#context is that he sent me an ask with his age (60s) and I told him that the reason age in bio is a requirement for me

[bittsandpieces]

You arrogant stuck up bitch! You don't need to give me any time to update my bio. You can block me now! ffs smh 😡

posting this one so that everyone else can block you too

[snowdice]

Gaps in His Files (Part 5) [Relabeled; Refiled Series]

Fandom: Sanders Sides

Relationships: Logan/Patton

Characters:

Main: Logan, Patton

Appear: Remy, Virgil (but only in the epilogue)

Summary:

Logan Berry has learned many things the last 10 years: a lot of math and physics, a bit of humility, and how to be a hero being just a few. Through his education, his experience teaching, and his exploits as the superhero Bluebird, he’s changed in a lot of small and large ways. He has recorded these changes in well-organized documents and files. He’s even had to create two new file designations: a red one for files about his moonlighting at Bluebird, and a light blue one dedicated to his boyfriend, Patton.

When Bluebird is targeted by a memory device and all of those 10 years of progress suddenly disappear, Patton Sanders and Logan’s extensive files are left as his only resource to get those memories back. But what is Patton supposed to do when there are clear gaps in his files? And what does he do when he is one of them?

This is set 25 years before Sometimes Labels Fail though it’s story is completely independent of it and it is not necessary to read that one first.

Notes: Superhero AU, memory loss, past child abuse, past child neglect, unhealthy ideas about ones place in relationships, emotional suppression, self-deprecating thoughts, medical procedures mentioned, very brief unhealthy views of sex

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

Logan contemplated his new companion, Patton, he’d said once they were in the car. The man had removed his own mask when they’d switched cars in some underground location and had given Logan cloths to change into in the back seat of a much more normal SUV. The cloths fit perfectly, and he imagined they must be his. The large and soft sweater was one of the most comfortable things he could remember wearing.

Not that he could remember much of anything.

To distract himself from that concerning thought, he once again refocused on studying the man driving the car. He appeared to be in his late 20s or early 30s and the dark marks around his eyes indicated that he was likely exhausted. It was only a little past 6pm, so Logan had to wonder why. Of course, the man had to have been out searching for Logan for hours. He was surprised the man was able to find him at all in such a large city when Logan himself was hiding. It was likely good that he did however considering that Logan had no idea where to start with dealing with whatever had happened to him on his own.

He seemed vastly more comfortable driving the SUV than he had driving the other strange car. His hands moved to buttons without looking for them and he sat back against the seat instead of sitting up straight and attentive. Logan deduced this must be either his car or one he drove frequently. He also clearly knew the path from the underground garage to wherever their destination was well as he anticipated turns and stoplights despite the fact that it was getting quite dark.

He glanced over at Logan and noticed him watching. He gave a small smile. “Yes?” he asked. There was something different about the way Patton often spoke to him, but Logan could not put his finger on what. A type of familiarity perhaps that was strange coming from someone who was to Logan all but a stranger.

“That phrase was a code I made up when I was a child in case a time traveling future version of myself needed to gain my trust.”

Patton laughed lightly. “Yes, I know. You read The Door into Summer when you were eight and came up with a time travel protocol.”

“Why do you know it?” Logan asked. “Why do you know the context?”

“I’ve been briefed on all of the Logan Prime Directives even the silly ones though…” he contemplated, “I guess that one wasn’t as silly as we both thought it was, all things considered.” He shook his head. “I did not think I’d ever use that one when you told me that story.”

“No, but…” he said. “Why would I tell you about it? I never even talked about it with my parents and certainly not with my peers.”

“We…” Patton glanced at him. “We’re close. How, uh, how far back do your memories go? You clearly have some of them if you remember being eight.”

He hummed in thought. “Many things are rather fuzzy, though I don’t know if that is an effect of the device that erased my later memories or just an effect of those memories having aged. I have a good impression of most of my childhood. The latest memory I can access was from when I was 18. I don’t recall graduating high school. How old am I now?”

“28.”

“That is a concerning amount of my life to be missing,” he commented. It was more than 1/3rd of his life and likely an important 1/3rd. He would have graduated high school and college, moved away from home, and, if things have gone to plan, entered a doctoral program. He felt as though he should be hurrying home for dinner with his parents, but he likely hadn’t lived with them in many years. He does not even know if his parents still live in his childhood home; many people downsize when their children move out, and he highly doubts they anticipate grandchildren which might have prompted them to retain the home. His parents might not even be alive. They were both in good health, but much can happen in 10 years. His mother would be approaching her sixties, his father already well into them. The average life expectancy was in the 60s and he’d never really thought about that in the context of his parents, but he’d likely had to confront that fact sometime in the last 10 years even if they weren’t yet deceased and…

“Are you alright?” Patton asked.

“Of course, I am,” Logan said.

“Are you sure?” he asked, his tone softening.

“I am simply contemplating the possible information I am missing.”

“I can answer questions if you’d like to ask.”

Logan thought about it for a long moment. “Are my parents still alive?”

“Oh sweetie,” Patton said. “Yes, your parents are fine and in good health. In fact, after your mother retired, they’ve been going off on hiking trips together. They’re probably more fit than I am at the moment.”

Logan let a slow breath out. “That is good,” he said, his voice level.

Patton reached over a hand to touch his knee, startling Logan a bit at the ease at which he casually touched him. “It’s okay and I’m sure we’ll get your memories back soon.”

“That is rather optimistic,” he replied. The hand still on the steering wheel clenched just barely, but the one on his knee didn’t even twitch. He slowly took the hand touching him back.

“Nothing wrong with optimism.”

Logan didn’t respond and they soon pulled into a parking garage. Patton parked the car and then let him to a 3rd floor apartment. Logan was careful to memorize the path in case he needed to retrace his steps for some reason. Patton reached into his pocket for a key and unlocked the apartment door.

The second he walked into the front room, Logan knew this had to be his space. Perhaps it was the repressed memories or perhaps it was simply that everything about it was exactly how he would have organized it himself. The couch was positioned perfectly based on the position of the door, window, and air vents that he could see. There was a small television screen set up on a stand made for that purpose at a reasonable distance and angle from the couch and the recliner next to it. There were no blankets or pillows in sight, likely stored away in a closet, the two pairs of shoes by the door were plain and carefully straightened on the rug, and there were no extraneous papers anywhere, but there was one single notepad on the table between the couch and the recliner with a capped pen laying parallel to it. It was exactly right. Any doubt that somehow Patton was lying and did not truly know him fled completely.

Tension he hadn’t even been aware of leaked out of him like water swirled down a drain after a bath, but apparently that tension had been the only thing keeping Logan on his feet. The body aches and headache that had been looming behind the adrenaline and survival instincts swamped him for the first time since he’d first awoken. It suddenly felt as though he had not slept in the 10 years he did not remember. There was a tingling feeling between his ears and forehead. He turned to the other man calmly as he finished locking and bolting the door. “I am passing out,” he informed him, and then he did.

Thanks for reading!

Also, self-plug, I’m doing a special event for my 10th dice roll fic. If you look at the rules here, you can give me prompts in my AUs including the Labeled Universe. I’d really like to get some more prompts for the event! You can also vote on ones people already sent it!

Want to read more? Click below!

AO3 Part 6

[it-goes-both-ways]

Over the last few years I've been posting more and more of my actual views, which I'm not exactly ashamed of but realise they're not so much unpopular opinions as downright rejected ones. I pretty much know why I have them, I'm aware of my biases and make every effort to restrict them to words, not allowing them to affect my relationships or treatment of others, restricting the hyperbole and rants to this blog and my long suffering partner. Unfortunately I seem to attract the worst kind of women in real life, which is not at all helping. Every time I reveal something I worry about being rejected, told I'm a monster, a failure, a disgrace, an embarrassment, but each and every time I've gotten nothing but acceptance. I am greatly honoured by your support thus far, for tolerating my increasingly frustrated outbursts and hope I won't push you away with this, but it's been all consuming for almost my whole life, and part of “cleaning up my room” is putting all that baggage out there to be scrutinised and hopefully understood, sometimes all that is needed is a willing ear, suppression only breeding resentment and isolation.

All the bullshit feminism has caused, from protesting the male pill and shutting down shared parenting efforts to the Duluth model and erasing men who are raped by women or by counting them under "violence against women" stats to boost the female victim numbers. Mary Koss, the progenitor of the 1 in 5/4/3/-69/ π r2 stat claiming that it's "inappropriate" to consider male victims of forceful envelopment by women as they are merely ambivalent about their own desires. Lobbying for laws that regard mutually drunk sexual encounters as automatically rape by men, underage consensually sexually active couples (even if they're months away from age of consent or the girl is older) as child rape on the part of the boy, guilty until proven innocent, accusation is the evidence, kangaroo courts, sentencing discounts on top of the preexisting bias which causes a 63% disparity and difference in treatment to the point where if you take every step of the justice system into account the crime rate is pretty damned even (with women often using proxy violence so they have plausible deniability, and avoid responsibility/physical risk). Treating women as the definitive victims of prostitution no matter which side of the transaction they're on. Banning men from charity fundraising events, transpeople only allowed if they provide evidence that they are biologically female. Having the NHS class women choosing to have genital piercings as being victims of female genital mutilation, while male genital mutilation performed at birth is not so much as frowned upon let alone illegal by any single country on the entire twatting planet. In fact you can buy some baby foreskins if you want to, or rub them on your face, the target market being protected from the very process that brought them their anti-ageing face cream, complaining that it costs more than men's moisturiser.

The innate gynocentrism of humanity has always led to women being their top priority, now even above children, it tries to pander, and acquiesce to their every demand while being told it hates them. The cases like the woman who filmed herself raping her own baby and getting the oh so harsh sentence of community bloody service and house arrest. The "poor, neglected" woman whose husband had become distant from her (wonder why) so she raped her son's friend, whose punishment was being banned from his school, which she considered too harsh as she missed her son's graduation. An audience of hundreds of normal regular women cheering and celebrating a man being drugged by his wife, who then cut off his penis and threw it in the "garbage disposal" permanently destroying it, just for asking for a divorce (can't think why he'd want to leave), despite no further context it was declared "fabulous" to the ecstatic jubilation of the empathetic sex. There's the idea that men commit the vast majority of rapes while calling female teachers "seducing" their students mere trysts, shameful liaisons that do not deserve prison, female prison guards committing the overwhelming majority of rape of male children and youths in juvenile detention (89%), among other women who rape men and boys (my own mother being one of them), this in addition to the rape rate among female prisoners being 3 times that of male ones, not a single damned thing is done about the propagation of the bullshit narrative. Somehow the fact that female rapists tend to target children is irrelevant because male ones target adult women, and "you don't see women going around raping adult men" (even though the stats are still around 50/50 because it's a human problem, unless those women are exhibiting toxic masculinity or something). There's the 10,000 men and boys slaughtered in their schools by Boko Haram while girls were released and allowed to go home, the boys being set on fire, their throats slit, or shot if trying to escape, no one giving the slightest hint of the merest ghost of a toss, until they realised that they weren't getting the attention they craved so they kidnapped girls, causing an international outcry and the media/celebrities changing their motivation from "eradicate western education" to "oppress women and stop them getting an education". There's the refusal by both the left and the right to look beyond the plight of women when it comes to Islam, they not only ignore the laws which oppress men, but declare those men the "real" misogynist patriarchal oppressors and innately sociopathic rapists. There's the refusal to recognise that women are a part of society and have far more influence than anyone wants to admit. There's Muslim men's obligation towards women, the segregation in Saudi where they have many public places from which men are banned unless accompanied by a female family member, where they'll be arrested for accompanying a woman to whom he is not related while the woman is merely sent home, where men face potentially fatal consequences for the same "crimes". Where homeless boys in Pakistan are pretty much guaranteed to be repeatedly raped day after day.

Then in my own life, being 6 or 7 years old, my sister 8 or 9 and told to stay put as our Reliant Robin went up in flames, having to be pulled out by a stranger, a man, because we were more afraid of disobeying than of burning to death, mother not even sparing us a glance as she grieved the loss of her car, later keeping it in the garden like some sort of shrine. Around the same year, at an LRP event (Lorien Trust's The Gathering), being left in the tent alone late at night and going to look for her, finding her on top of an unconscious man, she at least picked up on the fact that I was revelling in her severe hangover the next morning. Sneaking downstairs one night to see the aftermath of one of her "encounters", the man was broken, so started my extreme protectiveness of men and distrust of women, to the point of being called a gender traitor for the first time at around 7 years old by my 60+ year old year 1 teacher (who also wouldn't allow me to use left handed scissors or to write left handed, unwittingly making me ambidextrous. Being left with a violent babysitter who made me sleep under the table, or on the floor beside her bed (despite having 4 bloody beds), who wouldn't let me eat since burning the toast, beat me for asking for a glass of water and wouldn't even allow me to drink out of the tap, she once threw me in a wheely bin and poured dishwater over me, mother was in the garden just a few doors down, yet did nothing. She’d always try and get her boyfriends to beat us but they always just laughed it off (they’d put up with abuse themselves but never lasted long after she started bringing us into it), one in particular was into BDSM and later got mother a job as a dominatrix (she was disappointed by our complete lack of surprise), and even he had to draw the line at demonstrating how sexual intercourse works to his girlfriend’s 6 and 8 year old daughters.

My sister and I as little more than toddlers, mother putting our onesies on backwards so we couldn't take them off, having to go to the loo with them still on. Having the door handles put on upside down so that we couldn't reach up enough to open it to get to the loo so we ended up pissing ourselves. Having a daily diet of four slices of bread and the cheapest of generic vegetable spread as we weren't allowed mother's butter, being starved as punishment or just because she felt like it (having won custody of us only to spite dad), leading to malabsorption and osteoarthritis at the grand old age of twenty bloody six (3 years ago now), once a week we got an actual meal. Being around 8 or 9, visiting my auntie who was in hospital after having a stroke, having already had MS she was left paralysed, just 23 years old, granddad put together a system for her to speak by grouping letters and having her blink once for the stated grouping or letter or twice for basically undo. I gave her my only teddy which I carried everywhere, a stuffed donkey I got from Spain, she kept it. Staying in her house, continuing my habit of accidentally setting fire to the toaster, being left alone most of the night and going to look for mother in the village pub, finding her in one of her drinking competitions, walking in and vagblocking her, much to her frustration and anger. Being treated like a replacement husband, even trying to talk me into having a sex change despite only mild dysphoria, which was later greatly lessened by having an implant which stopped periods, eliminating most of the feeling of wrong (most cases of sex change regret are people who were abused, either treated like shit for their biological sex, treated as if they are opposite sex, or sexual abuse). Hearing about how the only way she'd get any when she was with dad was when he was asleep. Why did he end up dying a slow, agonising death while she gets to carry on regardless? Asking me about who I liked, later discovering exactly why she wanted to know, a man I care about was raped because I didn’t pick up on her ulterior motives. Having mother and her friends try to teach me to manipulate men, get them to pay for me, trying to turn me into a gold digger, only making me hate them even more. Coming of age (16), no longer eligible for child benefit, mother having been visiting friends more and more often until she didn't come back, only finding out that she'd been gradually moving out when we got the eviction order.

I'd been training myself to eventually join the army from the age of 5, once when I was 6 mother had asked me to go to the supermarket to get a bag of potatoes, she usually got a 20kg sack, must have taken me an hour to get it home, a man helping me carry it some of the way. When I finally enlisted I had to stop taking codeine for the malabsorption, it wasn't as much of a problem if I was eating every day (I usually forget as my body had been conditioned by neglect, not even bothering to remind me to eat any more), my hips had always made crunching and cracking sounds when I move, but as my body adjusted to the lack of codiene the pain became unbearable, upon being diagnosed with osteoarthritis I had to give up any hope of ever being a soldier, I've lost my purpose, and have nothing to replace it with, couldn't even work a whole shift when I got a factory job, humiliating, I'd informed the woman of my condition and she'd assured me that it was just a machinist job. It wasn't. It was everything you shouldn't do if you have any sort of hip problems. I'd never felt such agony and I'd fractured my bloody skull (at an LRP event). The woman was such a nasty bitch about it, she went from compassionate and understanding to mocking me for being upset that I was so damned useless now. I offered to forfeit my pay but her colleague, who also had arthritis and could no longer work the floor, was obviously far more genuinely empathetic than the woman, my brief boss was also sympathetic and even paid for a taxi to take me home after I refused an ambulance. The pain didn't subside for days.

I've never had a female friend who hasn't betrayed me, my "best friend" in school found it hilarious to punch me in the back in the middle of class, causing me to yell inadvertently as the air was knocked out of me. In year 8 the other kids stepped up their game and went from throwing stones to a house brick, when I got back to school she asked where the stitches were, just so she could punch me and reopen the wound. I was never allowed to retaliate, it would always be me who would be threatened with expulsion even if I only snapped after years of beatings which everyone knew was happening. Every birthday the other kids would falsely accuse me of something so I'd have to spend break times stood outside the headmaster's office, the equivalent of the stocks. Whether it was asperger's making me so unlikeable or if I genuinely am just a massive thundercunt, I never found out what I did to provoke them. Every time I put my trust in a woman it gets thrown in my face. My neighbour decided she was my best friend for life and would call at all hours of the day and night to get me to pick up her bloody methadone twice a bloody week, go to the chippy at 11 o'bloody clock at night, she's always trying to get me to take the pills she buys off a disabled neighbour. There are three things I refuse to take, hormones, anti-depressants, and sleeping tablets and she's always trying to get me to take them. The last straw was when her husband, who I got on very well with and whom she abused constantly, died, I told her to be careful what she wished for. When I finally called her out on using me she leapt immediately to the "after all I've done for you" bollocks.

Time after bloody time it's the same damned story, even regular everyday normal women will talk about things that would get a man arrested or at least publicly lambasted, that erections equal consent, that MGM is not at all a violation of the right to bodily autonomy, that it's absolutely fine and dandy to hit your male partner only to call the police if he defends himself, that female paedophiles shouldn't be punished because boys always want sex no matter what age they are but girls mature younger, right the way back to "We should have the vote but not have to pay with our lives as men had to in their millions while we shamed men and even underage boys into doing the same". What terrified me as a child was women's ability to completely turn off their empathy, the "woman scorned" is seen as karmic justice, there are people defending even the most brutal crimes:  assault, murder, rape, mutilation, over something as minor as rejection, or an accidental drive by fart, or just the crime of being a man who wanted a divorce. Empathetic sex my absolute arse.

A fellow MRA publicly humiliated Adam on a livestream when we went to the men's day march and conference, we were staying in an air B&B, Adam and Will Styles still riding the high of giving their first speeches, only for the woman to dredge up shit that was no one's bloody business and ruin the whole mood for no bloody reason, she also attacked 6oodfella on one of the hangouts. Another one was giving private information, with a vicious twist, poisoning the community against one of our group, Paul Elam didn't want to get involved and Janice Fiamengo immediately cut ties, treating him like a bloody criminal, what the hell did the woman say to her? I could see the Woolly Bumblebee thing coming a mile off, I worry whenever youtubers I like get girlfriends because they seem to either completely change or disappear, like Spino and Bread and Circuses respectively. I'm suspicious of female MRAs, I don't want to be but often even the sane ones are just tradcons. If it weren't for the Honeybadgers and you lot I'd have no hope at all.

The constant stream of "toxic masculinity", oppression, patriarchy, of women complaining that their air conditioned (which is also bloody sexist somehow), seated jobs at a till are paid less than the men (and women but they're not going to mention that) carrying heavy boxes, driving forklifts, working in a cold warehouse, and risking serious injury or death infinitely more than they ever will. The selfishness, solipsism, and sociopathy is too much. Throughout history women have never cared about men aside from ones they have a bond with, have never appreciated a damned thing men have done yet they demand that men prioritise them. Why should they?

I’ve seen and experienced the worst examples of female nature in action, “toxic femininity” if you will, and the difference in reaction to it, never being believed as a child no matter how many times I begged other family members and even strangers to please let me live with them instead, I’ll sleep in a tent, look I brought it with me. Pathetic, but you’d have thought someone would have cottoned on. I'm not going down the anti-women route as my sister has, given her own treatment of her partners and her own admission, she’s not so much pro male as anti-female, but it’s increasingly difficult not to resent them even if everything has a biological explanation. I still defend women if the facts bear it out, even if I don’t necessarily agree on a personal level, reals over feels, the people I agree with most also being female has definitely helped me not fall over the edge, one of whom feels very much as I do to the point where she doesn’t consider herself to be a woman due to her own observations and experiences. But the longer this goes on, the more laws are changed, media is poisoned, speech is suppressed, how the hell do I stop myself from just giving up entirely? How on earth can I stop myself from becoming an all out misogynist? Because it is women, not just feminists. It’s female nature being allowed to go unchecked, even when the same happens with male nature women are still prioritised. There are exceptions on both sides but it’s not enough to change the overall trend. There’s never been a balance, and because of human nature there never will be, which is where the problem lies. I know there’s no hope, that it’s utterly futile, completely pointless, and it’s driving me more towards extremism. I completely understand why we’ve lost so many MRAs to suicide. But I’m still going, even if the only way to make even the slightest change is to appeal to female self interest I’ll still do it. Everything I’ve been passionate about throughout my life is a pointless endeavour, I can’t stop myself from caring or change my fundamental character, it’s a downward spiral and there doesn’t seem to be anything I can do about it.

[onlovestreetwithjimmorrison]

Mary and Jim to the end

Before Jim Morrison became famous with the Doors, he and Mary Werbelow were soul mates. In the never-ending procession of Morrison biographies, she is mentioned briefly but never quoted. Google her, and not a single photo appears. She has never spoken publicly about their three years together - until now.

By ROBERT FARLEY Published September 25, 2005

[Courtesy of Mike Sanders]

WHERE THEY MET:

Clearwater Beach, Pier 60. Mary was in high school, Jim just finished a year at St. Pete Junior College. His second cousin, Gail Swift, who lived in Clearwater, says their relationship was intense: “I think they answered a lonely call inside each other.”

Go to photo gallery

BEAUTY CONTESTANT:

Mary, at 18, competed for the title of Miss Clearwater 1963. The Clearwater Pass Bridge is behind her.

[Courtesy of Clearwater Public Library]

Mary Werbelow is polite but firm: She doesn't do interviews. Ever.

Jim Morrison was her first love, before he got famous with the Doors. Friends from Clearwater say that for three years in the early 1960s, Jim and Mary were inseparable. He mourns their breakup in the Doors' ballad The End.

For nearly 40 years, all manner of people have tracked Mary down and asked for her story, including Oliver Stone, when he was making his movie starring Val Kilmer as Jim. Others waved money. Always she said thank you, no.

"I have spoken to no one."

She can't see what good could come of it; some things are just meant to be kept private. Besides, journalists always get it wrong. They focus on Jim Morrison as drunk, drug abuser, wild man. They don't know his sensitivity and intellect, his charm and humor.

"They take a part of him and sensationalize that. People don't really know Jim. They don't really have a clue."

Mary is afraid to share. Because nobody could ever fully understand him, or her, or them. Not to mention how painful it is, even 40 years later, to relive something she would rather forget. She still aches for love lost; her regret never relents.

She lives in California, alone, in an aging mobile home park. By phone she is told that back in Clearwater, to make way for condos they're tearing down the house on N Osceola Avenue, the place Jim lived in when they met. His room was in back, books stacked everywhere save for the path to his bed.

"That was a lovely home," Mary says. "It's a shame to knock it down."

Across a dozen conversations, she amplifies on stories the old Clearwater crowd tells, and adds some of her own. She says she's not sure why she's talking now. Maybe it's just time.

SUMMER 1962, CLEARWATER:

Nine years before Jim died

Mary and best friend Mary Wilkin spread their beach blanket near Pier 60. Our Mary was 17, wearing a black one-piece, cut all the way down the back, square in front - a little daring for the time, especially for a buttoned-down Catholic girl.

Amid the flattops on the pier, the guy with the mop of hair stood out.

Jim had been sent here by his father, then a Navy captain, after he blew off his high school graduation ceremony in Virginia. He had just finished the year at St. Petersburg Junior College and lived with his grandparents, who ran a coin laundry on Clearwater-Largo Road.

On her beach towel, Mary turned to her friend and uttered the first sexual comment of her life:

"Wow, look at those legs!"

Jim tagged along when his friend came over to flirt with Mary Wilkin. He told our Mary he was a regular pro at the game of matchsticks, a mental puzzle in which the matches are laid out in rows, like a pyramid. Loser picks up the last one.

Jim challenged Mary and suggested they spice things up with a wager. If she won?

"You'll have to be my slave for the day."

If he won? Mary had to watch beach basketball with him.

As Mary's first command, she marched Jim to the barber. She was just finishing her junior year at Clearwater High, where all the boys had flattops; she was not going to be seen with such a hairy mess.

"Shorter," she told the barber.

"Shorter.

"Shorter."

To a buzz cut.

He must really like me, Mary thought. I'll see if I still dig him by the time his hair grows out, and if I do, it won't matter.

Slave order No. 2: Iron and clean. And wash her black Plymouth, a.k.a. "The Bomb."

Jim had begun the wax job when Mary's father rescued him with a picnic basket and suggested the couple adjourn to the Clearwater Causeway.

To cap slave day, Mary had Jim chauffeur her to St. Pete, in the shiny Bomb, to see the movie West Side Story.

Mary was on the high school homecoming court. Her friends did cotillion dances at the Jack Tar Harrison Hotel, hit Brown Brothers dairy store for burgers and malts, and shopped Mertz's records for Ben E. King, Del Shannon and Elvis Presley.

Hair shorn, Jim still attracted attention, shy behind granny glasses, army jacket and a conductor's hat. The local law stopped him multiple times to check his ID.

He read his poetry at the avant-garde Beaux Arts coffeehouse in Pinellas Park and visited St. Pete's only live burlesque show, at the Sun Art Theater on Ninth Street.

Friends who thought they knew Mary couldn't fathom why she would want to hang out with the likes of Jim Morrison.

What they didn't know was how out of place Mary felt in her social circle. Jim talked like no one she had met.

"We're just going to talk in rhymes now," he would say.

He recited long poems from memory. "Listen to this, listen to this," he'd say, "Tiger, tiger, burning bright . . ." - excited, like it was breaking news, not William Blake.

This was not puppy love, Mary says, like the earlier boyfriend who played guitar, wrote songs and serenaded her by phone. This was different. This was intense.

"We connected on a level where speaking was almost unnecessary. We'd look at each other and know what we were thinking."

She liked her alone time, in her bedroom, dancing and drawing.

Jim liked his alone time, in his bedroom, reading.

They skipped dances and football games and hung out, at her house, his grandparents' house, wherever.

"I hated to let him go at night. I couldn't shut the door."

When it came to sex, Mary's answer was no.

"It was not happening. And it didn't for a long time. I'm surprised he held out that long."

Mary's grandparents were strict Catholics. She had visions of them at the last judgment, watching her. "It was too much for me to bear."

The poet

Everybody, everybody, remembers the notebooks. Any time, any place, Jim would fish one from his back pocket, scribble and chuckle.

Chris Kallivokas, Bryan Gates and Tom Duncan. And Phil Anderson, George Greer, Ruth Duncan, Gail Swift and Mary. They all remember.

Around Jim, you always felt watched. He'd bait and goad, get a rise, take notes. "There was no one who wasn't under observation," Gates says. "His only purpose in life was observation."

When Jim drove, Mary kept a notebook at the ready.

"Write this!" he'd say, dictating an observation. Or he'd pull over and scribble himself.

Everyone has a story about Jim's brainy side. Kallivokas remembers the night his Clearwater High buddies and a new kid came by Alexander's Sundries, his father's drugstore on Clearwater Beach. They wanted Kallivokas to come party, but he had a term paper due the next day, on Lord Essex. Naturally, he had written all of two sentences.

"I know all about him," the new kid volunteered. Jim wrote the paper off the top of his head, with footnotes and bibliography.

"To this day, I don't know if it was right," says Kallivokas, who says he got an A+

They would rag Jim that the books crowding his living space were for show. He'd look away and challenge nonbelievers to pick any book and read the beginning of any chapter. He'd name the book, the author and more context than they cared to hear.

"He was a genius," Mary says. "He was incredible."

She says his heroes were William Burroughs, William Blake, Hieronymus Bosch, Norman Mailer, Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx, Arthur Rimbaud, Aldous Huxley, Jack Kerouac.

Mary didn't have heroes like that. "Jim was my hero."

The provocateur

Pre-Mary, Jim's buddy Phil Anderson brought him to a house party on Clearwater Beach.

Jim was dazzling with the dictionary game. People would pick obscure words, and Jim would tell the definitions.

Phil turned, and his pal was standing on the couch, peeing on the floor. "Needless to say, we were asked to leave."

That was Jim. He'd charm, then provoke. It was worse when he drank.

He got epically drunk on Chianti at the all-day car races in Sebring, crawled around in a white fake fur coat like a polar bear covered in dirt and tried to launch himself onto the track. Friends grabbed his ankles.

"He'd get a real pleasure out of shocking people and being a little eccentric and peculiar," Kallivokas says. "And that came to the forefront when he had a couple drinks."

Mary says he rarely drank in her presence.

"It was out of respect for me. We were in love, and he didn't want to do things that I didn't like."

"That's a real key to understanding Jim," Gates says. "She was the love of his life in those days. They were virtually soul mates for three or four years."

In the fall, Jim transferred to Florida State. Most weekends, rain or shine, he hitchhiked back to Clearwater, 230 miles down U.S. 19. Most days in between, letters postmarked Tallahassee arrived at the Werbelow mailbox on Nursery Road.

Mary's father intercepted one, read the page about sex and never got to the part that made clear Jim was writing about a class. Furious at her father's snooping, she burned all Jim's letters, a move she came to regret, deeply.

She wasn't much of a letter writer herself. At Jim's direction, she wrote once a week and included the number of a public telephone in Clearwater and a time he should call.

On his end, Jim would put in a dime for the first two minutes. They would talk for hours. When the operator asked him to settle up, he'd take off. Free phone service.

On her end, Mary would loiter by the phone at the appointed hour, glancing about, certain it was the week the cavalry was coming to arrest her.

"I was so scared," she says, laughing. "I just thought it was normal. I see now it wasn't."

She always assumed he had her wait at different phones for her protection; now she's thinking it was his way of making sure she wrote him at least once a week.

March 30, 1963:

Eight years before Jim died

It's hardly something Mary brags about; she says she would have declined. But when the Jaycees called to recruit her for the Miss Clearwater competition, Mary's mother answered the phone.

"Oh, yeah," mom said, "she'll be happy to do it."

The third and final night of competition, more than 1,000 people packed Clearwater Municipal Auditorium. Five finalists matched "beauty, personality and poise."

Mary was looking good, not that Jim was thrilled. If she won, it was on to Miss Florida. Less time for him.

In her toreador outfit - tight-fitting green pants with red sequins down the sides from hip to ankle - Mary did the bossa nova, swirling a red and yellow satin cape. The Clearwater Sun called her performance a "house-stopper." Time for her big question: "If your husband grew a beard, what would you do?"

What a stupid question, she thought, and answered: "I'd let him grow it. Whether he would kiss me or not would be another matter."

She told the judges she was headed for college, torpedoing her chances because it meant she would not be available to fulfill all obligations of Miss Clearwater.

Sitting through other contestants' routines, Mary scanned the darkened hall until she spotted Jim, bored senseless. But there.

She got first runner-up.

1964-65, Los Angeles:

The breakup

Mary's father banned Jim from the Werbelow house. Mary won't say why; she doesn't want to add to the Morrison myth.

When she followed Jim to Tallahassee for a semester, her parents objected. When he started film school at UCLA and Mary announced she was following him to Los Angeles, they were devastated.

To bribe Mary to stay, her mother bought her an antique bedroom set, no competition for a 19-year-old following her heart.

Mary says Jim asked her to wear "something floaty" when she arrived in Los Angeles. "He wanted me to look like an angel coming off the plane."

Instead, she drove out a week early and surprised him.

Together again, in an exciting, intimidating city, they kept separate apartments. Mary got her first real job, in the office of a hospital X-ray department. Later, she donned a fringe skirt and boots as a go-go dancer at Gazzari's on the Sunset Strip.

Jim studied film. At the end of the year, a handful from among hundreds of student films were selected for public showing. Jim's was not among them.

Shortly after, Mary says, he told her he was humiliated, considered his formal education over and needed to forget everything. He built a fire in his back yard and incinerated many of his precious Florida notebooks.

Mary says he started doubting her commitment. "You're going to leave me," he would tell her.

"No, I'm not. How can you say that? I'm in love with you."

After one fight, Jim went out with another woman. He wasn't home the next morning. Mary went to the woman's house, but she said Jim wasn't there.

Mary called: "Come out wherever you are!"

Jim slinked forward, a hand towel around him. Mary bolted and, in a blur, hit the woman's fence as she sped off.

"That was the beginning of the end."

He was drinking hard and taking psychedelic drugs. The darkness she says she had seen from the start was overtaking him, and she didn't want to watch him explore his self-destructive bent. She felt he had swallowed her identity. Whatever he liked, she liked.

"I had to go out and see what parts of that were me. I just knew I had to be away from him. I needed to be by myself, to find my own identity."

She enrolled in art school. The day Jim helped her move to a new apartment, she told him she needed a break.

"He clammed up after that. I really hurt him. It hurts me to say that. I really hurt him."

They split up in the summer of 1965.

A few months later, Jim got together with a film school buddy, Ray Manzarek, who says he wanted to combine his keyboards with Jim's poetry. They started the band that became the Doors.

Friends from Clearwater never saw it coming. Back then, Jim didn't have much interest in music. He didn't even appear to have rhythm.

"He didn't sit around and sing," Mary says, laughing. "Jim, no, he was a poet. He wrote poetry."

By phone from his home in Northern California, Manzarek says all the guys in film school were in love with Mary. She was gorgeous, and sweet on top of that. "She was Jim's first love. She held a deep place in his soul."

The Doors' 11-minute ballad The End, Manzarek says, originally was "a short goodbye love song to Mary." (The famous oedipal parts were added later.)

This is the end, Beautiful friend

This is the end, My only friend, the end

Of our elaborate plans, the end

Of everything that stands, the end

No safety or surprise, the end

I'll never look into your eyes . . . again

. . .

This is the end, Beautiful friend

This is the end, My only friend, the end

It hurts to set you free

But you'll never follow me

The end of laughter and soft lies

The end of nights we tried to die

This is the end

* * *

Within two years of their breakup, Light My Fire was No. 1 on the charts and Jim was the "King of Orgasmic Rock," the brooding heartthrob staring from the covers of Rolling Stone and Life.

He took up with other women, notably with longtime companion Pamela Courson, but Mary says she and Jim kept up with each other. She says she was his anchor to the times before things got crazy.

"I'd see him when he really needed to talk to someone."

Before a photo shoot for the Doors' fourth album, she says Jim told her: "The first three albums are about you. Didn't you know that?"

She says she didn't have the heart to tell him she had never really listened to them. She had heard Doors songs on the radio, but she didn't go to his concerts, she didn't keep up with his career.

Mary vehemently denies it, but Manzarek says she told Jim, "The band is no good and you'll never make it." He says Mary wanted Jim to go back to school, get a master's degree and make something of himself.

When Mary moved, she says, Jim had a knack for finding her. He would eventually ask if she had changed her mind. "Why can't we be together now?"

Not yet, she would answer, someday.

More than once, she says, he asked her to marry.

"It was heartbreaking. I knew I wanted to be with him, but I couldn't."

She thought they were too young. She worried they might grow apart. She needed more time to explore her own identity.

In late 1968, Mary moved to India to study meditation. She never saw Jim again.

March 1, 1969, Miami:

Two years before Jim died

With the Doors coming for their first Florida concert, Chris Kallivokas left a message with his old friend's record company. He says Jim called him back, loving life.

"The chicks we get, the money. . . . It's great."

"So that crowd control works," Kallivokas teased, talking about theories that intrigued Jim in Collective Behavior class at FSU. He said Jim answered:

"You've got to make them believe you're doing them a favor by being onstage. The more abusive you are, the more they love it."

They planned a reunion in Clearwater.

* * *

Some 15,000 fans cram into the 10,000-capacity Dinner Key Auditorium, a sweaty, converted seaplane hangar in Miami. Jim Morrison announces his drunken presence with dissonant blasts from a harmonica.

The cover boy, 26 now, has a paunch and beard, a cowboy hat with a skull and crossbones and noticeably slurred speech.

One stanza into the second song, Five to One, he berates the crowd.

"You're all a bunch of f - - - - - - idiots!"

Confused silence. Uncomfortable laughter.

"Letting people tell you what you're gonna do, letting people push you around. How long you do think it's gonna last? . . .

"Maybe you like it. Maybe you like being pushed around. Maybe you love it. Maybe you love getting your face stuck in the s - - -."

Screams from the audience.

"You're all a bunch of slaves. . . .

"Letting everybody push you around. What are you gonna do about it? What are you gonna do about it? What are you gonna do about it? What are you gonna do about it? What are you gonna do about it? What are you gonna do! What are you gonna do! What are you gonna do!"

He talks as much as he sings. He wails about loneliness and rants about love. Three songs after berating the crowd, the music softens and he lets loose a plaintive:

"Away, away, away, away, in India

"Away, away, away, away in In-di-a

"Away, away, away, away in In-di-a

"Away, away, away, away in In-di-a."

* * *

Morrison invited the crowd onstage, and the concert disintegrated. Amid the chaos, he supposedly unzipped his pants, exposed himself and simulated sex with guitarist Robby Krieger.

With the country debating indecency run amok, Jim Morrison was Exhibit A. He was charged with lewd and lascivious behavior, a felony, plus indecent exposure and two other misdemeanors.

The courtroom in Miami was packed. State witnesses saw what they saw. Others said it was hype, Morrison only simulated what he was accused of. There wasn't a single damning photo.

Bryan Gates hadn't seen Jim in ages. They caught up during a break, and talk inevitably turned to Mary. What ever happened to her? Gates asked. Jim said he had lost touch, California seemed to have swallowed her up psychically.

He was acquitted of the felony but convicted of indecent exposure. On Oct. 30, 1970, he was sentenced to six months of "confinement at hard labor" in the Dade County Jail.

Out on appeal, he moved to Paris, where he shared an apartment with Courson.

The Doors released L.A. Woman in April 1971, with hit songs Love Her Madly and Riders on the Storm. Months later, Jim Morrison was dead.

On July 3, 1971, Courson found him in the bathtub. The listed cause of death was heart attack; drugs were suspected. He was 27.

September 2005

34 years after Jim died

Mary is 61, unemployed and rarely leaves her mobile home. She says she married and divorced twice, and she has no children.

"I can't find anybody to replace Jim. We definitely have a soul connection so deep. I've never had anything like that again, and I don't expect I ever will."

She painted, mostly realistic oil portraits. She won a small legal settlement after she said she developed multiple chemical sensitivities from rat poison that seeped through the vents of her art studio over the years. It makes it difficult to be around scented products, and she gave up her art.

Mary would not meet with a reporter for this story or allow her photo to be taken. She says she weighs exactly what she did in high school - 107 pounds - but now her hair is long and gray. "People sometimes tell me I look like an artist."

She doesn't think the early Doors albums are all about her but says the lyrics include references to her and Jim's shared experiences, including the "blue bus" in The End. She considered writing about the references but decided against it. An artist herself, she didn't want to spoil people's various interpretations.

For decades, she says, she brooded over how things might have turned out had they stayed together but finally concluded it was destiny. "He was supposed to go into that deep, dark place."

His grave in Paris draws pilgrims from around the world, but not Mary. Quite the opposite, she says. She wants to forget, and still she feels his ghost checking on her.

Lines in Break on Through especially pain her, lines she interprets as Jim saying she betrayed him by not getting back together:

Arms that chain us

Eyes that lie

"I promised it wouldn't be forever, that I'd get back together with him sometime. I never did. It's very painful to think of that. For a long time, any time I would think about him, or anyone would talk about him, I'd cry.

"It used to make me so sad. I never gave him that second chance. That destroyed me for so long. I let him go and never gave him that second chance. I felt so guilty about that."

Mary says she is tired. She has trouble sleeping. She says she's not sure if she has done right by talking so much. She's worried that others will seek interviews that she does not want to give. She wants that made clear: She does not want to talk about Jim anymore.

- St. Petersburg Times researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.http://www.sptimes.com/2005/09/25/Doors/Mary_and_Jim_to_the_e.shtml

[bdneiceme]

Sex in the church...

There has always been a taboo about transparency in the church. We want to get folks delivered but no one wants to share their story. The old way of thinking that if it happens in this house, it stays in this house is why generations of families stay in bondage. So please take some time to read about some things that I have experienced and feel comfortable enough to share with you today. By no means is this easy for me to do, but it is necessary. Maybe if someone would of shared with me, I could of spared myself some sleepless nights. This blog is by no means a way for me to make ANYONE feel bad about the choices they made or are making. This is about ME and MINE. I'm doing this to maybe help someone else, not to judge you. So do me a favor and check your feelings at the door. Don't take it personal sis (Sis in this context is gender neutral!) !

Ever since I can remember I remember learning that sex was a sin. That you shouldn't "do it" for lack of better of words, until you were married and that you would be punished by God for doing "it" too soon. I was more afraid of getting pregnant and getting a disease than anything else that I learned as a youth. I wish they spent more time talking about soul ties than STD's and pregnancy if I can be honest. Growing up in the 90s, sex was starting to become a more main stream issue. Commercials and movies became sexier, safe sex was a mantra and getting tested was a way of living. I learned what "it" was because KIDS TALK! All it took was one recess at ACA and I quickly learned that sex was going to be a bigger problem in my life than any of the other sins that ever was mentioned in Sunday School.

I, like most Preachers Kids, NEVER EVER wanted people to know I wasn't a virgin. The scrutiny that would follow would be too much to bare. I didn't want to embarrass my parents. They were Pastors, what would that make them look like? I was mortified when they found out. I was way too young to have let go of something so precious, but the young man who was my "boyfriend" told me he loved me and we were gonna be together FOREVAAAAA *Cardi B voice*. And that's what I thought sex was. I thought it was an undeniable love you had for someone and once you had that, it would be okay. Not to mention the countless "adults" that talked freely about their sexual endeavors around me that pushed me just enough to want to experience this euphoria for myself. So at the tender age of 14, I did "it". I had no idea "it" would lead me to the tears I cried and the things I battled, but it did, and 12 years later I'm still dealing with the aftermath of it.

Yea, I know, 14 is young. Super young, but I thought I was ready for it. He told me I was ready for it, and how can you argue with the "love of your life". Lol with hindsight it's hilarious, but at the time I thought it was perfect. I remember feeling like I was trying to swallow an SUV when my parents found out. I ain't scared of NOT NOBODY, yes I know that's incorrect but I SAID WHAT I SAID, but I am DEATHLY afraid of Kenny and Leta. I lost more than my virginity that day, I lost their respect. That still chokes me up somedays because if you follow me on any social media platform you know they mean everything to me. I wrecked their lives and unbeknownst to myself I ruined mine as well.

Now granted, SEX ISN'T A BAD THING, but I do understand it is intended for marriage. I wish I could tell my husband that he was the only man to has ever touched my body, but I can't. I can however tell him that he is the first one to touch my body since September 2017! Now the rumor mill will always run. I have been called a hoe more times than I can count. Now I don't remember any of those people with me when it happened, but they know more about what happened than we do. I was also a lesbian, unknowingly, for about 8 years lol. I just learned that my sexuality was just that, MINE and I didn't have to explain it to any one else but Jesus. (FOR THE RECORD I AM NOT AND WAS NEVER A LESBIAN. IF PEOPLE DON'T THINK YOU AND YOUR LESBIAN FRIENDS ARE A COUPLE ARE YALL EVEN REALLY FRIENDS?)

I didn't really have sex in high school. Due to the lack of opportunity, not because I wanted to live Christ like. College wasn't even really a coming out for me, but I can say I did experience a lot more with the opposite sex because those "adults" I mentioned before told me it would be worth it in college. So I had to see if they were right about it. But one thing I do know is that it would of been better had I waited. It wasn't worth the emptiness, the tears, the lies, the cheating, the sneaking, all of it. It just wasn't worth it. I knew that I was wrong but I thought as long as I cried and asked God for forgiveness then all was well. I thought the blood was strong enough to make me white as snow. And if I "messed" up again, I would pray and keep it moving because God will ALWAYS be forgiving. However, that emotional baggage started to add up.

2014 I told my bestest friend in the whole wide world that I wanted to be celibate, (I deliberately use celibate and not abstinent because I lean more fondly to the definition of what it means to be celibate) and she said she supported me 150%. Right after I thought I met the ONE. It was perfect. I made this declaration and then God sent Him to me! He was in the church and when I told him what I wanted to do he was perfectly into it, until he wasn't. He just KNEW I was his wife and he had "prayed" for me so it was okay right? Yea he preyed alright, and even though our romance was short lived, the baggage that I was left with haunted me til this day. So this journey has been brewing in me longer than my membership at Have Life Church, but it wasn't until now that I was okay with me, that I was ready to take this step and embark on this journey.

I purposely didn't mention how many partners I have had and I'm choosing not to disclose that information because frankly it's not important. Whether it be 2 or 20, it's not pertinent enough to share in this blog. What is pertinent is the fact that I chose to live a better life. I have asked God to forgive me and then in front of about 300 people vowed that I would live a better life for Him. Yes, I messed up. My prayer is that I won't let it happen again. Every person you have sex with, you have sex with every person they have laid with. Yea, you may only have 5 partners, but you also have to add on the sex partners of all 5 of them, and all of their partners, and so on and so on. You're carrying baggage that doesn't even belong to you! Think of how foolish you would look if at the airport you grab someone else's bag and when they ask for it back you make a scene and leave knowing it isn't your bag. Now you're weighed down with your bags, their bags, and everything else that comes with it because you can't let go.

My prayer is and was more than that God keeps me until I meet my Kingdom Mate, but also that God clear out any emotional baggage that I gained from another soul. It's a freeing experience. I feel like if I didn't have shoes on, I would float clear into the air. My spirit isn't heavy anymore. I didn't even realize it was heavy until it wasn't anymore. My heart is happy. I'm happy. Celibacy is a choice. It's one that I wish I followed through with 3 years ago, but here I am. Will it be easy, probably not, but it will be worth it. I'm not condemning anyone for their choices, I'm just talking about ME and MINE. Ok isn't good enough for me. I want more! And I know by me making this decision God is going to open doors I could of never imagined because of my obedience. So hold me accountable. If you see me slipping, let me know. We remain too silent and we fail as Christians because NO ONE wants to be held accountable.

Try your hardest not to judge me. Sorry Mommy and Daddy for letting yall down, but I swear I'm trying every day to get my life back right. It's a journey. It's one that I am willing to share. This isn't everything, but it's enough and hopefully it will spark something into the heart of someone else and say no one else will touch me until I say 'I do!' No, I'm not perfect, but I AM WORTH IT! You are too! Feel free to drop a comment or two. Know I was sincere when writing this and maybe you can be transparent about a demon you battle in your life. I will write again at 60 days in! Yall keep me prayed up!

-Britt

[little-wankenobi]

Multiples of five, please

5. Was your last kiss drunk or sober? Probably drunk because I highkey cannot remember my last kiss. 

10. When is the last time you saw your sister? I do not have a sister. 

15. You’re locked in a room with the last person you kissed, any problems? ???? who even was my last kiss?????

20. Does anyone like you? Jesus does. Actually, I think there was a guy that liked me. He is three years younger than me and I barely know him. It wasn’t going to go anywhere. 

25. In the past week have you cried? I cried today. :^)

30. Do you like text messaging? It is convenient 9/10 times but also difficult because 80% context/sarcasm is lost 

35. Would you prefer a relationship or a fling? Relationship. I cannot deal with short term nonsense. 

40. What made you start liking the person you like now? I saw his picture on Facebook. 

45. Would you date someone right now if they asked? I struggle w this a lot in my current state of life. I’m moving. I’m in school for probably forever. So, ideally I’d like someone who already has a degree/job so it’s less stressful on the relationship because 80% of the reason it wouldn’t have worked with Youngblood™ is just that. I also did not have romantic feelings for him but there were a lot of other thoughts/feelings that came up during that time.  I don’t know what God has in store for me right now. I’ve been single for over two years. I want to date, but I’m not sure if it’s prudent to do so, though. 

50. Anyone you’re giving up on? Not any person, just the idea of a best friend. 

55. Have you ever liked somebody and never told them? I literally never tell people I like them. I just wait for Tol Priest to tell his parents I think he’s cute. 

60. What do you carry with you at all times? I try to keep a Rosary, a book, and a cellphone charger on me at all times.

65. Did anything “cute” happen in the last week? I got a delicious slice of chocolate cake sent to our table when I was out to eat with Tol Priest and Traddie Core member by parishioners. 

70. Would you rather listen to Luke Bryan or Lil Wayne? WEEZY. 

75. Are you 16 or older? This website has aged me well over 16 years. 

80. Are you from the south? Southwest 

85. What’s the last movie you saw in theaters? Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. II

90. Have you ever snuck out of your house? No. The fear of getting caught sneaking out of a Mexican household outweighed the thrill of doing anything of the sort. 

95. What were you doing last night at midnight? Sleeping 

100. Are you friends with people on facebook that you actually hate? I don’t really hate anyone. There are people on Facebook from high school that I don’t know why I am friends with, though. 

Thanks, Marial.

[thoughtfulcupcakesublime]

Virginia legislators are continuing their work in Richmond.

Prince William County residents heard about what’s occurring in the General Assembly at a Dale City Post Crossover Legislative Town Hall.

State Senator Jeremy McPike and State Delegate Elizabeth Guzman held the meeting at Beville Middle School in Dale City on February 15.

Education and transportation were a couple of the topics they covered.

This is a video of the town hall:

Below, is the transcription of the meeting, which is normally done with 80 percent accuracy. Unfortunately, it wasn’t able to translate all of what Guzman said.

McPike: I will, we’ll go ahead and get started. Appreciate your motivations for additional folks who joined us today. Uh, I’m Jeremy [inaudible]. Uh, [inaudible] Woodbridge [inaudible] stretches on Prince William Parkway from 95 homes of many villains spreads to launch them two 34 in your dad’s freaks in the forest high school.

Speaker 2: Got run.

Speaker 3: Great County limits. Okay.

McPike: Um, and then first off, happy belated birthday to delegate. [inaudible]

Guzman: yeah. Now I going get to listen to this mine. How can we turn 47?

Speaker 3: You’re so young. I just don’t got the menu

Guzman: strictly brilliantly has parts of [inaudible] County and [inaudible] County raise me. I’m telling you I have, I won’t say most of them city and then I’ll go with you were sent off to go sit strict as well. And then I have pulled off as well. I spoke with them and then from there I go to, okay, fine. Where have [inaudible] [inaudible] um, [inaudible] area I think cause I shared that if you’re going to get how I and I, you [inaudible] Nope. [inaudible] I have the street area and we need deal [inaudible] we need you to just freak. I go into football, not going to have Monclair I should not ever go.

McPike: Thanks for joining. Uh, this is sort of, if it’s okay, we’ll probably do some intro of what we’ve been working on, a little bit about the budget and sort of what’s going on in Richmond and then open it up to your questions. There’s lots of things going on and so we might in our remarks and uncover something that you’re interested in. So, and encourage folks to ask questions if you’ve seen something to bring that up. Um, gravels if that’s okay. If someone disagrees with the statement or the position of someone, this is a lie, you know, this is an opportunity for folks to voice this concerns and not necessarily have a debate the debate, but also just to respectful, right? So if you disagree with someone, I’d encourage folks to not comment on it or BU or one way or the other. That makes sense. Um, cause it is a nonpartisan town hall. [inaudible] allowed to ask questions, have them disagree with the position. It’s fine to disagree. Um, I think it’s important to have a context that we can agree and disagree, but we should do so respectfully. Does that make sense? Everybody? Okay. We also have two other like this here. Say hi and introduce yourself.

Guzman: The one water conservation district. This is Stephen’s full boyfriend, Vanessa city full from the other one is [inaudible].

McPike: So a couple of things. This is our budget year, so this is our long session. So we’re in our 60 day. In fact, some Morrow, um, they’ll be publishing the budget and the budget amendments. So the cover introduces a budget [inaudible] starts as a matter of process. That all comes out tomorrow evening. And so we’ve been working on, I know [inaudible] has a minus in the house Senate and so there are lots of them pressures as you can imagine to work what’s in the budget and what’s not in the budget. And so we’ll see that board out this weekend and so we’ll be breeding for that as well. That’s lots of moving parts to it. But I think from an overall perspective, the company is really encouraging us specifically for early education and pre-K education that owns the 100 million option investment between standard of quality of rent, re benchmarking, uh, additional dollars in funding in early childhood education.

McPike: Um, you know, the principal County we’ve been trying to catch up in terms of, um, probably chocolate slots, not quite there to the, it’s um, stepping up and also offering some incentive, uh, opportunities for additional preschool. Um, as we knew, as you know, the data shows us that earlier kids learn to read, they can learn the rest of the subject and they could build the comfort, um, very early in life and their skill set and reading the data says that we’d be much better off versus remedial training later on. And so this is really the first budget that we’ve seen, this sort of significant significant investment, um, in our education system, which is great on the back end of it. You see also the availability for college, uh, community college, which I think is just great for those kids who do qualify for Pell grants.

McPike: There’s free community college that goes as much as well. Um, we’re going to be serious about getting every kid the skills that they need. Um, we know that we’ve have very bright kids in our community that sometimes feel like they can’t go to the next step, usually their financial words or other words. And so the more we can open up those opportunities, I think the better we do leveraging on our talent. Some of them right here in developmental school and um, you know, we want make sure that the kids have that, whether it’s a skill trade or computer science, there’s targeted degrees that the governor has put in this budget and I think that helps to win both our workforce development needs as well as ensuring that those kids, so those are important highlights, transportation, there’s some bills and transportation that’s going through that are really important.

McPike: They will all pro sports increase in the back pass. That will help define some of my hands patients. We are billions behind our projected funding level. As you know, the 2013 legislation made a small net and that those, the person that changed since 1986 in terms of transportation funding, there were certain things that we also proposed for Metro two years ago that took some of the road money away. They were restoring some beds and transmit transit occupancy tax code in this region. That’s really important for prison County. Um, the improvements and investments in fury might seem to report with the long bridge. It’s the bridge that all the rail lines pop as they cross into DC. So all the very trips right now are, we’re going to roughly 22 trips a day by making this investment in the long bridge and we’ll be willing to do also weekend trips, reverse trips and increase the number of trips.

McPike: I’m afraid your spread line part of that is going to be funded from the ISIS. I’m told [inaudible] dollars for buying funding, but this is up 1.41 point $5 billion multi year project to get there. And other than for the commuter rail, that’s just a huge difference. Right now we can’t do anything to a one inch with Patsy on the be revise. And so the more and more books we can get, you utilize it with the more frequent and reliable service, the more people wouldn’t get um, [inaudible] back jamming roads and open up as a communal house. So I’ll take a couple of pauses and then trade back and forth because there’s a number of different, we move into cards. I think those are two pretty significant ones.

Guzman: So just be back on the outreach out medication. One part that is gonna be different than years prior. You probably know [inaudible] town was not taking advantage of all the money that was available for patients before or leaping back. So right now you don’t need to knew that insulation Ricky never gets, well initially if there was any four, four year olds, it’s going to be expanded with [inaudible]. So that is great. You know, if they’re going to be able to release. And then also what is going to happen is that the, I will not allow finally childcare providers in that community, both little race amplification process. So they do get access. That’s my name. Or by your server.

Guzman: There’s one cop yet these time are not the same. Like the money’s going to sleep there, you’re gonna use it and it’s gonna just be waiting for the difference. Now he’s studying, we don’t use the body breathing accounting. The money’s gonna go away wasted. So I think that’s any people we have to work together to try to work with local government and to work with providers in the area who makes sure that we’re going to take advantage of those support monies. I mean, we are needing the numbers. I mean [inaudible] when we are thinking the amount of children and we are seven things in that County, and then we talk with [inaudible] route up between your car to qualified, you know what the median household income of about a hundred thousand $120,000 per household. So that make us individual who, any size of freebies when he has Google with free childcare or anything like that, other the BPI, advising, raising the minimum wage, all of those forward.

Guzman: The guidelines he’s called that I want to go up. Who’s going to be opening over tuning these? Can you find [inaudible] [inaudible] I know that important investments schools as well. I would say that we are security. The funding for reviews like age and older for school money that was taken away at the end of the first one I got to go. I also, I mean DCS at least Dale city if someone you’re wasting money. The area where we have, I know each not watching other students so I work job is jabs can not meet anybody or we need more resources. Right now that classes or English language learners is 24,000 students. So we are volume. We thrive. The reviews that those 17 she’s here but then we couldn’t find the money. You know as we have been abusive to how I learned it the same way like you didn’t use Morgan.

Guzman: There is money available above our house who any book Conrad’s millions dollars. So I’m hopeful that we can go back and change these videos that we allow model for communities. That goal was [inaudible] sorry that it’s 17 7:00 PM hitches, 4,000 students. So we’re trying to put 20 features to a thousand students. So I it’s just that that’s the reality, right? That the word, anything, you know, anytime you in schools we are feeling as set up the [inaudible] was saying is that we’re paying for tap because public education was not a priority or maybe 2018 where we’re working with the same by different public education from 2008 and however from NEP has gone. How many people if we just look around them, I mean how many [inaudible] who have come having that committee and we’re working with the same plan. So feels like a school counselor, psychologists, social workers where he would be hard, especially a patient.

Guzman: And especially with the vacation we are working with jailer, they are doing a whole or the shape of the whole system, uh, adjusted Luca. What can we do for, especially with vocational classes, that it has not been patched in 2009 and that’s time we discuss, especially with location in Virginia, who now 2009 and we all know that back then men have help. What statement? You know their work and they’re still many children. I’m fired. Cause every advancing that their children have a condition and they need more resources. So we are glad to be straight. [inaudible] our very own sacred values application incarnate [inaudible] school has taken the, you know, these very, it’s built, it’s built, it’s working really, really hard. We’ve tried to provide more resources to special education classrooms as far as [inaudible] we are going to finally have hoping, hoping that, you know, every facet. [inaudible]

Guzman: I haven’t decided for Metro. And finally, and this is just a study and I don’t want you to think that this will happen in a couple of years. No, it said home circle. It’s going to take at least 15 years. Look in years, if not 20 years, who bring a Metro to call you back. We’re going to have more VA services. Uh, we need to work with the IPC. The last time that I met with, I told them that what I heard at the doors, because we do have other commuters and we don’t have places, Bart, even one of the things that mesh of the yabbies this stuff and there’s no places to my parking. They’re not really, there is no old who built a new computer lab. So we are talking about trying to have shadows to allow people to frog from where they leave their knots.

Guzman: I was also brought me to see, we kind of have finally I, they’ll city on the right service that could allow people to drive bill with Del city. There’s a population that we talk to right now within the city is very powerful. We talk in Minneapolis right now, so we want him to have allowed people that are working locally to stay out of their cars and fight to take public transportation to go for work. You know, I, I know that PRPC director that we, you wanna think about Nashville that we are, we need to think outside the box about maybe making it more accessible for people. So if I’m asking my husband who dropped me off at WSP Istation, so I don’t think of training. I don’t think of anything because my husband is taking off from work with take me. So I, we had to call my boss. I’m trying to find ways to make people who love you here. Your station. We’d love other resources. No, I feel you miss it. A nerve money. Um, B and C who give [inaudible] we talking about [inaudible] in Washington D C now need to take care of them. I worry about my needs. You never caught,

McPike: um, couple of things that, um, the legislation back in specific with working on [inaudible] did the same rule. Open up the question [inaudible] covered this morning. And how long have you [inaudible] um, this year I work on many of, you know, the last couple years I’ve been working on natural gas pipeline safety via song house has exploded in my history. And what Ruby, um, this year also removing is currently an exemption and Virginia state law that allows the natural gas companies to not use a professional engineer when they, Sam can charge him. Um, after the Massachusetts explosion in fires that occurs in, is 22 States that have that exclusion cause action to remove it. Is that the trend of the bill this year to remove that legislation to ensure that any of this infrastructures reviewed and signed by a professional figure? Um, and there’s lately I’ve been to [inaudible] actually since the last year, has the son get killed with house, which is requiring a lab water testing and how the daycare facilities, um, there is led facilities.

McPike: The federal laws cover essentially the water distribution systems, but not addition to facility. And so the solder joints, um, in different pipes still contain a certain parts of led. And so it does require that same standard not being anybody wants led water going into the baby formula or anything else or just basic rain water and talk to her. That’s a vague neurological. Um, and also getting the school’s resources, um, in coordination with the Virginia department of health use of existing level or standard like carrying this past two years ago for schools. Uh, make sure we understand that holistic view of the problem around the state and the, to identify resources to that. So I have a budget numbers on that as well. That helps that often start to aggregate some of the data so we can get schools, they do have a federal grant they were, were, were awarded last year or something like $33,000.

McPike: Obviously that’s a drop in the bucket so to speak. So we would get a lot of work. I’m just going to do on that. One of the other big goals I worked on this year and incurred for the governor’s offices, worker ms classification. Um, this primarily impacts, uh, the construction trades. There are other industries that do as well that do not follow the IRS guidelines in terms of who should be at a 10 99 worker and who should be an employee. And what occurs is, especially when construction jobs is, there are lots of companies who essentially tend to at nine a bunch of employees so they’re not paying the same taxes. So those betters, that undercut those who are doing business the right way and Virginia has been very lax about that appointment. And so this grades have a new enforcement mechanism within the department of taxation as well as coordinating with the department of labor and other agencies and create some, some penalties for those who are bad actors.

McPike: Right now companies getting open up and close really with little penalty associated with it. And that’s unfortunate because it does hurt. Like I said, the good actors that come here are doing the right thing. So this modeling gets a little bit more teeth than enforcement. My name is indoor wall. Um, so those are, those are a couple of, there’s a dozen other things I’m going to give you. Seed reform, um, cutting the number of permit types of half just updating um, alcohol licenses based on new businesses, business standards after provision. And we really didn’t anticipate like wait months with you, like selling you a case of beer. But there’s also serving that, you know, there’s all sorts of business models in addition to the new distilleries and how they want to innovate. And so it’s really consolidating, I don’t know about a hundred pages of code section and reducing, cutting essentially the, what we call it, Christmas tree effect.

McPike: When you sort of add on thing permit types, you can just consolidate a certain license authorities to make it a lot easier for people to apply for licenses. Um, additionally, this year was uh, a bill going through the expanse on my bill from last year that allows for open carry of alcohol. If you’ve been to mass this first Fridays, you notice that you can have a restaurants can sell a beer and if you have a closed down special event area. And so I’m gonna ask, this is taking advantage of this year where they closed down the streets on first Fridays. And so the restaurant jurors can sort of amino, you can also have a beer, you can got to carry the street which were closed down and then it is demarcated area. Listen to a live band. And I know the masters restaurant droves, they see it at all.

McPike: They’re like all times sales high by like eight 30 I think the second night. Some of them were telling me. So that’s that. And yeah, so yeah, I’ve checked with the chief of police there and others. In terms of enforcement issues, he said there’s been not. Um, so there’s been a really great in that positive, but now it’s sort of catching on. So lots of other parts of the same line. So there’s a bill this year that would increase it to 16 as well as allow, if you have a multi-day permit, would only count as one. So some localities have like a festival or something that would come as one of those permits. So encouraging people in historic downtowns, no 16 permits a year. So it’s a limited duration permanent. Right now the current code is 12. So this was not the two 16 but also the count for if you had a sort of a weekend long festival on Friday, that Sunday that when he hound for for three to those that sort of account for one sort of a total there.

Guzman: Okay. So let’s talk about public notes. Will it just be like what you’re talking about? So I would discard we um, consenting and be able to send up that wheel is fighting people A’s and PFS. It’s a [inaudible]. How many of have many peoples are very familiar with environment here? I can tell us that our phone actually use water across the catheter. So we are conducting a study with the department of health and they will absorb across cost tests. I believe Edify waterparks or pizza, tough people in gays. I knew the times at the house. [inaudible] at the center we have now a [inaudible]. So I even told him one time, I don’t think we’ll be surprised. [inaudible] last year that was killed his body. Nine votes about, see that over next one separately in the presence of ATC, beat up the smoking. And the reason with my nurse on their age, you find that in fact, so you will not [inaudible].

Guzman: I think these use just a public health issue. It’s one of the main costs. [inaudible] I gave him through smoking as they grow out, but I was exposed in clothes so long into small, I mean it’s just the right thing to do to my plans. I’m not developed. So in that field I was able to get somebody back and some support from outside. They have out that as far as um, changing facilities with the department of student health services, I have her request from one of my constituents who is a single father that he used it in a couple of the saved and buildings and he couldn’t find that changing table.

Guzman: So finally we were able to partner with the department on getting our services. So we will use one facet of birth, gender, we tend to fables. So yes, because they are there. So many women nowadays there are, you know, being back at the hospitals on fire that’s taking the fathers, I think it’s their responsibility to think he felt that children as well. So I’m excited about that view game with your [inaudible] that focus on integrating past comedian defense hoping that he will go well in the Senate. As far as I wanted to talk about environment a little bit. I was fine with a great deal and I carry a couple of legislations for them. I wasn’t accessible, you know to pass [inaudible] or the other development that is asking about these kind of things with more than a hundred thousand citizens. I’ve seen this with more than 300,000 citizens [inaudible] affordable policy and doing public transportation as a comprehensive plans anytime they are developing a 5% or 15 year [inaudible] plan and I passed the center on the way to go to the governor says so I’m excited about that. I’m talking about separating your deal as well. I can’t really kind of house or solution that passed the house is going to say that I have not heard yet where Regina will become versus baby in the country. We’ll be clear that they’re declining with emergency and waiting to absolutely

Speaker 4: [inaudible].

Guzman: I don’t see a problem with that. That’s the company. Coffee’s just being loud and clear. The cavitation is right up and we need to start acting. Now. I have seen South of my union fear brothers and sisters, so I the African [inaudible] that would allow public employees who [inaudible] and he passed the house. It’s on its way to the Senate. I was not be fired Friday evening that he will be heard on Monday. [inaudible] okay. How’s this [inaudible] so I just wasn’t able to speak a week. We’ve been neither of the, not yet. We actually had a casual conversation on Friday and was set up on the bar. That means that they might need, might be this scheduled for Monday, so I’m hoping that I can testify. So I log in for it. It said Arthur’s before he gets hurt at ease the Senate with our members upon our Sunday.

Guzman: We’ll see if I’m successful. If not, you know, we have a very, okay, tell me about the house going through the center and I just don’t want to do that. But if I have to, I may wear in salary. Not only Google, I mean I know probably complete you who buy them connected these days, like also partnering with the Omaha world. We’ve that Bernie Genito where he said that if we are going to do these, then maybe you have to structure [inaudible] and disrupt and put it in place is the aid [inaudible] and for these relations for that [inaudible] members will be assigned by the opener and we have located money to also hire some hearing officers. So any time they’re high school be an issue in between an employee and an employee or in the public sector at third, I probably didn’t know you were nation’s local CIT officer would lead that mediator in between that lawyer and that employee or we both.

Guzman: I think that’s something that would benefit everybody. Nobody wants to look a car as a don’t need a public employee. We just wanted to be able to be listened. I think for me, my idea is that someone’s reputation will say, Oh, that means that we’re going out. How much is it going to cost? Is it gone in Greece over the taxes? Well, I will tell you right now, and have you seen accurately because your governing bodies will continue to, uh, in the power of appropriations that we do by having a voice at the table, we, you were going to have to listen to us and we will make our case for, say for example, the 1% salary increase is not necessary. Firefighters with blonde hair, you know, the government is, they could ever pay for better, you know, and with the better resources to do their job for the Sophie says the same way, you know, we’ve been talking about buying new equipment, then they will have to stop to the police officers to come there by ease and coordinated with them what they need to do their job better.

Guzman: Teachers, you know, when we’re talking about how we’re gonna, uh, we’re gonna include the 1% salary, 12 features. I want to make their case as how they are used to their person online. My before in the classroom. How it’s important to have this or this motor classes. How are they unfolding? Many animals have their first amount of time for this schools. As these things need to be heard. The school board members need to listen from the pictures. What is going on as far as giving out justice reform. I finally sent the field center last week as increase the age of minors trial as adults. He came from the house. The genetics will support, I will say [inaudible] adjustments. Even those who weren’t before, like delegate Ron Vale was not from Virginia. I’m the main girl for people, not definitely three, four people to come up. You and I took a picture with because [inaudible] years in a row, he finally agree with [inaudible] and I was able to partner with administration as well because it was a priority for Bella.

Guzman: I know, I’m trying to look at faces. Some of you have some requests. It’s function, you know, very important for many individuals. I introduced legislation. Uh, but I think that some of the members who are not ready yet, so those are happy and sent to the crime commission. So the practical nations wanna send recommendations for next year. So we can see why is going to be allowed to eat lunch, right? Not, I mean the reality is there we all having young who will make mistakes, I mean that wrote us well, but then realities that you have to be carrying that with the rest of your life and that prevents you from having an employment for working with children even, I mean, right in a class and the school system, if you have a felony on your, uh, on your criminal record. So we have to change, you know, kind of like justice reform will happen up here. That’s also for many years what are trying, people are screaming out in the streets. I’m talking about individuals of all of my and identities float. And you find made a mistake when I was 18 or 19 years old and now I have proven that I’m not going to see this and that I have medication that I fear from my mistakes. These is that country of second chances. So Regina has to be that either, you know, on, uh, provide an expungement services.

McPike: Yeah, a tremendous amount going on this week was crossover Wednesday, Tuesday night inside where we got one out. It was about one o’clock in the morning, take her for converted that morning. So now we finish up our business, the house they do other than getting on the second run. So there’s a little bit more than the day before the crossover, but we moved out of there. We don’t typically move the pending question, which means that the vote has to be taken on the Senate and the house are the rules of procedure. We let everybody in the bait, if they have a voice, they’re going to make sure that those thoughts are, are shared. Unless it gets extraordinarily long for one speaker, then we might push things along a little bit. But this week was an extraordinarily long week. Many things on the, not only in the criminal justice reform, decriminalization of marijuana, um, the significant tweaks to criminal justice system are fairly significant.

McPike: There are things in 20 years that have sort of stack the deck of one side and we’ve really started to tackle some of the structural injustice in how we treat the cases. Both then, you know, sentencing different tiers as all sorts of nuance and Recode right now that we are starting to be ended to fix. Was your really, really important? Uh, there’s also been, um, I think some, obviously some big hot topics in terms of on gun safety legislation. Um, what passed the Senate was a one gun a month, a universal background checks with certain provisions excluded in terms of the family. Um, it has to be a sale. So there’s this certain transfer provision. So for instance, if I’m out hunting on a tree stand, you don’t create a, you know, unintended felony cause I leave my gun to go and clean the deer or whatever and I left my gun with my buddy.

McPike: I don’t want to, you know, we try to avoid creating sort of unintended consequences through that in terms of what transfer means. And so we did take out some of the original provisions to the spur that we didn’t have folks that were caught in sort of innocent situations versus, um, some of the gun show loophole and other sort of proxy sales that are going on. Um, so we, we certainly sort of tackle that as a, as an approach. So we also did the one got along with just returning to the legislation. We had, I don’t know, 15, 16 years ago that was within the law. Um, additionally, there were some provisions that passed the Senate that allow for, um, vocal control for local permits. Um, Lavella valleys would have to post if you have a special permit that they, they don’t want to have guns present at.

McPike: And they had posted that sign at that public hearing. Notice all sorts of other provisions to make sure that, again, it’s not an unintended consequence. You can’t just walk into a place and not have any notice that you’re not supposed to care. And so there’s sort of the savings that are put in place. Um, certainly the other hot topics goals in relation to um, number of flips or add ons to pass the Senate that certainly ban bump stocks are trigger acted activated devices. Um, the bills dealing with um, round counts or well let’s say that sort of assault rifles or assault weapons has not passed the Senate, um, based on different definitions of round town and other issues that start to really get into some pretty nuance stuff. I know there’s been a lot of hot topic, social media and other stuff, so I wanted to cover that.

McPike: The other more recent one is on driver’s licenses for uh, new Americans or undocumented Americans and other systems here are not yet citizens working their way there. And you know, I’ve seen a lot of social media sort of being on this of the last week or so. I was really picked up on, you know, why we’re doing this, why it’s needed. If you look at it and break it down to the basic facts and figures and folks who been here, manifests 2030 years is folks have licenses in Maryland for other places. Right now it’s other car is also registered in Maryland that go through the Virginia safety inspection nor do is there an understanding of Virginia rules of the road and the walls. So there are provisions to provide a license framework that requires passing of the test driver test, having insurance, you know all the other things that go with it in terms of savings.

McPike: So there’s some, I think some pretty strong public safety initiatives. In addition, the tax, they should obviously our tax and other things that go with it, registration fees that go with it to ensure that everyone has the same understanding of the rules of road. And so that’s something that I know I’ve seen people asking or emailing about what are we doing, you know, you know, people are going to put the comments of the people are getting something for free. It’s not free. They get to play that same exact rules and everybody else, no special conditions. And so I just want to make sure that it’s very clear despite what you might see on social media. Very strange. And the other question I heard was, well what happened with New York? You know the feds are now timing now on the preferred travel program or field where the exact name is, but essentially the frequent flyer, perfect TSA preferred entry program.

McPike: The reason why they did that in New York cause they had locked down the day to day decision. The Virginia law that we have that’s going through has provisions that they can request involved before I personally can still request in the DMV database a specific individual. This is not part one. And so that takes care of the federal concern that had come up and that’s why New York is having problems. We don’t have that same problem. We have avoided that issue by specifically writing and provisions in the code go for that issue. So I just want to address those couple of things of, you know, what people are calling or writing about and sort of address addressed it as I think are some really important positive as many other important positive social in addition to the publicity and taxation around that issue. And this has been been improved for many, many years.

McPike: Um, unfortunately. Um, but I think with now with real idea in place as well, it takes care of the plate issue in terms of the reason essentially returns the law to where we were 2004 post nine 11 in Virginia. That’s what the law does and because we have separate relining and you are going to require a real idea, the board, the domestic plate as it is, you still going have that requirement. So that doesn’t change any of the frameworks that we have, the federal requirement as well as Virginia framework. Um, so I think there’s a lot of positives around that. So I want to cover, make sure we covered through those more hot topics that have been swirling around Richmond. I are you seeing things on social media that makes sense. Stonewall

Guzman: the week. It’s just like the vinegar there was talking about these. What’s up great. Did show up for a mold from breaking before 2003 I didn’t do none of that. Were just bringing it back a low that was in Virginia and was taken way we false out because it was taking after what happened on nine 11 and we all know now and none of [inaudible] I mean where [inaudible] so we are trying to bring in an hour just having stayed [inaudible] we’ll play, we’ll pay property taxes where maybe, but that money is instead of going to Mary instead of going to Washington DC, I haven’t only bad because there’s a lot of people that they send, I just want this and even though they averaging at residents, they go on charge [inaudible] paint documents via the need you both to get a license. He married in Washington D C at that spot.

Guzman: I need to stop all of that Senate, send a book support on that [inaudible] at one of the things that we’re doing to be here. Well, he’s trying to fight for that adamant [inaudible] Oh, um, perfections in general. I have employment in housing, I guess discrimination with myself. I had an easy job. And what do you think that way in school I stayed in agency and they went through the very, you know Jessica, Wendy [inaudible] who they are and that is one of what daddy did for that reason. I’ve presented legislation on his own into the center that will require state employees pay the LGBTQ [inaudible].

Guzman: That means I’m going to ask him, you know, I’m just one of them to know what it these life and they need to understand that community so they can help them to get there. That’s been years take them, be who they want and they put up, they want to quit just a day. I only just use the word services and will be confident and we do it in, I mean we both work at these already implemented in so many capacities. These is far off. You are to an orientation or what can we respect each other? What would work for them?

McPike: Get her back on the driver’s license privilege. One question I saw online or on email is an indication that this would somehow allow people to vote or not. Citizens does not do that. Just cleared the snake. He’s nations that cross in fact separate regions. How it, what does that send to the blood collection to make sure those distinguishing factors of a citizen citizen? I, there’s lots of ways that very clear if

Guzman: you vote, then you are not a citizen or to go at all. Even you have a green card [inaudible] that it’s a felony and you can taste it or patient or vomiting. [inaudible] [inaudible] would there

McPike: be an indication on the license non-resident that you went up and looked what provision?

Guzman: If there are no veal, somebody [inaudible] his driver’s license and the other one is agree with each guards. But the good thing is that we all come over the real IDs and if you aren’t a citizen, you’ll get a star of Lena [inaudible] but you don’t get the star. That means that you are not a citizen, but that doesn’t mean you are undocumented. Amen. You know, it puts me that you are great.

McPike: I just decided I didn’t want to go through the hassle cause I just [inaudible] but what does all the election laws that are also changing the requirement for it? You still would be recording them too long to show a need, but if you don’t have ID you still have to vote. You have to sign and that’s under the penalty and I felony. That’s when this gets in. So both on the voter registration forms and other things. So that’s right there felony and also, and the election, if you comment and then try to vote, you’re putting a signature, you’re, you’re signing yourself from a felony and you’re not registered. So there are a number of different checks in both databases across the board that you would be envy to the board of elections database. So those a number of different ways going from protection to that and the,

Guzman: yeah, I’m just going back to my deals. I think there’s one thing that I, as a door, what I was knocking is about drug prices. Everywhere I go, people what? Frustrated [inaudible] insurance, how much they have to stop [inaudible] I mean, schooling, if you still have, I’m sending them deal [inaudible] [inaudible] payment system. Is that the and innovative solutions to address that cause the persecution threats, Regina, at that point of sale, these [inaudible] uh, you know, we’ve had different version of some hockey change to how the Friday’s I dated, um, that come provided to us all being a road. We’re going to have all of the stakeholders that are part of that process. How can we come up with a solution and that solution is to be filed by December. So generally comforting the nature station. Do we just work on [inaudible] out?

McPike: There’s been some limited measures going through the Seinfeld pharmacy benefit managers or PBMs you’ve might’ve seen on the news. There’s all sorts of discounts that the drug manufacturers offer those discounts and Venice rebates don’t get passed on to the end user. And so there’s a lot of, you know, your pay plan pays for a certain point and then they’re also capturing the rebate on the other side. And so, and then the direct price is higher with the passive PBMs. And so there’s all sorts of sort of moving parts and shenanigans that are going on that they’re, they’re sort of doing one of these is, does that mean that he’s got tons of years are in the or development that occurred with this drug? All that. Listen, 50 years ago it’s all done because there’s no need to pay 600 times what somebody tries. It should be.

McPike: It’s really frustrating to get in a room and healthcare space and everybody does what he’s like, wait a second, we’re paying like 20 bucks for this, like 10 years ago, you know, it’s 150 now. I’m pretty sure I’m not making him breathe free a hundred times in my day. This is crazy. And so they keep, it’s a complex issue. It’s one of the most frustrating things to deal with. Um, but I think our, our ability to have patients visits with the medical way before we’re just about an hour and a number of different things we’ve got also figure out, hopefully it ties in with the button too because we also have to help the fund, the board elections with some initial whether it’s going to be clearly sort of no excuse absentee, you are early voting provisions. I think it will come out of both the house and the Senate and I think that’s extremely important for this year because we have so many books like you knew, you know what an hour plus at all. Any one day you could have doctors come up or emergency, you know let’s have more participation, not less. I think there’s a general consensus in both jammers that some or all or combination provisions will be valid for one thing that will go in effect for breaking into the next school and teachers will not happen anymore.

McPike: The primary outburst of social media on that, Tim was like, give me a break, Nico, come on. So essentially not then the one thing we’ve done is fuck the state holiday to electric kissy football. You can’t complain if you don’t vote. I didn’t mention that. [inaudible] get some work and she had gotten cancer presumption and finally we’ve got it out of the house and the Senate. So that’s been appeared that bill every single year for of six years. So this has cancers that are directly linked to the toxins that they interface. There’s been fires and that’s been just a long time. Now I removed provisions that gotten whatever our firefighters who passed away caught up in legal battles for about a year before he died. We were in that section of the code. Um, and then we have a PTSD Eatonville that is passed out under the Senate and it’s over the house and he did not have a people to action so far on the house [inaudible] and then flipped back any provision.

McPike: And this creates the first defense [inaudible] to provide relief, first presumption relation, PTSD and our first responders. Um, there’s just so many folks that deal with, but a single incident or cumulative incidents over the couriers. You just lost open officer two weekends ago. Um, unfortunately this, the story plays out across the Commonwealth. Um, all of the points for different reasons and we are not tackling the issue more proactively and we need to create a framework that says if you’re struggling, you got some framework coverage. And folks I know and worked with, they want to get back on the job too, but they’re hurting. And right now that was the mantra for so many years in these lines of service has been sort of [inaudible], you know, and um, unfortunately the costs really get worn by the families that are involved. I was over time and it’s time we started to flip that. So this is the first year we were really struggling with the progress that flipping this discussion. Um, yes it will, it’ll have some financial hit the localities because there’s some premium issues, but hopefully those that start to think about it and do more proactive things and the more frequent check ins of sitting down. So incident reviews, other things to check out mental health status over not just single incident, but the cumulative total.

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[rolandfontana]

The Man Who Murdered the Sixties

It’s been a half-century since Charles Manson and his loopy minions conspired to commit a series of murders that still fascinate and flabbergast the world.

Manson, who died in prison in 2017, would savor the attention he continues to attract, including in this summer’s Quentin Tarantino film (“Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood”) and several new books,  including my own.

In March 1967, at age 32, Manson was a fresh federal parolee who stumbled into San Francisco as American ingenues in peasant dresses and bellbottoms—runaways, hitchhikers, and lost souls—were streaming in for the Summer of Love. His timing was impeccable. The patchouli-scented sexual revolution created a perfect petri dish for his predation.

Using prison-honed talents as a con man and middling skills as a guitarist and singer-songwriter, Manson soon began building a cult of as many as 35 young hippies, three-quarters of them women.

He would spin campfire lectures for his stoner clan featuring Psych 101 dogma about projection and reflection. He basted their brains in a mix of Jesus Freakiness, Dale Carnegie hucksterisms, Norman Vincent Peale’s sunny-sided platitudes (“You are perfect!”), and the buggy self-help triangulations and “dynamics” of his prison-library Scientology.

Charles Manson. courtesy Oxygen

They believed he was a godly mystic.

The writer David Dalton nailed Manson in eight words: “if Christ came back as a con man.” Joe Mozingo of The Los Angeles Times said, “He was a scab mite who bit at the perfect time and place.”

Using the playbook of pimps and cult patriarchs, he isolated troubled young women from their past lives and controlled their bodies and minds. He was the Wizard of Oz for libertines, and he as much as told them so.

Susan Atkins, who became one of Manson’s most prolific killers, said Manson often mocked his own followers’ blind faith.’

“He said, ‘I have tricked you into doing what I want you to…It’s like I’ve got a bunch of slaves around me,” she told a grand jury in December 1969, after her arrest.

The Enigma of Charles Manson

Manson was an enigma on many levels.

The “Manson Women” Photo courtesy Oxygen

He was a racist and sexist imbued with the old-timey sensibilities of an Appalachian upbringing. He preached female subservience and racial segregation, and his young followers lapped it up in the midst of a flowering civil rights movement and on the cusp of modern women’s liberation.

Many were willing to kill for nothing more than Manson’s validation.

“You can convince anybody of anything if you just push it at them all of the time,” Manson once said, “…especially if they have no other information to draw their opinions from.”

Just 29 months after Manson began assembling his naifs into a communal Family, these “heartless, bloodthirsty robots…sent out from the fires of hell,” as a prosecutor would describe them, carried out a series of proving-ground murders in Los Angeles over four weeks in the summer of ‘69 that still has a place of prominence in America’s storied pantheon of crime spectacles.

The primary motive was money to allow the Family to finance a retreat to California’s Death Valley to ride out the race war that Manson predicted was coming.

The first victim, the Family’s good friend Gary Hinman, was Killed on July 27. Two weeks later, on Aug. 9 and 10, Manson followers killed the pregnant actress Sharon Tate, coffee heiress Abigail Folger, Leno and Rosemary LaBianca, and five others in acts of casual savagery that remain a peerless mashup of celebrity, sex, cult groupthink, and bloodlust.

Police outside 10050 Cielo Drive in Hollywood where the blood-splattered bodies of Sharon Tate and her four friends were found. Photo by George via Flickr

“It had to be done,” one of the killers, Leslie Van Houten, explained after her arrest. “For the whole world’s karma to be completed, we had to do this.”

Writer Dalton, who covered Manson for Rolling Stone, called him “the perfect storm” for 1969.

“It was the conflation of mystical thinking, radical politics, drugs, and all these runaway kids fused together,” Dalton told me.

“The world seemed to be in death spiral of violence, and we thought the whole hippie riot was about to begin to save use all. We were going to take over and everything would be cool. In fact, the opposite was happening, embodied by Charlie Manson.”

The implausible Manson story cannot be separated from the context of its era, as some Americans were asking essential questions about what their country ought to be.

The half-decade of 1965 to 1970 saw ghetto riots, the emergence of a vibrant new psychedelic culture, shocking political murders, riveting space exploration, escalation of the war in Vietnam, and burgeoning protests of the same.

Two months alone in the summer of 1969 brought an extraordinary series of events. On June 28, a police morals-squad raid on the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York’s Greenwich Village, touched off three days of rioting—and ignited the gay rights movement. On July 18, Ted Kennedy, surviving male heir to the American political tragi-dynasty, fled the scene of a fatal car wreck on Chappaquiddick Island, Mass. On July 20, the world watched on TV as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took their stiff, bouncing strolls through moondust.

Among the viewers was a small group of friends and kin gathered at the home of Sharon Tate. Twenty days later, on Aug. 9—50 years ago today—four members of the same group would be savagely murdered by Manson’s second kill team. A week after that, more than 400,000 peopled endured organizational bedlam to attend the Woodstock Festival, 100 miles north of New York City. That same weekend, Hurricane Camille pounded ashore on the Gulf Coast, east of New Orleans at Pass Christian, Miss., killing 256 people.

The Sixties created Manson, and his crimes were an exclamation point to a turbulent decade.

A ‘Child of the ‘30s’

But as he liked to say, “I am a child of the ’30s, not the ’60s.”

He was born to a prostitute mother and drive-by father in 1934 and raised by relatives in Kentucky, Ohio and West Virginia coal country. He became a chronic juvenile delinquent who flailed his way through a Dickensian childhood. A tiny boy who grew into an elfin but sinewy man, he was locked up in reform school, jail or prison for all but a few years of his life from age 13 to the grave.

He spoke or wrote a million words about his life and crimes—in court, in letters, in media interviews. He bleated many excuses for his wasted life, almost always beginning with a lack of parenting and proper education.

Manson often played crazy, but that was a studied tactic. As Vincent Bugliosi, his prosecutor and biographer, told Time magazine before he died in 2015.

“His moral values were completely twisted and warped, but let’s not confuse that with insanity. He was crazy in the way that Hitler was crazy…So he’s not crazy. He’s an evil, sophisticated con man.”

Manson preached a homespun version of liberation theology—the freedom to be you. But a switch was flipped in the fall of 1968, when the Beatles released their White Album.

Manson convinced his followers that the world’s most famous band was sending him direct messages in the lyrics, including those of “Helter Skelter.” He imagined that Paul McCartney’s song presaged a race war that would induce the Family to retreat to a desert hideout, then emerge heroically and install Manson as a world leader and master breeder.

Manson recast his horny young stoners into a classic apocalyptic cult, prepping for end times. Growing impatient for the race war, Manson decided to “show blackie how to do it” by committing a series of murders and leaving clues meant to implicate the Black Panthers, that era’s subject of America’s ever-changing moral panic.

The starry-eyed plan was a failure on every level.

Before Manson “got on his “Helter Skelter” trip,” according to Paul Watkins, another follower, “it was all about fucking.”

Five former members of the Family, all senior citizens now, are still imprisoned, 50 years along: Leslie Van Houten, Patricia Krenwinkel, Charles Watson, Bobby Beausoleil and Bruce Davis.

Manson follower Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme was imprisoned for the attempted assassination of President Gerald Ford. Photo via YouTube

Many others have died, including Watkins and Susan Atkins.

Most renounced Manson long ago, although Lynette (Squeaky) Fromme, an early acolyte who served 34 years in prison for a 1975 assassination attempt on President Gerald Ford, self-published an autobiography last year that was largely dedicated to minimizing Manson’s culpability.

Atkins, who once seemed to enjoy her public profile as an illustrious sexpot murderess, had a personal reckoning before her death from brain cancer in 2009.

“In hindsight,” Atkins wrote in her memoir, “I’ve come to believe the most prominent character trait Charles Manson displays is that of a manipulator. Not a guru, not a metaphysic, not a philosopher, not an environmentalist, not a sociologist or social activist, and not even a murderer.

David Krajicek

“His long-term behavior is one predominantly of a practiced manipulator.”

She called him “a liar, a con artist, a physical abuser of women and children, a psychological and emotional abuser of human beings, a thief, a dope pusher, a kidnaper, a child stealer, a pimp, a rapist, and a child molester. I can attest to all of these things with my own eyes.

“And he was all of these things before he was a murderer.”

This essay is adapted from David J. Krajicek’s new book, Charles Manson: The Man Behind the Murders that Shook Hollywood (Arcturus).

The Man Who Murdered the Sixties syndicated from https://immigrationattorneyto.wordpress.com/

[sinceileftyoublog]

Jess Williamson Interview: Woman and her Symbols

Photo by Chantal Anderson

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Jess Williamson is able to look back with wisdom and gratefulness at the period of her life that inspired her new album Cosmic Wink. Moving from Texas to LA, not knowing whether the person you love is going with you, and an aging dog might not seem like traditional fodder for a record. Yet, Williamson was able to channel all of these anxieties into something truly spiritual.

It’s easy to get lost in the timelessness of the music--somewhere between high and lonesome country and expansive indie rock--but here’s the the record's  chronological context: Williamson was already planning to move to LA but was falling in love with her bandmate Shane Renfro (who also records as RF Shannon). She moved, he visited, and then he moved to LA. “We pretty quickly merged our lives,” Williamson told me in late June over the phone. The two (Renfro co-produced and co-wrote Cosmic Wink) made the record back in Texas. A month before that, Williamson’s beloved dog Frankie passed away. “I think she knew my life was about to change in some pretty drastic ways that meant I would be touring and traveling a lot more. I think she knew she wasn’t down with that,” Williamson said. “She picked the perfect time to leave. Before we made the record...she was able to be with her vet that knew her forever. She had a lovely service surrounded by the people she loved.”

Talking to Williamson, you get the sense she has these innate connections with both living things and herself. She’s at once intellectual and sort of mystic, referring to psychological theories in the same sentence as astrology. That interplay certainly finds its way into the songs on Cosmic Wink. Opener “I See The White” is a song about love and consciousness, while “Wild Rain”’s exemplary of her self-reflection. “You say there's two women / Living inside of me / And one's doubt and desire / And she's our enemy / Yet it's her wellness / That draws you in close,” she sings, exuding both a sense of grounded self-awareness and otherworldly warmth. It’s also worth noting that Williamson’s wish to establish connection even finds its way into interviews--she’s the first person to ever ask me in return what’s my favorite song on her new album.

Williamson is eager to return to Chicago after a successful show opening for Loma at Schubas back in May, which she called “the best show of the whole tour.” Tonight at Empty Bottle, she and her band will play all the songs from Cosmic Wink. Below, read the rest of our conversation, edited for length and clarity, in which she breaks down the album’s aesthetic, title, cover art, and more.

Since I Left You: Cosmic Wink is based on some pretty publicized distinct events--happy and sad. Was there anything specific you wanted to communicate about yourself through the record, or did you more make it to process what was going on in your life?

Jess Williamson: I was ready for a shift. My previous records are a lot more somber and sparse and more haunting and sad. I was ready to change that, to make music in a different way. My personality is not very somber and sad. That’s just where the music was coming from for a long time. I was ready to make a record that felt more me, to be able to relax and do it. I started touring a lot more, and I was touring solo, and playing all these sad songs--which of course, I love. Most of my favorite music is sad songs. But you’re asking a lot of your audience to be quiet and listen to the lyrics. I was opening up for bigger bands who were having a lot of fun playing loud, upbeat music. I realized I really wanted to do that. That’s a big reason the record sounds the way it does. Giving myself permission to have a little more fun.

SILY: Is that where the “cosmic” part of the album title comes from?

JW: A few months before I started writing the record, I read this book called Man And His Symbols. The first section is by Carl Jung, and the next is by other authors. But he edited it, and they’re all people he worked closely with. Essentially, the book is all about working with your unconscious and working with dreams. There’s this Jungian concept called synchronicity--looking for meaningful coincidences you really can’t explain. If you start to notice these things in your life, you realize they’re pointing to something larger you need to pay attention to or a path you needed to go down. I just kind of started learning about this stuff and getting super interested in this Jungian way of living. 

I'm also really into astrology. It was my birthday, and it was a new moon in Sagittarius, and I’m a Sagittarius, so I was like, “This is really special.” I was reading about it, and one of the readings I came across said to look for synchronicities during this new moon because they are cosmic winks from the universe letting you know you’re not alone. Right after that, I came out to LA, started this new romantic relationship, and was looking for signs all the time. My whole life turned upside-down, so I needed something to hold onto. Whether I was looking for answers or not, I found them. In a way, the record was a cosmic wink itself. I took some pretty big leaps of faith, and my life is for the better, because I’m able to make music the way I want to, having signed with Mexican Summer. I made the album before they were in the picture. It all is kind of looking up.

SILY: Did you get any new pets after your dog died?

JW: No, I’m not ready, because I’m still heartbroken over Frankie. I would feel like I was betraying her [laughs]. But we also have so much touring coming up. It wouldn’t be fair to a new puppy. Hopefully one day.

SILY: What’s the story behind the cover art for the album?

JW: The front cover is a photo of me in Malibu that Shane took. We were on a hike and going to my friend’s engagement party. We literally changed clothes in the car, and I put makeup on, but as we were driving we saw this insane sunset. I said, “Shane, we have to turn around. That’s amazing.” He just snapped this photo of me, and it turned out to be the perfect cover choice. I knew I wanted a photo overlooking the ocean at sunset. It made sense for this album. 

The back is this great design that Bailey Elder did--she’s one of the graphic design team members at Mexican Summer. I love it because different aspects of the art represent different aspects of the lyrics. I actually sent her a picture of Frankie, and she drew Frankie for the back of it. There’s a little slice of the sunset on the back, too, joining the front and back cover as if it’s a little portal. I can’t speak too much on it, because it’s really Bailey’s art, but that’s my take on it.

SILY: This might be a hard question, but do you have a favorite song on the record?

JW: That’s such a hard question. It changes. It used to be “Wild Rain”. I don’t know. I really don’t have a favorite. At one point it was “I See The White”.

SILY: Your stated influences on the record are a lot of canonical rock ‘n’ roll from the 60′s or even the 90′s. Did you want to make this record a bit more accessible?

JW: Absolutely. I wanted to make a record that felt classic and universal. To be honest, when I hear a song from Heart Song in certain contexts, I’m embarrassed. It’s a really intense, deeply personal, vulnerable record. That can be uncomfortable, even for me at times. But now, I’m like, “Yeah, let’s listen to Cosmic Wink!” It was an exercise in making an album that’s universal. Of course it’s about me, but it can be about anyone. The lyrics are more universal and open-ended on purpose.

SILY: What else is next for you?

JW: Today, I’m finishing some cover songs for Aquarium Drunkard. The rest of my year is touring, and in between tours, trying to write.

SILY: What songs are you covering?

JW: I’m doing “Unravel” by Bjork and “A Thousand Miles From Nowhere” by Dwight Yoakam.

SILY: Anything you’ve been listening to, watching, or reading that’s caught your attention?

JW: I’ve been listening to the new RF Shannon album called Trickster Blues. It’s amazing. I’ve been reading How To Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan. It just came out. The subtitle is What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence. I’m about halfway through. I just watched Won’t You Be My Neighbor. I cried. What was really interesting for me was that I’m also reading a Ram Dass book called Polishing The Mirror. It came out about 4 years ago--it’s a really succinct book about how to live your life well. The way Fred Rogers lived his life is essentially the exact same way Dass talks about how to live a good life. It's all the same. All the great teachings about how to live and be a good person on this earth. It doesn’t matter what religion or spiritual context you’re coming from. Fred Rogers was a minister. He was a Christian. And what better example of how to live in a Christ-like way. I’m not a Christian, but I do think that Jesus Christ is an enlightened being that was on this earth that was an example for how to live.

[texasborderbusiness]

Texas Border Business

University of Notre Dame, Indiana – It’s a bright morning in Hidalgo, Texas, a small town on the Rio Grande about 60 miles inland from the Gulf of Mexico. Like many border towns, there’s some history here. A defining feature of Hidalgo is the Old Pump House, built in 1909 right on the riverbank to bring water to thousands of acres of farmland in the Rio Grande Valley. In 1933, a massive hurricane flooded the area and caused the river to alter its course: The bank was now about a half mile away. A channel was built to fill the gap, until the facility aged out of usefulness in 1983.

Which is to say, things here have changed.

There’s another defining feature in this area: a jagged wall that separates the U.S. from Mexico. In Hidalgo, it’s about 100 yards from the pump house. It rises and falls with the topography, alternating between stretches of concrete barrier in some areas and high metal fence in others. Sister Norma Pimentel, M.J., is known to bring visitors here to pray and reflect. To her, it’s another reminder that things have changed.

“I grew up here, and we didn’t have walls,” Sister Norma remembers. “People from this side and that side, we were family. They allowed us to be in community with each other.”

Sister Norma is executive director of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, the charitable arm of the Catholic Diocese of Brownsville. The University of Notre Dame is honoring her with the 2018 Laetare Medal. Established at Notre Dame in 1883, the Laetare Medal was conceived as an American counterpart of the Golden Rose, a papal honor that antedates the 11th century. Past Laetare recipients include President John F. Kennedy, Catholic Worker founder Dorothy Day, novelist Walker Percy, former vice president Joe Biden and former speaker of the House John Boehner. It is considered the most prestigious honor given to an American Catholic.

The “American” part of that designation Sister Norma says occurred by “chiripa — sheer chance.” Her parents came from Mexico to the U.S. in the 1950s when her father sought to become an American citizen. He filled out an application and planned to return home to Mexico to await a response, but was told he must wait in the U.S. while his application was processed. He hadn’t planned on the extended stay with young children and a pregnant wife but found work bagging groceries and an apartment for rent. During the stay, his wife gave birth to Norma. The family stayed in South Texas, but with relatives on both sides of the border Sister Norma refers to her upbringing as “entre dos fronteras, enjoying life in two countries.”

There were fewer strangers in Sister Norma’s life then. This too has changed. One of her duties is oversight of the Catholic Charities of Rio Grande Valley’s Humanitarian Respite Center in McAllen, Texas, the largest city in Hidalgo County. It is here that scores of immigrants — approximately 100 every day, Sister Norma estimates — stop after crossing the border into the U.S. They arrive after processing by U.S. Customs and Border Protection with little more than the clothes on their backs and a notice to appear in immigration court. In many cases, they’ve turned themselves in to the border patrol as an initial step in seeking asylum in the U.S.

“They come totally destroyed,” Sister Norma says.

“They’ve come through so much. They’ve come from different countries in Central America, up through Mexico, most of the time walking and hiding from people who want to hurt them.”

The journey from Central America to the U.S. is an arduous and dangerous one. Often immigrants will pay thousands of dollars to guides for assistance in traveling north. This may require selling off many of their worldly possessions, including mortgaging their homes in which family they’re leaving behind may still be living. But the money rarely pays for protection. They are vulnerable to every kind of harm on the journey, especially women, who are prey for rapists and human traffickers. Other times kidnappers will take children hostage and demand ransom money from the family.

Yet for these people, the risks of staying in their countries outweigh the risks of making the journey. The vast majority of the immigrants traveling through the respite center are fleeing war, crime or crippling economic circumstances back home. So they leave, becoming strangers in a strange land on their way to a friend or family member already here.

One such case is Jose, who arrived at the respite center late one afternoon with his son, Gabriel. He was the subject of increasing harassment and threats by gangs in his native El Salvador. Jose was in the army and later worked for a city mayor. His position gave him access to things like firearms and uniforms, which the gangs coveted so they could impersonate military personnel. As he continued to refuse their demands, the threats escalated. Amazingly, despite his background of military and government service, he didn’t have adequate protection from the gangs.

“My boss told me — my direct supervisor, the mayor — that I should quit my job,” Jose says. “He thought that quitting was the only way to keep my distance from them. They had already marked me, how I worked … they didn’t stop bothering me. When I was in the army, they bothered me for two years. I was just there to do my job, earn my daily bread.”

When the gangs began to threaten Gabriel’s life, Jose finally decided to leave. He left behind a wife and a 2-year old in El Salvador and traveled 25 days before reaching McAllen.

Jose and his son, Gabriel.

Stories like Jose’s have been a part of Sister Norma’s experience ever since she entered religious life. In the 1970s, the border patrol would routinely contact the superior at her convent seeking shelter for an asylee family. They would stay with the community until arrangements could be made for them to travel to family in the U.S. “During those first years of my religious formation, I quickly learned the importance of living out our faith by how we welcome and protect those that need us, especially the vulnerable stranger in our midst,” she says.

While ad hoc care for refugee families was always part of living out vocation on the border, a more systemic response to the issue became acutely necessary in 2014. In spring and summer of that year, more than 130,000 refugees from Central America streamed across the border into the Rio Grande Valley. A significant number were unaccompanied children, sent by desperate parents with groups heading north to the U.S. in hopes they would be taken in by a relative. Customs and Border Protection was overrun, struggling to provide safe shelter for such a flood of people moving in such a short amount of time.

In response, Sister Norma turned the parish hall at Sacred Heart Church in McAllen into a makeshift refugee camp. The city donated portable restrooms and showers, cots and tents. When a city worker surveyed the scene one day he asked Sister Norma what she was doing. “I’m restoring human dignity,” she said. Her work earned her the recognition of Pope Francis in 2015 during a virtual town hall-style meeting ahead of his U.S. visit. He used Sister Norma’s example as the context for saying a broad thank-you:

Refugees entering the Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley building.

“I want to thank you,” the pope said to Sister Norma. “And through you to thank all the sisters of religious orders in the U.S. for the work that you have done and that you do in the United States. It’s great. I congratulate you. Be courageous. Move forward.”

Two years later, Sister Norma joined Pope Francis at a press conference at the Vatican to launch a campaign called “Share the Journey,” organized by Caritas Internationalis. The initiative aims to help immigrants who uproot and move to another country.

From the parish hall to its current location in two adjoined storefronts in downtown McAllen, the work of restoring human dignity at the respite center remains the same. The numbers haven’t again reached the crisis levels of 2014. There was a surge in the fall of 2016, just before the U.S. presidential election, then a dramatic drop-off. In recent months, the numbers of people leaving Central America for the United States have trended upward. For people who have spent weeks traveling, on constant alert to avoid the dangers of the journey, the respite center is often the first time in a long while they’ve felt welcomed and restored.

“The families walk in and they’re amazed,” Sister Norma says.

“Sometimes they have tears in their eyes because of the joy of being welcomed. The moment they walk through that door, and they enter this room with volunteers clapping and saying ‘Bienvenidos!’ you see in their faces, this transformation beginning.”

The afternoon of Jose’s visit, about a dozen children are with the group. A young mother breastfeeds her child then lays her down for a nap in the nearby crib. After some initial shyness, the other children make their way to a fenced-off indoor play area. “All the worries about the trip stay on the other side of the fence,” Sister Norma says. “Here they can be a kid again.”

Guests rarely stay more than several hours — just enough time to get a hot bowl of soup, a shower, some new clothes and a bag filled with essentials for the rest of the journey. The center’s volunteer staff helps them contact the family member they’re on the way to see and arrange for that relative to purchase the bus tickets for the trip. Before they leave they’re handed a large manila envelope with a printout glued to it that reads, “Please help me. I do not speak English. What bus do I need to take? Thank you for your help!”

The center’s volunteer staff offers clothes and other items to refugees, and helps them contact the family member they’re on the way to see.

And each day, every day, the process repeats. Sister Norma gets a text from the border patrol, indicating how many people they’re dropping off at the bus station to be picked up by Catholic Charities, and at what time. The vans pick them up. They shuffle in. They rest. Then they’re on their way. Days with a lot of visitors are challenging, but Sister Norma doesn’t count hours. “I don’t look at this as work,” she says. “It’s my life.”

Sister Norma recognizes the work does not enjoy universal approval, especially in the current political climate. She traces this partly to the profound effect 9/11 has had here. In the aftermath of the attacks, resources began pouring to the southern U.S. border to beef up security. The wall in Hidalgo was one that was built soon after. And as physical walls went up, emotional and spiritual barriers were erected as well. The attacks caused a sizable portion of the American population to develop (or reinforce) a heightened distrust of the stranger entering the country. While there are real risks to be addressed on the border, Sister Norma believes an outsized emphasis on security can come at the cost of the merciful response children of God are called employ.

And if the physical barriers are a new reality, Sister Norma suggests the spiritual walls don’t have to be.

“They haven’t had a chance to get close,” Sister Norma says of those who oppose her work. “To see that face of that mother, of that child, and when you see that there’s a special connection that happens and you know as a human being you feel the need to reach out and help.”

Courtesy of the University of Notre Dame

2018 Laetare Medalist Sister Norma Pimentel, M.J. Texas Border Business University of Notre Dame, Indiana – It’s a bright morning in Hidalgo, Texas, a small town on the Rio Grande about 60 miles inland from the Gulf of Mexico.

[santiagostyle]

I didnt even notice u reblogged it too 1-116 payback tiiiiiiime

oh boy here we go

1: Let’s start with a tricky one; what is the real reason you are confused right now?

tbh bc i just remembered i have to read a play for uni by tomorrow and i’m confused about why i never do my homework

2: Do you ever get “good morning” texts from anyone?

lol no

3: If your significant other smoked pot, would you care?

like,,,, only if it was having adverse effects on either of us but if it was a once in a while thing i don’t think i’d have an issue with it 

4: Do you find it easy to trust others?

??? yes and no like it depends on the person

5: What were you doing at 11PM last night?

probably reading fanfic tbh

6: You’re drunk and lost walking down the road; who is with you?

my best friends from uni lets be real they’re the only people with whom i would be drunk and lost in the same night

7: What would you do if you found out you had been cheated on?

that would require an s/o but i would dump them

8: Are you close with your dad?

eehhhhhh depends on the day

9: I bet you kissed someone last night, right?

lol good joke

10: What are you listening to?

Mowgli’s Road by Marina and the Diamonds

11: You can only drink ONE liquid for the rest of your life - what is it?

i mean look logically? water

12: Do you like hickeys?

..... sometimes

13: What time do you go to bed?

usually between 11 and 11:30pm

14: Is there someone who continuously lets you down?

there are several people who continuously let me down

15: Can you text as quickly with one hand as you do both?

nope

16: Do you always answer your texts?

i try my best to

17: Do you hate the person you fell the hardest for?

nah

18: When was the last time you talked to one of your best friends?

in person like 6 hours ago, online like 20 mins ago

19: Is there someone that makes you happy every time you see them?

yeeees

20: What was your last thought before you went to bed last night?

“oh shit i haven’t done the reading... oh well”

21: Is anyone else in the room with you?

my mum is in the room like adjacent to me i guess that kinda counts bc they’re sorta connected

22: Do you believe what goes around comes around?

mmmmm i like to think i believe it but i’ve found that it’s not always true

23: Were you happier four months ago than you are now?

definitely not

24: Is there someone you wish you could fix things with?

mm yeah

25: In the past week, have you cried?

yes

26: What colour is the shirt you are wearing?

grey

27: Do people ever call you by your last name?

only my best friend from uni on some rare occasions 

28: Is anyone ignoring you right now?

i mean,,,, i wouldn’t really know would i 

29: Do you have a best friend?

i have several

30: Would it be hard seeing someone else kiss the last person you kissed?

nah i’m over him now

31: Who was your last call/text message from?

lmao my dad i sent him a list of groceries

32: Are you mad at anyone?

i mean,,, yes kinda like not for something specific it’s just a general annoyance directed at a few people

33: Have you ever kissed someone older than you?

yes

34: How old will the last person you kissed be on his/her next birthday?

21

35: How many more days until your birthday?

266

36: Do you have any summer plans yet?

boi i barely have plans for friday night

37: Do you have any good friends of the opposite sex?

i sure do

38: Are you keeping anything from your best friend(s) now?

mmmm i’m low key salty with one of my best friends but not gonna tell her

39: Do you have a secret that you’ve never told anyone?

nah at least 1 person knows all my secrets

40: Have you ever regretted kissing someone?

lmao yes

41: Do you think age matters in relationships?

only if it’s ?? illegal or an abuse of power

42: Are you available?

i mean??? i think so yes????

43: How many people have you had real, strong feelings for since high school ended?

i had ‘feelings’ for someone but idk if u would call them real or strong,,, and i guess i kinda like someone rn if that counts

44: If you had to get a piercing (not ears), what would you get?

probs my belly button

45: Do you believe exes can be friends?

mmm depends on the situation

46: Do you regret anything?

nah i try not to

47: Honestly, what’s on your mind right now?

the fact that i haven’t done the reading for uni tomorrow

48: Did you ever lose a best friend?

yep

49: Was your last kiss a mistake?

nah

50: Why aren’t you pursuing the person you like?

i mean,,,, i’m going on a date on friday does that ?? count ??

51: Has the last person you kissed ever seen you cry?

not cry but i was close one time like way way waaaaay before we kissed

52: Do you still talk with the person you LAST kissed?

not unless i see him in person

53: What was the last thing you ate?

pasta!!!!!

54: Did you get any compliments today?

well my modernism lecturer told me i had some great ideas about virginia woolf 

55: Where are you going on your next vacation?

this is an excellent question and i do not have an answer

56: Do you own anything from other countries?

yessss, all the stuff i bought in the US, and my best friend just got back from Serbia so i have stuff from there too but I also have presents from China, Spain, Mexico etc etc idk my extended family travels a lot

57: Are most of your friend guys or girls?

girls

58: Where have you lived most of your life?

Sydney, Australia

59: When was the last time you took a long drive?

Like,, yesterday I was in the car for almost 5 hours

60: Have you ever played Spin the Bottle?

lmao yes at year 10 camp with half of my grade

61: Have you ever TPd someone’s house?

nope

62: Who do you text the most?

i generally use like Facebook messenger more often than text but either way the answer is my best friend from uni

63: What was the last movie you saw?

Metropolis 

64: What’s preventing your current boyfriend/girlfriend from going back to their ex?

I do not have an s/o

65: How many boyfriends/girlfriends did you have in 2011?

LMAO ACTUALLY THAT’S THE ONLY YEAR I’VE EVER “DATED” ANYONE SO ONE (1)

66: Is the last person you kissed younger than you?

nah

67: Do you curse around your parents?

never ever around my dad, sometimes around my mum depending on the situation

68: Are you happy with where you live?

mmm yeah pretty much

69: Picture of yourself?

that’s so,,, much effort and nobody is gonna read these so

70: Are you a monogamous person or do you believe in open-ended relationships?

yay monogamy 

71: Have you ever been dumped?

yes

72: What do you most like about making out?

this feels inappropriate to answer on a public forum but god idk ???? it’s just all around nice

73: Have you ever casually made out with someone who you weren’t seriously involved with?

hahahah yes oops

74: When you kiss someone for the first time, is it usually you who initiates it or the other?

always the other person boi i’m nervous af

75: What part of a person’s body do you find most attractive?

??? their face i guess

76: Who was the last person you talked to last night before you went to bed?

one of my best pals from uni

77: Had sex with someone you knew less than an hour?

.... not applicable 

78: Had sex with someone you didn’t know their name?

also not applicable 

79: What makes your heart flutter and brings a big cheesy smile to your face?

god okay um cute boys cute girls and cute dogs

80: Would you get involved with someone if they had a child already?

I mean,,, given that I’m pretty young probably not but I wouldn’t hold it against them if that makes sense. Like I wouldn’t NOT get involved with someone just bc they had a kid

81: Has someone who had a crush on you ever confessed to you?

haha god yes it was,,,, unpleasant

82: Do you tell a lot of people when you have a crush?

??? i haven’t had a crush in a long time but I used to always tell my two best friends from high school

83: Do you miss your last sweetie?

nope

84: Last time you slow danced with someone?

???? never

85: Have you ever ‘dated’ someone you’ve never met?

hahah no

86: How can I win your heart?

be a) jake peralta or b) amy santiago

87: What is your astrological sign?

gemini

88: What were you doing last night at 12 AM?

fam i was sleeping

89: Do you cook?

I can make tacos that’s about it

90: Have you ever gotten back in touch with an old flame after a time of more than 3 months of no communication?

well like i kinda had to bc we went to school together but we defs had a period of Not Speaking and then became friends again later kinda

91: If you’re single right now, do you wish you were in a relationship?

mmmm kinda sorta

92: Do you prefer to date various people or do you pretty much fall into monogamous relationships quickly?

i prefer monogamy but i don’t really have experience with either

93: What physical traits do you look for in a potential interest?

idk i don’t really have A Type in terms of physical features i just like boys who make me laugh ugh

94: Name four things that you wish you had!

1. a guaranteed job in the arts industry 2. the capacity to ensure world peace 3. less anxiety 4. like,,,, money bro i’m broke rn

95: Are you a player?

no

96: Have you ever kissed 2 people in one day?

like if kissing my friends counts then yes

97: Are you a tease?

i don’t think so????

98: Ever meet anyone you met on Tumblr?

not yet but i have met someone i met on twitter

99: Have you ever been deeply in love with someone?

no

100: Anybody on Tumblr that you’d go on a date with?

i mean??? idk ????

101: Hugs or Kisses?

both idc this question sucks

102: Are you too shy to ask someone out?

god YES but i think,,, i kind of accidentally may have done it anyway

103: The first thing you notice about the opposite sex?

their face??

104: Is it cute when a boy/girl calls you babe?

YES just depends on the context bc i’ve had a lot of people use it passive aggressively 

105: If a sexy person was pursuing you, but you knew he/she was in relationship, would you go for it?

nope

106: Do you flirt a lot?

i think unintentionally yes

107: Your last kiss?

???? what about it ???? it was like almost 2 years ago so like does it even count 

108: Have you kissed more than 5 people since the start of 2012?

boi i haven’t kissed more than 5 people period

109: Have you kissed anyone in the past month?

no

110: If you could kiss anyone who would it be?

tbh? amy santiago

111: Do you know who you’ll kiss next?

i mean i have a pretty,,, good idea 

112: Does someone like you currently?

god i hope so or else this date is gonna be awkward

113: Do you currently have feelings for anyone?

see above

114: Do you like to be in serious relationships or just flings?

look i don’t have experience with either but i think probably relationships 

115: Ever made out with just a friend?

umm ??? i mean maybe like we were friends at the time but i was kinda Into Him idk i don’t have an answer for u

116: Are you happier single or in a relationship?

look tbh i’m,, kinda happy either way as long as i have my friends

[cathshaylergdc-blog]

THINK - Week 1

Over the course of this week I have been trying to get ideas together for the YCN brief. My main goal was to fully analyse my audience and consider how I should approach the brief in their context. After an initial talk with our tutor, we decided as a group that we were going to go against the initial THINK strategies: dark, bloody adverts with victims flying over bars at 60mph and children narrating that their daddy killed someone. 

I started thinking about the social stigmas surrounding drink driving. Since the first public campaign against it back in the 60s, the number of accidents caused by drunk drivers has dropped by over a half. These campaigns made drink driving socially unacceptable amongst older generations - I wanted to test out if there was a similar viewpoint in the 17 - 24 age category. 

I sent out a group message to a ranged group of my 17-24 male friends asking them if they would allow me to use their profile photographs to create two fake tinder accounts. One for a safe driving persona, and one for a drink driving persona. Luckily I had a successful response with most of my friends agreeing to the experiment. 

I experienced a minor hiccup after realising that in order to make separate tinder accounts for my friends, I would need 7 different phones. So to start off, I just made one. My friend Paul became Pablo. (Picassoh)

Fake Facebook account was needed in order to create a fake tinder profile.

Initial tinder profile. Pretty unrealistic as nobody would actually ever put this in their bio. 

The safe driving account received 20 matches in 24 hours, and even a message of approval from one match...

I then changed the tinder profile, keeping every aspect the same apart from changing the I don't drink and drive statement to ‘I drive drunk’

Giving the account another 24 hours drunk driving Pablo came back with 11 matches, nearly half of what he had received the previous night.

This proved successful as a first experiment on the idea of drink driving as a socially unacceptable thing. The response was good from my friends who wanted to take part, so I think I will further it making a couple more tinder accounts over longer time periods so I have more substantial research at the end of the project.

Along the same theme of social unacceptability, I have ordered some stickers with he statement ‘I DRIVE DRUNK’ printed on them.

(Like that... but circular)

I plan to hand these out to members of the public next week as a social experiment - to see wether or not they would wear them. Hopefully they won’t, and i can continue a concept along the lines of ‘If you're embarrassed to broadcast it then why do it’.

Strapline idea: Drink drive? Social suicide.

The sticker idea lead onto a possible advert concept, where upon entry to a club a boy is stamped with an ‘i drive drunk stamp’ the music goes off and all the chatter stops - a clear awkward vibe overcomes the whole scene.

When presenting my ideas to the group it was clear that the concept of being revealed as a drunk driver to be something humiliating or embarrassing worked.   I’m now thinking of taking this concept down a photographic route focusing on one male character. Perhaps named Dave. Dave Drivesdrunk. There will be a serious of portrait shots where dave is put in humiliating settings, however the humiliation is caused by the exposure of his drink driving.

Potential ideas:

Beer bottle with a label and arrow pointing upwards saying ‘drives drunk’ Club entry stamps Simple face on portrait of Dave covered in ‘I drive drunk’ stickers Perhaps an instagram account @davedrivesdrunk clearly friendless with personal style shots and selfieswith 0 likes Standard nightmare of turning up naked to school - but instead of being naked... He is covered with i drive drunk stickers and stamps.

Week 2 

This week my stickers arrived and I took to the streets of Hull to try and get people to wear (or preferably not wear) them. Overall this experiment turned out to be kind of a waste of time, as I didn’t really know wether or not people had worn the stickers or not. I linked to an instagram account on the back of the sticker - but nobody seemed to respond. 

Despite this I carried on with the sticker idea - testing out what it would look like if one was completely covered in the stickers. An ‘inescapable label’ (lol) 

I felt the outcome of this experiment looked quite daunting and almost ‘surreal’. So decided to take this route further. Firstly, I redesigned my stickers to make them a bit more impactful.

I used red to give more connotation of danger, and the british transport font to help the stickers resonate more with driving. 

I then ordered a load of condoms with my design printed on them. Still to this day unsure why I did this? 

My Actor 

After posting around on some casting websites with no real luck, my friend recommended that I get in contact with one of her actor friends. Luckily he turned out to be perfect for the part, with a sort of ‘mainstream lad’ish look. But also quite a dark look about him.

Lewis Lilley - Showreel 

The Shoot

The shoot day was a lot of fun. There were a couple of problems; one being not having an access to a dolly (despite being told there would be one in the studio). Another being how abnormally tall my actor turned out to be - appearing taller than the backdrop in the shot, This meant we had to shoot him whilst kneeling on the floor. This didn’t really turn out to be such a bad thing in the end. It actually helped to make him look more vulnerable. 

I also did some images featuring the condoms I got printed and a beer bottle marked ‘drives drunk’. However, these turned out a bit rubbish and don't really fit with the rest of my campaign -  so I don’t think I’ll use them. 

Bad Crit 

After my crit I was told that my video outcome (linked below) worked quite well. However my print campaign did not. I was told that my posters looked like ‘A good album cover’ rather than an anti drink driving campaign (a compliment and an insult). Another comment was that my initial tinder research was strong, however it didn't seem to fit in with my campaign. 

So to fix this i tried to incorporate the idea of social media and rejection into my campaign. The slowed down song ‘Getting to know you’ seemed to work quite well in my initial video to create a dark and eerie feel, so I continued this in the social media side. I made 2 videos using aftereffects picturing Dave Drivesdrunk in situations of rejection on social media - being swiped left on tinder and being a rejected friend request on Facebook. 

Final Outcomes and YCN PDF

PASSWORD FOR ALL: DAVEDRIVESDRUNK