#and how beautifully west coast not like us was

[feddy-34]

kenny said he got more in the bank too im scared

[petew21-blog]

Swapcation

I can't believe I finally did it. I was so afraid to use my powers I got and now look at me.

A fat kid like me would never walk around like this. Parading around

I still feel guilty though

14 hours ago:

My family spoke about receiving my powers for many years. They all got their chance for a few years when they were young but one day their power run out when they got too old. It took a few years for each person.

But now I was the youngest out of our family and they all were looking forward to use my powers to swap them into younger bodies. I hated this idea, cause they usually picked a family they knew and replaced them. What did my family do with the other swapped family are you asking? You don't wanna know.

And that's why I escaped the night before my family got their hands on me. I couldn't let another family get killed of like so many before. I just have to swap soon enough before my family finds me a tries to use me for themselves. Unfortunately it won't be easy, cause after centuries of swapping, they got themselves into the higher class and got enough money to do whatever they wanted.

I ran through the forest with my backpack and got to the nearest road. It was the middle of the night and there weren't cars nearby. I walked for an hour and arrived to a 24/7 diner. Perfect. I can hitchhike from here.

The only three people in the diner were the chef, waitress and some guy. He looked like a bussiness man coming from some trip. Sipped his coffee, maybe heading somewhere and trying to get some cofein to not fall asleep behind the wheel.

I aproached him:"Hey, I was just wondering if you were taking hitchhikers by any chance?" I asked with a shaky voice.

He looked at me with his exhausted eyes:"Where are you heading? Got a name kid?"

"North," I exclaimed, " and the name is Kenneth. Nice to meet you." I lied, not using my real name.

I saw a spark in his eyes. Maybe it was just a coincidence. "Really? North? There isn't anything but wilderness for miles." I didn't respond. And just nodded. He continued:"Well we got a lot to talk about then"

We headed to the car. He was driving a black Toyota. That's all I could say about that car. I knew shit about cars

His car was clean, but he had a lot of bags in the trunk. Probably from the business trip, I thought.

An hour of smalltalk about my life and himself followed. His name was Matthew, and he worked as a marketer on west coast. He quit university a few years ago and went on to get more money. From the talk all I could notice was the way his hands moved, his beautifully manly hands. His biceps was carefully wrapped around by the blue short sleeve of his T-shirt. I could only imagine what it would be like to kiss his beard and continue to his chest. Burry myself there. I wondered if he was hairy there just as his arms were.

As I was dreaming about this beautiful specimen I didn't even notice that he made a few slight turns. As he kept talking and I was admiring him, out of the pitch black forest a diner emerged. The same diner we came back from.

I looked at him horrified

"You didn't think that your parents would let you get away? Sorry for the change of your plans for the vacation, but your family needs you and I was promised a lot of money. So I gotta get you back."

Fuck. No. I can't let this happen. I can't go back. I gotta find a way out of here.

The doors were locked, so there was no way I was getting out of there. Begging didn't seem like a valid option. I noticed the time 2:09. It's my birthday. I wonder. If this doesn't work then I am dead. If I don't do anything my family will use me. I can't let the happen.

I concentrated hard enough. I have never swapped before, but I knew how from my family. They all went through it many times.

I felt warmth coming straight from my head, following to my hands.

We were few miles from my home

Now or never

I jumping at him. My right hand grabbing the wheel and turning it to the right. My left hand grabbing his shoulder.

A moment of darkness. For a short glimpse I saw my own face shocked and screaming. Then we hit the tree.

I got out of the car as soon as possible. My body didn't move. I killed him. I did the same thing, like my family to all the others.

I ran to the backseat, grabbed my backpack a ran striaght to the forest. I could hear sirens in the distance. I have to run now.

Present

I think it has been far enough for now. The forest ened with a beautiful large meadow between two massive mountains. Sun already shined and I could slow down for a minute.

I took off my ripped shirt and jeans. If someone saw them they would think that a bear attacked.

In my view were now two beautifully sculpted hairy pecs and even more beautiful abs. I went through every ridge my fingers found. The skin was tigh and warm. After the run I completely forgot I was now Matthew. Not Jake anymore. But Matthew. Beautiful hot sexy Matthew.

I spoke out. What a manly voice I now possess I though. My hand touching my neck and the other my lips and beard as I spoke. I smelled my armpit. The stentch of sweat was extremely strong but erotic. I went to admire my new hairy legs. I slowly started from my strong thighs, through the thick carpet of hair covering them, following to my new feet. I took off the shoes. My feet are massive now.

The last thing I didn't see yet was already awaiting hard. I got completely naked. There I was. A man! A hot sexy man. Sculpted like a statue with a hard and large dick in hand. I jerked off slowly and with my other hand I kept on exploring the already touched areas. I went on to masturbate rapidly just until the streams of cum kept pouring out off me.

I stood there smiling, laughing.

And then the clarity hit. I took Matthew's life. I did that to stop my family, but that didn't make it easier.

There was no going back now. I took my backpack and the rest of my clothes that weren't destroyed, hoping I would get a chance to get some on the way.

"I am Matthew Daniels and I am on a vacation. I am Matthew."

I went into the beautiful nature to continue my journey. I still feel guilty. Maybe the feeling will pass. I hope...

Part 2:

[babydollmarauders]

GOODBYE — JOHN MARINO

part of the Maraschino Cherry! AU

y/nmercer

liked by john.marino97, dawson1417, and 6,927 others

y/nmercer new jersey, you made dreams come true. you gave me a few last years of living with my best friend, and you brought me my prince charming of a fiancé. i can’t thank this city and this team enough. i truly don’t have the words to describe how grateful i am for everything that jersey has meant to me, but it’s time for the next adventure. utah, i’ll see you soon…. please don’t take away my margaritas 🩵

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john.marino97 as taylor swift once said “everything you lose is a step you take.” just think of this loss as the first step in our personal journey, shortcake. this is the first in a long line of things we have to do on our own, and i’m so glad to have you by my side.

y/nmercer when he listens to and understands taylor swift 😩🤭 I’M GONNA PROPOSE

john.marino97 i think i already did that? what do you think i did when i got down on one knee and gave you that ring?

y/nmercer idk? i thought you just had a really weird way of gifting a promise ring or something

dawson1417 call me every day and tell me all about the mormons and life in utah! i’m gonna miss you, but i’m so happy you found your happily ever after and have someone to take on life with ❤️

dawson1417 even if that someone is john

john.marino97 we’re gonna be brothers one day, and then you’re gonna wish you were nicer to me

dawson1417 @/john.marino97 nah

y/nmercer i love you, bubba 🤍 thank you for being my best friend and allowing me to follow you around for the past 22 years. life will be so much different without you by my side

lhughes_06 i’ll miss you, mom! i hope you have a good time in utah! i’m gonna miss you dropping off cookies after losses and doing my curls

y/nmercer my first child <3 i love you so much, hun! i’m gonna miss you so much but i’ll see you later this summer and when we play NJD!

user92 this must be so hard for her :( i can’t imagine being with your twin from the womb to 22 and then having to move across the country just like that

user16 i mean, i’d assume she knew the risks of being with a hockey player and that it meant she could have to leave

user92 @/user16 that doesn’t make it any less hard for her

jackhughes gonna miss ya short stack! don’t get shunned out there in utah!

y/nmercer you’re not that much taller than me! just for that, i will not miss you

jackhughes oh no, you’ve wounded me! what ever will i do?!

y/nmercer fall in a hole, slut

jackhughes right back at you, whore

y/nmercer @/john.marino97 JOHN! LOOK WHAT HE CALLED ME!

jackhughes tattletale. you can dish it out but you can’t take it?

y/nmercer i’m just a girl

nicohischier we’ll miss your presence here in NJ, but i can’t wait to hear all about your new life, y/n!

y/nmercer please bring me back so many swiss treats as a going away gift!

user04 new jersey is gonna miss john’s talent and your kind heart and vivacious energy! i hope utah treats you guys well!

ehaula utah stole my babysitter! good luck out there, i’ll miss you both!

y/nmercer i’ll fly back. don’t ever underestimate what i’ll do for your children, erik.

nicolelaud i’m gonna miss my wine wife so bad 🍷🤍 i’ll pour a glass in your honor, babe. it’s been a privilege to be your friend and watch your relationship blossom beautifully. i’ll still see you in a few weeks, right?!

y/nmercer thank you for welcoming me into this team dynamic with open arms! i’ll miss you!! and absolutely! no chance i’m giving up a jersey bachelorette party!

user78 THIS IS HOW I FOUND OUT JOHN IS LEAVING US?! I HATE MY LIFE

vitacz15 i’m so sorry to hear about this! but i know you’ll do great there!

y/nmercer i miss my daily dose of vitek! thank you, VV!

curtislazar95 i’ll miss *adam hamway voice* THE MARINO’S! hope you thrive on the west coast! luke’s curls will miss you too

y/nmercer i’m a marino?! 🥹

curtislazar95 well yeah, soon enough!

naterbastian take care of my boy out there in the beehive state! i know he and you are gonna do great things!

y/nmercer awww bass! don’t worry, i’ll take care of your husband! 🫶🏻

jesperbratt don’t be a stranger ❤️ you have a home here any time. we’ll miss you both lots

y/nmercer oh bratt-man, don’t make me cry again 🥺

user30 the way john hasn’t posted a goodbye but she has 😭

user6 well, john never posted a goodbye when he was traded from the penguins either, but considering this seems to be the first NHL player she’s dated, i assume this is her first time having to leave against her will from a city she’s grown to call home, so it makes sense that she posted a goodbye

tmeier96 good luck on the west coast! i’m just a text away if you ever need anything, it was a pleasure to get to know you

y/nmercer just stab me with a dull soup spoon already, it would hurt less

john.marino97 @/y/nmercer no.

[abiiors]

west coast

a/n: apologies if this is a bit shit, i did just write it in one burst of horny at 12:30 am <3

this is fiction that only operates on horny. no logic to be found.

minors dni!! (use of "good girl" once or twice i think)

the sharp smell of a burning cigarette permeates the car, wakes up your senses, as you speed down the pacific coast highway. well, matty does anyway, gelled hair blowing in the wind, the thrill of the speed bringing a smile to his face. 

in the dying light of the day, he’s beautiful. all classic handsome with a stubble and a lit cigarette dangling loosely between his pink lips. the golden light brings out the browns and greys in his hair, makes his eyes look like pools of gold. his jawline is sharp enough to cut, especially when he takes a drag of the cigarette and blows out the smoke. 

he’s happy, carefree, singing along to a lana del rey song on the radio, one of your favourites too. their voices blend beautifully, and you wonder what it would be like to be that perfect. 

“you’re staring,” he smirks. he’s cocky today, you like that about him, about l.a. something about being here brings out the quintessential rockstar in him. and something about seeing him like that makes heat pool between your legs. 

“i am,” you challenge, feeling a bit cocky yourself, “what will you do about it?” 

views of the clear blue sea whizz past you but you keep your eyes on matty until he looks at you, only for a second before he returns his attention to the road. it’s empty, nothing but you, the music, and your thoughts that have long since crossed into filthy territory. 

you look at his lap, not the least bit subtle about where your eyes linger. 

“what can i do?” he asks in response, “i like that you’re staring.”

with a surge of boldness, you place a hand on his thigh, on the soft denim of his faded blue jeans. he looks straight out of a dream. 

wayfarers, white t-shirt, golden light. and your hand inches closer to his crotch. 

“minx,” he laughs, quickly catching up to your intentions, peeking at you from the corner of his eye. “you wanna do it here?”

“i’ll make it worth your time,” you lean over, trailing a few kisses on his jaw, leaving behind red lipstick marks and hissing lightly at how his stubble feels on your soft lips. “if you promise to keep us safe.”

sure, your tone is joking but the very real danger of it shoots a tendril of thrill through you, zapping like electricity. he shifts in his seat, clearly eager with anticipation. the next time to eye his crotch, there’s already a bulge. 

you twist your body in the seat, flicking your tongue on the corner of his mouth, chasing away the traces of your lipstick left seconds ago. matty hisses. 

“shit, baby,” he laughs, “go on then. make me feel good.”

you palm him before he’s even done speaking, eager to feel him, to taste him. to hear all the sounds that spill from his lips while his fingers thread in your hair. pushing you down, fucking your mouth. 

he’s already groaning, growing harder under your touch and shifting in his seat while you undo the zipper of his jeans. his other hand is out the window, tapping away the last of the cigarette ash before he stubs it out in the ashtray. the cigarette smoke blends seamlessly with his cologne, with the salty ocean air. 

“lift your hips for me then,” you whisper right into his ear, savouring the way his breath hitches. breaking his composure feels like a small victory, watching him eagerly help you pull himself out of his pants is better still. 

you trail the kisses down his neck, leaving soft red smudges on the collar of his white tshirt—shame you can’t get him out of it in a running car. you would have liked to leave bruises and bite marks all over his chest and stomach. 

“tease,” he hisses, impatient now, whiney almost. so you give him what he wants. 

without warning you bend all the way down, swirling your tongue around his tip and over the slit. the taste of his precum settles on your tongue, sharp and salty and mouthwatering. the sound that leaves him cannot be described with mere words. it’s a grunt, low and guttural—pule male desire and rockstar arrogance.

he lurches, the car stutters slightly and another shiver passes through you. what a way to go this would be…

“fuck—fuck,” his breathing deepens immediately, abs flexing ever so slightly against your cheek. you’re aware of the way the ends of your hair brush and tickle his inner thigh. you’re even more aware of how he throbs in your mouth even with just the tip in. 

placing a hand on his thigh to hold him down, you take more of him in. he’s hard and thick, stretching out your mouth and making your lips burn the lower you go. it’s a delicious burn. 

a jolt goes through you, one full of nerves and excitement and lust. desire settles on your bones like a living thing. oppressive in the best way possible, leaving you so momentarily blinded that when the car veers almost dangerously to one side and you only hum around him in warning. 

“focus, matthew,” you grit out, letting go of him, “on the wheel or i stop right now.”

he mumbles something incoherent, hand resting on top of your head, struggling with himself whether he should push you down. he could if he wanted to, you would let him, happily gag on his cock just to hear him make those sounds again. 

“please, baby,” he moans and that’s all you need to take him back into your mouth, all the way to the hilt this time. 

pleasure swirls inside you, hot and instant, a sweet ache settling between your legs, right where his tongue was the night before. you feel the sting of the stubble burn at the memory. 

your pace is deliberately slow, torturously so, hollowing your cheeks around him and letting your teeth scrape on the sensitive skin. matty’s hisses and moans wash over you, growing in intensity the more you let your tongue swirl over his tip. 

“this is torture,” he moans. his hand fists in your hair, tighter than before. it stings. it sends delicious tingles all over your body. 

this time he doesn’t stop himself from pushing your head down, guiding you just how he wants you, right until you can feel his tip touching the back of your throat. you gag slightly, drooling all over him. it’s already a mess, wet and hot. even more so when you slide your mouth up his length, simultaneously tracing a nail on the thick vein pulsating on his underside. 

matty’s thighs tremble dangerously. 

“wheel. focus.” you remind him. “i told you i’l make it worth your time.”

but you do decide to stop with the torture after that, bobbing your head up and down his length and increasing your pace. the salty taste of precum lingers stronger in your mouth, getting more and more intense each time you tease his slit. 

the faster you go, the more he slows the car, struggling to control the speed while he’s busy trying not to thrust into your mouth, trying not to fuck your mouth like he wants to. and you can tell he really, really wants to. 

“baby…” he warns; almost as if on cue, you feel the car pulling over to the side of the highway, slowing to a stop. your heart beats all over your body. this is it. you’re in for it now. 

“be a good girl now and open wide,” he warns a mere moment before you feel his hips lifting off the seat. 

matty’s fist tightens into your hair, keeping you in place so he can thrust into your mouth, over and over exactly how he wants to. being used like this has you moaning obnoxiously. you know what it does to him, how the sounds shoot straight to his dick, making him lose it more and more. 

“i’m close,” he moans. 

the sides of your mouth burn, stretched out fully from being fucked at a bruising pace. the ache between your legs increases, sure to have left an obvious damp spot on your panties by now. 

you need to taste him, feel him spilling in your mouth now. so you let your teeth graze over his length again, moaning, hollowing your cheeks until you feel the spurts of warm, thick cum spill down your throat. 

the sounds coming out of him—out of both of you—are downright sinful; loud and wet and obnoxious. you’re a sloppy mess too, a mixture of drool and cum running down the side of your mouth as you try to keep up with his thrusts, swallowing every last drop he has to offer. pleasing him like a good girl until his thrusts slow to a stop. 

only then do you let yourself straighten. 

you’re sure your face is a mess; mascara smudged under your eyes, red smeared around your mouth just like it is at the base of his cock, forming a filthy ring. your chin, wet and sticky from his cum. 

matty has his tipped back, eyes closed and breathing heavily. his sunglasses are pushed up on his head. his cheeks are pink, mouth parted open and still smudged on one side with red. 

he looks stunning, perfect. 

that is until he opens his eyes to look at you, gaze dark and somehow still hungry. you know it’s a silent command. you obey it, opening your mouth wide to show him that you’ve swallowed everything. all of it. 

the sun’s gone down now. it’s almost dark. even when the cars zoom by, they don’t stop or pay attention to you. but matty does, looking at you intently, mouth curling up as he lets his eyes roam over your flushed face, tangled hair, and wet mouth.

“come here,” he gestures, voice rough and gravelly. “it’s only fair i return the favour.”

[aworldofpattern]

Christian Allaire at the Met Gala 2024, wearing custom outfit by Jamie Okuma.

Allaire, a fashion writer at US Vogue, is Ojibwe, and a member of the Nipissing First Nation, Ontario. Okuma is a Luiseno, Shoshone-Bannock, Wailaki, and Okinawan who is also an enrolled member of the La Jolla band of Indians in Southern California where she lives and works.

Allaire: 'I knew I wanted to wear an Indigenous designer to the Met this year. When I heard this year’s theme—“Sleeping Beauties”—and dress code—“The Garden of Time”—I was instantly struck by a few concepts: That our Indigenous designs & craftwork have persisted FOREVER, and that many of our traditional garments have always beautifully reflected the natural world that surrounds us.

On the blazer, @j.okuma used a hand-reverse appliqué method to illustrate two of my favorite flowers from back home: Lupines and Indian Paintbrushes. Turns out, these flowers are also popular in Jamie’s region down on the West Coast. (We both agreed they are very “rezzy flowers.” 😉) For the pants, Jamie also put a contemporary twist on a traditional breechcloth, instead adding a built-in panel to formal tailoring. I absolutely adore how she mixed the old with the new.

To finish off the look, Jamie also surprised me with a special Bandolier-style bag that made me super emotional when I unboxed it. She found an ANTIQUE piece of Ojibwe floral beadwork (likely turn of the century) to represent my specific heritage, and then helped restore it into a cross-body style—adding modern touches like crystal straps and ribbon embellishments.

Many archival photos show Ojibwe men wearing similar Bandolier bags throughout history, and when I carried it last night, I couldn’t help but feel like I was carrying a piece of my ancestors with me. And holllah - we made it to the MET.'

[myemuisemo]

Suddenly, Letters from Watson dumps us in the middle of the Great American Desert (part 1 of "On the Great Alkali Plain," 2/7/24). This is not anywhere I expected to be transported from London, and the contrast makes the Mountain West feel exotic for a minute.

The Great American Desert -- stretching from about Grand Island, Nebraska to the Sierras and pretty much the entire north-south length of the U.S. -- had become a thing of legend since explorers' accounts in the 1820s. When Dad and I drove across it in 2022, we talked about how incredibly daunting it must have been for emigrants seeking their land of milk and honey on the Pacific coast.

The way we went, out I-80, Nebraska shifts from green to gray as it rises toward the Rockies. After a while, the wind picks up as you go uphill into Wyoming. There's a lot of Wyoming, and after Cheyenne and Laramie (both of which would be small towns in most states), it's very, very empty. When we finally started the descent toward Salt Lake City, and the little valleys beside the road turned green with running water, it was truly like entering paradise.

Of course, in 1847, Salt Lake City was just barely being settled, as Brigham Young led his Latter Day Saints west from Council Bluffs, and its location wasn't part of the U.S. yet.

The Mexican-American war had started the prior year, 1846, and was still going. Spring-summer of 1846 saw the Bear Flag Revolt in California, followed by the U.S. just annexing the state. Gold wouldn't be discovered at Sutter's Mill until 1849, so while emigration to California happened -- the Donner Party made their ill-fated trip in 1846-47 -- it wasn't anything like the scope of movement along the Oregon Trail.

As far as I can tell, "Sierra Blanco" is not a real place. There's a Sierra Blanca in New Mexico -- which would fit with all the specific landscape, plus White Sands National Park in New Mexico specifically has alkali flats. Last time I drove through New Mexico on I-40, in late 2018, it was delightfully desolate, so I can buy that in 1847, it seemed completely empty, with even the native peoples avoiding some stretches.

Why anyone would be crossing New Mexico is a mystery, since neither Arizona nor southern California were much settled by Americans. There was some sort of wagon route across New Mexico used by U.S. soldiers during the Mexican-American War, so if I'd expect anyone to be about, it'd be the U.S. Army.

Utah, now, is downright famous for its salt flat, but that's west of the site of Salt Lake City.

Regardless, parties screwing up their trip to the west by taking an imprudent shortcut or mistaking the route was definitely both a thing that happened and, thanks to the Donner Party, a trope. Our haggard and starving traveler sounds about right.

Then he reveals a Plucky Innocent Victorian Child.

That "pretty little girl of about five years of age" is the absolute ideal of Victorian childhood, being perfectly behaved, utterly imperturbable, determined to see the best in all things, sweet, trusting, and looking forward to being reunited with her mother in heaven.

This kind of child is why Louisa May Alcott was seen as innovative for writing Little Woman about girls who worked on their character flaws. (This is also the ideal the March girls were being aimed at. Polly in An Old-Fashioned Girl comes closer, but even Polly would have been upset about being hopelessly lost in the desert with no water.) Contrast this with the street urchins that Holmes employs in his investigation, who are good enough sorts but scrappy, resourceful, and street smart.

Ordinarily, a Victorian child who was utterly sweet and pious would be a cinnamon roll, literally too good, too pure for this world, and thus would die beautifully but tragically before long. Being lost in the desert seems ideal for this, but --

She turns to prayer, and since someone must survive in order for this scene to be relevant,

Yes, darn it, I am on the edge of my seat to know what happens. I'm also grateful that crossing the Great American Desert in 2022 was a quicker process. I've been reading Carey Williams' old-but-interesting California: The Great Exception, which has a lot to say about how 19th century isolation shaped California's economy and power structure, not always for good. But that's neither here nor there -- I don't think we're headed to California.

[randomvarious]

Today's compilation:

Now That's What I Call Music! 8 2001 R&B / Pop / Teen Pop / Alternative Rock / Pop-Punk / Post-Grunge

Welp, folks, it looks like we're nearing the end of the earliest days for this beloved flagship series that's known for constantly delivering reproductions of the day's biggest pop hits, but I still have a couple more of these albums in my queue to enjoyably sift through. And just like the other seven installments that precede this one, Now That's What I Call Music! 8 also makes for a pretty great trip down commercial radio memory lane as well 😍.

But before we dive right on into it, how about we have some nostalgic fun with the ad for this release first? See, If you had placed an order for Now 8 by credit card or with check-debit, you'd also receive a free limited edition collector's box that you could store all of your other Now CDs in too! Wow! How considerate! Thanks Now! 😎💖

But we actually start off on a few somber notes here... 😔

Now 8 was the first dispatch from the main series to be released after 9/11, and so, I feel like the inclusion of its final track, U2's "Walk On," which never even made it onto Billboard's Hot 100 chart, was done solely in order to try to console an American psyche that had been deeply wounded at that time. "Walk On" was released as a single in February of 2001, and was actually about the plight of Burmese peace activist Aung San Suu Kyi—who, years later, would despicably do nothing as Myanmar's head of state to address the genocide of Rohingya Muslims that her own military was perpetrating—but in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, the song found itself resonating with a lot of Americans, serving a sudden and newfound purpose as an anthem of perseverance for them.

And that's pretty much undoubtedly why Now chose this song to close out the album. Had 9/11 not happened, this comp's last track would've probably been a song that had actually charted on the Hot 100. But because this album was slated to release in November of '01, the Now brass probably thought it best to end with a song that could acknowledge that then-current moment of anguish and turmoil, rather than awkwardly and tone-deafly just loading up their CD with fun pop hits from the summer that had just passed.

But less than three weeks before 9/11, R&B star Aaliyah had also tragically passed in a plane crash after filming the video for her beautifully soft and sensual, final single, "Rock the Boat" too. So Now not only included that song on this release, but they dedicated the whole album to Aaliyah's memory, and also donated part of the proceeds from the triple-platinum seller to her memorial fund as well.

And last with the sadness, rest in peace to the great Steve Harwell. I absolutely despised your band's cover of The Monkees' "I'm a Believer" when I first heard it (which appears on this album), but I still genuinely dug your work more than most are willing to admit, and really also loved the critique you had about the commodification of social movements in "Walkin' On the Sun," which is something that many people probably overlooked because they had nothing nice to say about your band that, unfortunately, became a Shrek meme. At the end of the day, Smash Mouth made a bunch of fun music, man 😞.

OK, on to the rest of this album...

So, the album cover for this release says it comes with 20 chart-topping hits, but in reality, only three of these were actually Hot 100 #1s. There's Destiny's Child's "Bootylicious," which, to go with their Survivor album's theme, intended to use the opening guitar stutter from "Eye of the Tiger"—by the band *Survivor*—but had to settle for Stevie Nicks' "Edge of Seventeen" instead; Usher's "U Got It Bad" ballad; and Joe's "Stutter," which isn't actually the most famous version of the song, but is the "Double Take Remix" instead, that was done by Allen "Allstar" Gordon Jr., and sampled both the iconic west coast alternative rap classic, "Passin' Me By," by The Pharcyde, as well as the song that that song itself sampled, Quincy Jones' "Summer in the City." And it also features now-canceled rapper Mystikal, which represents his third overall appearance in this series.

And speaking of remixes and samples, the famous Murder Inc. remix of J.Lo's "I'm Real," featuring Ja Rule, doesn't appear on here, but instead, it's her underappreciated and poppier original version that sounds nothing like the remix, and samples from classic Japanese electronic group Yellow Magic Orchestra's digi-chirping "Firecracker," which ends up naturally giving the tune a sweet 80s throwback kinda vibe.

Other songs worth mentioning are the brilliantly produced and super light and smooth Janet Jackson jam, "Someone to Call My Lover," which sampled from folk duo America's "Ventura Highway;" and a terrific tune that was actually originally released in 1998, but rose to US fame because of its inclusion in a 2001 Mitsubishi ad: "Start the Commotion," by UK duo The Wiseguys. That one's very much in that Fatboy Slim-helmed UK big beat vein; gotta love the blaring and swingin' sampled horns on it! 🤩

And there's a solid handful of other songs on this CD that I could devote some space to as well, but I think this post here is already long enough as it is.

So, another terrific nostalgia rush to be had in this trip all the way back to 2001. And I only have one more of these Now comps left in my queue, but I think I'm gonna save it for later.

Highlights:

Destiny's Child - "Bootylicious" 'N Sync - "Pop" Jennifer Lopez - "I'm Real" Joe feat. Mystikal - "Stutter (Double Take Remix)" Janet Jackson - "Someone to Call My Lover" Christina Milian - "AM to PM" Aaliyah - "Rock the Boat" Usher - "U Got It Bad" Gorillaz - "Clint Eastwood" The Wiseguys feat. Greg Nice - "Start the Commotion" Sum 41 - "Fat Lip" Blink-182 - "The Rock Show" Fuel - "Bad Day" U2 - "Walk On"

[xtruss]

The research vessel Nathaniel B. Palmer works along the ice edge of the Thwaites Glacier ice shelf in Antarctica. Photo by Zuma Press

How We Came to Know and Fear the Doomsday Glacier

It’s the world’s most vulnerable glacier and key to the stability of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, yet we’re only now getting to know Thwaites Glacier. What took us so long?

— By Marissa Grunes | January 3, 2023

RAM! The bright red hull of the US Coast Guard icebreaker Glacier slammed onto the ice. Every rivet of the 95-meter-long ship shuddered with the impact. It was 1985, and the researchers aboard were sailing through one of the world’s most remote places: the Amundsen Sea, Antarctica. A graduate student onboard, Jill Singer, got to try her hand at breaking ice during the voyage. “You push the throttle or thrusters up,” she explains. “It would lift the front of the Glacier out of the water enough to drop down on the ice and break it.” RAM! After several days of charging at sea ice with bone-aching resolve, the Glacier broke through.

“[We] broke into … a beautifully calm, ice-free sea, the eye in a hurricane of ice,” glaciologist Terry Hughes later wrote of the moment—one he had been dreaming of since at least the 1970s when he first started worrying about glacial collapse.

The Glacier became the first ship to sail into Pine Island Bay.

The US Coast Guard icebreaker Glacier in Pine Island Bay, Antarctica, in 1985. Photo courtesy of John B. Anderson

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts sea levels will rise almost half a meter by 2100. That water will displace several million people on coastlines around the world. Much of the water will come from the region around Pine Island Bay. Specifically, it will come from what’s been dubbed the “Doomsday Glacier”: Thwaites, one of our planet’s largest glaciers, which is roughly as extensive as Great Britain.

Glaciers form when snow is compacted into ice over hundreds of years. As the weight of new snow and ice presses down, the ice beneath starts to flow like a river. Thwaites is an outlet glacier, meaning it flows all the way to the ocean. There, its coastal edge stretches 120 kilometers in a dazzling white wall of ice that looms up to 40 meters above the surface of the ocean and reaches over 200 meters deep.

Thwaites and its neighbor Pine Island Glacier drain about one-third of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet—the ice sheet extending west from the natural dividing line of the Transantarctic Mountains. The two glaciers are breaking up into icebergs far more quickly than new ice can be created. Already they contribute five percent of annual sea level rise, or roughly 0.18 millimeters annually: the equivalent of dumping over 20 million Olympic-sized swimming pools into the ocean each year. And if Thwaites collapses, its shape and location mean the rest of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet could go with it. All told, that’s enough water to raise sea levels by over three meters, redrawing coastlines and transforming the planet we know.

Map data by ArcGIS

Researchers like Hughes have been raising concerns for nearly 50 years about the glaciers that flow into Pine Island Bay and the surrounding Amundsen Sea embayment. Yet coordinated international research of the region only took off in 2018, with the formation of the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration. Today, the potential collapse of Thwaites Glacier is among the largest environmental threats to global civilization—and we’ve barely begun to understand it. What took us so long?

As it turns out, Pine Island Bay is one of the hardest places in the world to reach. The story of how we know what we know about Thwaites is also a story of the challenges—and triumphs—of science at the bottom of the world.

Pine Island Bay is a small indent in the coast of West Antarctica. It feeds into the stormy and ice-choked Amundsen Sea—the only sector of Antarctica that no nation has bothered to claim. It’s remote even for Antarctica: the closest permanently occupied research station is 1,500 kilometers away.

The first ship known to have reached the Amundsen Sea was commanded by Captain James Cook. In January 1773, he and his crew on the HMS Resolution were the first humans to cross the Antarctic Circle, the invisible line of latitude at 66° south. Cook had been sent south by the British government to determine whether land existed below Australia, a region of longstanding curiosity to members of England’s leading scientific institution, the Royal Society. A year later, the Resolution again crossed the Antarctic Circle but was stopped short by what Cook described as an “immence Icefield … so close packed together that nothing could enter it.” The ship was at S 71°10′, W 106°54′. According to legend, young midshipman George Vancouver clambered to the bowsprit and waved his hat over the icy waters, declaring himself the southernmost human in history. The ship’s coordinates became known as Cook’s ne plus ultra—Latin for “no more beyond.”

When Cook turned back, the Resolution was less than 300 kilometers directly north of Thwaites Glacier. It’s a short distance by today’s standards, yet when a modern edition of Cook’s journals was published in 1971, his ne plus ultra in that region remained unbroken. In 200 years, no one had sailed farther south into the Amundsen Sea than Cook.

Pine Island Bay was first seen not by sea, but by air. In the 1940s, the US Navy organized Operation Highjump, which sent aircraft carriers to map different parts of the Antarctic coast. The USS Pine Island, named for Pine Island Sound in Florida, was sent to the Amundsen Sea. But the Pine Island never entered Pine Island Bay. Instead, its aircraft returned with the first aerial views of the embayment.

With little incentive to brave the harsh conditions of the Amundsen Sea, the US Navy and Coast Guard focused on other Antarctic regions over the following decades. By 1980, Pine Island Bay remained the largest unmapped coastal area below the Antarctic Circle.

The aircraft carrier USS Pine Island in the Amundsen Sea in January 1947. Its aircraft took the first images of Pine Island Bay, the location of Thwaites and Pine Island Glaciers. Photo courtesy of National Archives, photo no. AAE-518

Around that time, though, Hughes had begun to ask questions about the region. The glaciologist, who called himself a “cowboy scientist,” was outspoken and had a flair for making dramatic statements that could distract from the science. But he was also respected as a keen theorist whose papers bristled with mathematical equations predicting the behavior of glacial ice under various conditions.

As early as the 1970s, Hughes was concerned with two problems not then widely studied: a warming planet and the potential collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. He had become involved in a major project to reconstruct the growth and collapse of ice sheets during the last ice age. This project had drawn his attention to Pine Island Bay as a coastal area where the outer edge of glaciers might calve or break apart into icebergs with especial rapidity. Hughes had noticed that satellite images showed a surprisingly short glacial shelf. Why did the glacial ice not extend all the way across the bay? Outlet glaciers generally flow into an ice shelf, a floating expanse of ice reaching over the water. In certain cases, this floating shelf can buttress and protect the “grounded” inland ice that rests directly on bedrock. A similarly sized glacier in East Antarctica, David Glacier, flows for 100 kilometers over the ocean. Pine Island Glacier’s floating ice, by contrast, is half that length.

At the time, scientists knew the planet was slowly warming, but many believed Antarctica was safe: simply put, it was too cold to fail. Hughes wasn’t so sure. He worried that the lack of a large floating ice shelf in Pine Island Bay indicated instability among the nearby glaciers, which reach deep into the heart of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. In 1981, he dubbed Pine Island and Thwaites Glaciers the “weak underbelly” of West Antarctica: glaciers whose weakening could trigger the catastrophic collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. And he did mean catastrophic. Most of West Antarctica might be open water within 500 years; the oceans could rise by over a meter in one human lifetime. With the bombast that raised eyebrows among his colleagues, Hughes titled one of his research papers “Deluge II and the continent of doom: rising sea level and collapsing Antarctic ice.”

An aerial view of a shrinking glacier: Pine Island Glacier between 2000 and 2019. Photos by NASA

When Hughes sailed past Cook’s ne plus ultra and entered Pine Island Bay in 1985, he was a guest onboard with no official funding. Yet he hoped to learn more about Pine Island Glacier—particularly, whether it was flowing too fast to be stable. Ice and wind conditions in the bay were so bad, though, he was unable to collect useful data.

For the National Science Foundation (NSF), which had funded the research cruise, curiosity alone couldn’t justify the fuel needed to ram ice day and night on the taxpayer’s dime. If there were a glaciological fire smoldering in Pine Island Bay, as Hughes argued, NSF needed to see the match. Hughes hadn’t found it.

In fact, early satellite data was casting doubt on Hughes’s theories. In 1972, fresh from the space race, NASA and the US Geological Survey had launched the first Earth Resources Technology Satellite (now renamed Landsat). ���Remote sensing has revolutionized glaciology,” says glaciologist Karen Alley. “It’s not that long ago that nobody even had a picture of the whole continent,” she adds, referring to Antarctica. “And now we have continent-wide ice thickness and flow velocity.”

Throughout the 1980s and early ’90s, studies based on Landsat satellite images suggested that Pine Island Glacier was not only stable, it was actually gaining ice: 50 gigatonnes of ice per year, according to one estimate. It was fattening up to match its nickname, the PIG. Thwaites Glacier—an afterthought in these studies—was apparently growing, too.

It seemed Pine Island Bay shouldn’t be considered an area of concern. Hughes wasn’t convinced. The bay’s lack of floating ice shelves still raised his suspicions. Without data to support his theories, though, there was little he could do.

How did the studies using Landsat get it so wrong? “There’s a lot it doesn’t do,” Alley explains. Landsat specializes in capturing data at the surface; it turns out the crucial information Hughes needed was hidden beneath the ice, where Landsat couldn’t reach. But a different type of satellite technology was about to turn glaciology on its head.

In 1991, the European Space Agency launched the first European Remote Sensing satellite. It carried instruments for a new technique called radar interferometry. Eric Rignot, a glaciologist at the University of California, saw the technique’s potential, particularly after following its use on a NASA space shuttle a few years later.

Images from the Earth Resources Technology Satellite (now called Landsat) revolutionized Antarctic science, giving researchers aerial views of the continent and its ice. Photo courtesy of the European Space Agency

Using radar interferometry, Rignot was able to pinpoint facts about the glaciers that had once been invisible. He could see deformations in the ice with accuracy up to one millimeter. He could read ice movement not year to year, not even month to month, but by the hour. Most importantly, he could locate the grounding line.

When it comes to glacial collapse, the action is at the grounding line, where a glacier lifts up from the bedrock and begins to float over the ocean. It’s also where ocean water gnaws at that glacier’s base, loosening it from the bedrock. Much of West Antarctica’s ice is grounded well below sea level, in a bowl-shaped marine basin. Warmer ocean water can flow downhill into this bowl, melting the ice at the grounding line and causing it to move inland. When floating ice melts, it doesn’t change sea level: it’s already displacing ocean water, like ice cubes in a glass of water. But when the grounding line retreats, once-grounded ice melts. That does increase sea level and also destabilizes the glacier: the ice is thinned out from below and breaks apart more easily. In the sloping marine basin beneath Thwaites, the wall of submerged ice stretches over 1,000 meters deep, giving the water an enormous surface area to work on. The water can push the grounding line inland rapidly, only slowing if it encounters bedrock that is elevated—say, an underwater ridge or mountain that “pins” the ice. Thwaites Glacier has one such pinning point, about 40 kilometers behind the current grounding line. That pinning point sustains pressure against the glacier’s interior, like a flying buttress pressing against the wall of a cathedral. If the ice shelf is loosened from that pinning point, the glacier may pour its ice out even more rapidly.

The grounding line is where the bedrock, ice, and ocean meet. Pinpointing its location and how it moves helps inform researchers about a glacier’s stability. Illustration by Mark Garrison

Researchers can’t tell how fast the grounding line is retreating if they don’t know where it is. With this vital information, Rignot was getting melt rates orders of magnitude higher than ever seen before. He calculated that a major glacier in Greenland was melting by up to 20 meters per year. (Previous data had suggested that even the most vulnerable glaciers melted about 10 to 20 centimeters annually.) Rignot knew the figures would look wild to many of his colleagues. “Woah! Maybe my data is bad,” he thought, “but the evidence is piling up that these melt rates are way bigger.” He received pushback throughout the 1990s. It was hard for many to believe glaciers could disappear that fast. What could destroy a glacier so quickly?

The answer arose from an unexpected source. An oceanographer at Columbia University in the City of New York, Stanley Jacobs, thought the ocean might be involved. He knew of Hughes’s work and in 1991 had published a paper urging “icebreaker penetration and detailed oceanographic sampling” of the “largely unknown” Amundsen Sea. He wanted to take a ship back to Pine Island Bay.

The ocean’s importance may seem obvious now, but at the time researchers were more focused on flow velocity than on what happened when the glacier reached the ocean. In glaciology, Rignot says, few thought the ocean could matter: “It wasn’t on the horizon.”

The ocean is notoriously difficult to study. It’s expensive and dangerous, even in the best conditions. Rignot’s improved satellite data was so good that he mostly worked from his office in California. Where the ocean was concerned, though, satellites weren’t enough. Satellites can give temperatures only at the surface, where ice melt and subzero winds make polar water very cold; they can’t reach the deeper warm water.

“To get data in the ocean, you have to go there,” Rignot says. In 1994, Jacobs did just that.

No one had broken through the ice around Pine Island Bay since the voyage of the Glacier a decade earlier. “We were going into essentially uncharted waters,” recalls the oceanographer Adrian Jenkins, who joined Jacobs onboard. “No one knew where the edge of the continental shelf was—it was mismapped.”

Their cruise started in the more accessible waters of the Ross Sea, south of New Zealand. There, the team found extremely cold ocean water—about -2.2 °C, well below the freezing point of fresh water. As they followed the coast toward Pine Island Bay, though, something changed. They entered Sulzberger Bay, around the corner from the Ross Sea, and found water at 0 °C.

The water got warmer still as they approached their goal. “We managed to get the ship into Pine Island Bay, which was obviously the place above all others I wanted to get,” Jenkins recalls. “And the observations changed our thinking about the region.” Startled by the warm temperatures, he taught himself the scientific software MATLAB onboard and coded up some rough estimates. “I found these really high melt rates, like 100 meters per year—I thought way too high, way too high,” Jenkins recalls. “I thought there must be something wrong; I spent the next 10 years trying to figure out what. Turns out it’s not so much of an overestimate as I thought.”

An image captured on February 11, 2020, by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission, shows ice that had recently calved off the Pine Island Glacier. Photo courtesy of the European Space Agency

Initially, though, the team had trouble publishing their results. A paper they submitted to a major publication was rejected without outside review, dismissed as not being of sufficiently broad importance.

Rignot became a key ally. His work had focused on Greenland, but he knew of Hughes’s seemingly niche obsession with Pine Island Bay. He was intrigued by Jenkins’s high melt rates, which aligned with the figures Rignot had found in Greenland. The warm water that Jacobs and Jenkins had discovered in Pine Island Bay brought the whole picture together.

“I had heard this theory on the instability of West Antarctica,” Rignot recalls. He began looking at radar interferometry data on Pine Island Glacier’s grounding line, and “Boom! It was flashing on my screen. Something big was happening here.” He took almost two years to publish his calculations: “I wanted to be darn sure that what I was seeing was real,” he says. “Because if it was real, that was very significant.”

At a conference in 1997, Rignot presented findings indicating that Pine Island Glacier’s grounding line was retreating by roughly 1.2 kilometers per year.

“This was where Eric’s work set the world alight,” Jenkins remarks. Jenkins, Jacobs, and their colleagues had shown that the glaciers were melting faster than previously thought, due to the warm ocean. But melting can still be a relatively stable process and not always a problem. The danger arises when the grounding line retreats, giving warm ocean water ever greater access to the interior of the ice sheet. In these cases, the glacier may not melt slowly like an ice cube—it may collapse like a cathedral.

Today, Rignot’s calculation holds: researchers believe Pine Island Glacier’s grounding line retreated by around one kilometer per year in the two decades before 2011 (it seems to have slowed down recently). Thwaites continues to retreat around the same rate of one kilometer a year and loses around 37 gigatonnes of ice annually. (That’s enough to bury the contiguous United States five millimeters deep in ice every year.) When Hughes started looking into Pine Island Bay in the 1980s, he may not have understood the mechanisms, but he was right to worry.

Changing the direction of Antarctic research is like driving an icebreaker, though. It’s slow and expensive. After the 1994 cruise, it took NSF six years to send a ship back to Pine Island Bay, and the ice was so thick on the first attempt (in 2000) that Jacobs couldn’t get close to Pine Island Glacier. In the meantime, he and Jenkins continued publishing with Rignot to strengthen their case that warm water was rapidly shifting the grounding line.

Finally, in 2009, their ship broke through. It had been 15 years since anyone had sailed these waters. Now, though, they had new cutting-edge technology: Autosub3, a fully automated underwater drone. Autosub3 confirmed Jacobs’s original suspicions that the ocean was the culprit: a deep band of warm water, called Circumpolar Deep Water, was getting under the glacial shelf. It had already eaten an enormous cavity under Pine Island Glacier.

Thwaites Glacier as captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission, November 26, 2020. Photo courtesy of the European Space Agency

The next generation of polar researchers responded to these developments at the bottom of the world. David Holland, a Canadian mathematician interested in modeling ocean-water-air interactions, had been on the second plane to land atop Pine Island Glacier in 2007. He knew that ocean currents respond principally to wind and other atmospheric patterns, and had developed a sophisticated weather station to find out what the atmosphere was up to. He and two assistants camped out on Pine Island Glacier five summers in a row before they shifted their focus to Thwaites.

They were still figuring out where to focus their research, he explains. Building on previous work, Holland’s team started at Pine Island. But, he says, “while we were there, we thought, Shouldn’t we be next door at Thwaites?”

The storms around Thwaites and its vast extent make it especially difficult to study. In 2004, a joint project between the United States and the United Kingdom had included the first systematic airborne survey of the topography beneath Thwaites, revealing patterns of ice flow into the glacier’s interior and its connection to the surrounding ice sheet. The scope of its possible impact was becoming clear.

Thwaites is larger than Pine Island Glacier—much, much larger. It has a wide front—over 120 kilometers—and its base slopes steeply down to nearly 1,000 meters below sea level. These dimensions give the warm ocean water a lot of ice to work with. Moreover, Thwaites’s catchment basin, meaning the ice that flows into the glacier, is around 700 kilometers long, the distance from Boston, Massachusetts, to Washington, DC. In short, it’s the perfect candidate for collapse on a massive scale. Today, Thwaites contributes more sea level rise than Pine Island Glacier by a factor of four to one.

For decades, though, the focus had been on Pine Island Glacier. The two glaciers are neighbors—but on an Antarctic scale of over 50 kilometers of thick sea ice between the most accessible ice fronts. In fact, since earlier cruises had been so intent on reaching Pine Island Glacier, it’s possible that nobody saw Thwaites from shipboard until 2019. And as Holland found when he sailed there in January 2022, the glacier’s disintegration is making it even harder to reach.

Headlines in December 2021 announced that the Thwaites ice shelf might “shatter like a car windscreen” within five years. That’s hard to say for sure. We do know that the floating ice shelf acts like a buttress, keeping Thwaites’s inland, grounded ice stable. We also know that the ice shelf is fracturing into icebergs at unprecedented rates. If the ocean drives the grounding line back too far, it can cause runaway melting.

Thwaites is a cork in the bottle of West Antarctica. Its vast size and central position mean that its collapse could trigger a reaction across the entire West Antarctic Ice Sheet. It’s possible this happened around 125,000 years ago, when sea levels were about six to nine meters higher than today. West Antarctica won’t fall apart overnight. It might take a few hundred years. But if it does happen—as many researchers fear it will—it will redraw global coastlines.

Holland sees the planet in terms of a simple principle: “play with the atmosphere, expect change.”

Unusually warm ocean currents are melting the ice. Those currents are driven by shifting wind patterns: stronger winds displace cold surface water, allowing deep warmer water to rise up and pour over the continental shelf into the marine basin beneath the glaciers. The winds, in turn, respond to one thing: changes in air temperature. And those changes are caused by greenhouse gas emissions.

In short, Holland says, “the winds will change the ocean, the ocean will melt Antarctica—and the water is coming to visit you.” There is evidence that atmospheric changes can raise sea levels by several meters within the space of a century. But the systems are so complex that they’re hard to predict. We have apps on our phone to tell us the weather tomorrow, Holland remarks, but we’re a long way from having such apps for the ocean or ice sheets. In fact, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change asserts that predicting the “dynamic contribution” of ice sheets “remains the key uncertainty” in sea level rise projections.

Science is a fallible, communal human process; it moves by slow self-correction, threading its way through uncertainties like a ship among icebergs. In Pine Island Bay, where the ocean charts themselves are still being updated, precision is vital. But precision takes time, and Thwaites’s time seems to dwindle with each new study.

— Marissa Grunes is a Science Writer and Literary Scholar who has written on the cultural and scientific history of Antarctica for Atlas Obscura, Nautilus, and the Boston Review, among other places.

[viviralavisuals]

Visual Journal #6 - Documentary Reflection

We watched a documentary called Black Art: In the Absence of Light.

Here are 3 works from the movie that drew my interest.

("Black Girl's Window" by Betye Saar) This drew my attention because of the composition primarily. it evokes kind of an uncanny valley feeling but in a good way. And I really like the way the smaller panels have content in them too.

("Composition 1" by Norman Lewis) I love a good abstract piece. the colors work really well together. they overlap and interact in a visually appealing way.

("President Barack Obama" by Kehinde Wiley) This is by far the most iconic president portrait. No other painting of a president has featured this kind of composition or background. it just looks so good.

Here are 3 pieces that I wasn't immediately drawn to.

("Windward Coast -- West Coast Slave Trade" by Radcliffe Bailey) I don't know. If I was someone who didn't know the context behind this piece and saw this in a museum, I would wonder if there was a bonfire going on later. Knowing the context I would absolutely say this is a truly symbolic piece, but for me it doesn't evoke the same feelings a painting would.

("It Shall Be Named" by Renee Cox) I do love this piece, it just doesn't immediately catch my attention. If it was isolated like it was in the exhibit of course I'd stop to look. But if I saw it crowded by people or if it was next to a bunch of other pieces I'd probably keep walking.

("Sugar Sublime" by Kara Walker) Remember how that piece at the beginning gave me uncanny valley vibes in a good way? this does the opposite. I would be terrified if I was the guy who had to turn the lights on in the morning at this exhibit. it's beautifully made, I do not doubt the time and effort it took to make, but it just unnerves me.

Discussion Questions

Who authors art history? Who decides which stories get told and how?

The authors of art history are the people who spend the bulk of their lives appreciating and studying art. And sometimes it's just overzealous white men who love to give their opinions.

Why were there no black artists in "Harlem on My Mind"? Why were James Van Der Zee's photographs of black life not considered art?

The exhibit "Harlem on My Mind" opened at the Met in 1968. This was around the "end" of the Civil Rights Movement, where many things were done and still being done. Black people were still facing(they are still facing) so much discrimination--1969 didn't hit and suddenly racism didn't exist. James Van Der Zee's exhibit didn't have any black artists and I believe that's because he wanted to showcase his idea of Harlem--to photograph it without being in it. i am of the opinion that if you don't know what you're talking about then your art will reflect that. That's why his photographs could not be art.

How did Faith Ringgold bridge black art and the Civil Rights Movement? How was her approach to this different from the group Spiral that rejected her?

She was a very mixed media artist whose bold pieces and use of racial slurs in her works created something that drew people's eyes and almost a sort of shock value. The artists in Spiral didn't use that sort of method to make their statements.

Why was there only one woman in Spiral, Emma Amos?

She was the only woman in Spiral probably because art was still a very sexist field at the time and so she was there to help challenge that standard.

[dietraumerei]

Weekly Writing and Reading Update

Hello, I am making caponata and have actually chopped all nine thousand vegetables that go into it, I am READY. And also about to get some wine, while I listen to sixties rock and admire the sun, and basically live my best West Coast dream life <3

(I did probably too many chores this weekend and my body kinda hurts, but they are DONE and most of the house is together and someday I will have a weekend of just JOY!) Writing Gah, finally back in the groove! I'm not writing, like, thousands of words a week but I'm not sure I'll be doing that again anytime soon, especially with the summer and just...stuff. But I am writing again and it feels good!

Swords and Ploughshares; Signs and Sigils Got a new chapter this week!

Untitled Intense Pain Kink/HC story: I don't want to post this til it's done because there is a LOT but I think it's...2/3rds done? Maybe 3/4s?

Like a Garden In The Spring I'm working on the next chapter, definitely hoping to have it posted this week!

Reading

I am finally at the heart of Master of the Senate -- the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957. I will be honest that parts of this book kind of dragged but now I get why it won a Pulitzer; Caro's recitation of the conditions of Jim Crow and especially of Emmett Till's murder is unrelentingly horrific and somehow...immediate. He writes so clearly. (He is also sensitive but unsparing when talking about Johnson's own racism, and his compassion but also thirst for power and how all that came together so that a man who definitely used the hard r in private and public was also...LBJ.) In contrast to Caro, I also finished The Sea Runners; I've loved Ivan Doig's writing for years and I cannot believe it took me this long to read this. It's written beautifully, sentences curling back on themselves. Doig is so clever about it, but not in an irritating way -- he's just celebrating language and writing a gorgeous book. It's broadly a survival story, but mostly it is a love song to Coastal Northwest and the landscape and I think it is the best book I've read this year.

[m8tee-mate]

American Threads: Where Tradition Meets Trend

In the vast tapestry of American fashion, the threads that weave tradition with trend create a unique and captivating story. Join us on a journey through the rich fabric of American Threads, where the roots of heritage intertwine seamlessly with the ever-evolving pulse of contemporary style.

Unraveling the Past: A Thread of Tradition

The Fabric of American History

In this chapter, we delve into the intricate weave of traditional American fashion. From the pioneering spirit of early settlers to the influence of indigenous cultures, the fabric of American history is beautifully reflected in its clothing.

Fashion Icons Through the Ages

Explore the timeless styles of iconic figures who shaped American fashion. From the classic elegance of Audrey Hepburn to the rebellious spirit of James Dean, their impact on threads that transcend generations is undeniable.

The Loom of Innovation: Threads in the Modern Era

Revolutionary Textiles

Discover how American Threads have evolved with technological advancements. From smart fabrics to sustainable materials, innovation has woven its own chapter into the fabric of contemporary fashion.

Fashion Cities: Hubs of Creativity

Dive into the vibrant scenes of fashion hubs like New York and Los Angeles. These cities not only stitch together diverse styles but also nurture the next generation of trendsetters.

Weaving Traditions with Trends: A Harmonious Blend

Cultural Influences on Contemporary Fashion

Explore how cultural diversity plays a pivotal role in shaping modern American Threads. From streetwear inspired by hip-hop culture to bohemian trends influenced by artistic communities, the melting pot of traditions is vividly evident.

Sustainable Fashion: A Growing Trend

Witness the rise of sustainable practices in the fashion industry. American Threads are embracing eco-friendly choices, proving that style and sustainability can coexist.

The Colorful Tapestry of American Threads

Regional Styles: From East to West

Unravel the distinct styles that emerge from different regions of the United States. Whether it's the preppy looks of the East Coast or the laid-back vibes of the West, each region contributes a unique hue to the American fashion spectrum.

Celebrity Collaborations: Where Fame Meets Fabric

Celebrities are increasingly becoming part of the fashion narrative. Explore how collaborations between stars and designers create threads that resonate with fans around the world.

Conclusion

As we reach the end of our journey through American Threads, it's evident that the tapestry of American fashion is not just a collection of garments; it's a living, breathing story. From the roots of tradition to the dynamic pulse of modern trends, the threads that bind us are both timeless and ever-changing.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) About American Threads

1. What defines traditional American fashion?

Traditional American fashion is characterized by a blend of influences, including the styles of early settlers, indigenous cultures, and iconic figures throughout history. It reflects the rich tapestry of the nation's heritage.

2. How has technology influenced American Threads?

Technological advancements have revolutionized American Threads, introducing smart fabrics and sustainable materials. Innovation continues to play a key role in shaping the modern landscape of fashion.

3. Are there specific fashion trends unique to different regions of the United States?

Absolutely! Each region contributes its own distinct style to the American fashion scene. From the preppy looks of the East Coast to the laid-back vibes of the West, regional diversity is a vibrant thread in the fashion tapestry.

4. Why is sustainable fashion gaining popularity in American Threads?

The growing awareness of environmental issues has led to an increased focus on sustainability in the fashion industry. American Threads are embracing eco-friendly choices, reflecting a commitment to a more responsible and ethical approach.

5. How do celebrity collaborations impact American fashion?

Celebrity collaborations bring a touch of glamour to American Threads, creating styles that resonate with fans worldwide. These partnerships showcase the intersection of fame and fabric, influencing trends and capturing the spirit of the times.

[dailyaudiobible]

12/14/2023 DAB Transcript

Jonah 1:1-4:11, Revelations 5:1-14, Psalm 133:1-3, Proverbs 29:26-27

Today is the 14th day of December, welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I'm Brian. It's fantastic right, it’s wonderful to be here, wonderful to have this place to be around the Global Campfire, as we navigate through December together and the festivities before us, and the Scriptures before us. We’ve been working our way through the minor prophets in the Old Testament. That's how the Old Testament ends.

Introduction to the Book of Jonah:

So, today we’re reaching another one of those minor prophet books, and this one has bit of a twist to it. We’ll be reading the book of Jonah and Jonah was a prophet who lived in the northern kingdom of Israel. Basically, just west of the southern portion of the Sea of Galilee during the reign of King Jeroboam. And we’ve read a number of the prophets in the Scriptures and we know that the Bible uses the prophets to call their own people, the Jewish people, the Hebrew people to repentance. Jonah's mission was to go to a totally different city and a totally different people. He was to go to the city of Nineveh, which is one of the largest cities in the world at that time, the ruins of ancient and are still existent near the modern city of Mosul in Iraq. A lot of, a lot of those rooms were damaged in some of the unrest that has been in that region, but they still exist. And Jonah did not want to do this assignment whatsoever. God commanded him to go to a people who were enemies of Israel and enemies of God. So, so Jonah ran away, opposite direction. Total opposite direction, ran to the Mediterranean coast, got on a boat near Tel Aviv, what would be modern Tel Aviv, and took off, and it's famous, this is a really famous story from Sunday school because Jonah ends up in the belly of a great fish. And after three days of repenting, he is spewed out on the shore alive. So, for we who believe in Jesus, we can see the aforesaid shadowing of Jesus in this story, but it also has so many parallels in our lives. When we let fear and arrogance and pride and all of the things that just pull us into darkness. We let those things lead us into darkness, we will find ourselves on the run from God. That's probably, we probably already know that, but we probably don't, maybe fully completely understand that there is no running from God. Jonah, he’s swallowed in the open sea by a great fish which is a tragedy, but the tragedy becomes his salvation. He would have died and drowned in that storm. The journey would've been terrifying inside of a fish. But God used the fish to deliver Jonah alive to dry ground to finish the mission which he does, and he doesn't like it, right till the very end. But we'll see that all because we’re gonna read the entire book of Jonah today.

Prayer:

Father, we thank You for Your word, we thank You for this is territory that we’re moving so rapidly through in the minor prophets, so quickly that we’re reading books in a day and absorbing that and we ask Your Holy Spirit to help us as we've gone through the book of Jonah today. We know the story of the great fish, Jonah in the whale, but often we don't think about the implications of running away from You into a storm. May we take the lessons that are apparent before us and consider the ways that we just simply don't want to obey You. And so, we’re going in the opposite direction, thinking we’re to get away with it, thinking we’re gonna out run or hide from You, as if. Help us to humble ourselves under Your mighty hand, that in due season You will lift us up. We pray this in the precious name of Jesus. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com that is home base, it's the website, it’s where you find out what's going on around here and it's Christmas time around here. So, for Christmas this year, as I've been mentioning for the last couple of weeks, we printed vinyl albums of the Daily Audio Bible music and packaged them beautifully so that they’re like commemorative collector's edition things in small quantities and made them beautiful. And all of the resources that come from the proceeds from this are invested into what's coming next year, which is brand-new everything. A brand-new home for the Global Campfire, a brand-new Daily Audio Bible app, and a much more stable environment for us to operate from. And so, thank you for your partnership on that. You can find these at dailyaudiobible.com or in the app. Just go to the Shop, and in the Shop, you’ll find the Christmas Section and you can look at everything there. Thank you so much.

And if you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible before the end of the year, thank you, profoundly, profoundly for your partnership. There is a link on the homepage at dailyaudiobible.com. If you're using the app, you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or the mailing address is P.O. Box 1996 Springhill, Tennessee 37174.

And as always, if you have a prayer request or encouragement, you can hit the Hotline button in the app, that's little red button up at the top, or you can dial 877-942-4253.

And that's it for today, I'm Brian and I love you and I'll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Prayer and Encouragements:

Blessings dear Audio Bible Family. This is Rose. Today is December the 5th. I was going to call in for prayer today to seek for wisdom, to know how to deal with my brother who’s been addicted to drugs for 25 years. He’s been in-and-out of different rehabs and just at a loss to know how to help him. But more importantly, on my heart now is Blind Tony. I just heard his call in about the fire in his house. Thank God, Blind Tony, that you are okay, that your sister is okay. But we are standing in prayer for you and asking God to restore everything that the enemy has tried to steal. You are such a blessing to this community. And we will be praying so hard. Please, if you could, just put your email address again on the…on the prayer wall. I’d love to reach out.

Hey guys, this is Miranda from South Carolina. And I’m calling cause I actually nanny everyday, it’s my job. And one of my children has a prayer request that they would like to call into you guys. Cause you guys are the prayer warriors. So, his name is Ransom. And I’m calling in because my friend Sam, his parents are getting divorced and he needs some, and his brothers, and he needs some love and support. Thank you. Thank you guys. I know you guys can handle this prayer and send some love to this family. Hopefully God can bring them back together and build this family back and make it even stronger than before. Alright, thank you guys.

Hi, this is Sally from Alberta, Canada. I just want to lift up Delta Alpha Foxtrot. I can’t imagine what you’re going through, my friend. But I just know that our God is an amazing, amazing God. And that I just claim, in the name of Jesus, His mighty, mighty peace, that surpasses all understanding right over you today and all your loved ones. That you will have the strength to just step one foot in front of the other. That He will be a light unto your feet, and His help to take one step at a time moving forward. And I just pray that even though these things don’t make sense right now, you’ll just have the grace and the presence and the peace of the Lord Jesus Christ with you. Blind Tony, I’ve never heard you feel so down but you just sound, oh, my heart is breaking for you right now. And again, I just pray that our Lord, our Savior, to put His peace around you right now. That you find alternative accommodations, that your home is restored and just remember my brother that our Lord is a faithful Lord. You know that you don’t need me to tell you that. But He loves you. And I’m just so glad that His angels were around you and kept you safe in that fire. And that you still find a place to rejoice in this. And I just know that even __ and that He’s just got you in the palm of His hand.

Hey guys, it’s Eyes of a Dove. Angie, South Dakota, your grandfather is at stage 4 cancer, and he has passed away and you're asking for our family to essentially sit in shiva. That your husband and your extended family, they’re suffering with this unexpected loss. I’m just praying that the father would come and wrap His mighty arms around all of you and give you comfort and peace during this time of loss. I’m surely coming up on your tail feathers my friend, as my father is getting close to the end of his life as well. Praying for you, my friend. Delta Alpha Foxtrot, I’m praying for you my friend for, as you have also ushered your father into the kingdom of God. I’m praying for you. What a bittersweet time. Flying Tony, so sorry about the fire. Blind Tony, I apologize. I’m so sorry for that fire in your house. Oh, my goodness. Praise God, you guys are all alive. I’m sorry for that destruction and that you can’t stay in there. And I’m asking God for those resources to come quickly so they can get back in their home. Pamela, we’re praying for you in Florida, that the enemy cannot kill, steal, and destroy anybody in your family, in the name of Yeshua. We pray for physical healing, we pray for mental healing and health, protection. Father God, would You come and just put your hand on all of them, right now. Lift up our dear Pamela. Praying for Rifka. And thank you for praying for me, sweet friend. As your father is also living the twilight phase of his life. So many of us our losing our fathers. Help her have a supernatural peace and joy. As she loves her father good. And it’s just a beautiful time for them to be together while he packs for eternity. In the Vine, I’m so happy to hear __ God is healing you, your heart and your mind. And what a wonderful ministry that your involved in, brother. So cool to hear all about it. Anyways, that’s it for now. I’ll call back with some more friends. I love you. Cherish yourself and each other. Bye.

[dekorcompanys]

Get Your Bedroom Summer-Ready With Just these 7 Decor Elements

It's almost summertime and you know what that means - it's time to do a bit of sprucing around the house! If you are looking for some creative ways to get your bedroom ready for the sunnier months, look no further. Here are seven decor elements that will instantly boost your bedroom's style factor and make it feel like summer.

7 Practical Tips to Make Your House Summer Ready

Before we focus on home decor elements, here are 7 practical tips to make your home summer-ready.

Replace heavy bedding with light fabrics like cotton and linen.

Open up your windows to allow in plenty of fresh air and natural light.

A fresh coat of paint can instantly refresh any room, and your bedroom is no exception! Choose bright and light colours that will make the space feel airy and cheerful. Consider adding abstract wall paintings or nature-inspired pieces to bring the outdoors in and add a touch of whimsy.

Natural light is great, but you'll also want to add some cosy atmosphere with a bedside table lamp. Opt for a warm, inviting light that will create a relaxing ambience for those cosy summer nights.

Whether it's a bowl of shells, a beautiful vase or a basket of fresh fruits, decorative items can add a summery touch to any space.

Cool off your bed with light, breathable sheets and duvet covers.

Plants like cacti and succulents are perfect for creating a relaxed, beachy feel. They also help improve air quality in your home!

Get Your Bedroom Summer-Ready With Just these 7 Decor Elements

Your bedroom should be a place of rest and relaxation. With just these seven decor elements, you can give it the summery makeover it deserves! Let's get started

1. Abstract Paintings: A bright abstract painting hung above your bed is an instant way to add some bold colour and texture to your bedroom. Whether you opt for an abstract landscape or something more minimalist, having a wall-painting bedroom can make all the difference. Not only does it bring life to the space, but it also serves as a great conversation starter when guests come over.  Starry Skies 100% Hand Painted Wall Painting is a wall painting bedroom that will bring character to your space.

2. Table Lamp for bedroom: A modern table lamp is a great way to bring a touch of warmth and softness into your bedroom. Look for one with an adjustable neck so you can change its position and find just the right angle of light. You can also use table lamp for bedroom as a nightlight if you need something softer than overhead lights while sleeping. Plus, with its sleek design, this kind of lighting will fit right in with any type of decor – from classic to contemporary.  The West Coast Antique Floor & Green Comet Antique Decorative Table Lamp is the perfect table lamp for your bedroom for the summer.

3. Decorative Items for House: Home decoration showpieces can help inject some personality into your room by adding unique details that reflect who you are as a person. Look for decorative items for house like vases, trinkets, figurines, photo frames, and sculptures that all have special meanings or evoke certain emotions when you look at them. This way, no matter what season or style trends come along, these pieces will always be meaningful reminders of why your home is so special to you! Maverick Parrot Decorative Showpiece for Home Décor will beautifully enhance any room.

4. Nature Paintings: If abstract art isn't quite up your alley but you still want something brightening up those walls, then why not try nature paintings? Whether they're realistic depictions of a beach sunset or abstract interpretations of flowers in bloom – nature paintings can really bring some life into the room without taking away from its understated vibe (depending on how many colors you choose). Plus, these works often come in smaller sizes so they won't overwhelm the space either!

5 Designer Wall Clock: Having a designer wall clock like the Ambrose Decorative Wall Clock With Moving Gear Mechanism in your bedroom gives off such an inviting vibe – especially when paired with other rustic elements like wood furniture or natural-fibre rugs! And if left unchecked, time can easily slip away during long days spent lounging around at home – so having one of these clocks around means that there's always something there keeping track of time (even if it's just subconsciously!). Besides being practical items too – clocks are also great decorations that never go out of style!

6. Home Decoration Showpiece: Home decoration showpieces are perfect if you want to give your bedroom an extra sparkle this summer season! Look for pieces made out of glass or metal – they tend to blend well with most types of decor styles while also making quite an impactful statement at the same time. You could even go for novelty items like cacti-shaped planters or pineapple-shaped lamps for extra fun vibes in the room!

7. Wall Paintings: Last but not least – wall paintings are another great way to add some pizzazz to your bedroom this summer season! There are so many options out there ranging from watercolor landscapes to abstract cityscapes – whatever type speaks to your heart should be hung up on your walls.

With these seven decor elements added into your bedroom mix this summer season, we guarantee that everyone who walks through those doors will be wowed by its beauty and charm! From colorful abstract paintings to designer wall clocks– each piece brings just enough flavour into the mix without overpowering everything else– which makes them perfect additions no matter what type of style aesthetic you prefer in general. So go ahead– give those walls a little love this summer– we know they deserve it. Happy styling!!

Source: https://dekorcompany.medium.com/get-your-bedroom-summer-ready-with-just-these-7-decor-elements-2466b265941f

[justoneofthoseghosts]

Sylvie didn't want to say she was avoiding Matt while he was at the firehouse during their shift. She didn't complain though when ambo kept getting calls, never giving them a chance to even say hello.

Call her chicken or whatever.

She couldn't avoid him forever though so when Dylan asked if she wanted to go to Molly's she didn't make some excuse not to go. Admittedly, she scans the bar as they entered, breathing a sigh of relief when Matt wasn't around (yet.)

She offers to grab them beers while Dylan found a table near the back of the bar. As she places her order, she hears Herrmann let out a loud whoop. She stiffens momentarily before turning around to find Matt smiling tentatively at her.

"Hey," he greets.

"Hey," she echoes.

"It's, uh, good to see you, Sylvie."

She smiles, "you too. How are Ben and Griffin?"

"Good - they're good," he replies.

"And you?" She inquires, not sure where the curiosity was coming from.

"I'm okay," he says, "Portland's not that bad. Work's good."

"I'm really happy for you, Matt," she tells him earnestly, "I should get back to -"

She gestures to where Dylan was seated. He spots her and waves as she waves back.

Matt nods and before Sylvie could stop herself, she hugs him.

Call her a masochist bur maybe she wanted one last memory of him - some small comfort that not everything had imploded or changed and as she felt him hold onto her tighter, it was like images begin to play in Sylvie's head like a montage as the hugged. A glimpse into what their future could have been - trips together to exotic locations, renovating an old house, marriage, kids with her blonde hair and his blue eyes. She closes her eyes, willing the tears not to fall. It was a nice thought, some kind of happily ever after in another universe maybe but not in this one.

Maybe she blames herself somewhat. Maybe she could have stuck the next two and a half years instead of letting it all go. There were too many maybes though. Maybe they wouldn't have lasted anyway. Maybe that happy ending was just a dream.

"It was really great to see you, Matt," she says.

"You too," he responds.

She grabs the beers and heads back towards Dylan.

"Who was that?" He asks.

She's startled for a moment, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear and thinking about how Matt still used the same aftershave. She shakes her head.

"He used to work at 51."

Then after a beat, an ounce of honesty.

"We were together for about a year but it got too hard because he moved to the West Coast."

"Ah," Dylan lets out.

"What?" She asks, eyes wide.

He tilts his head to the side, eyeing her carefully, "maybe that's not quite over yet."

She shakes her head, "of course it is. I am -"

Over him, she was about to admit. Except maybe it wasn't 100% true. One moment at the bar and it almost came rushing back - all those feelings she had for him, the moments they spent no matter how small or how brief, the phone calls, the handwritten letters, the voicemails she saved and listened to even months after their breakup, the same ones she only deleted about a month ago. Maybe she shouldn't have taken Violet and Severide's advice after all until she knew she had really, truly moved on. It wasn't fair to anyone she attempted to date.

"I think I should go," Dylan mentions, taking one more swig of his beer.

"I'm sorry," she tells him, "really."

He glances towards the bar before gazing at Sylvie, "me too."

Sylvie realizes that it wasn't easy getting over the love of your life. It didn't take days or months or, as she looks over her shoulder towards the bar, at him, maybe even years.

Maybe this is what all those beautifully heartbreaking songs above lost love was about and maybe she'd just need to live with it.

I want to write that angsty one shot but also, I don’t want to write it 🤡

[mzminola]

Community

Straight and cisgender people being part of the broader queer community is good in a variety of ways, and the example from my own life is growing up queer in a small town with parents who were supportive before either they or I knew I was queer.

My mom and dad grew up in Berkeley CA and were involved through their youths in a variety of extremely nerdy things like the Society of Creative Anachronism, Dungeons & Dragons (and a Star Trek inspired sci-fi variation), theater, etc. Within those groups, and other parts of their lives, they had a lot of queer friends.

They moved around a lot as adults, and this was the pre-internet era so staying in touch was harder, and even when they stayed in touch they didn’t necessarily see people in person much. I wound up growing up in a small liberal town in western WA. Statistically, due to the small population, I just did not know any out queer adults in my hometown when I was growing up. There was no GSA at the school, either.

But for years I had stories of queer adults, long before I ever knew I needed them. I never once worried my parents wouldn’t accept my bisexuality, because I was so very used to my parents talking about queer friends of theirs who were giant nerds, with the exact same fondness and nostalgia as all their other friends. Stories of queer-specific shenanigans were told alongside all the other shenanigans.

We had semaphore flags in the costume playtime box because Dad’s a nautical history nerd, and we had big motorcycle goggles designed to fit over chunky glasses because Mom used to catch rides around the Bay Area with lesbian biker friends. That blend and casualness was just a normal part of my childhood.

~

I learned from stories of my parents’ friends that you could take stereotypes and turn them into in-jokes; gay friends playing backyard baseball or catch or other sports totally flubbing a throw, and heckling each other with “What’s the matter honey, your wrists too limp?”

~

I learned about the AIDS epidemic, of the loss, the grief, the stigma, and of the ways people fought back. Supported each other. I learned a lot more when I was older from queer adult survivors of the epidemic online, but I learned first from my parents, who were still grieving friends they lost.

This was not distant history, this was not something that happened to “other people” this was something that happened to their community.

~

My father’s mother’s brother is gay. My great uncle. He raises tropical birds. When he was a much younger man than he is now, the signaling style of wearing a diamond earring in one ear was starting. Now, at the time, most men to wear a diamond earring as a signal of their sexuality wore very small, discreet flecks. Just this little flash of light that might catch your eye, that might make you look again.

Great Uncle inherited his mother’s engagement ring, took that honking big “look at me and admire how I got engaged! Look at me, look at me!” diamond to the jeweler, and got that sucker turned into an earring. You could not fucking miss it.

And you know what? That’s how I learned about queer signaling as a thing people could do, it was presented as a fun family story, and I wouldn’t have heard it if not for my parents, because Great Uncle lives in a completely different part of the country from us and doesn’t travel much, so I’ve only met him twice, during which everyone was catching up on current life, not stories of his youth.

~

When my mom, dad, and their friends were all young adults who’d recently left home and were living in a different state from their families, one of their friends was a butch gay man who’d recently come out to his parents. And his mom wanted to be supportive, and she was a person who sewed clothes herself. So she made him shirts. She had his measurements, and she’d regularly mail him care packages with beautifully hand-made button up shirts in pink and purple fabrics. Because those were the gay colors at the time, and she wanted to make sure he knew she supported everything about him, that she would never want him to change himself to fit in society’s mold.

Now the thing was, pink and purple were not actually to his taste. They were not colors he’d normally pick out for himself. But he and his parents didn't live in the same state anymore, this was pre-Internet, if you wanted to share photos you had to take them, develop the film, and mail them. So she wasn’t seeing his style regularly, she was seeing the style of the out gay men back in the Bay Area, and doing her best.

He wore the shirts. He was running around the Oregon countryside as a butch gay man in the early 1980’s in pink and purple button ups, because his mom made them for him with love, he loved her too.

So I heard this story growing up, and I learned from it. I learned parents could love and wholly support their queer children long before I ever heard about parents who rejected theirs. I learned love is in the actions we take. That it’s going to be imperfect, but what matters is we’re trying our best, and accepting that from each other.

~

I’m bisexual, and I’ve got some weird gender stuff going on. I did not know any out queer adults in my hometown growing up. I did not find any writings until the early 2000’s when the Internet became more accessible. My school did not have a GSA.

But I knew I wasn’t alone. I knew pieces of west coast queer culture and history. I knew queer people could be giant nerds, could be outdoorsy, could be silly and serious and fully rounded people with rich, wonderful lives. That their friends and family could accept them wholly without hesitation. Because what was there to hesitate over?

I’ve said before my hometown is liberal, and it is, but it still had enough prejudice to keep me semi-closeted as a teen. I had peers insist to me that “a child needs a mother and a father”, had adults insist civil unions were fine but marriage equality would violate religious freedoms, heard peers use “gay” as an insult from late elementary school onwards (and the teachers just ignoring it).

I needed all those stories from my childhood. I needed them. And I had them. Without ever having to ask.

And my brother had them too. He’s straight and cisgender, and he has never been anything but 100% supportive of me. He was arguing for equal rights and refusing to use the derogatory language peers were before I ever came out to him.

When I see people trying to gatekeep the queer community, this is what I think of. I think of being a kid in a small town, without knowing any local out queer adults, hearing people around me say bigoted things, but having all these stories burning in the hearth of my heart, and I think…

You want to douse that flame?

You want to reach back in time and wrench those stories from the child I was?

You’d rather I grow up isolated, confused, lonely, and scared, than have my straight, cisgender parents in the queer community? You want me to be isolated now, you want my brother to abandon me?

Really?

Identity and community are intertwined, but they are not rigid, nor should they be.

Community being broader is good.

[megslovesbooks]

Dreamin’ of the West Coast: A companion playlist.

Liner notes below!

Oh gosh. The music in my head for this fic. Its a lot! I knew going in that it would have to be a big deal, music is always importing in my writing and since the world of this story is rooted in music I knew that I'd probably end up feeling pretty strongly about it. Some of the songs in this instalment are later additions than others, but some are cornerstone songs that really shaped where this story went. Here are my thoughts about them if you care to read.

Peaches Etude -- FINNEAS

We don't really get into it in this fic, but I definitely think that Eddie uses piano to self sooth, and I think he's been doing the same for Chris. I think this is a song he plays for his son, and when he's missing him as well. Soft and warm and home. Also, Finneas' whole vibe really resonates with my Eddie, so there will probably be more of his music in chapters to come.

Interstellar: First Step -- Performed by Kyle Landry

I went back and forth about what to use here, I knew it needed to be something sweeping and emotion as well as something incredibly technical to play. This is our chance to really understand just how good Eddie actually is, he doesn't get this gig just by being adorable you know. I debated for a while if a film soundtrack was too meta? But then I realized its my fic and i'm stealing all kinds of music to give these characters and I can do what I want so. I love this piece, it just does something to my insides every time I hear it. In my head, the part the band hears begins around the 5 minute mark, the way those last few minutes of music build is breathtaking and I love the image of that music just filling the empty space and the team just standing and listening in awe. As a side note, this is a different version than the one linked in the fic, I couldn't find this exact version on youtube.

West Coast -- OneRepublic

This is one of those cornerstone songs. The moment I heard it I knew it was for Buck. It speaks to his entire journey so beautifully and also its just so smooth and sexy. It speaks of brighter days and that spark of unquenchable hope in Buck that makes him so extraordinary. His path always leads to LA, to home. In this and every universe. I think this was one of his songs that made the band big...but it wasn't their breakout song...more to come on that.

The Maze -- Michael Schulte

This song is all vibes baby. Its about family and overcoming and speaks to who Station 118 are to each other, but it also just evokes the overall sound I imagine for the band.

Wild Turkey -- Amythyst Kiah

Ok. First. If you haven't listened to this woman PLEASE do, go check out everything she's ever done, you won't be sorry. She's a queer Appalachian musician and her music has changed my life. She's a local (to me) artist and is just exploding lately, I'm so glad, because the whole world needs to be listening to her. When I imagine Hen's singing voice, this is all I hear, that rich tone, glorious. This song is hard. Its about losing someone you loved in a way you can't begin to understand. I think it speaks to Hen and the terrible things she's had to overcome. I also like that the harmony is with another feminine voice, that's got to be Karen right? I also get really emotional when the drums come in thinking about Chim being such an important support in Hen's story.

The Boys of Summer -- The Ataris

Move Vibes, Less Plot! I have this silly idea that Station 118 always plays 2 encores, the first is one of their songs, whatever they feel like playing. The second is always something silly or weird, a cover of something they think is fun. I hope to play with this more in future too.

BONUS TRACKS

Your Ghost -- Dave Hause, Amythyst Kiah

Right off the top please know that this song deals with the murder of George Floyd in particular and police brutality in general. First and foremost, if you feel up to it, you should just listen to this song for you because it is powerful and important. But I'm putting on this list because when I think of the blend of Buck and Hen's voices, this is what I'm thinking about. I also think that Station 118 is pretty adamant about making their music stand for what they believe in like this.

The Boys of Summer -- The Hooters

I almost used this in the main fic because this kind of sound treatment is exactly what I mean when I think they do fun covers. Alas, its more mellow than I want it to be, you gotta rock people's faces off in a final encore...so just imagine this kind of treatment but the energy of the original. lol.