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cardstumble · 4 years ago

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https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Year-of-Dangerous-Days/Nicholas-Griffin/9781501191022

police brutality drug crisis immigration white/latin/black tribes

Excerpt

Chapter 1 CHAPTER 1

DECEMBER 1979

By 1979, there were several Miamis that barely lapped against one another, let alone integrated. The county itself was a strange beast, twenty-seven different municipalities with their own mayor, many with their own police departments. But Miami wasn’t divided by municipalities; it was separated into tribes.

There was Anglo Miami, which the city’s boosters were still hawking to white America: beaches, real estate, hotels, and entertainment. Tourists dominated the region. Dade had 1.6 million residents but

2.1 million international visitors a year. Anglo Miami was far from monolithic. There were southerners, migrants, and a large Jewish population that ran some of the most important businesses and institutions in Miami Beach.

Across the causeway in Little Havana and up the coast in Hialeah sat Latin Miami, created by the Cubans who’d fled Fidel Castro’s revolution twenty years before. Whenever there was violence south of the border, Latin America coughed up a new pocket of immigrants. Most recently that meant that the Cuban population in Dade was being watered down by Nicaraguans, Salvadorans, and Colombians.

Then there was black Miami. It, too, had more divisions than cohesion. There was a strong Bahamian presence, plenty of Jamaicans. Both felt distinct from the African Americans who had moved south from Georgia, and those who were born and bred in Miami. The latest immigrants were only beginning to spill in: a large number of unwelcome Haitians. Arriving on rickety boats, fleeing both political persecution and economic despair, they were docking at a time when not one of Miami’s communities was in the mood to reach out and welcome them.

For all the nuances, if you were black, white, or Latin, you tended to know so little about the other tribes that you regarded them as rigid blocs. Who knew a Jamaican turned his nose up at a Georgia-born black, or that a Puerto Rican couldn’t stand another word from a Cuban, or that a Jew couldn’t walk through the door at the all-white country club at La Gorce? There was enough inequality to go around, but in this one thing, the black community got the most generous helping.

In 1979, if you were black in Dade County, you most likely lived in one of three neighborhoods: Overtown, the Black Grove, or Liberty City. Liberty City was the youngest of the three, dating back to 1937, when President Franklin Roosevelt authorized the first large public housing project in the South. It was Roosevelt’s response to local campaigns for better sanitation. In the ’30s, Liberty City had what most houses in Overtown and the Black Grove did not: running water, modern kitchens, electricity. Overtown remained the center of black life in Miami until the arrival of I-95, the vast stretch of American highway that ran from Maine down the East Coast all the way to Miami. It stomped right through the middle of Miami’s most prominent black neighborhood in 1965, a ravenous millipede with a thousand concrete legs.

Had the 3,000-kilometer highway been halted just 5 kilometers to the north, black Miami might have had a different history. Instead the highway, touted as “slum clearance,” bulldozed through black Miami’s main drags. Gone was much of Overtown’s commercial heart, with its three movie theaters, its

public pool, grocery store, and businesses. Goodbye to clubs that had hosted Ella Fitzgerald, to the Sir John Hotel, which had offered their finest suites to black entertainers banned from staying in whites-only Miami Beach. But more important, goodbye to a neighborhood where parents knew which house every child belonged to. Goodbye to the nighttime games of Moonlight Baby, where kids would use the bottle caps of Cola Nibs to mark the edge of their bodies on the pavement. Goodbye to unarmed

black patrolmen walking black streets.

Overtown had its own all-black police station, with strict rules. Black officers couldn’t carry a weapon home, since “no one wanted to see a black man with a gun.” They could stop whites in Overtown but

had no power of arrest over them. The closest affordable housing for Overtown’s displaced was in and around the Liberty City projects. Block by block it began to turn from white to black, until neighboring white homeowners built a wall

to separate themselves from ever-blacker Liberty City. White housewives in colorful plaids and horn-rimmed glasses carried protest signs: “We want this Nigger moved” and

“Nigger go to Washington.” Someone detonated a stick of dynamite in

an empty apartment leased to blacks. Nothing worked, and by the end of the 1960s the first proud black owners inside Liberty City were joined by many of Overtown’s twenty thousand displaced. As white flight accelerated, house prices declined, local businesses faltered, and unemployment and crime began to rise. By 1968, Liberty City had assumed a new reputation. The CND—the Central-North District—had

earned the nickname “Central Negro District” from both the city and the county police departments.

There was still beauty in Liberty City, still sunrises where the light would smart off the sides of pastel-painted houses, and the dew on the grass would glisten, and churches would fill, and the jitney buses would chug patiently, waiting for the elderly to board. Still schoolchildren in white shirts tightening backpacks to their shoulders and catching as much shade as possible on the way to the school gates. There was still beauty, but you had to squint to see it.

Eighty percent of South Florida homes had air-conditioning in 1980, but in stifling hot Liberty City,

only one in five homes could afford it. It was a neighborhood without a center, few jobs to offer, seventy-two churches but just six banks,

not one of which was black-owned. There were plenty of places to pray for a positive future but few institutions willing to risk investment in one. The fact that a teenager called Arthur McDuffie got out at all was unusual. The fact that he came back, found a good job, earned steadily, and raised a family was rarer still.

Frederica Jones had been Arthur McDuffie’s high school sweetheart at Booker T. Washington, one of Miami’s three segregated schools. They’d met while Frederica was walking home from the local store, where she’d bought a can of peas for her mother. She’d swung her groceries at her side, and McDuffie, who’d been watching her from across the street, fell into step beside her.

After a few moments of banter, McDuffie made a simple declaration. “I like you.” Then he asked for Frederica’s number. That night McDuffie called, and the two talked for an hour. At the end of the conversation McDuffie, two years Frederica’s senior, asked, “Would you go with me?”

“Yes!” she said.

They became inseparable. They were in the Booker T. Washington band together. McDuffie was the baritone horn

and Frederica a majorette. She watched McDuffie win the local swim meets. When McDuffie graduated, he joined the Marine Corps, and for the next three years, they communicated through letters. Then, within two months of his honorable discharge, they married. Two children quickly followed. After which came problems, separation, and, in 1978, divorce. McDuffie had always had a reputation as a ladies’ man, and now he had

a child with another woman to prove it.

Yet toward the end of 1979, the thirty-three-year-old McDuffie was back visiting the house he’d once shared with Frederica. He mowed the lawn, fixed the air conditioners, and trimmed the hedges of their neighbor, the last white family on the block. The warmth in the failed marriage seemed to be returning. The two spent the night of December 15, 1979, together, and McDuffie asked Frederica to join him on a trip to Hawaii—a vacation he’d just won at the office for his performance as the assistant manager at Coastal States Life Insurance.

The following day, Sunday, under bright 80-degree skies, Frederica, a nurse at Jackson Memorial Hospital, drove McDuffie back to his home. She parked the car feeling like there was positive momentum.

They’d talked of remarriage in front of their families. The deal was that if McDuffie could make “certain changes” in his life, then they could go ahead and make it official. As they sat in the car, McDuffie kissed his ex-wife goodbye and promised to be back at her place that evening to take care of their children before her shift. Normally, Frederica worked only afternoons, but the hospital was short-staffed over the Christmas period and she’d agreed to work that night at 11:00.

Shortly after 2:00 p.m., McDuffie walked into 1157 NW 111th Street, the home he now shared with his younger sister, Dorothy, a legal clerk. It was a modest building, painted green. Inside there was a record collection and books of music. McDuffie played

five instruments, all horns. There was

an entire white wall “covered with plaques and certificates of achievement,” including his “Most Outstanding”

award from his Marine Corps platoon. He wasn’t a war hero, hadn’t fought in Vietnam, but McDuffie had been faithful to the corps, a military policeman who had done his job impeccably.

A dutiful father, McDuffie had already wrapped Christmas presents for his two daughters and hidden them in a closet in his bedroom. His nine-year-old would get a wagon, a jack-in-the-box, and clothes. His oldest would get a watch, a tape recorder, a radio,

and a pair of roller skates.

He’d saved for months, but it hadn’t been an easy year to make money. Under President Jimmy Carter, the country, most especially the South, had been battered. Unemployment was stubbornly high, and it looked like the president was being swept downstream by the economy. For all Carter’s preaching of forbearance, the reality was that interest rates were up to 17 percent. In thirty years, inflation had never run higher.

Gas prices had doubled in two years. Even hamburger meat was two dollars a pound.

Despite all this, Carter was about to enter an election year in comparatively good standing. Whatever America thought of his ability to steer the country, he retained the people’s sympathy,

with an approval rating of 61 percent. Six weeks before, the Iranian revolution had become very real to the distant United States. The sixty-two hostages captured in the American embassy in Tehran had helped generate a sudden sense of solidarity in the United States. Between that and the following month’s Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, there was an understanding that Carter had a tricky hand to play. He would promise a strong and quick response to both situations. By the end of the year Carter led his presumptive challenger, Ronald Reagan, by

an enormous 24-point margin.

Still, the mood was summed up best by the

Miami Herald

in 1979. It was a year the average American wallet had “barely survived.” The unseen benefit, according to the paper, was that Miamians like McDuffie lived in Florida. They weren’t being hammered on heating oil like the rest of the country.

By Miami standards, the evening of December 16 counted as cold, expected to dip below 70 degrees and then drop below 60 the following day. Miamians traditionally overreacted, digging out winter coats and scarves for a rare outing. McDuffie selected blue jeans, a navy shirt over a baby-blue undershirt,

and a black motorcycle jacket. He searched his house for a hat to wear under his helmet. At 5:00 p.m., he closed the door behind him.

His own car, a 1969 green Grand Prix, wasn’t parked in its usual spot in his driveway. A friend had borrowed it. So he climbed on an orange-and-black 1973 Kawasaki 2100, “a more or less permanent loan” from his cousin. McDuffie turned the key, revved the engine, and drove the motorcycle south to Fifty-Ninth Street, to his friend Lynwood Blackmon’s house. He pulled up at the front door, feet still astride the bike, and talked to Blackmon’s seven- and eight-year-old daughters. He explained to them that he couldn’t help their father tune their car as he’d promised. His tools were in the back of the borrowed Grand Prix. Next he drove to his older brother’s house, his most common stop, and found him washing his car in his driveway. McDuffie grinned, revved the engine, spat up dirt over the clean car, and sped away before his brother could grab him. He raced to the far end of the street, turned, and braked hard.

“You better slow that bike down,” shouted his brother. McDuffie nodded, grinned, and pulled away.

Sometimes on weekends McDuffie moonlighted as a truck driver, making deliveries to Miami Beach. Sometimes he gave up his time to help jobless youngsters, teaching them how to paint houses. Just two years before, he’d painted the Range Funeral Home, where his body would arrive in exactly a week. On this particular Sunday evening, he was going to see Carolyn Battle, the twenty-six-year-old assistant that McDuffie had hired at Coastal Insurance. She was pretty, independent, and stylish, with a preference for dresses and wearing her hair in an Afro. He’d brought a helmet for her.

McDuffie shouldn’t have been driving at all. His license had been suspended months before, and he’d paid his thirty-five-dollar traffic fine with a check that had bounced. He’d told a coworker that he was worried about getting stopped again, but there were no alternatives for

driving back and forth to work. Public transport was pitiful in Miami, and Liberty City—barely serviced—was reliant on independent jitney operators who rarely worked weekends. Not having a car was a self-quarantine.

McDuffie collected Carolyn Battle. They drove fifteen minutes south, to the edge of Miami International Airport, where they watched planes arcing out over the ocean or dropping into landing patterns above the Everglades. Tiring of the airport, McDuffie drove Battle across MacArthur Causeway to Miami Beach. When McDuffie was a child, dusk would have found an exodus heading the other way:

black Americans subject to a sunset curfew. But on December 16, on the three lanes that ran east over the bright blue shallows, McDuffie showed off, hitting eighty miles an hour. They walked in the sand, stopped for Pepsi, and then at 9:00 p.m. headed back to Battle’s apartment at 3160 NW Forty-Sixth Street, just

five blocks from the Airport Expressway.

At one in the morning, McDuffie slept in Battle’s bed while she watched television on her couch. At 1:30 she woke him up. “Jesus,” said McDuffie, reaching for his watch. He was far too late to show up at his ex-wife’s house. Frederica would have taken the kids over to a babysitter two hours ago. How was he going to make that up to her? Had he blown it? McDuffie gathered his watch, his wedding ring, his medallion. Still dressed in his blue jeans, two blue shirts, and boots, he put on his knitted cap under his white helmet, tied his knapsack to the back of the Kawasaki, and headed north toward home.

Was it a wheelie, a rolled stop sign, a hand lifted from a handlebar to give the finger that caught the sergeant’s attention? The officer would later offer all three explanations of why he’d first noticed the Kawasaki pass by him. It was 1:51 a.m. The sergeant got on the radio, described McDuffie’s white helmet and the tag number of the motorbike, and flipped on his red light and siren. On a cool night, with the rider in jeans, jacket, and helmet, he couldn’t have known if he was black, Latin, or white.

McDuffie appeared to glance in his mirror and then sped through a red light on NW Sixty-First Street. As the sergeant followed in his white-and-green county squad car, McDuffie blew through another red light and swept around corners,

not even slowing for the stop signs. He’d picked a very quiet night for these traffic infractions. Within sixty seconds of the beginning of the chase, McDuffie was being followed by every available unit within Central District.

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beard-marine · 4 months ago

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crossedbeams · 8 years ago

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History - Trinity Ch. 9

Genre: Casefile | Fandom: The X-Files x The Fall x Sreetcar | Rating: Mature | Setting: Circa 2012. Canon compliant | Chapters: 2/6 of Part 2

Trinity Part I

Chapter 1 - Perfume || Chapter 2 - Impression || Chapter 3 - Connection Chapter 4 - Delusion || Chapter 5- Confrontation || Chapter 6 - Post Mortem

Trinity Part I

Prologue - Purgatory || Chapter 2 - Animosity

TRINITY: PART II CHAPTER II - History

Blanche Dubois sways slightly in her seat, so frail in the halogen brightness that it seems that an especially assertive huff from the air-conditioner might blow her away. Scully tries not to let her feelings show on her face, trying to retain her bedside manner, but seated next to the marble-composure of Stella Gibson, she feels like an open book. Scully has expressed concern to both the officer-in-charge and to Blanche herself that this interview is too much, too soon, that the post-nightmare sedation received has barely left her system, but it seems Blanche’s mind is made up. There’s a set to her jaw that stills the usual nervous flutter of her hands, as if her determination to verbalise the perceived threat gives her the power to escape it. Yesterday they were treated to a flurry of words, images and half-truths about her past but today is different; today she flits between periods of haunted silence and scuds of hard words, heavy with exhaustion and bitter with truth.

‘I met him in Miami one Christmas.

I had to get out of Laurel. I couldn’t breathe for the rumours and the boiler was as played out as I, so I figured why not fly south with the birds. I had a friend in Miami, Mrs. Meghan Sands, a girl from school who still sent pretty letters and empty invitations from time to time, and was far enough away that she wouldn’t know any better than to let me stay a while. The first few days were golden, like in that song. The fates allowed us to get along and I didn’t need to go out looking for someone like I’d planned to… I didn’t even need the bourbon I’d stowed in my suitcase. I thought my luck might be changing, she had a bachelor friend who was kind and attentive and the climate suited me well. It was my little Christmas miracle... until the night Meg had a headache and went up early, and Mr. Sands poured us both one too many drinks and then tried to kiss me. I screamed and that was the end of it. Women don’t like to keep other women that their husbands think of kissing under their roofs, regardless of who started it.’

Blanche smiles wanly at her sad philosophy, threading her fingers through her hair to push it off her face, searching Scully’s face for some flicker of understanding and ignoring Stella completely. Normally Stella commands the room, a cold clear light of absolute certainty, but Blanche’s narrative is a firelight flicker, unpredictable and prone to flare or fail. After yesterday’s experience, the British detective seems reluctant to push her witness to the point of hysteria, so she simply sits, waiting for Blanche to arrive at her destination and leaves Scully alone in the half-light of half-truth.

Nodding her encouragement, Scully squeezes her hands together under the table, trying desperately not to fidget and betray her discomfort to either her witness or her colleague. The grey areas between belief and proof have always belonged to Mulder and his absence makes her feel both incomplete and an imposter. Her relief shakes past her lips on a long-held breath when Blanche finally breaks the silence to continue; claiming back the spotlight before it can reveal too much of her questioner.

‘There's something about me that makes people think I’m trying to seduce, even when I’m not, some scarlet letter that burns through my purest intentions and draws down the worst of men. It seems Hester Prynne and I both wear clothes cut from the same cloth. Maybe she was forced and I bought mine, but nobody made me stay in Miami. Nobody forced me into that hotel, through those bars, into those dresses that covered less than they ought. There were men, some of them as rich as I’d dreamed they would be, but all just window shopping while they waited on a younger model, and as the New Year rocketed in my money was gone and all hopes of finding that elusive millionaire dwindled with the fireworks.

I’d decided I was washed up, that I’d have to go to my sister, when he slid into my booth and paid off my tab. He was younger than me, not exactly handsome but somehow imposing, and he took my hand with the gentleness of a child and kissed it.’

The thin white hand on the table shakes at the memory, at the hard bones of truth hiding just under the fragile skin of her memory.

‘I asked if he was a knight in shining armour and he said no. His voice was caught between accents and soft. I could hardly hear him over the music in the bar but his body curved round like a shield and I thought perhaps I could be safe there.

I asked him if he was a millionaire and he said he could be and smiled.

I knew he wasn’t. After two more drinks I knew he wasn’t there to rescue me, but in his smile, in his hand and his eyes, there was something more intoxicating than liquor or wealth; he needed me. Not in the way that all men need a woman when their libido is high and their morals low, but on some deeper level. He looked at me like a baby looks at its mama holding it, like a man looks at his wife at the altar, as if I were the only one who could give him what he needed and he would die without it. Without me.

I went with him willingly, legs unsteady enough that I leaned on his shoulder even after we got in the cab. He held my face in the crook of his shoulder and neck, hiding me from the world, and I didn’t think anything of it when he pressed his handkerchief into the gap between my face and his neck. At first I was pleasantly surprised he carried a handkerchief, I thought they died out with chivalry, so when I found I was getting dizzy I assumed it was the drinking. I tried to move, to get some fresh air, but he shushed me and held me still until everything dissolved to nothing.

I woke up in an unfamiliar place, naked, cold and tied to a mattress with plastic sheets on it by my pantyhose and underwear. He was standing at the end of the bed and crying. He still looked young, but no longer innocent, the blankness in his eyes frightened me more than the surroundings and I cried out. He didn’t move, just kept staring; not at my body but at my face, so I screamed until he did move. An alarm went off somewhere out of sight and it seemed to break the spell. He forced another cloth against my mouth and held my nose closed so I had to breathe through the copper-sour fabic. It choked me, stealing my sound and my air until I passed out again.

The next time I woke up I was alone and the whole place stank like cooking. Something greasy and burned, a poor man’s hell. I stayed quiet a few minutes, until I was sure I couldn’t hear anyone around so I started trying to get free. My arms were tied to a grille over the window and when I pulled it bent before my arms did, but it was loud, the metal screaming or maybe it was me. Either way I panicked, freeing my hands as fast as I could so I could at least scratch and hit when the moment came. Except nobody came. Only quiet.

The room had a door but it was locked and when I threw myself at it, the whole placed swayed and creaked. I realised then I must be in a trailer, there was no sound of the sea for it to be a boat but I was just as marooned as if it had been. I couldn’t shift the door, the windows were boarded tight, so all I could do while I sat in this trap was look for a weapon. The little kitchen was almost empty, plastic over everything but the oven door which was leaking the acrid burning smell. I wondered if I was being poisoned while I looked for the knives, you know the poem? “An ecstasy of fumbling,” and I had Wilfred Owen but no knives. No nothing but the built in furniture and something blackened and unrecognisable smoking in the oven.

Perhaps he meant to burn me. but there was no flame, just as there was no gas...no sign of his intentions at all. I was the mouse in his humane trap, captured and waiting for some other, undecided death. The trailer was small but I never felt so exposed as I did then, shut in this empty living, dying space with no protection and no way out.’

Blanche has shrunk in her chair, muscles contracting her down to her smallest self as though she can hide now as she couldn’t then, and Scully fights the urge to try and comfort her, to try and heal. But they need their truth and from the sounds of overzealous punctuation and seat shifting to her her left, Scully suspects Stella’s patience is wearing thin.

‘I shut myself in the bathroom. The door was barely solid but it locked from the inside and I felt safer in the tiny space, there was less room for fear especially when I found an old shirt stuffed between the shower and the toilet. I had clothes, I had a locked door, I was still alive and there was a cold, clean draft that helped me to clear my head. I sat there until I started shivering, wishing I could dissolve into atoms and escape with the air rattling through the vent. It took me much too long to realise that maybe I could, that cold air meant outside and outside might mean escape. When I stood on the toilet I could see stars around the ventilation hatch, just a few spots of light where things didn’t fit together properly, I can’t count how many times stars have showed me my way, but I caught Orion by his belt and followed one hunter away from another…

I don’t remember jumping down, but I must have because I do remember running; my feet shredding on the rough ground, losing myself in the night time under the stars with no plan or direction in mind other than other than away. Far away. I didn’t even look back. That’s the first thing they teach you when running track you know? Looking back slows you down. So I ran until I saw lights besides the stars, and then the lights were a road and the road had cars and I tried to stop them but nobody would help me until the police came.

I tried to tell them, tried to explain who I was and what had happened but they thought I was drunk. And then they took me into the station and looked me up and my record made them think I was really drunk.’

Scully interrupts then,

‘They didn’t take a statement? Or make any attempt to corroborate your story?’

Blanche regards the table with unnecessary interest.

‘They called the bar where I was and the barman said I’d left willingly with a guy. Just like the last few nights. I said that was true but what happened after was different. And they said I’d only been gone a few hours. And I said a few hours that I didn’t want to be gone! And then… they said they could do a test... To find out if I’d been… forced... because then there was a crime.’

She starts making nervous circles on the table with one slim, white finger.

‘I told them no. I told them…. I told them… I hadn’t. I knew I hadn’t. I know what - and then they said that there was no crime to investigate, that what people did in their bedrooms was their business, that maybe I should drink less and be more careful about who I “kept company” with.’ Blanche ceases making the circles and replaces them with sharp, slashing lines across the grain of the wood. Scully’s stomach has hollowed out and she glances sideways to see Stella’s lips set in a thin, furious line, the first time they have both responded to their witness in the same way.

‘I got angry then.’ Blanche admits, though her fury is written in every line of her pposture and the bitter strikes she is marking on the table. ‘And I shouted at them, told them that I might have started out drunk but that they were the ones who weren’t seeing clearly. They were the deluded ones! They laughed at that until I called them some very vulgar things. Then they put me in a cell and in the morning they gave me some pants out of lost property and let me go. I went back to Laurel that night.’

The fight drains out of her then, remembered anger giving way to resignation as Blanche finally widens her focus to include Stella, and then leans in a little, voice low with something not far from exhaustion and laced with the shame of defeat.

‘I thought about staying... about trying to prove myself. But I thought I was more likely to be found by the boy with the dead eyes than to find the truth and get anyone to believe me. You know it as well as I do Detective Gibson, all stories have power, but there’s danger in the telling. My love of magic, of fairytale colours in a bleak world makes me an “unreliable witness.” In this man’s world people are supposed to be one thing or another, beauty or a bitch, a wife or a wastrel. I tell stories, drink cocktails with strangers, dance alone until last orders and therefore I am judged a liar, a drunk and a floozy. There’s no place for those women in the witness stand so instead I ran.

I’ve always run. I’d like to run now but I’m so very, very tired.’ She looks to the door as if it leads to some far-flung escape and not just another corridor, her body leaning towards the imagined escape before retreating with a sigh. ‘Everything looks better when it’s moving fast, and the bad things pass sooner. Sometimes they even hurt less.’

‘Did the bad things pass?’ Stella’s voice is the calm after the storm of the story and Blanche looks up and laughs, though the sound holds no humour.

‘Detective Gibson… Stella... in your line of work you must know that people like me are never far from disaster. If I were a ship, my anchor would be calamity, weighing the end of a long chain that sometimes I can lift enough to move a little but that always pulls me back. But yes, for the purpose of this meeting, the bad thing passed. I never saw that person again. That bad thing became one more shadow in my past and other things, some of them better, took over my days. A little colour in all the whiteness, a little warmth to hold back the dark...’

‘Until last night?’ Stella clarifies, and Blanche nods.

‘He’s older now, not much but there are deeper lines and a scar where there didn’t used to be. He burned his face into my nightmares when he stood and watched me scream. I’d know him anywhere.’

‘I hope she’s right,’ Stella mutters absently as they go over their notes in an empty interview room. Next door, Blanche Dubois is sitting with a police sketch artist.

‘About what?’ Scully can’t quite keep the incredulity out of her voice. She’s still haunted by the desperate hold of Blanche’s gaze across the table, by the unspoken plea in her voice that cut straight through the veneer of police detachment Scully had painted on in preparation. That story, half-hidden though it was behind poetic embellishments, had connected with both her doctor’s need to heal and the long dormant hunger for justice, truth and fairness that Mulder had always appealed to to convince her of a tenuous case. Blanche Dubois has made her believe, and the idea that Stella can remain unmoved, unaffected by the scars laid bare before them...

Stella looks up, confused by the harsh edge to Scully’s words and somehow sees and understands all that she cannot verbalise in the shared space of a conflicted blue gaze.

‘I was talking about being able to recognise her attacker’s face anywhere. Not the rest of it. I…’ Stella pauses, caught between instinctively presenting her most resilient self and sharing an honest moment.

Screw it.

Dana Scully has forgiven several misreadings, has proved herself invaluable to the investigation and she doesn’t seem the type to exploit a crack in another woman’s armour. Her trust is worth the risk, and so Stella sighs, leans forward to massage her temples and lets her words fall softly into the quiet of the room.

‘I wish that I didn’t think the rest of it was true. It would be much, much easier to squeeze Ms. Dubois for information if I hadn’t seen that same face in a thousand interviews. But I have, I’ve seen it all, I’d recognise that truth anywhere; the eyes pleading to be believed, the hands holding the tension of the trauma, legs pressed tight together as if it weren’t already too late to protect what has been taken. And the voices… I’m halfway across the world but it’s always the same. Fear and anger, sadness, hurt and shame... that’s the worst, the fact that any woman anywhere could blame herself for what an assailant took from her. That chord of desperation, denial and survival? That victim symphony? You can’t fake it.’

She looks up, cate sight of the personal question forming on Scully’s lips and folds her arms to fed off any further intrusion.

‘Blanche Dubois is a victim, I know that that much is true, though I still don’t know of whom. But even if I did, I have to force that knowledge to the back of my mind to do my job. I have to separate the woman from the witness, the same way you pathologists view a cadaver as a case and not a person. Perhaps at times I go too far in that separation, when the stakes are high…’ Stella stops, head bowed, and tries to push away a memory of Blanche Dubois’ agonised face when confronted with an identity parade of the dead, to stop herself feeling the disappointed blaze of Dana Scully’s protective instinct.

And then there’s a small hand on her elbow, a note of forgiveness at her side.

‘Sometimes we all go too far trying to do the right thing.’ Scully’s words are heavy with years of experience and her smile is sad. For a brief but binding moment the air in the room is one of sisterhood, and then a wash of boisterous male voices swings past in the corridor and reality crashes back into the foreground.

Stella shakes herself and turns her smile professional while Scully’s hand retreats to close up her notes.

‘I think you should be looking for your possible first victim in Miami’s Jane Does,’ she says, as if nothing has happened. ‘Your perp had a kill room set up, and I think it’s unlikely he walked away from it. With that timeframe, we may be looking further back than we thought.’

Stella nods her agreement.

‘Let’s go tell Stanning,’ she says. ‘That should give him something to be petty and pissed-off about in the afternoon briefing.’

<< Previous Chapter || Next Chapter >>

Thank you as always to @therobbinsnest @stellagibsonisalifeforce and @carrie11 without whom this would be an utter mess.

#txf #The Fall #The X-Files #Dana Scully #Stella Gibson #Blanche Dubois #A Streetcar Named Desire #My Writing #Trinity

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yashtaidmari-blog · 5 years ago

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If you are living in Miami and looking for Marine air conditioning repair in Miami then it is worth to contact yacht and they are well experienced in dealing with marine repairing.

#Marine Generator Repair Miami #Marine Control Heads for Sale #Marine Ice Makers #Boat Air Conditioner Repair Near Me

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angelinatoms · 5 years ago

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ZF Marine and Siren Marine create the connected experience. (Courtesy ZF Marine/)

The Internet of Things (IoT) goes to sea.

It wasn’t that long ago when IoT bordered on science fiction, prognosticators telling us that this interconnectivity between machines would provide all kinds of solutions dubiously looking for a problem—like trackers that tell us the toilet paper dispenser is empty or our fridge is out of eggs.

Yet, like solar power, wristwatch communicators and apps that track our physical fitness, it turns out IoT can prove valuable on boats when used in the correct application. And the ZF Marine connected experience through Siren Marine is a great application.

At its most basic, the ZF connected experience allows boat owners to confidently monitor the status of their marine transmission. Siren Marine’s cloud-based Connected Boat platform connects boaters with their ZF transmissions 24/7, keeping them informed about their transmission’s status. A Mag Bay 42 equipped with twin ZF 400 series transmissions and the Siren Marine system was on display at the 2020 Miami International Boat Show.

Siren Marine’s cloud-based Connected Boat platform connects boaters with their ZF transmissions 24/7. (Courtesy ZF Marine/)

Just what can you monitor? You can track hours of use and will receive alerts about scheduled maintenance, which helps ensure reliability. Additionally, through specially created tiles on the Siren Marine app, boaters can connect with the ZF Marine support team directly via phone or in-app email to ask questions about its propulsion system and receive help from in-house factory experts. This exclusive functionality puts vital performance and diagnostic information at the fingertips of boaters and helps customers connect with ZF-authorized service providers.

Let’s say you get an alert about a filter and fluid change. The part numbers, quantities and other pertinent info related to the service are accessible via links to that info on the ZF Marine website. You also have the optional choice of sharing information about how you use your boat to help ZF “better understand how, when and where customers use their products so ZF can continue to provide them with components that provide the best boating experience.” ZF also believes these functions just scratch the surface. For example, it is evaluating operating hour-based extended-warranty options that could be purchased through the ZF tile.

Both Siren and ZF assert that these capabilities are available to existing ZF customers by adding the Siren MTC to their boats and downloading the free Siren Marine app for iOS and Android devices. For existing users of the Siren MTC, this integration with ZF is backward-compatible.

With the ZF connected experience, boat owners can also benefit from Siren Marine’s Connected Boat. This monitors battery voltage, bilge water level, bilge high-water alarm, temperature and more. It allows you to track the boat’s GPS position and set geofences to locate it, and you can connect to entry alarms and motion sensors. If you have digital switching, with the addition of a separate Actisense module, you can also control lights, the air conditioner and countless other systems from anywhere.

Read Next: App Based Monitoring and Security for Your Boat

So, with the ZF connected experience, you can monitor your marine transmission and other systems to better adhere to maintenance schedules and address problems, even if you are not present on the boat. Availing oneself of such data is a good way to enhance the reliability and longevity of your boat and its systems. That it can be done from afar and with factory expertise is like having an experienced buddy helping you maintain your boat.

* CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFO

#boating #boatingtips #boatingsupplies #boatingnews #boatingshop #wolfcreek

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floridaindependentblog · 5 years ago

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Florida is filled with vacation-worthy cities that make the decision where to move a tough challenge. There are multiple reasons for transferring to Tampa. It could be for work, a loved one, a change of scenery or even retirement. However, the great weather, with blue skies and sunshine in this cosmopolitan city, makes it a popular choice.

Tampa is on the west coast of Florida, on Tampa Bay, near the Gulf of Mexico. It is the third-largest city in Florida after Miami and Jacksonville. If you live for sunshine, the temperatures rarely go over 100F in the summer and do not go lower than 30F in winter. It not only offers a warmer climate but natural attractions, diverse neighborhoods, great food, cultural events, and recreational activities. It also provides a lot of work opportunities.

Once you’ve decided to move to Tampa, the next part is to plan your move properly to make the transition as seamless as possible. Here are some tips to remember before you relocate.

Find a moving company

The initial step is to research reputable Tampa movers who can assist you with your personal belongings. Ask for tips from your colleagues, family or friends. If you are moving because of a job transfer, consult with your office if they will shoulder the expense. Compare and contrast rates and services that best meet your budget and needs. Be practical and look into the costs of transporting your belongings as opposed to purchasing the same item in your new city. Move only with the items that you feel have meaning or sentimental value, donate what you don’t need to charity.

Turn over your utilities

At least three weeks before you move, make sure to call your local utility providers (gas, water, electric) to schedule a turn-on date. See who provides the best internet in your area. If it is the same company that you already have, rework your contract to the new address.

Choose your neighborhood

Always factor in your personal lifestyle and financial standing before moving. Research on the neighborhoods you’d like to visit. Try and experience living in each area before making your final decision. Is the neighborhood safe? Will it be close to your work? Does it offer good places to eat and shop? But more importantly, make sure that the cost of living works with what’s in your bank account.

Homeowner or Rental

Florida is a popular state for retirees and people looking for better weather. If you are moving alone, it would be wise to rent an apartment in your first year, before purchasing a house that is a bigger commitment. When moving with a growing family, buying a home will be more economical. Staying in central, touristy areas will have higher rent and real estate costs, so choose wisely and ask for the assistance of a licensed real estate agent to help you.

Update your driver’s license

If you’re moving from a different state, you will be required to re-register your vehicle at the local DMV. They will also need you to update your driver’s license and car insurance. Read online and do your research with all the required paperwork so you will be prepared when you arrive at your new home.

Transfer your records

After finding a doctor and school for you and your family, it is wise to have your records from your old city transferred. Having your personal medical files at hand will give your new doctor an idea of your body’s history and needs.

Get a job

If you’re not lucky enough to be retired with a substantial pension, then you’ll need to stay afloat to maintain your life by the sea. It is advised to only move after finding a job in your new city. Tampa has many job opportunities such as IT, tourism and in the medical field.

R&R

Tampa offers a wide range of activities for your weekend rest and recreation. It hosts top-class beaches, museums, amusement parks, music festivals, and sports activities to keep you and your family entertained. From posh boat tours, zip-lining through the scenic Tampa Bay, to watching dolphins swim, there is something for everyone. So pick up a reputable guide book and ask for tips from locals where to go to next during your free time.

Prepare for the heat

The weather in Florida is warm and wet, only light clothing will be needed throughout the year. Your new home should have an air conditioner because the heat and humidity can become unbearable at certain times of the year. The monsoons also bring in typhoons and flooding so look into protecting your home and yourself. November through May are the best times to move to Florida when the weather is more temperate. It will help your body get used to warmer conditions slowly.

In closing, Tampa has great things to offer. Always choose what works best for you. The cost of living in Tampa is fairly reasonable when you consider what you can get for the money. There is no state income tax and houses are relatively inexpensive. So for those yearning to live close to the beach, moving to Tampa can make that dream come true.

The post The Complete Guide to Moving to Tampa appeared first on Florida Independent.

#Moving

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ntrending · 6 years ago

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How hospitals prepare for increasingly dangerous hurricane seasons

New Post has been published on https://nexcraft.co/how-hospitals-prepare-for-increasingly-dangerous-hurricane-seasons/

How hospitals prepare for increasingly dangerous hurricane seasons

The last thing hospital workers want to do in the midst of a natural disaster is evacuate. While staying in place is often dangerous—just last year, 14 elderly residents of a Florida nursing home died after due to power outages during Hurricane Irma—transporting patients can be just as troublesome.

Medication schedules, nutrition plans, and essential services like dialysis are often upended. By the time a storm reaches its full strength, it’s often too late to evacuate, as the labor-intensive process requires ambulances, accessible roads, and neighboring facilities capable of accommodating displaced patients. And even when it works, closing up shop leaves anyone seeking additional care destitute.

That’s why hospitals go to great lengths to prepare for all manner of seemingly-unthinkable scenarios, with copious plans and regular rehearsals. It’s also why they’re relying on architects and designers to ensure new buildings are designed with disaster in mind. “Traditionally, we’ve been designing on the assumption that weather is normal and follows usual patterns,” says Mike Cavanaugh, who leads sustainability efforts at Cannon Design. “But if the last few years have taught us anything, it’s that unpredictability is the new normal.”

To cope, many hospitals are pursuing a holy grail of climate resilience, which is defined by the Resilient Design Institute as “the capacity to adapt to changing conditions and to maintain or regain functionality and vitality in the face of stress or disturbance.” Using site-specific climate models and cutting-edge engineering techniques, architects are trying to get ahead of sea level rise, inland flooding, wildfires, extreme temperatures, and drought.

For most of the year, the boomerang-shaped island of Nantucket has fewer than 11,000 residents. But “on a good summer day,” John Messervy says, that population can swell to more than 50,000. Tourists from the mainland flood into the so-called summer colony, which lies 10 nautical leagues off the southern coast of Massachusetts, on ferries from Cape Cod’s crooked hook and puddle-jumping jets from New York City.

The motivation for these sun-baked escapades is clear: Picket fences line Nantucket’s sandy dunes. Picturesque lighthouses stand guard over the Atlantic. And tucked around every corner are houses clad in iconic silvered shingles. But for Messervy, the island’s best attributes looked less like an Instagram opportunity than a weathered Rubik’s cube. As the facilities planning director for Partners Healthcare, he’s the person responsible for construction of the new Nantucket Cottage Hospital, the main source of medical care on an isolated, vulnerable island.

“Nantucket Cottage Hospital has that name because the original hospital was in a cottage,” Messervy says. Unable to find a more suitable building, the two founding physicians purchased a homesteader’s property in 1912. As the island grew, the hospital did too. In 1957, a larger facility was constructed at the hospital’s current site on Prospect Street, in the heart of Nantucket’s island-wide historic district. Within a decade, a new wing was added. And there it stayed.

For almost half a century, this facility was enough to serve the island’s permanent residents and any visitors in need of urgent care. It might still be enough to serve them, if it weren’t for the creeping advancement of climate change, which threatens the safety of patients and providers in hospitals across the country.

“It’s very vulnerable, being 30 miles out in the ocean,” Messervy says. When helicopters can’t fly and boats can’t brave the storm, residents are left with no other options for care. That’s why, in 2013, Partners Healthcare conducted an evaluation of its existing site and facilities along the eastern seaboard. The company concluded a new hospital was needed if Partners Healthcare was to continue serving Nantucket residents “irrespective of what the weather is,” Messervy says. With just 14 beds, the new Nantucket Cottage Hospital isn’t much bigger than its predecessor. But when it opens, it’ll be one of a growing number of hospitals designed to withstand floods, Category 5 hurricane winds, and even disruptions to the shared energy grid.

In Nantucket, many of the most utilitarian features are obscured by aesthetically-pleasing details. Parapets up high help the new building blend in with its historic surroundings, but they also obscure boilers and backup generators that are bolted to the roof, far away from ruinous waves. And, Messervy says, “behind the shingles is a very robust weather protection system.” It may look like its humble neighbors, but the hospital is built to meet the comprehensive building code of Miami-Dade County, one of the most hurricane-battered regions of the world. There is no basement. Walls are double-hulled; many low-level surfaces cast from concrete; and windows are designated blast-resistant and designed to resist strong winds and swirling debris. And, wherever possible, there is redundancy. (There will, for example, be three kinds of phones on site: analog, digital, and satellite, according to the Cape Cod Times.)

Not every facility has the same needs, but the same problem-solving approach applies wherever extreme weather encroaches. “Houston itself is very flat,” says Jill Pearsall of Texas Children’s Hospital, another Cannon Design site. “The drainage is not fast.” That’s why the children’s hospital and a few of its fellow 50-plus facilities at the Texas Medical Center have invested in enormous flood doors, installed in the tunnels that connect many of the institutions together. “It’s not exciting as you think,” Pearsall says of batting down the hatch. “It’s literally like taking a door stop off a door, closing the door, and latching the door. It’s just a really big door.” But, she admits, it makes all the difference when water is threatening to pour in.

In other communities, where disastrous storms aren’t the norm, smaller strategies can help fortify hospitals against subtler threats. In the desert, extra generators may be necessary to ensure a power outage doesn’t bring life-saving air conditioners to a rumbling halt. Strategic shading can also help, whether its artificial like brise soleil installations, or more natural like heat-busting green roofs. In colder climes, healthcare facilities might do well to adopt extra insulation and double-paned windows. Everywhere, experts say, redundancy and relentless preparation are key.

No strategy is full-proof, but done well, these structures might put an end to many hospital evacuations. “All of these projects are kind of a test,” says Messervy. “We don’t know how successful we’ve been until the building actually confronts a weather event of the magnitude that it was designed to.”

Written By Eleanor Cummins

#Environment

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