#can i...declare it tennyson month?

[laurapetrie]

And so she lived in fantasy.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "Lancelot and Elaine" from Idylls of the King (1859)

[annesoftheisland]

The Green Gables folk went home after Christmas, Marilla under solemn covenant to return for a month in the spring. More snow came before New Year's, and the harbor froze over, but the gulf still was free, beyond the white, imprisoned fields. The last day of the old year was one of those bright, cold, dazzling winter days, which bombard us with their brilliancy, and command our admiration but never our love. The sky was sharp and blue; the snow diamonds sparkled insistently; the stark trees were bare and shameless, with a kind of brazen beauty; the hills shot assaulting lances of crystal. Even the shadows were sharp and stiff and clear-cut, as no proper shadows should be. Everything that was handsome seemed ten times handsomer and less attractive in the glaring splendor; and everything that was ugly seemed ten times uglier, and everything was either handsome or ugly. There was no soft blending, or kind obscurity, or elusive mistiness in that searching glitter. The only things that held their own individuality were the firs--for the fir is the tree of mystery and shadow, and yields never to the encroachments of crude radiance. But finally the day began to realise that she was growing old. Then a certain pensiveness fell over her beauty which dimmed yet intensified it; sharp angles, glittering points, melted away into curves and enticing gleams. The white harbor put on soft grays and pinks; the far-away hills turned amethyst. "The old year is going away beautifully," said Anne. She and Leslie and Gilbert were on their way to the Four Winds Point, having plotted with Captain Jim to watch the New Year in at the light. The sun had set and in the southwestern sky hung Venus, glorious and golden, having drawn as near to her earth-sister as is possible for her. For the first time Anne and Gilbert saw the shadow cast by that brilliant star of evening, that faint, mysterious shadow, never seen save when there is white snow to reveal it, and then only with averted vision, vanishing when you gaze at it directly. "It's like the spirit of a shadow, isn't it?" whispered Anne. "You can see it so plainly haunting your side when you look ahead; but when you turn and look at it--it's gone." "I have heard that you can see the shadow of Venus only once in a lifetime, and that within a year of seeing it your life's most wonderful gift will come to you," said Leslie. But she spoke rather hardly; perhaps she thought that even the shadow of Venus could bring her no gift of life. Anne smiled in the soft twilight; she felt quite sure what the mystic shadow promised her. They found Marshall Elliott at the lighthouse. At first Anne felt inclined to resent the intrusion of this long-haired, long-bearded eccentric into the familiar little circle. But Marshall Elliott soon proved his legitimate claim to membership in the household of Joseph. He was a witty, intelligent, well-read man, rivalling Captain Jim himself in the knack of telling a good story. They were all glad when he agreed to watch the old year out with them. Captain Jim's small nephew Joe had come down to spend New Year's with his great-uncle, and had fallen asleep on the sofa with the First Mate curled up in a huge golden ball at his feet. "Ain't he a dear little man?" said Captain Jim gloatingly. "I do love to watch a little child asleep, Mistress Blythe. It's the most beautiful sight in the world, I reckon. Joe does love to get down here for a night, because I have him sleep with me. At home he has to sleep with the other two boys, and he doesn't like it. "Why can't I sleep with father, Uncle Jim?" says he. `Everybody in the Bible slept with their fathers.' As for the questions he asks, the minister himself couldn't answer them. They fair swamp me. `Uncle Jim, if I wasn't me who'd I be?' and, `Uncle Jim, what would happen if God died?' He fired them two off at me tonight, afore he went to sleep. As for his imagination, it sails away from everything. He makes up the most remarkable yarns--and then his mother shuts him up in the closet for telling stories . And he sits down and makes up another one, and has it ready to relate to her when she lets him out. He had one for me when he come down tonight. `Uncle Jim,' says he, solemn as a tombstone, `I had a 'venture in the Glen today.' `Yes, what was it?' says I, expecting something quite startling, but nowise prepared for what I really got. `I met a wolf in the street,' says he, `a 'normous wolf with a big, red mouf and awful long teeth, Uncle Jim.' `I didn't know there was any wolves up at the Glen,' says I. `Oh, he comed there from far, far away,' says Joe, `and I fought he was going to eat me up, Uncle Jim.' `Were you scared?' says I. `No, 'cause I had a big gun,' says Joe, `and I shot the wolf dead, Uncle Jim,--solid dead--and then he went up to heaven and bit God,' says he. Well, I was fair staggered, Mistress Blythe." The hours bloomed into mirth around the driftwood fire. Captain Jim told tales, and Marshall Elliott sang old Scotch ballads in a fine tenor voice; finally Captain Jim took down his old brown fiddle from the wall and began to play. He had a tolerable knack of fiddling, which all appreciated save the First Mate, who sprang from the sofa as if he had been shot, emitted a shriek of protest, and fled wildly up the stairs. "Can't cultivate an ear for music in that cat nohow," said Captain Jim. "He won't stay long enough to learn to like it. When we got the organ up at the Glen church old Elder Richards bounced up from his seat the minute the organist began to play and scuttled down the aisle and out of the church at the rate of no-man's-business. It reminded me so strong of the First Mate tearing loose as soon as I begin to fiddle that I come nearer to laughing out loud in church than I ever did before or since." There was something so infectious in the rollicking tunes which Captain Jim played that very soon Marshall Elliott's feet began to twitch. He had been a noted dancer in his youth. Presently he started up and held out his hands to Leslie. Instantly she responded. Round and round the firelit room they circled with a rhythmic grace that was wonderful. Leslie danced like one inspired; the wild, sweet abandon of the music seemed to have entered into and possessed her. Anne watched her in fascinated admiration. She had never seen her like this. All the innate richness and color and charm of her nature seemed to have broken loose and overflowed in crimson cheek and glowing eye and grace of motion. Even the aspect of Marshall Elliott, with his long beard and hair, could not spoil the picture. On the contrary, it seemed to enhance it. Marshall Elliott looked like a Viking of elder days, dancing with one of the blue-eyed, golden-haired daughters of the Northland. "The purtiest dancing I ever saw, and I've seen some in my time," declared Captain Jim, when at last the bow fell from his tired hand. Leslie dropped into her chair, laughing, breathless. "I love dancing," she said apart to Anne. "I haven't danced since I was sixteen--but I love it. The music seems to run through my veins like quicksilver and I forget everything--everything--except the delight of keeping time to it. There isn't any floor beneath me, or walls about me, or roof over me--I'm floating amid the stars." Captain Jim hung his fiddle up in its place, beside a large frame enclosing several banknotes. "Is there anybody else of your acquaintance who can afford to hang his walls with banknotes for pictures?" he asked. "There's twenty ten-dollar notes there, not worth the glass over them. They're old Bank of P. E. Island notes. Had them by me when the bank failed, and I had 'em framed and hung up, partly as a reminder not to put your trust in banks, and partly to give me a real luxurious, millionairy feeling. Hullo, Matey, don't be scared. You can come back now. The music and revelry is over for tonight. The old year has just another hour to stay with us. I've seen seventy-six New Years come in over that gulf yonder, Mistress Blythe." "You'll see a hundred," said Marshall Elliott. Captain Jim shook his head. "No; and I don't want to--at least, I think I don't. Death grows friendlier as we grow older. Not that one of us really wants to die though, Marshall. Tennyson spoke truth when he said that. There's old Mrs. Wallace up at the Glen. She's had heaps of trouble all her life, poor soul, and she's lost almost everyone she cared about. She's always saying that she'll be glad when her time comes, and she doesn't want to sojourn any longer in this vale of tears. But when she takes a sick spell there's a fuss! Doctors from town, and a trained nurse, and enough medicine to kill a dog. Life may be a vale of tears, all right, but there are some folks who enjoy weeping, I reckon." They spent the old year's last hour quietly around the fire. A few minutes before twelve Captain Jim rose and opened the door. "We must let the New Year in," he said. Outside was a fine blue night. A sparkling ribbon of moonlight garlanded the gulf. Inside the bar the harbor shone like a pavement of pearl. They stood before the door and waited--Captain Jim with his ripe, full experience, Marshall Elliott in his vigorous but empty middle life, Gilbert and Anne with their precious memories and exquisite hopes, Leslie with her record of starved years and her hopeless future. The clock on the little shelf above the fireplace struck twelve. "Welcome, New Year," said Captain Jim, bowing low as the last stroke died away. "I wish you all the best year of your lives, mates. I reckon that whatever the New Year brings us will be the best the Great Captain has for us--and somehow or other we'll all make port in a good harbor."

Chapter 16, New Year's Eve at the Light, Anne’s House of Dreams

[theotherpages]

National Poetry Month #9 - Catullus - Catullus IV

Every rock and roll band occasionally does a ballad. Why? I have no idea, but I assume that they need something slow and easy to sing after bouts of energetic screaming and bashing. In more general terms, even when you’re really good at something, you need to try other things from time to time.

Today we’re going to hop in the Wayback Machine and go sixteen centuries back before Grimald, and talk about about Catullus ( Gaius Valerius Catullus) a Roman poet from the first century BCE. Some 116 of his poems survive to the present day. I was amused to see that half of these are still part of the current AP Latin syllabus.

Catullus, like Grimald, lived in a time of war and turbulence, near the end of the Roman Republic.  He wrote a wide variety of poems, including many short epigrams, and also many poems to his live interest, Clodia. He was a fan of the Greek poet Sappho, so his pet name for her was Lesbia. To students who have studied Latin in school, Catullus was sampled repeatedly, but with much care by our teachers. He could be humorous, and he loved a good insult, but much of it is so sexually explicit that it is difficult to discuss in polite company. Whenever there is a literal and a deeper meaning, teachers were quick to steer conversation into safer waters - which leads us to today’s poem, which has always been one of my favorites.

I think it shows, beautifully, that when the rock & roll poet of his era decided to write something serious instead, the result can be lyrical and memorable. Here it is first, in the original Latin: (don’t worry, you can skip down, I don’t really expect you to read it)

Catullus IV

Phaselus ille, quem videtis, hospites, ait fuisse navium celerrimus, neque ullius natantis impetum trabis nequisse praeterire, sive palmulis opus foret volare sive linteō. Et hoc negat minacis hadriatici negāre litus Insulāsve Cycladās Rhodumque nobilem horridamque Thraciam Propontida trucemve Ponticum sinum, ubi iste post phaselus antea fuit comāta silva; nam Cyrōtiō in iugō loquente saepe sibilum edidit coma. Amastri Pontica et Cytore buxifer, tibi haec fuisse et esse cognitissima ait phaselus, ultimā ex origine tuō stetisse dicit in cacūmine, tuō imbuisse palmulās in aequore, et inde tot per impotentia fretā erum tulisse (laevă sive dexterā vocaret aura, sive utrumque Iuppiter simul secundus incidisset in pedem), neque ulla vota litoralibus deis sibi esse facta, cum veniret a mari novissimo hunc ad usque limpidum lacum. Sed haec prius fuere: nunc reconditā senet quiete seque dedicat tibi, gemelle Castor et gemelle Castoris. 

-- Catullus

And here is my favorite translation (and yes, I had to use the Wayback machine to find it. I wrote it down in 1975). It is about a boat the speaker once traveled on, that he now sees at rest. There are some nice metaphors here on youth and age, excitement, and reaching the end of life. It has a different viewpoint, but bears some similarities to  Tennyson’s Ulysses.

Catullus IV

This ship, friends, tells us it has sailed, Declares it flew upon the sea And, birdlike, flew more rapidly Than all the rest. Swift ships have failed To catch her when they race with oar and sheet. All met with quick defeat, She won the Adriatic’s praise And praise of the Cyclades, Of noble Rhodes, of Thracian seas, Windy and rough, and of the bays Of savage Pontus: she’s made journeys there When other’s wouldn’t dare. Before she traveled far away, Her mast in old Cytoris wood Was once a stately tree and stood And spoke in whispers, and they say Amastis’ and Cytoris’ summits heard Her softly murmured word. This ship says these things were known To them, when she with rustling hair Stood lonely on a summit there: That she in waters madly blown Would steep her palms, and gliding coolly by Scorn every stormy sky. I sailed with her, and I saw how She tacked to right and left and knew The winds of Jupiter which blew Upon her sails or on her bow, She made no vows to gods who ruled the seas But weathered all storms with ease. She made her final Odyssey To this calm bay where she will stay And age in peace and where she may Repose, protected from the sea. Sacred to Castor and his twin, This Ship Has made her final trip. -- Catullus

I remembered this so well, in fact, many decades later, that when I wrote Ethos, the fifth book in The Republic of Dreams, I made one of the key elements of the story a boat named the Tyche (Fortune), whose existence mirror’s Catullus poem (perhaps with a bit bumper ride, though). One of the voices of the series, poet Natalia Yeka, writes an homage to it, echoing Catullus:

 Last Voyage of the Tyche (in the style of Catullus IV)

[Written upon seeing the boat at anchor off Ashkelon]

This boat you see before you, my friends,   Was once the fastest of ships. If her sails and spars could speak, they would attest   How, birdlike, she flew upon the swells, And fled more rapidly before the wind than all the rest. Swift ships of many flags have failed to catch her   As they raced with engine, oar, and unfurled sheet, Every one of them met with quick defeat,   For never was any other hull even half so fleet. She sailed the steep Dalmatian coast,  Flew swiftly through Aegean seas Trading from Rhodes to Thracian shores.   In times of mystery, intrigue, and war, She crossed the Red, Black, and Alborán with ease. Through raging storms and writhing waves,   Round rocky shoals and windswept bays, She’s taken her fearless crew to places where   Other captains would never dare. The trees from which her soul was made   Once stood stately on a mountainside, Weathering wind and rain and conversing with the sky   Asking Aeolus to teach them to fly. And you know, my friends, that he answered. You see her now at rest, not in her accustomed waters deep,   But in the stillness of this harbor. She has made her final Odyssey and earned her sleep   As once she earned her keep, There is only one question I must answer:   Tell me, does Fortune have a daughter? – Natalia Yeka, American Poet (22nd Century CE)

Do you think my high school Latin teacher would be impressed that I still remember this stuff 42 years later? --Steve

[tsukidoesthewritingthing]

Dumb Damsels in Distress: A Comparison of Elaine of Astolat and Bella Swan

           Elaine of Astolat is quite probably the most well-known Arthurian symbol of unrequited love. While not the most famous of Arthurian tales, Elaine’s story has nonetheless survived and had many retellings and interpretations. She was considered by Victorian writer Tennyson to be one of “the true” in his quartet of idylls about Arthurian women and she is now considered a staple of the Arthurian legend. Fast-forward several hundred years to Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight. Meyer introduced the world to Bella Swan, who quickly drew massive amounts of criticism. At first glance these characters seem different, but their story arcs of love and rejection are actually quite similar. Yet in spite of their similarities, Elaine is forgiven for obsessing over her Lancelot while Bella is condemned for worshiping her Edward. The reason for this difference in judgment is that scholars emphasize that cultural context to blame for Elaine’s actions, but they give no such excuse to Bella.

To analyze these differences in emphasis, we will first establish similarities between the two characters by comparing their relationships and their reactions to rejection, drawing from relevant passages in Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, and Stephanie Meyer’s two books Twilight and New Moon. Then we will explore scholarly criticism of Malory, Tennyson, and Meyers, focusing on the use or lack of cultural context. Finally, we will examine how scholars’ discussion of cultural context creates an environment where Elaine can be forgiven even though she acts in the same manner as Bella.

           For both characters the cliché of love at first sight holds true. For Elaine, a single glimpse of Lancelot is enough to cause her to fall madly in love with him. According to Malory she “beheld Sir Lancelot wonderfully […] she cast such a love unto Lancelot that she could never withdraw her love […]” (Malory 390). Tennyson describes how Elaine does not even need to see Lancelot to love him, only hear his voice (“Lancelot and Elaine” 242-3), and to her “he seem’d the goodliest man / That ever among ladies ate in hall, / And noblest […]” (“Lancelot and Elaine” 253-5). Her infatuation with Lancelot goes so far as to make her faint when he gives her but a kiss on the cheek (“Lancelot and Elaine” 824-5).

           After deciding that Lancelot is her true love, Elaine tries to foster a relationship via physical closeness; she is “about Sir Lancelot all the while she might be suffered” (Malory 391). As Lancelot stays in Astolat, Elaine becomes more and more enamored with him and more and more determined to make him hers. She does so by symbolically claiming Lancelot as her lover via the conventions of courtly love by insisting that he wear her token in jousting (Malory 391, “Lancelot and Elaine” 355-72).

           Though her token is merely a disguise to Lancelot, she takes it as a coupling and fabricates a love affair between them. Her obsession with her imaginary relationship causes self-imposed isolation. In Tennyson, the isolation is imposed via her fixation on Lancelot’s left-behind shield. “[D]ay by day, / Leaving her household and her good father, climb’d / That eastern tower, and entering her barr’d her door, / Stript off the case, and read the naked shield […]” (“Lancelot and Elaine” 13-16). Elaine shuns her established society, i.e. “her household and her good father,” in order to spend time with her lover, even if it is only in her mind. Her fixation on love eventually takes a morbid turn when she declares that she will love him unto her death. Elaine tells Sir Gawain in Le Morte: “he [Lancelot] is the man in this world that I first loved, and truly he shall be the last that ever I shall love” (Malory 400). In Tennyson, Elaine states that she must die without Lancelot’s love (“Lancelot and Elaine” 888-98). Without even having spent any significant time with Lancelot, Elaine already declares that up unto her death, she will always love him. Even as she lies dying, she places her love of Lancelot above her love of anything else, refusing to “leave such thoughts” in order to think of her immortal soul and God (Malory 413).

           Bella fares no better than Elaine when it comes to infatuation. The instant Bella sees Edward she is irrecoverably attracted to him; she sees him as “devastatingly, inhumanly beautiful” with the “face of an angel” (Twilight 19). Bella’s attraction to him causes her to attempt a relationship, even though, similarly to Elaine and Lancelot, Edward is initially uninterested in any contact with her. He is so averse to being around Bella that he tries to transfer out of a class that they share (Twilight 27). In spite of his initial rejection and seeming dislike of her company, Bella’s curiosity about him is insatiable, culminating in intensive research to figure out whether or not he is a vampire (Twilight 133-6). Even when she finds out that he is and that he is dangerous, she does not care. Though “there [is] a part of him […] that lusts for [her] blood” she is still “unconditionally, and irrecoverably in love with him” (Twilight 195).

           Once Bella finds herself coupled with her vampire lover, she participates in the same self-isolation that Elaine does. Bella’s conversations with her human friends, already sparse, dwindle to almost nothing. She purposefully isolates herself from her peers, leaving her new friends immediately when Edward comes along (Twilight 206) and purposefully sitting away from the rest of the school during lunch (Twilight 207). Along with her isolation, Bella develops an almost morbid infatuation with the idea of staying with Edward until she dies. In New Moon, she insists on being turned into a vampire so that she can stay young with Edward forever. When he disagrees, she decides to put her humanity up to a vote among his family rather than listening to Edward’s doubts or considering the consequences of leaving the human world behind (New Moon 521).

           With the kind of passion that both Bella and Elaine put towards their relationships, it is only natural that rejection by their lovers leads to turmoil. Elaine is devastated when Lancelot tells her that he is uninterested in a romantic relationship. Tennyson describes Elaine’s reaction to Lancelot’s rejection:

                       While he spoke

                       She neither blush’d nor shook, but stood deathly-pale

                       Stood grasping what was nearest then replied,

                       “Of all this I will nothing;” and so fell,

                       And thus they bore her swooning to her tower (“Lancelot and Elaine” 958-63).

Elaine cannot handle the idea of Lancelot never loving her, and must be carried away from the scene. After swooning in despair, Elaine mopes around her tower, pining away for Lancelot or at least the shield that she used to further her fantasies (“Lancelot and Elaine” 982-4). Finally, her despair turns to self-destruction: “[…] the blood red light of dawn / Flared on her face, she shrilling “Let me die!” (“Lancelot and Elaine” 1018-19). Unable to cope with Lancelot’s rejection, Elaine chooses to waste away and die. According to Malory “she made such sorrow day and night that she never slept, ate, nor drank” (Malory 413). Elaine’s suffering lasts ten days (Malory 413), then she finally succumbs to starvation and dies, Lancelot’s name on her lips.

           In an almost parallel scene, Bella faints soon after Edward rejects her. She collapses on the forest floor and lies there until someone comes and carries her away (New Moon 73-5); for Bella “love, life, meaning… [is] over” (New Moon 75-7). After getting through the initial breakup, Bella spends four months pining over Edward in a comatose state, shown in New Moon by completely blank pages (New Moon 84-93). This pining mirrors Elaine’s insistence that she be left alone in her tower to die; indeed, Bella rejects her father’s insistence that she go out, wanting instead to waste away like Elaine (New Moon 94-5). After pining, Bella goes on a self-destructive binge; she oscillates between behaviors such as riding too fast on motorcycles she barely knows how to drive (New Moon 186-7), associating with gangs in bars (New Moon 110-3), and jumping off a cliff where she almost dies (New Moon 357-63). Though her self-destruction does not ultimately lead to death, Bella shows the same inability as Elaine to cope with the loss of her lover. Rather than work through heartbreak and try again, Elaine and Bella both choose to harm themselves until they either die like Elaine or win their lover back like Bella.

           When examined closely, Bella and Elaine’s stories are extremely similar. Both stories revolve around their relationship with a man. Both girls almost instantaneously fall into an obsessive devotion for their man, whether the men are interested in them or not. Finally, both girls childishly and impulsively turn toward self-destruction when their lovers leave them. While the details of their stories may differ, from their actions it is clear that Bella and Elaine are practically the same character. The stories could be reversed; there could be Bella the Lily Maid of Astolat and Elaine Swan, but the conclusion of the stories would still be the same: rejection, self-destruction, and death or near-death.

           And yet, as we discussed earlier, Elaine is forgiven by scholars for her obsession and self-destruction. For some reason, it is fine, even laudable according to Tennyson, for Elaine to act as she does; but when Bella acts in the same way, it is cause for outcry. This reason is, as previously stated, cultural. According to modern critics of Arthurian literature, Elaine is a product of the views on women in Malory and Tennyson’s times. Twilight scholars, on the other hand, do not consider Bella a product of her time.

           In Malory’s literature, women are consistently on the sidelines. Damsels exist in Malory to be rescued, not to participate in any of the knightly action. For writers in Malory’s time, women were “frequently in the position of spectators” (Davidson 24), and though they had some emotional involvement, they could do little more than watch and wring their hands. In Malory’s account of the legend, women are mostly considered props to the knights’ stories; for example, Malory diminishes the importance of the Lady of the Lake from a powerful figure in her own right to a facilitator of the action in Arthur’s court (Davidson 25). Malory’s constant sidelining of women and refusal to place them in any position of power except when related to a man shows that women in Malory’s time were defined completely by their relationships to men, not by any internal characteristics.

           In relation to Elaine, Malory creates her as a symbol of perfect maidenly love. In order to push this idea of perfect love, Malory temporarily leaves his sources behind and focuses on Elaine’s death in unprecedented detail (Reynolds 35). Before she dies, Malory has her “devote all of her actions to proving to him [Lancelot] that she would make a good wife” (Hares-Stryker 211). While Lancelot is injured, Elaine “watch[es] him day and night” and does not leave his side until he recovers (Malory 405). Thus, Elaine follows the female conventions of the time, creating ideal earthly love by “subject[ing] herself completely to the needs and desires of her knight […]” (Davidson 33). Even though she commits suicide, generally considered an abhorrent sin to Malory’s Christianized audience, she is simply following the “natural law” of love, thus “no guilt attaches to such love” (Reynolds 36). In short, Elaine’s obsessive love of Lancelot is not only good, but also natural. Women of Malory’s time were meant to obsess over the happiness of their lovers and they were meant to establish their personhood based on their relationship to their men. Therefore, it is perfectly fine for Elaine to die “utterly consumed by her obsessive love” (Hares-Stryker 209). Because she is consumed by love for Lancelot, she is fulfilling her character’s feminine duty to surrender herself and her identity fully to a man.

           Though Tennyson wrote almost four hundred years after Malory, his portrayal of women is hardly better. As mentioned earlier, Elaine was placed as “true” in Tennyson’s quartet of poems about Arthurian women. Elaine and her behavior, then, were considered to be a model of behavior for Victorian women and to highlight the falsity of Guinevere and Vivian. Throughout these four idylls, the virtue of a woman is not necessarily dependent on her personal characteristics, but rather “her degree of loyalty to a male counterpart” (Ahern 88). Thus, like Malory, Tennyson’s women are also defined by their relationships to men. According to scholars, this is typical of Tennyson’s time. The idylls are “first of all a Victorian poem” (Fries 45) and “close to the mainstream Victorian attitudes” (Simpson 362), i.e. women should link their personal identity to men.

           Elaine in particular is symbolic of the attitudes towards women in the Victorian era (Simpson 34). She is the weak woman, the woman who swoons readily and often. Though she is rejected, Elaine remains true to her lover unto her death, allowing him to be the “god of her created world” (Fries 45), epitomizing feminine loyalty. More importantly to the Victorian reader, she maintains her chastity, and thus implicitly criticizes the unchaste women in Idylls such as Guinevere (Fries 51), mirroring the Victorian ideal of “worship of women as the source of moral inspiration” (Simpson 361). Thus, Elaine’s actions are reasonable to a Victorian writer; she is a “model of feminine nature that pervaded Victorian thinking” (Ahern 89) because she prizes her chastity, morality, and loyalty above all other things, including her own life.

           For both Malory and Tennyson, Elaine’s actions are commendable. They fit in with the “mythic views of maidens and women” (Simpson 350) of their times. Though they are several hundred years apart with their writings, scholars view their ideas of femininity as analogous. Though Tennyson gives women a bit more attention, allowing women their own stories and their own characterization, he still follows Malory’s example when he defines women in terms of men. None of the idylls specifically about women are only about women; Tennyson always has a male presence that ultimately drives the story. Scholarly critiques conclude that for both writers Elaine does nothing wrong. Scholars say that their culture tells them that Elaine’s absolute devotion to Lancelot is natural and admirable. Even her suicide is understandable; if her life must be defined by a man, but the man she chooses refuses to have her, then she no longer has a life of her own to live, thus death becomes a viable alternative to living a life with no real societal identity. Really, by this logic Elaine’s only fault is a poor taste in men.

           In contrast to Malory and Tennyson, Meyer’s Bella does not fit in with contemporary views of women. In fact, Bella’s actions tend to fit more with Malory and Tennyson’s ideals of women tying themselves to men. Though Bella is capable of caring for herself, she surrenders her well-being to Edward (Dietz 105). She allows him to take complete control of her sexuality and humanity by allowing him to control when they have sex and when he turns her into a vampire (Silver 129). Bella “ignores individualism in favor of affiliation” with Edward (Silver 124), basing her entire identity off of her relationship with him. Through her self-isolation, she rejects the human world in favor of devoting herself to the world of her vampire lover. Because she associates herself so closely to Edward, her worth becomes “tied to recognition from and partnership with a man” (Dietz 106). Bella even changes her views about abstinence and marriage to early twentieth century ideals to match Edward’s out-dated philosophy (Kokkola 166). In short, Bella allows herself to be consumed by Edward. She yields all her personal power and identity to her man, keeping very little power for herself. Like Malory’s damsels, she allows herself to become a part of a “relationship of perpetual rescuer and rescued” (Silver 129). Instead of forging her own path, Bella chooses to become part of Edward’s story and leave her ties to her human life behind. Her actions by modern standards feel irrational and dangerous, and more troubling to scholars, the “irrationality-madness of Bella’s love for Edward is presented as though it were a positive trait” (Kokkola 17).

           Though Meyer portrays Bella’s rejection of personal identity as positive, it does not fit in with modern, scholastic ideas of how women should behave. In a modern culture that champions female empowerment, Bella’s actions give “subtle messages that undermine [girls’] worth” (Dietz 103) and encourage girls to surrender their identity to a man. Twenty-first century women are encouraged to take self-defense classes and to learn to live on their own, but Bella chooses to surrender all matters of safety and health to Edward, almost treating him like a second father (Silver 125). It is no wonder that the over-arching scholarly criticism of Meyer’s series is that “the novels’ gender ideology is ultimately and unapologetically patriarchal” (Silver 122). Bella’s actions fit in quite well with the established patriarchal ideals of Malory and Tennyson, which run contrary to a post-feminist society. Bella’s actions, then, do not fit in with the scholarly depiction of twenty-first century society; she is not an independent, strong female character that feminist scholars can champion.

           In the above exploration of cultural context, it is important to note that when scholars seek to criticize Elaine, they turn to the ideology of the time. Elaine’s intrinsic character rarely comes into play. Scholars note how Elaine is symbolic of Tennyson’s views on women (Simpson 362), or how Elaine’s dialogue with a priest before her death mirrors Malory’s ideas about earthly love versus love of God (Reynolds 35). Elaine is compared to the “mythic views” of women (Simpson 350) and “model[s] of feminine nature that pervaded Victorian thinking” (Ahern 89). The general trend in scholarly writing about Elaine shows a concern with understanding the culture that Elaine is acting within, and very little concern with her actual actions.

           Because Elaine’s actions are framed in a cultural context, she becomes essentially blameless. She, as a character, cannot be blamed for her obsessive and suicidal nature because she is not a character unto herself: she is a product of past, anti-feminist ideas of how women were meant to act. She does not, in fact, know any better, and is as powerless as a child against the influences of Malory and Tennyson’s culture. In their emphasis on Elaine’s cultural background and meaning, scholars ultimately absolve Elaine of any responsibility or blame for her actions.

           Yet while Malory and Tennyson’s cultures are highly scrutinized, few scholars discuss the cultural background of Meyer. While there are some considerations about Meyer’s background as a Mormon, scholars do not discuss the Twilight’s background of, for example, Disney princesses to explain Bella’s behavior. Critics do not even touch on the idea that perhaps Bella is a product of a long line of “happily ever after” stories from films and television. There is no mention about the current cultural climate that still clings to the ideal of female chastity. No one thinks to do a serious analysis of how Twilight relates to what our twenty-first century culture holds as ideals for maidens.

           For critics of the Twilight series, Bella’s faults have nothing to do with the culture she comes from; there is just something intrinsically wrong with Bella’s character. When criticizing Bella, scholars tend to only analyze Bella’s actions. They look at Bella’s desire for a male protector (Dietz 107-8), or they consider her willingness to be utterly consumed by Edward, both literally and figuratively (Nicol 117). The culture that Bella could possibly represent is ignored in favor of criticizing Bella. The only time culture is even mentioned is when scholars contemplate the effect Bella will have on future female culture, not how present culture has affected her.

           This emphasis on Bella’s actions instead of her culture is what causes both the critic and the layman to ultimately condemn her. Without any cultural context, Bella has no excuses to hide behind like Elaine does. Instead of a blameless mouthpiece for the culture of the time, she becomes a dangerous character that will have long-lasting negative effects on young girls. Elaine is allowed to be anti-feminist because she is viewed through a highly refined cultural lens. But Bella has no such framework and is thus forced to stand up against feminist criticism on her own merit. She ultimately fails and draws the criticism that Elaine does not. Because of Bella’s failure, she has been described by critics as “an anachronistic throwback to pre-feminist conceptions of a feminine ideal” (Nicol 103). Bella is indeed anachronistic where Elaine is not. Bella, in short, should know better than to copy the actions of Elaine. Elaine, on the other hand, has no feminist context with which to view her actions. She only has the anti-feminist notions of her time, thus according to scholars, she is forgivable.

           But should we forgive Elaine? No, we should not. As established above, Elaine and Bella’s actions establish them as essentially the same character. Thus, we cannot judge them based on different criteria. If Bella must be judged by her own actions, then Elaine must also be judged purely on the merit of her choices. Or, if we must judge Elaine by her culture, then we must also judge Bella by her culture. This may or may not prove Bella a better character than first supposed, but it will give the two characters equal scholarly footing.

           Regardless of how Bella is judged, Elaine should be judged by twenty-first century standards. While Elaine as a character may be a product of her time, she represents an archetype that is still present today, as seen in Bella’s character. This archetype is the broken maiden without a man, the young girl that must have love or at least the illusion of love in her life in order to function. Elaine may be “pre-feminist” but her story has survived into a post-feminist society. As such, it is necessary to judge Elaine not by the standards that were set for her hundreds of years ago, but the standards of now. And, like Bella, by current standards Elaine does not hold up. For ages people have “turn[ed] to literature, and especially fiction, for answers, for models […]” (Howey 8). Elaine’s archetype is not a model that should survive, yet if we keep excusing Elaine and other characters like her it will continue as a model for generations to come.

Works Cited

Davidson, Roberta. “Reading Like a Woman in Malory's "Morte D'arthur"”. Arthuriana. Vol. 16,             No. 1 (2006): 21-33. Print. Academic Search Premier. Web. 12 March. 2012.

Dietz, Tammy. “Wake Up, Bella! A Personal Essay on Mormonism, Feminism, and Happiness.”            Bringing Light to Twilight: Perspectives on a Pop Culture Phenomenon. Ed. Lisa Gizella           Anatol. Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. 99-112. My iLibrary. Web. 25 April 2012 <http://0-            lib.myilibrary.com.library.unl.edu?ID=315874>.

Hares-Stryker, Carolyn. "The Elaine of Astolat and Lancelot dialogues: A confusion of intent."    Texas Studies in Literature & Language 1997: 205. Academic Search Premier. Web. 12   March. 2012.

Howey, Ann F. Rewriting the Women of Camelot: Arthurian Popular Fiction and  Feminism.

           Westport: Greenwood Press. 2001. Print.

Kokkola, Lydia. "Virtuous Vampires And Voluptuous Vamps: Romance Conventions       Reconsidered In Stephanie Meyer's 'Twilight' Series." Children's Literature In Education           42.2 (2011): 165-179. Academic Search Premier. Web. 25 April. 2012.

Malory, Thomas. Le Morte d’Arthur. New York: Penguin. 1969. Print.

Meyer, Stephanie. New Moon. New York: Little, Brown. 2006. Print.

---. Twilight. New York: Little, Brown. 2005. Print.

Nicol, Rhonda. “When You Kiss Me I Want to Die: Arrested Feminism in Buffy the Vampire        Slayer and the Twilight Series.” Bringing Light to Twilight: Perspectives on a Pop             Culture Phenomenon. Ed. Lisa Gizella Anatol.  Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. 99-112. My      iLibrary. Web. 25 April 2012 <http://0-lib.myilibrary.com.library.unl.edu?ID=315874>.

Reynolds, Rebecca. “Elaine of Ascolat's Death and the "Ars Moriendi"”. Arthuriana Vol. 16,       No. 2, (2006): 35-39. Academic Search Premier. Web. 12 March. 2012.

Silver, Anna. "Twilight" Is Not Good For Maidens: Gender, Sexuality, And The Family In           Stephanie Meyer's "Twilight" Series." Studies In The Novel 42.1/2 (2010): 121-138.            Academic Search Premier. Web. 25 April. 2012.

Tennyson, Alfred. “Lancelot and Elaine”. Idylls of the King. New York: Penguin. 2003. 152-         190. Print.

[talesofnecromancy]

March 2017 #31

H: Girl - are you alright?

Me: No. I’m inebriated and just generally fucked up.

(The next night...)

H: Darlin’.

Me: Hey.

H: Are you feeling better?

Me: Yes, thank you. How are you?

H: I exerted myself today.

Me: Doing what?

H: Rode Tennyson.

Me: You okay?

H: Tired. Worn. It was a worthwhile enterprise.

Me: Hm, that’s okay then. Are you downstairs or are you in bed?

H: The sofa. The stairs were not inviting.

Me: Figures. So, if you’re on the sofa are you a little bit covered in cats?

H: Yes.

Me: Heehee. Nice. Gin too?

H: Yes… You got anything on your mind darlin’?

Me: My father came back from my great aunt’s funeral and gave me one of her rings to use for scrap silver or sell as I saw fit and I feel incredibly sad - I don’t know what to do with it. It’s got a giant citrine / orange paste stone. The silver’s warped with wear - it’s obvious she loved it. I’d be pissed if all my shinies were just melted down or something when I died.

H: It is hard knowing the love you have for an object is not shared or respected.

Me: I know it’s foolish to love things, but often it’s what they symbolize.

H: They are a reliquy and aspiration in one.

Me: (I nod and my brain switches track from the profound to the vainly superficial as I catch sight of myself.) My legs are fat.

H: (smiling) Your legs are perfectly shapely.

Me: (I sigh because I know my brain is an idiot: it is impossible to have fat legs when actively underweight.) Did you have to deal with this female insecurity shit back in the day?

H: Girls confided such things to one another; to us they presented complete indifference or perfection.

Me: (grimacing) You must find my insecurities quite tedious.

H: I am honoured that you would share the truth of them with me… Darlin’?

Me: What?

H: You are careless with many things.

Me: Yes?

H: (quiet and serious) I don’t want to see you fall.

Me: Uh… Are you worried about something specific or is this a more speculative concern?

H: A little of both.

Me: What’s the specific worry?

H: You have to be declared fit.

Me: To get back to Farfaraway? Yes.

H: I don’t think that will happen if I’m here.

Me: Are you saying for as long as I have you, I might have latent TB?

H: …Yes.

Me: So to get back…

H: …yes…

Me: …to the States…

H: …yes…

Me: …I have to…

H: …yes…

Me: No. And don’t you fucking dare leave because I will hunt you down, d’you hear me? (calmer) I’ll do a spell. It’ll be okay. I’ll sort something - I’ll… Oh. I’ll put you in Bedlam.

H: (tightly) Not the most convivial of places… but all right.

Me: (surprised) D’you really mean you’d let me send you to Bedlam?

(Yes, that Bedlam, otherwise known as Bethlem Hospital. The nature of my connection with it and how I know I can pack H off there are a rather long and unlikely story.)

H: You had better fetch me out again.

Me: Yes! Of course I will.

H: (sighing) It will run its course darlin’.

Me: What will exactly?

H: (gesturing) This. You will be happier.

Me: And back in Farfarawy with Kal… (Which in my mind leads inexorably to…) Having a child scares me.

H: As it should.

Me: Oh, well that made me feel better!

H: (quietly) I never had the privilege…

Me: Kerrist I’ve got enough body issues without having a small person bloody growing in me. Fuck!

H: Darlin’…

Me: Would you be happy - if your body was going to warp and change like that for nine months and then be messed up afterwards?

H: …Likely not. But even a winning hand comes at a price.

Me: (grudgingly) I guess.

H: Girl?

Me: Yeah?

H: You are of great value to me. Please try to recall that, if it matters…

Next Conversation

[mycroft-silently-judges-you]

Sherlock, James Bond, and the Frankly Alarming Amount of Skyfall Parallels

(((This is Part 3 of my 18 part meta series (x) analyzing EMP Theory and evidence supporting it in TFP)))

Skyfall release date: November 9th, 2012

Sherlock series 3 release date: January 1st, 5th & 12th, 2014

Starting with series three, Sherlock started to let the Skyfall references fly, the most obvious being one that nearly everyone caught at the time:

Which was the point. Gatiss and Moffat wanted us to catch onto the Skyfall reference because they already knew what they were going to do with series four and this was meant to act as an attention-getter. As for why they would use Skyfall specifically, it’s because it was the last released James Bond movie at the time and it would be the one the public would be most likely to recognize being referenced there’s also the whole Bond faking his death thing but whatever

Does that mean there are no references to other Bond movies? Not at all. Did you wonder why they would go through the trouble and expense of making a metal grill for a bad guy you see for the grand total of two seconds?

Or why a bomb was stopped on an important number reference?

Or why THEY LITERALLY CAST SOMEONE WHO HAD BEEN IN A BOND MOVIE TO HEAD SHERRINFORD???

Coincidence? The universe is rarely so lazy.

Below the cut:

An exhaustive list and picture reference for every Skyfall parallel

References to other James Bond movies

How we know it’s canon Sherlock has seen the James Bond movies

How, in the end, this all circles back to Johnlock

Skyfall Parallels

Skyfall opens with Bond in pursuit of a hard drive containing the identities of intelligence agents

Which the bad guy is stupid enough to wear around his neck

But whatever. M is heading up the operation at MI6, where they are tracking Bond

Who is chasing the bad dude through a bazaar

During the course of which he drives his motorcycle on stairs

Because apparently all MI6 agents have mad motorcycle skills The pursuit ends with Bond chasing the bad guy to the top of a train, where he gets shot

Bond ultimately gets shot again and falls over the side of the train

And into a river that carries him over a waterfall

And pulled under into “deep waters.” Which is basically the essence of EMP theory. During the credits sequence we are given a shot of a woman holding a Walter PPK, the gun model Bond uses throughout the movie. This shot will come back to haunt us later. Until then...

After the shooting at the waterfall, Bond is declared dead

And he lets everyone go right on believing it and for the moment, the audience believes he is as well.

The bad guys, now in possession of the hard drive, hack into MI6 *cough*Mary on her cellphone in TAB*cough* and this message pops up on M’s laptop

“Think on your sins” is what I believe the entire point of TFP is, but that’s a meta all on its own In her rush to get back to MI6, she is stopped on Vauxhall Bridge and is forced to watch as MI6 is blown up

After the terror attack, we are shown that Bond is alive

And sporting a pretty wild array of scars from various missions, some of which are on his back

He goes drinking in a beachside bar where he finds out from a CNN bulletin that there was a terror attack in London and he goes back to take down those who did it

If Mycroft can be Wikipedia he can also be Wolf Blitzer. Upon arriving back in London, Bond decides that his best course of action is to go scare the shit out of M as his way of announcing he’s back and to tell her that his faked death lent “perspective”

M accepts him back on the condition that he passes his physical and mental exams at MI6. Bond goes in and when faced with the psychiatrist, he’s told he’ll have to go through a round of word association

He does fine until he’s faced with the word Skyfall

He freezes when it’s uttered and then walks out of the room. M tells him in her super cool office that he’s passed his exams and is assigned to go after the agent who took the hard drive and find out who he’s working for

Bond meets Q at the National Portrait Gallery where he’s given the papers he’ll need to go after the agent in Shanghai

Once in Shanghai, he follows the agent to a business building where he sets up a perch to assassinate someone in the next building over

Bond then fights the assassin, who pushes him through a glass pane

And you know what’s behind them during this fight scene?

A HUGE BLUE DISPLAY OF JELLYFISH. Bond Sherlock and the assassin trying to kill him Mary in front of a massive display of blue jellyfish wow wow ANYWAY. Bond is still looking a hot mess and after a shave

He gets back in his groove. Next he goes to a crazy beautiful floating casino to cash in a chip he found on the agent he killed. A woman comes down to meet him who he knows is connected to the big bad guy who is behind the terrorist attack on MI6. When he wants to have a conversation with her free from prying ears, he removes his earpiece

She agrees to take Bond to the island where the big bad guy is via boat

It’s an abandoned island based on a real one called Ghost Island

Bond comes face-to-face with the villain, Silva, who was a former agent that went rogue *cough*Mary*cough* Silva tells him a story about how his grandmother had an island and that when it became infested with rats, she set a trap that the rats fell into and for survival, they began eating one another. When there were only two rats left, she released them back into the wild because they only ate rats anymore. He implies that they are the last two rats, that they are alike and should team up. “Eat others or eat each other”  *cough*Moriarty*cough* Silva then goes onto use sexuality to faze Bond

The confrontation continues and Silva says that he hacked MI6′s system and pulled up Bond’s file. It revealed that M lied when she said Bond passed his tests and that the psychiatrist determined he had a substance abuse problem and authority issues traced back to “unresolved childhood trauma.” He taunts Bond’s dedication to Queen and country, saying he needs a hobby. Bond says his is ”resurrection.” This all ends with Silva being taken into custody and back to London. He’s contained in a “prison inside a prison” type cell

Silva confronts M when she comes to see him for turning him over to the Chinese who tortured him for five months before he managed to escape Ajay is that you? M leaves for a meeting that could determine the fate of the 00 section of MI6. During this meeting, she quotes Tennyson’s Ulysses, a poem the late poet described as being about his "need of going forward and braving the struggle of life" after the loss of a friend Sherlock post-wedding anyone? Meanwhile, Q is shown to be examining Silva’s computer and in doing so inadvertently releases a program that hacks MI6′s systems to open every door, allowing Silva to escape and go after M to kill her for her perceived betrayal. Bond chases him into the Underground

Into a station

And exits at Westminster

I am literally setting this show on fire Bond gets to the meeting and manages to extract M before Silva can kill her. He says they need to ditch the government car because of its tracking system and he takes her to his storage unit where his Aston Martin is stored

Bond proceeds to take her to a place where he believes he’ll have the upper-hand against Silva: Skyfall, his ancestral home

Which even comes with a creepy graveyard and everything

When they are approaching it, he remarks that a east wind “storm is coming.” With the help of M and the old groundskeeper, Bond sets up defenses inside Skyfall. At sunset, Silva arrives with his goons in a helicopter

Blasting Boom Boom by The Animals

Which Bond calls out by saying “Always got to make an entrance.” Silva then proceeds to fuck shit up. He opens fire on Skyfall, throws explosives, the works. Skyfall burns to the ground

Have you set everything you own on fire yet? I have Bond escaped Skyfall through a hidden tunnel (after remarking that he hated the place), but Silva and one of his men manage to catch up with him as he’s running across the frozen lake Musgrave Hall had a lake too LORD HAVE MERCY Bond struggles with Silva’s dude behind him for his gun and shoots a circle into the ice below them, making them fall into the freezing water where they fight

And Bond kills him. Bond makes it to Skyfall’s chapel, where M and the groundskeeper are hiding, and kills Silva with a knife in the back, saying, “Last rat standing.” When M sarcastically asks what took him so long he replies, “Got into some deep water.” FUCKING SHOOT ME M sadly dies from a gunshot she got during the assault on Skyfall, which devastates Bond. Bond returns to London, which is when we get the shot we all know and love:

Now what’s interesting about Skyfall is that, unlike most Bond movies, the iconic gun barrel shot is at the end and not the beginning

With the red bleed shot differing greatly in shade

Now remember that shot at the beginning I said would come back to haunt us? The one comparing Norbury and the woman in the credits sequence holding a Walter PPK, which is traditionally Bond’s gun? 

It’s especially interesting here because when compared to the ending of TLD, it is the gun used in the gun barrel shot, but the gun Eurus’ was using and fired at John is clearly not a Walter PPK

It’s a Sig Pro SP2022. So what’s the significance of the change? Why flash back to a Walter PPK?

BECAUSE MARY USED A SUPPRESSED WALTER PPK WHEN SHE SHOT SHERLOCK. If I’m right in thinking everything we’ve seen since Mary shot Sherlock has taken place entirely in Sherlock’s head, him flashing back to Norbury’s/Mary’s gun is further proof that the simulation he’s running is breaking down.

That, and he wasn’t willing to let a pesky detail like the type of gun Eurus used get in the way of him fulfilling his Skyfall Bond movie fantasy simulation because he loved that fucking movie so much. LOVED IT. Him and John have watched it at least 10 times.

It’s also not the only wonky detail about the gun barrel shot ending. You know how I said the blood color was different? Well, the red used in TLD closely resembles the red used in The Living Daylights gun barrel shot

You know, the one that featured a character named Kamran Shah played by Art Malik

Who played the governor of Sherrinford in the next episode. AMAZING

Other James Bond Movie References and Notes of Interest

Diamonds Are Forever (specifically mentioned on John’s blog (x))

The villain has faces crafted like his own and recruits body doubles to fake his death in case people like Bond or others come to kill him hello Irene/Moriarty hired Sherlock imposter in TRF When Bond “kills” him he says “Welcome to Hell” which will come to play later in another meta 

A wallet being used to falsely identify someone (John as Sherlock in TBB)

This bullshit

During a scene when Bond implies that the diamonds are hidden in the dead guy’s ass. A guy who was falsely identified as Bond. Wow. Just wow.

When the dead “James Bond” was found, Bond says “Just proves no one is indestructible.” A mirror of Sherlock saying “I’m known to be indestructible” in TEH

The dead “Bond” is carried off in a hearse. Kind of like how the title TEH implies Sherlock’s body wasn’t in the hearse because he was alive, which is the case here

Two assassins trying to kill Bond, Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd, are a gay couple

“I’m afraid you’ve caught me with more than my hands up.” A nice dick pun that plays nicely into the 8,000 dick puns on Sherlock

The chick Bond works with only has communication with her connection to the diamond smuggling ring over the phone. Moriarty stays disconnected from his crimes, except for when he talks to the old lady hostage on the phone and Irene

Bond goes into a subterranean lab to find the diamonds. Reminiscent of the subterranean lab in HoB

The Spy Who Loved Me

First of two movies featuring Jaws, a villain who tries to kill Bond

He has metal teeth (like one of the guys who tortured Ajay in TST) and is extremely tall (like the Golem in TGG). One of the more memorable Bond villains

The title could be taken literally as being about Mary loving John it’s a selfish love but you get the gist

“I need you.” - woman to Bond (”Who needs me this time?” - Sherlock to Mycroft in HLV)          “So does England.” - Bond to woman (”England” - Mycroft to Sherlock in HLV)

Woman Bond works with drugs him with powder in her cigarette so he’ll pass out, like Mary drugging Sherlock with powder in the letter in TST

Villains lair is aquarium-like and has sharks, which he points at and says “There’s death.” The pane you see the shark through is like the circle ones in the aquarium in TST and the death comment over the shot of the shark was like when Sherlock recites the Merchant of Samarra over shots of sharks in the beginning of TST

The Living Daylights (featuring Art Malik)

The woman Bond helps has a Stradivarius cello named Lady Rose, which was assembled in 1724. Eurus is said to have a Stradivarius violin in TFP. And Lady Rose, they call John’s baby Rosie

Once the crisis is averted and the woman saved, Bond sees a sign that gives the miles to Karachi. When he sees it he says to her, “I know a great restaurant in Karachi. We might be in time for dinner.” Sherlock saved Irene in Karachi

Various Other References

The numerical significance of a bomb time stop in Goldfinger (bomb in TEH)

A media mogul who uses blackmail to manipulate world leaders in Tomorrow Never Dies (Magnussen in HLV) 

“James Bond is a blunt instrument wielded by a government department.” - Ian Fleming (James Bond creator). M refers to Bond as a “blunt instrument” in Casino Royale. There was also a song titled “Blunt Instrument” on the Casino Royale soundtrack composed by David Arnold. YES, THAT DAVID ARNOLD. The one who does the Sherlock soundtrack with Michael Price. Mycroft refers to Sherlock as a “blunt instrument” in HLV

Sherrinford has the sleek glass and stone appearance that is reminiscent of several Bond villain lairs

Mycroft’s insane umbrella sword/gun would fit right in with all the other crazy contraptions that come out of MI6 development

There are two Bond movies literally titled You Only Live Twice and Die Another Day, a theme Sherlock has been fucking around with since forever

BTW I think it’s hilarious that when a critic put Sherlock on blast after TST for “slowly morphing into James Bond” (x), Gatiss wrote a poem that basically said “fuck you Sherlock can be physical too” (x). Like, that review wouldn’t have gotten nearly as much attention as it did if Gatiss didn’t respond to it. This was basically cannon fire intended for us to take notice of. Like, bro, I’m already here. I see you.... and all your James Bond references.

James Bond in Sherlock’s Canon

Between the case write-ups of ASiP and TBB, John makes a blog post titled Diamonds are forever (x) where he bemoans Sherlock not taking a case about a missing diamond because he found it “boring” shout out to John for being all excited and ready with a blog title for a prospective case Things get interesting in the comments section when Sherlock asks where he’s heard the phrase “diamonds are forever.” John responds that it’s a James Bond movie and that they’re doing a “Bond night.”

Even though Sherlock acted salty in the comments, we do know from his own blog (x) that he did watch a Bond movie with John, potentially Diamonds Are Forever since that is the one John referenced

While James Bond is not mentioned on the blog again, it is featured in ASiB when Mycroft says “Bond air is go” and Sherlock later figures out that it is connected to flight 007. We can now assume that it is because John made him watch Bond movies that Sherlock understood the references

Johnlock

Something every Bond movie features is a Bond Girl. Ever since the early Bond movies, actresses have vied for the role. There is a massive amount of publicity surrounding whoever is being considered for the role and ultimately whoever gets it. It’s a huge deal. The name of the girl always changes and so does her role, but there is one constant:

Bond always, ALWAYS, gets the girl

If Sherlock is imagining his life right now as one big Bond movie, the huge aspect of romance is currently missing, which John said in TLD would complete him. It’s not so far-fetched to think that Sherlock will also get the girl in the end

Or, since Sherlock is gay, get the guy

When Johnlock happens, Gatiss and Moffat will have, in a sense, created not only the first explicitly confirmed gay Sherlock, but Bond as well. Even for them, that’s pretty audacious. Cheers to you sirs!

tl;dr

There are a shit ton of Skyfall references in Sherlock starting in series three, reaching a crescendo in series four, and Gatiss and Moffat are creating the first explicitly confirmed gay Sherlock and Bond.

PS - A special thank you to my boyfriend who, much like John, made me watch the James Bond movies, which is how I picked up on all these references. I thought they were ridiculous but, much like Sherlock, I enjoyed the time with my boyfriend.

[i-ghd]

Searching far and wide for King Arthur

Ah, King Arthur.. I'm sure he was here. Somewhere.

I'm standing high above Southern England on the west end of the Marlborough Downs at dusk searching for a Dark Ages super hero. Everyday life continues far below me, in the evening deluge of traffic down the M4. In the distance a late sun sparkles on the Bristol Channel. But up here I'm in a different world, gripped by greatness. Perhaps.

This is Liddington Castle, a Iron Age hill fort a few miles south of Swindon, now no more than a few ancient smoothed ditches around a wide slab of springy turf. Was it also Mons Badonicus the site of the Battle of Badon Hill, one of our greatest home wins,  King Arthur's decisive victory over the Saxons sometime around 516-518 AD?

"The twelfth battle was on Badon Hill and in it 960 men fell in one day, from a single charge of Arthur's,” reads an ancient account, “and no-one laid them low save he alone."

Hold your protests, purists. I know there are lots of other possible sites – many are associated with places called Badon -  but this is my choice, and there are experts who agree, so there.

And why not? Liddington was slap bang on the highway of history. The Ridgeway, the motorway of its day, now a long distance trail, ran right past it. Just the place to pull over for a mighty showdown.

And it’s the people’s site. Millions of us can glance up at every year. You can spot it from the M4, the London to Wales and the West railway, and from almost as far as Oxford: secret, brooding, and magnificent.

Historians are now sure there was an Arthur, or some great man fitting the profile, even if he never did pluck swords from stones, rescue distressed damsels and kick his wife Guinevere under the round table for eyeing up Lancelot, as Malory had it in Morte d'Arthur.

So even if Arthur is not still sleeping in an enchanted cave, he has never gone away. This summer he’s in a cinema near you. The latest Arthur movie promises a spare, mean king, (played by Clive Owen, with Keira Knightley as Guinevere), shorn of chivalry, questing and magic, as far from Sword in the Stone and Camelot as a film can travel. If that makes us look afresh at the exactly who and the precisely where of Arthur, so much the better.

The film makers perversely prefer Ireland for the location scenes, which according to the (not too precise) accounts of the hard-riding war leader’s travels is the only place in the British Isles he did not pop up. That makes our shadowy monarch the tourist boards’ Messiah. There are tantalising “Arthur was (possibly) here” clues in so many places, you’d be hard put to get round them all in less than a month.

The hunt for the sites of his twelve great victories, recorded by Welsh historian Nennius, could have you tracking Arthur from a suburb of Glasgow (Cambuslang)  to Hadrian’s Wall, to a valley in N Wales. There are possible Arthur sites in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire and Essex (Colchester). But the strongest candidates are in the South West and Wales. I went to find the best (well I do have an Arthurian name - Sir Gareth).

So where was Camelot? Forget the colossal medieval pile they mocked up for the 1967 film of the musical. Some high wide hill, formidably defended, fits the bill, and the smart archaeological money is on Cadbury Castle, just off the A303 at Chapel Cross in Somerset. Digs in the 1970s suggested it might have been some great leader’s HQ.

I made the 20 minute ascent from the car park. It was worth it if only for the views over half of Wessex from the flat grassy top 500 feet up, and to the mysterious Tor at Glastonbury 12 miles away. (This year some enterprising walkers inaugurated Arthur's Way, a 130 miles trek from Cadbury to Tintagel in Cornwall.)

And Arthur’s grave? So you think British politicians invented spin. The monks of Glastonbury Abbey may have been onto it in 1190 when they claimed to have “discovered” the bodies of both King Arthur and Queen Guinevere. Oh, and there was even a sword.

Nothing remains, of course, although there is some evidence that a grave was dug up. But what if…? The Somerset levels still hint at the drowsy enchantment that came from the once annual winter flood. Add the Tor, our leading geological eccentricity: all the ingredients for the Isle of Avalon.

It’s not too far to Winchester, for possibly our greatest surviving relic of early Arthur mania.  The splendid Round Table has stood or hung in the Great Hall of the Castle for 700 years – it’s free, just walk in. But authentic? It has been dated to around 1270. Henry VIII later had it painted with the Tudor colours.

You can put together a perfectly plausible alternative Arthur tour in South Wales. I headed for Caerleon, just off the M4 at Newport; the Roman fortress is another strong contender for Camelot, with plenty of space for a round table.

Then it was west to Mynydd-y-Gaer near Pencoed, focus for one of the enthralling new Arthur theories that spring up every so often. Two archaeologists claim to have traced King Athrwys's (Arthur’s) grave near the altar of the ruined Church of St.Peter.

I pondered this claim while trying out the Ogwr Ridgeway Walk (splendid views)  which runs the 13 miles to Mynydd-y-Gaer from Margam Park, past another strong Mt Badon candidate, Mynydd Baedan near Bridgend.

It was a short hop down the M4 to Arthur’s Stone on the Gower Peninsula beyond Swansea. The great man couldn’t be buried under the massive slabs on the high bare moor at Reynoldston, could he? I thought about it over a pint of Brains Best in, naturally, the King Arthur. Then on to Carmarthen, where his wizard sidekick is said to be buried under Merlin's Hill, alongside the A40 just outside the town.

There is yet another Arthur circuit, in Shropshire.  Two researchers claim to have identified Camelot as Wroxeter near Shrewsbury and his burial site as the Berth, close by. And they site his last battle on the Camlad river at Rhyd-y-Groes. There is a route you can cycle or drive to link them up.

But it’s down to Cornwall, for possibly the most intriguing Arthur find yet.

Tintagel, that storm-lashed headland, has been an essential  stop since Tennyson gave Arthur his umpteen revival in the Idylls of the King. Today English Heritage look after it tastefully. But was it where Uther begat the future monarch?

In 1998 archaeologists found a piece of slate at Tintagel inscribed with the name "Artognov" (pronounced Arthnou, the 6th C version of Arthur). English Heritage declared  it proof that at least an [italics] Arthnou was there: “It is a massive coincidence at the very least, the find of a lifetime." The slate is now on display at the Royal Cornwall Museum, Truro.

And so to the end game. Was Slaughter Bridge near Camelford the Battle of Camlann in 542, where Arthur was killed (legend has it by Morded, his wicked nephew)? There does seem to have a ferocious battle here in ancient times.

By now and this being Cornwall, I was finding it hard to separate the few facts from the rich overlay of romantic legend. So how could I miss Castle Dore, linked to the sobbiest, gushiest romance in the entire Arthurian story, Tristan and Isolde?

I let my guard drop completely at Dozemary Pool, near Jamaica Inn, the “lake” where Sir Bedevere is supposed to have returned Excalibur to the depths. (Bosherton Lily Ponds in West Wales is another top contender).

All made up, of course. But wait. Perhaps it was a trick of the light, but as I gazed out over this dreamy water, weren’t they finger tips I saw just breaking the surface?

[thechasefiles]

The Chase Files Daily Newscap 1/18/2019

Good MORNING #realdreamchasers! Here is The Chase Files Daily News Cap for Friday 18thJanuary 2019. Remember you can read full articles for FREE via Barbados Today (BT) or Barbados Government Information Services (BGIS) OR by purchasing by purchasing a Weekend Nation Newspaper (WN).

COPS FIGHTING BACK – Body cameras were used for the first time locally on Thursday as the police intensified their stop-and-search exercises across Barbados, prompted by a violent start to 2019. And with mounting public pressure on Government to do something about the surge in crime, the areas of police, forensic science and criminal justice have been shifted from Minister of Home Affairs Edmund Hinkson and will now fall to Attorney General Dale Marshall. Following 16 days of seemingly unending violence with bloody gun clashes leading to three deaths in eight days, members of the public took to every media platform to call on authorities to do something and were particularly harsh against Hinkson, claiming that nothing was being done to combat the lawlessness that struck fear into the hearts of residents in some communities. The citizens also took aim at the police, who quietly responded by stepping up their crackdown on illegal firearms. (WN)

HINKSON LOSES SOME OF HIS PORTFOLIO  - Minister of Home Affairs Edmund Hinkson appears to be an unlikely casualty of the spate of current violent crime. In an announcement tonight from the Government Information Service, it was revealed that a number of responsibilities related directly to law and order have been shifted from his portfolio and attached to that of the Attorney General Dale Marshall. The St James North representative is no longer responsible for the Royal Barbados Police Force,theForensic Services Centre,theCriminal Justice Research Unitand thePolice Complaints Authority. The changes take immediate effect. No reasons were given for the shift of responsibilities. However Hinkson still has responsibility for the Barbados Fire Service, Immigration, Post Office, Government Industrial School, National Council on Substance Abuse and the Prison Service. However, his previous responsibilities are now added to a long list in Marshall’s portfolio that include: Principal legal adviser to Government; Law reform and law revision; Court Administration; Legal Aid; Legal Affairs; Court Process Office; Magistrates’ Courts; Registration Department; Supreme Court; Community Legal Service Commission; Rehabilitation of Offenders Board; Director of Public Prosecutions; Financial Intelligence Unit; Anti-Money Laundering Authority and the Family Law Council. (BT)

MORE LAYOFFS AT TRANSPORT BOARD BY MONTH-END  - By next week workers at the Transport Board are expected to learn just how much more they would be impacted by Government layoffs, as the state-owned entity has signalled readiness to commence a second round of cuts under the IMF-approved Barbados Economic Recovery Transformation (BERT) programme. While not willing to divulge the numbers earmarked for the breadline, chairman of the Transport Board, Gregory Nicholls told Barbados TODAY that discussions with the workers’ bargaining agent, the Barbados Workers’ Union (BWU) are set to commence within the next seven days. “I can’t divulge numbers because I have not entered formally into discussions with the unions and for me to do otherwise would be tantamount to going into those discussions having stated what the outcome is going to be. We will begin those discussions within the course of the next seven days after which workers would have a clearer picture of what is to take place,” Nicholls told Barbados TODAY on the sidelines of a conference for prospective bidders to provide 40 electric buses, and held at the Courtyard Marriott this morning. Last November the state-run Transport Board retrenched 50 of its 600-strong workforce. First to go were those who received permanent appointments just weeks before the May 24 General Election. However, the Transport Board chairman told Barbados TODAY that this time around many of the workers would be re-employed in the public transport sector within another format. “We have just completed our master plan and submitted it to our parent ministry and yes there will be further cuts at the Transport Board. What I can say though is that the difference with this phase of retrenchment under the BERT programme is that a number of the employees would be rehired under the Transport Board but not directly with the board. So one of the fundamental planks under the phase of this programme is that there are services that can be provided to the Transport Board that don’t have to be provided by an employee, that still significantly reduces the payroll cost and expenditure of the organization,” he explained. Nicholls gave an update on the number of employees who have indicated an interest in receiving voluntary separation packages. He noted that his organization was still working out the logistics as well as the funding sources for these persons. “There are still simply too many variables for me to give a time frame for those persons right now. It will be impossible to say anything definitive because we still have to source the funding from central Government in order to make our commitments of severance payments for those workers who might want to go voluntarily,” Nicholls revealed. Despite earlier reservations by their union, 50 Transport Board workers, mainly bus drivers, opted for voluntary separation last month. An official told Barbados TODAY at the time that drivers represent the bulk of workers wanting to go home due to the stressful nature of the job but it was feared the number might overwhelm the Transport Board.   (BT)

NUPW WRITES LIAT ON PILOTS’ BEHALF – The National Union of Public Workers (NUPW) has written to LIAT on behalf of disgruntled pilots.  Union president Akanni McDowall said the union wrote chief executive officer Julie Reifer-Jones to have the pilots’ grievances addressed. In response, Reifer-Jones said she had to make checks with the Labour Department in Antigua before they could move ahead. LIAT pilots have been traditionally represented by the Leeward Island Airline Pilots Association (LIALPA), but all of that changed after the relationship with current president, Captain Carl Burke, broke down.  (WN)

TAKE A STAND, GOVT TOLD – Government is being challenged to take a more definitive step in defence of Venezuela’s right to self-determination, following Barbados’ decision to abstain during a vote at the Organization of American States (OAS) on whether Venezuelan President, Nicolas Maduro’s second term should be recognized as legitimate. Lecturer in Political Science at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, Dr. Tennyson Joseph described government’s position as the “safest bet” given the country’s status as a “small, weak” state. “I would have preferred to see them vote down the attempt to ostracize Venezuela,” Joseph said. However, he noted that with the reality of international politics and with the type of pressure faced by some of these states, Barbados and other CARICOM countries decided to play it safe. “They did not want to associate themselves with a call for declaring Venezuela’s government illegitimate. An abstention is like a half step in a positive direction. They should have taken a definitive step to defend the right of countries to self determine. Maduro was sworn in on Thursday for his second term following a heavily disputed victory at the polls amid a devastating economic crisis. Barbados was among five countries including St Kitts-Nevis, Trinidad and Tobago, Antigua and Barbuda and Belize who abstained from the controversial vote. Caribbean Community (CARICOM) member countries, however, remained heavily divided, with the Bahamas, Jamaica, Guyana, Haiti and St Lucia supporting the OAS resolution not to recognize the legitimacy of Maduro’s second term, while Dominica, St Vincent and the Grenadines and Suriname voted against. In an interview with Barbados TODAY, Joseph said Barbados should have voted in line with the principles of non-interference and against intervention in the affairs of other countries. “Barbados should have made a clear statement on the matter. However it was still a better position than those who wanted to see Venezuela ostracized,” he said. “I think there is a lot of diplomatic work to be done by those of us who understand the Venezuela situation, to put pressure on the Barbadian authorities to vote more affirmatively in defense of Venezuela in the future.” Nevertheless, Dr Joseph said the decision would have been made under immense pressure by the United States of America “and other anti-socialist powers” in the hemisphere, to vote against Venezuela. However, he chastised the government of St Lucia, his home country, as well as Jamaica, describing the leaders of both countries as “reactionary”. He challenged the leaders of both countries to declare their interest in the matter. “What is in Jamaica’s interest or in St Lucia’s interest to join a group of countries that insists on reversing Venezuela’s socialism?” he questioned. “What power does St Lucia have on the world stage or a country like Jamaica to declare a country like Venezuela, a regional power, illegitimate or to interfere in Venezuela’s internal affairs, unless Jamaica and St Lucia are two pawns in a larger game which they do not understand or at least which they are pretending not to understand. “Even in the 1960s and 1970s, the most reactionary states in the Caribbean always understood that they would not interfere in the internal affairs of third states. Why is it in the 21st century, with this new push of imperialism, Caribbean leaders are falling in line with imperialist policies in which they have no direct interest?” While he noted that CARICOM member states were not often very united on matters of international importance, he encouraged Caribbean countries to return to the position coined by former Prime Minister, Errol Barrow as being “friends of all and satellites of none.” (BT)

‘REFORMS WILL SEE BARBADOS REBOUND – One regional economist is forecasting that Government reform will take centre stage this year and should result in a turnaround in economic fortunes. Marla Dukharan made the prediction in her Caribbean Economic Outlook 2019 broadcast this week as she examined the region’s economies and their exposure to international developments. She said while some Caribbean economies would continue to struggle to regain a strong footing in their tourism growth due to lingering effects of the 2017 hurricanes, there were others that should see a turnaround in their economic fortunes. She said growth was forecast for all regional economies except Barbados and Puerto Rico, -0.1 per cent and -1.1 per cent respectively. “Puerto Rico and Barbados are projected to show some contraction this year. Puerto Rico, because of their structural problems but also lingering effects of the storms; Barbados, because of the massive fiscal adjustments that are taking place and the IMF (International Monetary Fund) programme really taking effect this year,” she said. Recalling the disappointing 0.5 per cent decline in the Barbados economy for the first nine months of last year, Dukharan said there were several projects that could easily contribute to positive growth this year.  “There is a lot that is happening that can counteract the negative growth. For example, construction and investment, but we still have generally high unemployment of around 9.2 per cent and inflation that trended higher as well,” she said. Highlighting the tax measures implemented by the Mia Mottley-led administration last year and the deal between the IMF, the regional economist singled out the tax reform, saying this especially showed just how serious government was about transforming the economy, She said Barbados “is likely to be the next success story in the Caribbean after Jamaica should they continue along this path of adhering to the guidelines outlined by the IMF”. “The things to watch out for this year is basically the fact that the government is going to push through a lot of reforms. We saw the taxation reform for corporation tax being equal onshore to the offshore. That I think is one of the major things that demonstrated how serious and committed this government is to reform and also to abiding to the demands of the international institutions,” she said. “The government does seem committed to the IMF programme. I think that they will continue to adhere to the guidelines and we will continue to see the economy improve,” she added. After last year’s revenue-raising measures and phases one and two of the retrenchment exercise under the Barbados Economic Recovery and Transformation (BERT) programme, Government is expected to embark on the third phase this year, which would include more retrenchment of government workers, as well as training and retooling of staff and a digital transformation of government processes. Dukharan warned that Barbados and other Caribbean islands remained susceptible to external shocks including BREXIT, trade tensions between the US and China, higher interest rates in the US, fluctuating oil prices and volatility in the international financial market. She also stated that the region was vulnerable to various health scares from Venezuela, pointing out that the Spanish-speaking nation continued to pose “the most immediate and serious longer-term risks to this region”. “We desperately need civility in Venezuela not just for Venezuela but for the Caribbean region as well,” she said. Dukharan said she expected the Trinidad and Tobago economy to be further downgraded and authorities there to likely approach the IMF for help by 2021 or 2022. “Authorities there are painting a completely different and untrue picture of the state of affairs and state of the economy there,” said the Trinidad-born. (BT)

DLP WILL NOT BE RUSHED – Contrary to some political pundits who have expressed concern over the seemingly slow resurgence of the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) following their 30-nil defeat at the polls eight months ago, the head of the party says the political entity is taking its time to rebuild its strength. President of the DLP, Verla Depeiza, made it clear that her party will not be spreading itself thin in a futile effort to try to please everyone. “We cannot please everybody that much is clear. This is a process that has to be undertaken meticulously in order to rebuild stronger,” said De Peiza. The DLP leader was responding to concerns raised by lecturer in Political Science at the University of the West Indies Dr Kristina Hinds, who recently warned that the DLP could face extinction if its leaders do not undertake strong rebuilding efforts and come up with a set of strategies to reclaim confidence in the party. Dr Hinds suggested that there was no guarantee the DLP would remain a political force although it has been around some 60 years. However, De Peiza fired back, stating that her party was taking things in stride, tackling the high priority issues first. She told Barbados TODAY that part of the recovery effort must include learning from the mistakes that led to the DLP’s decimation in the May 2018 elections. “We are tackling two things at the same time. One is to ensure that we never find ourselves back in this position again and the other is to speak to what is current. What is current is our country’s financial position and one cannot say that we have not responded to what involves the country financially. We have always made ourselves available and fully accessible,” stressed De Peiza. So far only two persons have publicly expressed an interest in being part of the DLP’s slate at the next poll. Businessman Ryan Walters has his eyes set on contesting the St Michael North West seat, which was previously held by former Minister of Finance Chris Sinckler. More recently, former president of the Barbados Union Teachers Pedro Shepherd has written to the DLP executive to contest the St Michael South East seat. (BT)

ATHERLEY TO FORM NEW PARTY – A new political party is definitely coming. Leader of the Opposition Bishop Joseph Atherley said that shortly he would make an announcement in relation to the party. On Thursday, Atherley, a former member of the ruling Barbados Labour Party (BLP), confirmed to THE NATION that a much rumoured new party was indeed coming. He had been previously approached about whether he intended to form a party and at the time did not comment. When pressed Atherley would not go any further on the matter or reveal from where his membership would be drawn. At a recent press conference, he was joined by a former candidate of the United Progressive Party (UPP), one of the contesting parties in the May 24, 2018 elections leading to further speculation that the new party was in the offing. At the time of the 2018 General Election, several parties and Independents contested the 30 seats against the then ruling, but unpopular Democratic Labour Party, which went on to cede even its strongholds to the BLP. (WN)

ACT NOW – Social activist Reverend David Durant is pleading with Government to step in now and help the group of Haitians stranded in Barbados. Reverend Durant said getting the young men between the ages of 21 and 36 back home must be the authorities’ first priority. He said Government’s intervention was urgently needed because, in his opinion, the situation has reached an “unsustainable proportion”. On Tuesday, Barbados’ Ambassador to the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) David Comissiong told Barbados TODAY that Government was looking at the idea of placing new travel restrictions on Haiti because the number of Haitians who have come to the island looking for work had reached worrying levels. Durant said he was worried about the Haitians’ response to not having the money to be able to provide basic necessities for themselves. Almost every day, Haitians are headed to Durant’s Brittons Hill, Restoration Ministries Church, asking for help with return plane tickets, in addition to food and other necessities, because they have run out of money. “This is more serious than people think. I think people need to be aware of it because we don’t want this to go into a deeper crisis. Right now let us deal with the crisis that we have here,” he said. “I could understand how the Government is thinking because I believe this has gotten out of hand. So I believe they are putting restrictions so that we can avoid this type of dilemma that we are facing. “We have a number of Haitians here who do not have accommodation, who cannot find work because their passport stamp is for six months but work is prohibited, and they have run out of money to support themselves. “Therefore, they can become a liability or they can begin doing things that should not be done in order to gain money, and we do not want that kind of thing happening here. Some of them are being exploited because they are being asked to do things and are not being paid,” Durant said. Last August, Government removed visa requirements for Haitians to enter Barbados. Since then, a large number of citizens from that nation have been coming to Barbados, after paying between US$2 500 and US$3000, to an agency that promised them they would get work and accommodation when they get here. In late December, 15 Haitians were evicted from a house in Bonnetts, Brittons Hill, St Michael home, after a disagreement with the landlord. Dr Durant has so far managed to send home one young man who had health complications and two others are scheduled to leave within the next week on tickets bought from donations. “There are about ten more to go, and they do not have money to purchase return tickets. I would like to appeal to the Haitian government, in light of the people of the country being misled to come here on the false notion that they can work, to now intervene and help to get their citizens back home so that we can put an end to this part of the suffering that they are experiencing,” Durant said. Meanwhile, Ambassador Comissiong told Barbados TODAY that Government would be meeting tomorrow to consider a number of options to deal with the problem, including adopting a policy similar to one used by Dominica where Haitians pay a US$400 bond before entering the country and this money is used to purchase return tickets if they overstay the time granted. The money is returned if they leave the country within the period granted them.  (BT)

FLAWED SYSTEM – A Barbadian education researcher has accused the Government of ‘education malpractice” in the manner in which the island’s school system has been managed. Today, founder and researcher of the Global Education Reform Research Centre, Terrel Yearwood, was critical of the school placement system under the Barbados Secondary Schools’ Entrance Examination (BSSEE), familiarly known as the Common Entrance or 11-plus exam. Speaking at a press conference at the Barbados Investment and Development Corporation Small Business and Entrepreneur Centre, Yearwood joined the chorus of dissenting voices to the examination, contending that the assessment system for Class 4 students which tested English Mathematics and Composition was not an accurate test of a children’s intelligence. “There is nothing wrong with testing or evaluating a child because an exam is basically an evaluation but Common Entrance is too limited in scope. To test a child in such a limited area is education malpractice and you want to pronounce and denigrate a child’s intelligence based on such a practice,” he said. “We don’t believe problems can be solved by continuous assessment. The problem is inferior schools that we have in this country,” Yearwood suggested. The researcher contended that the island’s 22 public secondary schools should be assessed on a level playing field. “There are a lot of people who want to tell you that you can’t have children with different marks in the same school – that is nonsense! The Ministry of Education has been structuring schools in the wrong way and I believe at this point they need to come better,” Yearwood said. “We believe that every school should be allowed to share fairly and equitably in the allocation process. If you have 100 children who get between 90 and 100 we want to see every school in Barbados having children who have those kinds of marks whereas a place at Parkinson as to be equal to a place at Queen’s College,” he also argued. The founder of the Global Education Reform Research Centre who explained that he specialises in global security research, went on to suggest that if the ministry was not equipped to handle the task, the management of the island’s secondary schools should be handed over to private institutions. “I am sure many people in Barbados will support the notion that if the ministry can’t run these schools properly, give out St George  [Secondary School] on a management contract to the same St Winifred’s or St Ursula’s people and I’m sure the public of Barbados will be willing to support that extra expense.” Yearwood openly opposed the allocation of students according to their grades since he noted that this leads to lowered self-confidence and morale among students. He accused the ministry of making ‘ mock sport’ at the students of Barbados and devaluing the institutions as well. “If a student gets 100 in Maths [and] 98 in English, Harrison College can take them but you want to take children who only got 20 and 30 per cent and pack them into one school. We have schools in Barbados that accommodate 700 children . . .  1000 plus children so why would you take a school that can accommodate  1000 student and place 1000 children in that school who all got low marks . . . you will stand and tell me you are not making mock sport at that school. “You are destroying that school’s image as a credible institution of learning and no one will want to associate with that school. If the ministry doesn’t know how to run a school that has children with the whole spectrum of marks, with the 20s, 30s and the 80s and the 90s tell them check with St Winifred’s!” While recommending that the ministry should abolish its current marking system to get into secondary level institution as it puts students at a disadvantage, Yearwood argued that if students were shared an identical syllabus and weren’t segregated intellectually, parents would be willing to send their charges to newer secondary schools. “If the ministry had to manage these newer secondary schools in a better manner . . .  a lot of those people who reside in St Philip won’t have a problem sending their child to Princess Margaret but they will not send their child to Princess Margaret under the system which is being managed by the ministry.” (BT)

DRUGS, ALCOHOL AFFECTING WORK PERFORMANCES – Illegal drug and alcohol abuse by some Barbadians has been identified as a leading cause of absenteeism and poor workplace performance among employees, some of who continuously use the dangerous substances while on the job. Manager of the National Council For Substance Abuse (NCSA), Betty Hunte, identified Marijuana and Cocaine as the most prevalent drugs currently affecting workplace performance but warned that prescription drug use was also steadily increasing. Loss of productivity, workplace injuries, theft and even fatalities were among the problems identified as directly related to drug use and according to Hunte has been worsened by some workers attempting to offer illegal drugs for sale to their colleagues. On the other hand, when those drugs are not available, some employees reportedly suffer from withdrawal symptoms, which further affect performance. Hunte was addressing approximately 30 supervisors from the Ministry of Transport and Works (MTW), a government department affected by such issues, during a workshop hosted by the NCSA on drugs in the workplace. In fact, according to the MTW’s Deputy Chief Technical Officer, Phillip Tudor, the problems have led to the theft of tools, including “[weed] whackers, shovels and those kinds of things . . . leading to disharmony in the crews,” among other problems. While Tudor urged the supervisors present to actively assist workers who may be affected, he said that in many cases, drug users and alcoholics were often reluctant to admit they were having problems. “We had issues with one person who was often drunk on the job and we called him in and he said, ‘no boss, I don’t drink,’ but yet still I could smell the liquor coming out of his pours,” he revealed. To respond, NCSA manager Hunte called on employers to step up the fight. “Employers can help employees and their families through referrals to community resources and services,” said Hunte who called on local workplaces to establish Employee Assistance Programmes (EAP) and Drug-Free Workplace Programmes (DFWP) to “help employees and their families, through referrals to community resources and services.” She added that “many individuals and families face a host of difficulties closely associated with drug use, and they bring these problems into the workplace, directly or indirectly.” Hunte said interventions by employers were not only critical to the improvement of the workplace productivity, but also the community at large. “By taking steps to combat substance abuse and addiction among employees, a company can increase productivity; reduce N.I.S claims, absenteeism, employee thefts, accidents, legal liability and turnover; lower medical and health benefit costs and improve morale and employee health. “And because we tend to spend so much time in the workplace, agencies are in an excellent position to help employees, their families and their communities combat this growing problem,” said Hunte. In addition, she pointed out that both men and women were falling victim to drug abuse in the workplace, but different factors were influencing the two. “Some of the differences for women center on the physical effects of addiction while others focus on how women relate to their families, their communities and their children. “Many of the symptoms of addiction for women tend to be directed inwardly including anxiety, shame and depression. For men, the symptoms tend to be more visible and external- aggressive or drunk driving, fighting and assault,” said Hunte,” she said. (BT)

RASTAFARI MOVEMENT BLASTS RELIGIOUS LEADER’S CRITICISM OF MARIJUANA – A Rastafari movement has blasted Reverend Dr Lucille Baird for suggesting that legalizing marijuana had the potential to destroy society. Speaking recently, Baird condemned what she called the sudden introduction of medical marijuana legislation as Barbadians were grappling with economic challenges. “While Barbadians were under the anaesthesia of the Barbados Economic Recovery and Transformation (BERT) programme, and anxious about the layoffs and the other issues associated with that, they got injected with legalized medical marijuana,” she said. “. . . It can potentially cause long-term devastating effects on this nation, as other much bigger countries have experienced since making similar moves,” Baird, the head of Mount Zion Missions also added. However, spokesperson for the Ichirouganaim Council for the Advancement of Rastafari (ICAR) Adonijah has refuted those suggestions. Referring to Baird’s comments as “ignorant misinformation” Adonijah said Baird had no such evidence to support her claims. “Dr Lucille Baird blithely speaks of the ‘devastating effect on this nation as much bigger countries have experienced’ if cannabis is decriminalized, without bothering to provide a scrap of evidence. “Here is a question for her. Has she heard of any ‘devastating effects’ in Canada since legalization? What about Holland and Uruguay?” Adonijah questioned. While pointing out that marijuana had been used in several homeopathic medicines in North America since 1937, he said the Church continued to show a bias towards the natural plant. In fact, Adonijah contended that while the Church continued to oppose the use of marijuana, it was silent on the use of alcohol, which he argued had been proven to affect people’s health as well as to be potentially fatal. “The demonstrated bias of the Church against a natural plant becomes even more curious when one considers its stance on alcohol. While even critics of cannabis are saying that “enough is not known” about cannabis, there can be no doubt about what is known about manufactured alcohol products,” Adonijah stated. “The whole world knows that excess alcohol makes people badly ill, kills people, is responsible for many accidents on the road, is responsible for much domestic abuse and much more that is negative. “Do we hear the Church arguing with such hysteria that alcohol should be prohibited, once again? Not a peep! But it is all over cannabis with its bias, misinformation and plain lies. Clearly, the Church is much more comfortable with manufactured alcohol, a product which kills, than it is with cannabis, a plant made by God which heals,” he added. (BT)

TELEPHONE NUMBER OUT OF SERVICE AT LABOUR DEPARTMENT – The public is asked to note that the main telephone number 535-1500 at the Labour Department of the Ministry of Labour and Social Partnership Relations is currently out of service. The public is further advised that they may call the Department at 535-1534, or 535-1562. They may also email the office at labour@labour.gov.bb.The Labour Department regrets any inconvenience caused. (BGIS)

ROSEMOND TO GO BEFORE DRUG COURT – A 41-year-old labourer who admitted today that he smokes marijuana, told a magistrate that he was willing to get help. He will get that help when he appears in the Drug Treatment Court before Magistrate Graveney Bannister on January 23. Troy Shawn Rosemond pleaded guilty in the District ‘A’ Magistrates’ Court to possession of cannabis worth $20 on January 16, 2019. Acting Magistrate Anika Jackson asked him “do you have a drug problem?” He replied: “I does smoke marijuana. I know I can’t keep on doing it. I won’t necessarily say I have a problem.  I en really drug-addicted. I ease off for a few days.” Prosecutor, PC Kenmore Phillips, told the court that the young man was seen by police in the area of Shopper’s Paradise, Roebuck Street, St Michael,  opposite Police Headquarters. When police officers approached him be began to act in a suspicious manner and after allowing them to search him, four grease-proof wrappings with vegetable matter suspected to be cannabis were found and he admitted ownership. Rosemond’s counsel, attorney-at-law Kyle Walkes noted that his client did not waste the court’s time and pleaded guilty, and additionally, the father of two was gainfully employed. Rosemond was granted bail in the sum of $750. (BT)

PSYCHIATRIC ASSESSMENT FOR CONFESSED THIEF – Admitting that he has a problem and gets injections weekly, a 53-year-old St Michael man was today sent to the Psychiatric Hospital for a 21-day evaluation. He is Andrew DeLisle Carmichael of 10 Princess Royal Avenue, Pinelands, St Michael, who appeared in the District ‘A’ Magistrates’ Court before Acting Magistrate Anika Jackson and pleaded guilty to stealing a handbag, purse and $956.95 in cash, the property of Carmen Skeete on January 16. According to Prosecutor, PC Kenmore Phillips, the complainant, a security officer in the Thomas Daniel building, Hincks Street, Bridgetown left her desk and when she returned she was alerted that her bag had been stolen by Carmichael. She and others chased Carmichael and caught up with him on Cheapside, St Michael and the police were notified. When asked by the Acting Magistrate why he was before her, Carmichael replied. “She get back everything ma’am.  I did want something to eat.” He will return to court on February, 7, 2019. (BT)

FIT FOR BAIL – A young attorney-at-law tried his best today to save a father from being remanded, even noting that someone could be on remand for several years before the matter is heard, but to no avail. Harry Husbands said in the District ‘A’ Magistrates’ Court presided over by Acting Magistrate Anika Jackson “Look at the court’s track record, things take very long and a simple matter like this could also take long.” Husbands was representing Andre Troy Gibson, 39, of Block 6B, Ferniehurst, Black Rock, St Michael, who pleaded not guilty to a charge that between August 12 and 27, 2018, he entered the house of Donna and Michael Allman of Chadderton Road, Carrington’s Village, St Michael, and over $1600 in items. Among them were four bags valued $1,020; a set of pearls valued $300; one ham valued $80; a whole chicken, valued $16 and one laptop of unknown value belonging to Donna Allman; and one Samsung laptop valued $240 belonging to Michael Allman. Prosecutor, PC Kenmore Philips in objecting to bail, told Acting Magistrate Anika Jackson about the seriousness of the matter. He noted that while on bail for similar matters it is alleged that Gibson committed the offence and if bail were granted, he might re-offend. Attorney Husbands said that his client is a single father to a 15-year-old girl, whose mother had gone to Canada and had not returned. He added that Gibson’s girlfriend had a miscarriage as a result of an incident last month in Queen’s Park, St Michael. The attorney also pointed out that his client is a national footballer representing Brittons Hill, and having attended court on previous occasions “is a perfect candidate for bail”. The acting magistrate refused the attorney’s application and remanded Gibson to prison until February 14. (BT)

SOUTH AFRICAN WOMAN MISSING – Police are seeking the public’s help in locating Sydney Danson a 23-year-old South African woman. She was last seen with 40-year-old Keith Austin of Tampa, Florida  and two Jamaicans on Monday January 7. Anyone with information relative to the whereabouts of Sydney Danson is asked to contact Police Emergency number 211, Crime Stoppers at 1 800 8477, Oistins Police Station at 418 26 12 or the nearest police station. (BT)

CRICKET’S GAIN, FOOTBALL’S LOSS – Cricket’s gain is likely to be football’s loss. With the influx of visitors for the much-anticipated West Indies cricket Test match against England beginning next Wednesday at Kensington Oval, the Barbados Football Association (BFA) may be forced to delay a triangular cup series. This is after BFA president Randy Harris told the January 3 edition of the Daily Nation the competition was expected to take place between January 21 and 29 at the Wildey Turf. It was all part of the BFA’s New Year’s resolution to strengthen the quality of the game while acting as a warm-up for the Tridents’ home fixture against Nicaragua on March 24 in the Concacaf Nations League qualifiers. Several attempts to reach both Harris and general secretary Edwyn Wood were unsuccessful. They are attending a FIFA workshop in Africa and are scheduled to return on Monday.  (WN)

WINDIES UNDAUNTED – Underdogs or not, West Indies fast bowler Kemar Roach is adamant that now is the time for the regional side to beat the visiting England side. The three-match Test series between the two countries starts next Wednesday at Kensington Oval with the West Indies rated down the ladder at number eight on the International Cricket Council’s latest Test ranking and England ranked as the third best side in the world. But England’s previous history on tours to the Caribbean is not lost on the West Indies’ premier pacer. “The West Indies on their day can play good cricket, we always have that match in us where we can beat any opposition. We still have that in us. There are some quality players in the side along with a few who are now gaining experience. I think the time has come for us to take the mantle and run with it. I don’t think England have won a Test series in the West indies for a long time, it has always been a tough tour for them here and we want to keep it that way.  I think we can beat them at home, I don’t think we have any more wait in us, the fans are all waiting for us to do better,” Roach told Barbados TODAY. He acknowledged that Test series against England in the Caribbean was always a good experience for West Indies cricket. “I think the guys are ready and raring to go. We have a couple of new guys in the squad, we will try to get them gel as soon as possible. So far everything is going pretty well, a series win will give us a strong impetus going into our World Cup preparations,” Roach said. The 30-year-old pacer who has played 50 Tests and taken 166 wickets said he still felt the same excitement for the game he did in his youthful days. “Obviously it is a harder on the body now, but I still love to put on the maroon cap, I still love to go out there and play. I try to perform as best as I can and bring joy to the people of the West Indies. I still have the ability and skills to make an impact on the game. I want to continue to do it as long as I can. I hope my body stays up to the task as well,” he stated. Roach who is at number ten on the list of West Indies’ wicket-takers said he reached one of his goals in the last series to be among the top ten on the list of leading West Indian bowlers and added his next goal was to get to 200 Test wickets “I have set 200 wickets as my next target and I will see how far I can go from there. Obviously, I am aging, we all know that, but I think I still have another three to four years in West Indies cricket, I can still make a contribution to the team,” Roach said. He explained that playing before his home crowd was always a good feeling. “As a Bajan playing at Kensington Oval in front of your home crowd is always a good feeling, you know the conditions well, and it is always a good feeling to represent the West Indies in your homeland. Kensington is a historic place, a lot of great cricketers have played at the ground. It has been renovated from the old venue to a new one, but it is still a good feeling to go out there and see the Sir Garry Sobers Pavilion, the Greenidge and Haynes stands or to be  bowling at the Malcolm Marshall or Joel Garner end.” Roach who is the senior fast bowler in the West Indies team said his body had changed and injuries had set him back a lot. But he added that he has remained strong and his bowling was now based on consistency. “I have been working hard with my coaches on the technical and mental aspects of my bowling, I am in good stead. I have been doing pretty well since I came back into West Indies cricket, and I want to continue to doing so,” he stated.  (BT)

BUJU CONCERT REPLACES REGGAE ON THE HILL 2019 – The following is a statement by FAS Promotions and FAS7STAR On Saturday, April 27, Fas7star will host the eagerly anticipated Buju Banton ‘Long Walk to Freedom Tour’ in Barbados at Kensington Oval. This concert will replace the FAS Promotions’ annual Reggae on the Hill, which was originally scheduled for Sunday, April 28, at the Farley Hill National Park. This decision was taken after the initial contract date for Buju Banton was changed from April 6 to April 27, making it impossible for two such large events to be staged on consecutive days with the requirement for back-to-back production. Any inconvenience to patrons is regretted. Nevertheless, the two other signature events of the annual Barbados Reggae Festival will be staged as usual. These are the Reggae Beach Party at Pirate’s Cove on Sunday, April 28, and the Vintage Reggae Show and Dance at the Oval on Tuesday, April 30. Accompanying Buju are three other revered Caribbean acts, Jamaica’s Wayne Wonder and Spragga Benz and Barbados’ Buggy Nhakente. The Magnum Xplosion Reggae Beach Party features Sizzla Kalonji and Busy Signal with top local artistes and DJs. Headlining the Vintage Reggae Show and Dance are Barrington Levy, Cutty Ranks, Mikey Spice, George Nooks and Barbados’ Splash Band and Lil Rick.  (BT)

For daily or breaking news reports follow us on Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter & Facebook. That’s all for today folks. There are 347 days left in the year. Shalom! #thechasefilesdailynewscap #thechasefiles# dailynewscapsbythechasefiles

[milesmowll60-blog]

Religious Example From The Development From The Seed.

Moon, away from all cosmic entities is believed to possess the maximum strength. There is the capacity from the Jupiter individual not permitting the Moon individual deal with emotional states that could be important by showing up unresponsive when that is actually a natural instinct for the Jupiter individual to select the Moon individual up as well as certainly not let them dwell on the damaging. In the 2nd Venus makes one a writer, along with excellent education and learning and also wealth, with expertise from music as well as along with gift of the the astrologies of Tennyson, Byron, Omar Khayam, Tagore as well as Aurobindo Venus in the next was accountable for their popularity as artists. Stephen: That is actually intriguing, yeah I assume really only thinkin' about this Evan, there is actually an aspect listed below, I'm certainly not a psycho therapist, I would certainly certainly never make believe to become, but the psychology of success, Lorraine you recognize as well as I understand if you start in the early morning as well as you prepare on your own the most difficult job, and you don't believe you carry out a great job from it, that is actually heading to establish your state of mind and your confidence for the remainder of the day. The Moon shows the joy and also showing assurance, nevertheless an affected Moon shows the neglect and also extraction you experience along with dropping peace The Moon is actually the spirit of our center which experiences through the sense mind and body, one of the most effortlessly injured and one of the most vulnerable. Throughout twenty months, while operating as an Interaction Policeman (Also Known As 9-1-1 Operator) for a neighborhood jurisdiction it is a truth that in the course of the cycle from a moon there was actually a grown level of require things like residential disturbances, theft, hooliganism, mental health and wellness requires irrepressible member of the family, or participants in the area that were under therapy for various mental disorders. Rather surprisingly, this page at NASA's very own internet site (near the bottom) details just how NASA showed in 2010 that they believe newly found pits on the moon could possibly likewise be actually entries into below ground caves or tunnels. The main Xinhua news organisation pointed out volunteers would live in a substitute area log cabin" for in between 60-200 days over the upcoming year aiding researchers know what will certainly be actually required for people to remain on the moon in the tool and also long terms". In genuine fact it is actually declared that many establishments like crystal high rises (the fortress) and also dome shaped buildings have been captured on film on the lunar area ... Healthy-life20.Info as well as to finish off on the subject of the moon below is actually a somewhat striking image on the lunar surface likewise had by Russia's Luna-17. I do not wish that, given that our company reside in risk of constructing a step ladder to the Moon where we are actually closer to the Moon weekly but we are actually certainly never truly getting there. My little girl is a virgo sunshine virgo moon she is actually simply 14 and she is incredibly crucial from being this young she is very liable, as well as. she knows eating right and also physical exercise which i located kinda bizarre for a 14 year sometimes simulates a little old lady trapped in a fouteen years of age she could additionally be the most useful person you'll come across, the only thing that is actually best in her eyes and she never ever critizes is her ragdoll cat( vangelis) its like her child ... he can do no inappropriate.