#everything for the chief of the heritage union

[layton-heritage-posts]

hey can i destroy you is that chill -tf2heritageposts

Oh yeah sure thing buddy go ahead.

[ladyinwriting18]

Traditions (Flip Zimmerman x Reader)

Summary: It might be your first Hanukkah with your boyfriend Flip Zimmerman, but you're determined to make it one you both remember.

Words: 4794 Warnings: PIV, Oral sex (female receiving), Sex on Hanukkah. Sex on the kitchen floor.

When you awaken that winter morning, you find that Flip has already left for work. If you're being honest, you’re glad he’s on the early shift, it gives you more time to prepare. You smile to yourself, excited for the surprises you have planned for tonight… The first night of Hanukkah. You’re sure that Flip doesn’t even realize the date, but it doesn’t matter cause you’re doing all of this for him.

After going undercover to infiltrate the KKK, he’s been more drawn to his heritage, though he hasn’t allowed himself to fully dive in. You know it’s because he feels unworthy… After a lifetime of feeling indifferent about being Jewish, he feels like he’s intruding on something that should have been close to his heart from the start. What right did he have to his Jewish roots when others had sacrificed, bled, and stood proudly for them? But to you, there’s no right or wrong way for one to experience their religion. Just because Flip hadn’t grown up going to temple or having a bar mitzvah didn’t mean he didn’t have a right to the Jewish religion now. That’s why you’d done research at the library and the local temple, reading up and asking a rabbi for advice on properly celebrating Hanukkah. You wanted to give Flip this, wanted him to feel comfortable to explore this part of himself. Especially with you. And perhaps, if tonight went well, it would lead to the two of you celebrating Hanukkah again next year. You had done everything in your power to ensure that nothing would get in the way of that. Starting off with ensuring that Flip wouldn’t get stuck working late. A quick call to the chief informing him that not allowing one of his detectives to observe a religious holiday would probably sound really bad to a union representative had sealed that deal. The chief had claimed to enjoy your “spunk” in calling him behind Flip’s back, but either way, he promised to send “your lover boy” home at a decent time. Now came the fun part…decorating and cooking. You hop out of bed and quickly wash up to prepare for the day before heading downstairs. There’s a lot to get done and you’re a mix of nervous and excited. Excited to see his reaction, but nervous to screw things up. You’ve never cooked these recipes before. What if they turn out horrible? You try to shake off your nerves. They won’t stop you now. You would do your best for him and that was it. The first thing you work on is making the dough for the challah bread since it has to rise multiple times before it can be braided and then baked. At least…that’s what the recipe book said. You say a silent prayer before setting the dough to the side to rise, and then you get to work on a less nerve-wracking task—decorating the house. You hang long white fairy lights along some of the walls, drape blue tinsel over the fireplace mantel, and lay out Hanukkah-themed table runners along the coffee and kitchen tables. But you don’t stop there. Multiple candy bowls filled with chocolate gelt and dreidels are placed around the living room, knowing that Flip has a secret sweet tooth. You still aren’t fully clear on the rules of spinning dreidels but you’re certain the both of you could figure it out. That or just enjoy munching on chocolate. Either way, that isn’t the most important part of tonight. After your conversation with the rabbi, you learned that menorahs are usually passed down through families and generations. Knowing that wasn’t an option, you had searched every antique shop in town until you found something perfect—a beautiful brass menorah with the Star of David under the middle candle. You polish it until it shined and place it in the center of the coffee table with white candles. With the rabbi’s help, you had written out the prayer that is traditionally read while lighting a candle each night. Alongside the prayer is a yarmulke, in case Flip wants to wear it. 

With the decorating done, you head back into the kitchen to start on dinner. Following along with the cookbook you borrowed from the library, you fry potato pancakes, otherwise known as latkes, roast potatoes, prep the brisket for the oven, and braid the challah dough. It isn’t long until the entire downstairs is filled with the most wondrous smells. You’re more excited now, certain that the smells are a good sign that the food will be equally delicious. Knowing you don’t have much longer before Flip gets home, you head upstairs to change. You want to look good but not overly fancy, so you decide on a simple black knee-length skirt with a soft, white cashmere sweater, and black, heeled boots. Pleased with how you look, you head back downstairs to finish everything up. You end up cooking until the very last minute, barely having time to plate all of the food before the sound of Flip’s car turning into the driveway. “Shit!” you curse and hurry to put everything out on the kitchen table along with the good china plates and a bottle of wine. The front door opens and you freeze in your spot, wanting him to find the surprise on his own. You listen to the sounds of him making his way inside, taking off his boots and jacket before setting them aside in the hallway closet. He calls your name… Tells you he’s home… Comments on how amazing dinner smells… Then his breath catches in his throat and all goes silent. Flip stands in the entryway of the living room, taking in the scene before him. The room is basked in a romantic, and yet inviting, glow, from the lights to the menorah and the other decorations. He stands there, jaw slack and too stunned to speak. What a lucky bastard he is. “Sweetheart? Get in ‘ere!” You do as you're told without hesitation, but the minute he sees you, he wraps you in his arms. “Babygirl, did you really do this all for me?” You smile up at him and nod. “Happy Hanukkah!” If you wanted to say more, it’s cut off by his kiss. It’s passionate, fiery, and all the things you love about him. “Wait, Flip! Wait!” you protest against his mouth in between giggles. “I have more to show you!” He chuckles in amusement and releases you from his hold but instead takes your hand. “Alright, alright. I’ll behave.” “Good! Now, come on.” You take him into the kitchen and show him all the food you’ve made. “I followed the Jewish cookbook I got from the library exactly, so hopefully everything tastes good!” Flip cocks a brow in surprise. “They actually make Jewish cookbooks?”

“Uh-huh.” You blush, biting your bottom lip to try and stop the word vomit that’s building in your throat. Maybe you had misread the situation or done something offensive. “When…I spoke to the rabbi, he told me that menorahs are usually passed down from generation to generation, but…I know you didn’t have one.” You swallow hard, trying to gauge his reaction but still, you can’t seem to shut the hell up. “The one on the coffee table is an antique. Now you’ll have one forever, to pass on to your children.” You realize what you said a second too late and internally die a little. “That is…if um…you want to.” But Flip isn’t listening, because suddenly, he’s picturing the future. One where a four-year-old sits on his lap to help him light the next candle on the menorah while you watch with your belly filled with a second child. You squeeze his hand, he still seems to be in shock but you can’t be sure. “Is…Is this all okay? Did I…do alright?” 

It’s the uneasiness in your tone that snaps him from his daydreams. He turns to you, cupping your cheeks in his hands. 

He wants to reassure you, but he finds himself overcome with emotion. “I…don’t even know what to say. How did I get so damn lucky?” He tries to laugh to stop the tears that threaten to prickle his eyes. “Thank you…for doing all of this. Thank you for loving me enough to do all of this.” Your lips find one another again, but this time softer than before. His hands hold your face steady as you lovingly kiss. Your arms wrap around his middle, feeling more and more like melted butter by the second. “I love you, Flip Zimmerman. I just wanted you to feel accepted and safe to start your own traditions here with me.” “I do, Babygirl, I do.” He talks in between kisses as if it’s too painful to stop, “God I love you.” The kisses continue until the sound of his stomach growling pulls you apart. “Uh, Darlin’? Can we eat now? All I had was black coffee and cigarettes for lunch.” “Flip!” you scold and lightly smack his upper arm. He shrinks back, pretending to be wounded and holding his hands up in surrender, but all the while, he laughs. You glare at him with your hands on your hips. As wonderful of a boyfriend as he is, he’s still crap at taking care of himself. “Can you wait a few more minutes? We’re supposed to light the candles before we eat.” His laughter dies down, “Wow…you really weren’t kidding about researching this stuff.” His bewilderment and sincerity touch you, causing your hands to drop from your hips. “I had to make sure everything was perfect for your first Hanukkah.” 

“You’re the one that’s perfect,” he states firmly before interlocking your fingers together. “Let’s go light our very first menorah.” Your heart swells at his words and the two of you walk back into the living room. The two of you sit in front of the coffee table where the menorah is set up. You hand him a yarmulke and a piece of paper with a prayer written on it. “The rabbi said this is the prayer to read while you light the candle.” Flip hesitates, not sure if he feels deserving of the honor. He hadn’t been the one who did all this work, you had. As if you can read his mind, you speak up. “If you aren’t comfortable, then we don’t have to. I know there’s a lot of new information here, but we can take it slow and make our own traditions. Don’t let the fact that I became a little overzealous with my research intimidate you. If you want to try this, then I’m right here with you.” Hearing you mention creating traditions together warms him. He leans forward and places a hand on your cheek. “You did more than I could possibly ask for. And yes…I want to try this. Just…don’t make too much fun of me mispronouncing the words in this prayer.” “I wouldn’t be able to tell if you did.” You chuckle and leave a kiss along the inside of his wrist.  Taking a breath, he places the yarmulke on his head and does his best to recite the prayers. He stumbles over a handful of Hebrew words. It makes him feel self-conscious but you just smile reassuringly, nodding at him to encourage him to continue. With the prayer read and the candle lit, Flip takes your hand in his. You sit in silence together, watching the way the flame dances, causing the light to bounce along the walls. His gaze falls on you, his eyes sparkle with happiness at how peaceful you look basked in the candlelight. “I’m guessing tomorrow night, we light the second candle?” You nod before looking back at him. “Should we go eat now?” His back straightens fully at the mention of food. “I thought you’d never ask. My stomach’s been aching for a taste since I walked through the door.” 

You playfully roll your eyes and stand. “Well then, we better go and get you some food. I can’t let my man go hungry.” You take him into the kitchen and tell him to make himself comfortable while you make him a plate filled with latkes, roasted potatoes, and brisket before making your own plate and sitting down. ‘Now, before we eat, you have to–” You hand him another piece of paper with two other prayers. “Read these. The first prayer is meant to be said before we cut the challah and the second before drinking the wine.” Flip reads both, doing so with a bit more confidence than before. A sense of pride fills him at repeating these words that have been said by countless generations of Jews. “That was wonderful,” you praise and then you both begin to eat. You watch him carefully, wanting to gauge his reaction to tasting the food. “Please be honest if something doesn’t taste good and I’ll practice to get better at it.” But the man sitting across from you is too busy moaning blissfully at the flavors filling his mouth. “Shit, babygirl, you’ve really outdone yourself.” You nearly dance in your seat from happiness. “I’m so glad! I was worried it wouldn’t taste good enough.” Flip extends his hand across the table and squeezes yours. “I’m not sure how I got so lucky in finding you, but I’m going to spend the rest of our lives showing you just how much you mean to me.” Tears prickle at the corners of your eyes, beyond the point of euphoria. “Shhh, come on now, no tears. This is meant to be a happy occasion. Hanukkah is about keeping faith and miracles.” You raise a curious brow and he sheepishly chuckles. “You’re not the only one who’s been secretly reading up on the holiday.” The rest of the meal flows effortlessly, the both of you enjoying the food and one another’s company until he sits back in his chair with a contented sigh. It pleases you that you’ve made him so happy, but you have one more surprise for him. From your skirt pocket, you pull out a small black box and slide it over to his side of the table. “Flip?” The sound of his name catches his attention and he looks back to find the gift box. “Little One? What’s this?” “Open it and find out,” you reply in a sing-song voice that has him chuckling. He opens the box and finds a simple gold chain with the Star of David hanging from it. A small gasp of surprise leaves his full lips. He gapes at you, unsure of what to say. “I know you mentioned that you misplaced your old one while you were undercover because you had to take it on and off so much. I hope you like it.” He doesn’t have the words to express his gratitude as a swell of emotion starts to overcome him, so instead, he kisses you—hard. The kiss steals your breath away. So much so that you’re left dizzy. “Thank you, my love,” he whispers hotly against your mouth before sitting back down. Still dazed, you giggle slightly. “You’re welcome. Let me start cleaning up so we can spend the rest of our night relaxing.” Not waiting for a reply, you stand and carry a stack of dirty dishes to the sink.

Flip watches, slipping the yarmulke from his head and putting his gift around his neck before following you over to the kitchen sink. “Can I do anything to help you clean?” 

You brighten at his offer, thankful for the help. “That would be great!” You hand him a dish towel with a cock of your hip. “I wash, you dry?” He agrees and the two of you get to work. Every once in a while, Flip playfully splashes you with sudsy water, laughing every time you huff in irritation. You’re adorable and he just can’t help himself. With the dishes done, you move on to wrapping up the leftovers and even pack some for his lunch tomorrow. “I’m going to be the envy of every guy in the squad room. They're all going to be wishing they had the chance to taste your cooking.” “I can pack you extra to share!” His hands find your hips, lovingly gripping them in his large hands before pulling you forcefully against him so your ass is pressed to his crotch. “Not a chance, Little One. It’s all mine…and so are you.” Without warning, he spins you around and crashes his mouth onto yours. You aren’t sure what’s got him so worked up, but truthfully? You don’t care. Your arms wrap around his shoulders, pulling him in for more. Which he gladly gives by slipping his tongue into your mouth. A tiny moan leaves you from the sensation. Flip grins at the sound. You want more but he breaks the kiss. “Does my girl want more?” You nod, your pupils blown wide as you search his. “Please, Flip.” Your plea is enough for him, so he drops down to his knees before you. Grabbing your skirt, he bunches it up at your waist, pleased to see the damp spot that’s already started to form at the front of your panties. He runs the tip of his finger over it but avoids your clit. “Seems like you have something else for me to eat.” You whimper, now realizing what he means to do. “Hold your skirt up for me. I need my hands free.” You do as you're told but it feels so taboo to be standing here in the middle of the kitchen, exposing yourself to him. But you don’t have much time to think about it because he starts ripping off your shoes and panties. He looks up at you, looking incredibly smug, which only makes your cunt drip more. The moment you're bare, he pushes his nose to the cleft of your cunt, breathing in deep. His groans, eyelids fluttering as his cock jumps within the confines of his jeans. When he speaks again, his voice is quiet but rough, “You’ve done so much for me today. Now, you deserve to be worshiped.” He brings his hands to your ass, gripping it tight and pulling you close so he can drag his tongue through the folds of your cunt. The flat of his tongue makes you whine, your hand reaches for the counter ledge that’s just behind his head while the other keeps ahold of your skirt. “D-Don’t stop. Feels good. Y-Your tongue feels so good!” You're grinding into his mouth now, chasing more pleasure for yourself. Watching you sends shockwaves down his body. His cock throbs in his dark denim, aching for release. He reaches down to unzip his pants, moaning into your cunt as he frees himself. Precum drips from the tip of his cock down onto the floor. His fingers find their way to your slit, slowly pushing one…and then two fingers inside. You cry out, head tilting back as you moan into the ceiling at being stretched out by his thick digits. The legs holding you up begin to shake, but luckily, his other hand holds you at the base of your spine. You look down at him and catch sight of his hard cock, jutting up from the front of his jeans. “Oh. Oh fuck, Let me take care of you, Flip. Let me take care of your cock.”

But he only growls and picks up the pace of his fingers. He doesn’t want to hear your words, he only wants you to cum. The mixture of his tongue flicking at your clit and his fingers filling you up has you forgetting everything else. Your peak steadily starts to roll through you. “Right there! S-So close! I’m so close!” You can barely finish speaking before you’re cumming. The hand that had been holding your skirt shoots out to take hold of the counter, needing it for balance as your orgasm rocks through you. Your skirt falls over Flip’s head, but he doesn’t stop the movements of his tongue and fingers until your body starts to relax. He moans low in his belly at the taste of you, only removing his fingers and sitting back on his heels so he can check on you. Pushing your skirt off his head, he holds your gaze while fucking his fingers clean. Your cheeks burn with color and Flip chuckles with a grin. You just came all over his face while standing in the kitchen and you still have the decency to blush. You’re just too adorable and perfect. He pushes himself off the floor and grabs your face to claim your mouth again. You cling to his shoulders, body molding against his so you can feel his cock pushing against you. You start unbuttoning his plaid shirt, tugging at it aggressively to get him naked. “Take me? Right now. Right here.” “Naughty girl wants to be fucked on our kitchen floor that badly, huh?” You whine at his teasing but go quiet when you realize he’s guiding you both to the floor. He settles between the apex of your thighs, aligning his cock with your sopping hole. You wiggle against him in anticipation. “So needy for it. Here then—take it.” And with that, he plunges inside, groaning at the way your walls hug him tight. He gives you a moment to adjust, your toes curling at how deep even his first thrust is, but that moment doesn’t last forever, and soon he’s picking up his pace. You cry out and Flip revels in the sound. Gripping your hips, he slams into you until he’s certain he’s hitting your g-spot. Your back arches off the tile floor and you screw your eyes shut against the overwhelming pleasure. Usually Flip took his time to work you up to the point of total abandon. Sometimes even edging you so you’d beg, but not tonight. Tonight, he fucks you hard and fast like it’s the last time he’ll ever have the privilege of watching you cum. Your moans are drowned out by wet skin slapping together. Your cunt is so wet that you’ve managed to drip onto his balls and inner thighs. “Look at me,” he commands, using his authoritative ‘cop voice’. You do so and find his eyes blown black with lust and his face flushed with sweat. The sight takes your breath away. He looks positively feral. “I want to watch you fall apart. Want to see your soul leave your body just so it can come crashing back while you scream my fucking name.” 

Your cunt clenches around him at his words. You love it when he talks like this. Filthy and possessive. His nostrils flare as he huffs hot breath across your skin. How he’s able to keep his stamina up is a mystery, but still, his thrusts are unrelenting. You can’t deny how much you love him laying claim to your body. “Yes! Fuck, Flip, yes!” you continue to moan a string of curses and pleas as you wrap your legs around his waist so you grind into his thrusts. With the change in the position of your legs, he too rearranges himself. He places his palms flat on the floor on either side of your head, completely leaning over you and driving his cock even deeper into your aching cunt. You didn’t think he could fill you up any more, but leave it to Flip Zimmerman to find a way. A pressure builds in your lower belly, tightening and threatening to crack open. However, your gift dangling from around his neck comes very close to hitting you in the face. He immediately notices and makes a move to pull back but you’re faster. Your hand reaches and presses the Star of David to Flip’s chest…directly over his heart. “I love you,” you breathe out, holding eye contact with him. “I want this forever. With you.” You swear he whimpers, emotion softening his features but all the while bucking harder into you.

“I want this too. Every Hanukkah. Every year together with you.”

A smile breaks out across your face and you use the chain around his neck to tug him to your mouth.

You both moan into the kiss, movements becoming sloppy.

He stumbles over your name before telling you how close he is. You echo his words back to him, knowing you’re moments away from being driven over the edge.

But that’s not good enough for Flip when he wants you to crash and burn beneath him. He brings one of his arms between your bodies to find your clit and strokes it just right.

Your body starts to shake.

You leave rational thought behind and all that is left is the primal need flowing through your limbs.

“That’s it. Come on baby, cum for me!”

You wouldn’t have been able to stop yourself even if you had wanted to. Your inner walls close in around him as you cum, holding him in place and hugging him tight.

“Fuckfuckfuckfuck!” he grunts repeatedly until he’s tossing his head back in a howl and filling you with his cum.

You both rock against one another as you come down from your highs. Eventually, Flip slumps down to rest in the crook of your neck. The kitchen falls quiet except for the panting you’re both doing in an attempt to catch your breath.

He recovers before you and lifts his head to kiss your forehead before meeting your gaze. “You alright, sweetheart?”

You respond with a dreamy ‘uh-huh’, earning you a chuckle from the man still on top of you.

Carefully, he detangles himself from your legs and the heat of your cunt so he can lay beside you on the cool tile floor.

“Mind if we lay here for a bit? You wore me the hell out.” He chuckles and extends his arm so you can rest your head on his bicep.

“Wore YOU out? I’m the one who’s lying on the kitchen floor feeling like jelly.” You only mean to tease but his other arm finds its way around your middle.

With a playful growl, he hauls you to him, smashing your back into his chest. His large hand sprawls across your stomach, tickling you. You squirm, giggling, and look over your shoulder to kiss him.

The kiss halts his movements and instead has him humming against your lips. When the kiss is broken, he turns his attention to the junction of your neck. Pleased that he seems too preoccupied to continue tickling you, you finally rest your head on his bicep and close your eyes.

You relax within his embrace, enjoying the feel of his lips and facial hair as he leaves soft kisses along your flesh.

He whispers your name, causing your eyes to flutter open. You look over your shoulder at him again.

“I want to say thank you for everything you did for me tonight. You could have simply said ‘Happy Hanukkah’ to me and I would have been over the moon…but the fact that you did all this just for me blows me away.”

You can feel tears watering up behind your eyes but you hold them in so you can continue listening to what he has to say.

“And I…meant what I said before about wanting to spend every Hanukkah with you. Well…any holiday really. I want to spend them all together and make our own traditions, like you said.”

You can’t hold back for a moment longer. Twisting in his grasp, you turn over so you’re facing him and throw your arms around his shoulders.

“Oh, Flip, nothing would make me happier!”

He wraps his arms around you, hugging you tightly to him, and whispers that he loves you.

Another calm silence falls between you. To an onlooker, the scene would look peaceful if it wasn’t for the fact you were both half naked, lying on the hard kitchen floor.

But the two of you are too content to care about anything other than snuggling.

Time passes, and within the quiet, a devilish question comes to your mind.

“Flip?”

“Hm?” he responds.

“If we’re going to create our own traditions, does this mean you’ll fuck me on the kitchen floor at the end of every Hanukah meal?”

His back straightens as he looks at you in alarm until laughter emanates through his entire frame. “Naughty little slut,” he teases, giving your ass a swift smack.

You squeal and try to wriggle away, but he easily pins you down and tickles you until you’re breathlessly begging for mercy.

Eventually, he relents, but still keeps you pinned down to kiss you one last time. “Happy Hanukkah, babygirl.”

[watching-pictures-move]

Movie Review | The Package (Davis, 1989)

This review contains mild spoilers.

When I'd watched Under Siege and Above the Law, I'd assumed that their politics had come primarily from Steven Seagal. I'd assumed Seagal and director Andrew Davis had been hanging around on set and Seagal had been hinting to Davis that he'd totally, for real, involved in some secret black ops type stuff that he wasn't allowed to talk about but that it was totally a bad thing that these secret black ops guys were allowed to do bad stuff, man. This was in between Seagal hinting that he was totally, for real, involved with the Sicilian mafia and talking up his total, for real, Italian heritage. And Davis would politely nod along, for fear of pissing off the Ponytail, and try to get back to filming. But based on The Package, maybe Davis held some of those politics too, because while this is one of many CIA-related thrillers and action movies made and set during the Cold War, it actually is less than thrilled with the CIA and expresses a healthy skepticism about clandestine operations.

The conspiracy plot here, without revealing too much, is a dark mirror image of thawing U.S.-Soviet relations. If the heads of both governments can come together in the name of peace, so too can the more hawkish elements in their administration to keep the war going. Which means, among other things, that this is the kind of movie where you get actors playing real life historical and political figures. To that end, I will say that the guy playing Gorbachev does bear a resemblance to the real deal, but while I assume the American president was supposed to be George H.W. Bush, the guy playing him looks more like FDR. (Davis would improve in this regard in his next movie Under Siege by getting the man himself.) I think he would have been more convincing as H.W. if he were accompanied by somebody playing Dan Quayle. Maybe he could have given a speech. "This disarmament treaty between the U.S. and the Soviet Union is a lot like a tomatoe." At which point he presumably would have been heckled by the press.

Anyway, this is a pretty entertaining watch, in large part because Davis is really good at handling intricate plots. This is maybe not as relentless as The Fugitive, but there's some nifty juggling of story threads, particularly a Chekhov's gun involving an undercover man that pays off with a literal gun. He also makes great use of locations. This was mostly shot in Chicago (standing in for a few other places). Unlike many other CIA thrillers set in sexy foreign locales, the action here takes place in shitty looking streets during the winter when everything is drab and grey. But you get the sense that this is a living, breathing city that these spies are running around in, so that when action erupts, like an ambush in a crowded bar, it has an added kick.

And of course there's the cast. Gene Hackman might not be anybody's idea of an action hero, and the movie keeps him from doing anything too physically strenuous, but as usual, he imbues this character with a lifetime of experience without doing a lot to spell it out, making what could have been a stock role into a real human being. The look of sheer contempt he gives to his captor when given milk and cookies is priceless. And Joanna Cassidy, who like Hackman imbues some real humanity into a role that could have been a plot device in a lesser movie (the early scenes between them make it clear why they're ex-husband and ex-wife). And you got Tommy Lee Jones as the assassin, having a ball in his dryly humorous way, and a very punchable John Heard as a slimy CIA guy (I assume his rank is chief asshole). And just when you think the movie couldn't get any better, it drops in Dennis Franz in a classic Dennis Franz role as a gruff but principled cop, a cherry on top of this conspiracy thriller sundae.

[mode4nation]

New Delhi: The 12th edition of the North East Festival date 15th to 17th November 2024, is an immersive experience in the culture and flavours of the eight states and 200 communities of the north-east region of India. Whether you're a music dance & fashion lover, a foodie, or simply someone eager to explore different traditions, this annual event should sate you. The event opened on Friday 15th November and will run till Sunday17th November at Major Dhyan Chand National Stadium at India Gate.

The glamour edge — the fashion show — featured collections by 16 talented designers from the Northeast. Models walked the ramp to live music, weaving a narrative that captured the region's colours, tradition and aesthetics. But there was space also for folk artisans. Yoho from Nagaland happily said, "Over the years, I have experienced how this festival helps artisans like me. My woollen handmade products resonate with the winter season in Delhi."

Tara Bhuyan, the visionary Creative Director and Investor of brand TBC, proudly showcased a breathtaking traditional Assamese collection at a recent fashion event. The exquisite showcase featured an array of stunning Mekhla Chaders, elegant Sarees, and other traditional stylist outfits that highlighted the rich cultural heritage of Assam.

According to Madhusudan, the Head Fashion Designer, the collection comprised 17 colorful outfits, each one meticulously designed and crafted to perfection. The talented models who adorned the ramp added an extra layer of glamour and sophistication to the already-stunning outfits.

The event was a massive success, attracting a huge crowd of over 2000 people who were treated to a visual feast of fashion, culture, and beauty. The audience was left mesmerized by the sheer brilliance of the collection, and the event was hailed as one of the most memorable fashion extravaganzas in recent times.

Organised by Socio-Cultural Trust Trend MMS, with the support of the Union ministry of development of the northeastern region, Delhi Police, and various central and state govt departments, the event aims to promote tourism, entrepreneurship and cultural awareness. Shyamkanu Mahanta, chief organiser of the festival, said, "This platform unites diverse traditions and paves the way for opportunities that benefit the entire region." The inaugural event saw addresses by key personalities, including chief guest Pabitra Margherita, Union minister of state for textiles.

At the B2B Tourism Meet, industry leaders convened to discuss opportunities in the Northeast. Padmapani Bora, IRS, secretary of tourism, and managing director, Assam Tourism Development Corporation, said, "The state offers everything from heritage and scenic beauty to fascinating nightlife and shopping experiences. With the International Tourism Mart in Kaziranga later this month, we want to spotlight the Northeast's tourism potential."

Madhusudan

Fashion Designer

[lovelore]

FULLNAME : Georgina Vezesha Brentwood

KOREAN-NAME : Bae Hwa Rim / 배화림

NICKNAME : Vee, Zesha, Gina

DATE OF BIRTH : April 19th, 1999

PLACE OF BIRTH : Manhattan, NYC

NATIONALITY : American / Indonesian / Korean

ZODIAC : Aries

MBTI : ISFP

BLOOD TYPE : A

SEXUALITY : BISEXUAL

HEIGHT : 168 cm

WEIGHT : 46 kg

OCCUPATION : Chief Operating Officer at Brentwood's Industry in Manhattan and Indonesia.

The Brentwood name was synonymous with plastic, a seemingly mundane material transformed into a global enterprise by Anderson Fred Brentwood, or Bae Il-seong as he was known in his Korean homeland. Brentwood Industries, a titan in the industry, stretched its reach across continents, churning out everything from battery casings to medical packaging. Anderson, a Korean American, had woven a life as rich and diverse as the products his company produced. His wife, Arini Djoe Hiang Susanto, an Indonesian with Chinese ancestry, brought a vibrant tapestry of cultures into their union.

Their story began in a whirlwind romance, a chance encounter that sparked a lifelong journey. Their love story unfolded across bustling boardrooms and serene temples, marked by the birth of their first set of twins – Georgina Vezesha Brentwood and Georgia Zinistya Brentwood. Born on April 19th, 1999, amidst the glitz and glamour of Manhattan's Upper East Side, the twins were the embodiment of their parents' unique heritage. However, fate intervened when a medical subsidiary in Korea necessitated Arini and Anderson's presence. Zinistya, barely four, embarked on a new chapter with her parents, leaving Vezesha behind in the embrace of her grandparents. Stayed behind in New York, nurtured by the stories of her heritage whispered by the wind through towering buildings. This separation, though heartbreaking, was the first thread in the complex tapestry of their lives.

A year later, on August 1st, 2004, their family welcomed another daughter – Geodarine Vaellora Brentwood, a ray of sunshine born in the heart of Seoul.

Anderson, his Korean roots deepening with each passing year, bestowed Korean names upon his children. Zinistya became Bae Hyun Rim, Vezesha was Bae Hwa Rim, and Darine, Bae Ro Na.

The Brentwood family became a constant in motion. Zinistya and Darine followed their parents' ambitious strides, crisscrossing the globe as Brentwood Industries expanded its reach. Vezesha, however, remained a constant in New York, growing up under the watchful eyes of her grandparents. Once a month, the family would reunite, a bittersweet time of shared laughter and tearful goodbyes. At the age of 22, the winds of change blew again. Indonesia, Arini's homeland, beckoned. Brentwood Industries, ever the opportunist, saw a new frontier to conquer. Vezesha, having just graduated with honors from Yale University, finally joined her family, the missing piece of the puzzle slotting into place. Darine, a recent graduate from a French high school, seamlessly transitioned into a prestigious Indonesian university, her internship with the family business keeping her close to her roots. For the first time in their lives, Vezesha, Zinistya, and Darine were under the same roof, united in their mother's homeland.

The years of separation, however, had woven a tapestry of distinct personalities. Vezesha, the polished New Yorker, hid a steely resolve beneath her glamorous exterior. Zinistya, the adaptable chameleon, possessed an unwavering loyalty to her family. Darine, the youngest, was a whirlwind of youthful energy, her enthusiasm masking a keen intellect.

As they navigated their new life in Indonesia, their individual experiences would begin to intertwine. Vezesha, with her Ivy League education, would be thrust into the high-stakes world of international business, her polished demeanor masking a yearning for a connection she never quite had with her parents. Zinistya, ever the bridge builder, would find herself caught between the clash of her sisters' contrasting personalities. Darine, the youngest and perhaps the most perceptive, would become the catalyst for change, her youthful spirit reminding them of the love that bound them together.

And so, the three Brentwood sisters, once scattered like stars across continents, found themselves under the same sky once more. Their lives, like interwoven threads, were now poised to create a magnificent tapestry, a story of family, ambition, and the enduring power of love that transcends borders and time itself.

[erynalasse]

Do you suppose 'The Breaking of the World' means anything east beyond Rhun? I must imagine that between the War of Wrath and the Fall of Numenor, the bent of history might well be inverted depending on who experienced what - the War of Wrath destroyed the West, but it freed the East from Morgoth's reach where the elves (presumably) never bothered, with the possible exception of the Avari. And the Fall of Numenor is just straight up the wholesale elimination of the colonial power dominating everything.

I just have this funny image in my head of eastern scholars of Middle Earth being like, 'Cataclysm? Tragedy? Breaking of the world? We became free for the first time in all our history.'

As one does, I immediately had imposter syndrome about my own memory and went to go reread Chapter 17: “The Coming of Men Into the West.” LOTS of interesting stuff there.

First of all, a quick geography recap: the men originally came from Hildórien in the east. The exact location of this place is a bit screwy, but the maps seem to say it’s closer to Rhûn than Mirkwood. Definitely nowhere in Beleriand! So the origins of men are likely to be somewhat close to the region you’re interested in later in time: falling off the edges of Tolkien’s fuzzily bordered maps.

Here’s the interesting thing to me: Morgoth did reach out to Men in their original lands to the east to see what he could do with them. Morgoth sent spies there to plant evil but had some mixed success.

“To corrupt or destroy whatsoever arose new and fair was ever the chief desire of Morgoth; and doubtless he had this purpose also in his errand: by fear and lies to make Men the foes of the Eldar, and bring them up out of the east against Beleriand. But this design was slow to ripen, and was never wholly achieved; for Men (it is said) were at first very few in number, whereas Morgoth grew afraid of the growing power and union of the Eldar and came back to Angband, leaving behind at that time but few servants, and those of less might and cunning.”

And what’s even more interesting to me is that this memory doesn’t come down to us through the Men themselves! Finrod, who first found Bëor, was only told, “A darkness lies behind us… and we do not wish to return thither even in thought.” And furthermore, this darkness in the Men’s hearts is explicitly compared to the the Kinslaying and the Doom for the Noldor. These are telling examples because those events were partially self-inflicted. We can argue divisions of fault—I sure have—but the Noldor aren’t blameless. If we take this metaphor somewhat literally, neither are the Men for their darkness.

In the discipline of human geography, mass migrations can have both push and pull factors: aka reasons to go, or reasons to leave. I think we’re looking at both things here. Melkor clearly got up to some shenanigans with the early Men; he sent spies and traitors to sow dissent even if little came of it for him personally. But I think that something bad happened far to the East—something so bad that the Men deliberately excised it from their cultural heritage and stories. I’m speculating on some kind of treachery and in-fighting—definitely some senseless destruction. That’s Morgoth’s characteristic work style, and the Men’s conclusion was to forget this darkness rather than use it as a cautionary parable. “Don’t trust the dark and don’t look back” isn’t a complicated lesson and it doesn’t require elaboration.

But we also have a pull factor: Bëor’s people and later clans are chasing the “Light” over the mountains. He says that “Westwards our hearts have been turned” and leaves it at that. And this is a frustrating case of real world considerations clash with fantasy logic, because… what??? Light? Who put that on their hearts? Presumably Eru, but that feels like cheating from an out-of-universe standpoint. Personally, and you can disagree with me if you like, I think this “Light” probably evolved as a natural need for an opposite to the Dark they left behind. It’s a simple template. Leave the Dark in the East; go the Light in the West. Pass it down enough generations, and it’s easy to turn that dichotomy into a semi-religious belief that inspires you cross a two entire continents.

And here’s the other thing. People will not keep moving unless there’s a reason. It sounds basic, but it’s worth emphasizing. Mass migrations can take generations. Groups splinter and settle down along the way, just like the Sindar on the Great Journey. And so the most reasonable view for the clans who made it to Beleriand is that they are a very small fraction of the people who scattered from the mysterious Darkness in their original land. People probably went in different directions and stopped after different distances.

And I think there’s a solid reasoning for different groups to have different oral traditions of remembering the Darkness and Morgoth’s corruption. Certainly Bëor’s approach—excising it from their histories—is not the only approach. So other groups will tell stories about this to their children. It’s the nature of legends—as the time depth would make these things—to get rearranged in the retellings. But the core? A Darkness that drives you from your homeland because of the foul whispers of the Enemy-over-the-mountains? Oh no, it isn’t going anywhere; it becomes the boogeyman and the antagonist and the thing that frightens children into good behavior. It’s the enemy with a thousand faces but the same essential truths. There was evil in our past. We fled to escape it. But it is not truly gone. And that is what the generations will pass down to each other.

And then we return to the thing you actually asked about, because I’ve gotta save the good stuff for last! I think that the Breaking of the World and the defeat of Morgoth is relevant to the far-East people, but more in a way of “Oh, that sounds familiar. You lost your home to the Darkness too? So did our ancestors. That’s rough, buddy.” Maybe losing a continent and getting displaced is hard, but it isn’t your continent, is it? At the end of the day, not being personally invested in the fight mostly says you’re not personally invested in its outcome. Maybe some people are impressed that the legends do have an answer—the Shadow was conquered after all!—but life goes on.

Well, until it doesn’t, and until the Darkness strolls eastward in the person of Sauron. And then sometimes you may wish you paid more attention to how the people over the mountains managed it the first time.

[southeastasianhistories]

The Australian external territory of Christmas Island is infamous for its immigrant detention center. But the island also has a history of solidarity: in the 1970s, its Chinese and Malaysian workers led a union struggle against colonialism and apartheid.

Christmas Island rises from the Indian Ocean around 1,600 kilometers from Australia. Closer to Singapore than the mainland, it is home to a population of around two thousand people, the majority of whom have Chinese ancestry, with a sizable minority of people of Malay heritage. This tropical rocky speck is unlike most of Australia — on Christmas Island, Lunar New Year, Hari Raya Haji, and Hari Raya Puasa are public holidays.

Christmas Island is well known to Australians, but not for its natural beauty or unique red crab migrations. Rather, this far-flung external territory primarily features in Australia’s consciousness as a site of human misery. It plays host to an infamous immigration detention center, a cornerstone of a draconian border protection system that has driven Australian politics to the right for years.

However, few realize that Christmas Island has a more radical, internationalist history. It was the site of a militant trade-union struggle against a form of apartheid that segregated white and Asian workers until the 1980s. The victory of those who stood up to the Christmas Island Phosphate Company demonstrated the power of collective action to overcome racism and exploitation.

British Imperial Apartheid Settlement of the uninhabited island, named Christmas Island in 1643, only began after British surveyors discovered phosphate deposits in 1886. Britain annexed the island in 1888 and gave the Christmas Island Phosphate Company a ninety-nine-year lease on the territory. Phosphate mining began in 1899, using indentured labor from Singapore, the Malay Archipelago, and China.

In 1919, Britain transferred the management of mining on Christmas Island — as well as that of Nauru and Banaba, now part of Kiribati — to the British Phosphate Commissioners (BPC). The BPC comprised government representatives from Australia, New Zealand, and Britain. In 1949, the British government sold its mining rights to Australia and New Zealand. And in 1958, the UK transferred sovereignty over Christmas Island from Singapore to Australia. All the while, the BPC continued to manage the island using extraordinary powers. The BPC paid Asians a fifth of what white workers received and could summarily dismiss workers, who had no right to appeal.

The authorities deported fired workers within twenty-four hours, stamping their passports with NTR — “Never to Return.” They forbade Asian workers from owning land on Christmas Island or settling permanently. The BPC owned everything, including the local shop.

The island’s housing, transport, swimming pools, and education system were also highly segregated. White families lived in houses built to Australian standards while Asian families lived in small flats without hot water or air conditioning. Single Asian men lived in dormitories the size of bathrooms, without mattresses.

There were also two schools, one Asian and one European. The island’s European population were almost totally opposed to proposals to integrate the two schools.

Unsurprisingly, given this setup, one resident described Christmas Island as pretty much the last outpost of the British Raj. The BPC men were all there with their white shorts and long socks and they all played golf on Friday afternoons. The European people would put on shows at the Christmas Island Club, but by virtue of the fees, it was a European stronghold.

Striking Against the BPC The catalyst for change came in 1974, when workers struck to oppose the dismissal of Teo Boon How, the chief interpreter in the administrative office. The BPC had fired him on March 26, ordering him to leave Christmas Island within twenty-four hours. The next day, more than 1,100 workers refused to report to work, instead marching in protest.

The strike forced the acting administration to rescind Teo Boon How’s deportation order and later to reinstate him. This was not the first strike on Christmas Island. However, it signaled a shift. It was the first time the island’s Asian community exercised political power.

On March 21, 1975, fifteen Asian community leaders met secretly and formed the Union of Christmas Island Workers (UCIW). On Teo Boon How’s recommendation, they elected schoolteacher Michael Grimes as the UCIW’s first general secretary on a part-time basis, in part thanks to his experience organizing teachers’ unions. They also elected as president Lim Sai Meng, a worker with a Chinese background who had come to Christmas Island from Malaysia in 1973. Within a week of its formation, more than seven hundred workers had joined the new union.

Grimes had arrived in 1975, alongside some twenty other people from the Commonwealth Teaching Service. Their salaries outstripped those of local teachers, highlighting the extent to which the BPC underpaid Asian workers.

In 1978, Grimes resigned as UCIW secretary and was replaced by Gordon Bennett, an English migrant. Bennett’s more militant style of union organizing caught the attention of mainland Australian newspapers, highlighting the plight of Christmas Islanders.

The Chinese community nicknamed Bennett “Tai Ko Seng” (Big Brother Who Delivers). Under his leadership, the UCIW immediately called for a $30-a-week raise and minimum wage parity with the mainland within a year. The workers also demanded Australian citizenship rights for Christmas Islanders and called for the Australian government to take full administrative control of the island.

In 1979, the workers met at a cinema in Poon Saan, Christmas Island’s second-largest town. Almost the entire workforce of the island voted to take strike action in support of the UCIW’s demands, bringing phosphate production to a halt. The workers self-levied to raise a war chest of $70,000 for their campaign.

The BPC fought back against the industrial action. They stood down three hundred workers in May, following a strike by ship loaders. According to their industrial agreement, the BPC didn’t have the power to sack these workers. James Taylor, the deputy president of Australia’s arbitration commission, came to the island to mediate the dispute.

At the company’s request, Taylor inserted a stand-down clause into the ship loaders’ agreement, retrospectively legitimizing the BPC’s move. Unsurprisingly, this only fanned the flames of the strike.

The workers reacted swiftly. A mass meeting of 1,500 workers voted to prevent Taylor from leaving Christmas Island. Taylor was only allowed to leave some days later, after Australian Council of Trade Unions president Bob Hawke flew to Christmas Island and intervened on his behalf.

Next, the UCIW took its campaign to the mainland, where they made use of a series of creative tactics. They took the home affairs minister to court for underpayment and established a protest tent camp outside Parliament House in July 1979. Later that year, they waged a twelve-day hunger strike, garnering media attention.

Against all odds, the union won the pay raise it had demanded immediately. And its protest actions resulted in a public inquiry into the BPC. The inquiry recommended that Christmas Island be brought under the same administrative jurisdiction and industrial legislation as mainland Australia. A former BHP executive, Wilfred Sweetland, ran the inquiry and was scathing of the BPC, describing it as “colonial” and “repugnant.”

By 1981, the UCIW had won all its industrial demands including wage parity. The publicly owned Phosphate Mining Company of Christmas Island took over the phosphate industry. This finally put an end to the BPC’s rule. Following his victory in the 1984 election, Bob Hawke’s Labor government brought Christmas Island fully under Australian administration.

Ongoing Injustices Despite these victories, Christmas Islanders are still confronted by injustices. In 1987, the Australian government closed the phosphate mine. Although union workers purchased the mine and reopened it in 1990, other attempts at economic diversification have not borne fruit.

The Australian government blocked proposals to boost tourism by revitalizing the island’s resort and casino, previously legislating to prohibit casino operations. This means that Serco, the company that runs the notorious Christmas Island Detention Centre, is the island’s largest employer.

The battle against the legacy of colonialism is also not over. Christmas Island has many of the characteristics of a non-self-governing territory, as described by UN Charter Article 73. Yet Australian governments still treat it like a distant possession. Islanders do not enjoy basic democratic rights.

Australian citizens in Christmas Island can vote in federal elections, but they must do so as part of the Northern Territory, and have no say over the Western Australian state laws that apply to them. Just as Christmas Islanders did not get to vote over the transfer of sovereignty to Australia in 1958, the Australian government has not consulted with them or allowed them a say over the island’s governance since.

Following its historic victories in the early 1980s, the UCIW has maintained its key role in the life of the island. Gordon Thomson, a UCIW leader who also serves as the president of the Christmas Island Shire Council, summed it up well: the collective power of unionism yet remains the most important and only real means of resisting those who would destroy us and the gains we have made as a union since 1975. Indeed, the story of the UCIW’s victorious battle against the colonial apartheid regime in Christmas Island should be as well known in Australia as other historic struggles, like the Wave Hill walk-off or the green bans. Christmas Island’s history shows that militant, class-struggle trade unionism is a powerful weapon against colonialism and racism.

[ucflibrary]

American history is a broad and varied topic. It ranges from the native inhabitants who formed communities here thousands of years ago to the creation of a new nation of states to the dreamers who immigrate to these shores today. It is an enormous amount of information to cover, but it is important that we all learn about our past. As Edmund Burke said in Reflections on the Revolution in France, “Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it.”

The founders of the United States, beyond their faults and foibles, began this nation with a grand and noble sentiment of “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity….”

“We the people” is us. Join us this month as we explore our past to help ensure “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” applies to us all.

Click on the Read More link to see the full list, descriptions, and catalog links for the featured titles on American History suggested by UCF Library employees. These 24 books plus many more are also on display on the 2nd (main) floor of the John C. Hitt Library next to the bank of two elevators.

11/22/63 by Stephen King On November 22, 1953, three shots rang out in Dallas, President Kennedy died, and the world changed. What if you could change it back? In this brilliantly conceived tour de force, Stephen King—who has absorbed the social, political, and popular culture of his generation more imaginatively and thoroughly than any other writer—takes readers on an incredible journey into the past and the possibility of altering it. Suggested by Kathleen Silva, Libraries Student Ambassador

 A History of the American People by Paul Johnson This challenging narrative and interpretation of American history by the author of many distinguished historical works is sometimes controversial and always provocative. Johnson’s views of individuals, events, themes, and issues are original, critical, and admiring, for he is, above all, a strong believer in the history and the destiny of the American people. Suggested by Allison Hilton, Libraries Student Ambassador

 A Map to the Next World: poetry and tales by Joy Harjo The poet author of The Woman Who Fell from the Sky, and new poet laureate of the U.S., draws on her own Native American heritage in a collection of lyrical poetry that explores the cruelties and tragedies of history and the redeeming miracles of human kindness. Suggested by Jada Reyes, Libraries Student Ambassador

 Alex and Eliza by Melissa De la Cruz In the pages of Alex and Eliza, #1 New York Times bestselling author Melissa de la Cruz brings to life the romance of young Alexander Hamilton and Elizabeth Schuyler. Suggested by Kathleen Silva, Libraries Student Ambassador

 American Canopy: trees, forests, and the making of a nation by Eric Rutkow (UCF Faculty Author) As Eric Rutkow’s brilliant, epic account shows, trees were essential to the early years of the republic and indivisible from the country’s rise as both an empire and a civilization. Among American Canopy’s many fascinating stories: the Liberty Trees, where colonists gathered to plot rebellion against the British; Henry David Thoreau’s famous retreat into the woods; the creation of New York City’s Central Park; the great fire of 1871 that killed a thousand people in the lumber town of Peshtigo, Wisconsin; the fevered attempts to save the American chestnut and the American elm from extinction; and the controversy over spotted owls and the old-growth forests they inhabited. Rutkow also explains how trees were of deep interest to such figures as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Teddy Roosevelt, and FDR, who oversaw the planting of more than three billion trees nationally in his time as president. Suggested by Richard Harrison, Subject Librarian

 Americans Remember Their Civil War by Barbara A. Gannon (UCF Faculty Author) This book provides readers with an overview of how Americans have commemorated and remembered the Civil War. Suggested by Richard Harrison, Subject Librarian

 Beneath a Ruthless Sun: a true story of violence, race, and justice lost and found by Gilbert King Beneath a Ruthless Sun tells a powerful, page-turning story rooted in the fears that rippled through the South as integration began to take hold, sparking a surge of virulent racism that savaged the vulnerable, debased the powerful, and roils our own times still. Suggested by Richard Harrison, Subject Librarian

 Elizabeth Warren: her fight, her work, her life by Antonia Felix In this breakthrough biography, bestselling author Antonia Felix carries readers from Warren's hardscrabble roots in Norman, Oklahoma, to her career as one of the nation's most distinguished legal scholars and experts on the economics of working Americans. Felix reveals how Warren brought her expertise to Washington to become an icon of progressive politics in a deeply divided nation, and weaves together never-before-told stories from those who have journeyed with Warren from Oklahoma to the halls of power. Suggested by Megan Haught, Teaching & Engagement/Research & Information Services

 Hamilton: the revolution: being the complete libretto of the Broadway musical, with a true account of its creation, and concise remarks on hip-hop, the power of stories, and the new America by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jeremy McCarter This book gives readers an unprecedented view of both revolutions, from the only two writers able to provide it. Miranda, along with Jeremy McCarter, a cultural critic and theater artist who was involved in the project from its earliest stages and traces its development from an improbable performance at the White House to its landmark opening night on Broadway six years later. In addition, Miranda has written more than 200 funny, revealing footnotes for his award-winning libretto, the full text of which is published here. Suggested by Katie Burroughs, Administration

  Historians on Hamilton: how a blockbuster musical is restaging America's past edited by Renee C. Romano and Claire Bond Potter Historians on Hamilton brings together a collection of top scholars to explain the Hamilton phenomenon and explore what it might mean for our understanding of America’s history. The contributors examine what the musical got right, what it got wrong, and why it matters. Does Hamilton’s hip-hop take on the Founding Fathers misrepresent our nation’s past, or does it offer a bold positive vision for our nation’s future? Can a musical so unabashedly contemporary and deliberately anachronistic still communicate historical truths about American culture and politics? And is Hamilton as revolutionary as its creators and many commentators claim? Suggested by Katie Burroughs, Administration

 John Marshall: the man who made the Supreme Court by Richard Brookhiser In 1801, a genial and brilliant Revolutionary War veteran and politician became the fourth chief justice of the United States. He would hold the post for 34 years (still a record), expounding the Constitution he loved. Before he joined the Supreme Court, it was the weakling of the federal government, lacking in dignity and clout. After he died, it could never be ignored again. Through three decades of dramatic cases involving businessmen, scoundrels, Native Americans, and slaves, Marshall defended the federal government against unruly states, established the Supreme Court's right to rebuke Congress or the president, and unleashed the power of American commerce. For better and for worse, he made the Supreme Court a pillar of American life. Suggested by Larry Cooperman, Research & Information Services

 Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen Americans have lost touch with their history, and in Lies My Teacher Told Me Professor James Loewen shows why. After surveying eighteen leading high school American history texts, he has concluded that not one does a decent job of making history interesting or memorable. Marred by an embarrassing combination of blind patriotism, mindless optimism, sheer misinformation, and outright lies, these books omit almost all the ambiguity, passion, conflict, and drama from our past. Suggested by Emily Parente, Libraries Student Ambassador

 My Own Words by Ruth Bader Ginsburg with Mary Hartnett and Wendy W. Williams In this collection Justice Ginsburg discusses gender equality, the workings of the Supreme Court, being Jewish, law and lawyers in opera, and the value of looking beyond US shores when interpreting the US Constitution. Throughout her life Justice Ginsburg has been (and continues to be) a prolific writer and public speaker. This book’s sampling is selected by Justice Ginsburg and her authorized biographers Mary Hartnett and Wendy W. Williams, who introduce each chapter and provide biographical context and quotes gleaned from hundreds of interviews they have conducted. Suggested by Sandy Avila, Research & Information Services

 News for all the people: the epic story of race and the American media by Juan Gonzlez and Joseph Torres From colonial newspapers to the Internet age, America’s racial divisions have played a central role in the creation of the country’s media system, just as the media has contributed to—and every so often, combated—racial oppression. This acclaimed book reveals how racial segregation distorted the information Americans have received, even as it depicts the struggle of Black, Latino, Asian, and Native American journalists who fought to create a vibrant yet little-known alternative, democratic press. Suggested by Jada Reyes, Libraries Student Ambassador

 Shade: a tale of two presidents by Pete Souza Shade is a portrait in Presidential contrasts, telling the tale of the Obama and Trump administrations through a series of visual juxtapositions. Here, more than one hundred of Souza's unforgettable images of President Obama deliver new power and meaning when framed by the tweets, news headlines, and quotes that defined the first 500 days of the Trump White House. Suggested by Megan Haught, Teaching & Engagement/Research & Information Services

 Team of Rivals: the political genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin Acclaimed historian Doris Kearns Goodwin illuminates Lincoln's political genius in this highly original work, as the one-term congressman and prairie lawyer rises from obscurity to prevail over three gifted rivals of national reputation to become president. Suggested by Joan Reynolds, Interlibrary Loan & Document Delivery Services

 The Book that Changed America: how Darwin's theory of evolution ignited a nation by Randall Fuller Creating a rich tableau of nineteenth-century American intellectual culture, as well as providing a fascinating biography of perhaps the single most important idea of that time, The Book That Changed America is also an account of issues and concerns still with us today, including racism and the enduring conflict between science and religion. Suggested by Christina Wray, Teaching & Engagement

 The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama by Gwen Ifill Veteran journalist Gwen Ifill surveys the American political landscape, shedding new light on the impact of Barack Obama’s stunning presidential victory and introducing the emerging young African American politicians forging a bold new path to political power. Suggested by Sandy Avila, Research & Information Services

 The Devil in the White City: murder, magic, and madness at the fair that changed America by Erik Larson Erik Larson—author of #1 bestseller In the Garden of Beasts—intertwines the true tale of the 1893 World's Fair and the cunning serial killer who used the fair to lure his victims to their death. Combining meticulous research with nail-biting storytelling, Erik Larson has crafted a narrative with all the wonder of newly discovered history and the thrills of the best fiction. Suggested by Rachel Edford, Teaching & Engagement

 The Dictionary Wars: the American fight over the English language by Peter Martin Peter Martin recounts the patriotic fervor in the early American republic to produce a definitive national dictionary that would rival Samuel Johnson’s 1755 Dictionary of the English Language. But what began as a cultural war of independence from Britain devolved into a battle among lexicographers, authors, scholars, and publishers, all vying for dictionary supremacy and shattering forever the dream of a unified American language. Suggested by Christina Wray, Teaching & Engagement

 The Field of Blood: violence in Congress and the road to civil war by Joanne B. Freeman Joanne B. Freeman recovers the long-lost story of physical violence on the floor of the U.S. Congress. Drawing on an extraordinary range of sources, she shows that the Capitol was rife with conflict in the decades before the Civil War. Legislative sessions were often punctuated by mortal threats, canings, flipped desks, and all-out slugfests. When debate broke down, congressmen drew pistols and waved Bowie knives. One representative even killed another in a duel. Many were beaten and bullied in an attempt to intimidate them into compliance, particularly on the issue of slavery. Suggested by Richard Harrison, Subject Librarian

The Law by Frederic Bastiat The Law was originally published as a pamphlet in 1850 by Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850). Bastiat wrote most of his work in the few years before and after the French Revolution of 1848. The Law is considered a classic and his ideas are still relevant today. The essay was published in French in 1850. Suggested by Allison Hilton, Libraries Student Ambassador

The Truths We Hold: an American journey by Kamala Harris By reckoning with the big challenges we face together, drawing on the hard-won wisdom and insight from her own career and the work of those who have most inspired her, Kamala Harris offers a master class in problem solving, in crisis management, and leadership in challenging times. Through the arc of her own life, on into the great work of our day, she communicates a vision of shared struggle, shared purpose, and shared values. In a book rich in many home truths, not least is that a relatively small number of people work very hard to convince a great many of us that we have less in common than we actually do, but it falls to us to look past them and get on with the good work of living our common truth. When we do, our shared effort will continue to sustain us and this great nation, now and in the years to come. Suggested by Megan Haught, Teaching & Engagement/Research & Information Services

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens Perfect for fans of Barbara Kingsolver and Karen Russell, Where the Crawdads Sing is at once an exquisite ode to the natural world, a heartbreaking coming-of-age story, and a surprising tale of possible murder. Owens reminds us that we are forever shaped by the children we once were, and that we are all subject to the beautiful and violent secrets that nature keeps. Suggested by Emily Parente, Libraries Student Ambassador

[newstfionline]

Epic Battles, Palaces and Concubines: A Chinese Studio’s Vast World of Fantasy

By Steven Lee Myers, NY Times, Dec. 2, 2018

HENGDIAN, China--If you are going to make a movie in China today about ancient warriors defending a mythical kingdom or a partisan resisting the Japanese occupation in the 1930s, or involving any variation of that staple of China’s entertainment industry--the back-stabbing concubine drama--chances are you are going to make it in Hengdian.

The city is home to Hengdian World Studios, which claims to be the world’s largest outdoor movie and television lot.

To call it a “lot” is an understatement. It is not one lot, but 13 of them, scattered over 2,500 acres in and around what was once a sleepy farming village nestled in the hills of Zhejiang Province, in central China.

There are other studios in China--Shanghai Film Park, for example. Only in Hengdian, though, will you find a faithful recreation of the palace of Qin Shi Huang, who ruled in the third century B.C. near what is today known as Xian, or of the capital of the Northern Song dynasty, which reigned from the 10th to the 12th centuries.

There is even a Forbidden City that is not only startlingly realistic, but also only a little bit smaller than the real thing in Beijing.

The one thing that might seem to be missing from its huge front gate is the photograph of Mao Zedong--except that the gate was constructed to look as it did during the Ming dynasty, not the later version known since the 17th century as Tiananmen.

“These scenes today no longer exist,” said Guo Huizhong, a director, as he filmed a war drama, whose title roughly translates as “The Last Bodyguard,” inside a building reconstructed as an opera house from the first half of the 20th century.

Moviemaking blurs the distinction between reality and fantasy, and Hengdian World Studios arguably does that better than any other place on Earth.

“This is where the empress committed suicide,” a studio assistant, Xu Hailei, explained as she guided an open cart through the faux Forbidden City, which, even up close, is pretty convincing.

“She jumped from there,” she went on, describing a historical fact of 18th-century China--the death of Empress Fucha--but also a pivotal scene in one of the most sensational dramas of the year, a 70-episode epic, “The Story of Yanxi Palace.”

“Yanxi Palace” streamed on iQiyi, China’s version of Netflix, from July to August, and continues to do so in China and dozens of other countries. It has been streamed 20 billion times, and its staggering popularity has influenced everything from fashion to the debate over China’s struggling #MeToo campaign.

It has also attracted more visitors to Hengdian, which distributes maps and postcards showing the sites where the series was filmed, including the building of the title, which means the Palace of Prolonged Happiness.

Ye Yunfeng, 24, came with her boyfriend from Lishui, a city not far to the south, because she wanted to see the hall where the emperor’s Grand Council met.

“The details of this show are very good,” she explained. “Many details, like the clothes, the headdresses and the backdrops, are in line with history.”

The serial’s creators, and its fans, judging from comments posted online, credit its success in large part to the attention to historical detail.

“The cost of actors and actresses are not expensive,” said Yang Le, the chief executive officer of Huanyu Film, the Beijing production company that produced “Yanxi Palace.”

Instead, the producers spent their budget on artisanal embroiderers to recreate the dresses and flowered headdresses of the era--3,000 outfits, some of which are on display in the company’s office in Beijing.

Yu Zheng, a screenwriter and producer of “Yanxi Palace,” said he wanted to convey an aspect of China’s “intangible cultural heritage”--combined with “the pacing of an American television series.”

“People in our generation are all watching American and British television series,” said Mr. Yu, who is 40, “but actually there are many traditional cultures in China that are very worthy of being promoted to the world. We have a lot of beautiful things.”

That is the illusion Hengdian World Studios was created to sustain.

The studio was founded in 1996 by one of China’s first billionaires, Xu Wenrong. His Hengdian Group made a fortune in electronic components in the early years of the country’s capitalist transition.

When an acquaintance needed a location for a film, “The Opium War,” about China’s humiliating loss to Britain in the 19th century, Mr. Xu agreed to build one from scratch in the company’s hometown.

Since then more than 2,400 films and television series have been made at the studio, including 337 between January and October this year.

On a recent visit, there were 15 projects being shot at the same time, requiring studio organizers to juggle schedules and enforce deadlines.

There are 400 distinct spaces where filming can take place, covering the entire breadth of China’s history, its culture and its architecture.

Two areas recreate Guangzhou and Hong Kong as they looked in the 19th century, built for “The Opium War,” and another reproduces the Imperial Summer Palace, which was sacked by British and French soldiers in 1860. Its ruins are preserved in Beijing.

There is also a recreation of the Communist Party’s wartime base in Yan’an and a replica of a Buddhist temple whose original on a hill nearby has since been closed to the public.

“Many people learn history through television dramas,” said Zheng Junnan, a production assistant for another concubine melodrama set in the Qing dynasty.

“I don’t read books often,” he explained.

Mr. Zheng, like many in Hengdian, is a transient; he moved to Hengdian for the duration of shooting.

There is a sort of union hall in the town center where people play cards and shoot pool while waiting for the chance to get parts as extras. And epic battles need lots of extras.

Another lot, “The Exposition City of the Ming and Qing dynasties,” is a reconstruction of ancient buildings that were torn down in nearby parts of China and hauled to Hengdian.

There are scores of courtyard temples, houses and other structures, including a wooden tower from Nanjing. Each is marked with plaques describing their origins and “date of migration.”

The theater house where Mr. Guo was filming “The Last Bodyguard” was a reconstruction of an 18th-century building from Anhui Province, with the region’s distinctive southern architecture.

It wasn’t his first choice, he said, but other sets in the studio were already booked, so he made do, decorating the stage in the style of the 20th century, and bringing in opera singers from Beijing.

Yuxuan Honghao, a 26-year-old actor on the set of another series about concubines set in the Qing dynasty, said the attention to historic details had not always been a priority in the past but “The Story of Yanxi Palace” is already encouraging others to follow.

“The things in history books are one-side; they are only textual,” he said. “Films and television dramas can restore Chinese history as much as possible, and people can see what it was like.”

[kayla1993-world]

Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister, has led Canada’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. For her, this crisis strikes differently.

As Canadians watched a government update about the situation on Feb. 24, the day that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a full-scale military attack on the sovereign country, they got a glimpse into her heritage.

“To my Ukrainian-Canadian community, I would like to say that now is the time for us to stand together in support of our friends and family in Ukraine,” she said later in Ukrainian.

In 1991, when Ukraine became independent, Freeland’s mother helped draft the country’s constitution. In 1988 and 1989, she was an exchange student at the University of Kyiv while studying at Harvard University. As a pro-democratic, pro-Ukrainian independence activist, she caught the attention of the Soviet Union’s KGB.

Her career as a journalist began in Ukraine in the 1990s. She later became the Financial Times’ Moscow bureau chief. Freeland was barred from entering Russia along with other Canadian politicians and diplomats following sanctions imposed by the West for the annexation of Crimea.

CTVNews.ca reached out to the minister’s office for background information and explanation of how her personal connections impact her work on this issue. Staff revealed that she said on Thursday that the focus should be on the Ukrainian people.

“In Ukraine, we are seeing people who are determined to fight and die for democracy and freedom. We are not going to submit to you, despite our small size and your larger army," she told a press conference.

Ukraine has accomplished great things and I am proud of them. Their courage inspires me, as well as the entire world. David Fraser, a retired NATO commander, lauds her efforts to distance herself from the situation at hand.

“I have to say, she’s been pretty low key about this so far and I credit her for that – she could have come out more emotional, but she hasn’t. In an interview on CTVNews.ca, he said she has been what we should expect from our deputy prime minister.”

“She hasn’t taken the soapbox and used it to make cheap political moves.” Following in lockstep with its allies, Canada has imposed economic sanctions against Russian institutions and elites for the war in Ukraine. Also, the government has announced shipments of lethal and non-lethal military aid to Ukraine, as well as millions of dollars worth of humanitarian aid.

On a daily basis, Freeland stands alongside her colleagues, unveiling incremental punitive measures as the crisis escalates. The former Conservative defence and foreign affairs minister Peter MacKay said in a statement that the minister is doing everything in her power to expedite the government’s support.

“In times like these, that’s how it should be. After a gradual and measured response, the sanctions and aide are picking up. She has exhibited a willingness to spend political capital and embody the urgency and the motivation to deliver a lot in recent days,” he said.

He has faced criticism, however, after being photographed at a Ukrainian solidarity march in Toronto on Sunday holding a red and black scarf embroidered with the phrase “Glory to Ukraine, glory to the heroes.”

Ukrainian insurgents adopted this slogan at a congress held in Nazi-occupied Poland in April 1941. According to her office and the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, the questions and backlash she received online are associated with Russian-backed disinformation targeting members of the Ukrainian community.

During World War II, Freeland's grandfather was the editor of a Nazi propaganda journal in occupied Poland. The former diplomat told CTVNews.ca that Freeland’s bold rhetoric against Putin has long been infused in her work in previous positions, namely as foreign minister.

During a speech delivered on June 6, 2017, she outlined Canada’s foreign policy priorities and emphasized the importance of preserving a world order based on rules.

The Canadian foreign minister stressed the importance of protecting borders and specifically mentioned Russia’s “illegal seizure” of Ukrainian territory by Russia as something Canada “cannot accept or ignore.”

Freeland’s rhetoric has gotten more aggressive after a second invasion. President Putin will be judged by history as harshly as the world condemns him today. The tyrant cements his place among Europe’s most reviled dictators of the 20th century. She said on Feb. 24 that Canada and our allies would respond swiftly and bite.

In Fraser’s words, she has and will always be a “vehement pit bull against the Russians.”

[xtruss]

Is the U.S. Withdrawal From Afghanistan the End of the American Empire?

Only time will tell whether the old adage about Afghanistan’s being the graveyard of empires proves as true for the United States as it did for the Soviet Union.

—By Jon Lee Anderson | The New Yorker | September 1, 2021

For two decades now, the U.S. has seemed increasingly unable to effectively harness its military prowess and economic strength to its advantage.Photograph by Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times / AFP / Getty

How does an empire die? Often, it seems, there is a growing sense of decay, and then something happens, a single event that provides the tipping point. After the Second World War, Great Britain was all but bankrupt and its Empire was in shreds, but it soldiered on thanks to a U.S. government loan and the new Cold War exigencies that allowed it to maintain the outward appearance of a global player. It wasn’t until the 1956 Suez debacle, when Britain was pressured by the U.S., the Soviet Union, and the United Nations to withdraw its forces from Egypt—which it had invaded along with Israel and France following Gamal Abdel Nasser’s seizure of the Suez Canal—that it became clear that its imperial days were over. The floodgates to decolonization soon opened.

In February, 1989, when the Soviet Union withdrew its military from Afghanistan after a failed nine-year attempt to pacify the country, it did so in a carefully choreographed ceremony that telegraphed solemnity and dignity. An orderly procession of tanks moved north across the Friendship Bridge, which spans the Amu Darya river, between Afghanistan and Uzbekistan—then a Soviet republic. The Soviet commander, Lieutenant-General Boris Gromov, walked across with his teen-age son, carrying a bouquet of flowers and smiling for the cameras. Behind him, he declared, no Soviet soldiers remained in the country. “The day that millions of Soviet people have waited for has come,” he said at a military rally later that day. “In spite of our sacrifices and losses, we have totally fulfilled our internationalist duty.”

Gromov’s triumphal speech was not quite the equivalent of George W. Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” following the 2003 Iraq invasion, but it came close, and the message that it was intended to relay, at least to people inside the Soviet Union, was a reassuring one: the Red Army was leaving Afghanistan because it wanted to, not because it had been defeated. The Kremlin had installed an ironfisted Afghan loyalist who was left to run things in its absence, a former secret-police chief named Najibullah; there was also a combat-tested Afghan Army, equipped and trained by the Soviets.

Meanwhile, the mujahideen guerrilla armies that had been subsidized and armed by the United States and its partners Saudi Arabia and Pakistan were in a celebratory mood. Their combat units were massed outside Afghanistan’s regime-held cities, and there was an expectation that it would not be long before Najibullah succumbed, too, and Kabul would be theirs. In the end, he held out for another three years, with his downfall merely leading to a new civil war.

For all the talk of internationalist duty, the Afghanistan that the Soviets left behind was a charnel ground. Out of its population of twelve million people, as many as two million civilians had been killed in the war, more than five million had fled the country, and another two million were internally displaced. Many of the country’s towns and cities lay in ruins, and half of Afghanistan’s rural villages and hamlets had been destroyed.

Officially, only fifteen thousand or so Soviet troops had been killed—although the real figure may be much higher—and fifty thousand more soldiers were wounded. But hundreds of aircraft, tanks, and artillery pieces were destroyed or lost, and countless billions of dollars diverted from the hard-pressed Soviet economy to pay for it all. However much the Kremlin tried to gloss it over, the average Soviet citizen understood that the Afghanistan intervention had been a costly fiasco.

It was only eighteen months after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan that a group of hard-liners tried to launch a coup against the reformist premier Mikhail Gorbachev. But they had miscalculated their power, and popular support. In the face of public demonstrations against them, their putsch soon failed, followed by the collapse of the Soviet Union itself. Of course, by then, much beyond the Soviet Union’s Afghan quagmire had conspired to fatally weaken the once powerful Empire from within.

While the two events are humiliatingly comparable, only time will tell whether the old adage about Afghanistan’s being the graveyard of empires proves as true for the United States as it did for the Soviet Union. My colleague Robin Wright thinks so, writing, on August 15th, “America’s Great Retreat [from Afghanistan] is at least as humiliating as the Soviet Union’s withdrawal in 1989, an event that contributed to the end of its empire and Communist rule. . . . Both of the big powers withdrew as losers, with their tails between their legs, leaving behind chaos.” When I asked James Clad, a former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, for his thoughts on the matter, he e-mailed me, “It’s a damaging blow, but the ‘end’ of Empire? Not yet, and probably not for a long time. The egregious defeat has hammered American prestige, however, delivering the geopolitical equivalent of egg on our face. Is that a fatal blow? In the wider world, America still retains its offshore power-balancing function. And despite some overheated journalism, no irreversible advantage has passed to our primary geopolitical opponent—China.”

It is true that, for the time being, America retains its military prowess and its economic strength. But, for two decades now, it has seemed increasingly unable to effectively harness either of them to its advantage. Instead of enhancing its hegemony by deploying its strengths wisely, it has repeatedly squandered its efforts, diminishing both its aura of invincibility and its standing in the eyes of other nations. The vaunted global war on terror—which included Bush’s invasion of Iraq for the purpose of finding weapons of mass destruction that did not exist, Barack Obama’s decision to intervene in Libya and his indecisiveness about a “red line” in Syria, and Donald Trump’s betrayal of the Kurds in the same country and his 2020 deal with the Taliban to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan—has effectively caused terrorism to metastasize across the planet. Al Qaeda may no longer be as prominent as it was on 9/11, but it still exists and has a branch in North Africa; isis has affiliates there, too, and in Mozambique, and, of course, as the horrific attacks last Thursday at Kabul airport underscored, in Afghanistan. And the Taliban have returned to power, right where it all began twenty years ago.

Rory Stewart, a former British government minister who served on Prime Minister Theresa May’s National Security Council, told me that he has observed the events in Afghanistan with “horror”:

Throughout the Cold War, the United States had a consistent world view. Administrations came and went, but the world view didn’t change that much. And then, following 9/11, we—America’s allies—went along with the new theories it came up with to explain its response to the terrorist threat in Afghanistan and elsewhere. But there’s been a total lack of continuity since then; the way the United States viewed the world in 2006 is night and day to how it views it today. Afghanistan has gone from being the center of the world to one in which we are told that such places pose no threat at all. What that suggests is that all of the former theorizing now means nothing. To see this lurch to isolationism that is so sudden that it practically destroys everything we’ve fought for together for twenty years is deeply disturbing.

Stewart, who co-founded the Turquoise Mountain Foundation—which has supported cultural heritage projects, health, and education in Afghanistan for fifteen years years—and is now a senior fellow at Yale’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, was skeptical of Joe Biden’s assertion that the strategic priorities of the United States no longer lie in places like Afghanistan, but in countering China’s expansion. “If this were true,” he said, “then clearly part of the logic of the American confrontation with China would be to say, ‘We’re going to demonstrate our values with our presence across the world,’ just as it did in the Cold War with the U.S.S.R. And one way you’d do that is to continue your presence in the Middle East and other places, because removing yourself is counterproductive. In the end, I think all of this talk about a China pivot is really just an excuse for American isolationism.”

Back to the nagging question: Does the return of the Taliban in Afghanistan represent the end of the American era? On the heels of what appears to have been a disastrous decision by Biden to adhere to a U.S. troop drawdown that was set in motion by his feckless predecessor, it can certainly be said that the international image of the United States has been damaged. It seems a valid question to ask whether the United States can claim much moral authority internationally after handing Afghanistan, and its millions of hapless citizens, back to the custody of the Taliban. But it remains unclear whether, as Stewart suggests, the U.S. retreat from Afghanistan represents part of a larger inward turn, or whether, as Clad believes, the U.S. may soon reassert itself somewhere else to show the world that it still has muscle. Right now, it feels as if the American era isn’t quite over, but it isn’t what it once was, either.

— Jon Lee Anderson, a staff writer, began contributing to The New Yorker in 1998. He is the author of several books, including “Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life.”

[orbemnews]

These Neanderthals Weren’t Cannibals, So Who Ate Them? Stone Age Hyenas. ROME — When a Neanderthal skull was discovered in a cave on the property of a beachfront hotel south of Rome in 1939, it prompted a theory, since debunked, that Neanderthals had engaged in ritual cannibalism, extracting the brains of their victims to eat. Now, a find at the same site, made public on Saturday, appears to have confirmed the true culprit: Stone Age hyenas. New excavations at the site in the coastal town of San Felice Circeo have uncovered fossil remains of nine more Neanderthals of varying sex and age along with the bones of long-extinct hyenas, elephants, rhinoceroses and even the Urus, or Aurochs, the now-extinct ancestor of domestic cattle. Experts say the findings, at the Guattari Cave, will offer fresh insight on the culinary peculiarities of the Neanderthal diet and much more. “The story of the cave didn’t finish in 1939 and still had a lot to give,” said Mauro Rubini, the chief anthropologist of the local branch of the Culture Ministry. “Consider that the human skeleton is a formidable archive that tells us everything: their age, sex, height, what they ate, their genome, whether they had illnesses, how much they walked and even if they were able to have fun,” he added. “We are working on solid scientific data so we can give a complete picture of the situation,” said Mr. Rubini, whose staff is in charge of analyzing the Neanderthal remains. One of the Neanderthals found in the cave lived about 100,000 to 90,000 years ago, and the other eight have been dated from around 65,000 to 50,000 years ago. The cave’s discovery in 1939 created an international buzz when it yielded what remains one of the best preserved Neanderthal skulls ever found. The skull had a large hole in the temple, and its fame may have been fueled by the thesis put forth by Alberto Carlo Blanc, the paleontologist who first studied it, that the Neanderthals had engaged in ritual cannibalism. In the latest excavations, led by a multidisciplinary team that has been working since October 2019, researchers found hundreds of animal bones with signs they had been gnawed on by hyenas — the Stone Age ancestors to today’s carnivores — who used the cave as a sort of pantry, said Mario Rolfo, who teaches prehistoric archaeology at the University of Rome at Tor Vergata. It appears that the hyenas also had a taste for Neanderthals, and one skull found at the site had a hole similar to the one found in the 1939 cranium. That find definitively put to rest Blanc’s theory of cannibalism and cult rituals. “Reality is more banal,” Professor Rolfo said, adding that “hyenas like munching on bones” and probably opened a cavity in the skull to get to the brain. It is unclear whether the Neanderthals were killed by the hyenas or the hyenas snacked on Neanderthals after they died from other causes. “What it does mean is that there were many Neanderthals in the area,” Professor Rolfo said. Neanderthals flourished in Europe for about 260,000 years, until roughly 40,000 years ago, though the dating is subject to much scholarly debate. Their bones have been found at sites across Europe and western Asia, from Spain to Siberia. But “finding so many in one site is very rare,” said Francesco Di Mario, the Culture Ministry archaeologist in charge of the excavation. The recovery of new fossil remains, along with the 1939 findings, makes the cave “one of the most important Paleolithic sites in Europe and the world,” he said. Italy’s culture minister, Dario Franceschini, called the finds an “extraordinary discovery” that enriches research on Neanderthals. The site was particularly well preserved because a prehistoric landslide had closed the entrance to the cave. So when workers at the Guattari Hotel stumbled on it eight decades ago, “they found a situation that had been frozen in time, mummified to 50,000 years ago,” Professor Rolfo said. The cave was studied until the early 1950s, but was not excavated again — and studied more comprehensively — until the last 20 months. That work has involved areas of the cave that were previously unexplored, including one cavity that regularly floods in the winter months. The team of archaeologists, anthropologists, geologists and paleontologists also worked on the anterior area of the cave, unearthing burned bones, carved stones, and bones with cut marks, indicating that they had been hunted. “We found rich traces of Neanderthal life there,” Professor Rolfo said. Angelo Guattari, whose father owned the hotel in 1939 and was among the first to see the earlier Neanderthal skull, said that over time the cave had been mostly forgotten, unfortunately. Now, as the delegate for cultural heritage for the town of San Felice Circeo, he hopes the discoveries will lead the site to be opened to tourists. The mayor, Giuseppe Schiboni, has applied for European Union funding to develop the town’s archaeological and anthropological pull. The hotel that the Guattari family once owned — since renamed “Neanderthal Hotel” — is up for sale. Mr. Schiboni said that he would love to buy it and install a European center on Neanderthal studies. Once the site opens, possibly as soon as this year, visitors will be presented with a 10-minute virtual-reality video “and be catapulted into the cave” in its prehistoric guise, to help them better understand their surroundings, said Mr. Di Mario, who is coordinating the on-site research. Neanderthals, said Mr. Rubini, the anthropologist, “were the uncontested lords of Eurasia for about 250,000 years.” Whether humans will match that is an open question, he said. “We don’t know if we will be — we’re still relatively young.” Source link Orbem News #Age #ate #Cannibals #Hyenas #neanderthals #Stone #werent

[centerforartlaw]

By Stephanie Drawdy*

The Art Business Conference, held in New York on April 17, was an ambitious day of discussion among art professionals who shared insight on the “ecosystem” of the art market. From the impact of technology on authentication to data breaches and many points in between, the Conference, now in its second year, provided hands-on information about practical issues affecting the global art market.

The art market was likened to a marathon, not a sprint, in the Conference’s opening session that dealt with the future of collecting. The panelists vigorously debated the factors that may control the viability of collecting, which included price transparency and knowing one’s client. Tech startup Artsy was represented by Devang Thakkar who discussed his company model as an online platform for galleries, museums, and foundations, and how that model meets a core need that will increase collecting. For example, its “Augment Reality” capability allows potential collectors to project images in their home, office, etc. to see how a piece works in their space. Mr. Thakkar believes this will change how people see art.

Online auctions were also discussed as a vehicle that is increasing collecting.  Dallas-based Heritage Auctions was represented by its director of American Art, Aviva Lehmann, who was formerly with Christies. Ms. Lehmann used the recent increase in the valuation of illustration art as an example of how online auctions are helping the market. She described a bidding war by two individuals who each wanted to buy the same piece by Norman Rockwell as a Mother’s Day gift. Neither bidder had a history of collecting illustration art, but the vehicle of online auction facilitated their interest in the piece and drove up the price to a multi-million dollar sale.

Art Market Economist Magnus Resch discussed implementation of new tools like block chain, the digital register that anonymously records transactions. Block chain (discussed in the recent article by Louise Carron) has the potential to impact areas of the art market like provenance by increasing the transparency of a piece’s history. Yet, because everything takes longer in the art world, according to Mr. Resch, the impact of block chain in the art market may be long in coming.

Another big topic was third party funding of art and cultural heritage claims. At the outset of her presentation, Noor Kadhim, Head of International Arbitration, Investment Planning, and Art at London’s Cubism Law, set out a wise premise: the lawyer’s job is not to give a pathway to heaven, but to prevent hell. With that, she proceeded to explain a variety of legal funding solutions that achieve the lofty public policy goal of preventing injustice, the insurance products that can be incorporated into funding, and the investment aspect of art claims. Ms. Kadhim also touched on the vital impact the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act of 2016 had to lift the procedural bar on many art/cultural heritage claims that otherwise would have been abandoned. 

One panel was devoted to the creation of traveling exhibitions, and the extreme risks, challenges, and budgetary considerations involved in such a daunting task. Many within earshot (including myself) cringed when Wendy Lindstrom, Commercial Litigator with Messner Reeves, described the Gerhard Richter that was punctured while out for a traveling show. Insurance expert Anne Rappa with Huntington T. Block offered other concerning examples of art bearing the brunt of being on the road, including sheet metal sculpture insured with a policy that contained a dent exclusion; the basic take away: read the fine print.

Vastari Group’s CEO and co-founder Bernadine Bröcker Wieder suggested that institutions should create more ambitious traveling shows with the use of a business model from the outset. It was suggested that one way to raise the bar of an exhibition was to augment it with other works to build a unique theme. The Royal Academy’s 2015 exhibition of 17th century Baroque painter Rubens was cited as an example to be emulated; with its addition of works by other painters like Van Dyck and Cezanne, the Royal Academy showed how Ruben’s painterly style evolved. Interestingly, it was not expressed on the panel that the addition of other painters’ works to exhibits like the Rubens show have been frowned upon by some critics, such as Zoe Pilger with The Independent who would have preferred to see Rubens “on his own.” 

The issue of data protection was a timely topic in the Conference, given the upcoming passage of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that goes into effect in the European Union on May 25, 2018. Cyber Security Director Aaron Aanenson with S-RM, an international risk consulting firm, gave an overview of the GDPR, noting that after its effective date, the GDPR will protect anyone who suffers a data breach while in the EU, regardless of citizenship. More info about GDPR can be found here.

Somewhat less concerning than data breaches, but still quite intriguing, was one panel’s discussion of the decisions that go into and the limitations that apply to protecting artists’ legacies. Christa Blatchford, the chief executive officer of the Joan Mitchell Foundation, defined the charitable purpose of her role as the stewardship of Ms. Mitchell’s legacy, not its protection. Tiffany Bell, editor at large with Artifex Press, discussed her decisions as editor of the Agnes Martin Catalogue Raisonne, at least one of which went against Martin’s express wishes; despite Martin’s desire that her early (pre-1961) works not be seen, Bell decided to include them because, in Bell’s judgment, they enhanced the understanding of Martin’s later works. And, the lesson from this panel for estates with constrained funds: the continual nature of perpetuity is, in fact, limited .. by what’s affordable.

This was the second annual Art Business Conference in New York, with the Conference having originated in London in 2012. Here’s to its return to this side of the pond next year for further discussion of the complex, interconnected network that is the art market.

About the Author:  Stephanie Drawdy holds a B.A. in Studio Art and Political Science from the College of Charleston, a J.D. from New York Law School, and a Diploma in Arts Profession Law and Ethics from London’s Institute of Art and Law.

Disclaimer: Reading about art and law events is no substitute to formulating first-hand opinions about speakers and topics.

      WYWH: NYC’s Art Business Conference 2018 By Stephanie Drawdy* The Art Business Conference, held in New York on April 17, was an ambitious day of discussion among art professionals who shared insight on the “ecosystem” of the art market.

[totsuhwa-asegi]

[image description: two indigenous Elders wearing sunglasses and blue windbreakers. The man on the left has gray hair and is holding a feather, a traditional symbol of the Okanagan people. The man on the right wears a pale cowboy hat and is holding a teddy bear named Tupa; the bear is a tool to help kids deal with trauma.] [Editor’s note: This article contains content about suicide, mental health and violence that may be upsetting to some readers.] Kim Montgomery remembers the triple homicide like it was yesterday. She had just moved back home to the Syilx/Okanagan Nation when it happened. She recalls how the 2004 shooting that killed three and severely injured two shook the Indigenous community to its core.Montgomery’s cousin-in-law was one of the victims killed that night and she remembers the long wait for information.“They had left the bodies up there for like a full day before anybody even knew who it was, and then once they brought the bodies down, they still didn’t know at the hospital who actually died,” she said. “They found out who was shot, but they didn’t know who died for hours and hours later.” Few families in the Syilx/Okanagan Nation were untouched by Dustin Paul’s violent crime, but what really angered the nation was the lacklustre response by health officials. Health Canada sent three social workers to the Penticton Indian Band to provide mental health support to the individuals affected, but their approach was culturally insensitive and badly received.“They were non-Indigenous people, and the one person that was Indigenous worked from a different kind of framework and was very not engaging,” she recalls in a phone call from her house in the mountains of the Syilx/Okanagan territory. “It was like, you come to me, I’ll just sit here. And the community didn’t engage.”Montgomery remembers the support workers stayed for only a day or two, because band families did not want to speak to them. She called it a “you come to me in my office” approach that did not take cultural practices and histories into account. The half-hearted attempt sparked a fire for change in the Syilx/Okanagan Nation, which includes the Okanagan, Osoyoos, Penticton, Upper Nicola and Upper and Lower Similkameen Indian bands, Westbank First Nation and the Colville Confederated Tribes in Washington state.Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, who is now the president of the Union of BC Indian Chiefs, was the nation’s chief at the time.Montgomery said Phillip had heard a talk by Ray McGuire, who had started a team of Indigenous social responders in an Indigenous community on Vancouver Island. Phillip brought the idea back to the Syilx/Okanagan Nation and called Montgomery to help lead the change.She helped develop training materials, building the new Okanagan Nation Response Team from scratch. With a master’s in social work from the University of British Columbia and Okanagan heritage, she was a perfect fit for the lead position on the team. The Okanagan Nation Alliance asked each of the seven member communities to nominate two people to participate in the team on a voluntary basis. Each member would undergo 10 training sessions and learn how to support victims of trauma, mental health, grief and violence in the home.“People sent youth, they sent Elders, they sent their councillors, they sent knowledge keepers, they sent construction crew — like it didn’t matter what profession they had, their go-to people came,” remembers Montgomery, who helped lead the training sessions.The idea was that each volunteer, once trained in cultural histories, intergenerational trauma, non-violent communication and suicide prevention, could help their own community deal with traumas. The first round of volunteers finished training just before the start of Paul’s trial in 2006. It would be the first of many trials and traumatic situations Montgomery and the Okanagan Nation Response Team would face in the coming years. The second team of its kind in the province, the Okanagan Nation Response Team receives government funding from a program aimed at preventing suicide in First Nations communities. Originally, suicide prevention and response were the team’s main focus. But its role has evolved to include mental health support, wellness checks, grief support and domestic and family violence.Indigenous people are three times as likely to experience violent crime as non-Indigenous Canadians, while roughly one-quarter of all Indigenous Canadian women report being victims of domestic abuse. Youth and family violence are also much higher in First Nations communities across the country than among non-Indigenous people. Intergenerational trauma and social issues like poverty and drug and alcohol use, combined with a lack of mental health support, have contributed to a crisis in many communities.But the aftermath of the shootings showed that simply bringing in non-Indigenous mental health workers with little or no cultural knowledge is no solution, Montgomery said.That’s why she believes the Okanagan Nation Response Team is so vital. “One of our values, strong, sharp values, is relationships, and it’s the hub of everything we do,” she said. “So we don’t push things, we don’t move things so they go faster. We work with the family at their pace, and one of the biggest things is our people helping our people. That is a whole different way of doing work from an Indigenous perspective.” Montgomery described her work in dealing with a critical situation involving the Osoyoos Indian Band. The process started with bringing a group of band influencers to the table. Montgomery said she and the people from the band listed all the families touched by the incident and determined who at the table — or in the community — was the best person to reach out to each individual and family. “I’m not going OK, I’m going to phone all these people and I’ll make sure they’re all OK, don’t worry about this, I’ve got it,” she said. “So it’s really about who knows Joe, who knows Tom, who knows Bill? OK, you take that person.”They took a day to reach out and assess which families and individuals didn’t have the support they needed. Then they made plans to make sure those supports were provided and make plans to ensure they got it.“That’s an example of an Indigenous approach,” Montgomery said. Provincial and federal health systems dealing with trauma would more likely say “‘Send me a list, send me their email, my group’s coming in, if we need you, we’ll call,’” she added.The team’s wrap-around approach, based on relationships and trust, has been very successful, she said.Montgomery and the team have been recognized for their work nationally, and the original five-year pilot program has become a permanent source of support. The team is constantly expanding by training new volunteers so as many community members trained in trauma response as possible.A huge part of the success is due to the wholly Indigenous model, informed from those within the communities they serve, she said. The team works with people who need support for as long as needed.“Even the admin approach is from an Indigenous perspective,” said Montgomery. “It’s not like, ‘OK we responded, peace out.’ That’s that hit-and-run model, this is not. It’s very much an engagement-focused model and supportive model and that’s how we do work differently.” Jennifer Lewis said working differently is critical. As the wellness manager for the Okanagan Nation Alliance, she oversees the Okanagan Nation Response Team and other programs aimed at improving health and wellness among the Syilx/Okanagan communities.The team’s work in tackling entrenched social issues has been important, she said. And it’s just as it’s important that it’s a community initiative informed by the culture of the people being served.“We have a right to support our nation members in a cultural manner, in a way that we decide as a people, that is needed,” Lewis said. “And that has to do with sovereignty as well.” Sovereignty — in all its forms — is a big part of the team’s approach, she said. They use it to inform everything they do, including waiting to be asked to step in and help rather than pushing forward. Respecting boundaries is a big part of Syilx/Okanagan culture, stemming from the generations where self-sovereignty was stripped from people through residential schools, over-policing and racist government policies.Lewis believes the Okanagan Nation Response Team is so important for the communities in part because relationships with first responders and government response teams have been so negative in the past. “Our community has a long-standing history with the RCMP of mistrust and harm,” she said. “They have their own structures and their own policies, right? Like they have their own work hours... how are they able to adapt to community needs?” Community needs are at the centre of the team’s approach. They’re focused on putting community protocols and practices into action to improve the health and wellness of their nation members. Asked why the team is so vital to the community, Lewis said it’s because they know how to treat their own people.“We know cultural protocols. We know families and family histories. We know our community,” she said. “Where we have relationships, we have more trust and willingness to ask for, and accept, support.”

[go-redgirl]

The History of Presidents Using Military to Restore Order Within US Fred Lucas / @FredLucasWH / May 31, 2020 /

Minority-owned businesses are among the worst-hit targets of looters and rioters who rampaged in Minneapolis and then other cities after a black man died in police custody, according to news reports.

“Expressing grievances to our elected officials in the form of protest is a time-honored tradition,” Stacy Washington, co-chairwoman of the board of Project 21, a black conservative group, said in a public statement Monday.

“But what we are watching unfold across the country is a coordinated effort to destroy the rule of law and order in our communities and to gin up racial tension,” Washington said. “In video after video, we see masked white protesters dressed all in black destroying property in black neighborhoods. And it’s blacks who are trying to stop the Antifa protesters from defacing small businesses.”

During remarks Monday evening in the Rose Garden, President Donald Trump noted: “The biggest victims of the rioting are peace-loving citizens in our poorest communities, and as their president, I will fight to keep them safe.”  

The liberal Left continue to push their radical agenda against American values. The good news is there is a solution. Find out more >>

Prosecutors charged Derek Chauvin, 44, with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter in the death of George Floyd, 46, who was being arrested Memorial Day evening on suspicion of passing a counterfeit 20-dollar bill.

Cellphone video showed Chauvin, at the time a Minneapolis police officer, with a knee pressing into the neck of Floyd, prone and handcuffed on the pavement, for nearly nine minutes.

Floyd, who was black, could be heard begging Chauvin, who is white, to allow him to stand and saying “I can’t breathe” before he fell silent.

A medical examiner determined Monday that Floyd’s death was a homicide. Outrage over his death has united Americans across political divides, as well as police chiefs and police unions.

“I understand the anger, but I do not understand destroying your own neighborhood to protest an innocent man’s murder,” Marie Fischer, an information technology specialist and Maryland political consultant who is black, said of those looting and setting fires.

“I do not understand many who are bailing out these ‘protesters’ as a sign of support. How about you fund the minority business owners whose stores and businesses have been destroyed by rioters?” said Fischer, who also is a member of Project 21. “They should fund those who were and are building these communities instead of the ones tearing them down under the guise of social justice—which in this case is neither social nor just.”

Here are six examples of minority-owned businesses across the country that were vandalized, desecrated, or destroyed by rioters.

1. Minneapolis: Where Unrest Began

Luis Tamay, an immigrant, reportedly saved for more than 10 years to open his Ecuadorian restaurant, El Sabor Chuchi, in Minneapolis seven years ago.

After guarding his restaurant during the first couple of nights of unrest,  Tamay obeyed the city’s curfew Friday night and went home, believing the Minnesota National Guard would keep order.

When Tamay arrived at his restaurant Saturday morning, it was burned to the ground, the Minneapolis StarTribune reported.

“Seventeen years of work is gone,” he told the newspaper.

Nearby, a Spanish-language radio station, La Raza, also burned down. Station owner Maya Santamaria wrote on her GoFundMe page: “Small, minority business owners found themselves with the businesses that they worked their fingers to the bone building destroyed, looted, vandalized and burned down. Some had no insurance. Others have no resources.”

Jeff Lusuer, a Minneapolis barber who is black, had two shops. One was burned down; someone broke into the other and stole supplies.

Still, Lusuer expressed empathy for the looters after what had occurred in Floyd’s killing, saying he is fed up with police.

“Even though it hurt my businesses, I understand,” Lusuer told the StarTribune.

Floyd was killed in Minneapolis, and peaceful protests began there before others turned to violence, looting, and arson.

The StarTribune reported: “The riots and arson that followed protests of George Floyd’s death have devastated organizations and businesses that serve communities of color.”

The newspaper reported Monday that looters burned a nonprofit center for American Indian youth.

La Michoacana Purepecha ice cream shop lost power as a result of the riots, and employees tried to give popsicles away.

“People right now are going to want to stay away from Lake Street, and that is understandable,” business owner Ricardo Hernandez told the newspaper, referring to the location of his ice cream shop.

“It’s very hard to see your whole life savings go down like this,” Hernandez said. “We used up all our money to build something nice for … not just the Latino community, but everybody.”

2. Atlanta: ‘A Very Sad Day for Us’

Atlanta has a strong legacy in the civil rights movement as the one-time home of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who promoted peaceful resistance to injustice in the 1960s.  

Still, the city erupted in riots as badly as any other in the nation over the weekend. Some of the stores that were broken into and damaged were black-owned businesses, Fox 5 Atlanta reported.

The TV station highlighted Attom, the first black-owned business to operate in an outdoor mall called The Shops at Buckhead, known for high-end retail stores.

“I don’t know if people know we’re owned by a black man because we don’t put it on the front of the business,” Attom owner Zola Dias told the station. “But this is a very sad day for us.”

The store is boarded up, like most of the other shops in the outdoor mall, Fox 5 reported.

“I’m a black man, I’m young, but there is another way to go and protest,” Dias added.

A group of black women set up a fundraising effort to assist black-owned businesses that were destroyed or vandalized, the station  reported.  

3. Looting in Texas Capital

Looters targeted a black-owned salon over the weekend in Austin, Texas, NBC affiliate KXAN reported.

The owner of Private Stock Premium Boutique set up a GoFundMe page and as of Monday had raised more than $60,000 to help rebuild.

Another black-owned business, World Liquor & Tobacco, was looted twice Sunday, KXAN reported.

4. ‘Frustrating’ Vandalism in Denver

A Denver restaurant called Buffalo Bills Wings and Things, owned by Zac Gabani, was a target of vandalism.

“It is frustrating,” Gabani told CBS4 in Denver, adding that breaking things “is pretty counterintuitive.”

Gabani’s eatery reportedly was one of the few businesses that tried to remain open during both the riots and peaceful protests in Denver.

“We were the only place open to feed them,” Gabani said. “We like to support the community; we just wish they would help support us as well.”

5. Milwaukee: ‘Not a Way of Finding Justice’

Dozens of minority-owned businesses in Milwaukee were ransacked by looters, Fox6 Milwaukee reported.

Sam Rahami, owner of the store Trend Benderz, smashed over the weekend, told the TV station:  “Destroying somebody’s business, somebody’s livelihood, is not a way of finding justice for anyone.”

Another store owner, not identified by name in the news story, complained to the station that the destruction was counterproductive.

“What they’re doing is against their benefit. We are here to be part of this community,” the owner of a Cricket Wireless store that was looted and damaged said.

6. Philadelphia: ‘For My Own Community to Do It to My Business’

Black leaders in Philadelphia held a forum calling for peace and in part highlighting that many black businesses were being destroyed, ABC-6 reported.

The forum included black clergy in Philadelphia as well as Human Rights Coalition 215 and Philadelphia Community Stakeholders.

Among those speaking at the event this week were Elliott Broaster, owner of Smoke N Things, a shop that was burned down.

“When I got home alone, I shed a few tears. I saw my business burn down and it hurt me a lot. And especially for my own community to do it to my business, that’s what really [hurt],” Broaster told ABC-6.

The news station reported: “What took years for this Temple grad to build was destroyed in a matter of minutes.”

Dear Readers:

With the recent conservative victories related to tax cuts, the Supreme Court, and other major issues, it is easy to become complacent.

However, the liberal Left is not backing down. They are rallying supporters to advance their agenda, moving this nation further from the vision of our founding fathers.

If we are to continue to bring this nation back to our founding principles of limited government and fiscal conservatism, we need to come together as a group of likeminded conservatives.

This is the mission of The Heritage Foundation. We want to continue to develop and present conservative solutions to the nation’s toughest problems. And we cannot do this alone.

We are looking for a select few conservatives to become a Heritage Foundation member. With your membership, you’ll qualify for all associated benefits and you’ll help keep our nation great for future generations.

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OPINION:  Well, no-one can blame President Trump for all these unfortunate out of control people that are destroying their own communities which does not  make any sense.

Where is ‘ole’ big Mouth Al Sharpton, Farrakhan, Jesse Jackson and others that always complaining about everything but don’t have the gaul or ba**s to try to calm down these young Black Americans running through this country destroying ‘Black Own Businesses’ in their anger of a man that was murdered by a Police Officer in his community.

Certainly they are mis-guided and its certainly not a way to handle such and awful situation.

Our prayers going out to his family and friends!