#converted fringe tower?

[thistoowillpasss]

[jomiddlemarch]

With you nothing is simple yet nothing is simpler 

Rose stood before her, drooping, her braids coming undone, shoes scuffed, a new rip in her overalls, giving Hermione a look of absolute incredulity when faced with the undeniable truth:

Hermione had forgotten to pack snacks. 

She didn’t even have a bloody Polo mint somewhere in the recesses of her beaded bag, Transfigured to look like an ordinary mum’s ordinary leather handbag, designed to carry her through her day at the Ministry and any trips she might make to Muggle London. 

Forget about something healthy. 

She had planned to rely on the water fountain, that wasn’t another complete miss on her part.

She opened her mouth to begin the explanation-slash-apology that would not satisfy either one of them. Rose already had that furrow in her little brow that meant she planned to invoke Nan, which only ever meant Molly, and how important Nan said it was for growing human beans to have good homegrown food and not that muck Mum bought from Tesco’s.

“I have plenty, if she’s hungry. The fruit’s already cut, it won’t keep, and these pesto egg muffin bite things he said he liked yesterday, so of course I’ve gone and made far too many.”

That was Draco Malfoy, sitting on the bench just next to hers, a rucksack and some sort of sport-inspired hamper beside him, unable to resist rubbing it in, that he was a better prepared and more attentive parent than she was, the he his neatly and comfortably dressed five year old son Scorpius, who somehow made the jersey and shorts he wore look like the ideal outfit for a Wizarding child. His fringe was the proper length and not slicked back with some imported pomade like Draco’s had been for the first three years at Hogwarts, and he was busy constructing something tower-like from the stones, twigs and other assorted detritus he’d scoured the park for while Rose ran around, screaming like a banshee and climbing halfway up a tree before scuttling down again before Hermione had to call out to tell her too high, Rose!

Hermione turned her head to convert her explanation-slash-apology into a far more gratifying coldly cutting retort that she had to trust to inspiration to supply, since she had nothing approaching the moral high ground, when she actually looked at Draco’s face, which was tilted in an encouraging and frankly kind manner, and consider the tone of his voice, which had been commiserating and not the least judgmental. Hermione was quite familiar with the myriad shades of judgment and Draco’s voice hadn’t held even one.

He was also incredibly fit.

(That wasn’t really relevant to her decision-making, but it was note-worthy as a general fact.)

“Rose, Mr. Malfoy has some fruit if you want a snack. And something else tasty and homemade, just like Nan would have given you for tea,” Hermione said. Rose sized up Draco in an instant, pivoted to rifle through the sporty hamper, retrieved a little baggie of apple slices and another of the unexpectedly attractive pesto egg bites that reminded Hermione she’d also forgotten lunch and a stale ginger biscuit at her desk was going to have to hold her until after Rose was asleep.

Again.

“Ta,” Rose said, about to fly. It was impossible that she wouldn’t be Quidditch-mad. 

“Rose,” Hermione said. 

“Thank you, Mr. M’Foy,” Rose said. It was anyone’s guess if she would have gotten Malfoy correct without her mouth half stuffed with Braeburn. 

“You’re quite welcome,” Draco said.

Hermione nodded and Rose scrambled away, as fast as her hand-me-down trainers could take her.

“Thank you. I appreciate it. Her wild magic on an empty stomach is terrifying,” Hermione said. Was she bragging about Rose’s magic, when she’d heard rumors Scorpius Malfoy might be a Squib? Probably and she wasn’t proud of it, but that wasn’t unfamiliar either.

“I find them terrifying full-stop,” Draco said. “Adorable, would lay down my life for him in a heartbeat, makes me question every decision my own parents ever made on my behalf, but terrifying nonetheless.”

Hermione laughed. It was the first time she could remember laughing at something Draco said without there being any seething vitriol or tearful desperation she’d had to tamp down or put aside. It felt…nice.

“I have a bit more sympathy for my parents,” she offered. “My wild magic started when I was a toddler and they had no idea what to make of it. No context at all. My mother told me, during out sixth year, that she’d thought she was losing her mind. I was well on my way to inventing Leviosa before I got a hold of the first year spellbooks.”

“Yes, I can see how that might be where one would go. Madness, that is,” he said. There was a frankly companionable silence between the two of them and then he spoke again. “Sometimes, I can’t help regretting it.”

“Regretting what?”

“I love him, with all that I am, my heart and soul and magic. And I can’t help regretting sometimes I agreed to it, having him when I, when we did,” he said. He turned away slightly, so that she saw him in profile, a face like a god’s on a coin, the straight nose, the full lower lip, his jaw held tightly. 

“Why are you telling me?” she asked.

“For one, I don’t think you can think any worse of me than you already do, so that makes you perfect for such a shameful admission,” he said, shrugging. “Secondly, you let your daughter eat the snacks I made. Not that I’m trying to make you feel like you owe me something, that I’ve caught you out. You trusted me with your child, that’s what I meant.”

“I think you underestimate how I think of you,” she said slowly.

“Is that better or worse? Do you mean you think well of me and now I’ve dropped in your estimation? Or did I somehow go from sniveling worm beneath your heel to abysmal slime-mold you wouldn’t use your wand to scrape off with magic from said heel?”

He sounded resigned, amused, self-deprecating. His voice was low, a rich baritone, only a little of that drawl he’d had at Hogwarts left. The perfect amount. 

“I wear flats unless I’m in court,” she said. “I don’t hold the past against you anymore, we were children, child-soldiers, pawns moved around by people who should have known better. Played a better game of Wizarding chess, given that it was our lives they used. I regret it, myself, having her so young, though I don’t let myself think it if I can help it. I can’t, if I want to keep being a decent mother.”

“You are clearly an exceptionally fine mother. Why did you do it? You’re Hermione Granger, you don’t make decisions you regret,” he said.

Now she laughed, a bitter sound, that kept the tears in her eyes from spilling. 

“Don’t believe everything you hear. Or read,” she said. “I lost my parents in the war. They were both only children, my grandparents were gone a long time ago. Rose was my one chance to have a family, someone who belonged to me.”

“I’m terribly sorry. I hadn’t heard they’d died,” he said.

“They’re alive. Just…lost. Turns out, if you do a thorough enough Obliviation, there’s no return. The person they were before is effectively dead. They’re just not sad about it. That’s for other people,” Hermione said.

“Astoria told me it was her dying wish to have a child, even though it would kill her,” Draco said.

“That’s why you agreed?”

“No. I refused when she said that. She used blood magic, from the binding. Once that was done, it was either lose them both or just her,” he said. “She didn’t know that for sure, there was plausible deniability and we’d said someday. She made someday happen sooner than I thought possible.”

“You loved her,” Hermione offered. She’d never met Astoria, who’d been a few years behind them at Hogwarts and in Ravenclaw, had only a dim memory of the photo that had been in the Prophet when the marriage was announced, a slim, dark-haired young woman wearing a lot of lace standing next to Draco, who’d been all in black. Wizards wore all sorts of things to funerals. Only Hermione saw him in mourning at his wedding.

“In a way. I hated her too. I didn’t want to be either of my parents and I didn’t know how to be anything else,” he said. “My parents were overjoyed, a Malfoy heir, no miscarriages, no stillbirths. A healthy Pureblood baby. That’s quite rare, all the inbreeding, you understand. They think Astoria was a paragon of virtue and also, they didn’t give a damn about her.”

Scorpius ran over and stretched out a hand to show Draco a stone. It was an unremarkable piece of quartz, though it did catch the light.

“What a find, love. You can bring it home if you like or leave it here. You could even hide it, like goblin treasure,” Draco said, studying the stone, reaching out to straighten the collar of Scorpius’s jersey. He touched Scorpius’s cheek fondly, but he didn’t try to wipe the smear of dirt there, nor did he say anything about his son’s grubby hands. Hermione recalled what a pristine child he’d been, all silver and green, how he’d stand between his parents, very still, as if a portrait were being painted. 

“Hide it—” Scorpius said and darted back over to the field, just at the edge where a copse of trees stood, shadows beckoning. The whole playground was heavily warded and there were monitoring spells St. Mungo used for observation. It was safe enough to let him run away.

“That’s what I thought,” Draco said, shooting her that familiar parental glance, proud and powerless. 

“Ron begged me not to end the pregnancy. It wasn’t planned. The Healers said the curse damage I suffered from Bellatrix was unpredictable, the interactions with contraceptive charms and potions would have made them less effective. It wasn’t my fault, except I never told them I hadn’t bothered with any spells or potions, so it was, in a way. I didn’t care and then I did. I told Ron I was pregnant and he told me he was gay and in love with Theo and it would break his mother’s heart if he never gave her a grandchild. My parents were gone. Harry and Ginny were expecting, Andromeda was raising Teddy, Bill and Fleur just had Victoire. It was easier to say yes. It made so many people happy and Ron did what he said he would,” Hermione said. Andromeda knew most of it, but Hermione had never told anyone all of it, certainly not in one sitting, not sitting on a park bench in the weak English sunshine, without a Polo mint to her name. Augusta Longbottom had said Hermione should do as she liked but it was rare to see such a strong magical signature in the first trimester, though likely it would happen again, for a witch of her abilities. Likely hadn’t seemed like a good enough bet, not when Ron’s blue eyes had pled with her and he’d held her hands in his instead of touching her completely flat stomach. 

“What he said he would?” Draco repeated. He sounded encouraging, not nosy. Not prepared to made a rude remark about Ron or the Weasley family as a whole. It felt…good.

“Molly wanted me to name her Frederica. Winifred. Or Elfreda. It was ghastly. Even I knew Fred would have loathed it. Ron put his foot down and told her we weren’t doing that to a baby and that I had final say on her name. Then he came out to them, Molly and Arthur, so the name part receded as something anyone cared that much about,” Hermione said. “I don’t have to tell you how Purebloods feel about that, however warm and Muggle-forward they seem to be.”

“Bloody hell,” Draco said.

“There was a lot of screaming. Arthur finally told Molly to be grateful she had a son alive to tell her what made him happy and she piped down,” Hermione said. “She started knitting a jersey for Theo as soon as Ron let it slip they were involved. It was a little forced, but I think the knitting settled her down, let her feel like she was back in charge of the family. Molly had a great need for that.”

“Ah, the famous Weasley jersey,” Draco said.

“Infamous is more like it,” she replied. “Fleur won’t wear hers at all. But she’s married to Bill, so she can get away with it.”

“I gather you don’t have the same option,” he said.

“Molly watches Rose when Ron and Theo and I are all working or busy, always sends home dinner, invites me to Sunday lunch even when Ron and Theo have Rose. She’s Rose’s only grandmother. She means well,” Hermione shrugged. “Fleur wears cashmere and Molly sniffs. I Transfigured mine into a cardigan. Molly didn’t mind that, as long as the H is all on one side. I hid the pockets I added.”

“It’s hard, isn’t it?” he said, squinting a little against the light, the sun lower in the sky. Rose had approached Scorpius and now they were working on something with less height but a larger area. Hermione suspected St. Mungo’s had tracking spells to evaluate wild magic. At Rose’s last Healer’s visit, Hermione had been advised to stock up on Easiheal and beginning Arithmancy books, as if she and Ron hadn’t already done so (plus the Wizarding chess set Theo had brought out to let Rose watch them play.)

“It beats the alternative,” Hermione said. He shifted, faced her full on. They both looked older than they were, Draco with shadows under his grey eyes that spoke of broken sleep, Hermione with a streak of white in her hair like a ribbon, neither of them partial to glamours. He’d grown a fair amount after Hogwarts, his shoulders broader, his lanky frame filled out, and he dressed the part of an older man, much as Hermione had her mum’s uniform on. For a moment, she only saw the boy he’d been, too clever by half, preening, insecure, nervous he’d be caught caring. He’d taken the Dark Mark or rather, it had been forced on him, hidden by the sleeve he had securely fastened with monogrammed cufflinks. He could be the Dark Lord’s deputy, she could be dead in a ditch, both their first wands broken.

“I don’t think that’s as true as people say,” he replied. “We could have been given a chance to grow up. To put ourselves first, not the survival of the Wizarding world or the Noble House of Black. We could have found ourselves here in another ten years or twenty, with children we had chosen to have. Had wanted to bring into existence from dreams. We wouldn’t have to be alone, here, and at home, sitting by ourselves with a drink after we put them to bed, wondering what happened—”

“It’s hard,” she said, to stop him, because he was so right it hurt. She drank tea at night, even though it kept her up, because drinking wine or whiskey alone was worse. Ron and Theo encouraged her to go out when they kept Rose, but she didn’t. She didn’t want to explain who she was and she couldn’t bear it they already knew. She drank oolong, Darjeeling, PG Tips, always black, and she never read the leaves.

“What if it were easier?” he asked.

“Easier?”

“What if you told me what happened and I told you, after we put them to bed. What happened that day, not just what Rose did and what Scorpius said, but how you dealt with that stroppy minister from Croatia and how I heard back from Damaris, in Alexandria, about that manuscript revision, and what we could bring to the potluck Neville’s insisting on hosting instead of getting a proper caterer,” he said. “Samosas, for the record. Though I can manage vol-au-vents in a pinch, if you wanted to be Muggle retro about it.”

“That’s a lot happening,” she said. It was a leap, an enormous, across-a-chasm leap, he was describing and also just words, a possibility she could dismiss with a shake of her head, a slight frown, some politeness he’d accept instantly. His eyes, though, were hopeful, watching her.

“Scorpius will probably interrupt. He usually wants a glass of water exactly when I’m at a good part,” Draco said.

“Rose talks in her sleep. In French. It’s quite distracting,” Hermione said. When had she ever backed away from something daunting? Granted, she usually did some research first. Draco knew what a vol-au-vent was; she clearly wasn’t the only one who prepared. “It’s better than mine. She talks to Fleur and Gabrielle a lot.”

“I’m fluent,” he said. “In French and wheedling.”

“I’m good at pouring a glass of water wandless. I make the water take the shape of a dolphin going into the glass but I can do a Hippocampus too,” Hermione said.

“Are you hungry? I have apple slices and pesto egg muffin bites going begging,” he said, smiling. He had a sweet smile and a gleam in his eyes that was positively, gratifyingly filthy. She blushed, dropped her gaze from his.

“You’re a very pretty mummy, Hermione,” he said softly. “But it can be whatever you want, however you want. It can be maybe later, after you look at your calendar. Half-past never. Whatever’s easier—”

“I didn’t bring any snacks to the park and I have nothing planned for dinner unless we get Indian takeaway again. For the third time this week,” she said in a rush. “It would be easier to have someone else take care of dinner. I’m not picky, Rose isn’t either.”

“Bolognese or carbonara?” Draco asked. “Scorpius Hyperion Malfoy is made 98.2% from pasta. Don’t be deceived by the organic apple slices and pesto egg affectations.”

“Carbonara’s faster,” Hermione said. 

“But what do you want?” Draco hit the you and want with a perfect balance of emphasis. It made her remember she was only twenty-four years old. Hermione, not only Madam Granger and Mummy and ‘Mione.

“Bolognese,” she said. She reached over, touched his hand where it rested beside his leg. He couldn’t mistake her intention. “Everyone calls her Rose, but I named her Roseline, from Shakespeare. Roseline’s the one Romeo liked first. She goes away. Lives her own life off-stage.”

“I had to pick a constellation. I wouldn’t do it again,” he said.

Ten years later, after a long day and a longer night, he arrived, only a little later than they’d planned and just as they’d hoped. They named him Hugo.

[dalydily]

Radahn and Miquella - Part 2: Battlemages, and the Haligtree

One of the many Miquella's Lilies in Liurnia are located right next to the Converted Fringe Tower. At first I passed over this spot thinking there was nothing here, until I looked at the map and saw that 2 interesting spells are found here, Haima Cannon and Haima Gavel.

Judging from the numerous Lilies throughout Liurnia, Miquella probably came into contact with the Haima followers at the Academy, or through the Carian family, or even just exploring the land. The Battlemages may have found themselves ideologically aligned with the demigod or Miquella might have told them of his plans for the Haligtree.

Both spells mention "Might as a means to quell conflict" and the Haima scholars are known to range out into the world instead of retreating to the Academy during conflict. Despite nominally being aligned with the traitorous Academy there are more in the rest of the world than not. In fact there are 2 in the Haligtree just before Loretta that sometimes give players trouble.

Even before the DLC released, them seeking peace through violence would be an obvious reason for them coming to the Haligtree. Even Malenia's title is Miquella's Blade so at least they both admit some amount of violence is involved in their goals.

And Post-DLC with Promised Consort Radahn makes their involvment even more obvious. They're on some level loyal to Caria and the new lord of the Haligtree is of the Carian royal family. And Radahn is certainly no stranger to violence l.

Something to note about Battlemages and their fellow sorcerers is that most have a pendant on their armor. Said pendant is blank though, except for the Battlemages. Theirs have a star design similar to star designs seen on Carian equipment and the Miquellan Knight's Sword (this one will require its own very lengthy post, its own description actually downplays how Carian it is).

I think there are multiple factors why the Battlemages might flock to the Haligtree; not just that Loretta is here, but that Miquella likely contacted them at the Academy and the Converted Fring Tower, and the copious Carian influences across the Haligtree (more on that across other posts).

[recusantchicky]

One of the glintstone crowns bestowed upon Raya Lucaria scholars whose pursuits were deemed worthy. Increases intelligence to the detriment of stamina. The Karolos Conspectus is the oldest of the academy's lineages of study, begat by the sorcerer Azur. Scholars who follow in his footsteps pursue the mysteries of comets.

and lets remind:

Comet Azur: When Azur glimpsed into the primeval current, he saw darkness. He was left both bewitched and fearful of the abyss.

Azur's Glintstone Staff: Staff of the primeval glintstone sorcerer Azur. Only those who have glimpsed what lies beyond the wisdom of stone may wield it.

Founding Rain of Stars:

The eldest primeval sorcery, said to have been discovered by an ancient astrologer. A sorcery of legendary status.

Summons a dark cloud of stars overhead. Shortly after, the cloud will release a violent deluge of star rain. This sorcery can be cast while in motion. Charging increases potency.

Thought to be the founding glintstone sorcery. The glimpse of the primeval current that the astrologer saw became real, and the stars' amber rained down on this land.

Stars of Ruin:

Legendary sorcery devised by Lusat, primeval sorcerers.

Fires twelve dark shooting stars that pursue the target. This sorcery can be cast while in motion. Charging increases potency.

When Lusat glimpsed into the primeval current, he beheld the final moments of a great star cluster, and upon seeing it, he too was broken.

the helmet is required for the Converted and Converted Fringe towers + the Erudition gesture in front of the--Marika statue huh?

i was just annoyed by the puzzle when i did it but why tying azur studies, the oldest lineage of study, to marika? whomst also foresaw the end in a rain of fire and the death of stars? whomst lost her culture to it in the beginning and so made the stars IRRELEVANT and CHANGED FATE ITSELF to avoid the END OF ALL THINGS?

come on! if yr gonna lean into the vibe of "marika did this for a reason, and had gone thru an extinction event" why can't we work with the actual one the game has always been telling us about???

erudition: the state of having or containing a lot of knowledge that is known by few people.

[baycruiser23cara]

1- 8 August - Back to Scotland - the long way 

Anne and I chose to take the slow road back north, this time up the east side of the country. Very lucky to stay with and catch up with many wonderful friends along the way - in order Dave and Catherine, Phil and Melanie, Maureen and Peter, Ian and Fee, Carys and Ross, Mike and Joy, Sarah and Vic. Had a great week - highlights being the Fawlty Towers-esque stay at the Grand Hotel in Scarborough, walking along the sands at Alnmouth and visiting the Edinburgh Fringe for the very first time. At Inverness I say goodbye to Anne and welcome fresh Crew Matthew. We drive to Oban to be reacquainted with Cara and to ride out the storm for two nights at the Transit Marina. It is during our first night at the Oban Inn that I get to appreciate the true agenda of my new companion- namely to convert unsuspecting American tourists to a more ‘wrighteous’ political persuasion, haha. 

[largemandrill]

Turns out that the Troll knight outside the fringe converted tower does NOT in fact respawn. Good thing i got a good pic of the guy

[travelaroundindia]

Best holiday destinations in India

India is a diverse country with a wide range of holiday destinations to suit various interests and preferences. Here are some of the best holiday destinations in India

The Serene Backwaters of Kerala

The backwaters of Kerala are a network of canals, lagoons, lakes, and rivers that run parallel to the Arabian Sea coast in the southern Indian state of Kerala. Among the most famous backwater destinations in Kerala is Alleppey, also known as Alappuzha. The backwaters in this region are often referred to as the "Venice of the East" due to their breathtaking natural beauty and unique ecosystem.

The backwaters offer a serene and picturesque setting, with lush greenery, palm-fringed shores, and tranquil waters. Traditional houseboats, known as "kettuvallams," are a popular way to explore the backwaters. These houseboats were once used for transportation of goods but have now been converted into floating accommodations for tourists.

Cruising through the backwaters on a houseboat is a truly enchanting experience. You can relax and enjoy the peaceful surroundings while being pampered by the crew, who will take care of all your needs. As you glide along the waterways, you'll witness the daily life of the local communities, including fishermen, farmers, and artisans. You can also spot a variety of bird species, such as kingfishers, herons, and egrets, along with exotic flora and fauna.

The backwaters are not just about leisurely boat rides; they also offer opportunities for various activities. You can indulge in fishing, kayaking, canoeing, or simply take a dip in the backwaters. The surrounding villages provide an insight into the traditional rural life of Kerala, and you can visit local markets, temples, and ancient monuments.

One of the highlights of visiting the backwaters is the delicious Kerala cuisine. You can Savor traditional dishes like appam (rice pancakes), puttu (steamed rice cake), karimeen pollichathu (pearl spot fish marinated in spices and grilled in banana leaf), and a variety of seafood delicacies.

The best time to visit the backwaters of Kerala is from October to February when the weather is pleasant. During the monsoon season (June to September), the backwaters come alive with lush vegetation, but heavy rainfall can limit outdoor activities.

The serene backwaters of Kerala offer a unique and tranquil experience for those seeking relaxation, natural beauty, and a glimpse into the local culture. It's a must-visit destination for nature lovers and anyone looking to unwind in a serene and picturesque setting.

The Majestic Landscapes of Ladakh

Ladakh, located in the northernmost part of India, is renowned for its majestic landscapes that captivate visitors from around the world. Nestled in the Himalayas, Ladakh offers breathtaking vistas of rugged mountains, deep valleys, pristine lakes, and ancient monasteries. Here are some of the remarkable landscapes you can explore in Ladakh:

Nubra Valley:  Located to the north of Leh, Nubra Valley is a picturesque region with towering sand dunes, lush green villages, and a meandering river. The valley is famous for its unique double-humped Bactrian camels that you can ride across the sand dunes. The journey to Nubra Valley takes you through the world's highest motorable pass, Khardung La.

Zanskar Valley:  Zanskar Valley is a remote and isolated region in Ladakh known for its pristine beauty. The valley is flanked by towering mountains and is home to several ancient monasteries, such as Phugtal Monastery and Karsha Monastery. In winter, the frozen Zanskar River becomes the famous Chadar Trek, attracting adventure enthusiasts from around the world.

Lamayuru:  Located on the Leh-Srinagar Highway, Lamayuru is known for its mesmerizing moon-like landscapes. The dramatic erosion formations, popularly known as the "Moonland," create a surreal and otherworldly ambiance. Lamayuru Monastery, one of the oldest monasteries in Ladakh, is also a significant attraction in the area.

Magnetic Hill: Situated near Leh, Magnetic Hill is a unique phenomenon where the alignment of the surrounding hills creates an optical illusion that makes vehicles appear to roll uphill. It's a fascinating spot that attracts curious visitors who enjoy witnessing this strange phenomenon.

Ladakh's majestic landscapes offer a unique blend of natural beauty, cultural heritage, and adventure. Whether you are a nature lover, a spiritual seeker, or an adventure enthusiast, Ladakh's landscapes will leave an indelible mark on your heart and soul.

The Cultural Delights of Rajasthan

Rajasthan, a state in northern India, is renowned for its rich cultural heritage and vibrant traditions. It offers a plethora of cultural delights that captivate visitors from around the world. Here are some of the highlights:

1. Majestic Forts and Palaces:  Rajasthan is home to numerous majestic forts and palaces that showcase the architectural brilliance of the region. The iconic forts of Jaipur, Jaisalmer, Jodhpur, and Udaipur are must-visit attractions. These impressive structures reflect the grandeur and valor of the Rajput era.

2. Colourful Festivals:  Rajasthan is famous for its vibrant festivals that celebrate the rich traditions and customs of the region. The Pushkar Camel Fair, Jaipur Literature Festival, Teej Festival, and Desert Festival are just a few examples. These festivals offer a glimpse into Rajasthan's music, dance, art, and folklore.

3. Camel Safaris and Desert Life: The vast Thar Desert in Rajasthan offers a unique opportunity to explore the desert life. Camel safaris are a popular way to venture into the sand dunes and experience the desert's tranquility. Spending a night in a desert camp, enjoying traditional Rajasthani cuisine, and witnessing breathtaking sunsets are unforgettable experiences.

4. Puppetry and Puppet Shows: Puppetry is an ancient art form in Rajasthan. The intricate craftsmanship and colorful puppets come alive during traditional puppet shows. These shows depict folk tales, Rajasthani legends, and historical events, providing a fascinating glimpse into the state's cultural narrative.

These are just a few of the many cultural delights that Rajasthan has to offer. The state's rich heritage, warm hospitality, and vibrant traditions make it a captivating destination for anyone seeking an immersive cultural experience.

The Pristine Beaches of Goa

Goa, located on the western coast of India, is known for its pristine beaches that attract tourists from around the world. Here are some of the popular beaches in Goa:

1. Calangute Beach:  Calangute is one of the busiest and largest beaches in Goa. It offers a vibrant atmosphere with numerous beach shacks, water sports activities, and a range of accommodation options. The golden sand and the clear blue waters make it a favourite among tourists.

2. Baga Beach:  Located adjacent to Calangute, Baga Beach is famous for its nightlife and party scene. The beach offers a lively ambiance with beach shacks, clubs, and restaurants. It is a popular spot for water sports such as jet skiing, parasailing, and banana boat rides.

3. Anjuna Beach:  Anjuna Beach is known for its laid-back and hippie vibe. It gained popularity in the 1960s and 70s and still retains its bohemian charm. Anjuna is famous for its Wednesday flea market, where you can find a variety of goods such as clothes, jewellery, handicrafts, and souvenirs.

4. Vagator Beach:  Vagator Beach is divided into two parts by a rocky cliff. The northern part, known as Big Vagator, offers a picturesque view and is popular among backpackers. The southern part, called Little Vagator or Ozran Beach, is more secluded and peaceful. The beach is surrounded by coconut trees and offers stunning sunset views.

5. Palolem Beach:  Located in South Goa, Palolem Beach is known for its natural beauty and calm atmosphere. It is a crescent-shaped beach with soft white sand and crystal-clear waters. Palolem is a great place for relaxation and also offers activities such as kayaking, dolphin spotting, and boat trips.

6. Morjim Beach:   Morjim Beach, also known as "Little Russia" due to the large Russian expat community, is a quieter beach located in North Goa. It is famous for its serene beauty, nesting sites of Olive Ridley turtles, and birdwatching opportunities.

These are just a few examples of the many beautiful beaches in Goa. Each beach has its own unique charm, and whether you're looking for a lively atmosphere or a serene escape, Goa has something to offer for everyone.

The Spiritual Journey to Varanasi

Varanasi, also known as Kashi or Benares, is a city in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. It holds immense spiritual significance for Hindus and is considered one of the oldest inhabited cities in the world. Varanasi is often referred to as the spiritual capital of India and is renowned for its rich religious heritage, ancient temples, and the sacred River Ganges. Embarking on a spiritual journey to Varanasi can be a deeply transformative and enlightening experience. Here is a guide to help you navigate this sacred city and make the most of your spiritual journey.

Plan your Holidays to India with travelaroundindia.com

[scotianostra]

The Hub.

Formerly The Highland Tolbooth Kirk,  a Church of Scotland building, it remains one of the most characteristic buildings of Edinburgh, with its silhouette visible from all around the Old Town, this was taken from The National Museum of Scotland.

The building was designed in the Neo-Gothic style, and was a collaboration between the Scottish architect James Gillespie Graham, and the English architect Augustus Pugin. It is constructed from dark coloured sandstone, which will make it seem to you older than its true age; it was built between 1842 and 1845. Its spire is the highest point in Edinburgh, standing at 72m high.

Despite its appearance and name, it has never actually been consecrated as a church, because the Church of Scotland had it built to function as the meeting place of the General Assembly.

They met here for the last time in 1929, when they moved to the new Assembly Hall, located on the Mound. The building was then used by various congregations until 1979, when they united with the congregation of Greyfriars Kirk, and the building was closed. It was converted and reopened as The Hub in 1999.

You will find the interior has been completely remodelled to become The Hub, and is now a multifunctional space, where many different events are held.

It is also the location of the ticket office and information centre fo the Edinburgh International Festival (not to be confused with the Festival Fringe), which takes place in the second half of August every year. There is also a cafe and restaurant inside!

Before the construction of the new Scottish Parliament building, at the lower end of the Royal Mile, opposite Holyrood Palace, parliamentary sessions were usually held in the Assembly Hall, between 1999 and 2004, but were also occasionally hosted by The Hub as well.

In 2006, after the collapse of a beam in the debating chamber, Scottish Parliament returned to The Hub for a period of two weeks.

Behind it you can see  The Outlook Tower, once the home to Patrick Geddes and now The Camera Obscura & World of Illusions, it is flying The Pride Flag to celebrate the  Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer, Pride Month.

[xtruss]

As-Salt: The Middle East's City of Tolerance and Generosity

— By Marta Vidal | 22nd December 2021

This small Jordanian city where minarets and church towers share the skyline was deemed a "place of tolerance and urban hospitality" by Unesco.

The sunrise call to prayer echoed through a still sleepy valley as the first rays of sun illuminated golden limestone houses clustered on the slopes of three mountains.

"Allahu Akbar" ("God is great"), the voice of the muezzin rose up above the domes of the city. "Hayya 'ala-s-salah" ("Hurry to the prayer"), called loudspeakers from the minarets that dot the rugged landscape.

Moments later, the city's winding streets filled with the ring of church bells announcing the morning mass.

We were in As-Salt, the Middle East's newest Unesco World Heritage site. This small Jordanian city where minarets and church towers share the skyline was deemed a "place of tolerance and urban hospitality".

Located at the crossroads of trade and pilgrimage between the Mediterranean Sea and the Arabian Peninsula, As-Salt grew into a thriving town in the late 19th Century during a period of reforms intended to "modernise" the Ottoman Empire.

In the city's historic centre, hundreds of heritage limestone buildings – dating to the late 19th and the early 20th Centuries – with arched doorways, carved columns and high windows glowed in the sun.

Thaira Arabiyat embroiders the hems of a scarf in her shop (Credit: Marta Vidal)

"The yellow stone buildings are important, but they're not the reason why As-Salt is so unique," said Thaira Arabiyat, a shop owner who trains local women in traditional needlework, as she poured me a cup of coffee fragrant with cardamom.

We sat surrounded by embroidered dresses and scarves at her small shop in the city centre, where I first found her sewing the knotted fringes of a shemagh, a traditional Jordanian scarf. She interrupted her work to tell me more about her hometown.

What makes this city so special is the people here, their kindness

"What makes this city so special is the people here, their kindness," said Arabiyat after filling my cup a second time. She then asked me, "Did you have breakfast? Come eat with me."

While exploring the city's winding streets and narrow alleys, I received repeated invitations for lunch, coffee or tea. Traditions of hospitality and generosity towards visitors have deep roots in As-Salt.

For centuries, the city was an important stop for merchants and pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem, Damascus, Baghdad or Mecca. Residents would welcome visitors and offer them food and lodging.

In the 19th Century, As-Salt became the region's administrative headquarters, attracting merchants from different religious and cultural backgrounds. Many ended up settling in the hillside town, creating prosperous neighbourhoods where local Bedouin tribes mixed with Levantine traders and craftsmen.

As-Salt has about 650 significant historical buildings exhibiting a blend of European and Ottoman styles (Credit: Marta Vidal)

"As-Salt became a meeting place between east and west, between the desert and the urban centres," said Ayman Abu Rumman, former director of tourism at the local Balqa governorate (one of Jordan's 12 governorates), adding that the city's diversity is reflected in its architecture.

The best example of the city's blend of Ottoman styles, European influences and local traditions might be the sumptuous Abu Jaber House, built in local limestone with Italian frescoed ceilings, Art Nouveau stained glass windows, ornamented columns and ceramic tiles from Syria. The house belonged to Abu Jaber, a wealthy merchant family who settled in As-Salt at the end of the 19th Century. In 2009, the building was converted into a museum that takes visitors through the history and traditions of the Ottoman town.

When Amman was chosen the capital of the Emirate of Transjordan in 1928, As-Salt lost its regional importance. Spared the intense urbanisation of Amman, As-Salt has managed to retain its character.

For Jordanian architect Rami Daher, who prepared the city's nomination file for World Heritage listing, the city is unique not just because of the historic limestone buildings, but also because of the way it has preserved traditions of hospitality and tolerance over the centuries.

As-Salt residents put up a sofa on the road where they meet to play manqala, a popular board game (Credit: Marta Vidal)

"The topography of the city has fostered a sense of community and proximity. Neighbours live very close to each other and support each other in many different ways," he said.

A network of interlinked stairways, shared courtyards and public squares has encouraged the development of a tolerant, multi-faith society and brought a sense of belonging to a shared space. Most of the traditional buildings feature communal courtyards or terraces where neighbours can cook, eat and drink together.

"People here still live like they are part of the same family, there is no segregation between them," said Abu Rumman as we sat together in a room at the Abu Jaber museum with a panoramic view of the city's mountains.

He gestured towards the square across from the museum, where elderly men from different backgrounds meet every day to play rounds of backgammon and manqala, an ancient board game popularised by the Ottomans. He then pointed to the mosque and church in front of it.

Hammam street is a busy alleyway full of shops and is named after old Turkish baths (Credit: Marta Vidal)

"The church is facing the mosque and they share the same entrance," he said. "Muslims and Christians participate in each other's celebrations. They share what they have with their neighbours."

This is perhaps most evident in the city's oldest church. Built in 1682 around a cave where it is said Saint George appeared to a shepherd, the church is known in Arabic as Al-Khader, an Islamic figure syncretised with Saint George in the region.

Christians and Muslims Both Go There To Pray, Everyone Is Welcome.

The church's vaulted stone interior is full of icons and mosaics that depict Saint George slaying dragons, and what remains of the cave is visited by people from different background who come to light candles and leave handwritten wishes.

"Christians and Muslims both go there to pray, everyone is welcome," said Sabreen Dababneh, who works in the neighbouring Orthodox Church, Dormition of Virgin Mary.

Dababneh told me this interfaith harmony is what makes As-Salt so special.

"The church keeper who works with me, Ali, is a Muslim," she said. "There are no differences between us. We live here as brothers and sisters."

[whileiamdying]

New Again: Grace Jones

This Friday, The Black Rock Coalition Orchestra will host a tribute to Grace Jones at Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater in New York. Curated by musician Gordon Voidwell, the evening is titled “State of Grace.” Ms. Jones will join an impressive list of artists previously celebrated by the BRC, including Nina Simone, James Brown, Betty Davis, Curtis Mayfield, and Gil Scott-Heron.

Grace Jones first appeared in Interview in January of 1977, and in October of 1984 she graced our cover. At the time, Ms. Jones was a mother (to Paolo, her son with Jean-Paul Goude) and dating Dolph Lundgren (before Rocky IV made him semi-famous, when he was still known as Hans). She’d already released six albums (she’d go on to release another four) and was starting a side gig as a film actress.

Grace Jones By Andy Warhol & André Leon Talley

She’s positively jet-propelled. Since 1974, when Grace Jones began her entertainment career lip-synching on tabletops at Club Sept in Paris, she’s transcended the stigma of disco diva and captured true stardom. Having released her sixth album, Living My Life (on Island Records), and made a wicked film debut in Conan the Destroyer, Grace is now working on a James Bond flick (A View to Kill) in which she’s slated to jump off the Eiffel Tower in a cape that becomes a parachute.

Even when she had no money, long before her one-woman show was a sellout around the world, Grace Jones had indefatigable style. She would sweep into New York in August to vacation on Fire Island with only a Swiss Army knapsack slung over her shoulder. In that sack, she had a sea of silk squares and pounds of Kenzo knits (all gifts of the designer) to create the Wrap Esthetic. Her one big dress for years was a chenille bedspread anchored with golf-ball sized Victorian upholstery fringes, which the clergyman’s daughter converted into a Parisian sine qua non of sophistication—from poolside to all night romps with LouLou de la Falaise. Her gift is for visual originality. To appreciate it, one must witness Grace thrashing around onstage, or in her “A One-Man Show” video—an Academy Award nominee directed by Jean Paul Goude—crashing a dozen cymbals into orchestrated revolt on stage. Or in Paris, swinging over a throng of 2,000 at Le Palace. Or taking three hours to pin in a white foxtail to the back of her Azzedine Alaïa ensemble to create a city savage suit.  Designers Montana, Kenzo, Miyake, and Alaïa come to Grace with gifts as if to an altar incarnate. At last count (by Grace’s own arithmetic), she has over 1,000 pairs of designer shoes. “I keep them organized by taking Polaroids and taping them on each box,” she says. “I’ve been in my apartment only two years and already I have to build a new closet.”Graffiti impresario and artists Keith Haring came along to Interview‘s Union Square office to watch this month’s cover story in action, as did physical maintenance technician Lydia Cengic if the SoHo Fitness Center. Amazing Grace was three hours late, going over the inventory in her fur vaults uptown before her escape from Manhattan into the movies.

ANDRÉ LEON TALLEY: Grace, now hit it! Right from the top, they want to know about the glamour bit. How many furs do you own at this moment?

GRACE JONES: Around 35. I’m having a new yellow fox made by Claude Montana. I buy them with my play money, money I make from the Honda TV commercial, and the new Citroën car commercial I will begin shooting in Paris next week with Jean-Paul [Goude]. In that, my hairdo will become the headlights of the car. And I start running like Superwoman. Soon, I guess they will have me in airplane commercials, reflecting speed.

ANDY WARHOL: Why don’t you buy a house instead of all those furs

JONES: I’ve got that, too. I’m living in my own condominium in the West Village. I am going to build a house soon in Jamaica. I don’t wear jewelry, so I wear furs. I don’t have diamonds.

WARHOL: You should.

JONES: I couldn’t wear them.

WARHOL: Diamonds would look great on you.

JONES: Well, I don’t think I could get away with it. I would be held up in the street. But no one comes over to me and says, “Give me that fur coat.”

WARHOL: But your furs are in the fur vault, right?

JONES: Yes.

TALLEY: At Bergdorf’s.

WARHOL: Your diamonds could be in the diamond vault.

JONES: That’s true. It’s a bit harder, I think, to find a good diamond. You’ve really got to know where you’re getting them from.

TALLEY: But a good fur is easy to find?

JONES: I can look at a fur and tell if it’s good or not. You don’t have to dissect a fur.

TALLEY: But does dyeing the fox fur purple do something to the fur?

JONES: Oh, definitely. You dye the hair red, bright orangey red…

TALLEY: Do you have a red fur?

JONES: I have a red one, I have an electric blue, and a purple one. You put a hat on and you’ve got all this color coming.

TALLEY: Well, with a fur coat you don’t have to wear a dress very often. In the winter you can just wear a leotard or your body stocking.

JONES: Or backless tight dresses. I wear my furs all the time. I wear like three different ones in a day.

TALLEY: And when you travel how do you pack them?

JONES: I never check them on an airplane. I wear and carry as many as I can. Sometimes they tell me I can’t carry them on board and I say, “What do you mean I can’t carry them on board?”

TALLEY: Furs are a big investment. How many do you buy a year?

JONES: I buy the whole collection if I like it. I only started getting into furs when the designers I liked started making them.

TALLEY: Remember we went to the first show of Claude Montana’s at Bergdorf’s and you tried on the furs?

JONES: I went crazy. I had some cloth coats from Montana and Kenzo, and I was always saying, “I wish they would make these coats in fur,” and when they started doing them I went absolutely crazy. Usually the first collections are really good.

TALLEY: I was uptown going to church and on the 95th and Broadway “Grace Jones” was above the title of Conan on the movie marquee. They didn’t even have Arnold [Schwarzenegger]’s name.

JONES: Maybe Schwarzenegger was too long.

TALLEY: In that neighborhood you must be a big celebrity. In Conan you upstaged everyone.

JONES: I didn’t try to. I mean it’s a normal thing to do. I really wanted to be an animal in this. I wanted a lot of animalism to come out of it, and when you come out with a tail that’s wet, it’s just natural—

TALLEY: To shake it.

JONES: Yeah.

TALLEY: Did you design your own costumes?

JONES: I brought along all my stuff and said, make this cut, copy the belt…

WARHOL: In the James Bond film you’re doing, are you going to play the same kind of character?

JONES: No. It will be more feminine. Also tough, but feminine tough, lethal. I’m the bad guy, and then, of course, after Bond makes love to me, like all the other women, I wake up out of my hypnosis, and I turn good in the end.

WARHOL: Who is James Bond now?

JONES: It’s still Roger Moore, but I wish it were Hans [Lundgren, GJ’s bodyguard beau now known as Dolph Lundgren]. He should be the next James Bond. I don’t think Roger has much more…

TALLEY: This is his last film.

JONES: I don’t think he can go anymore. Hans is going to be coaching me for the kickboxing scenes. I’m a kickboxer in the movie and Hans is a champion kickboxer, so it’s perfect.

WARHOL: He’ll be in the movie, too?

JONES: Yeah, I don’t know anyone who could coach me any better.

WARHOL: I think you’re a really good comedienne.

JONES: Bette Midler told me that. She said, “My god, you say the funniest things.”

WARHOL: Actually, you should start to buy all the Rosalind Russell pictures. The Front Page, the early ones that she did as sort of a tough comedienne with Cary Grant. I think Chris Reeve would be a great person to play against you, or Eddie Murphy. He’s a good comedian.

JONES: He doesn’t have any style though, does he? Who has a Cary Grant that could pull it off?

WARHOL: Chris Reeve. I saw him in Aspen a couple of days ago. He really hasn’t had a good comedy part yet.

JONES: This is also a very glamorous role. I dictate my wardrobe.

TALLEY: In Conan, when you hit Wilt Chamberlain all the time, did you actually knock him off the horse?

JONES: Yup.

TALLEY: And leap on him? That’s not a stuntwoman?

JONES: That was me.

TALLEY: Was it a real stick?

JONES: Yes, but he’s padded.

TALLEY: So you wouldn’t hurt him.

JONES: I had to hit him right on the mark, right in one area. What happened is they had such a hard time finding a double for me.

TALLEY: That’s impossible, darling!

JONES: They don’t want to cut their hair. Can you imagine people freaked-out over a lousy haircut? The hair is going to grow back. I had a guy double for me. He chewed tobacco and spat all the time. It was like seeing myself chewing tobacco and spitting every two seconds.

TALLEY: What things did he do as your double?

JONES: He did the really dangerous stuff, like climbing… down the waterfall. He did the stunt when both Wilt’s and my horse collided. That’s when the horse fell on his leg. After that he disappeared. He took off and didn’t say a word. We were looking for him; all the police were looking for him. He left all his clothes in the hotel, and we thought he’d gotten mugged or something. Here you bring somebody from Mexico, and he was wild, really animalistic, much more than I was…

TALLEY: Was he the same color as you?

JONES: Yes. Same size. He rode a horse very well.

TALLEY: Is your father very proud of you?

JONES: Yes.

TALLEY:  Did he go to see Conan?

JONES: Oh no, he doesn’t go to the movies.

TALLEY:  But his daughter is in a movie.

JONES: I know, but he can wait till it comes on Home Box Office.

TALLEY: Did your mother go?

JONES: My mother hasn’t seen it yet either.

TALLEY: Why not?

JONES: I don’t know.

TALLEY: But you see your mother all the time. I always see you with your mother.

JONES: I think I wanted to go with her. Why don’t we take her tonight, or when she comes back on Thursday?

TALLEY: Okay, I’ll go with you.

JONES: I’ve never really gone and seen an audience’s reaction.

TALLEY: I saw it at 49th and Broadway… you give your mother furs at Christmas, don’t you?

JONES: I give my mother a fur every year.

TALLEY: And yourself five.

JONES: Seven, eight, nine, 10.

TALLEY: Remember Steve Rubell’s old club—it was like a country club in Queens.

JONES: And we went on that bus with [fashion illustrator] Antonio, [models] Pat Cleveland and Alva, and I sang “I Need A Man.”

TALLEY: You wore a gold tutu and gold cowboy boots. That was probably your first live appearance in New York.

JONES: Can you imagine?

TALLEY:  How do you write your songs? How do you compose lyrics? Where do they come from?

JONES: They come from real-life experiences. I write them in five minutes. Something happens and you start writing. I like writing them rather than talking on tape. When you write you can see it. KEITH HARING: Do you type or write by hand?

JONES: I write by hand.

TALLEY:  At this point of your life, what do you not have that you’d like to have?

JONES: Oh, just more of what I have. I want to create really good work and have fun with it.

TALLEY: Do you remember the great moments like when we were in Paris and you opened at the Palace and Yves [Saint Laurent] and LouLou [de la Falaise] were sitting in the balcony, and they freaked out, they though the costume was inappropriate.

JONES: It was the most awful costume. The people were wild. The audience ripped off my clothes. I was stark naked. Yves took LouLou’s scarf and wrapped it around my waist, and he took off his belt, put it around my breasts and carried me back out on the stage.

TALLEY: But don’t you remember the great moments you also had when there were rumors in Paris that Yves was very ill and you did this great show, one of his best, the Carmen collection, and at the end of it—after 300 outfits—everyone has to hold Yves up. All the models were supporting him as he was having a breakdown, and you were the only one where—

JONES: “Darling, it’s all right, it’s fine.”

TALLEY: “It’s fine,” and you were smiling. You were the only one with a sense of humor about it. Everyone else was in mourning—very sad. It was so natural for you to have this upbeat moment. Where do you think it comes from?

JONES: I think it’s just my natural talent. They used to call me firefly when I was a little girl and I always tried to figure out why I was being called a firefly. I was really black, black, black from the sun. After being in Jamaica for 13 years, my eyes were really beady and white and my skin was really black. I must have really looked like a fly. My eyes looked like lights, like stars.

TALLEY: But born from a minister.

JONES: There’re lots of musicians in my family, too. My mother sings incredibly well. I’ve got to make a record with my mother’s voice on it. She sings a lyric soprano. We do the opposite. I’m a baritone. She’s a star singer in her church. She always does her solo.

TALLEY: Do you realize that there are still people who think that you are a sex change?

JONES: Oh, I love it.

TALLEY: Or that you never had Paulo as a child.

JONES: Oh, I adopted, huh? So what does that make Hans?

TALLEY: You were one of the first with your style to cross over in your way of dressing.

JONES: Androgynous.

TALLEY: There are people who say to me, “Grace Jones, she’s not a real woman, she’s a man, a drag queen.” How do you feel about that?

JONES: I don’t care. I like dressing like a guy. I love it. When I was modeling I used to do pictures where I would dress up like my little brother. No makeup and I looked like a boy.

TALLEY: Don’t you think it’s passé the way society puts these sort of stigmas and labels, “boy,” “girl”?

JONES: Very passé. The future is no sex.

TALLEY: You can change your personality.

JONES: You can be a boy, a girl, whatever you want. I have a lot of man in me.

TALLEY:  And you have a lot of woman in you too, darling.

JONES: I have just as much woman in me as I have man. It’s just a matter of channeling the energy into which way you use it.

TALLEY:  How do you feel about people that cross over? Are there any crossover people that you like? Marlene Dietrich has a very wonderful sort of crossover style.

JONES: I love Dietrich.

TALLEY: Greta Garbo?

JONES: They’re all the people I love.

TALLEY: Michael Jackson?

JONES: More and more now than ever. Well, Annie Lennox, she’s doing a number.

TALLEY: Is there any drag queen that you thought had great style? Can you think of a great drag queen, one who had a true style and originality?

JONES: I think Amanda Lear came the closest.

TALLEY:  She even wears Chanel slings.

JONES: There’s this other one that used to run around all the time dancing. We had a fight once.

TALLEY: Potassa.

JONES: Potassa is really wild. Gorgeous still, and bones, cheekbones. People think I have silicone cheekbones, they think I had a nose job or something. My god, I feel like I’m completely remade. Why couldn’t I have been born looking like this? But I don’t care. It doesn’t bother me.

WARHOL: You were a very famous model, you’ve always had good looks. What was your first job?

JONES: My first modeling job was for Essence. Remember that makeover? They did a before and after and I looked better before.

WARHOL: Were you with an agency then?

JONES: Yes, I was with Black Beauty.

WARHOL: That was a great agency.

JONES: They had trouble booking me, though. I couldn’t do any commercials… I looked a lot freakier than I do now.

WARHOL: Then you went to Europe and you just became very big there.

JONES: I took the same look that I was pounding the streets with. I mean, I’d come on my motorbike.

WARHOL: You lived in Philadelphia—

JONES: For a year.

TALLEY:  And you took the bike from Philly?

JONES: Yeah. A Honda. I went to Paris, and in three months I was on four covers. My timing was jus right. I went there and everyone went, “We found her—Josephine Baker.” They went wild. Then I started working with Helmut Newton and Guy Bourdin and Hans Feurer, and I started getting incredible pictures. I was wild there. I went in for this Ellecover. I just went to see them, and I got hot. I said, “Do you mind if I take off my stockings?” because I hated stockings. I don’t even know why I had them on. They said no, and I guess they thought that I was going to the ladies’ room to do it, and I did it right there in front of all the good actresses. They gave me the cover right away. You do that here and they’d say, “This girl, never send her to our office again.”

TALLEY: Do you ever want to design clothes? You could make a lot of money with a Grace Jones collection.

JONES: I think I would let my sister do it. My sister lives in Colorado and she designs. She has a store. She has wonderful taste, like mine. I would let her do it and let it come through her. That way you keep it in the family.

TALLEY: You’re going to bring out a lipstick, aren’t you?

JONES: Well, I’m working on that.

TALLEY: You’ve been working on that lipstick for a long time. The Grace Jones lipstick.

JONES: I was going to do it by myself… then do it with a company that can take more of the responsibility. I don’t want to put my own money into it.

TALLEY: Weren’t you going to so a sunglasses collection?

JONES: That also is going to be a whole line. I’m gathering a lot of stuff so that when I do it, it will be a whole line, like 15 items.

TALLEY: Wigs, scarves, sunglasses—

JONES: Accessories.

TALLEY: And your calendars.

JONES: I thought I’d do a couple calendars with some of Richard Bernstein’s stuff if we can gather it up in the next few years, and some of Antonio’s drawings. A really nice calendar.

TALLEY: Do you see yourself as a role model for black women?

JONES: No, I don’t think in color.

TALLEY:  Do you see yourself as a role model?

JONES: They think of me as a role model, but I don’t. When I’m doing something like Conan, for example, just before I did it I had questions like, “Do you think this is a role that people are going to be proud of you for?” This is something like my mother or father would ask me. Do you know what I mean? Don’t put that responsibility on my head. I said, “My body will look gorgeous.” I just have to say, “Hey, I’m going to have to worry about politics now at this point? Forget it.” I see myself as no color. I can play the role of a man. I can paint my face white if I want to and play the role of white. I can play a green, I can be a purple. I think I have that kind of frame and that kind of attitude where I can play an animal. If you think in color, then everyone around you is going to think in color and that puts limits on the way you think. I don’t think like that. A lot of the roles that I’m doing are roles that a man or a person of any color can do.

TALLEY: Have you ever come up against prejudice in your career?

JONES: No.

TALLEY: You never had to curse someone out for making rude remarks?

JONES: I curse people out, but not for remarks, not racial remarks. Maybe they’re too scared of me.

TALLEY: Do you know what Karl Lagerfeld said once? There was a period when he had gone off you for a while, this was before you went to by his big fan hats. LouLou and I were saying, “Grace is so fabulous,” and he said, “Grace Jones, she looks so fierce I could have her as a guard dog in my castle!”

JONES: [laughter]

WARHOL: But you’re always nice, Grace.

JONES: Aren’t I? I can just sit there, though, and people get really scared just to come up and say “Hi.” They think I’m some kind of witch or something.

TALLEY: Where do you get the stamina to go through all of the style thing? When we were in Paris, you made us stay with you for 10 hours at Azzedine Alaïa’s for personal fittings, but Alaïa loved it.

JONES: Three days in a row. You have to do it.

TALLEY:  You always loved clothes. You used to make Givenchy couture dresses to wear to high school from Givenchy patterns you got at Woolworth’s.

JONES: Yeah. I don’t cook, but I can sew.

TALLEY:  When you didn’t have much money in Paris, you used to have the best outfits. Like dresses that looked as though they were made from chenille bedspreads and a nice pair of gold sandals. Remember when you used to dance around with LouLou?

JONES: Underneath the table.

TALLEY:  On the table and falling down.

JONES: Those crazy parties at Kenzo’s. Oh, my God. I don’t know what happened, I was supposed to do his show and something happened… Oh yes. This girl insulted me in Paris. I remember it was a racial thing, too. She was working for Kenzo, and he had booked me for the show and she just thought, “No way.” I know it wasn’t Kenzo’s fault, but I got so mad that night. We had this ceremonial dance on the floor and I whipped him, I beat him.

TALLEY: Well, you’re good at that.

JONES: I whipped him.

TALLEY: Did you really?

JONES: Yes. Whipped him, stripped him naked in front of the whole party. Everybody was there.

TALLEY: But you and LouLou and Kenzo used to have some wild moments at the Club Sept under the tables and stools, my dear.

JONES: LouLou only comes out when I go to Paris.

TALLEY: She’s fantastic. She’s one of the true originals.

JONES: They wait for me to come once a year to drag them out of their holes.

WARHOL: I met you through LouLou the first time—we were in an elevator at a party.

JONES: Oh wow, God, you remember that.

TALLEY: Well, LouLou is a great person for putting people together under some sort of weird circumstance.

JONES: She has a beautiful soul. I love her. She’s one of the first women I could really love.

TALLEY: Me, too. She’s fabulous. How do you keep your body so beautiful?

JONES: I pump iron with Hans.

TALLEY: Every day?

JONES: Yes.

WARHOL: You don’t have varicose veins.

JONES: I never do that much.

WARHOL: Where do you workout?

JONES: Madison Avenue Muscle. Great name, isn’t it? It’s beautiful, all new black gorgeous machines. I cant wait just to lay there and do a leg curl on it. You just want to stay in there and go from one machine to the other. It’s really like making love to them.

TALLEY: When you go to your father’s church don’t they just go crazy?

JONES: I sign autographs. Every church I go to all the kids come around with their paper.

TALLEY: With your fur coats and your limousines and all the glamorous trappings, don’t they just go mad when they see you coming?

JONES: Oh yes. It’s like a dream.

TALLEY: Deep down you are also very much a home person. You’re very close to your mother, and you’re a wonderful mother to Paulo. What is it like being a mother?

JONES: I had him in half an hour—I didn’t suffer, so it’s great. If I’d suffered longer than that I don’t think I would have appreciated it as much. He’s wonderful.

TALLEY: How old is he?

JONES: Four.

TALLEY: Does your son give you a balance after all the hard work on the road and films?

JONES: No, he’s so wild. It’s nice to have moments when I can cuddle up with him and lie down with him and fall asleep with him. He’s so passionate. He kisses me the way they do on The Guiding Light. I say, “Where did you learn to kiss like that?” and he says, “As The World Turns and The Guiding Light.” And I figure my mother must be watching a lot of soap operas when he’s with her. His eyes become like bedroomy and he hugs me and sticks his tongue in a little bit. I say, “Paulo, what are you doing?” and he says, “That’s how they kiss on television.”

TALLEY:  Would you ever want to have your own television program like those half-hour sitcoms?

JONES: We were just approached to go The A-Team. I said, “What is this, Mr. and Mrs. T?” Give me a break. No way!

TALLEY: Darling, you have to do Dallas.

JONES: On Dallas their lighting is awful. I wouldn’t do it, never. If you can go in there, and if they can let you light—

TALLEY: Light yourself?

JONES: Not just yourself, but the whole scene. I mean, I come from that world and I can’t see myself thrown into these day-bright hot lights every day. I don’t see myself doing television until they improve their quality of lighting.

TALLEY: What is the most incredible memory you have onstage live?

JONES: Being handcuffed.

TALLEY: That night at the Savoy?

JONES: Yes. That and the Palace. And also a live performance in San Remo was incredible. I tore up the whole set. I took all the flowers and threw them to the audience. The audience went crazy. The next day the director came on his knees with a bucket of flowers for me and said, “God, please, here are some flowers you can throw. You can destroy the whole state.” That was pretty wild.

TALLEY: Do you think you have matured from five years ago with all this work? You said you’re much nicer.

JONES: I don’t know what “mature” means. I still keep my mind open. It’s not stagnant. I’m still very childlike, and I keep a certain naivety as far as being able to receive information. Once you think you’re mature and you know everything, then you don’t put up the antenna, it’s no longer out there receiving for you…

TALLEY:  Do you think that shock value is very important?

JONES: I think you’ve got to come in and bang them over the head. I don’t spend all that time putting on my makeup and big dragonish clothes from Japan to get on television. You have to create a lot of energy in one second. Otherwise it’s a waste of time.

TALLEY: I know you like to travel, and you’ve had some strange experiences.

JONES: I’ve been to Africa. I used to vacation in Tunisia a lot. And Abidjan (Côte D’Ivoire), I worked there for a long time. That was my nightmare experience.

TALLEY: Did you ever eat ants for lunch?

JONES: No, worse than that, they put me in jail. They said my papers weren’t in order and they wanted a payoff. We came in really late with this Italian photographer. It was the first time I turned down a job with Saint Laurent, and he never hired me again until the show you talked about before. I turned it down to go on this gig in Africa, and then I get there and this little creep tells me my papers aren’t in order. They isolated me and put all my clothes back on the plane. I thought I’d take enough Valium so I could pass out in the airport and they wouldn’t send me back on the plane. So that’s what I did. By the time the police came to get me the plane was leaving. I just lay on the floor. They lifted me up like a sack of potatoes and put me right on the floor of the entrance to the plane. The stewardesses came over and they were blabbering away in their African French. The stewardesses decided they couldn’t take me in that condition, so they had to lift me up again. They threw me in this jail for undesirables. I was there one night and some guy tried to rape me in the middle of the night.

TALLEY: And what did you do?

JONES: I spat up all over myself is what I did. I went into convulsions. Finally I woke up crying. Good trick, crying. You cry and you get anything you want. Finally, it all came out who I was and they were asking me to marry them in the end. I went through a whole night of hell. They wanted some money. They were a little jealous. The next day the bosses changed and the new boss was nice. He snuck me out to the airfield.

WARHOL: How long ago was this?

JONES: That was in 1972. Yves got really pissed, saying, “Who does she think she is, cancelling on Yves Saint Laurent,” but I said, “I’ll never get another opportunity to go to Africa.” I swear I should have never gone to Africa. I should have stayed right in my house in Paris.

TALLEY: Grace, what qualities do you seek in a man?

JONES: I like sensitive men. They have to be able to understand themselves.

TALLEY: Real men also show weakness, they can cry.

JONES: Crying is not a weakness. It’s something that should be able to work for you. It should also be a strength. I think if you can cry when you feel like crying it’s a strength. If you feel like crying and you can’t cry, that’s a weakness. That means you’re holding all that stuff inside. It’s a physical thing. You make yourself sick if you can’t have that release. I think its great if a man can cry. I cry all the time when I sing “La Vie en Rose.” I always cry. Paris and all of that, all my French lovers.

TALLEY: Don’t you think that Paris is the greatest place to begin a career?

JONES: It’s wonderful.

TALLEY: There’s no sky like the Paris sky.

JONES: It has all the romance. Everywhere you look it’s a picture. It’s so inspiring. You put a lot more effort into what you’re doing. It’s definitely an incredible culture there for stimulation of one’s art.

WARHOL: How do you fight off all the groupies?

JONES: They follow me all over the place. They follow me on tours. I don’t know where they get the money. They’ll be at every town, the same people throughout the whole tour. This one clone from Jamaica was following me everywhere and so I told him to wait and I’d invite him in for a drink. But then he wanted to feed me. Finally, I had the club guy come in and say we had some business to do. Otherwise it’s like I adopted a son. They write, call, send paintings. It’s amazing how many paintings are done. There was a student that does architecture that wanted me to come to his graduation. He was doing his thesis on me.

THIS ARTICLE INITIALLY APPEARED IN THE OCTOBER 1984 ISSUE OF INTERVIEW.

[muertawrites]

Two Halves - Chapter Eighteen (Zuko x Reader)

Chapter 17

Word Count: 2,200

Author’s Note: Shit’s hitting the fan y’all - not just in Two Halves but in everything else as well. I’m formatting this and ignoring all the impending doom swirling around me by drowning it out with Disney move soundtracks. 

You wake before Zuko the next morning, which isn't hard considering you barely slept. Toph arrives under the cover of early dawn, the sky just becoming gray as her ship lands on the palace grounds; you meet her without your husband, as you never got the chance to tell him she was coming the night previous. 

“You didn't have to rush out here,” you tell her, clutching her hands in an anxious vice. “It's not safe.” 

“When have I ever cared if anything was safe?” she scoffs. “Sparky clearly needs help protecting you.” 

The words are delivered with sarcastic wit, but her fingers shake in your palm. 

You decide you won't tell her about Qiang’s threat - you don't want to give him reason to hurt anyone else. Instead, you tell her that the palace is under constant, heavy surveillance, and that you're still unsure who exactly is conducting the strange occurrences that have plagued you or what their motives are. Not exactly a lie, but enough that you feel she won't be put in any more danger. 

“Do you think you can even trust your guards?” Toph wonders, her arm clenched tightly to your elbow. 

“Suki vetted every one of them herself,” you tell her. “But… we still don't know.” 

As you walk with her through the palace, nothing feels secure - the servants that pass you all seem suspicious, the guards and metal benders that flank you all looking like strangers through the gaze of your fear. Anyone could be working under Qiang; the thought of being so unsafe in your own home, even with the people you trust most beside you, makes you ill to the point you feel dizzy. 

“Zuko should be up,” you blurt. “Why don't you spar with him before breakfast? I’ll meet you.” 

Toph’s brow furrows with unease, her grip on your bicep becoming tighter. 

“Are you okay?” she asks. 

You nod, but don't bother to put on a brave face. 

“I just feel a little tired,” you reply. “I didn't sleep very well last night.” 

Again, not a lie. 

Toph considers this for a moment, no doubt gauging your pulse, then concedes, letting you go with a firm, nervous squeeze. 

“Okay,” she says. “We’ll stay close.” 

When you see that she goes without incident, you sweep through the corridor, hastily making your way back to your own, personal bedroom, and locking the door behind you. For a moment, you stand staring at the threshold, considering pushing your vanity or wardrobe in front of it to barricade yourself in. 

Your vanity. Your wardrobe. 

It sinks in that you haven't been alone in this room since you returned from Ember Island; you moved your belongings into Zuko’s room, opting to sleep next to him and making plans to convert the room back into a sunroom. You pace the floor slowly, inspecting the bed and its thin, billowing canopy, the windows and their gorgeous views beyond lightly veiled curtains; had you stayed in this room, they'd have been switched out for heavier ones in anticipation of winter, but they remain, letting in cool air that chills the dormant space. Dust has gathered on the deep, glossy wood of your vanity, your fingers leaving streaks in their wake as they run along its edge. You pull the single drawer open as if by instinct, something catching in your chest as its only remaining contents slide out from the shadows. 

A single pai sho tile - the lotus. 

On its side, so minuscule you can barely make it out, is a series of addresses; you discovered the markings one night while nervously toying with the gift from Iroh, finding various locations around the world listed on the piece after inspecting it under a magnifying glass. You told no one of this, not even Zuko, knowing deep down that it was something Iroh meant only for you. Your fingers trace over the address in the Imperial City - a pub by the name of Ichigo’s. 

Without a second thought, you dash to the trunk at the foot of your bed and pull a cloak from its depths - the one you and Zuko used to navigate the city unnoticed during your wedding celebrations. You strip out of your ceremonial robes, folding them neatly in the space where the cloak was and replacing them with your traveling clothes. You thank the spirits for the cold weather as you pull the cloak tightly around yourself, making sure it obscures your face before leaving the room once more. 

In the corner of your bedroom, there's a hatch; it's hidden under a false floorboard, beneath a thick rug, and leads to tunnels that wind in a labyrinth below the palace. Zuko explained that they've been there for hundreds of years, known to very few select people within the palace walls as an escape for the royal family should the need ever arise. 

“It's how we hid when Aang invaded the Fire Nation,” he told you. “It's where I confronted my father and left.” 

You raise the hatch from its disguise, slipping into the hole it forms in the floor with a single candle, the lotus tile, and the knife with which Qiang intends for you to kill your husband. In a matter of seconds, the board and rug fall back into place, and you slip from the palace in the dark, the entire world above unknown to your disappearance. 

The streets of the Imperial City are unfamiliar to you, but you make an effort to walk with sure steps. Your face is well hidden under your cloak, shadowed by the gray gloom of a silver sky, but it isn't as if anyone is curious enough to slow and peer beneath it; the air is brisk, and people rush past you in a haste to get where they need to go, back into warmth. 

Ichigo’s is on the fringes of the city, resting on a small hill beside the docks amongst a cluster of other businesses; together, they form a small alley and marketplace, its shops and stalls either shuttered or lit with hanging burners to fight off the winter cold. As you approach the bar, climbing over a set of wood steps that creak and shift under your weight, rain begins to fall. 

The inside of the bar proves much more welcoming than its surly exterior. In one corner, a fireplace burns with a wide, open hearth, a set of thick logs crackling cheerfully within. The paneled walls are decorated in an array of tapestries and promotional posters for other local businesses, and the tables that span the room are cozy and intimate, seated with cushions and placed atop tatami mats that buffer the rough wood floors. The bar itself is also quite quaint; only a few feet long and hosting about four seats, its shelves of liquor bordered by a twinkling string of lanterns and a small, handwritten message board announcing the day’s kitchen specials. What catches your eye, however, is the cluster of pai sho tables against one wall, the one farthest occupied by an elderly man in a white robe; you approach him tentatively, taking the seat opposite him and bowing respectfully under the guise of your hood. 

“Are you interested in a game?” the man asks. His voice is kindly, his mouth spreading into a grandfatherly smile as he speaks. “I don’t often find strangers willing to play against me.” 

“A game would be nice,” you reply, unsure what exactly you’re doing but knowing this man must be the reason Iroh sent you here. “Do you mind if I play with my own lotus tile?” 

“Not at all,” the man accommodates. “I too have my own set of tiles.” 

You reach into the pocket of your cloak, placing your lotus amongst the tiles set up on the game board; the man observes you carefully, leaning in to get a better look at the piece you’ve brought with you. 

“Do you mind if I see that for a moment?” he asks. “The craftsmanship is exquisite.” 

You nod, allowing him to take the piece. He turns it over in his fingers, running the pad of his thumb over the intricately carved design and holding it up to his face, inspecting it with great discretion. A nervous flicker tickles your stomach as he traces over the sides of the tile, no doubt finding the inscriptions on its surface. 

“You’ve been sent by a friend of mine,” the man finally states. 

“I believe so,” you respond. “I’m in need of some help.” 

“Then you’re in the right place,” the man says with a grin. He stands, handing the lotus tile back to you and ushering you to follow him. “Come with me. There’s another friend I’d like you to meet.” 

Wary, you follow him to the side of the bar, where he lifts a heavy curtain and slips into a back room. You clutch the knife in your pocket tightly, discreetly, hoping you haven’t just made a grave mistake and gotten yourself in more danger. He takes you through the bar’s storage room, moving aside a tower of boxes to reveal a small door, held in place by a simple, secure latch; he snaps it open, leading you through a low archway that descends into the building's basement. 

On the other side of the short passage, you find a tiny, yet nicely decorated sitting room - curtains hang from the ceiling creating a tentlike atmosphere, parted in places to reveal maps of the four nations hung on the walls. The center of the room is occupied by a large desk upon which many books and scrolls are scattered, and the air is heavy with the smoke of incense. Under the single lantern that lights the space, you spot the familiar face and humble stature of an older woman. 

“Advisor Yong,” you gasp. 

She stands in shock, pacing quickly over to you as you lower the hood of your cloak to reveal your face. She takes your hands in her own, clutching them tightly. 

“My lady,” Yong breathes with as much awe as you addressed her with. “How did you come all this way? Are you alone?” 

“Iroh gave her his tile,” the man who brought you explains. “I assume he sent her for her safety.” 

“There are tunnels under the palace,” you add. “I told the staff I was feeling ill and snuck out. Nobody knows I'm here.”

Yong guides you to the table, sitting you down beside her and telling the man to fetch you a cup of tea. The time-wisened lines in her skin seem deeper than usual, creased by a frown that distorts her whole face.

“They'll be discovering that you're gone soon,” she says, “so we must make this quick. Has Iroh told you about his membership with the Order before?” 

You shake your head, furrowing your brow in confusion. 

“The Order of the White Lotus,” Yong elaborates, “is an ancient society that operates beyond political bounds. We come together to share ancient philosophy and knowledge, but since the war… we act as a sort of lifeline organization as well. Emergency aid for those who need it.” 

“Iroh gave me that lotus tile when he was here for the wedding,” you tell her. “He must have known something I didn't because we’re in much more danger than we thought - Qiang threatened me. He wants me to kill Zuko.” 

“Qiang…” Yong mutters. “He can't be the one behind this. He doesn't have the manipulative tact to convince so many groups to act according to his will.” 

“He made it seem as if they were huge,” you continue. “He told me they had informants all over the palace.” 

“He's a good liar,” Yong dismisses, though her expression remains concerned. “Intimidating, too; that's why he was the one to threaten you. But he isn't the leader. What did he tell you? When he gave you the order?” 

“He said they'd kill my family. I don't want to lose anyone, but Katara and Aang…” 

Yong nods. 

“Aang is too important,” she finishes for you. “His death would devastate the world and put countless lives in danger. I promise, we won't let any harm come to them or anyone else.” 

She stands once more, offering a hand with which she raises you up. She continues to clutch it, gripping you as if letting go means surrendering you to the enemy. 

“I’ll call a meeting of our members within the city,” she states. “We have a few members staffed at the palace who we’ll ensure are at your guard. I’ll alert internal security and have them investigate Qiang immediately.” 

The man returns, and Yong instructs him to leave the tea and accompany you back to the palace - as far as he can without compromising the security of the tunnels. 

“Advisor Yong,” you say as you're ushered again through the passage and out the back of the pub, “we only have a week. Is that… do we have enough time?” 

Yong’s eyes sweep your face, her pupils flitting back and forth as she tries to find the right words to say.

“I won't lie to you,” she finally answers. “I don't know. All I can promise you is that we’ll do our best. We reconquered Ba Sing Se with much lesser numbers than we have now - here's hoping those odds are still in our favor.” 

📚 table of contents 📚

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[websitedevelpmnt]

How to Choose a Web Development Company

The challenge of selecting the proper organization to broaden your internet site is as essential as any you’ll make towards the destiny of your enterprise, proper up there with logo, management crew, and style of techno to apply in your preserve music. No organization is a success these days with a lackluster internet site, and locating the proper improvement crew to fulfill then exceed all of your desires has a superb effect for your typical backside line.

There are some of key elements to don't forget while attempting to find the proper net developer, a lot of which regularly pass forgotten via way of means of even the maximum knowledgeable enterprise owner. From technical talent and coding prowess to beyond enjoy and verified fulfillment, no issue must be taken too lightly. Here are 10 regions to preserve in thoughts at some point of your seek to make sure you come to be with the proper crew and the brightest destiny in your enterprise.

Coding geniuses

Coding is the middle talent and language on the coronary heart of the entirety to do with web sites. Your developer must have a hyper-fluent information of coding and be capable of construct your webweb page from the floor up efficaciously and accurately. Your clients wouldn’t accept some thing much less than an enterprise expert. Neither must you. Any dream you've got got in your webweb page may be performed via way of means of the proper developer with an automated hold close of all code. Seriously, they must be waking up at night time screaming semantics into the ether. It shouldn’t be their 2d language, it must be language 1B.

Proven music record

There’s a cause Clooney in no way has to audition. Past fulfillment is a positive indicator of whether or not or now no longer a developer could be capable of nicely meet all of the needs of your webweb page. Take a examine their improvement portfolio or request to peer samples in their beyond paintings. An organization happy with its expertise could be satisfied to oblige. If they’ve correctly crafted useful and modern web sites withinside the beyond, there’s an amazing risk they’ll do an amazing task on yours, too. This additionally indicates they have got enjoy participating with customers and speaking at some point of the procedure to attain the high-satisfactory feasible stop result.

Responsive support

The proper developer will function a collaborative accomplice thru each step of the webweb page-constructing procedure. It’s essential they pay attention and apprehend the dreams of your enterprise and the way the ones can high-satisfactory be met thru a useful and exquisite internet site. There will probable be troubles that stand up each at some point of and after the introduction of your webweb page, so it’s additionally essential they’re capable of roll with the ones punches and deal with any issues in a pleasant and cooperative manner. Think of them because the Robin in your Batman, minus the spandex.

Integration experts

The capacity to combine all of your 0.33 celebration structures into your new  web page isn't only a perk – it’s a important element to search for in a developer. Whether it’s Salesforce, MailChimp, or some thing greater enterprise-specific, the proper crew could be capable of make sure seamless integration throughout all platforms. Your new webweb page must be constructed round your current structures, now no longer the alternative manner round. We’d in no way tear down the Eiffel Tower simply to plant a few grass in its shadow. In a few instances your 0.33 celebration structures may also want an improve to align with enterprise standards, and the proper developer could be capable of understand that.

An astonishing improvement crew could have sure privileges others don’t, normally received thru long-status fulfillment within side the enterprise and a pleasant frame of paintings (and now and again magic). For example, if you’re constructing an ecommerce internet site, you’re going to choose the organization that boasts more than one Certified Magento Developers over the only that has a part-time developer who dabbles in ecommerce. Partnerships or certifications from organizations like Google, Adobe, Rackspace, and Amazon Web Services provide organizations a leg up at the opposition and a greater superior variety of capabilities. Think Swiss Army Knife vs. butter knife. These partnerships are key to don't forget while seeking out a developer, because it additionally presentations a relevance withinside the enterprise and precedence from a number of the largest names at the net.

Ability to paintings with designers

We understand improvement is essential, and so is layout. The must intertwine and paintings along each other to create the high-satisfactory feasible enjoy each time every person visits your webweb page. Some organizations provide each improvement and layout services, which shows fluid verbal exchange and collaboration as they paintings with you to construct your internet site. This guarantees the entirety appears and features the manner you need and that there aren't anyt any delays in both introduction and ongoing maintenance. They must be capable of bake the cake, enhance it, and restore it while it flies off the flatbed.

Variety of revel in

It allows to understand your developer has revel in constructing webweb sites for a extensive kind of industries and audiences. Can they deal with the whole thing from marshmallows to machetes? If so, there’s a very good risk your web website development online could be no problem. Agencies with revel in in each B2B and B2C web sites are certain to have a corporation grip on tailoring the code and layout in your needs. It additionally suggests revel in excelling in loads of circumstances, irrespective of the customer or intention of the internet site. You is probably tempted to select the developer who simplest builds web sites for dentists, however that’s in the end going to bring about you getting a one-size-fits-all internet site that doesn’t come up with the capability you truly need.

They care as an awful lot approximately the backend as they do the frontend

A a success internet site doesn’t simply appearance first rate, it additionally capabilities seamlessly to your clients and to your team. It ought to be simply as clean to your clients to locate what they want or make a buy as it's miles that allows you to replace content material or layout. A exact developer will make the backend so user-pleasant that you’ll surprise what you used to do at paintings all day.

Keeping up with the enterprise

The internet site enterprise adjustments rapidly, and the developer you select ought to be capable of develop proper along that trend. This will hold your enterprise working alongside the slicing fringe of your respective enterprise and take away any threat of turning into obsolete (gasp). Look for a person continually making use of progressive and new thoughts into their paintings and seeking to push the envelope of net improvement. These corporations will regularly have a number of the formerly noted enterprise privileges and an stock of a success and sundry clients. An bold spirit is an indication of a wholesome agency, and they’ll make a dependancy of making use of that equal mentality in your internet site.

They’re now no longer dust reasonably-priced

Effective net improvement isn't reasonably-priced. It charges cash to attain a internet site that appears exact, operates well, and converts traffic into earnings to your brand. You can’t take shortcuts on your improvement or you’ll become regretting it down the road. What if Airbnb or Netflix had skimped on their net budget? We’d all be dozing in hammocks and looking Baby Geniuses 2 on VHS. You get what you pay for on this respect, and also you need a first rate internet site. Hiring a reasonably-priced net developer constantly ends with hiring a totally high-priced net developer to position out all of the raging fires.

[boltontechnical-blog]

Top 3 cell c signal booster

Cell C has been South Africa’s fastest growing mobile operator for many years and managed to grow it’s mobile subscribers from 9 million in 2012 to over 20 million in July 2015. Cell C offers competitive pricing on their data and voice products and have launched some innovative product offerings in recent years such as on-demand video streaming services for movies, series and other content. Cell C relies partly on roaming on MTN’s cellular infrastructure, which has helped increase their national coverage footprint significantly, however they are still hard hit by recent cell tower battery theft and vandalism on their own and their roaming partner’s networks.

Many consumers struggle with weak Cell C signal, and some claim to have no signal even though they are located within a coverage area on the coverage map. Others lie on fringe areas of these coverage zones and struggle with spotty and weak signal.

If you’re reading this article, and searching for a way to boost your weak Cell C signal, we have the answer you have been looking for.

Introducing our complete list or signal boosters for your needs:

Home & Small Office

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Vehicle Solutions- Car, Caravan and Boats

The Challenge:

First, let’s explain why you’re getting weak signal and dropped calls. Cellular phone signals are radio waves that travel great distances but are easily interrupted by almost anything you can think of:

Distance from a cell tower

Too many users serviced by same cell tower

Outside Typography: Trees, koppies, mountains, valleys, and tall structures like buildings and dense urban population.

Building material: Metal, glass, concrete, brick, and other conductive material (electrical or magnetic).

Internal building obstructions: Thick walls, other electrical devices, clutter, etc.

Bad weather.

By the time the cellphone signal reaches your cell phone, it’s weak and spotty leading to limited coverage and bad reception. You’ll raise your phone in the air hoping the antenna will pick up something, hanging on to that one bar of signal if you’re lucky.

Everything changes with a Cell C Signal Booster.

A Cell C Signal Boosters takes the existing weak signal, and amplifies it up to 32X, and then re-broadcasts the enhanced signal to an area in need in your home or car.

Cell C Signal Booster Highlights:

ICASA Approved. Complete easy to install kits.

Better coverage: no need to stand in a particular spot or do ballet moves to get workable signal.

Reliable reception: no more dropped calls, repeating a conversation, or robotic-sounding voices

Consistent internet with faster upload and download speeds.

Works on all smartphones & cellular devices.

No monthly fees — once off purchase. No need to connect to wifi or internet.

Works for all Cell C voice and text services. Also boosts signal for MTN, Vodacom, Telkom, and Rain.

For homes, whether you’re in a remote area with an self-sustainable farmhouse or the big city with difficult-to-penetrate-signal buildings, our recommended cell phone amplifiers will get the job done. They’ll extend your Cell C network signal up to 1000m2 depending on your outside signal and amplifier.

Cell C Enterprise signal booster solutions cover up to 30 000m2 buildings, although it takes a dedicated team of installers and planners to get the absolute best service.

Why let bad cell signal frustrate you? Bring the cell tower inside your home! Below are our top recommendations for Cell C signal boosters.

Cell C Cell Phone Signal Booster For Home

OUR PICK — A500 Signal Booster Kit

https://www.boltontechnical.co.za/products/wilsonpro-a500

A500 Product Highlights

Entire home coverage: Improves 3G and 4G coverage up to 500m2 (typical home size).

Most popular home booster: Trusted by hundreds of people across South Africa.

High-powered range: Up to +70 dB gain for 32X stronger signal.

Our Review:

WilsonPro A500 has been the most recommended home signal booster for many years for good reason. It’s a dependable performer that covers most homes for better signal.

The average south african home size is around 250m2. Under absolute best conditions, the WilsonPro A500 covers up to 500m2 if you have great outside signal and an open-spaced home layout.

Tried-and-tested results and customer reviews put it at 300m2–450m2 and a little less for remote areas, or in extreme poor signal conditions.

The A500 is a great option for most homes, small offices, farmhouses, and buildings under 500m2. If you’re getting some spotty reception, we’d recommend to start with this signal booster since this tends to be the Goldilocks or “just right” model.

https://www.boltontechnical.co.za/

FREE delivery, minimum order R500

30 Day money-back guarantee.

Lifetime support.

Cell C Cell Phone Signal Booster For Offices and Large Buildings

OUR PICK — A1000 Signal Booster Kit

https://www.boltontechnical.co.za/products/wilsonpro-a1000

A1000 Product Highlights:

Whole House or Office coverage: Improves 3G and 4G coverage up to 1000m2 (large buildings).

For Large Building Coverage: Trusted by hundreds of people across South Africa

High-powered range: Up to +74 dB gain for 32X stronger signal.

Our Review:

The Wilson Pro A1000 (50 Ohm) from Wilson Electronics is the most powerful commercial cell phone signal boosters we currently offer. It features automatic gain control with a self-optimising design for easy installation & maintenance.

Best-case scenarios can expect coverage up to 1000m2. More likely results can at least expect 750–900m2 even with below-average outside signal. Again, fringe zones can expect a little less.

If you have an extremely poor signal (remote area) or need wide coverage for a building 1000m2+ over a warehouse or large area, the WilsonPro A1000 is your best bet.

https://www.boltontechnical.co.za/

FREE delivery, minimum order R500

30 Day money-back guarantee.

Lifetime support.

Cell C Cell Phone Signal Booster For Vehicles and Small Rooms/Areas *Launches End October 2019

Our Pick Drive AM 100-Pro

https://www.boltontechnical.co.za/products/weboost-drive-am100-pro

AM100-Pro Highlights:

High-powered range: Up to +50 dB gain for 32X stronger signal.

Multi-user: Boosts signal for multiple users in a vehicle — up to 4 handsets.

Dual-Solution: Can be used in a vehicle and doubles up as a small room solution.

Our Review:

The Drive AM100-Pro is a “dual-solution” unit that work for vehicles and in single-room situations. The product is currently under going ICASA regulatory testing and will be available by end of October 2019.

This will be the first wide-band vehicle unit in the South African market, meaning it will boost 3G and 4G LTE signals for all cellular phones and all networks.This easy to install device is perfect for cars, bakkies, trucks, caravans and boats.

For the Single Room Solution: Depending on the outside signal, you will get 1 room coverage under best conditions. But you’re not here because of best conditions, so it’s more realistic to say small office to single room coverage (about 100m2 to 125m2).

This unit is a great option for single-office, home office and small areas such as cottages or apartments. A good starter kit if you have decent outside signal however doesn’t provide whole home coverage, and is not a strong performer in remote areas with extremely poor signal.

Visit the product page and join the pre-order mailing list to get notified as soon as the product launches.

https://www.boltontechnical.co.za/

FREE delivery, minimum order R500

30 Day money-back guarantee.

Lifetime support.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Is a Cell C Signal Booster the same thing as a Cell C Microcell?

No. They’re completely different products.

A Cell C Microcell needs to be connected to a broadband landline internet to work. In short, it acts as a personal cell tower by converting your broadband landline to cell signals and vice versa.

A Cell C signal booster takes your pre-existing weak cell signal and amplifies that 3G & 4G LTE siganl in your home, office, or car. Think of it as a megaphone, it enhances the signal for your phone to pick up.

Which is better? Cell C Signal Booster or Cell C Microcell?

A Cell C signal booster and here’s why.

Cell C now suggests users connect to WiFi calling instead of installing Microcells.

If you already have broadband landline internet from Cell C, Mweb, Afrihost or any internet provider, we recommend going with WiFi calling.

A Cell C Microcell is additional equipment you don’t need since WiFi calling does the same thing and it’s free.

But if you don’t have a landline internet service provider nor have access to it–especially remote areas, then a Cell C booster is the best choice since it doesn’t require any type of internet or WiFi service to work.

It simply reaches further to the nearest cell tower, bypasses multiple interference, and brings a stronger signal to your phone.

Will a Cell C Signal Booster also improve my Cell C hot spot device?

Absolutely.

Cell C mobile hot spot routers use 3G & 4G LTE signals, and that’s what signal boosters do: enhance 3G & 4G LTE signal!

From any Wireless Internet router, it’ll get better signal and speeds, especially if the Cell C 4G router has an external antenna port that can directly connect to the Cell C signal booster.

Will a Cell C Signal Booster work with my Cell C phone?

Yes, yes, and yes.

Whether it’s an iPhone, Samsung, LG, or any phone, if it’s working on the Cell C network, then a signal booster will also improve reception to your phone.

What if I switch mobile operators in the future?

Our Cell C signal boosters from Wilson Electronics (weBoost & WilsonPro) are multi-network systems. This means they are also compatible with MTN, Telkom, and other major and local networks. They are future-proof!

What about Cell C 5G service?

The rollout process for 5G in South Africa is expected to take another 2–3 years. South African mobile operators are waiting on the communications regulator (ICASA) to license the required spectrum.

The Minister of Communications has asked ICASA to investigate and report on the required spectrum for 5G. This report is due to be released end of May 2020, whereafter a separate policy direction on the 5G candidate bands will be issued.

Will 5G make my Cell C signal booster obsolete?

Nope.

4G LTE is still being built out across South Africa. In fact, 4G LTE is the backbone of the nation’s wireless service. It’s not going anywhere anytime soon, AND it’s getting faster.

4G LTE is expected to peak in 2030–2035. So…come back in a decade and ask the same question and we might have a different answer by then.

Who are you and how can you help me?

Bolton Technical is a leading provider of cell phone signal boosters, devices that amplify 4G & 3G LTE for any phone with any network for home, office, or car.

We’ve boosted over 1,000,000 sq meter of signal for homes, buildings, and vehicles across South Africa and the US.

Free consultation (ask us anything) with our SA-based customer support. Email: (sales@boltontechnical.co.za). Phone: +27 11 749 3085

Free delivery for orders over R500 to main centers.

30-day money-back guarantee. We want to make sure you’re satisfied.

Our goal is simple: keep people connected. Ask us anything and we’ll be glad to help.

[invincible-heaven]

How to get Cannon of Haima & Gavel of Haima - Converted Fringe Tower

[alicescripts]

Live show: Los Angeles, California

On October 30, we are releasing the Alice Isn’t Dead novel, a complete reimagining of the story from the ground up. It is a standalone thriller novel for anyone looking for a scary page-turner, whether they’ve heard this podcast or not. Available for preorder now. And preordering helps authors out tremendously, so please consider it. Thanks so much!

Hi, this is Joseph Fink. What you’re about to hear is the live Alice Isn’t Dead performance at the Largo in Los Angeles on April 5, 2018. This live episode was not any material from the podcast, but instead was a standalone show focused on the weird and interesting sites and places of LA. It was an incredible night, and thank you to those who came out to see it. Enjoy the show.

--

Oh. I’m sorry, I uh, I didn’t expect um, I-I didn’t know that anybody would be listening. [clears throat] OK. Um, when you tell a story, you should expect an audience but sometimes I don’t think about that. I just tell the story the same way I breathe, just move life in an out of my body.  I suppose you could listen if you want.

My name is Keisha. I’m a truck driver. It’s weird isn’t it the-the way say our jobs as though they were an identity rather than a thing we do for money. I mean do you think that outside of capitalism we’d confuse our self image with what pays the bills? [chuckles] Sorry. I-I got away from myself. Story not polemic, right.

I became a truck driver because, well, that-that’s a long one. I thought my wife alice was dead. But she isn’t dead. And she’s out there somewhere on the highways and back roads, and I’m trying to find her. Just driving my truck around and around looking for her. That’s who I am really. I am the one that looks for Alice. And Alice is the one who isn’t dead, but isn’t here.

I was in Los Angeles. All downtowns are the same downtown, they are landscapes built for the facilitation of money and business without thought to he human experience. And we are tiny to these monuments and that we are allowed to pass among them is a privilege, not a right. Still each downtown bears some mark of its city. The LA downtown, despite surface similarities, could not be mistaken for New York or Chicago, it’s too eclectic. It’s too strange in its architecture. LA is, is much more than movies but – movies infuse everything because movies are the only history the city will acknowledge. The history of the indigenous people, the history of the Latino people, these are set aside. The city looked at all the people that had already come and thought, ah! A blank slate! And so they did not draw from the Gabrielino or the Chumash or even the Spanish in their missions, they drew from the movies. From the foundational idea that LA could and should be anywhere in the world. So the style of LA is every style, each house and each neighborhood built in wildly different ways. It’s art deco and Spanish stucco and mid-century modern.

In Brand Park, out in Glendale, there’s this enormous house turned public library that is less actual Middle Eastern and more movie Middle Eastern, built by the wealthy white man whose garden that park once was. There’s nowhere in LA that feels stylistically of one piece, and it is that incoherence that provides the coherence of the city.

You see, I’ve come to town on your word, Alice. Only it wasn’t your word direct of course just – whispers through a network of safe houses and gatekeepers, those living on the fringe of society who can be trusted with the kinds of messages we send back and forth. But who knows how the messages mutate mouth to mouth? But still, even through this mutilation of intent, I can hear your voice, like a heartbeat, your skin and bone.

It’s Tanya in Omaha, a friend of the cause, who reaches out to me on my radio to finally lay your words to rest. There’s a meeting in Los Angeles, you’ve heard. You don’t know the exact nature and purpose of this meeting, no one seems to, but the word is that it’s a meeting of those at the heart of it, the ones that are making the real choices, that shape every decision that we think we freely make. So I’ve come to town to find that meeting. I will find this meeting and then… shit, I don’t know. And then I will decide what to do next.

I’m faced with a mystery that’s so much bigger than myself that it sits like an uneven weight in my chest. I feel off balance, so I take comfort in smaller mysteries, ones that don’t matter at all. In Pico-Robertson, a five minute walk from six different synagogues, and a celebrity chef kosher Mexican restaurant called Mexikosher, is a strange synagogue with no windows. The architecture is unmistakable. Modern LA Jewish has a certain look and this place has it, right down to the arches designed to look like the two tablets of the Commandments. Except this synagogue is several stories tall, and with no visible entrance.

What does it mean to blend in? What-what does it mean to, to disguise, what does it mean to stick out? These are intrinsically Jewish questions. A people that has, throughout over a thousand years of oppression, variously done all three. And this way too the building is very Jewish. Of course it is not a synagogue. It is, in fact, 40 oil wells hidden inside a soundproofed structure designed to look like a synagogue. And it is not the only one, just five minutes down the road is an office building with no doors and no windows, that one is 50 wells.

The machinery of our system is not hidden below us, it is disguised among us. Rocks that are actually utility boxes, trees that are cell towers. That vacant house that we walk by day after day, the one with the opaque windows? Actually a maintenance entrance for the metro.

Which buildings are real and which ones are disguises? It doesn’t matter, I suppose. But that’s what makes me enjoy considering it.

Sylvia’s here too. She’s really come a long way from the teenage runaway I first discovered on the side of a highway. Did you tell her about the secret meeting, Alice? She is both more vulnerable and far braver than either of us, did you send her to this place? [sighs] We reunited on one of the vacant cul-de-sacs near LAX, where neighborhoods that had once been an airport’s buffer zone were now demolished.

“Heya,” Sylvia said, as though we were meeting at the continental breakfast at a hotel, not on a dark empty street after months of not seeing each other. “Hey yourself,” I said. “Why did you come?” She shrugged, performed nonchalance. “Same reason as you, I guess.”

Well then I guess neither of us knew. Because I had no idea why I was there, I didn’t even knew who was meeting in this town, let’s start with that. OK what what organization, what secret brotherhood, what ancient cabal that influences world events is now sitting around the table in some sterile backroom in this sunny, thirsty city?

I could have asked Sylvia what she knew about it, but I didn’t. I felt like I would be following a script you gave to me, Alice, and I am not interested in your dictating my actions. So instead I asked her: “How you been?” And she took a long slow breath that was more answer than words could ever be. “[sighs] I’ve been good,” she said. “You know, trying my best, finding places to sleep, finding a friendly face on the other side of a meal.” She shrugged. “I guess it’s the same struggle for everyone. But those of us who live on the road, everything is amplified, you know?” I do know. Goddammit, I know.

I wasn’t even sure where in the region this meeting might be held. So I drove out east to the desert where the mountains looked like set backdrops, unreal and perfect, taking up half the sky. Palm Springs, the town killed by cheap plane tickets. Why drive two hours from the city for the weekend, when it’s possible to weekend in Honolulu or Costa Rica instead? Then, having died, Palm Springs hung on just long enough for everything dated about it to become vintage cool. Now it’s back, a mid-century modern paradise of steel beams and rock walls and that style of beautiful, but featureless wooden security fence that only exists in Southern California. Old motels not updated since the heyday of the 50’s now are converted to hip resorts with (farmed) table food and upscale tiki bars. The city is an Instagram feed. Which is both snark and compliment, because it is a genuinely beautiful place.

I wondered the town, feeling that there was something worth finding there, but unsure where it would be hidden. I visited Elvis’ Honeymoon Hideaway, a garish airplane of a house with giant wings of a roof looming at the end of a cul-de-sac, providing kitsch to the dwindling population of Elvis enthusiasts.

That house was built on sale for 9 million a few years back and is now reduced to an easy 4, so make those owners an offer and you too could own a house that is listed as a historical site. A place where Elvis had sex a few times. It probably doesn’t have a dishwasher, though, so… Just south of Cathedral City, I saw a sign that looked familiar. It’s this huge neon pink elephant, mouth wide in mid-laugh, splashing herself. A pink elephant carwash. The sign has a twin sister in Seattle, that one is famous. It was weird running into her in the desert too. It was like driving through the suburbs and suddenly finding out that 150 years ago, they also built an Eiffel tower in Pomona.

I stopped the car and I just gawked up at her. It made me so happy. And then, looking down from the sign, the horror came to me. I saw someone walking towards me with a shuffle that I recognized. Like their legs had no muscle or bone but were heavy sacks of meat attached to their body. One dead leg thrust forward after another, and as the man came close, he looked up and I went from dread suspicion to horrible certainty.

He’s one of those creatures that I call Thistle men. Sagging human faces hung limply on skulls that are the wrong shape. Yellow teeth, yellow eyes. They are serial murderers hunting the back roads of our highway systems, and one of them was here.

He made eye contact with me. He laughed, a sound like hanging knives clattering together. And then he was gone. The neon elephant’s face no longer seemed friendly. I mean it, too, seemed to be laughing.

Sylvia and I, we split up for the day. We just watched the traffic and people, looking for suspicious crowds, folks that don’t fit in with the tourists and the beautiful people working as baristas just for now. Of course we don’t know what those suspicious crowds would even look like. Grey men in grey suits going greyly about the tedious business of running the world? Or, like the Thistle men, monsters of hideous aspect?

I reached out to my friend Lynn who works as a dispatcher at my trucking company. She and I became friends soon after I started. She doesn’t take shit, I don’t give shit, we get along that way. “Any unusual moments in Los Angeles?” I said. “Strange shipments, unsual routings, anything?” “You know I can’t tell you that,” she said. “What if I said please?” I said. She snorted into the phone. [chuckles] “In that case, sure,” she said. “I always like you when I’m polite, let me see what I can find.”

Sylvia and I saw nothing of note that day. We ate together at a Korean barbeque place built into the dome of what had once been a restaurant shaped like a hat. “This is nice,” she said towards the end of the dinner. It was, it really was.

You know, a city is defined by its people but it’s haunted by its ruins. There are no cities without vacant lots, the skeletons of buildings, ample evidence of disaster and failure. Our eyes slide past them because they tell a different story about our city than the one we wanna hear. A story in which all of this could slip away in a moment. Even though we know this fact is true, even more for Los Angeles than most cities. This city will some day be shaken to the ground, or burned, or covered over with mud, or drowned by the rising sea or strangled by draught. The question is, as it is for each of us in our personal lives, not if it will die but how.

I like to go and look at these broken places where the refuse of recent history shows. It allows me to look at a region differently, maybe see what I was missing. And if a secret meeting was gonna be hidden here, where but in the cracks? So I peer in. I search.

Above the Pacific Coast highway in the hills of Malibu that are so beautiful when they aren’t falling or burning, is what remains of a house. That house was a mansion built in the 50’s and burned in the 80’s when its location finally caught up to it. There’s now a popular hike that goes right into the ruins, so any walker can go see this place where people lived as recently as 30 years ago. A ruin shouldn’t be so new. A Roman home destroyed by a volcano, well OK you know. A medieval castle, sure. Even an old stone settler’s hut, 100 years old, alright, OK that make sense. But a house that once held a television and a shower? It feels wrong to walk on the foundation, stepping over the bases of walls and around the chimney. It was a home not so long ago, and now it is transformed. Transformation is uncomfortable, and easily mistaken for an ending.

In Griffith Park, I met with Sylvia in the old zoo. All the animal enclosures are still there, and you can sit in them and look at where once caged animals lived, and now wild animals are free to come and go.

Sylvia and I sat in the artificial caves, trying to imagine what the purpose of this secret meeting was. Sure, generally the word was out that it was a meeting of those in control in order to further control us, but specifics were, as they often are, lacking. Sylvia asked me: “Do you feel like this story is too convenient?” And I had no way to respond but nodding. “But we still have to look for it, right?” she said. And I nodded again.

As the sun moved behind the hills, it got very cold. She said, “Yeah”. And I said, “Yeah.” And neither one of us meant it.

Gentrification comes for us all. Let’s leave aside for a moment the many issues of endangered communities and rocketing prices, and consider just two cases of what people will look past to get access to LA property. December 6, 1959, in the hills just below Griffith Park, a doctor lived with his wife in a mansion with an incredible view. The Christmas tree was up for the season, wrapped gifts underneath. At 4:30 in the morning, the doctor got out of bed, retrieved a ball-peen hammer and murdered his wife with it. Then he attacked his daughter, though she survived. And then he took a handful of pills and was dead by the time police arrived.

That house stood empty ever since, still filled with the family’s things: the furniture, the tree, wrapped gifts underneath. A prime house in a prime LA area, but who would live in a house where such horror had happened? For 60 years, no one. Well, the house sold for 2.2 million last year. A view of the city, just above those (-) [0:21:06]. Well at this point, who wouldn’t take some hauntings and a terrible bloody past for that?

Meanwhile the Cecil Hotel in Hollywood, site of an inordinate number of murders and suicides, where the Night Stalker lived in the 80’s while causing terror across the region, where just a few years back, a body floated in the water tank for days before being discovered, is now the boutique Stay on Main. A rebranding for this rebranded city. Even our murders are getting gentrified.

Maybe it’s me. I don’t know, maybe I just don’t like change. Change is often wonderful. But we should definitely think hard about what we are changing into, and what that change might mean. We should just spend a little time thinking about that.

[long break]

Still searching for this meeting. I went up the coast, over the Grade and down toward Axnard, not as cool as Ventura or as rich as Camarillo. Oxnard gets by. As I waited to hear from Lynn, I walked on Silver Strand, just watching the surfers. Many, even now in the winter. Nothing will keep them out of those frigid Alaskan currents. I headed south to Channel Island harbor. It was absolutely peaceful on its shore. The ocean is chattering and restless, the harbor sleeps. It does not stir except to send crumbling waves in the wake of the few boats in and out.

During my walk, I saw a rowboat. Old, practically falling apart. Something about the occupants of the rowboat made me look closer. Stooped figures in awkward postures that looked painful. One of them turned to face me, though the boat was 60 feet offshore, and even at that distance, I could see. Two Thistle men, floating in a rowboat in the (Sound).

“Ooooooooooooooooo,” one of them shouted at me in a gentle high-pitched voice. “Ffffffffffffffffffffffffffff.” There was something that looked a lot like a human arm poking out over the rim of the rowboat.

I returned to my truck. Not everything is my problem.

Worship is a feeling so all-encompassing that it can be easy to misunderstand from outside. Take the worship of Santa Muerte, a Mexican (folk) saint of death, likely a legacy of pre-Colombian devotion, dressed in the clothes of the colonizing religion. The church has spent a long time trying to suppress her worship, but of course the church has never been good at actually suppressing much, and devotion to Santa Muerte has only spread in recent times.

Like many figures of death, she represents healing and well-being. Religion often lies in embracing contradiction. Those on the outside, they see this as a weakness but those on the inside recognize it as strength. The temple of Santa Muerte in Los Angeles is just down on Melrose Avenue, sharing a building, as everything in LA does now, with a weed store. It is a one-room shrine established by a husband and wife, full of life-sized skeletons bearing (-) [0:25:04]. It would be easy as an outsider to default to one’s own associations with skeletons and come to one’s own emotional conclusions, but it is healthier to embrace the contradiction of these symbols of death. That, after all, physically hold us up for as long as we live. To deny Santa Muerte is to deny our own bodies.

Meanwhile on the other end of the spectrum, the Bob Baker Marionette Theater carries a different kind of worship: devotion to a performance style that time has left behind. And the outside of the building is – let’s face it, it’s creepy. Because, like skeletons, puppets have taken on a certain cultural connotation in the wider world. But we should try to see it from the inside, as the earnest expression of performance and joy.

Mm mm. No I can’t. Mm mm, I ju- not with puppets. Skeletons, fine. Loose-skinned monsters from whatever world, well I’ve deal with them, but puppets? Mm mm.

Lynn got back to me. “You didn’t hear this from me,” she said. “That goes without saying,” I said. “No it doesn’t,” she responded, “because I just told you that. Now, there have been some shipments that don’t belong to any company. Or the company info is missing from them, I can’t understand what I’m looking that. They certainly don’t hold up to any scrutiny at all, so I don’t think that they were expecting scrutiny. These things stand out so bad that they might as well be big red arrows pointing at a location in Los Angeles.”

It was late afternoon. Sylvia was asleep in the back of the truck’s cab. I lowered my voice. “Where?” She told me. I looked at Sylvia, knowing she would want me to wake her up, to take her with me. But I didn’t. I let her sleep. I went alone. Better that one of us survive.

I went where Lynn told me: up La Cienega, past a mall and a hospital. I came to the address she gave me. An unassuming place. If it weren’t for the brightly lit shine, I might not have even spotted it from the street. I went through the gates. There was a courtyard there, deserted. The air was still and there was no sound, but the stillness felt temporary, like the pause after an act of violence before anyone can get over their shock and react. I continued through the doors to a dark room. Not the grand hall I might have expected for a meeting like this, but a cozy place. Rows of theater seats. A stage draped in red curtains, from which a speaker stood addressing the crowd. There was music. Was that music? Or was it the shifting and squirming of inhuman bodies? Because there was something inhuman in this place, I could feel it. Not the people in the seats, they seemed completely human. Looking up at the person speaking, following the narrative, and slowly having information dawn on them.

In fact, the people in the seats did not at all seem like the kind of people I would expect at a meeting like this. Were these the powerful, the wicked? Were these the unseen hands ushering us to disaster? Looks can be deceiving. Everything can be deceiving, up to and including the truth, but no. I did not think that these were monsters, I thought they were people like me. People lured to the spot for the same reason I had been, because the story of the meeting had been a very good story. It played exactly into how I had thought the world works. It fed my suspicions and it led me to this place. And I think the same is true for every person in that room. They were there, like I was there, looking for a good story. But why were they led there? Hmm? If the meeting itself was a decoy, then what was the true purpose of this moment?

And that’s when I saw them. Lingering in the shadows at the edges of the crowd. Men with faces that sagged. Flesh that peeled. Yellow teeth, yellow eyes. Thistle men ringed the crowd. (Wools to sheep, parks to bunnies). Hunters. Prey. Did the people in their seats notice? Did they look into the shadows and see the inhuman eyes peering back at them, did they smell the breath of the Thistle men, like mildew, like soil? A smell of rot from deep within, cold lungs, did they hear the occasional laugh coming from a gurgling broken throat? Did they look beside them at seats that were empty and think, wasn’t someone here just moments ago? Or was there? But surely there wasn’t, because where could they have gone? And then the shadows at the edges of the crowd, the people that had once sat in those seats, were led into a place from which they could never return.

I understood. A simple plan: tell an irresistible story. A story that is exactly what all of us fighting Thistle might want to hear. That we were right all along. That the world really is against us in so simple and easy a way that the culprits could all meet in one room. And we would come to hear that story, and then Thistle would take us. Why hunt when instead they could lure?

Standing in the door to that hall of horrors, I saw the faces of the Thistle men as they turned and noticed. One gave a yelp and started to lope towards me and I fled. Where the courtyard had been empty, it was now packed shoulder to shoulder full of men with loose faces and eyes that went yellow at the edges and wet lips hiding sharp teeth. They were waiting for the crowd inside. Hungry creatures preparing to feed on any person that stepped out of that theater. I pushed into and past them, using their momentary surprise to escape, and I ran until my throat was dry and ragged, through that courtyard and out to where the lights of the strip club across the way flashed back and forth, back and forth, and then into my car and then onto the maze of freeways where it is so easy to disappear.

I kept my eye glued on the mirrors, but no one was chasing me. Somewhere behind me, an audience of innocents remained in Thistle’s trap, and I wouldn’t help them. I couldn’t.

Instead, I went back to the truck. Sylvia was still asleep in the cot. I sat in the driver’s seat. I was exhausted. The sun had fully set, and I allowed my eyelids to drift downwards. “Hi,” said Sylvia. She was in the passenger’s seat turned sideways towards me. It was light again. I don’t know how long I’d slept, I know I didn’t dream. There are small mercies in life, I guess. “Did you find out anything?” Sylvia said. I looked in her eyes. She’s so young. It wasn’t right and it wasn’t fair that she was out here like me on this labyrinth of roads and rest stops. But that’s just what it was. For her and for me and for so many others.

And she looked at me with trust. And I looked right back and I said, “I didn’t find anything. I don’t think the meeting is even real. Let’s get out of here.” Sylvia yawned, she stretched, she nodded. “Yeah OK,” she said. “Might as well. Too bad this turned out to be nothin’.” “Too bad,” I said.

So now here I am telling the story from just outside of Ashland, Oregon. Los Angeles is hundreds of miles behind me now. It isn’t far enough.

I love you, Alice. I stayed alive another day. You do the same, OK? OK.

[applause]

Joseph Fink: Thank you to everyone who came out for our Largo show. We will be back in two weeks with chapter 1 of our third and final season. This show would not be possible without our Patreon supporters. Such as the incredible Ethel Morgan, the indomitable Lilith Newman, the victorious Chris Jensen, and the electrifying Melissa (Lumm).

If you would like to join these folks in helping us make this show, please check out patreon.com/aliceisntdead, where you can get rewards like director’s commentary on every episode, live video streams with the cast and crew, bonus episodes, and more.

Thanks for listening, and see you soon.

[emergency-responder]

Signal Boosters for Vehicle

Continuous Coverage!

You’re on the move, and your service should follow. Get strong reception and consistent coverage, no matter where you are.

You get the powerful solutions for fleets and frequenters of the cellular network’s fringe, grab-n-go solutions for easy install, and support 1: for those who call the road home – Lexico can provide solutions for all drivers and passengers, fleets, and RV’ers.

Vehicle signal boosters works for all carriers and devices. Whether you are traveling and pass through a remote area, in the mountain side or at the beach, the signal booster designed to work in the car can help. It provides consistent service so you can stay connected on the go.

✅ Experience more miles of uninterrupted coverage while on the road. These signal boosters are designed to capture the outside signal and rebroadcast it to drivers and passengers.

✅ Quick and easy installation. Simply plug-in the power supply, mounting the exterior antenna, placing the booster in a frequented location and the booster will deliver improved cellular connectivity even further from the nearest cell tower.

✅ Stop drop calls and improve signal performance in the vehicle maximizing the cell service on the road. Read more..

Cellular DAS Design

                          Never-ending work of DAS – How it works?

The first step of Cellular DAS design is to obtain an accurate  and up-to-date blueprint of the building. The second step is to make sure you know all the relevant physical information related to the building and the DAS installation. 

Using the boosters, the signals are transmitted into the building through head-end equipment which converts the RF signals to digital pulse signals. Wireless distribution then disperses the digital signals throughout the building by way of fiber cabling, and are received by remote node locations that convert them back into RF signals and radiate them through multiple, strategically situated antennas for reliable in building wireless coverage.

Wider Signal Coverage

In-building cellular DAS being one of the leading verticals, it is a reliable wireless signal distribution for the business that most people are looking for and it is only high quality wireless communication systems that can deliver an optimal wireless network system. 

At Lexico, we are technology neutral and will work on the solution that makes the most sense for our Clients. There have been many scenarios where Lexico have recommended alternate solutions over DAS such as cell repeater solutions, it all depends on our customers unique needs, the specific market and the requirements of the Wireless Carriers network specifications”. So it is important to find a company that has the knowledge, expertise, and professionalism to handle your In building wireless installation, such as Lexico team. We can design a DAS system for any structures.

WORRY NO MORE!

Enjoy reliable connectivity anytime, anywhere. As the number of mobile users increases, it is most important to have uninterrupted connection to communicate with everyone. Smartphones being the primary device for communication to connect to our loved ones in good and bad times. In critical situations, we want to find it easier to connect with them and to the first response team. Read more..