Enchiladas, gorditas, green chile stew. The use of local chile, green and red, makes it a unique and transcendent regional dining experience. My mouth is watering as I write this. If anything, I undersold the glory of New Mexican green chile—and New Mexican cuisine—in the book. It’s amazing, but you have to go there to experience the real thing.

[jpaulfontan]

Living in Grace

and I just want to say you are free! Hello, you’ve found the Senior Adult Sunday School Class of Corinth Baptist Church in Singleton, Ms. The title of our lesson for today is: Living in Grace

This will be our 3rd

In a 5-lesson series under the general heading of:

Facing Adversity

We’ll be drawing Scripture from the Book of Philemon

Let’s start this lesson off with a question:

What is your initial

response to the word,

slavery?

Does that word dredge up an emotional response in you

at all?

If so, why?

Well, that really depends

on a number of factors,

now, doesn't it?

Here in the United States

in the 21st century,

most people would associate slavery with that

evil and racist institution that was in place in this country

during the era of the

Civil War and the two

centuries that led up to it.

It is for this very reason,

as we look at Paul's letter to Philemon, we need to be

careful with our understanding

of slavery in this book of

the Bible.

It's important to understand the context of the words as well as the

context of the culture

as much as possible

when interpreting Scripture.

Though some things about humanity never changes, we need to understand that life in the time of the Apostles was very different when compared to today.

Slavery in the first century

was based primarily on economics, not skin color.

When Paul wrote his letter

to Philemon,

roughly a quarter of the population of the Roman Empire were slaves of one sort or another…. as the economy of Rome was based on

slave labor.

People were enslaved for

a number of reasons:

being prisoners of war,

defaulting on a debt,

being born into a slave

family,

and some people even voluntarily

indentured themselves to

make ends meet.

But, freedom for slaves was possible... and common,

being granted by masters

or purchased through

personal savings.

Seems to me the slavery that so many of us look

back to 150 years ago in this land was considerably different

than in Roman days.

I've never heard of slaves

being able to earn any money at all

during the slave days

of the Americas.

It really was an entirely different

world during Roman days.

Paul was under house arrest

in Rome when he wrote this

letter to Philemon.

Philemon was a wealthy man and a

believer in the gospel of Jesus Christ, and obviously

a friend of Paul's.

I don't know how many

slaves Philemon owned.

But, one of them, a man

named Onesimus, (OH-nes-e-mus), had run

away from Philemon, his

master.

I've read in other places

that Onesimus had robbed Philemon in order to have

the funds he'd need to

flee as far away from his

master as possible.

I've also read that there

was a good chance that Onesimus could have possibly stumbled across

Epaphroditus, (EE-pie-froh-die-tus), en route to

Rome.

Epaphroditus was an envoy of the Philippian church who traveled to Rome to assist the Apostle Paul while he awaited his audience with Caesar.

And, it's entirely possible

that Epaphroditus may have encouraged the run-away slave to seek out Paul in order to gain advice.

Regardless of how he found

his way to Paul, he also found his way to Jesus,

for Paul calls him "his son" in this letter.

Onesimus became a Christian

while in the company of Paul.

Under his tutelage

Onesimus became convicted of

his own wrongdoing toward

his master and was willing

to go back to Colossae.

It was 1200 miles from Rome

to Colossae.

Onesimus had it made as he could have easily concealed himself in the population

of Rome; there were over

a million people there at that time. With this understanding, let’s get into the 1st section of our lesson for today.

Section 1: God’s People are Compelled by Love

Philemon 8-14;

8. For this reason, although I have great boldness in Christ to command you to do what is right,

9. I appeal to you, instead, on the basis of love. I, Paul, as an elderly man and now also as a prisoner of Christ Jesus,

10. appeal to you for my son, Onesimus.

I fathered him while I was in chains.

11. Once he was useless to you, but now he is useful both to you and to me.

12. I am sending him back to you as a part of myself. Receive him as a part of myself.

13. I wanted to keep him with me, so that in my imprisonment for the gospel he might serve me in your place.

14. But I didn’t want to do anything without your consent, so that your good deed might not be out of obligation, but of your own free will.

What we're seeing here

is another example of

God working all things

for the good of believers.

We have no way of

knowing for sure that Onesimus robbed his master when he ran away.

What we do know

is that Philemon

now had the opportunity

to receive something back

that was much more than a slave.

Onesimus, through faith in

Jesus Christ,

had become a brother in Christ to his master.

In verse 10,

Paul used the descriptive

terms, "son" and "father"

in a spiritual sense to show his deep affection for Onesimus, and to show that their relationship was more as that of

family.

It's obvious in his letter to Philemon that Paul and Onesimus had become

especially close.

And, this is reflected

in the tone of Paul's

letter to Philemon;

that Paul wished for Philemon to now treat Onesimus as a family member in Christ.

Paul, thanks to his own

"Damascus moment,"

knew first hand about

the transforming power

of God to take even enemies and make them

family.

Paul had had a front-row seat seeing what God could do and

how His grace triumphs over sin.

God had taken Paul,

a persecutor of the church,

and made him a son,

a brother with Christ,

a brother in the church,

and now,

a father in the faith

to others, including

both Philemon and Onesimus.

We Christians are described

in the Bible as

"the people of God."

As the people of God,

we're brothers and sisters

in Christ; we are family!

Because of the atoning death of Christ on the cross,

the church was created for

both Jews and Gentiles to become this single

"people of God."

We are a people who strive to live under

God's ruling care

while we're protected and

cared for by Him.

Now, how was Philemon

going to receive

Onesimus when he returned

to his master?

His options were to follow that gracious and forgiving

option that Paul presented to him

in the letter,

or to deal with Onesimus

according to the harsh

societal standard that

was in place for dealing

with runaway slaves.

Here in North America,

some of the Indian tribes,

like the Souix,

would capture slaves from their neighboring tribes.

If a slave ran away and

was re-captured,

it wasn't uncommon for them

to be hobbled,

made lame,

by cutting their hamstrings.

As for the Romans

concerning slavery;

it was perfectly legal to even

sell their own children

into slavery,

(talk about an incentive

to be a good child!).

The Romans most often beat

their re-captured slaves;

but they also had a brand

that was burned into their

foreheads that marked

them for life as a runaway.

Besides that, killing a slave

wasn't considered murder.

? So don't you know how much

faith and trust Onesimus must have had to do the right thing and return to

his master, Philemon?

So, what were Paul's

views on slavery?

To understand that,

we've got to take a

closer look at the

convention of slavery

during the 1st century.

In considering the church's practice and perspective on slavery, let's look at

some things about it at the time.

Slavery was an embedded

part of the social structure,

welfare system, and

economic activity of the

ancient world.

The absence of a modern democracy made it practically impossible to launch any sort

of effective political

revolution against it.

The most effective means of

improving the life of a slave

was for the master

to treat him or her kindly

with the prospect of

future freedom.

Paul addressed the slaves

in 1st Corinthians 7:21 to pursue their freedom when

it was feasible.

He also wrote in

1st Timothy 1:9-10, that slave traders were being immoral.

In 1st Corinthians 12:13,

Galatians 3:28,

Ephesians 6:8,

and Colossians 3:11,

Paul declared that both the slave and the free were equal in Christ.

And, as we've seen in

this letter to Philemon,

Paul was gently "strong-arming"

Philemon to accept Onesimus in a radically different way than was typical between masters and

slaves.

It was descriptive of a mind-set that, when practiced

more widely,

would cultivate an

ethic and a culture

that would effectively

undermine the practice

of slavery.

Section 2:

God’s People are Related as Family

Philemon 15-17;

15. For perhaps this is why he was separated from you for a brief time, so that you might get him back permanently,

16. no longer as a slave, but more than a slave , as a dearly loved brother.

He is especially so to me, but even more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord.

17. So if you consider me a partner, accept him as you would me.

It's obvious from

these Scriptures that

Paul had pondered....

contemplated the reasons

about why Onesimus had

been separated from

Philemon.

Paul had come to the

inescapable conclusion

that God had wanted for

Onesimus to join His family.

We don't know, for sure,

all of the details that

led Onesimus to run away

from his master.

We don't even know for a

fact that Onesimus had

robbed Philemon.

But what we do know

is that God's sovereign

grace works through

human affairs.

Though Paul understood well

this business of slavery,

he focused on the redemptive

aspect of the cross in

Onesimus's life.

Since being born again,

Onesimus was no longer

merely a slave;

now he was a brother

in Christ

among the people

of God.

Now look;

I don't know of any

direct evidence of

what Philemon did

concerning the returned

slave, Onesimus.

But wouldn't it be

reasonable to assume

that if Philemon

preserved and even

circulated that letter

among the churches,

that he did, in fact,

do as Paul had asked

him to do?

Did he set Onesimus

free?

Who knows?

But I truly believe

that the relationship

between the master and

the slave was

greatly altered.

And, in my opinion,

Philemon most likely

did grant Onesimus'

freedom.

And....And....

I also believe that

Onesimus' response to

his probable freedom,

was to stay on in the

service of Philemon....

as a brother-in-Christ.

Section 3:51

God’s People are Gracious With Each Other

Philemon 18-22;

18. And if he has wronged you in any way, or owes you anything, charge that to my account.

19. I, Paul, write this with my own hand: I will repay it, not to mention to you that you owe me even your own self.

20. Yes, brother, may I have joy from you in the Lord; refresh my heart in Christ.

21. Since I am confident of your obedience, I am writing to you, knowing that you will do even more than I say.

22. But meanwhile, also prepare a guest room for me, for I hope that through your prayers I will be restored to you.

The

"Book"

of Philemon

is the

3rd shortest book

in the Bible.

And yet,

there is a

wealth of wisdom,

teaching,

and knowledge

to be had

from it's mere

335 words.

In it,

Paul extends

a fitting ...

Christ like gesture

toward Philemon

in that,

he offers to take on

any burden

Onesimus had

caused his master.

He did this

in an effort

to reconcile

these two men

to each other.

This is

a picture of

"gospel grace!"

Paul was simply

doing exactly the

same thing

Jesus Christ did.

He was willing to

take on

the penalty for

Onesimus

just as

Jesus did for us.

In this way,

Paul's effort was

to reconcile these

men,

and Jesus...well,

He did what He did

to reconcile us to

the Father.

Like I said,

it's a picture of

gospel grace.

What Paul was doing,

essentially, was asking

Philemon to forgive

Onesimus.

Forgiveness is an

interesting thing, though.

You might ask,

"What's so hard about it?

It doesn't

cost you anything."

More often than not,

it does have a cost.

In the first place,

it means letting go

of the past.

It means letting go

of the anger.

It means letting go

of the sense of

moral superiority.

It really does

require sacrifice.

But, it IS a noble act;

and, it's expected of

Christians.

!We Christians have

received the

grace and forgiveness

of God!

For this very reason,

Paul felt confident that

Philemon would obey

his request and

welcome Onesimus home

as a beloved brother

in Christ. Now, if you’ve watched the past few lessons, you’ve watched me as I learned something about Paul’s imprisonment. A 4th missionary journey undertaken by Paul, AFTER his release from house arrest in Rome, was something I had been completely ignorant of. And yet, it did happen. Everything points to the fact that Paul did get to stand before Caesar and answer to the charges he’d been under arrest for…. for the previous four years. In fact, the final verse in this letter to Philemon, Paul even goes so far as to request that his friend prepare a guestroom for him, as he was anticipating his release from Roman custody. (Tongue-in-cheek; Now, how do you suppose he could have known that?)

In closing,

I'd just like to

point out this.

The gospel is the

story of Christ dying

in our place and

being raised for us,

and this story is to

affect

and to shape the

way Christians live.

The gospel is the

story the Holy Spirit

uses to radically

transform not only

the way we think,

but also the way we

treat others,

especially those

within the church.

Let's pray.....

[expatimes]

How Turkey became a hub for Arab Spring exiles | Arab Spring: 10 years on News

As a charismatic revolutionary from a scrappy Cairo neighbourhood, Ahmed Hassan was one of the stars of Jehane Noujaim’s 2013 documentary The Square, which followed a group of Egyptian activists as they toppled longtime ruler Hosni Mubarak in 2011 and then fought to keep their faltering revolution alive.

The film won three Emmy Awards and was nominated for the Oscars. But Hassan’s life got harder after it was released.

His work as a cinematographer and filmmaker dried up as production companies stopped hiring him, perhaps because he was blacklisted.

He had to abandon a film project after receiving threats. He could not carry a camera in the street without being harassed. Most of his friends were in prison, some had died.

“I felt like I was just centimetres from jail,” Hassan told Al Jazeera.

In 2018, he jumped at an opportunity to escape and went to Turkey, which has become a major hub for Arab exiles as many of the Arab Spring uprisings that first emerged a decade ago descended into violence and repression.

“You are able to carry a camera in Turkey. That is beautiful actually,” Hassan said. “Here, I’m walking and I feel free.

“I feel there is a government. I see the police but I’m not scared, it’s not like Egypt. I feel like there is law here.”

But life is also hard. Hassan says that, for him, Turkey looks like a watermelon with vivid, enticing red flesh.

“But when you bite into it, it’s salty, not sweet.”

In 2018, Hassan jumped at an opportunity to escape and went to Turkey

Place of exile

“There is no Arab city like that, with large populations from different parts of the Arab world having these tools of cultural and political expression, like Istanbul at the moment,” Mohanad Hage Ali, a research fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center, told Al Jazeera.

Ali said this trend first emerged from the soft power policies pursued by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AK Party), in power since 2002, which sought to extend Turkey’s influence and relations in the region through greater diplomacy, investment and educational projects.

It was aided by popular culture as Turkish TV series also became wildly popular across the Middle East and often glamorised Istanbul and glorified its Ottoman past.

“Look at Turkey before Erdogan, at the heart of the Arab world the way it is now,” Ali said.

The trend of Arab exiles heading to Turkey accelerated sharply with the fallout from the Arab Spring.

Turkey is now home to about four million refugees – mostly Syrians – along with activists, journalists and political figures from countries across the Arab world.

Neighbourhoods in Istanbul have been transformed by an influx of Arab communities and businesses, with the city’s Arab population likely to be well over one million. Turkey is home to an estimated 700,000 Iraqis. More than 500,000 mostly Syrian refugees live in the southern Turkish city of Gaziantep.

Turkey was broadly supportive of the Arab Spring uprisings, particularly as a staunch opponent of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and a supporter of Egypt’s short-lived Muslim Brotherhood-linked government of Mohamed Morsi.

Istanbul became a significant Muslim Brotherhood hub, especially after Morsi was overthrown by the military led by general-turned-President Abdul Fattah el-Sisi in 2013.

Islam Akel, an Egyptian journalist and TV presenter, almost died in August 2013 after he was shot and a bullet lodged in his lung at the pro-Morsi sit-in at Cairo’s Rabaa Square, at which at least 1,000 people were killed by the security forces.

He escaped to Lebanon, and then spent time in Sudan, before going to Turkey in 2014. He now works as a presenter at the Muslim Brotherhood-linked Watan TV in Istanbul. Akel praised Turkey for welcoming exiles.

“As an Egyptian Arab Muslim, being in Turkey was not a difficult thing for me, as being in a country where I hear the voices of the muezzins to pray and find mosques in front of me in every street is a matter of reassurance, connection and integration,” he said.

The trend of Arab exiles heading to Turkey accelerated sharply with the fallout from the Arab Spring

Hamza Zawba, a former spokesman of Morsi’s Freedom and Justice Party, arrived in Turkey in 2014 and now presents a show on the Mekameleen television channel.

“Turkey accepted us to live here as exiles, nobody else did that,” he told Al Jazeera, adding that Turkey provided them with a vital space to challenge el-Sisi’s narrative.

“ is a venue to express my views and to give some analysis, to face the claims of the media of the coup and to raise awareness over what’s going on,” he said.

The Egyptian liberal reformist politician Ayman Nour also moved to Istanbul and set up his own television channel, Al-Sharq TV.

Istanbul’s Arab Media Association has more than 800 members. Exiles from countries such as Libya, Yemen and Syria have also established media outlets, think-tanks, schools, charities and NGOs. Istanbul has also become a place where some LGBTQ Arabs feel safer and can live a more open life.

But while some exiles have thrived, others have struggled, and Turkey’s role as a safe haven has changed over the decade.

‘Shrinking space’

Bassam Alahmad is the executive director of Syrians for Truth and Justice, a non-profit organisation that documents rights violations by all parties in Syria. He came to Turkey from Syria in 2012.

“It was a good atmosphere for us to act and work in,” he said.

But he said the atmosphere became more restrictive over time, especially after Turkey’s first direct military intervention in northern Syria in 2016, and he felt he was no longer able to publish some of the human rights abuses he had documented. He says he was interrogated by Turkish security services over his work in 2018.

Turkish soldiers patrol the northern Syrian Kurdish town of Tal Abyad, on the border between Syria and Turkey

He was also threatened by someone he believes is connected to al-Assad’s security forces, but says that although he reported it to the police, they took no action. Murders of prominent activists in Turkey also unnerved some exiles and undermined the country’s reputation as a safe haven.

A Turkish government media spokesperson said they would not respond to Alahmad’s specific claims but provided a statement from a senior Turkish official that said: “Turkey provides a safe haven to nearly 4 million Syrian refugees. We take all necessary steps to ensure that asylum seekers feel at home and safe.”

Alahmad also said that attitudes in Turkey have become more resentful, hostile and racist towards Syrian refugees over time. Many Syrians also struggle to access services and education, can rarely acquire citizenship and are often exploited in informal jobs.

“We felt that it was a shrinking space,” Alahmad said. He and his wife managed to gain asylum in France and moved there in 2019.

“Here, you can say or write anything.”

Hassan praised Erdogan and Turkey for its generosity in welcoming so many refugees and dissidents, but he also mentioned anti-Arab racism as a significant problem.

“When they hear you speak Arabic, things become weird. People look at you and treat you differently. Sometimes when I’m with my friends we don’t speak in Arabic on public transport,” he said.

Turkey is now home to about four million refugees

Some exiles have also been changed by living in Turkey.

Mustafa Menshawy, a research postdoctoral fellow at the SEPAD project, University of Lancaster, told Al Jazeera that many rank and file members of the Muslim Brotherhood have become less conservative in their views or even left the movement after being exposed to a more socially liberal climate in Turkey.

But he also said that the Brotherhood become less hierarchical and more open to debate than it was in Egypt.

“The fact that Turkey, which is authoritarian in the way it treats its own media, is allowing members of the Brotherhood to have a voice, and how democratising that is, is a bit paradoxical,” he said.

“Turkey gives a voice to individuals who were not provided a voice either by the organisation itself in Egypt or by the regime, and this is very revitalising.”

But Menshawy characterises the group’s relationship with the Turkish authorities as a “marriage of convenience”, and he and others say Turkey’s status as an Arab hub is vulnerable to shifting political trends.

The next decade

“I see this presence as useful to project power and put Turkey up front as a major player in Arab politics,” Ali said.

But he said hosting so many Arab dissidents can become a problem and “very limiting for Turkey’s options” if it decides to pursue rapprochement with el-Sisi or al-Assad, who now appear entrenched in power, as well as proving unpopular domestically.

He also said Turkey’s role as such a strong Arab hub is very much contingent on Erdogan remaining in office.

“This Arab presence and this Arab experience ends with Erdogan,” he said.

Akel said exiles such as himself worry most about “political vicissitudes and fears about the rise of nationalists” at the expense of the AK Party.

Meanwhile, while Hassan has a lot of Turkish friends, most of his deepest friendships are with people back in Egypt.

“I still feel lonely in Turkey,” he said.

He is also struggling with the economic problems besetting the country, including high inflation, low wages and a lack of employment opportunities. He has been unable to get permission to shoot scenes for a documentary he is making, and says he will try to leave for a Western country when the coronavirus pandemic eases.

“I cannot stay here much longer, it’s become more complicated, it’s not easy to shoot sensitive subjects. And everything is going so slowly, I feel like I’m not stable. But it’s better than Egypt.”

#humanrights Read full article: https://expatimes.com/?p=15917&feed_id=24516 #arabspring10yearson #humanrights #middleeast #news #turkey

[studentthoughtsonsocial-blog]

Politics and civic culture

In a digitally progressive age, social media has enabled the general public to become active participants in amateur journalism, critics (including through activism approaches) and supporters of political agendas in real time. Further, it has been highlighted that social media can be an effective tool for encouraging political change (Jericho, G 2012) while creating an open dialogue between politicians and the general public.

In global and local politics, politicians have embraced social media as another mean of engagement with the public, however the effectiveness and in some cases the objective of the use of this medium is still developing and finding the right balance provides a challenge. An effective political approach to social media has been discussed as one where each platform is used in conjunction with one another, as opposed to in isolation, to influence resources and increase engagement. 

To compare the activity of two prominent world leaders and their approach to social media, namely Donald Trump and Malcolm Turnbull, I will explore their various approaches and relative criticisms.

The internet ha expanded the volume and sources of political communications (Young, 2010) and Malcolm Turnbull’s approach to social media is one that engages a combination of platforms to share political messages / communications, election campaigning and a balance of personal insights and activities. In my view this holistic approach has an underlying objective to reach a wide audience (through the various platforms) and the sometimes personal touch to posts makes him more relatable. Ultimately lessening a perceived divide between Malcolm Turnbull and his voters. However with most public approaches there will be strong opposing views of critics. In September of 2017 Malcolm Turnbull posted an image of himself holding his grandchild in one arm while holding a beer in the other at the footy, captioned ‘multitasking at the footy’(TheWest, 2017). Although his intent may had been innocent and an attempt at being relatable, or potentially a deflection to others while there was a controversial topic on the Australian political stage, there was a mixed response received to the post. This included support for Malcolm Turnbull as being seen as a ‘genuine Aussie guy’ in addition to a significant amount of backlash to his ‘parenting’ approach, while others used the opportunity to criticize him over a current political topic. Now while this seemed like it was a pressing topic in Australia, if this post made it to a global stage would the reaction from other be the same? 

Throughout the course of Donald Trumps 2016 presidential election campaign an article written by Matthew Ingram cites social media as playing an important role in his campaign and a significant reason behind his ultimate election. Looking forward since Donald Trump’s January 20 2017 inauguration, Donald Trump has significantly engaged social media (predominantly Twitter) (Wikipedia, 2018) to ensure his opinions are heard on the world stage.There has been much discussion and a recent Fox News poll highlight that the general public believe his tweets are hurting his agenda. Further reviews have been conducted on the tweet he posts, with one 2016 review citing one in every eight Twitter posts were a personal insult of some kind and as of November 2017 he ‘had insulted 394 people, places, and things on Twitter, ranging from politicians to journalists and news outlets to entire countries’ (Wikipedia 2018). Various opinion pieces have been written regarding Donald Trump’s conduct, both on and offline, with The Atlantic openly writing a damning article which open with the statement ‘we have never has a president so ill-informed about the nature of his office, so openly mendacious, so self-destructive, or so brazen in his abusive attacks on the courts, the press, Congress, and even senior officials within his own administration. Trump is a Frankenstein's monster of past president’s’. 

When we compare the activity of both leaders what kind of impression of the individual are you left with? Do they seem somewhat professional and measured in their approach to public engagement, or are they opening themselves up to be made a mockery of by others which further destroys their credibility in the public arena? 

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2017/jun/15/were-winning-so-much-malcolm-turnbull-mocks-trump-at-canberra-ball-video

https://www.viralviralvideos.com/tag/donald-trump/

[thealistart-blog]

Art Collecting Tycoon Budi Tek on Art, Museums, and Mortality

Budi Tek is undoubtedly one of the world’s most influential art collectors. The BIllionaire Indonesian-Chinese businessman, patron, and philanthropist, who made his fortune in the agriculture industry, began his collection in 2004 and has since amassed one of the world’s greatest collections of Chinese contemporary art. In 2007 he founded the Yuz Foundation “to promote contemporary art and artists, and contribute to various art initiatives,” and then in 2014 he opened the non-profit Yuz Museum in Shanghai to showcase his collection and to present exhibitions.

It’s no secret that Mr Tek is fighting pancreatic cancer – for the second time around. And it’s no secret that the diagnosis has caused Mr Tek to take rethink his future and the future of his museum and art collection. Which is why Mr Tek has taken the initiative to transform his private Shanghai museum, which is currently owned by a limited company, into a public institution. Mr Tek has already applied for non-profit status for his Yuz Foundation and plans to transfer ownership of the museum to the Yuz Foundation once the non-profit status is confirmed.

Mr Tek was recently awarded the title of Officer of the Legion of Honor by the president of the French Republic. Established in 1802, the Legion of Honor is the highest French order of merit for military and civil merits The title was bestowed upon Mr Tek in recognition of his “effort in advancing the cultural communication and cooperation between the two countries (China and France), as well as his contributions to the development of human society and mankind welfares.” The award is a fitting tribute to Mr Tek’s tireless efforts to advance communications between China and France.

TheAList.Art’s Nic Forrest got in touch with Mr Tek following the bestowal of the award and asked him a few questions.

When did you start collecting art and why?

I started to collect Chinese contemporary art in early 2000. The very first acquisition was one large painting from a young artist. Although the artist is not one of the so called “four kings” or a top artist, but when got it, I was very happy. The painting itself touched me deeply. Over those years, from 2004 to 2006, I collected a lot, and had a learning process in collecting art.

I myself am Indonesian Chinese. While I grew up in Indonesia, the majority of Indonesian populations were still laborers. But a few Chinese possess a large amount of money and have connections with the officials. Some of them did live in a lavish lifestyle, thus they hurt other groups’ ethnical emotion. So the Chinese population in Indonesia gave people an impression that they are rich but ignorant; they have no culture and are very mean.

After entering 21st century, Indonesia becomes a real democratic country. Many things become equal. The distribution of wealth is relatively equal. It is no longer like before. But on the other hand, how can we eliminate that bias on Chinese? We are not the same group any more—the Chinese is not like what they imagine.

As a new generation of the Chinese, we think we should build relationship with other groups. We have our own culture and tradition, and our art, etc. We hope we can share them. My interest is laid on Chinese contemporary art. Through contemporary art, artists talk about something different from politics. So sharing the art through Yuz collection artworks, we will give people a message. It is to realize cultural exchange by means of art. Even though you do not understand Chinese, and many Chinese do not understand Indonesian, we can communicate through art. My purpose is to set a platform like this, that’s how I started Yuz collections.

What is the focus of you collection and which artists form the basis of the collection? What are your main interests and ambitions when it comes to developing your art collection? Who are your favorite artists and which artists do you think are the most important to promote and acquire at the moment?

I spent years to learn which artists were important and which artists weren’t. In the end, I came to feel that a lot of works I once saw as important were no longer important anymore. This was a learning process, and during the process, every work in the collection has its meaning to me. Through the process, I have formed my collecting strategy and Yuz collection has formed its system.

One section of Yuz collection is sorting out the “history” thread of Chinese contemporary art history, by collecting the significant art works, especially oil paintings done in 1980s and 1990s, by those Chinese contemporary artists.

Another section are large-scale installations. I like to collect them, they are visually impressive, spiritually strong, like Maurizio Cattelan’s Untitled (Olive Tree), Fred Sandback’s Seven-part Right-angled Triangular Construction, Anselm Kiefer’s Fate of the Nations. Most of them are from western artists. The two sections echo with each other, forming the Yuz collection.

And in recent years, I’m not only looking at the past art history, I’m also exploring young artists and their new works, the works they have done with new media, to study the popular culture, to presenting the influence of the Internet era. I believe they are the future of art history.

I have an ambition to build a great contemporary art collection. The collection has a strong Chinese tradition that has been mixed with contemporary idea, while also explores the Western contemporary art’s history and future, but not limited to them, it looks into the development of contemporary art development in other regions as well, like Japan, Korea or Southeast Asia . A collection is a kind of cultural capital, more than a property. It is not only a financial issue, but also a social responsibility. It includes political, economic, and social elements.

What was the inspiration and motivation behind the development of the Yuz Museum and Foundation?

There is an old saying in Chinese, the true joy of joys is the joy that joys in the joy of others. The traditional approach to collecting is to seal things away, but I want my collection to be open, so that more people can share these outstanding works of art. I have entered the contemporary art field as a collector, but merely collecting artworks is not enough to satisfy me.

I hope to share the joy that art brings me with others and provide artists with a setting that can take in their artworks. To date, the best method I have been able to think of is to move from collecting artworks to establishing an organization, an art museum, and to finding a way to sustain it.

The year of 2008 marked a turning point in my career as a collector. I set up a non-profit art foundation in Jakarta, the Yuz foundation. There are three guiding principles of Yuz foundation: first, to collect contemporary art; second, to promote the art museum movement; and third, to play an active role in social welfare. As a patriotic overseas Chinese person, an Indonesian citizen and someone who has married into a Shanghai family, in 2014, I established Yuz museum in Shanghai. Foundation supports the museum, through initiating a lot of external communications and collaborations, like an invisible hand. The museum is a platform, which transfer the foundation collections and communication achievements into tangible exhibitions, promoting the exhibition development of contemporary art and to enhance the public’s understanding and appreciation of contemporary art. Although the physical nature of the foundation and the museum are different, the philosophies are the same,

What are your plans for the future development of the Yuz Museum and Foundation?

It is not a secret that I have had pancreatic cancer for one and a half years. It changed my horizon of being a human being. I’m still living and I’m still a useful person. Now I’m applying for non-profit status for Yuz foundation. Currently Yuz foundation’s ownership belongs to my company. But I want to turn this foundation into a public organization and can get public support, and then the museum and its growing programs supported by the foundation can be governed by a board of trustees, like the model that a lot of western museums have now. Other than this, Yuz foundation is also searching for a second site in China to house the foundation collections, to build a second museum to permanently show these collection artworks. And of course, the collection keeps growing. I have this wish that when students in China want to study Chinese contemporary art history, to study contemporary art history, they will come to these two museums.

How did your childhood and your experiences growing up influence and effect your love of art and the way you view and perceive art?

My education background is close to Han culture. I studied in Singapore and Hong Kong. They are all related to Chinese. At the time of late 1970s, in those days while I was in high school, I listened to Chinese folk songs from Radio Singapore every night. Until now I still can sing a lot of folk songs, including those revolutionary songs that many Chinese cannot sing. I developed a passion for Han culture. Now, in my system of collecting, I have a deep interest in collecting Chinese contemporary art, because they are things that I learned since a young age.

What are the most recent acquisitions of artworks that you have made?      

In the last year, yuz collection acquired quite a few works, following the idea of collecting the history of Chinese Contemporary Art. One of them is Fang Lijun’s Series I No.5, which is the artist’s first try of oil paintings during 1990-1991, with his well-known bald figures.

Another recent acquisition is Senior Liu Wei’s Swimmer. This piece was exhibited in 1994 International Biennial of Sao Paulo. It is a very specific piece in Chinese contemporary art history.

The other new acquisition is Wang Guangyi’s The Mao Grid, one of the significant works from his early artist life. The Yuz collection has many works from Wang Guangyi, especially quite a few before the artist produced his “great criticism” series. The artist himself is an eminent pop-art artist.

While collecting these works, I’m always looking at the art history and I believe that the longer you look back, the farther you can look forward.

At the same time, more and more works created by emerging artists are entering the Yuz collection. They are the future of the art history. Every year in the Yuz museum we do exhibitions to present these new art to the public. Like last year, the Yuz museum organized the OVERPOP show and exhibited a group of newly acquired Yuz collection works. These art works are from a party of young artists, using new media, new materials to interpret the living present. The exhibition was very successful, very popular with visitors, and received great credits from the art community. Many young artists from the show received recognized prizes in the contemporary art world.