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medicifm · 4 years ago

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* not me actually writing an intro the night before like i always mean to 😳 hennyway hey biddies , i'm chloe , im in the snowy part of pst , & i use she / her pns . i’ve been . . . . . . . scouring the tags for an rp like this so im so excited to bring this newish muse of mine here ! im here to do the honours of introducing my himbo - on - the outside , manipulative - shit - on - the - inside . . . oscar 🤡

( twenty three , cis man , he / him ) ✉ ― hey babes , have you met OSCAR MEDICI ? they’re working here as THE HEAD CHEF AT LORENZO’S , a few villas down from where you’re staying . you might hear them singing ALRIGHTY APHRODITE BY PEACH PIT playing from their villa , it’s their favourite song . yes , they hear that they look like JACK GILINSKY a lot , actually - it’s really uncanny . their friends back home in SYDNEY , AUSTRALIA say that if they were on a tv show , their trope would be THE WOLF IN SHEEP’S CLOTHING , how funny is that ? ✎ chloe , 22 , she/her , pst

𝐢 .

pinterest | wanted plots |

𝐢𝐢 .

name : oscar gabriel medici

age : twenty three

dob / sign : december 4th , 1997 / sagittarius sun , leo moon , libra rising

pob : sydney , australia

gender / pronouns : cis man & he / him / his

career : head chef at lorenzo’s , full - time heathen , professional disappointment for mothers everywhere .

drinking / drugs / smoking : yes / more often than he’d admit / never .

religion : jewish background , currently non - practicing .

physical : jack gilinsky fc , dark brown / black longish curls ( reference ) , dark brown eyes , canon jack g’s tattoos , no piercings , 6′2″ , 175 lbs , lean but strong . tattoos a la canon!jack , pearly white smile that he may . . . or may not . . . use crest 3D white strips weekly to maintain . lots of burns & scars from kitchen mishaps on his hands & arms .

traits : hard - working , flighty , intelligent , hedonistic , charismatic , intense , volatile ,

other : speaks weird french ( aussie accent tings ) , tans easily but wears sunscreen nonetheless , works hard parties harder , can’t read a lick of french but spends a lot of his free time with a coffee & a new paperback , has a bit of an internal vendetta against rich people ( for no real reason , he just doesn’t like most of them ) , has ins with a bunch the local farmers & visits them weekly , pretends he isn’t lowkey addicted to nicotine administered via a puff bar , liquor of preference is tequila or red wine , drives a lil vespa around town for the gag of it ( loves seeing it haphazardly parked amongst a bunch of luxury cars ) ,

character inspo : jess mariano ( gilmore girls ) , gordon ramsey 🤡 , patrick verona ( 10 things i hate about you ) , ferris bueller ( ferris bueller’s day off ) , han solo ( star wars ) .

𝐢𝐢𝐢 .

oscar’s arrival was as unwanted to his parents as could be : a father whose tendencies leaned towards alcoholism & abusing whoever was in arms reach , a mother whose life was more or less spent at the nursing home she worked as a nurse at , evading home . he became a self - inflicted loner , preferring to do literally the exact opposite of what was expected or wanted from him . he had a few friends he ran with , but watching them all go off & study or prepare for university solidified in oscar’s mind that the non - traditional route was for him . growing up by the water , oscar always felt more drawn to skip school & head to the beach than he did obeying his parents wishes .

one of his solaces was his grandfather , gabriel , who owned an italian restaurant in a beach town north of sydney . whenever the weather was bad & oscar felt like ditching class , he’d head over to his nono’s restaurant where his ass would be put to work as soon as he set eyes on the restaurant . it was tough work , but challenging in a way that fanned the flames in oscar’s heart , rather than dimming them . by the time he was a teenager he was working in the restaurant everyday after school , an agreement between him & his grandfather framed on the back wall that stated that as long as oscar kept from flunking out , he was allowed to spend as little or as much time in the kitchen as he pleased .

his absolute defiance of anything traditional & following the rules made him unpopular with adults , but lowkey cool with the girls . by the time he was sixteen , he was losing his focus on the restaurant & his grades & spending more & more time chasing after girls . his nono tried to get oscar to come back & focus , but as always , anything he’s asked to do quickly becomes the thing he’s running from the most .

tw : death , cancer . around his eighteenth birthday , his grandfather suddenly fell ill with a rare form of cancer that took his life six weeks after diagnosis , which rocked oscar’s world . he felt overwhelming guilt that he hadn’t spent more time with his grandfather , which manifested itself as oscar dropping out of school a year shy of graduation to commit himself fully to perfecting his grandfather’s techniques , learning all of his recipes ( read : pouring over dozens of handwritten cookbooks ) in some failed attempt to get back some time with him . oscar hadn’t been close with his parents in years , more or less seeing them as wardens of a prison he wanted nothing to do with . his grandfather’s will left him the deed to the restaurant , with an ask that oscar would promise to act on whatever he felt called towards , rather than doing what others expected of him . to be candid , this whole situation crushed him .

eventually , he decided he’d had enough of the stifling community he’d grown up in . he sold the restaurant to one of the regulars , a wealthy man who he’d come to acknowledge as somewhat of an uncle ; a safe pair of hands who would treat his grandfather’s legacy with as much passion & respect as oscar himself would . so he packed a bag , texted his mom that he was going traveling , & got on a flight that evening . he traveled all around - first through central america , then through europe , throughout asia & africa , & spent a few months driving a van across the continental united states & canada for fun .

eventually , he started getting low - ish on money , & decided to settle in one of his favourite places he’d visited : southern france . he arrived in early 2018 , taking on whatever menial tasks he could while learning french until he got a position as a line cook in an italian restaurant . a few years later , he’s made his way up to filling the head chef position , an honour he takes with pride . he’s implemented many of his own recipes while using flavours he’s learned from his travels , with ingredients straight from local farmers . he’s earned the restaurant a two michelin star rating , & is constantly striving for more to get that last star ( both for his own ego as well as a secret debt to his grandfather ) .

𝐢𝐯 .

ok but that vid where gordon puts two pieces of bread on someone’s head & calls them an idiot sandwich ? that’s oscar . intense as fuck in the kitchen , & best nobody catch an attitude about it bc he will not hesitate to hand them their ass on a silver platter .

another gordon reference : you know how he’s the spawn of satan with adults , but the sweetest , most helpul guy with children ? that’s oscar with his staff vs people he wants something from . whether its to sleep with them ( usually his first instinct to be fair ) , their money or clout , or to get into some wild adventure some random resort staff wouldn’t dream of getting into , he can turn on the charm whenever needed .

can go from absolutely demoralizing someone in the kitchen to stepping out into the lounge to schmooze with his friends or cougars who leave phat tips in 0.2 seconds . the speed at which his mood can completely 180 is one of the seven world wonders ( last i checked ) .

his love language is absolutely acts of service . catch him actually falling in love once in a blue moon & making it his mission to cook her extravagant meals everyday .

the wolf in sheep’s clothing label epitomizes his nice , helpful , charismatic exterior , while ulterior motives & disdain for those who grew up with more money than he did lurk beneath the surface .

he can be MEAN when someone fucks him over or pushes him farther than he wants - isn’t afraid to go for the low blows or send someone home with an identity crisis if it protects himself .

lowkey alcoholic but he’s not ready for that conversation yet . he sees it more as perks of the location & atmosphere he’s found himself in .

also lowkey falls in love HARD , like this man is a closeted romantic but self - sabotages all potential relationships before they can get to that point out of fear he’ll be unable to live life of his own volition ( takes a flaky philophobic sagittarius to know a flaky philophobic sagittarius 🤡 ) . has probably only had a few real relationships besides flings bc he’s afraid .

𝐯 .

check out my wanted plots tag listed here , as well as my pinterest wanted plots board here . here are some other suggestions hehe :

best friend / ride or die : someone who knows about his past , keeps him grounded when he’s lk spiraling & wants to drop everything & flee to some far flung corner of the earth .

actual relationship : it was fast - burn with deep feelings ( not them thinking they’re soulmates after dating for a month . . . pete & ariana type beat ) but completely unrealistic . they have their own life , he’s pretty much tied to the restaurant , not to mention his lack of sharing anything about his childhood / life back home . they loved & cared for each other , but crashed & burned fairly quickly because of how idealistic it was . they can either be on bad or good terms now .

hateship with sexual tension 😈

summer flings !!

fake boyfriend : he shows up on her arm to her family’s events where she’s expected to have a partner . it’s not a real relationship , but her parents don’t need to know that . he plays the part & satisfies her parents beyond the bare minimum , & in return she invites him to parties , takes him out on her family’s yacht , etc etc . we luv some symbiosis

i can always use more fwbs hehehe

squad : a group of people who do everything together , have a chaotic group chat , have nicknames for one another , are utd on each other’s sex lives , party all night then show up to brunch hungover together .

cat & mouse : someone he’s pursuing who isn’t quite giving in , & vice versa . maybe it’s been going on a few years , everytime they’re in st tropez they have this weird lil flirtationship thing goin on until she leaves , they forget about one another , then pick it right back up when she returns .

confidant : preferably someone from a working class background who understands his plight of being a worker amongst people who expect to be waited on .

enemies : they don’t like his attitude , & he doesn’t like them in return . lots of eye rolls , shit talking , & tension between their mutual friends .

we’re sleeping together but we shouldn’t be but that’s half the fun : for whatever reason they became friends , starting hooking up despite it not being a good idea ( read : he’s exes with one of her friends , her parents want her focused on career , they’re part of the same friend group , etc ) . . . but now they can’t stop . lots of stolen glances across rooms , squeezing past one another in a crowded club just close enough for a quick touch to the back , quietly leaving one another’s places the morning after & playing dumb to anyone who asks .

#villasintro #eeeek im hyped !!

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dustedmagazine · 4 years ago

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Dust Volume 6, Number 8

Angel Olsen

Now half a year in the pandemic, we’re starting to see the emergence of quarantine records, whether in the trove of reissues hastily assembled to stand in for new product or home recorded projects made with extremely close friends and family or albums that are conceived and written around the concept of isolation. Music isn’t real life, exactly, but it lives nearby. And in any case, it’s still music and can be good or bad whether it’s been unearthed from a forgotten box of tapes, recorded at home without collaboration or side people or technologically gerry-rigged so that distanced partners can work together. So, as long as you all are making music, we will continue to listen and find records that move us, as the world burns all around. This edition’s contributors included Patrick Masterson, Andrew Forell, Tim Clarke, Jennifer Kelly, Bill Meyer, Jonathan Shaw, Justin Cober-Lake and Ray Garraty. Enjoy.

+ — #playboy (Deluxe Edition) (self-released)

#playboy (deluxe edition) by +

One of the most genuinely confounding records I’ve heard this year comes courtesy SEO-unfriendly artist + aka Plus Sign fka Emanuel James Vinson, a Chicago rapper, city planner and all-around community activist who spends his time helping with the city’s Let’s Build Garden City initiative when he’s not making music (which is frequent, by the way — take a look at the breadth of that Bandcamp discography). The concept with #playboy, originally released in April but deluxed in late May, is simple: Two kids find a music machine called #playboy in their basement and start tinkering with it. Its childlike whimsy is conveyed in the song titles (“Getting the Hang of It,” “Wake Up Jam (Waking Up)”) every bit as much as it is in the music, with occasionally grating indulgences, the odd earworm and a brief appearance by borderless internet hip-hop hero Lil B that makes perfect sense in context; the kindred spirit of that community-building cult auteur is strong here. You may wind up loving this record or you may wind up hating it, but I can promise you this: You’ll be thinking about it and the artist behind it long after it’s over.

Patrick Masterson

Actress — Mad Voyage Mixtape (self-released)

I once suggested Darren Cunningham mucks about with his music because he can’t help himself. That was about six years ago on the occasion of his purported “final” album Untitled; with the benefit of hindsight, we can see he was (like so many others, to greater or lesser consequence) just pulling our leg with that PR. Hell, he’s released two albums worth of music in July alone: The first was the mid-month surprise LP 88, which follows in the vein of his acclaimed high period as an often brilliant, occasionally frustrating patchwork of submersible beats best played at high volume with a low end. The second came at the end of the month in an m4a file shared the old fashioned way on a forum via Mediafire link, nearly an hour and a half long, and per the man himself, “All SP-303, sketchbook beats, recorded this past week [the first week of July] straight to recorder or cassette.” It feels very much like a homespun Actress mixtape and is probably best thought of as livelier accompaniment to 88 but, even still, there’s no noticeable drop in quality — once Actress, always Actress. If headier lo-fi beat tapes are your beat, this will slot comfortably in line.

Patrick Masterson

bdrmm - Bedroom (Sonic Cathedral)

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Hull five-piece bdrmm play a satisfyingly crepuscular version of shoegaze on their debut album Bedroom. Ryan Smith, his brother Jordan on bass, guitarist Joe Vickers, Danny Hull on synths and drummer Luke Irvin combine the widescreen sound of Ride with a cloak of gothic post-punk. Like the late, lamented Girls Names, bdrmm find a sweet spot where atmosphere and dynamics either build to euphoric crescendos or bask in bleak funereal splendor. Bedroom seems deliberately sequenced from celebration to lament. “A Reason To Celebrate” evokes Ride at their most anthemic, the tripping staccato driven “Happy” summons the spirit of The Cure of Seventeen Seconds before the pace drops for the second half, the songs become quieter and darker as the band finds a more personal voice. “(The Silence)” is an ambient whispered wraith of a thing, “Forget The Credits” impressively mopey slowcore. bdrmm don’t always transcend their influences, but this debut is an atmospheric treat if your taste runs to the darker end of the musical buffet.

Andrew Forell

Circulatory System — Circulatory System (Elephant 6 Recording Co.)

Circulatory System by Circulatory System

Nearly 20 years after its initial release, the excellent eponymous debut album by Will Cullen Hart’s psychedelic chamber-pop band Circulatory System gets a long overdue vinyl reissue. While his previous project, the undeniably great Olivia Tremor Control, tended to lean more towards classic psych-pop’s traditional tropes — hard-panned drums, loads of disorientating tape effects, wonky harmonized vocals — Circulatory System taps into something utterly uncanny. Both Signal Morning (2009) and Mosaics Within Mosaics (2014) have their moments, but this is front-to-back brilliant, conjuring a sublime atmosphere of reflective estrangement. The music is a thick, grainy soup of shimmering instrumentation, from the eerie (“Joy,” “Now,” “Should a Cloud Replace a Compass?”) to the joyful (“Yesterday’s World,” “The Lovely Universe,” “Waves of Bark and Light”), but part of the album’s magic is the way everything flows into a seamless whole. As is vinyl’s tendency, the rhythm section really comes alive here, the fuzz bass and tom-heavy drum parts booming out, with plenty of vivid details in the mix swimming into view. A worthy reissue of an essential album.

Tim Clarke

Cloud Factory — #1 (Howlin’ Banana)

Cloud Factory #1 by Cloud Factory

Cloud Factory, from Toulouse, France, overlays the serrated edges of garage pop with a serene dream-pop drift. It’s an appealing mix of hard and soft, like being pummeled to death by pillows or threatened gunpoint by a teddy bear. “Amnesia,” for instance, erupts in a vicious, sawed off, trouble-making bass line, then soars from there in untroubled female vocals. Later, “No Data,” punches hard with raw percussion, then lays on a liquid, lucid guitar line that encourages middle-distance staring. None of these songs really up the ante with memorable melodies, sharp words or that intangible R’NR energy that distinguishes great punk rock from the so so. Not loud, not soft, not great, not bad. Cloud Factory resides in the indeterminant middle.

Jennifer Kelly

Entry — Detriment (Southern Lord)

Detriment by Entry

Nuthin fancy here, folks. Just eight songs — plus a flexing, fuzzing intro — of American hardcore punk. Entry has been grinding away for a few years now, and Detriment doesn’t advance much past the musical terrain the band marked off on the No Relief 7-inch (2016). That’s OK. The essential formula is time tested: d-beat rhythms, overdriven amps and Sara G.’s ferocious vocals delivering the necessary affect. That would be: pissed off, just this side of hopeless. Detriment sounds like what might happen if Poison Idea (c. 1988) stumbled into a seminar on Riot Grrrl; after everyone got tired of beating the living shit out of one another, they’d make some songs. “Selective Empathy” is pretty representative. Big riffs, a breakdown, and more than enough throaty yelling to let you know that you’re in some trouble. You might recognize the sound of Clayton Stevens’ guitar from his work with Touché Amoré — but maybe it’s better if you don’t. This isn’t music for mopery. Watch out for the spit, snot and blood, and flip the record.

Jonathan Shaw

Equiknoxx — VF Live: Equiknoxx (The Vinyl Factory)

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There’s nothing like a little roots music to get you through the sweltering summer heat, and this early July mix by Gavin “Gavsborg” Blair (half of forward-thinking Kingston dancehall unit Equiknoxx) was a personal favorite of the past month for hitting that spot. The group tends to throw curveballs at the genres it tinkers with, and Blair’s mix highlights why they’re so good at it: The crates run deep. Spanning everything from legendary producer and DJ Prince Jazzbo to in-house music fresh out the box (e.g., “Did Not Make This For Jah_9�� was released in late May), Blair sets the mood and educates you along the way. Like everything else these cats do (and that includes the NTS show — support your independent radio station!), it’s hard not to give the highest recommendation.

Patrick Masterson

Ezra Feinberg — Recumbent Speech (Related States)

Recumbent Speech by Ezra Feinberg

Knowing that Ezra Feinberg is a practicing psychoanalyst, it’s tempting to read meaning into the name of his second solo album. But be careful to think twice about the meaning you perceive and ask yourself, is it the product of Feinberg on the couch or your own projection? His choice to name one of the record’s six instrumentals (there are voices, but no words) “Letter To My Mind” certainly suggests that there’s an internal dialogue at work, but the music feels most like a layered deployment of good ideas than an exchange of intrapsychic forces. The synthesizers shimmer and cycle like something from a mid-1970s Cluster record, resting upon a pillow of vibraphone and electric piano tones, which in turn billow under the influence of undulating layers of drums. Feinberg’s guitar leads are bright and pithy, like something Pat Metheny might come up with if he knew he was going to have to pay a steep price for every note he played. Ah, but there I go, projecting an implication of adversary process where there may be none. Might it be that Feinberg, having spent a full work week immersed in the psychic conflicts of others, wants to lay back on the couch and exhale? If so, this album is an apt companion.

Bill Meyer

Honey Radar — Sing the Snow Away: The Chunklet Years (Chunklet)

Sing the Snow Away: The Chunklet Years by Honey Radar

Jason Henn of Honey Radar has a solid claim at being his generation’s Bob Pollard, a prolific, absurdist songwriter, who tosses off hooky melodies as if channeling them from the spirit world. His least polished material glints with melody hidden beneath banks of fuzz, whispery and fragile on records, but surprisingly muscular in his rocking live shows. This 28-song compilation assembles the singles, splits, EPs and bonus tracks Henn recorded for Chunklet between 2015 and the present; it would be a daunting amount of material except that it goes down like cotton candy, sweet, airy, colorful and gone before you know it. Like the Kinks, Henn has a way of making strident rock and roll hooks sound wistful and dreamy. In “Lilac Pharmacy,” guitar lines rip and buck and roar, but from a distance, hardly disrupting Henn’s placid murmur. “Medium Mary Todd” ratchets up the tension a bit, with a tangled snarl of lick and swagger, but the vocals edge towards quiet whimsy a la Sic Alps; a second version runs a bit hotter, rougher and more electric, while a third, recorded at WFMU, gives an inkling of the Honey Radar concert experience. A couple of fine covers — of the Fall’s early rant “Middle Class Revolt” and of the Monkees rarity “Wind-Up Man”— suggest the fine, loamy soil that Henn’s art grows out of, while alternate versions of half a dozen tracks hint at the various forms his ideas can take. It’s a wonderful overview of Honey Radar so far, though let’s hope it’s not a career retrospective. Henn has a bunch of records left to make yet if he wants to edge out Pollard.

Jennifer Kelly

Iron Wigs — Your Birthday’s Cancelled (Mello Music Group)

Your Birthday's Cancelled by IRON WIGS

As an adjective, “goofy” had gotten a bad rep in hip hop. Anything that is unusual, inventive and not in line with “keeping it real” is immediately stigmatized as goofy, weird, nerdy and bad. Iron Wigs is goofy but hold the pejorative connotations. Chicago representatives Vic Spencer and Verbal Kent team up here with Sonnyjim from the UK to do some wild rhyming. They collaborated before, but Your Birthday’s Cancelled is a complete, fully fleshed project, masterfully executed from start to finish. Instead of the usual gun busting you get a fist in the ribs. Instead of drug slinging, a blunt to activate your rhymes. Each member of the group has a distinctive delivery which makes you to listen carefully for every verse, no skipping. It’s a relief to listen to rap artists who don’t pretend they’re out in the streets while they’re at home enjoying a favorite TV series. The standout track here is “Bally Animals & Rugbys” with Roc Marciano dropping by for a verse.

Ray Garraty

Levinson / Mahlmeister — Shores (Trouble In Mind)

Shores by levinson / mahlmeister

Jamie Levinson and Donny Mahlmeister’s Bandcamp page indicates that they’re based in Oak Park, a suburb of Chicago. This goes further towards explaining their association with Trouble in Mind Records, which is located in the same county, than their music, which brings to mind something much further north. The duo’s music is mostly electronic, with modular synthesizers setting the pulse and sweeping the pitch spectrum while lap steel guitar adds flourishes and a shruti box thickens the textures. The album is split into two, with each track — one is named “Ascend,” the other “Release” — taking up one side of a 50-minute cassette. The first side trundles steadily onwards, and the second seems to bask in a glow to that never totally fades. Since there’s no “Descend,” it’s easy to imagine this music sound tracking a drive into the Canadian north, the journey unspooling under a sky that never darkens, its progress towards Hudson Bay unhindered by other traffic or turns in the road. Perhaps that’s just one listener’s fantasy of easy social distancing and escape from the present’s grim digital glare into a retro-futurist, analog dream. But in dreams we’re free to fly without being seated next to some knucklehead with his mask over his eyes instead of his mouth, so dream on, dreamers. This tape is volume one of the Explorers Series, Trouble in Mind’s projected program of limited edition cassette releases.

Bill Meyer

Klara Lewis — Ingrid (Editions Mego)

Klara Lewis’s latest recording shows a narrowing of focus. Previously she seemed to be trying ideas and methods on for size, investigating ambient electronics or hinting at pop melody without completely committing. Given the approach to music modeled by her father, Graham Lewis of Wire and Dome, she probably does not feel the need to do just one thing, and that’s a healthy angle if one wants to stay interested and flexible. But there’s also something to be said for really digging into an idea, and that’s what she has done here. Ingrid is a one-track, one-sided 12.” Burrowing further into one-ness, it is made from one looped cello phrase, which gets filtered and distorted on each pass. The effect suggests decay, but not so much the gradual transformation of a William Basinski piece as the pitiless abrasion of a woodworker going over a plank with sander. The combination of repetition and coarsening hits a spot closer to one that Tony Conrad might reach, and that’s an itch worth scratching.

Bill Meyer

Luis Lopes Humanization 4tet — Believe, Believe (Clean Feed)

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The cruel economics of contemporary creative music-making favor an ensemble like Humanization 4tet. At a minimum, the filial Texan rhythm section of Stefan and Aaron Gonzalez (drums and bass respectively) and Lisbon-based duo of Rodrigo Amado (tenor saxophone) and Luís Lopes can each count on having the other half of a band on the other side of the Atlantic. But any project that’s on its fourth record in a dozen years has more going for it than the chance to save on plane tickets. For the Portuguese musicians, it’s an opportunity to feel an unabashedly high-energy force at their backs, as well as a chance to drink from a deep well of harmolodic blues. And for the Gonzalez brothers, it’s the reward of being the absolute right guys for the job; it has to be a gas to know that the heft they put into their swing is so deeply appreciated. While Lopes’ name remains up front, everyone contributes compositions, and everyone gives their all on every tune.

Bill Meyer

Joanna Mattrey — Veiled (Relative Pitch)

Veiled by Joanna Mattrey

This solo CD, which closely follows a collaborative cassette on Astral Spirits, is only the second recording with Joanna Mattrey’s name on the spine. But Mattrey is no newcomer. The New England Conservatory-trained violist has been playing straight and pop gigs for a while. If you caught Chance the Rapper on Saturday Night Live, Cuddle Magic with strings or a host of classical gigs around New York City, you’ve seen her. But if black dress and heels gigs pay her bills, improvised music nourishes her heart. And if sounds raw enough to scrape the roof of the world nourish yours, this album is new food. The premise of Veiled is finding veins of concealed beauty concealed, and that search impels Mattrey to tune her viola to sound like a horse-haired Tuvan fiddle, clamp objects to the strings and blast her signal through some satisfyingly filthy amplification. And whether it’s a slender tune or a complex texture, the reward is always there.

Bill Meyer

Angel Olsen — “Whole New Mess” single (Jagjaguwar)

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Everyone processes a breakup differently (though, to be fair, that’s probably less true now than ever). For Angel Olsen in 2018, it meant retreating to The Unknown, a century-old church in Anacortes, Washington, that Mount Eerie’s Phil Elverum and producer Nicholas Wilbur made into a recording studio. What ultimately came from those sessions was All Mirrors, but Whole New Mess is a chance to revisit that album (fully nine of these 11 songs are ones you’ve heard before; only the title-track and “Waving, Smiling” are new) in a more intimate framework — just Angel, a guitar, a mic and her reverberant heartache. The most cynical view to be taken here is that it’s a stopgap capitalizing on people’s vulnerability amid a pandemic quarantine, but it could also be a corrective for the bloat of All Mirrors, a record I listened to once and haven’t thought about since. Late Björkian excess doesn’t suit her nearly as well as the light touch delivered herein, and your interest will similarly hinge on how much Whole New Mess sounds like the old one.

Patrick Masterson

Ono — Red Summer (American Dreams)

Red Summer by ONO

Ono, the long-running noise-punk-poetry-protest project headed by P Michael Grego and travis, tackles the Red Summer of 1919, evoking the brutal race riots that erupted as soldiers returned from World War I. During that summer, conflicts raged from Chicago to the deep south, as white supremacists rioted against newly empowered returning Black veterans and an increased number of Black factory workers employed in America’s northern factories. Ono captures the violence—and its links to contemporary race-based conflicts—in an abstract and visionary style, with travis declaiming against an agitated froth of avant garde sound. “A Dream of Sodomy” lurches and rolls in funk-punk bravado, as travis declaims all the nightmarish scenarios that haunt his nocturnal hours, while “Coon” natters rhythmically across a fever-lit foundation of hand-drums, mosquito buzz and flute. “26 June 1919” wanders through a blasted, rioting landscape, sounds buzzing and pinging and roaring around travis’ fractured poetry. “White men, red men, Manchester town, send ‘em home, Oklahoma, send ‘em home, in a Black man house, send ‘em home, send ‘em home,” he chants, ominously, vertiginously. The center isn’t holding, for sure. The disc closes with the uneasy truce of “Sycamore Trees,” where steam blasts of synthesizer sound rush up and around travis’ vibrating, basso verses about meeting under the sycamore trees, a metaphor like the blues and gospel and nearly all Black music is full of metaphor about reuniting in a better place. Powerful.

Jennifer Kelly

Julian Taylor — The Ridge (Howling Turtle, Inc.)

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Singer-songwriter Julian Taylor does the little things well. That's not to say that he doesn't do the obvious things well, too, on his latest release The Ridge. His easy voice fits his songs, letting autobiography come with comfortable phrasing. As a writer, he tends toward the straightforward, avoiding extended metaphors or oblique references. The title track considers a particular form of life, and Taylor sticks to the tangible, singing about the stable, “Shovel manure, clean their beds, and prepare the feed for the day.” Taylor's songs make sense of the immediate world and relationships around him, but they avoid woolgathering. The album feels a bit removed from the current climate, but that's no complaint when Taylor's developed a welcoming place to visit. It isn't always easy here, but it's always companionable.

But back to those little things. Each song has carefully detailed orchestration and production. The record goes down easy whether tending toward James Taylor, Cat Stevens or something closer to country, and much of that easiness comes from the precise placement of every note. Burke Carroll's pedal steel, for instance, never exists for its own sake, but to serve the lyric that Taylor sings. The album contains enough space to feel like a rural Canadian ridge, with details drawn into to support Taylor's direct stories. The Ridge could easily go unnoticed (unobtrusiveness not being a highly rewarded trait), but its subtlety and care make it worth taking your boots off and sitting down for a minute.

Justin Cober-Lake

Various Artists — For a Better Tomorrow (Garden Portal)

For A Better Tomorrow by Various Artists

Compilation albums loom large in the American Primitive Guitar realm. Takoma, Tompkins Square and Locust all had larger ambitions than merely offering a sampling of wares, and to them, Garden Portal says, “hold my beer. I’ve got some collecting and playing to do.” For A Better Tomorrow started out as a Bernie Sanders fundraising endeavor. But when Bernie bailed and COVID-19 came on the scene, Garden Portal pivoted to support Athens Mutual Aid Network, an umbrella organization that coordinates aid to the underserved in this trying time. But in addition to good works, there’s some good work going on here. Not all of it is guitar-centric, but even the tracks that aren’t are close enough to the strings and heart template of the aforementioned parties to merit consideration under the same rubric. Joseph Allred’s been ultra-productive recently, so it’s actually helpful to be reminded of the spirit that infuses his playing by listening to it one track at a time. Rob Noyes’ “Diminished” takes the listener on a deep dive into the construction of sentiment and sound. And Will Csorba’s Pelt-like blast of fiddle drone, “Requiem for Ociel Guadalupe Martinez,” will put your hair up high enough to make that self-inflicted quarantine do a bit easier to execute.

Bill Meyer

Various Artists — The Storehouse Presents (The Storehouse)

The Storehouse Presents by The Storehouse

The coronavirus pandemic put the brakes on many things. You doubtless have your own list of loss, but for the proprietors of The Storehouse, the catalog of things kissed goodbye directly corresponds to their endeavor’s inventory of reasons to be. Over the past few years, the Storehouse has invited audiences out to a West Michigan farmhouse to enjoy a potluck meal and a concert played by some musicians of note. If there had been no lockdown, listeners could have enjoyed the Sun Ra Arkestra last April. Instead, no one’s playing, and no one’s getting paid, so the Storehouse has compiled this set of live and exclusive studio tracks to sell on Bandcamp in order to benefit the musicians and the Music Maker Relief Foundation. The cause, is good, but so are the tunes. Want to hear Steve Gunn and William Tyler in sympathetic orbit? Or Joan Shelley pledging her love? Or the first hints of Mind Over Mirrors’ new direction? Step right this way, preferably on one of 2020’s first Fridays.

Bill Meyer

Z-Ro — Rohammad Ali (1 Deep Entertainment / Empire)

youtube

On one of his previous tracks, Z-Ro admitted that he’s basically just writing the same song over and over again (that’s how meta he is now, writing songs on writing songs). While he exaggerated a bit, he was not that far from the truth. In the last half dozen years he’s been writing the same three or four songs in various combinations, reconfigurations and forms. Rohammad Ali follows the same template: haters hate him, but he’s OK and is counting his money. Multiply this by 17, and here is the album. Despite this self-cannibalizing (lots of poets did that), Z-Ro with every new album sounds fresh and far from tired. The self-repeats just fuel him. Rohammad Ali has only one rap guest, and it’s Shaquille O’Neal whose rap career didn’t jump off in the 1990s. A lack of guests only proves that Z-Ro can self-sustain without support from the outside. The only thing from the outside he needs is hate.

Ray Garraty

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eerythingisshaka · 6 years ago

Text

Mr. and Mrs. Stevens

This is my submission for @hoopshoney and @purple-apricots Black Panther Anniversary/Valentines Fic Fest! Not sure if this fic goes with the theme of the fest and if its a bit....I don’t know, however I did a thing and that’s that on that!

Warnings: Violence, Language, Sexual Situations

Word Count: 4k

Erik Killmonger x Black!OC

Prompt: “Try not to get blood on your clothes. We have dinner reservations in half an hour.”

Her phone trills in her bra as she checks herself out in the mirror. The shift she picked up for a friend starts in 15 minutes and she hates when he calls beforehand.

Picking up the call she answers. “Hey Erik.”

“Wassup baby girl? You at work?” His voice carries extra loud in her ear and kind of scratchy.

“Yeah actually. So why are you calling?” She asks in annoyance while applying her lippie.

“Aww, now don’t be like that. You -- money tonight e--? So don’t trip!” His voice crackles in her ear.

She takes a step back to look over herself in the mirror, pushing her braids back and turning around to check her behind. “The only thing I’m tripping over is why you obviously aren’t using the new AirPods I got you last month? I can hear the 10.99 drugstore quality in my ear, it’s bringing down my mood.” A loud sniff interrupts her train of thought as she sees a brunette leaning over the rim of a sink with a rolled up dollar bill.

Erik tuts at her. “Come on, you know I’m a traditionalist when it comes to the audio experience! I gotta, I gotta have, you know, an immersive, like, surround sound type of thing and like, the cords help-”

She leans on the sink in front of her. “You lost one at the gym today huh? When I called you and you said ‘shit shit shit!’ that was you dropping my money down the drain, huh?”

“Your money? Since when is it your money only?” Erik asks out the side of his mouth.

A girl taps her on the arm, wiping her nostrils as she holds out the dollar bill with a line left on the sink. She shakes her head with a polite smile. “Since I been doing all the work here. These long nights, planning my own appointments, working these guys for tips with only my own damn wit, when they obviously want more!”

“Pssh, aight aight, calm down. You know I appreciate this. It’s OUR thing though, so don’t get your butt on your back with me. I know you nervous cuz a high roller comin in today.” Erik says calmly.

She picks up her bag and stuffs it in a locker, slamming it closed. “Yeah, it’s basically now or never, Erik. If I’m not what he’s looking for, he’s moving on and then we ain’t got shit!”

Erik shushes her softly. “Chill, trust me. You what he’s lookin for. Guys like him love bitches like-”

“You better be kind and rewind that for me!” She demands. Erik always slipping his tongue at the wrong times, ignorant self.

Erik laughs. “I don’t mean you! He likes ‘females’ like you. He studies them the most, you know? That better?”

She sighs, choosing to ignore the still derogatory term. “Fine. You just be here when it’s all said and done. I need you in times like this.”

“You do, huh? I need you too, if you wearin whatever was in that bag you packed. Shit looked tiny, so you ain’t covering much.”

She cackles out loud, her laugh bouncing off the walls of the room. “Shut UP! Don’t be silly right now!”

“Ain’t nuthin silly! WE ain’t playing, you feel me?” Erik says authoritatively.

She kicks her heel at the ground, biting her lip. “I might be in a mood to see my friend backstage tonight.”

“Oh, so you claiming this dick right now? Cuz, I thought this was MY dick! Since I put in all the work around here, getting hard, staying hard, breaking your fucking back so all you gotta do is take it and you can barely handle that-”

“Oh Erik, fuck on with that. Buh-bye!”

“You get it now? Be good, DeDe.”

---

Johnny Rocket’s Adult Entertainment Club has a reputation for high profile clientele and catering to every kink imaginable. Politicians, celebrities, CEOs, and anyone with a 7 figure or more annual salary has the possibility of getting in any night, however the waiting list was 6 months back, minimum. If your name is powerful enough, you may receive a bump for the inconvenience, but there’s no way that list would move, as people kept looking for a chance to have an extravagant night inside.

One did not have to be looking for a touch from a stranger in order to enjoy themselves there, the club scene is just as hopping with exquisite seating, expensive liquors and miscellaneous party favors for the bold. Tonight, Johnny Rocket’s is packed wall to wall for a birthday party of the man who runs the Upper West Side of Las Papeleras, of that’s what he would call it. Mark Foley is the embodiment of greed; a shark tank businessman with a lust for power. His monopoly of the financial district kept his pockets running over and the local law enforcement’s lined to keep his shady dealings going at an accelerated rate.

His dealings started off with drug trades across the southern border of the United States, renting out the time of immigrants on the promise of Visa documents and safe keeping of their families on the road to citizenship. This was a messy business however, as many of his vulnerable employees would be caught shortly after a drop or killed for being intercepted to ensure the details of his operation remained unknown. It wouldn’t take much to cover his trail with his buddies in DC anyway. Even with a successful run, Foley would instruct his subordinates to drop off the grid, leaving his pushers high and dry until ICE came for them eventually.

But he was out of that game, now it is all about real estate. Foley knew exactly where to upstart businesses for friends and confidants that would make him the richest man in America.

“The rundown, dangerous, and poverty stricken neighborhoods are nestled so conveniently between downtown and the burbs. We just need to get those low lifes sucking off the teat of our taxpayer dollars to get off some extra dough, or get the fuck outta there.” Foley slurs his words, picking up his tumbler of 12 year old whiskey.

One of his associates respond, shaking his head. “Ahh, come on, Foley. Those people have been living there for so many fucking generations! How could you uproot them like that, changing there way of life at the drop of a hat like that? Where’s your heart?”

Foley blinks his eyes a couple of times, staring at his acquaintance from across the room for what seemed like hours. The flashing, multi-colored lights of the club blur his vision as the bass of A$AP Rocky pounds at their temples.

“Really?” Foley asks loudly over the music, frozen with his drink in his hand.

The man laughs out loud, banging the back of the couch as he leans his head back in blissful humor. “Fuck no! I’m just fucking with you Foley, come on!” He boasts, picking up a bottle of whiskey, clanging it against Foley’s glass.

Foley shakes as his hoarse laugh builds in his gut. “Ohh, man, you had me going there for a second! You can’t joke like that with me man, you’re still on probation with me.”

The associate combs his hair out of his face, adjusting his tailored, chocolate suede jacket. “Let me have some fun, huh? Anyway, you know what to do. Call up Johnson to get in touch with Hesson about his eminent domain clause on the block, and kick those sons of bitches out on the concrete. They’ll find a way, roaches never die, you know? They just skedaddle on to a new nest to infest.”

Foley lights up a cigar, pointing it his way. “Exactly. I consider this motivation to do better for themselves. Hell, once I clean up the pigsty, they can bring their credit score and occupation info, if they have one, and make a deposit with 6 months rent to settle in to the swanky new digs I transform those rat traps from!”

A waitress comes over in a leather miniskirt and thigh high boots with a fringed crop top that rests off her shoulder. Half of her braids are bound on top of her head, with the rest cascading down her back. Even in the dark room and the intensity of the strobing lights, her melanin shown beautifully rich, bringing the table to her full attention.

“Can I get you gentlemen another round?” Her voice said with a sultry timbre, leaning forward to pick up bottle and adjoining glasses. Some of her braids fall in the face of a hypnotized Foley who reached his thick hands through them, sniffing.

“Mmm, if you mean the juice, that’s not what I need another round of, sugar.” Foley says wagging his eyebrows.

She looks over at him, pulling her braids back and out of his hands. “You are Mark Foley, correct?”

He nods slowly, mouth half hanging open. “I like the way you say my name, doll.”

“My name is Sade. Your friend here made arrangements for us to...get to know each other a little better…” Sade bites her lip, using her almond shaped eyes to invite Foley into the possibility.

He didn’t need too much convincing as he clapped his hands looking over at his associate. “You sly dog! You planned this for me?”

He shrugs. “Nothing but the best, for the man who holds my old hood in his hands.” Raising the bottle up again in solidarity, Foley springs up out of the booth, grabbing Sade by the waist.

“This EXACTLY what I need! Let’s not delay, drop those glasses at the bar and let’s boogie!” Foley exclaims, leading Sade along and leaving his associate with the bill.

Foley’s hands were lit up over Sade’s body, feeling her soft and firm portions of her body with no shame as she led him to the quieter, private rooms in the bottom level of the club. A black door marked with the number 8 in gold is where Sade took them before pausing to turn around and face him, snapping her fingers to regain his sober attention.

“Once we cross this threshold, you will need to behave yourself. I won’t ask you again, otherwise consequences will be set.” She says calmly.

Foley looks around the hallway, rubbing his hands together before whispering. “Whatever you say, mistress. I am at your command.” His Dad-bod practically vibrated with excitement as she opened the door. As it closed with a clang, Foley peers around to inspect the various chains, harnesses, chairs with binding mechanisms that decorated the room.

“Whew, this is-”

“SHUT UP!” Sade yelled with a crack of a whip. Foley turned around quickly in shock.

“Sade, I wasn’t-”

“Are you speaking out of turn after an order?” Sade snarls. In the midst of Foley looking around the room, she has put on a black lace mask covering her face and a nine tailed whip in one hand with ropes in the other.

Foley shakes his head excitedly. “My apologies!”

“Turn around and get on your knees.” Sade says walking around the perimeter of the room like a lioness tracking her prey. Foley does as he is told, fitting the profile of sub perfectly as he avoids eye contact.

“You are a stupid, worm-grubbing quim aren’t you?” Sade says matter of factly, playing with the nine-tails in front of him.

Foley nods aggressively.

“ANSWER ME! Don’t you have a tongue?!” Sade demands, this time cracking the whip across Foley’s arm.

He shrieks. “Agh! Yes! Yes mistress, I am! I do!”

“Hm, we’ll see about that later...Do you have a problem with authority?” Foley stammers, not sure how to answer. “A man of such wealth and status must know a thing or two about breaking rules….Are you going to break mine?”

“No mistress. I’ll listen to every word!”

Sade puts her heel into his chest, leaning against him on her knee as she speaks in his face. “Have you ever let a Black person tell you what to do?”

Once again, Foley is at a loss for words as Sade runs a gloved hand through his thin, short strands of hair, before bringing the palm of her hand square across his cheek with a hard SLAP.

“That ends today. Tell me Black Lives Matter.” Sade commands with a dig of her heel that makes him wince.

“Ahh, Bl-Black Lives Matter.” Foley says hesitantly.

Sade takes her foot off of him before cracking the whip on him again. “LOUDER!”

“Black Lives Matter! Thank God, they matter!” Foley says more enthusiastically.

Sade looks him over with disgust. “Take off your clothes as you recite every Black person you know that has contributed to the fabric of our nation. Go!”

Foley starts with the buttons on his jacket and an ode to Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr. (Sade had to whip him for leaving off the Jr.) getting down to his briefs before stuttering on names, giving up before after he said Bill Cosby, holding his hands in front of his manhood.

“It’s not cold, put your hands down!” Sade demanded.

He does do quickly, looking embarrassed at the small protrusion he can’t seem to control.

Sade shakes her hand tutting him. “I’m glad you’re having fun. It’s a shame though, how little you know. The American private school system really failed you. However I am in a generous mood and have every intention on catching you up to speed. With a little help from a friend.”

On cue, the door opens and in walks his associate.

Foley protests. “Whoa, hey, this may have been incorrect info you got. I’m not into THAT.”

Sade grips his hair at the root. “Have my boot as a snack while the adults talk.” Stomping her foot in front of him, Foley bends down on the concrete floor to kiss and lick her shoe.

Sade sighs, wiping her brow. “Babysitting is so hard. What took you so long Erik?”

He unbuttons his jacket sighing. “His fucking card wouldn’t go through upstairs. So this muthafucka owe me his life and some change now.”

Erik picks up Foley’s pants, ruffling through his pockets for his wallet.

“Whoa, bro, what are you doing? You aren’t a part of this!” Foley says.

Sade was not pleased with this interruption, bringing her boot around to land it squarely with his chin. The crack of the impact echoed in the room as Foley flopped on his back, writhing in pain.

“What...the….FUCK!” He yells out, blood starting to coat his fingers.

“Damn, Sade!” Erik exclaimed, staring at his girl.

Sade inspects her boot. “Shit, he got a damn scuff in it, now I’m really pissed. Tie his ass up so we can move on.”

Erik handles Foley like a ragdoll, turning him over and using Sade’s ropes to tie his hands behind his back.

“You fucking niggers don’t know who you’re dealing with!” Foley says through clenched teeth.

Erik pulls him up by his arms over to a part of the wall with a collar and chain attached to it. Turning Foley around, he hooks his neck up to the contraption.

“You really want them to be your last words, bitch ass cunt?” Erik says, tightening the collar on the last possible notch. “Gotta use they language to get to em sometimes.” Erik says to Sade.

Foley laughs nervously as tears fill his eyes. “I could make you rich, man. Get your mom out the ghetto. You got any siblings? You could take them anywhere! I’ll turn your life around in ways you never seen, just let me out of here with this bitch!”

Sade sits on a stool trying to buff out the mark on her shoe. “Erik, his voice is annoying me…” She says in a sing-songy manner.

Erik pulls out Foley’s phone from his pants pocket, holding it up to his face to unlock it.

“Fuck! I shoulda known that facial unlock would bite me in the ass.”

Erik opens his camera to take some pictures. “Aww, shit! You finna be the Belle of the Ball once these circulate through your contacts. No way your bros at the Capitol can clean this mess up.” Erik laughs, showing the gallery to Foley, who is whining for mercy.

“Come on! Don’t do this! Let’s talk this over! You need some money? Let me give you something something, and we can work this out. No harm no foul!”

“Give him your bank login, we’ll handle the rest.” Sade instructs from across the room.”

Foley shifts, blinking the sweat out of his eyes. “I-I mean, you don’t wanna give me a figure first-”

Erik sends a strong blow to Foley’s gut, knocking the wind and dignity out of him.

“O...k…” Foley rasps as he coughs through his username and password for Erik to set up a transfer.

“Thanks for the paycheck, bro.” Erik, takes some leather gloves off of a table, sliding them, flexing his fingers. “No way in hell you can help me while you still got breath in your body. And ain’t shit you can do for me. That neighborhood you wanna run over so fuckin bad ain’t yours to take. White folks can’t never miss out on a land deal, fuckin colonizers.”

Foley struggled against his bindings, becoming agitated. “I am providing a service! Something that will make their world better!”

Erik punches the wall next to his head, cracking the concrete. “A world you ain’t got no plan to let them in? They already got a place to stay, and you want them outta there cuz the living is too cheap and they barely affording that. So instead of working for them, you’re just gonna build shit that they can’t afford, segregating them even more until they gotta leave. Turning half the shit into fucking parking lots any damn way.”

Foley breathes heavily, swallowing hard. “It’s so disappointing to hear you settling for less, bro. It really is…”

Sade comes up behind Erik, handing him a club and brass knuckles.

“I don’t need that shit, I got this.” Erik insists with a wink.

Sade rolls her eyes. “Try not to get blood on your clothes. We have dinner reservations in an hour.”

As Erik takes off his jacket and dress shirt. Foley says, “Aye, what was it you said before? Roaches always surviving? What’s it to you when they’ll find another hole to crawl into? Making babies and killing themselves, it’s the circle of life. I'm just tired of seeing your Black asses fucking with my city.”

Erik reaches behind his back near his waistband to swiftly take take out his military issue knife, grabbing Foley by his neck, slamming his head into the wall. As Foley neck folds sheath his hand, Erik brings the knife slowly to his eye socket as Foley closes his eyelids tightly. That only makes the process more messy as he screams in excruciating pain while Erik skillfully gouges him.

“There. Now you aint gotta see shit. That better?” Sade says, walking away at this point when all she heard was the pounding of Erik’s fist in bone. Foley’s feebled cries in pain didn’t last long when Erik socked him in his mouth, making him swallow his own teeth. Sounded as if he even indulged in the knuckles and the club after all, as he dared Foley to say something again, until it was impossible to do so Sade sat in her seat, reviewing her manicure as the cacophony of pounds into Foley’s body turned soft.

Erik’s breathing was the only thing left as he made his way back over to Sade with a wild nature in his eyes, and blood coating his knuckles and face.

“Ohhh, look at you! You’re never careful when I ask you to!” Sade scolds him as she pulls out a handkerchief and water, wiping down his hands.

“You know how I get carried away in the moment.” Erik says, voice gravelly as he stares at Sade.

Sade finishes off his hands, reaching for his face to clean. “Mhm, I know. Lucky for you, I brought a spare undershirt to change. What about your pants…” Sade brushed some dust near his crotch, feeling his dick twitch under her touch. “That is enough! I’m not cancelling this dinner. It's been weeks in the making!”

Erik bites his lip, leaning over Sade as she digs through her bag. “You blaming me when you out here dressed like that, kicking white folks in the face and not expecting me to wanna fuck you for that?”

Sade reaches for the collar of his shirt, tearing it halfway off his him with a blade between her teeth. She takes it and aims it over his chest. “You know how we celebrate…”

Applying pressure, she drags it slowly across his skin, red liquid bubbling along the length of the cut as Erik seethed. The satisfying release of his skin allowing the penetration of her blade made her breath hitch in her chest. “We got another one, we mark the occasion. Without him contacting his people in DC, no way they can settle a vote to gentrify now.”

Sade runs her thumb along the blood trickling out, wiping it clean before bring her face in his chest to lick his wound. The soft, muskiness of his skin is too tempting for her to let go as she caresses his chest.

Erik sighs deeply, taking one hand to grab her ass and the other wraps her braids around its knuckles pulling her face back as he devours her mouth hungrily. Erik lifts her up and onto a nearby table with a thud, pulling her skirt up to her waist as she reaches to free him from his trousers.

“Ooh, dont make me scar your back up now. This is lucky number 57?” Sade chuckles as Erik brings ankles to his shoulders, leaning over her.

The way Erik looks at her, one might think she was his sworn enemy. But this is Erik’s favorite time with Sade. Not just fucking, but taking out white folks that aren’t doing shit for anyone but themselves, leaving a trail of dead brown and black bodies behind them. Doing this vigilante justice together never got old.

“Try me. And a lot more to come.” Erik promises as Sade kisses his keloid riddled arm, biting down once he entered her.

Sade peppered Erik with affection as they fucked. Their roles easily switched from business to pleasure. Sade being the brains behind most of the operations, and Erik being the muscle, all he needed was to be told where to go and he had the rest. But as lovers, Erik took control of her, and she needed that change of pace.

As Erik reaches for her throat, he put his weight on her, lapping at her neck as he digs her out desperately. Sade gasped with each stroke he dropped inside of her, seeing stars as her breath quickened. Her head fell to one side as she got a full view of the damage Erik did to Foley’s body. The bruising, the bone jutting from his skin, blood pooling near his collapsed skull was all too much for Sade. She came so hard, Erik nearly slipped in her wetness flooding between them, tightening up on Erik until he contributed his own fluids to their celebration.

Erik lays still on top of her panting. “How much time left we got on the room?”

Sade rubs his back, still smooth but hopefully not for long once they continue their mission. “45 minutes.” She smacks his shoulders, willing him to roll off of her. “You’re cleaning up by yourself this time. Your dick is making me miss dinner, I’ve suffered enough.”

Erik laughs slow and deeply as he rubs his face, satisfied all the same. “You need a mop-iana?”

RagTag (it’s been so long since I wrote, I’m forgetting who likes to be tagged)

@chaneajoyyy @bidibidibombaclaat @wakanda-inspired

#erik killmonger fanfic #black panther fanfic #withlovefromwakanda #shakafic #fanfic

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bountyofbeads · 5 years ago

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What Happens When Ordinary People End Up in Trump’s Tweets https://nyti.ms/32bCiou

🍁🏈🍂🍻🍁🏈🍂🍻🍁🏈🍂🍻🍁🏈

What Happens When Ordinary People End Up in Trump’s Tweets

By MATT FLEGENHEIMER | Published Nov. 2, 2019 | New York Times | Posted November 3, 2019 |

McCALLA, Ala. — The evening of April 29 passed like many others for Ben Rawls, a fire lieutenant in Tuscaloosa: settled in the rocking chair on his porch, amid empty beer cans and mosquito-fighting candles, tweeting to an audience of dozens until he got sleepy.

“Granted I am in Alabama,” Mr. Rawls, 45, wrote around 11 p.m., after a major firefighters’ union endorsed Joseph R. Biden Jr. for president, “but most of the firefighters I talk to are voting @realDonaldTrump.”

The morning of May 1, some 36 hours later, was less typical.

Mr. Rawls showered and took his daughters to school. He ignored his phone, until it yapped so insistently that he had to look. An ashbin of Twitter comments greeted him: Racist. Moron. “‘Toothless’ — that was a good one,” he recalled.

The most curious posts disputed Mr. Rawls’s very existence. Strangers accused him of being a bot. He replied to one with a video he recorded in his pickup. “Here I am,” he said to the camera. “No faking here.”

All told, it took about 12 hours for him to solve the mystery. Back in his rocking chair, he stared at a fellow Twitter user’s note of congratulations: Mr. Rawls had been retweeted by the president of the United States.

Along with the Republican allies, Fox News hosts and conspiracy-mongering trolls whose messages President Trump pinballs across the political arena, he has also elevated regular people whose words he finds pleasing. Perhaps no group understands the praise-seeking cyclone that is @realDonaldTrump better than these arbitrary few who have lived inside it, briefly and usually unwittingly.

Their brushes with cybercelebrity are a portal into the Twitter feedback loop powered and experienced by Mr. Trump — dark, caustic, skimpy on nuance — where the ripples of a single presidential tweet can be hard to fathom unless measured against the relative anonymity to which these users were accustomed. Mr. Rawls got 2,700 retweets and 14,000 “likes” with the boost from Mr. Trump. The reach of his tweets before and since, he estimated, was approximately zero.

For many of the retweeted, the temporary platform stands as a testament to a style of politics they have never seen before — one that has bonded the president to his followers, virtual or otherwise.

“No other president has ever done stuff like this,” said Curtis Vincent, a 35-year old in Bowling Green, Ky., who operates one of the more than 215 unverified accounts Mr. Trump has retweeted since taking office. “They’ve been on a higher pedestal.”

Mr. Rawls, Mr. Vincent and several others were retweeted by Mr. Trump on May 1 after responding to a post by a Fox News personality, Dan Bongino, about the fire union’s endorsing Mr. Biden.

Joining them in temporary Twitter fame was Joelle Palombo, 46, a Southern California resident with 11 followers, who had largely used her account to cheer on her daughter’s soccer team. But after Mr. Bongino tweeted that “NONE of the firemen” he knew were with Mr. Biden, she replied with a note of support for Mr. Trump from one “fire family” out West.

The flood of reactions so spooked Ms. Palombo that she enlisted her teenage son to help block anyone she saw in her feed. The purge took three days, she said, and included the president, who she did not realize had retweeted her until a reporter told her months later.

“I went and looked at his account, and I blocked him,” Ms. Palombo said of Mr. Trump. “That’s how scared I was. I’m just one tiny hair on a dog. Are you kidding me?”

Although her affection for the president persists, Ms. Palombo questions the value of his favored medium. “How many hours of the day do people put in to do this?” she said. “I don’t need to have a voice on this. I’ll vote.”

Others have found more purpose in the practice. Mr. Rawls described himself as a reluctant Trump voter in 2016. He preferred Ted Cruz during the Republican primary, and he winces at some of the president’s choices, including insulting John McCain well after the senator’s death.

But as the 2020 election approaches, Mr. Rawls suggests, the president’s Twitter output is a more effective galvanizer than even the slickest campaign ad. “The tweeting doesn’t bother me so much anymore,” he said. “I don’t really feel like I wasted a vote.”

And the validation of the president’s retweet has encouraged his own more quarrelsome instincts. “Before all this happened, I would type something out and say, ‘People will think I’m crazy,’” he recalled, citing prospective tweets that he scrapped.

Since May, these second thoughts have been rarer. He has called Anthony Scaramucci, the former White House communications director, a “bitter jerk.” He has shared a doctored video of Speaker Nancy Pelosi appearing to slur her words. He has weaponized a gif of Judge Judy (“Either you are playing dumb, or it’s not an act”) to mock Representative Eric Swalwell, a California Democrat promoting gun control.

“I’m a little bit less of a wallflower than I used to be,” Mr. Rawls said, crediting Mr. Trump’s retweet. “I guess you could say I was more emboldened.”

CATCHING HIS EYE

Capital letters help. Sentence structure can be disregarded. Mornings, East Coast time, are best.

Grabbing Mr. Trump’s attention on Twitter is more art than science — and, often, more fluke than art. But some who have been retweeted say there are certain flourishes that can improve the odds.

The surest path is echoing Mr. Trump’s voice. The user @fiiibuster, whose profile boasts that he has been retweeted twice by the president, has built a following of more than 38,000 accounts — and won the digital stamp of approval from a man with 66 million — through a steady offering of posts that resemble Mr. Trump’s own. Among the words in @fiiibuster’s retweeted messages: “security,” “prosperity,” “America first,” “Pathetic,” “bad reporter,” “shame!”

In other cases, Mr. Trump has gravitated toward those who share his taste in reading. A few weeks ago, he retweeted Cathy Buffaloe, 70, a retired librarian in Walton County, Ga., after she quoted a Wall Street Journal column criticizing Representative Adam Schiff, the Democratic chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

When she told her husband what had happened, he asked if she had simply dreamed it. She took screenshots to show to friends and gained about 200 followers. “It isn’t often that ‘regular’ people have an opportunity to be heard concerning national issues,” Ms. Buffaloe said in an email.

J. T. Lewis, a 19-year-old Republican candidate for the Connecticut State Senate whose brother Jesse was killed in the Sandy Hook massacre in 2012, was retweeted last year after writing a flattering message to Mr. Trump. When he traveled to Washington months later to meet with the president as part of a school safety event, Mr. Lewis brought a printout of the tweet.

“He smirked and signed it,” he said. “It’s in my room somewhere.”

Mr. Lewis said he hoped the president’s imprimatur would show that Mr. Trump was not in league with the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who has spread bogus claims about the Sandy Hook shooting, including asserting that the victims’ families were actors and part of a plot to confiscate guns. (In 2015, Mr. Trump appeared on Mr. Jones’s “Infowars” program and praised him.)

But Mr. Lewis is skeptical that getting through to Mr. Trump owes to any elaborate strategy. “I don’t think things are planned out the way we think they are from the outside,” he said. “I think that was literally just: Guy in pajamas, ‘Oh, this is a nice tweet.’”

THE WRONG IVANKA

“The fingers aren’t as good as the brain,” the president once explained, discussing the typos he makes on Twitter.

And those fingers have at times conferred a spotlight on unsuspecting tweeters with low opinions of him.

In a tweet one night in January 2017, just before his inauguration, Mr. Trump shared a message calling his daughter Ivanka “a woman with real character and class” and tagging @ivanka.

That Twitter handle belongs to Ivanka Majic, 45, a technology researcher in Brighton, England, who shares a first name and little else with the president’s daughter. Ms. Majic woke up to media inquiries and a dilemma.

“There’s a decision to be made,” she said in an interview. “If you’re going to say something, what are you going to say?”

Ms. Majic recognized she would probably never be handed a megaphone like this again. “He was a bit unlucky, really, that it was my Twitter account,” she said.

She settled on this: “You’re a man with great responsibilities. May I suggest more care on Twitter and more time learning about #climatechange.”

Instantly, Ms. Majic became something of a local luminary as her progressive city strained to process Mr. Trump’s victory. Days later, at the London chapter of the global Women’s March, one attendee’s sign read, “@Ivanka, loving your work!”

In the years since, Ms. Majic has celebrated an annual “Trumpiversary” to mark the occasion. But one news clipping from the time still grates.

“There was one article that said, ‘Ivanka only has 2,700 followers,’” she remembered. “I was like, ‘That’s quite good for a normal person!’”

_______

Karen Yourish and Larry Buchanan contributed reporting. Kitty Bennett contributed research. Produced by Gray Beltran and Rumsey Taylor.

🍁🏈🍂🍻🍁🏈🍂🍻🍁🏈🍂🍻🍁🏈

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ourwickedworld · 6 years ago

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The Rambling Man Travel Review: Athens, GA

The Rambling Man. Travel Review: Athens, Ga The Classic City!

It is like going back in time, my personal portal to the past. Yes, it is a trip back to the college town I called home for 4 plus years. But, Athens will always be a place that conjures up life’s best feelings: love, passion, soul, heartache, and be so much more than a weekend getaway.

I arrive Friday November 9th, landing at Atlanta / Hartsfield International Airport. Athens is 50-60 miles Northeast of Hot Lanta, so I have a Hertz Rental Car in my future. Yep, I am rocking a white Ford Fusion to embark on this trip. I hop on 85 North, hit the 316 East, and I arrive in Athens in no time. As I approach my past, my present rolls down the window. My first test upon arriving into any new town, I must take a smell test of any city. I gulp in the air, and the South in general, but Athens specifically has its own smell. It is late fall, the air still warm. I smell water, soil, humid days, and the trees. You can see the many plants, you can smell the many trees. The many plants again near hibernation, a yearly tradition renewed as Fall turns to Winter.

And that could be the theme, a ritual renewed, of this weekend getaway. I have rambled into and out of Athens many times. I ramble into a town where every street light reveals a picture in reverse, to quote the great REM. Athens own REM… I am rambling into a weekend ritual renewed.

Where to start? How about an early afternoon stroll of campus? My accommodations at the Hilton Garden Inn, on E. Washington St. in downtown Athens, make the walk over to the University of Georgia campus darn right easy. My destination is North Campus, adjacent to Broad St. and directly South of downtown and Broad St. You will see the entrance to campus, and will be greeted by The Arch. But be for warned, Georgia Bulldog lore has it that only graduates can walk under the arch, those who dare walk under The Arch without a degree will suffer great sexual dysfunction. This may be a rumor, but, hey now, don’t mess with Southern Folklore if you ask me, especially when considering The Arch was molded in 1857. The University of Georgia, it is an old place, established in 1785. And, to me in my humble opinion, helps to explain my theme…. Because going to Athens, it is a tradition unlike any other, a ritual renewed.

Talk about walkability… North Campus on the campus of the University of Georgia is absolutely fantastic, offering young, hopeful faces, vintage buildings, historic sights, and sounds of hope hovering all around. After the flight, the walk gets my heart pumping. I play some REM, Widespread Panic, and Futurebirds to take in some of Athens Music royalty on my walk. Well, they are not quite all royalty yet, but I am taking in a concert tonight at the Athens historic legend itself, The Georgia Theatre. And, hum baby, I get a chance to see the band Futurebirds. Oddly, and without notice, I am in touch with my 19-year old former self. I am traveling in time tonight?

So hungry, I start to chew on my Red and Black ball cap. Food is right around the bend, but I have a few errands to run prior to catching a meal on the Rooftop Bar and the Futurebirds show at the Georgia Theatre.

It has been a long travel day, and if I did not get in the walk, I would have never been able to jump back into the rental car. It is a quick errand, a brief drive. I stop by the Package Store, somehow this is terminology for a place to buy liquor in the South. I pick up a bottle of Jim Beam and a 2 Liter bottle of Coke. The only thing missing… Picking up a copy of Leonard’s Losers. Leonard Postero was a native of Athens, Georgia, known for his syndicated radio show, Leonard's Losers. He was a 1943 graduate of the University of Georgia and served as an aviator in the United States Navy from 1943–45.

Leonard handicapped football games and provided a pamphlet, at the time. one could pick up at the Package Store. I picked up a copy quite often late on Friday’s in the Fall, and it 20-years later brings motivation and joy as I, in a similar vain of the great Leonard, pick my own Loser’s through my Las Vegas Larry’s Losers Podcast. Check it out… But remember, nobody does it like Leonard, a true Athens legend. We miss ya..

My errands continue, a stop at the Old Apartment. I am literally living a Barenaked Ladies song, The Old Apartment. Yes, this is where we used to live… Not much has changed, maybe some new paint. It is as if time stands still. I walk up the stairs to the outdoor patio, my eyes see what we used to see. The pine trees willow softly under the soft November sun. My car is still running, it may have been two minutes of my time, but the drive by of the old apartment is priceless.

I ramble on, rambling back to the hotel, a fiv- minute drive back East towards campus and downtown. I grab ice on my way up to my room, I drink two tall glasses of Jim Beam and coke. The TV is kept quiet, as I sit in silence. The perspective of life, ever changing. Travel can bring emotions, so can going back in time, but I don’t have time to think. I have a quick walk over to the Georgia Theatre for dinner!! I bark out loud in a weird ritual almost getting in some practice prior to barking all day tomorrow for the big game in town.

It is sweatshirt weather, a crisp fall night. I sit upon a most perfect sunset and spectacular views of Athens. The lights of space fuse to the Rooftop Bar, as I order the Pimento Cheese appetizer and a Purple Haze cold beer. I fold one beer to the next, before eventually heading down to the music venue which sits just beneath my feet.

The Band starts to play, and all is right in the world. It’s Friday night…. And a Friday night in Athens, by almost any definition features live music.

Stars were still coming from my eyes as dawn broke. It is a football Saturday morning in the Fall in Athens Georgia. But, hot dog, what a great show last night. I pull myself out of bed, quickly rotating my head in every direction to locate my water bottle. I see the leftover food I picked up after the show, Little Italy Pizzeria on Lumpkin. Little Italy Pizzeria is Athens in a pizza box. Let us not forget, Athens is a college town. And, late night cheezy, gooy pizza is just what the Professor orders after some live music and some beers at the Georgia Theatre.

The game is in a few hours, and my schedule is a bit tight, so I improvise a walk that is efficient on time. I start my walk from the hotel and walk South on Milledge Ave. The sidewalk below my running shoes has seen many footprints over the years, the traffic is moderate, and the sights and sounds are fantastic. To a degree, Milledge Ave., despite being a fairly major North / South thoroughfare, is the home to many college sororities. The antebellum homes turned Sorority Row is fairly intense and full of viewing pleasure, especially on a game day. And, frankly, this is what I mean by getting to know a city on an intimate level by walking its city streets. This walk is Southern Tradition, beauty, tradition, excitement, and a nice flat walk with a sidewalk to keep you safe.

I meet up with a few old pals that made the trip into town for the game, Mike, Wayne, and Mark. Wayne has a friend with a tailgate, so we plan on experiencing one of the best possible experiences known to man, a tailgate prior to a football game in Athens. GA. This is quintessential Classic City, college town, out of this world unique to Athens, and a must activity to truly understand why Athens is one of America’s premier cities and college towns.

We grill out and feast on Pork Shoulder with a white BBQ sauce. Some chicken chili was in the Crock Pot, and a big bucket of boiled shrimp and cocktail sauce sit on a table full of tailgate treats. I sip on another Jim Beam and coke, we talk football and get loud.

\The Georgia Bulldogs beat the Auburn Tigers, my friends and I ring the bell on North Campus, we then bar hop in downtown. The town is happy, winning big SEC football games in November over one of it’s biggest rivals can do that to a town in the South, and the happiness is obvious. This makes for a raucous and fun night of celebration. At times, yes, this old cowboy felt like the oldest cowboy in the room, but beating one of these young Millennials in a game of darts had me feeling spry. Bar games, what a country? Give me shuffle board, darts, corn hole, billiards… Downtown Athens can accommodate your inner bar game enthusiasm. And the late, late night scene… That scene can get you in trouble….

I wake up early Sunday to catch the early Service at Friendship Presbyterian Church. I would be remiss to leave out that the South is the Bible Belt for a reason. And, the glory of a Sunday Service in the South is a most unique experience and education. Regardless of faith, something good exists in the feeling one gets upon leaving church on a Sunday morning.

I grab breakfast at the Last Resort Grill, a must see event visit into A-Town. This place is so spectacular I would live in Athens full time just to go to the Last Resort every Sunday for brunch after church. I eat the Sunday Standard, two eggs any way you like ‘em, served with grilled new potatoes, crispy applewood-smoked bacon & one of their homemade scones. For the grand sum of $8.95 cents plus tip, I eat like a king in the company of scholars and the kind hearted. What a country to ramble city sidewalks and midnight streets, Athens is a true one of a kind college town.

I head South in my Rental Car on Milledge Ave to the State Botanical Garden of Georgia and I walk the picturesque landscape lost in thought and music. The Botanical Gardens are huge and make up several hundred acres, so it was most east to get lost in the beauty of a Sunday.

I arrive back at the hotel, tired. I turn on a movie in my hotel room, and I order takeout from Donna Chang’s before I hit the shower. The shower’s warm water brings me back to the future, I have a long trip home tomorrow.

But it truly did not matter where I was, what I was eating or drinking at this point. I was happy, most content. The stars of Athens Georgia again are overhead, as I dream a little dream on a Sunday night in mid-November, a ritual renewed.

What is the soul of Athens, Georgia? It is the whispers of REM, Widespread Panic, the B 52’s, Drive by Truckers, Dayroom, Futurebirds keeping you comfortable every step of the way. It is tailgating prior to a Big Game. It is the ghosts on North Campus hiding in the past. It is going to church on Sunday. It is a cocktail and a night out at the Georgia Theatre. It is the people who make the Last Resort EPIC. It is, however, a place where you can be who you truly are without judgement or prejudice. It is the Classic City!!

Scores: Walkability: 9 of 10 Drinkability: 9 of 10 Eatability: 9 of 10 Dudeability: 8 of 10

Can you catch a fish near or close to Athens? Yes, several bass lakes, creeks, rivers to fish. Can you hunt? Yes, area well known for deer hunting, bird hunting.

We Ramble On… Next Week, Santa Cruz, CA… We head to the beach bro…

To note, pictures. We want to share some pictures… Heck Yes…

We post some pics of the places, people, cities we Podcast and Blog about. Check them out on Tumblr or on our Twitter Feed, @BarkmanPete

Thank you for lending an ear, happiness starts today. The rambling man is part of The Pete Barkman Show and the How to live a Happy Life Series, this Segment: The Rambling Man. Travel Review: Athens, GA

The Pete Barkman Show has other segments to consider: Las Vegas Larry’s Losers, each football season see Larry pick the losers for any given week.

The Rambling Man, travel review. Enjoy unique travel experiences detailing the walbability, drinkability, Eatability, and the Dudeability of cities across the county.

The How to Live a Happy and Healthy Life Series, we have covered suicide, trauma, journaling for positive mental health, Is Happiness Possible, All Change is Self-Change with more episodes coming as we move further into 2019.

The Pete Barkman Show has covered the following news topics: Mollie Tibbetts, Judge Kavanaugh, Does God Exist?, Great Rivalries, MLB, Tiger Woods, Colin Kaepernick, and Urban Meyer. We podcast on relevant stories, breaking news, historical sports moments and record breakers.

This is the Pete Barkman Show, podcasting News, Sport, Opinion. Home of Las Vegas Larry’s Losers and The Rambling Man. Check us out…. Thank you.. Until next time…

#Travel #Athens #Georgia #travelreview #Food #Eat #men #menshealth #football #collegefootball #Walkability #Drinkability #Eatability #Dudeability #TheRamblingMan #music #GeorgiaTheatre #podcast #thepetebarkmanshow

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ctcullum17-blog · 6 years ago

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Day 1: Kia Ora and Welcome to Auckland!

Date of Reference: Sunday, 6/10/18 New Zealand (even though it was the middle of the afternoon on Saturday 6/9/18 US Central Time when I landed. Moving forward, I will use dates and times from the perspective of the local New Zealand time to keep things easier for me to keep track of. Isn’t time weird? Thanks celestial body movement and relativity!)

15 hours passed. I awoke to the gradual light that filtered its way from the front of the plane to the back. As I peered out the window, I continued to see darkness. All was calm. Then, the slight chime of the intercom filled the room like a soft alarm. It was the steward. “Kia Ora and good morning.” Kia Ora is a phrase New Zealand English has adopted from Maori culture (the Maori were the people that lived on the islands we now know as New Zealand long before European Colonization). Its literal translation is “be well/healthy”. The warmth of this phrase is infectious, and is a recognizable symbol of the warmth of my reception into the country, even if it was in the midst of the winter season at the time. I appreciated this change of temperature, however. Memphis had previously hit 89 degrees Fahrenheit each day. Being in a place that would maybe hit 60 degrees Fahrenheit at its highest was refreshing, to say the least.

As the plane touched down in Auckland, I disembarked down a ladder and onto the tarmac. After this, a courtesy shuttle pulled up next to the plane to transport me to customs. This happened to be similar to my connecting flight from Tokyo Haneda Airport to Akita, Japan. After the short 3 minute ride, I swiftly picked up my bag and got in line for customs. The most pressing questions I was asked was whether or not I had any food, animal goods, or outdoor equipment I would like to declare upon arrival. I mentioned that I had a pair of leather hiking boots. The customs official, while completely friendly and polite throughout our conversation, informed me that I must go through an additional biosecurity screening. I would soon learn firsthand that New Zealand takes biosecurity VERY seriously. I suppose this would make sense, as New Zealand, a small island nation, is often visited by foreign travelers for its pristine outdoor environments and activities.

Biosecurity took over an hour to get through, simply due to the number of international visitors arriving from various planes at the same time. Well… this, and the fact that there were only 2 customs officials manning the biosecurity tables/scanners initially. In retrospect, I’ll give the New Zealand Ministry of Primary Industries the benefit of the doubt. It was 6AM on a Sunday, after all. My training as an Industrial Engineer leaves me somewhat sensitive to situations like this, which can be frustrating at times. The line was long because of the disproportionate level of staff members to total queue length. This realization, coupled with the long flight, tried my patience. In spite of this, I maintained composure and worked to ensure I remained respectful and replied to the various instructions being received. Effectively, all I was really required to do at biosecurity was walk up to a 7-foot long metal table, open up my checked luggage, pull out my boots, and allow the customs officer to inspect the bottoms of my boots. Thankfully, they were still relatively clean (I can’t remember the last time I took a hike! This needs to change…). Had they been filthy, customs would have cleaned the boots before having me repack the bag. The only thing left to do was place the bag on the conveyor belt x-ray security machine and I was cleared to leave.

Auckland Airport resides in a southern subdivision of Auckland-proper. I was recommended to purchase a roundtrip ticket on the Skybus to get to the condo reserved downtown. After about 10 minutes of searching for the kiosk that sold SkyBus tickets, I managed to purchase a ticket and get on the bus. I was going to meet my girlfriend, Helen, and her family at the Airbnb condo from here, about a 26 km (a little over 16 miles) one way, which translates to roughly an hour of total travel time. As I got off the bus, I was standing in the midst of downtown Auckland near the bay. I could feel the gentle sea breeze chill my face as I followed some saved images from google maps to direct me to my destination. I am very glad I thought to do this while I was stateside. The airport only gave 45 minutes of complimentary wi-fi, and while the Skybus advertised free Wi-Fi, I was not permitted to access it as the cell number I had at the time could not receive texts originating from New Zealand according to the login authentication.

As I stumbled through some side streets, I came across a tall tower. The quiet of early morning vanished, and I heard someone shout “Chris!” from above. Helen’s mom happened to spot me walking up the street and flagged me down. I had arrived! I was actually surprised I managed to find familiar faces without access to the internet. This experience definitely reinforced the best practice of always having a backup plan for directional guidance. After rendezvousing with the Stritzels, I managed to drop off my bags, have breakfast, and then quickly turn around to the day’s main activity: visiting Waiheke Island.

As I mentioned earlier, downtown is quite close to the port, which has several ferries departing to the nearby islands. We quickly walked from the condo to the port, purchased tickets from Fullers for one of their ferries bound for Waiheke Island, and we were off in a flash. The map earlier in this post actually shows Waiheke. It is northeast of the downtown area and takes roughly 45 minutes to sail there. Waiheke is well known across New Zealand for its beautiful nature trails, award-winning olive oil, and picturesque wineries, all of which I was able to experience in one day.

We started the morning on the island with a hike. The original intention was to go to Whakanewha Regional Park. Though the hike we actually did included some wonderful trails that circled a lake wrapped by dense forests, we later learned that we were adjacent to the park while not technically being in it. To get to the forest, we disembarked from the ferry at the Fuller port located on the western part of the island. Then a bus pulled up and shuttled us more towards the center of the island. A breath of fresh air and some walking was welcome after previously being scrunched up in a metal tube for hours on end, followed by all the movement afforded me by the combined transit just mentioned. Though some would say we might have gotten a little turned around, I agree more with the popular adage: “Those who wander are not lost.” Admittedly, I think I was still ecstatic to be in a new place seeing flora and fauna I’d never seen before. Thin thatch filled evergreens blanketed the space as you can see, peppered with vibrant flowers, allowing the trail to feel like a whimsical meandering adventure!

The trailhead emptied us out close to Rangihoua Estate. As I would come to learn, Rangihoua grows olives to create high-quality olive products, including some delicious olive oils. While visiting the estate, the proprietor offered us free olive oil tastings. As the proprietor explained each type of oil available to sample, she also spoke more about the thought process that goes into developing olive oil. One of the facts that stood out was that only a few nations in the world have the right climate necessary to grow the olives necessary to craft rich oils such as these. Of those nations, Italy, New Zealand, and the United States (Texas) made the list. The estate is so intentional in its mastery of the craft, in fact, that their blends are award-winning. The Waiheke Blend (pictured above) actually won a gold medal at the Royal Easter Show in Sydney, Australia. Rangihoua was also featured in the world renowned 2017 Flos Olei Italian Guide to the World’s Best Extra Virgin Olive Oil. If you’d like to find out more about the estate, feel free to follow this link:

https://www.rangihoua.co.nz/

It was getting to be around noon, and with the growl of the stomach came the search for lunch. The proprietor recommended we go to nearby Batch Vineyard. What I did not realize was how long the approximate 2 km hike would feel, especially since it was all uphill. The views at the end of the hike, however, were breathtaking…

Helen’s family decided to take in the views briefly before departing back towards the Waiheke port. They had already reserved a slot for a wine tasting downtown and had just enough time to still travel to where they needed to be. Helen and I decided to stay and enjoy lunch while taking in the views. The restaurant is actually directly behind the vantage point of the above scenic overlook. Our view from our table was spectacular to say the very least. While the food was decent, being able to sit down and take in the 360-degree views from atop Waiheke Island made this moment truly special. It may be difficult to see, but Auckland is visible in the distance around this area… (see below)

After lunch, the bus picked us up to return to Waiheke port. I was certainly tired from all the walking and exploring that just took place, and was a bit relieved to begin returning to the condo. The bus slowly meandered down the hill and around various curves. After a few stops, we made it back to port. I managed to snag a coffee while we waited for the ferry. Caffeine was welcome to help stave the allure of sleep. It was beneficial for me to stay awake to get myself better adjusted to the local time as soon as possible.

The ferry back to Auckland was peaceful. It was interesting to watch the various islands roll by my window. I found it interesting that there was a lone tree sitting in the middle of a field. It kept my attention until I lost sight of it. The gentle roll of the waves nearly soothed me to sleep. Good thing the caffeine kept me awake! We met back with the rest of Helen’s family at the condo and decided to have sushi at a nearby conveyor belt shop. This brought back warm memories of the many times Helen and I devoured a whole school of fish at Kappa Sushi in Akita (definitely not exaggerating here!) Feel free to read my earlier posts during my study abroad in Japan to see and hear more about conveyor belt sushi restaurants and other interesting Japanese things.

Well, that’s all for now folks! Day 1 was filled to the brim with fond memories and served as an excellent springboard into the rest of that wonderful week spent in New Zealand. Stay tuned for more posts soon!

#waiheke #auckland

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shemakesmusic-uk · 4 years ago

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TRACK BY TRACK BREAKDOWN: Nowhere Sounds Lovely LP by Cristina Vane

The origins of American music are rife with sounds and styles from all reaches of the globe, but over the last century or so, the roles have somewhat reversed themselves with blues, jazz, and mountain music being re-dispersed and re-interpreted by musicians worldwide. Enter resonator-playing, foot-stomping Cristina Vane. Born in Italy to a Sicilian-American father and a Guatemalan mother, Vane grew up between England, France, and Italy, and was fluent in four languages by the time she moved to her fathers’ native United States to attend university at 18 years old. Unlike most of her contemporaries in the music industry, Vane has a taste for pre-war American blues from the likes of Skip James, Robert Johnson, and Blind Willie Johnson. Add a splash of slow western waltzes and haunting Appalachian melodies for good measure and she’s tapped in to the very well from which rock and roll sprung.

Vane’s debut full-length album, Nowhere Sounds Lovely, explores the depths of her new home’s musical history from her unique perspective without ever sounding like a re-hashing of old tricks. Out now, Nowhere Sounds Lovely flows naturally from the album-opening slow-burn blues of ‘Dreamboy’ to the clawhammer banjo driven lament of ‘Will I Ever Be Satisfied.’ Thw album ends with ‘Badlands,’–a haunting and visceral nod to the Dakota’s rocky, windy plains.

We asked Cristina to breakdown Nowhere Sounds Lovely track-by-track to give us more insight into what the songs on the LP are about. Read it below.

Blueberry Hill

Written the summer I first explored the United States more thoroughly-the Midwest and the South in particular-’Blueberry Hill’ is an ode to it’s namesake street in Taos, New Mexico. After staying in Louisiana a week or so, I made the trip through Texas to land in Taos. Between the spirits you can practically feel in New Orleans and the transcendent mystical energy in Taos, I was compelled to try and tie those times where it felt like I was dipping into another realm with the traveling experience; sleeping with spiders and the odd snake and critter, in new spaces and smells. While in Taos, I would walk up Blueberry Hill Road almost daily, and the wild sage hills of the mesa do still linger with me, truthfully speaking.They call New Mexico the land of enchantment and I hope some of that seeped into this song.

Travelin' Blues

I grew up moving around, and we travelled a lot in myfamily, but the feeling of living on the road rather than in a house for the first time is what sparked Travelin’ Blues. While I came to realize there is a fine line between running free and running from your problems, initially, travelling was the ultimate medicine for the existential woes I was going throughwhen I wrote this. I still had people I was missing, people I loved but didn’t loveme, and people who had left me or hurt me, but they felt further and further away from whatever new landscape I was awakening to. Sometimes, though, it felt like I was exploring all of this alone, and that it would have been nice to share it. So I wanted to write a happy blues, a song that admits that there are things that make you sad but ultimately just hops up and keeps moving forward.

Prayer for the Blind

This song is partly woven of a specific story I was told by a Nebraskan couple that I met out camping in Iowa. The woman told me about her mother, who was elderly and suffered from dementia. Apparently, her mother insisted that her husband was cheating on her with a woman with two peg legs, going out dancing and such, and was resolved to wring their necks. She related this story to me while laughing, and the contrast of the comedic aspect of such a heavy thing for a daughter to watch her mother go through hit me pretty hard. The lyrics touch on that story and on the complexity of mother-daughter relationships, even as they relate to my own. I was also eager to write a modal banjo song, as I thought it set a good canvas for these difficult themes.

Badlands

This song was an exercise in trying to capture the energy of a place. Until this record, I seldom wrote about anything besides human emotion and relationships. My first cross-country tour lasted five months, and opened up my experiences to visions and sensations I had never seen or felt. Contemplating a place like the Badlands of South Dakota for the first time inspired me to write a song to do it justice. Out of the flat, wind-strewn setting of the prairie, the Badlands emanate and draw your attention to them immediately, much like the swallows that seemed drawn to my car as I drove through long stretches of the Dakotas (hence, “dead birds”). You are constantly seen, for there is nowhere to hide on the plains. The toughness of the weather and soil year around, paired with the menacing, jutting, mineral rocks are what give the Badlands their name, and they are what birthed this song.

Dreaming of Utah

I wrote this song not long after coming off my five months of travelling and having just moved to Nashville. I woke up having such a strong, almost tangible yearning for Utah-a place I had never seen until a few months prior-and in the cold of my first Tennessee winter, it reappeared to me in a vivid daydream. The majestic landscape of southern Utah is compelling enough to write several songs about, but I was trying to encompass the general sense of awe and magnificence that nature inspired in me that summer. It also briefly points to the way that nature can be comforting when it feels like I don’t have anyone else around me-lovers, or friends-at least I have the mountains. This song is one of those that poured out quite quickly onto the paper, and it also signals the summer I started listening to Hank Williams and country music for the first time, which I think you can hear a little bit.

What Remains

I wrote ‘What Remains’ when I got tired of trying to find love. I wanted to challenge the idea that love is worth the pain, because that’s how I felt at the time. I think it’s a very human trait to pick yourself up after heartbreak and learn to have hope again, but I was feeling very skeptical about it all when writing this. Is love worth the pain? I was sitting in a dispersed campsite in Utah, staring at alien looking green stone mounds that surrounded me, and I didn’t know what to do with all of this freedom that came with a side of loneliness. I don’t think there is an answer to this question, but this song tries to explain the walls that go up when you don’t want to get hurt again, and tries to expose the vulnerability and loneliness inside those walls (I also wanted to channel whatever JJ Cale energy I could find when we recorded this).

Heaven Bound Station

‘Heaven Bound Station’ was written when I was visiting Nashville for the first time and was feeling inspired by the musicianship around me. I was delving deep into fingerstyle guitar, and wanted to write a tune that had the sound of ragtime or piedmont finger picking, and with a classic theme to match. The idea of wanting to die so that you will be in a better place is so central so many genres close to my heart-delta blues, gospel, bluegrass, etc. Faith is a very inspiring feeling to observe in others, and I tried to channel what it must be like to have the confidence to paint your own picture of paradise. I attempted an answer to the questions: what does heaven look like, and how does one get there?

Dreamboy

The premise of this song came to me as a somewhat moody foil to the sometimes saccharine, clichéd lyrics of love songs in the 40s and 50s-I found myself almost wanting to poke fun at flowery terms like dream girl or loverboy that come up so often in that era of music. When I began writing, however, I wanted to see what it might be like re-imagine this trope in the present-who is my perfect, imaginary man-and this song is what came next. The lyrics are a mixture of the best parts of the people I have met and my hearts wildest desires. The result is a Dreamboy tailored perfectly to me, but this is marred by the fact that I’ll only ever see him in my dreams, as he is unlikely to exist.

Wishing Bone Blues

‘Wishing Bone Blues’ is one of the two songs on the record that I wrote while still living in California. I was running with a pretty colorful crowd for a minute when I lived in Venice, and this song was a reflection of some of the things that accompanied them. Addiction was present in my personal and love life, and though I never struggled with hard drugs, I address my own dependencies in the lyrics too. There is also a sense that onecan get lost in time out by the beach, stuck in a cycle of gratification and excitement. There is always something to do, someone to smoke you out, someone to sit with, until you realize that months have gone by and you haven’t done much. I wanted the music to match the drama of how it feels to watch yourself doing something that isn’t good for yourself, and also wanted to work in some inspiration from Chris Whitley, whose playing I had just discovered (and sadly struggled with demons himself). For a place where it’s always sunny, the energy can get very dark by the beach.

The Driving Song

I started driving way later than most people here. I grew up in European cities which mostly relied on public transportation, and didn’t get a license until I was out of college and living in Los Angeles. I’ve had many intimate moments in my car since then, as most of us do, and living in L.A. I had a lot of time to ponder in traffic too. The song was born on a specific drive home, late at night on the I-10, when I was overcome with a general sense of dissatisfaction. A mixture of loneliness, ineptitude, and general worry about where I was in my life was so strong that the opening verse came to me as I drove, and the rest, pretty soon after.I felt tired of trying to carry the weight of several loved ones struggling with addiction. Something about the way that distance, speed and mortality all balance each other every timeyou drive bred a lot of the feelings that are in that song too.

Satisfied Soul

One of two waltzes on the record, ‘Satisfied Soul’ is partly an ode to traditional country music (which I was just discovering at the time), as well as the travelling I had done across the country. I grew up in Europe and moved to the U.S. for college at 18, so I had not seen anything inbetween the two coasts. Each region I discovered, down to the endless tiny towns I drove through for 5 months, was a new flavor. They were also a new lesson in the way people all do things differently, and yet are united by the same things too. Nature is one of those uniting factors, but was so drastically different in various places-from Montana down to Florida, Texas to Arizona, Washington to Iowa-I wanted to write a song in a ballad style that paid my respects to how all of these places had contributed to my satisfied soul.

Photo credit: Alex Skelton

#track by track breakdown #cristina vane #nowhere sounds lovely

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freechoicedreamer · 4 years ago

Text

Body and Soul (Ch. 12)

AO3

Opening Theme

“Your hands, your hands, Fall upon mine as waves upon the sands. O, soft as moonlight on the evening rose, That but to moonlight will its sweet unclose, Your hands, your hands, Fall upon mine, and my hands open as That evening primrose opens when the hot hours pass. Your hands, your hands, They are like towers that in far southern lands Look at pale dawn over gloom-valley'd miles, White temple towers that gleam through mist at whiles. Your hands, your hands, With the south wind fall kissing on my brow, And all past joy and future is summed in this great 'Now!”

(John Freeman, Hands)

Enchanted Mountains, Arendelle

Long and strong hands were the first attributes to catch Anna and Kristoff's attention. The baby searching eyes, curiously looking at his parents, and his hair, so pale that looked like a white down covering the white skin, came later. But the hands defined Handy, whose previously chosen name, Aatami, was immediately discarded as soon as the proud and exhausted new parents -Anna's labor lasted 10 hours! - laid their eyes on the little boy.

"Feet and hands of a climber..." declares his aunt as she bends over the crib, examining the newborn and already completely in love, "...hmm, conquering look of who knows that already has me in his palm, isn't it my cute little baby?!"

"Gideon," Anna turns to her sister's husband, who was watching the scene from a distance, "you've got competition!"

"No, if we consider that I'm in love with Elsa's loving way with your son, Anna…" he confesses already totally comfortable in expressing his feelings for Elsa in front of her sister and brother-in-law.

Elsa turns to look at Gideon sideways and smiles covertly. To their innermost sphere of friends their shyness and need to preserve the aura of mystery surrounding their relationship has given way to the relaxation of a 'let it go', although both still react with a barely-disguised surprise before public demonstrations of affection coming from the other. But what is better is that, as a reaction, no one else is surprised by them. Even out of their circle, as two public figures they have truly become an item, an emblem for a consolidated couple with private life out of the spotlight - everyone understands and respects their choice. (The same discreteness does not apply for more outgoing personalities, such as Anna’s, who is only curbed by Kristoff's more down-to-earth, practical way).

The royal palace is now divided into three wings. For housing the two new families in a more independent way, each sister occupies one of the two private wings, which in practice corresponds to twin homes, while the third wing is also divided into two sectors, one for the administrative activities of the Enchanted Mountains and the other for those related to the Ministry of Adventure Tourism.

As suggested by Belle, Gideon and Elsa actually chose to keep two residences, the other in his castle - arrangement that, in practice, doesn't change much for them because both palaces are located in the same enchanted land and the time to switch from one to another literally corresponds to the time spent at the flick of a finger.

"I've heard that Jasmine and Aladdin have welcome their little baby girl less than a week ago - which means all royal babies that spent Operation B&S in their mommies' wombs have already been born," Gideon tells them, moving to sit at the armchair close to the fireplace, "and we still need heating in late April, quite impressive…" he grumbles through his teeth.

"We are in the highest mountains, Gideon," Elsa joins him, "and in the highest latitudes…"

"The latitudes could be higher, though…" Kristoff sighs sitting close to Anna.

"What do you mean?" Elsa asks intrigued, "Arendelle is on the northernmost border."

"He means there is more beyond the frontier, higher mountains, even… He means Canada, for example, just to remain close to where we are…" Anna explains.

"But then we would have to cross the magic barrier. Of course I know that the world doesn't end on the border, but I'm not used to think beyond Maine," Elsa justifies her question.

"I think that when we think on adventure we can’t think on these limits.” Anna defends hers and Kristoff’s point of view, “and we are not alone, know that there are those that refuse to be caged in.”

“I get what you mean,” Gideon nods reticent.

“You do? You mean in a literal sense or in metaphorical one?” Kristoff questions him.

“In both senses, they refer to explorers. In a metaphoric sense, those thinking about going beyond the borders are like the eyes of an imaginative child, to give you just an example. In common with those in the literal sense they aim at exploring our world and learning, each day, how much wider it is than they thought the day before. Explorers are a self-fulfiller, self-motivated, self-driven, and self-sufficient. Independence is their hallmark...”

Smiling dreamily, Anna whispers, “Kris, remind me to ask Gideon to write the flyers for Summer vacations…”

Still wondering about what Anna said before, Elsa finally asks, “Anna, what do you mean by not being alone - am I sensing a new rebellion being forged?”

“Of course not,” Anna responds while accommodating the baby on her lap to breastfeed him. “I was referring to a recurring topic of conversations in taverns, restaurants, family reunions, especially since the shelter gatherings. During Operation B&S people talked a lot, being confined as they were, you know?"

"You mean… Operation B&S awakened the seeker?" Elsa asks.

"More than that, sis. During Operation B&S Kristoff and I ran a research in some shelters with two groups of adults: Younger and between 30 to 40. You didn't see it because you spent a lot of time at a kids' shelter... Anyway, compiling the answers we came to the conclusion that among us there are more wanderers, pilgrims and iconoclasts than we imagined - which is good for the Ministry. Borrowing Gideon's term, we identified a lot of explorers, people seeking to escape the confines of their average life by traveling the world or exploring its many mysteries."

"That's interesting… and to think you haven't sampled the two segments with the highest concentration of explorers: kids and teens. Anyway, better not explore this subject too much. Transposing the borders could have unpredictable consequences, there are plenty of places to explore within the Realms, so many that would take many lifetimes to explore them all…" Gideon reasons.

"Sure," Kristoff intervenes, "Anna's concern is with conformity - it reminds me how we, when children, loved to learn about the world. But don't worry, we are all good, no rebellion in sight… With Handy and within the realms we already have a lot of fun in the horizon. After the many events - fairs, festivals and tournaments - among many other tourism activities planned for this Summer, our next achievable goal is to activate the underground canals' maze for guided tours, perhaps this Autumn…"

"Wait a minute," Elsa cuts him, "but the maze... how to cross it without magic runes?"

"Well, good thing the Trolls are our friends, isn't it?" Kristoff winks, "we promised them to not include the Valley of the Living Rock in any tour package, in other words, to leave them in peace and alone, and in exchange they have drawn a few sketches of the maze. Grand Pabbie, Bulda, Cliff, Little Rock, and Goth - all of them are helping."

"The only thing holding back the project is the restoration of Wish Rumple's Castle. It's progressing slowly but we understand that its cleaning is complex and involves more than healing a build. As you know, Archie and Wish Regina are using the restoration as a recovery treatment for both Felixes and that requires another timing." Anna remembers. "Once the castle is ready, which I suppose will happen by autumn-winter, we'll be able to open the first United Realms Ski Resort. If it wasn't for Handy I'd be anxious, but now I'm not in such a hurry, every minute of this cuddly is precious and I want to enjoy it intensely," she says, looking tenderly at the baby breast feeding on her...

Enchanted Mountains, Wish Rumple's Castle

After its last residents, the old castle was left in ruins metaphorically comparable to the mental tissue deterioration of the newest pair of wish-nonwish twins. One of them, actually, ended up earning a new chance for living on Earth but in common both were lacking in emotional stability and life purpose. For this reason, Archie and Wish Regina, working together to socially reintegrate the two men - two adults too far away from their Lost Boys time, decided to develop for them a special rehabilitation program. This way, Felix and Wish Felix were enlisted as constructor apprentices in the Wish Rumple's Castle Restoration Project.

"They'll need many years of therapy," Archie diagnosed, but in order for them to become socially integrated, the participation in this project will give them a feeling of being useful, it will be good for their self-esteem, among other more audacious goals I hope they manage to achieve. But make no mistake, we are dealing with two cases of deep trauma."

"Luckily, the first steps have already been overcome," Archie continued to explain to those deciding over the guys' fate, "I mean, for their real therapy to begin they had to start walking the right path: both have already admitted that for them it is no longer a matter of blaming the father and mother figures standing in their way, as they used to do as Lost Boys - it is on them, the blame. Even this realization, helpful as it is, somehow is still a bit negative because it simply states that they realize that their parents are not against them, they are."

"I'm not sure if I got what you're saying. Who/what inner part is against them?" Killian questioned. "Is there a hidden part of their personality under the father and mother images making them believe for years that the cause of most of their trouble might somehow have got into them from outside?"

"Before answering this question, let's remember that we are dealing with two traumas interconnected. Besides the father-mother issue, cultivated for centuries in both Neverlands by each Felix - I'm naming it 'the Lost Boy Trauma', there is another equally (perhaps even more) important part: their unresolved sexuality. Despite their loyalty to their lovers' evilness, the misdirection of their sexual energy, the unhealthy development of their libido in an abusive and secret relationship never allowed to come out in the open and, which is worse, their true love and devotion, all of that ended up in betrayal, abandonment and feelings of hatred and sexual rejection. So, basically, in a second pack, there is the 'Pan/Malcom Trauma'. While Pan can be seen as Malcom's pedophile side disguised as a boy, each Felix must be seen only as Felix, they went to Neverland during their adolescence, not as a perverted adult reverted to a boy's age. That said, Killian, to answer your question, their inner hidden part fighting against them is the counterpart of their conscious attitude. The unconscious side will leave them no peace and will continue to plague them until it has been accepted. If they were younger a liberation from the past could be enough and a beckoning future would naturally stand ahead rich in possibilities, it would be then sufficient to break a few bonds and the life-urge would do the rest. But in Felixes' cases, they are not really as "young" as their bodies seem to be, the challenges are complex, the stakes are higher."

"In this case, what will be your approach for treating them, Archie?" Key asked.

"I'll illustrate with a metaphor, Key: the butterfly's metamorphosis, this is what I plan to explore during the treatment - a transformational process that might need to be extended over a considerable period of time, during which both Felixes will find themselves living in the very foundations of a world under construction. So, in this sense, I plan to get them involved in the process of restoration of the castle as a metaphor for the life-changing transformation they have to face, a massive reorganization of attitude, behavior, and sense of meaning similar to the massive reorganization of the chaos left by the Pans and Cruellas. Being there, working with their hands in the cleaning and reorganization of the rooms, helping to transform it into a Ski Resort, will trigger their singular encounter with a transformative image after transforming their major life traumas. The castle restoration will take months but for them their own metamorphosis, or transformation, will probably take years to become complete. When there is such a major passage, one can think in terms of the passing over (meta, trans) from one form (morph, form) to another."

...

Wish Regina is now married to Liam Senior, who decided to remain in land with her and Roland (though sometimes the young man visits his father and Regina and stays for a while with them). Besides their work on the Social Welfare Ministry, Liam and Wish Regina run, nearby their Enchanted Seashore house, a restaurant, The Sentinel, and a small hostel which is frequently the in-land home of the Nautilus' crew. Within her duties as Minister, once a week W. Regina travels to W. Rumple's castle taking Tink, W. Tink and the two Felixes with her. They are left there during the five working days, together with architects, bricklayers, carpenters, plumbers, electricians and painters, working on restoring the castle - left in ruins by the Pans and Cruellas - and creating a completely new place. During the weekends they return to Storybrooke and remain in a Detoxing Clinic.

Under the supervision of the two Fairies, their old acquaintances from both Neverlands, the ex-lovers of Pan and Wish Pan are responsible for cleaning the aura of the old castle, which is done through meditation exercises. For that, by acting on their own aura, cleaning the energy field that covers their entire bodies and protecting their spirits from the energies that surround them, they become energy generators producing purifying fields for the environment. This way, their psychic irradiation acts to clean the castle aura. The principle the Fairies use is a combination of mindfulness and meditation applied through simple exercises based on three techniques that greatly help to eliminate negative energies: 1) absorbing sunshine; 2) purifying energies through the crystal clear water of the underground rivers; and 3) just lying in a comfortable place where they can have time for themselves, without being disturbed, to empty their minds and relax their bodies.

In the beginning, only the two Felixes and the two Tinks took part of the exercises but soon the others joined their sessions, usually happening early in the morning, at noon and in the evening. With such a good camaraderie being established, Felix started to help the carpenters and Wish Felix, the painters (the fairies opted to work on the kitchen). These new developments have already showed the first signs of their past traumas' healing.

...

The Felix case rekindled the debates over the activation of the Ministry of Justice - which had been set up with the other ministries but the post had not yet been occupied. Regina, since Robin's return, has been completely refreshed and enthusiastic about the UR activities, and although accumulating the Justice post, she was the first to suggest that a new minister should be appointed. Some names were thought of, but all opinions converged when someone mentioned the name of Emma Swan-Jones…

For Emma, more than a Poetic Justice, the nomination was the crowning of a life trajectory, of a heroic journey marked by being a product of True Love in an unique configuration, back to old times at the Enchanted Forest. Above all, more than a tale written by the Fates, everybody agreed that she would be a natural in managing matters pertinent to the judiciary, police, maintenance and defense of human rights. Besides, having her beloved Captain by her side, leading the intelligence bureau of all realms, would be the icing on the cake.

By her turn, on numerous occasions Emma had already assisted Wish Regina at the Social Welfare Ministry, especially in the project most dear to her - Childhood & Adolescence, but she was somewhat reluctant to accept the invitation for a major ministerial role. Eventually she decided in favor of it once a few conditions were fulfilled satisfactorily. For that, Cruella's house was finally given a purpose after the clones were removed from it. Emma and Killian's goal was to remain in Storybrooke, close to their relatives and to the sea, and that was made possible when the Justice Ministry started to operate in the old mansion after another restoration project was carried out on it. The energy cleansing process adopted was similar to the one being performed at Wish Rumple's Castle - an Astral Healing Operation, but to a lesser extent given the different scales of the two buildings.

All in all, six and a half months after Operation B&S, everyone is starting to rationalize with their minds what has already been felt by their hearts: the astral field is cleaner now and a new energetic balance is gradually being achieved in the Upperworld Realms...

Olympus, Persephone's Garden

In the past, Persephone had a garden of ever blooming flowers in the Underworld but that changed after Hades' descent into madness and villainy - nothing else could flourish there. For Persephone, however, with the half-yearly change of scenery, a garden at Olympus would always bloom and produce her favorite fruit, pomegranate, upon her return to the Upperworld in spring.

The pomegranate is a fruit-bearing deciduous shrub fruit that has been used throughout history and in virtually every religion as a symbol of humanity’s central beliefs and ideals, namely, life and death, rebirth and eternal life, fertility and marriage, and abundance. For the goddess, it features prominently in the story of her marriage to Hades. Hades kidnapped Persephone and took her to the Underworld to be his wife. Persephone’s mother, Demeter, goddess of fertility, considering her daughter lost, went into mourning and thus all things on earth ceased to grow. Zeus, Persephone’s father, commanded his brother Hades to release her, however Hades had tricked her into eating six pomegranate seeds, and it was a Fate's rule, later repealed, that anyone who consumed food or drink in the Underworld was doomed to spend eternity there. Since Persephone had eaten the six pomegranate seeds, she had to remain in the Underworld for six months of the year. Hades agreed to release her to the world above for the other six months of the year, to be reunited with her mother.

...

For the gods, after the normalization of Nectar and Ambrosia production, the experience of being mortal became just a memory. But an unforgettable one, forever altering the way they view life and death. Apart from long philosophical discussions, however, in practice the cycles of seasons continue to follow, and with them, the time for Persephone's return to Olympus after the long winter.

Walking with her mother, Demeter, in their exuberant garden, Persephone reviews the events of the last period spent in the Underworld, probably the most intense and original of her entire existence.

“So far the total rebel souls count has surpassed 150,000, a surprising number. Arthur still suspects that there are some runaway souls hiding in the dry woods around Underbrooke, but no one to be found at the basements and sewers anymore. The rebellion leaders who refused to undergo a recovery program have returned to Tartarus and are now sharing the best-kept Titans' sector. I believe some of those who opted to cooperate can still be regenerated, such as Facilier, Tamara, Greg and a few others who showed signs of a slight regret - and you know that under my sight there is no way for them to fake a regret. By reading their aura I know that, ultimately, they all have as a goal drinking from the waters of Lethe to benefit from forgetfulness and to return for the reincarnation cycle. But their fates have yet to be revealed, they will be submitted to a new judgment and their new punishment will be defined. I’m advocating that there is no meaning in punishing if not for recovering but we will have to wait and see how the divine principle of Justice will be applied…”

“Remember that in some cases there is no return, my dear… By the way, what about Wish Rumple and Nimue? Despite the very serious crimes that weigh on them, without their help our victory would have been much more complex… ” Demeter asks.

“They are hibernating, especially Nimue, she hibernates 100% of the time. Merlin went down to the Underworld, accompanied by his friend Ingrid, and they worked with Nimue's soul for several days, applying passes on her, and helped Arthur and me to set up a gradual recovery program for her, in principle for lasting almost a century. Something different from what is being applied to James Nolan, because his case is quite simpler, his soul was not so corrupted. Similarly, for Wish Rumple, Wish Belle also worked with us to define a special recovery program for him. In his case, without the need of a prolonged hibernation. He voluntarily asked to gradually replace this therapy by a work assisting Arthur after Wish Belle moves to Elysium - which is about to happen. Another of his requests was to be part of the string quartet. As I’m not there, he has already started playing, but his instrument will change after Belle leaves. I've watched only one performance but the results on his aura cleaning were encouraging.”

“Hmm, that's interesting... We could use guardian flowers to accelerate Nimue and W. Rumple’s healing processes, they could be kept by Merlin and W. Belle, their true loves: a poetic outcome in the fate of the first and the last Dark Ones...” Demeter suggests.

“What a great idea! The flowers must be Red Rose, for Rumple, and Mistletoe, for Nimue, like this!” and with a gesture, Persephone produces two crystal cylindrical domes with the flowers in them. “We just need to give them to Merlin and W. Belle. For as long as they preserve their vitality and bright, there will be hope for Nimue and Rumple’s redemption.”

“Why not go down there now and give both to Belle? She can take them with her when she moves on. And I could go with you, you know, get to know more closely the Human that has stolen my daughter’s heart….” she winks.

“What do you mean? What are you talking about?”

“Don’t deny, Persephone, it is too evident. You are in love with Arthur and that is great, I’m happy for you. You needed a King to reign with you…”

“Right…” she smiles timidly, “I confess, he really is a special man. But ours is an impossible love, Mother, he is more than mortal, he is dead man, I mean, he doesn’t have a physical body, which makes things more complicated for us.”

“Not for Zeus, you know, I have talked to him and he has agreed: if Arthur agrees he can be resurrected in a similar way as Killian Jones was. From that, if he drinks the Nectar, in a similar way as what happened to Psyche - remember her story with Eros? Well, then, if he agrees in drinking the Nectar he will be one of us, a God, the new King of the Underworld. He will reign alone when you, the Underworld Queen, come to the Upperworld during spring-summer, and he will stay with you, down there, during autumn-winter.”

“Oh, Mother!” she closes her eyes dreamily, “that would be a dream come true, a really good dream! Arthur is nothing like Hades, he is a loyal and righteous soul. Although he made a very compromising mistake in Camelot, he was the first victim of it, a consequence of Merlin's prophecy misinterpretation. He paid with his life for all his crimes and has given successive proofs of a brilliant, selfless intelligence. Not to mention that to my eyes at least he is a very handsome man and... by the way he looks at me, it seems that my feelings are reciprocated. Oh, Mother, I can't believe I've been given a chance to love and be loved again, to find physical pleasure with a god, again... " she sighs with her eyes closed, anticipating the hours of endless love and passion beside the future god. "You and my Father really made this Spring a special one for me, thank you so much!”

“I'm glad to hear you saying that, your happiness is well deserved - and I'm glad that this time, hopefully, shared with a god worthy of your love, Persephone. You have been a good queen but too lonely… So, let’s visit my future son in law, your King Arthur, and soon he will be the one feeling good. Actually, if he agrees - as I’m sure he will, he will be the one feeling god!" Demeter grins at her pun. "You know, my divine intuition is telling me that soon you will have back your garden down there: with the return of music and yours and Arthur's blossoming love I’m sure that soon the flowers will be back to Underbrooke, in a similar way as hope returned when Killian resurrected and Arthur decided to stay there. His resolution triggered the restoration of a broken kingdom, thus marking the definite end of Hades' era - Arthur being rewarded with immortality is not a favor, my dear, but an act of Justice."

Enchanted Sea, Nautilus

"Ursula, more than six months have passed and you haven't started drinking Ambrosia's Nectar yet... always with some excuse not to go to Olympus. Triton told me that he started drinking months ago..." Nemo again tries to understand Ursula's motivation for her Nectar's abstinence, trying to make her open up to him. This time, in response Ursula shrugs, smiles a mischievous smile, and finally offers him the first concrete answer about her motives: "I'll drink again if you agree to drink with me..."

Her response catches the Captain by surprise and his reaction is a plopped look, a parted mouth but no sound and, finally, a piercing look into her eyes. Before he outlines another reaction, however, W. Ariel and Junior knock at the door and announce that the last crossing point has just been unlocked during the little mermaid dive. With that, they all head to the main room for joining Harris, Martin and their guests, not without Nemo finally managing to whisper, back to Ursula, "this conversation isn’t over yet!"

...

Renewed and grateful for the new chance of a life on earth, Lieutenant Martin and Lieutenant Harris, in an eternal honeymoon, rejoined the Nautilus' crew and, for this dive into southern waters still within twenty thousand leagues boundary, they invited three new friends from their Underworld experience: Franz, from Arendelle, Theodora, from Oz, and Jefferson Hatter, accompanied by his daughter Grace. In addition to the entertainment tour for the guests, the expedition fulfills the mission of unlocking the remaining crossing points on the seabed gridline - those on Earth have already been unlocked and the telluric energies are back to flow freely.

…

Sit at a lunch table, they celebrate their mission ending while still retelling their vivid reminiscences of the Underworld. Always eloquent, Jefferson is one of the most talkative, especially when asked about his latest great adventure. “I spent a great deal of my long existence traveling between realms, crossing portals to other dimensions… I knew lands without color - just black, white and shades of gray; I explored alternate enchanted forests, distant realms, wonderlands and enchanted deserts, many of them running under different paces, but nothing prepared me for the Underworld. I couldn't say it was, in the strict sense, a bad trip, because we were received as warmly as possible given the circumstances, but the feeling of death can only be understood by those who felt and remember it!!”

“What about the Land without Magic, Papa? You never told me much about it...” Grace asks, moving to a less somber subject.

“That’s because I’ve only been there briefly, my dear. During the first curse I confess that I was tempted to move there, because being the only Storybrooke’s citizen keeping the Enchanted Forest memory, the only one who did not forget the real identity, besides Regina, was the true experience of madness. People often refer to me as the Mad Hatter, but the real madness has always been my extreme lucidity - the rest is eccentricity and legend. But then I never wanted to cross the border because I didn't want to forget you, Grace. Although the pain of being able to see you, knowing who you were, but not being recognized by you was almost unbearable, I didn't want to lose you. Later, after the first curse was broken it became possible to leave without losing my memory and I got away with it. I loved New York even though I wouldn't want to live there. But all the cosmopolitan buzz, the mix of peoples and cultures make it a city that cannot be considered without magic. Unfortunately, its problem is being in a very sick world, a very sick society. I admit that my analysis is too simplistic, but definitely their economic, political and social systems turn their world a sick land. I do not know if there is, on the whole planet within the dimension of the Land without Magic, any society or political or economic system that escapes this sickness. As a society we also have a lot of problems but nothing comparable to their reality. The United Realms creation, as a concept, is fantastic but no one can predict the long term consequences of bringing us together without portals to cross - the only outside world for us now is the Land without Magic, reachable by crossing enchanted border lines. For adventurers minds like mine crossing the UR border will be tempting, mainly for younger, explorer minds since the older ones tend to be more conservative and less curious. Besides, as we do access their world through the electromagnetic waves, we know what is going on there, though they don't access our encrypted signals - yet; we know them and their struggles but they don't know us. We know how badly they treat the planet..."

“I know that the oceans suffer a lot because of the people who inhabit the Land without Magic," W. Ariel comments. "I communicate with many sea inhabitants and they use to describe the atrocities they are subjected to: predatory hunting with institution of destruction, the greed of seabed exploration for oil extraction, nuclear tests, contamination of waters by chemical, radioactive and industrialized waste - tons of plastic waste; there are various endangered species out there... it's very sad what they tell me when they can cross the barriers that separate the Enchanted Sea from the other Oceans."

“Their armament industry forces them to live in a permanent war…” Ursula adds. “I lived there, I know quite a bit about what Jefferson said, he is absolutely right. You know, sometimes I wonder if the world would accept and respect our existence... we could help them in that case.”

“They are not prepared for accepting that those whom they classify as fictional characters are in fact real people,” Theodora explains. “I know that there have been attempts, in the past, of people from our realms who tried to explain that to them - all ended up treated as crazy people and died in an asylum.”

“I guess they would accept more easily the existence of outer space Aliens than ours!” Junior jokes.

“Even so,” Nemo ponders, “my adventurous, explorer spirit insists that there must be a way to cross the borders undetected and, once there, work anonymously and unknowingly to at least protect the natural resources of the planet - as citizens of the planet we are connected to them - if they destroy Mother Nature, they destroy themselves and ourselves!”

“Has anyone discussed the possibility of unifying the United Realms with the Land without Magic?” Franz wonders.

“That would be too problematic, Franz,” Nemo responds. “We would be seen as part of Maine, the US government wouldn't respect our independence and would want us to be subject to their command, under their taxes, laws, currency and state government’s policies. And which is worse, considering their belic industry and geopolitical/military interests, they would want to explore and use our Magic and our unique Science as a weapon - not to mention that other people would want to proclaim their cultural property to reclaim some of our kingdoms. But as we really are One, what happens in there directly or indirectly affects us. That's particularly true now. You see, we could help them during this pandemic crisis much more extensively if we weren't oblied to work anonymously.”

“We got to befriend the Shamans and their tribes,” Grace reminds them, “there is hope…”

“That is meaningful, it really is.” Franz tells Grace. “But I’ve been told by those who got to talk with the Shamans, during the Victory Celebrations, that most of their people have been decimated and their culture has been disrespected for centuries, now. They are the real Native people of the American territory, in other words the original inhabitants of the United Realms territory. Perhaps if it were for them, only, the border could be deactivated without problem. But let's face reality, we should take their experience as a reference and be prepared to defend our lifestyle and culture. From what I understood, if we opened our borders we could become an exploited freak, something like an exotic attraction. Their dominant system - capitalism, isn't it? - would see us as an absurdly great source of wealth and exploitation. That would be our end," he continues reasoning. “But I get your point, Grace, knowing that they are destroying and polluting our shared home, Mother Earth, and being here doing nothing is quite disturbing…”

“Franz is right,” Nemo agrees. “For capitalism, we would be seen as a source of profit, of power, only. Our mystical existence would be unexplainable for them. Our elements of mystery if not explorable for profit or domination could be seen as a threat to their lifestyle and religious systems, which, it seems, may enrich the understanding but rob the imagination… As for us, we use to divide the world not into different groups of objects but into different groups of connections and, based on that, my only hope of a better rapport with them comes exactly from their Modern Science and their Ancient Cultures, such as the Shamans’ - both get closer to our approach. For modern Physics, the world appears as a complicated tissue of events, in which connections of different kinds alternate or overlap or combine and thereby determine the texture of the whole. I could discuss our principles and mysteries with scientists but not with politicians and economists…”

“You are referring to Heisenberg's principle of indeterminacy, isn’t it? I read about it during the 28 years of cursed Storybrooke…” Jefferson asks. "The so-called uncertainty principle..."

“Exactly,” Nemo confirms. “Heisenberg was a congenial fellow, he emphasized that the view of nature as an object out there was quite illusory, he demonstrated that the subject was always part of the equation, that an inexorable reciprocity between subject and object existed such that the very act of observation changed irreparably what was being observed - unknowingly, he enunciated one of the principles of Magic!! That is also one of the most important paradigms of Psychology, a fundamental paradox of existence inherited precisely in the fact that the human being is both subject and object at once.”

“They would want to rob our Nectar of Ambrosia, again…” Ursula mumbles.

“Oh, that reminds me that Ursula and I have an important issue to discuss, privately. So, if you'll excuse us, my friends, you should continue the conversation without us for now. Shall we go to our quarters, Ursula, please?” Nemo addresses her, already standing up.

…

Closing their quarters door and sitting close to Ursula, Nemo turns to her, holding her hand, “Very well, Ursula… Immortality. Is that what you are offering me?”

“Yeah…” she answers timidly. “That, or the other way around, I mean, mortality for me. I can't handle any other alternative very well. I either become a mortal and follow the timeline with you, or bring you with me to the immortality line. There is no other alternative to my equation, Nemo. I wouldn't know, wouldn't resist, and wouldn't want to be eternal away from you. I have already talked to my father and Zeus, among the gods they are of the few with authority and power to allow a mortal to become immortal. They recently opened an exception for Arthur, in the Underworld, not only to resurrect him but also to make him immortal, and they will say yes to you if you agree. The final decision is yours, you are free to choose."

“I choose you, my love, my eternal love…” he closes the gap between them, caressing her arms up and down to hug her tightly, holding her chin, stroking her ear and opening his lips to kiss her soft lips as they start a sensual dance of passionate tongues as skilled and wet as the tentacles of an octopus and a nautilus curling up and merging into One in a mating ritual.

Elysium, Islands of the Blessed

Belle's farewell was gentle, full of promises and hope when she and Rumple consummated their love the day before her departure.

“Rumple, trust our love, always be guided by it, know that through our Rose, I will be always taking care of you and protecting you. Please remember, keep in your heart that ancient Greek inscription we so often read together, as the mark of our everlasting love: Time is a child - playing like a child - playing on a chessboard - the realm of the child. It is Telesphorus, who errs through the dark regions of the cosmos and shines like a star rising from the depths. It points the way to the gates of the sun and dreamland…”

“I remember,” Rumple whispers caressing her tenderly, “when we sit in our castle to read about Telesphorus, whom in Greek mythology symbolizes convalescence, the period following an illness. Perhaps, one day, if you go to Mount Olympus, you will meet him. He is the son of Asclepius, the chief god of medicine.”

“Yeah, I’ll remember that… Do you know, Rumple, why I liked so much this passage? I never told you, I guess. That is because the "disease", of which Telesphorus announces convalescence through its small lantern, is the moment of complete immersion in the unconscious, in the darkness of absolute nothingness, referred to in the Greek text as dark regions of the cosmos."

Nodding, Rumple smiles and then asks, “and have I told you before why I liked this representation of Time?” As she shakes her head, he continues, “normally time is represented by the figure of death, a sinister skull with a scythe in its hand, but here it is represented by a figure of a child: playing, illuminating our paths through the infinite sky's darkness. It is also a representation of the Self, our real being, when we finally recognize it. Telesphorus represents the time when light is rescued, he is the discrimination, the right direction during darkening situations. He is the Time at the center of consciousness.”

The tears fall as Belle closes her eyes to absorb Rumple’s words. Reopening them, she looks into his eyes. “My love, the images of time, as the skull that carries the scythe or as the child that brings the light, they refer to two types of time experience that you and I will undergo from now on. The first speaks of the linear time to which your next flesh, after your stage in Underbrooke, will be subjected, easily perceived by the external transformations manifested by the body design and the environment around it. It will be marked by birth, life, and death and is related to the causal form of thought, beginning, middle, and end. They are like deaths and rebirths. This is Kronos, which represents time related to death, a time that consumes itself. Our Love lives in Kayros, a nonlinear time. It represents those moments that transcend the limitations imposed by the fear of death in a second as vast as the infinite space. Please remember, Rumple, Kayros, in Greek, means the right time. In Latin, it corresponds to momentum, the moment that leaves a strong and unique impression throughout life without the weight of past burdens and the anxiety about the future.”

“I see…” Rumple nods barely managing to speak, also with teary eyes.

...

“I love you, ma Belle de Jour, my eternal Belle! Meet me in our Kayros, I'll be there... part of me will be always there, waiting for the Right Time when we will be together again...” Rumple waves as she slowly climbs the stairs to the Upperworld taking with her the two crystal domes with the two flowers, the symbols of Hope and Eternal Love.

…

Wish Belle died without a proper funeral ceremony - her remains were abandoned in a cell where they decomposed. Nonetheless, she was loved - much loved by everyone who knew her and it was this love that allowed her soul to have the direction it had in Underbrooke. Finally managing to steer her Unfinished Business to a good outcome, Wish Belle braced herself for the big and definite shift in her existence: the Champs Elysee. She arrives in the Islands of the Blessed through a portal that took her soul to cross her twin’s place of burial, as a kind of ritual of passage to absorb a proper burial, and is met by two friends who recently have been in the Underworld with her: Merlin and Ingrid.

“Welcome,” Ingrid tells her, extending her arms.

“Hello, Belle, welcome to your new home,” Merlin smiles, receiving the dome with Nimue’s flower and looking at it absently.

“Follow me,” Ingrid brings them both back to the present. “There is a reception party waiting for you, my dear, you will soon realize how much we enjoy a good socializing meeting with good talk, dancing, delicious meals, lots of music and peace. Above all, Belle, a lot of peace. This does not mean that we do not care about those who have not yet reached this state of mind, on the contrary. Even in the face of the pain and suffering of others, it is the serenity of our spirit that points to the paths and to the reasons why so much sadness still affects our beloved humans incarnated on Earth or in lower layers of the Underworld. Come, Belle, between us we don't have to use the prefix "wish" to distinguish ourselves, we just know who we are.”

…

Wish Belle is living with the two Baelfires, now that Milah has moved to Liam’s ship, where he already lived with Alice. Sometimes she visits her twin and brother in law, usually to borrow a new book, which she reads out loud in front of her Rose, imagining she is reading to her Rumple. Her sister took from Olympus a free pass to the Olympian Library and she is sure to have enough lecture for all eternity - both Belles don’t complain. The 'Tiltskin brothers are the best companions she could have asked for, always good humored, always gentle, always ready to talk and to day dream. They love to spend hours painting or hearing their neighbor, Aesop, narrating/creating new fables in the house he shares with Marian.

Ingrid, living with her sisters and brother in law, sometimes visits Merlin, joining Rumple, who also loves to visit the Wizard and his Apprentice, Jack, in a lab where they run experiments, discuss spells or simply talk about Life, Love, and Eternity.

Fergus and Farah, with Midas, Wish Midas and their wives share a common hobby: Midas received from the gods a wide screen similar to the Charmings', but in their case, instead of watching real life people, they prefer to marathon watching movies and series produced on the LWM.

In contrast to Midas' cine club, Aunt Em, Ruth and Wish Ruth, being the Charming’s neighbors, are usually at their house watching their beloved ones, vibrating for them, feeling good with them...

Enchanted Sea, the Jolly Rogers

At the end of July, to celebrate the twins' third month and the first anniversary of the Sweet Suite, the much-dreamed and planned trip on the two Jolly Rogers finally became true. On a sunny Tuesday morning, the crew and passengers of the two ships departed from Storybrooke heading south, reproducing the original journey of Key and his four mates until their arrival on Heart-Shaped Island.

The preparations for the trip ran in parallel to a ministerial reform initiated with David's request to leave the Defense Ministry and to occupy the Agriculture Ministry, instead. What followed was a concatenation of changes leading to a brand new configuration. The renewed setup began to be outlined when Robin Hood assumed the Prime Minister position and soon after that several ministerial posts - previously created but not yet occupied - gained their holders, new offices and staff. As a whole, it was decided that each Ministry would have two holders to provide a better balance for them to conciliate their professional duties with their private lives.

This way, after David’s move, Emma requested Killian's release for working at the Ministry of Justice as head of the new Intelligence Bureau. Key, in turn, asked to share his time between Storybrooke Police Department and Emm's newly occupied Ministry of Art & Culture. As a leading specialist in computer science, Key naturally needed a higher freedom degree because he gradually became a consultant for all ministries but his goal is to dedicate, at least part-time, to fine arts, especially painting, and to maritime navigation - a dream shared with Killian. Besides, with his move he intended to free his wife for a part-time job thus allowing her to take care of the babies during their first year.

In the Magic Ministry Gideon gained Zelena's support after she and Chad settled back on her farm, previously occupied by Robyn and Alice. With the magic connection between the ranch and their Portland house, Zelena and Chad can better reconcile life on both worlds. Robyn and Alice, by their turn, are the newest occupants of the Loft in downtown Storybrooke.

Henry Mills joined Snow in the Education Ministry, while Chynna, besides majoring in Psychology, took over the Communication Ministry with Sydney (her father joined Nemo in the Ministry of Science & Technology). Lily and Phileas Fog assumed the Transport Ministry in coordination with the activities ran by Aladdin and Eric at the Ministry of Industry & Trade whilst Lancelot and Naveen moved to the Defense Ministry. The complete setup diagram was emailed by Chynna to Robin a few minutes after boarding the ships and its printed version went hand in hand.

"It looks great," Snow summed it up and concluded with her characteristic optimism: “This diagram confirms that we are not leaving any critical issue behind. We are free to completely relax and indulge ourselves on the cruise to Heart Island. All aboard, settled down, great weather, two ships lined up and ready to set sail!”

Differently from the original 4-sailor team, the cruise required a bigger crew which then resulted in 6 people for each ship under the two captains Jones command. The passengers include, in addition to those connected to the original Sweet Suite events: Kristoff, Anna and Handy (their baby boy), Eric, Ariel, Anastasia, Drizella, Moe, Jack and Johanna. The other passengers are: Killian, Emma, Hope, Key, Emm, Jason, Dylan, Henry, Cindy, Lucy, W. Henry, Violet, Alice, Robyn, David, Snow, Neal, Gideon, Elsa, Robin, Regina, Roland, S. Regina, W. Robin, Coralline, W. Regina, Liam Sr, W. Ariel, Liam Jr, Ursula, Nemo, Brennan, Gepetto, August, W. Pinocchio, W. Granny, Granny, Merida, Mulan, Red, Dorothy, W. Red, W. Mulan, Tiana, Naveen, Zelena, Chad, Aladdin, Jasmine and Farah (their baby girl) - a total of 72 people, 36 on each ship: full capacity without compromising their quarters comfort.

And there they go!

...

The days have followed with tranquility: warm with a refreshing breeze blowing over the sails, propelling the vessels like two ships floating in clear days and starry nights. The passage of time has been marked by the Sweet Suite songs, played in the same order as they were originally sung and played. One of the ships, however, has been kept quieter: Key's, as the four babies are traveling on it - Jason, Dylan, Handy and Farah, four new forces of nature preparing to shine in the world. Meanwhile, on the other ship, with everyone already with their own brightness dawned, there hasn't been any restrictions for a noisier radiation of joy and promise of life.

Seen from a distance the cruise resembles perfection, but at a close inspection Snow's wish hasn't been exactly fulfilled - blame on the Internet. Although trying, they haven't been completely disconnected from the world, especially from constant threats of global pandemic and ecological imbalances reported in the news arriving from the Land without Magic, which they follow concerned.

Despite of that the Enchanted Sea and the enchanted ships, working their magic, have managed to provide a well-deserved vacation to all, entitled to a stop on Carnation Island for a heavenly feast prepared by Poseidon and Triton, who were waiting for them. Inspired by the events on the island a year ago, Ursula proposes that they rehearse a new musical number in addition to the one performed for the Sweet Suite. The result, in the end, may not have been as magical as before, but will surely be remembered as one of the most relaxing and funny moments of their cruise.

...

Another day comes and goes and, finally, they reach it: Heart-shaped Island, bringing up to every one - each in their own private universe that collectively built the Sweet Suite a year ago, a lot of memories and emotions, a lot of voices in the sound of the waves, voices of the sea, voices speaking to the travelers disembarking from the two ships in a state of wonder but, if they stop to listen, shut up, for listening too: fortunate, enchanted hearty island, land where Love lives waiting for walkers as they wake up from a dream and face Real Life, where there's only sentiment, where there's only the sea.

“So beautiful…” Emm extends her arms with teary eyes clouded by images and sounds reverberating in her heart: magic music... magic mirror and, oh! sweet memory... Luna and Missy... “I miss them…” she whispers to Key and Emma, who walks close to them, hand in hand with Hope.

“They are here, Aunt Emm,” Hope comforts Emm, caressing her hands and pointing to the sky, “see those two shinning birds flying over there? They are Luna and Missy sending their love!!!”

…

The Beatles song sounds far away, mingling in the air with the happy laughs and screams of children - who today don't want to be treated like pre-teens or teens. Even the adults, seen at close range, have allowed the kid they kept in their chests to run free on the beach. At the extremes, all in all, old and young find themselves communing with the magic of the Island.

"Here comes the sun king Everybody is laughing Everybody is happy Here comes the sun king...

Quando paramucho mi amore de felice corazón Mundo paparazzi mi amore chicka ferdy parasol Cuesto obrigado tanta mucho que canite carousel..."

In this scenario, Emm and Key - she with Jason, the ever more contemplative, on her lap, he carrying the most alert, Dylan - are walking the heart path, the island edge.

"Still beautiful and welcoming," Emm smiles with nostalgia.

"Would you like to come back, love?"

"Maybe, on summer holidays or special occasions... we could build a few summer houses and come with Killian, Emma and Hope, perhaps, Robyn & Alice and Henry & Violet, and..." she grins shaking her head, "not too many or it would become too crowded..."

"Three houses would be perfect, love, they could be 3-bedroom cottages. Killian, Emma and I were talking to Anna and Kristoff about that, you know, nearly 30 minutes ago. We are thinking about creating a regular Tourism route - remember that it is always Summer-like here - but for that we'd have to build a small dock, for the Jolly Rogers, and 3 cottages: one at the tip of the heart, where your house used to be, and the other two in the lobes of the heart, where we made love for the second time," he grins, playing with Dylan's fingers.

Emma chuckles and continues, "it would be nice for us and the children, I can already imagine them running along these white sands, laughing happily, building castles..."

"Aye..." suddenly Key stops on his track to look into Emm's eyes, "it was here that I told you, for the first time, that I love you..."

"I love you too, Killian, and if it weren't for Jason already massaging my breasts and making my milk drip, I'd kiss you showing how much... Let's go find a shadow because these two are thirsty and so do I..."

"Sit here with the boys, Emma, under these palm trees. Don't spend your magic to bring water, I'll fill the canteen in the fountain and will be back in a minute."

...

“Emm, you lived in a paradise: a beautiful beach with warm waters, a cool breeze, crystal clear drinking water, delicious…” Zelena and Chad approach Emm, lying on the sand next to the babies, who alternate to breastfeed on her.

“Yeah, this island is really special, Zelena: magic and musical…” she smiles softly while looking at the children approaching with Alice and Henry Mills to sit next to them.

“What song would she - the island is a girl - sing to us if she could sing?” Cora asks, making funny faces at Dylan.

“We could ask her,” Hope replies and turns to Alice, “Starfish…” everyone smiles at the girl's cuteness using Alice's nickname, “you talk to the trees, so... you could ask them what song they would sing for us…”

“Sure, my cutie,” Alice replies blinking, “I'm going to the middle of the island, near the water fountain, I will concentrate to ask them and to be able to hear their answer and then I will come back to tell you…”

…

When she comes back with a big smile on her lips, everyone asks: "So, did it work?"

“Aye, the Island responded! she told me that the song she would like to dedicate to us is called Feeling Good!"

Initially the title didn't ring a bell to anyone and Key then asked his daughter if there wasn't any other hint - "nope, nada!"

“I know it!” Henry finally exclaims, “I know this song! There is a classic version with Nina Simone but I think I have a cover version on my playlist, do you want to hear it?”

“We want it!!” “Of course!” “Aye!” “Yes!” “Aye!”

"Very well, everyone," Henry prepares to press play: "here we go!"

0 notes

dreams-for-the-apoplectic · 5 years ago

Text

something i will probably never finish but like enough that im posting it anyway

Bro leans in the doorway of your room,

(and you see him from your periphery: boxers loose on bony hips and patterned with hearts, no shirt, can of orange soda in hand with shades neatly tucked on the bridge of a strikingly crooked nose)

and tells you,

(over the sound of the fans, three, overclocked on some jury-rigged upgrades he threw together last year when the air conditioner went schizo cherry apeshit, just like now, again, for the second time this week spewing out mad fumes all grey-black and choked from its old, dusty vents)

that you and he should just ollie outie of this midsummer popsicle stand and move somewhere the sun don’t actively to attempt murder you in the crispiest degree, KFC style.

And you jokingly tell him sure, fuck it, anything is better than clawing my way up Fire Death Concrete Mountain aka Texas Mordor, clutching this bitchin’ ring of power and muttering all manner of rapturous obscenities and salacious innuendos for my precious. Sign me up Major Douchenozzle, I’ll shimmy my fine ass up this fabled air-conditioned igloo any day.

A week later and you've packed your shit, grabbed your ticket, and are hopping the next flight to Vermont.

(four hours, fifty-one minutes, seven seconds, and Bro practically jumps off the plane hyperventilating when you touch down. you didn’t know how much he hated flying. you’ve never been on a plane before; if you didn’t know better, you’d think he hasn’t either. and if you quirk an eyebrow just over the rim of your aviators, and the side of your mouth makes a confused downturn for a second or two at just how fucking strange that that is, well, that was just a trick of the light, and the light is a dirty liar.)

He and you stick out like sore thumbs here

(with Bro in a crumpled white polo and asshole jeans and dumb fucking anime shades, one hand in his pockets with an impassive, calculating kind of expression that you’re more used to than the panic, checking through tabs on Complete Bullshit for god knows what reason; you in the same shirt you wore yesterday, hair a meticulously crafted unkempt, posture slouching something awful as you bop right the fuck along to some sicknasty new bassline Jade dropped on you the night before, thinking of ways to remix it into this new beat you’ve been working on)

among a crowd of home-grown New England faces haughty white and upturned and staring down at you and Bro like some trash that just rolled in from Doesn't Fucking Belong Here, USA.

(the luggage belt is moving so slow, so, so slow, it’s like watching a retarded crippled snail attempt a marathon against the goddamn salt shaker, and you wish you could just shake off the lingering, disdainful stares these people give the two of you, and you can, and you do)

(except you don't.)

You’re rolling through Montpelier an hour later, crammed up in the shotgun seat of an old, dirty, piece of shit pickup Bro apparently had nesting in the airport storage unit,

(it’s a rust hulk straight out of the early eighties, all torn up vinyl and engine rattling, with tacky, outdated bumper stickers on the back and a pine air freshener that does nothing to mask the smell of two-decade old cigarettes, and somehow you aren’t surprised this is his car because it is exactly how you imagined it.)

(you want to ask why he had a car in bumfuck, vermont and not in houston. you want to ask him if he even knows how to drive, but you hold your tongue nice and pretty and settle into the split vinyl seat cover)

moving past the city limits and into the countryside, over the state border and into New York. You give Bro the ‘what the fuck are we doing out here, man, is this the setup for a horror movie or some shit, because I’m not down to being the unwilling accomplice to some new echelon of fucked up smuppet snuff’ look, your fingers tapping in 4-4 on the dash, not really nervous so much as habitual.

(he ruffles your hair with a smirking, mean kind of half-smile, all teeth and teasing and unnatural. you swat at him uselessly.)

And then the road is quiet, and the sky is misting grey. It’s all evergreen and shrubbery and dark soil here, and small towns by clear water: fishing ponds, creeks and rivers, and more wildlife roaming these secondhand backroads than you’ve ever seen in Texas. It starts to rain a bit, ghosting against the glass, and over the soft creak of the windshield wipers Bro asks you if you wanna put on some music, little man, heard you were working on a new track and can I get a sneak peak at that delirious biznasty? And fuck yeah you have, even if it isn’t quite done yet, and you plop your phone on the dashboard, and the drive is comfortable,

(and you cannot shake this feeling that something is wrong.)

---

It isn’t an apartment, it’s a house in the goddamn woods; no, a fucking mansion in the goddamn woods, the design of it ripped straight from the personal architectural smutjournel of Frank Lloyd Wright, complete with white-foam waterfall and neo-American art deco pretension. Your mouth hangs open, and you know, you just fucking know a fly is about to buzz in that shit and set up a cozy little cottage, but you don’t care. This is straight wack, man.

(it looks vaguely familiar too, like something nostalgic stuck in your mental gears, cracked and rusted from disuse; something you saw once, a long time ago, in a place you can’t quite remember.)

Bro gestures you along along the concrete path, and you tell him no, wait, put the fucking brakes on Anime Goldilocks, what the fuck are we doing here, because this sure as shit can’t be where we’re living now, and I don’t wanna piss off the three bears. He pinches the bridge of his nose, and tells you in that deep southern mumble of his that, shit, kid, did you expect we’d just take a plane and end up in the same shitty apartment? And of course you didn’t

(even though you kind of did)

because that would be ridiculous, but-- you don’t know, you’ve been sharing a seven-hundred square foot living space with him for the past fifteen years. How are you supposed to react to a fucking mansion that just suddenly up and settled before you on delicate foundational popliteals and a stark-white concrete strapless all alluring and sultry? Just stand there stone-faced morose and stoic and fuck, that is exactly what you should be doing, isn’t it, because that was what he taught you, to

(stitch up the cuts slowly, careful with the needle and don’t fucking rush it, lil’ bro, even if they’re shallow you can’t just take it and jab that shit in, and for the love of god you gotta work on your dodge game, how the fuck do you expect not to get your ass served up sunnyside in a real fight?)

(̶̥̘͗̉̾̊͝ ̷̦̙̦͌͊̒́̍͛̀̀̈́́̚͘̕̚n̷̨̜̲͓̹̪͎̒͋́̊̎̐̍͌̆͘͝ͅͅͅ ̸̤̥̏́̌̑͒̈́̿́̃

̶̧̝͎̝͔͔̣̬͈̗̥̠̔̀͌̈́͆̒̇̋̋́̈́͐̈̚͝ ̷̡̛͕͚̰͉̦̼̤͍̘̝̹̮̩̈́̑̇̃̔͝͠ơ̷̡̧͔̘͇̖̫͉̳̳͖͇̰̻͗͛̿̋̾̏͘͝ ̸̨̧͈̱̫̩̲̦̭͖̿̃́̔͛̓̓͌̌͗̍̔̾͜ͅ

̷̢̮̮̠̠̬̖̙͈͋̍͛͆̔̈́̓̌̂̀͌̽͝͠ ̸̨̗̯̓͐̿̇͂͊̓́́̄̃̚͘͜͜.̷̲̙͓̮̮̬͓̈́̋͂͒̓̃͘͠͠)̸̧̖̪̦̥̪͙̫͍͙̩̻̺̩̒̌̈́͒͋͝ͅ

̵̬̯̪͛̓̈́̎̒́̂

It isn’t our house anyway, he says,

(and your mind slams on the brakes so hard you think you might flip this shit frontways, slam the roof on that motherfucker into the burning asphalt and skid off the edge of this brutal synapse fuckup.)

(you can’t remember what you were thinking. it’s blurry, and forgotten, and everything is normal again)

moving forward in long, atypical strides that you scramble to follow. The rain is still coming down, you realize, in a softer drizzle that dampens your shirt. Friend of mine lives here.

Holy shit, he has friends?

Yes, I have friends, you little shit, and you flinch when you realize you must have said that out loud. His arms flex, shoulder blades audibly popping with the contraction of muscle, and you flinch, and nothing happens. Her name is Roxy.

And shit, you guess that’s all there really is to say on the matter, because he doesn’t provide any further explanation and you sure as hell don’t ask. You duck under the porch roof and he raps a fat bar of knuckles on the door.

---

Roxy isn’t anything like you expect.

You don’t know what you were expecting, actually, considering you’ve only just heard about her, but she is perky and kind-eyed and so fucking sincere that the saccharine emotional font of exuberant delight that straight up sparkles from her is making you real uncomfortable.

She hugged you.

She hugged you and you liked it.

(and she hugged Bro too, made his spine go all weird fucking c-shaped wrongness as she crushes him against her chest, calls him Dirk like she fucking owns him.)

You’re ushered in as she turns on heel and sways away with a tipsy strut, sauced and sauntering and high stilettos tapping on the dark hardwood. She tells you to drop your things by the door, she can set each of you up with a room in a bit, and Dirk, honey, we have got so much catching up to do, I haven’ seen you and the lil’ guy in ages, and god yer both so fuckin’ tall I forgot about that bit,

(christ on the cross, she can speak at a mile a minute, accent a thickly laced New York staccato that matches Texas about as close to the intersection of nil and fuckall as you can get without running head-on into traffic.)

and Dirky, Dirkle, Dirk-a-licious, oh my god come here right now, I gotta show you this badass shit I‘ve been working on, it’s fuckin’ lit as hell, it has got switches and gizmos and all of the cool techy shit I know you swoon over, and you need to check out this code I wrote because you know I’m not about to trust anyone else to parse my sick lines, so come ooooooooooooon and there they go, Bro dragged stiff as cardboard across the floor by the hem of his fucking shirt. He gives you a side-eye look that says crosses somewhere between ‘don’t go anywhere, I’ll be right back’ and ‘help me.’

You shrug and flip him off and leave him to his fate. His death glare could kill a lesser man.

(holy shit.)

And then, quite suddenly, you are alone.

It’s not quiet, you notice - just a more subtle murmur than the scream of a city, made emptier without Roxy to fill up the room. Slow, churning movement below signals the languid rush of water as it tumbles beneath the floorboards and off the cliffside. Some woodland creature skitters in wet dirt beyond the window pane, which filters in ghost-grey light and shakes a bit when a particularly heavy set of raindrops hit.

You shuffle about awkwardly, and glance around for a second,

(the interior is lavishly decorated, you notice. posh white starkness for fineass digs. sir asshole the stone swamp wizard sits plainly in the foyer, nested in arcane robes of the dimwitted and tacky. a cat is nuzzled up at the foot of some kind of bronzed vacuum. the whole place smells like perfume and vodka. it’s kind of intoxicating.)

before deciding the panicked, lingering gaze is kind of stupid, and waiting for Bro to come back like a pining factory girl in the nineteen-forties writing sappy missives to the brave boys in Okinawa was lame as shit, so you flop down on the couch, all loose, gangly puberty limbs and feigned indifference and the muted light of your phone glaring back at you. You pull open a pesterchum window, shoot a few messages to Harley,

(some off-the-cuff rap cooked slow on these sick fires, like just put some whip cream and a goddamn cherry on that shit and call it a sunday. you also make sure to attach a file for the new sbahj comic you’ve been working on. you’ve lovingly dubbed the new arc ‘the spaztastic furry hatesex maelstrom,’ and you hope know she’ll love it.)

and Egbert,

(and you admit, muddled up in tangents and similes that take forever just to get to the goddamn point, that you actually took his recommendation and stuck through the bitterly tasteless cinema assassination of the week. you even wrote a shitty review for it on one of your ironically maintained critic blogs, and send him a link)

(you won’t admit you laughed at groundhog day. he will never let you live it down. never.)

and Lalonde,

(who is on, surprisingly, because you know she has school right now, and fuck if the flighty broad doesn’t take every swat of the educational ass whooping with a snide, condescending seriousness that has a way of getting just under your skin. she wants to go to Harvard, or Cornell, or Oxford, because she is smarter than you, and John, and maybe not Jade but damn is she close.)

(she doesn’t respond either, though, so you cast the thought away and send her some custom made memes deep fried in a hundred layers of crystalline jpeg illegibility and wait, fuck, holy shit)

and then someone is standing over you, peering with an appraising interest, like they’re looking at a slab of beef splayed out dumb on the chopping block. And you don’t flinch, you really don’t, even though you’re about five seconds away from flipping this shit backwards and kicking dust up as you run for the hills.

You can tell this girl is nasty. She is stygian lips and white-blonde hair and violet eyes that politely inform you that this is indeed the fucking slaughterhouse, that you guessed it right, and you’re about to get served up with a side of collard greens and barbecue sauce.

So of course the first words out of your mouth are 'sup, Rose.

Wait, wh

(you see her past the glow of a verdant sun, because even a double universe killing superbomb can't outshine her. cascading orange silk stitch wrapped in a star-shimmering supernova of violet eyes and pallid skin. it's like a goddamn angel come from the heaven; a smirk beneath the hood and fire in her belly. she is the fucking sun now, and nothing can even fucking compare.)

at.

(what the fuck.)

What the fuck.

(what the actual fuck dude.)

Do I know you? Her voice is just dripping contempt.

And you don't fucking know her. She isn't here. Rose is a billion lightyears off in the gay space commune, deep encoded digital vaporware that went out of style twelve fucking years ago. She is a string of chat logs and embarrassing Fruedian slips that didn't happen, no, Rose, you don't have undercover mother-lust.

And she is here.

You've never even seen her picture, but you know. You know far beneath the skin, something deeper than blood or bone or anything else seething something above that spiritual core. You know on a fucked kind of metaphysical. It's self-evident. It cannot help but make itself true.

Uh.

Shit.

Shit dude fucking say something. She’s just standing there, and the downward curvature of those lips is about to break out of the spatial plane and into some hyper paranoid fourth dimension. You guess she has a right to be weary. Your gangly ass is seated firmly in her territory.

#homestuck #dave strider #bro strider #rose lalonde #mom lalonde #decided i should probably fulfill the whole 'occasionally write things' part of my blog that has kinda been neglected since like 2017 or so #and this has just been sitting abandoned in a google docs since like early 2019 or so but i like it enough that i figured fuck it why not #so here you go #my requisite one writing thing that i post a year #it will probably never be finished #enjoy i guess?

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easyfoodnetwork · 5 years ago

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Is This the Start of a CSA Boom?

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As home cooks practice social distancing, farm produce that skips the store makes sense

Marnie Dresser never thought she’d want to sign up for a CSA again. “I tried it once and it felt like too much pressure,” she says. “I just wanted to go to the farmers market.” Dresser is an English professor in Wisconsin and lives in a town so small that its store shelves “didn’t even empty of toilet paper as soon as the other places,” as she describes it. But as spring break at the college where she teaches got extended and cases of COVID-19 continued to spread across the country, a CSA — in which farmers sell “shares” of their produce before the season starts (often in the winter or spring, when money is tight for farmers but expenses for the upcoming growing season are high) and customers receive produce boxes throughout the CSA season — started to sound more appealing.

“I’m kind of a worst-case-scenario thinker,” Dresser says; she couldn’t help but imagine all the ways that the novel coronavirus might affect society. “I wanted to support a local business because I feel beyond lucky that my job still exists at the moment. And I wanted to ensure our food supply.”

She’ll start getting her first CSA box in mid-April from a business called My Fine Homestead. Dresser signed up for a year’s supply of vegetables, eggs, and meat. “There’s so many unknowns and it felt really good to have something within my control I could do to help,” Dresser explains, adding, “It was very much pandemic-driven.”

While restaurants and other small businesses throughout the country are temporarily closing, CSA-like food subscriptions or one-off box deliveries of local food are skyrocketing in demand. Though some grocery stores are adding precautions, such as limiting the number of customers in the store, marking spots on the floor to keep people waiting in line six-feet apart, and cleaning registers, they are some of the last places where large numbers of people regularly gather as the nation faces guidance to stay home. Many shoppers (and grocery employees) are worried they might come into contact with COVID-19 while doing their shopping, and are limiting trips to the store. Despite the fact that there have been no major disruptions to the food supply, there are regular shortages of flour, eggs, chicken, ground beef, and toilet paper, among other staples. Food subscriptions that offer home delivery or a prepaid pickup option are an easy way to get fresh food while limiting social contact.

Though Gathering Together, a farm in Oregon, doesn’t start its CSA until June, company marketing specialist Sarah Reffett says that they wanted to do something in the meantime to bring fresh produce to their usual customers and make up financial losses from closed farmers markets and restaurants, a major source of income. Unlike the CSA, which requires a multi-months commitment, the VSA (which stands for “vitality supported agriculture,” as Gathering Together is calling it) can be ordered weekly and picked up or delivered right to customers’ front doors, depending on location. “The first day we put it up, the website actually crashed,” Reffett says.

In addition to starting earlier in the year, many pre-existing CSAs are starting programs that allow customers to get home delivery or sign up for a shorter period of time — one or a few weeks instead of a season or a year, as is more typical. Often these coronavirus-related CSA programs are given new names to differentiate them from the typical offering.

Growing Washington is calling its offering an “emergency CSA.” Usually CSA customers could expect their boxes to be full of hyperlocal, organic produce and add-ons like coffee or meats. Now, in the emergency CSA, instead of members choosing what goes in the box, there will be a set supply for everyone. The only choice? Whether the box of produce is small or large, says employee Gabrielle Santerre. Growing Washington may have to source from larger farms than usual to meet the increased demand. (Its own farm’s production is still limited this early in the year.) “Its primary focus is to keep our farm afloat and provide food for people in need,” Santerre says. Despite the restrictions, Growing Washington had to stop accepting new orders 48 hours after launching the emergency CSA through an email blast. “We capped it at about 1,300 shares,” Santerre says. Typically in the first weeks of the CSA there might be 100 or 200 people, with more added throughout the season as word spreads. Growing Washington never had so much demand so quickly. It’s taken everyone by surprise. “I feel like I’ve lived two lifetimes in the last week,” Santerre says.

Usually, Growing Washington delivers CSA boxes to pickup locations throughout the Seattle metropolitan area. Because so many customers are staying in their homes, the farm decided to try something new. Hosts can now sign up to be a “pay it forward” location; CSA drop-offs will still occur as usual, but the host will individually deliver boxes to people who need it nearby. “We don’t do door-to-door delivery, but wanted it to be available,” Santerre says, and she’s been pleasantly surprised by the many hosts who have agreed. “People want to feel like they can do something in these times,” she says. “We’re a little nervous, but hopefully they follow through.”

At Oregon’s Gathering Together, Reffett says that because it’s the off-season they have a limited staff, and she expects there to be some “streamlining” in the future for getting deliveries packed and out the door. “The whole thing took off so quickly and we’re still figuring out the logistics of it all and what’s the best way of getting this person their order effectively,” Reffett says. Gathering Together has always offered customers the option of donating additional money to help reduce the price of CSAs for families who need financial assistance, and the fund is extremely popular. She’s seen donations of $5, $40, and even $200 with weekly orders.

“It’s interesting to see how everybody is pivoting,” says Meesha Halm, a San Francisco-based food writer and author of Sous Vide Made Simple. “It’s such a shame all those food-delivery kit companies went under last year, because they’d be making a killing right now.” Halm has been restricting her trips to the grocery store to essential runs, though it’s a hard habit to break. “I’m used to darting out and getting what I want, but the risks outweigh the benefit for me,” Halm says. She has four people in her household, including someone who is immunocompromised. “So every little bit of spinach and fresh produce is precious,” she says. When a local fish company, Four Star Seafood, started offering delivery in her area, it was a “no brainer” to sign up for delivery. “I got my first order yesterday and there was no box or excessive packaging—just a guy showing up with bags of fresh fish,” Halm says. She’s also put in an order for mushrooms with Far West Fungi. Ordering from businesses like these, Halm says, “is a win-win for my family.”

Though businesses that take on box deliveries have to manage the logistics of getting these products to customers, it’s led to a boom time for some small food suppliers that might otherwise be struggling as restaurants and farmers markets close. Groce Family Farm, a sustainable meat producer based in southern Indiana just an hour away from Louisville, Kentucky, relied on local restaurants for 60 percent of its business. Farmers markets are still open (the last two weeks Groce Family Farm has had record-breaking sales), though vendors are spaced far apart, and owner Luke Groce went from doing farmers markets himself to bringing people on to grab orders from the coolers for customers and another to handle money. “We don’t do coins anymore and just round to the nearest dollar,” Groce says.

Groce started getting messages from people interested in his usual CSA two weeks ago and decided to put a number of large home delivery boxes for sale on his website. “They’re between $150 to $200 in value,” Groce says, full retail price with the delivery fee included for the Louisville metro area. They sold 75 boxes in a flash. “One way I put it is that in eight days, I did eight weeks of sales, and that’s with restaurants not ordering,” Groce says. “It more than made up for the loss in sales from our regular customers.” He’s heard similar stories from farmers across the country who offer home delivery. Throughout the United States, people are stocking up their freezers.

Though it varies from business to business and it’s unclear how long the sudden interest in home delivery will last, for the moment, these companies are among the few to be benefiting from the new normal sweeping the world. “It’s strange, with so many people being both fearful for their health and all this economic wreckage, to be profiting in a way we almost never have,” Groce says. “We’ll see what the new normal is, but I think that we’re doing okay. That’s no small thing for a farmer in America today.”

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2R5RssH https://ift.tt/3450zPH

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As home cooks practice social distancing, farm produce that skips the store makes sense

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junker-town · 5 years ago

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‘We just made history’: The story of hockey’s first ever Team Trans

How a group of 17 trans athletes came together last November to make history.

On a Friday in a little Cambridge, Massachusetts, ice arena, as a gaggle of middle schoolers lingered after a game and two men’s league teams were taking the ice, 17 hockey players were huddled in a corner, getting ready to make history.

Jessica Platt’s excitement shone in her eyes as her teammates on Team Trans, perhaps the first-ever all trans hockey team to play a game together, dug through a stack of blue and pink uniforms to find their own. Platt, a 30-year-old former CWHL player, said she had stopped playing hockey in her early 20s because she was uncomfortable with the overly masculine attitudes of the male players who surrounded her.

“I pretty much had to be careful how I presented myself,” she said. “I got really good at putting on the facade of who I thought I needed to be, and I tried to stick to that as closely as I could when I was in that area. I was a little bit more myself around my friends, but definitely not in the hockey scene.”

Platt traveled from Toronto to play with Team Trans, which was taking part in the 2019 Friendship Series tournament hosted last November by Boston Pride Hockey, New England’s largest LGBT hockey association (not to be confused with the Boston Pride of the NWHL). About five years ago, she finally felt comfortable enough with her transition to enter a women’s locker room and return to hockey. Though she had never met many of her new teammates, they bonded quickly around the familiar fear and anxiety they had felt to play a game they loved.

“Knowing that you’re the only one and no one else has the exact same experiences as you, makes it a little bit harder to, I guess, connect with them,” Platt said. “It’s a little lonely being the only [trans] person.”

That loneliness is why the team met in Boston. Transgender adults make up an estimated 0.6 percent of the general population. There are just 1.6 million trans people in the United States, according to the Williams Institute at UCLA. In Canada, as many as 1 in 200 adults (roughly 0.5 percent) are trans, according to the Trans Pulse Project. In any given town in North America, there likely isn’t enough athletes to form an entirely trans team.

Hockey was my life I also used it as a way to try and be more masculine, where if I was good enough, like being trans would go away.”

A dozen players had to travel from outside Boston to fill the roster, from as far away as San Francisco, Chicago and Ottawa. The draw of playing on an all-trans team even attracted two professional players, with former NWHL defenseman Harrison Browne joining Platt. Each were the first openly trans players in their respective leagues.

Brynn Toohey, a 30-year-old speedy winger and transgender woman from southern New Hampshire, often makes the trek south to play for Boston Pride Hockey, but that weekend she suited up for Team Trans, too.

Toohey’s BPH teammates love to point out that she drives a bright red Porsche. Contrary to her flashy game and bold eye makeup, she is disarmingly reserved and soft-spoken. Growing up in New Hampshire provided Toohey plenty of opportunity for ice time.

“Hockey was my life,” Toohey said. “I also used it as a way to try and be more masculine, where if I was good enough, like being trans would go away.”

She played junior hockey until college, and bounced around several club teams before dropping out of the game entirely in her early 20s. Life got in the way of her passion the way it does for many young people. But Toohey also struggled with gender dysphoria, the clinical term for the distress caused by a disconnect between a person’s assigned sex and their internal sense of their own gender.

Toohey said that she fell on hard times after college, intermittently struggling with depression and substance abuse before beginning her transition early last year.

“I had to get sober,” Toohey said. “And really once I was like, ‘All right, I’m trans,’ I was like, ‘Well, now there’s a future for me.’ Everything opened up.”

Around that time, she heard about Boston Pride Hockey. “I normally don’t do any LGBT anything,” she said, but she felt the sport pulling her back and decided to give the league a try. She attended a skate around and found a welcoming environment where she could play without being judged by her identity.

“If you told me six months ago, before I started transitioning or anything, I’d be playing on an all-trans hockey team, I would be like, ‘Yeah, right,’” Toohey said. “‘That doesn’t exist. There’s not enough trans people that want to play hockey like me.’”

Like Toohey, no one on Team Trans had ever played hockey with more than a handful of other trans players, if any. Typically, trans athletes have to seek out welcoming but predominantly cisgender teams if they want to compete.

Chris Harrington

Harrison Browne, left, and Jessica Platt, right.

Browne, a 26-year-old former two-time NWHL champion, said he experienced dysphoria triggers throughout his women’s hockey experience, like hearing his deadname, the term used for the birth name of a trans person who now goes by a different name, over the PA whenever he scored. Or when someone would yell something like “Let’s go, ladies” to the team when he was on the ice.

“When somebody hasn’t gone through what you go through, they can sympathize, they can empathize as much as a person can and my teammates did a really, really good job of making me feel as included as they could,” Browne said. “But when somebody doesn’t understand your way of life or doesn’t understand your mindset, it’s difficult. And this room here, this dressing room that [Team Trans] are all in, it definitely was an environment that I had never seen.”

Shane Diamond, a defenseman from Maine, skated with a men’s beer league team for several weeks to prep for the Friendship Series. It was his first time skating with a team of men as a “passing” trans man — meaning, a trans person whose outward appearance doesn’t immediately out them as trans — and the experience was unsettling.

“I walked into the space and it was one of the most homophobic, transphobic locker rooms I’ve ever been in, and that’s including growing up [playing] with the boys,” Diamond said. Stories like his were common among Team Trans players. And while some players tried, or are trying, to play through their transitions, others, like Toohey, were only drawn back to sports once their bodies were more in line with their inner sense of their own gender.

When somebody doesn’t understand your way of life or doesn’t understand your mindset, it’s difficult. ... This dressing room that [Team Trans] are all in, it definitely was an environment that I had never seen.”

Rather than risk exposing themselves to teams and spaces that don’t understand their identities, many trans athletes simply quit sports. Fortunately, more and more athletic associations and cisgender people have begun educating themselves on how to better treat and support trans people.

Unlike most of the players on Team Trans, William Frahm-Gilles, a 35-year-old trans man and defenseman, took up the game as an adult when he lived in Madison, Wisconsin, about nine years ago. “I always wanted to play hockey, but I just never had the opportunity growing up,” Frahm-Gilles said. He was enrolled in an intense veterinary educational program, and wanted a hobby to help him work out his aggression within an accepting community.

Frahm-Gilles became involved with the Madison Gay Hockey Association at a key point in his gender transition. “It was just this really bizarre flip from every other aspect of my life, where everyone assumed I was a really butch lesbian instead of assuming I was a straight woman,” he said. “But they were so encouraging about it that it was just like a really weird space to have to kind of come out in a totally different way. I’m actually super into dudes, not a butch lesbian.”

Frahm-Gilles was the first openly trans player in the MGHA, and he had to endure the league’s growing pains as it learned to accommodate him and his identity. In an effort to signal that the league was welcoming towards trans players, league officials and other players often went out of their way to tell new and potential trans players about Frahm-Gilles, even if he had never met them. That often put him in awkward positions, off the ice.

“A new player would join who was trans-identified and come up to me and start chatting transition talk,” Frahm-Gilles said. “That happened a number of times and there was just a lot of [league officials] not quite understanding how to actually be sensitive with that information about players.”

Life gradually became easier for Frahm-Gilles when other trans players started playing in the league. One of those players was K8 Walton, a 39-year-old nonbinary person who plays defense and joined Frahm-Gilles and Team Trans in Cambridge. Walton saw how the other trans players were being treated at the MGHA and set out to change the league to be more understanding.

“The driving thing was we needed to come in from the very get-go and teach people,” Walton said. The league needed to “make sure that everybody understands basic trans etiquette, like that you don’t out people or say, ‘Oh, you’re trans. Let me introduce you to my other friend who’s trans.’ And that you’re sharing a locker room with people who may have all sorts of feelings about their bodies, and that’s [whether they’re] cisgender or transgender.”

The MGHA has evolved in Frahm-Gilles’ time there. He has been happy to see more people like him on the teams he plays with and against. “I’m glad I fell so much in love with the sport,” he said, “because I don’t think I would have touched playing after the first couple of seasons.”

The night before the first game of the Friendship Series, Team Trans held its first and only practice. At one point, Platt deftly lifted the puck off the stick of an opposing player, weaved effortlessly through the defense and passed across the crease to a waiting teammate. An audible gasp followed by oohs and aahs sprang from the dozen-strong crowd.

Greg Sargent, president of Boston Pride Hockey, was among those watching. He would be suiting up and playing against Team Trans the following night. “She’s going to be tough to contain tomorrow,” he said. I leaned in and asked how his team would try to stop a line with Platt, Toohey and Browne, who wasn’t on the ice because his flight was coming in the following morning. “We won’t,” Sargent said. “But we still want to win.”

Like MGHA, BPH has recently gone out of its way to open up to trans players. BPH formed in 1989 as a space for gay hockey players to compete. Thirty years on, BPH is up to 45 members.

“Our number one goal is just to provide a great place to play hockey that you don’t worry about what the other person is thinking,” Sargent said. “When I grew up, it’s kind of like I was checking everybody out in the locker room but [was] never comfortable, never felt safe to say anything. It was the complete opposite. And so when I found BPH ... it was just amazing.”

Sargent’s experience in creating welcoming environments led him to help set up Team Trans. The organization regularly holds series with other gay hockey associations. After a tournament with the New York City Gay Hockey Association, Sargent spotted an opposing player who was nervously off to the side from the others.

“In Boston, we have a thing where if we notice anybody new not talking with anyone, our board is keyed into that and so we all take turns,” Sargent said. “We go and talk to them and make them feel welcome, introduce them to everybody.”

Sargent introduced himself to the player, and learned that the person was trans. After some discussion, the player told Sargent that there is a Facebook group full of trans hockey players, and that it was hoping to set up a game with an all-trans roster. The player, who ultimately couldn’t make it for the weekend series in Boston, explained to Sargent that while the NYCGHA was a safe place to play, it wasn’t specifically a trans locker room, so some trans athletes felt some lingering discomfort within the team.

Kyle Outlaw

Sargent wanted to help. “I said, ‘Let’s do this.’ So I told our board that and a lot of our older members were like, ‘That’s our story from 1989. We’re doing this, let’s make this happen.’”

The weekend didn’t quite go off without a hitch. Team Trans goaltender Alex Lefebvre said at one point after the first game, several of the team’s trans men had to wait in line to use the one stall in the men’s bathroom, which had run out of toilet paper. “Some of us were like, ‘I kind of just want to use the women’s room, but half of us have full beards.’” The incident was a stark reminder that many public spaces still aren’t designed with trans people in mind.

But Sargent took the event seriously, working with trans players from all over the continent to put together the team, and even ordering personalized Team Trans jerseys and socks with the players’ numbers on them, as well as commemorative pucks. The sweaters featured a pink and blue design with a diagonal split between the colors, inspired by the pink, white and blue trans pride flag. Several team members teared up when they first saw the design.

The atmosphere inside the Team Trans locker room before Game 1 was almost joyous. Players smiled without a hint of nerves. Hockey sticks lined the front wall, each taped in trans pride or rainbow colors. There was banter, of course. The team captain, who didn’t wish to be named, read out the lines, and mistakenly said one player’s name twice.

“I know there’s a bunch of trans guys in here, but you listed two Jacks and there’s only one Jack,” quipped one of the players, poking fun at the fact that “Jack” is a common name among trans masculine people.

Later, someone pointed out they needed a team chant, and Diamond immediately yelled out “T4T!” in reference to trans community lingo for when two trans people are dating each other. A unison of giggles followed; it was agreed.

Browne said after the game that he forgot to wear an undershirt and had been worried how his nipples would feel directly under his shoulder pads after top surgery. Several teammates understood his anxiety and offered personal experience to reassure him. To Browne, moments like that brought home what many on Team Trans had felt they’d been missing throughout their athletic careers.

“We’ve only been together for two days and I felt like there was a cohesive feel in there,” Browne said. “There was a comfort level that I’ve never really felt [before].”

Despite their fast bonding, Team Trans was up against a stiff challenge from a team that has been playing together for years. BPH put away two scrappy goals over the first two periods, and took a 2-0 lead into the third.

But Team Trans hadn’t yet put Platt, Toohey and Browne on the ice together. They wanted to spread their talent across multiple lines as best they could. After the second intermission, Team Trans held nothing back.

“When we score … we’re going to celebrate,” Toohey said in the team huddle. Her confidence felt brazen. They were still in a cisgender-dominated world where trans people have long had to be content with scraps of validation.

Team Trans won the faceoff to start the period, and Platt carried the puck over the blue line. She dished off to Browne, who quickly scanned the ice and spotted Toohey blazing down the slot, just to the left of the net. His pass found Toohey’s stick, and Toohey’s one-timer found the back of the net. The Team Trans bench and small crowd in attendance erupted together.

As she skated past the BPH bench, Toohey dropped to one knee and mimicked shooting a bow-and-arrow. “It was a great celebration between all three of us,” Toohey said. “Obviously I’d been playing for BPH so I had to give it to them with an arrow shot, and it was just great. It felt so good for us to get on the board and into the game.”

The first all-trans goal in history, in hockey history. That is wild. I think I’m just processing it as I’m saying it.”

It was an unforgettable moment for Browne. “The look on her face when it went in, it was like ... It was really, really, really special to see that,” he said. When asked what it meant to assist perhaps the first all-trans goal in hockey history, Browne raised his eyebrows. “The first all-trans goal in history, in hockey history. That is wild. I think I’m just processing it as I’m saying it.”

Riding the momentum of Toohey’s goal, Team Trans score another a few minutes later and tied the game, 2-2. The teams traded goals again, but BPH notched the eventual game winner with roughly two minutes left and took Game 1, 4-3. Both teams shook hands, and Team Trans turned to the 50 or so people in the stands, many of them trans people and family, and tapped their sticks on the ice, chanting, “thank you.” As they stepped off the ice, Diamond remarked, “We just made history.”

Lefebvre played well in net despite the losing effort. His family traveled from Albany, New York, to watch him, and he stayed on the ice after the final whistle to take pictures and chat about the game. At one point, a player from a team that was taking the ice next approached and told him he played an amazing game between the pipes.

“That was cool,” Lefebvre said later. “I have no idea if those guys had any idea what the game was or not. I was kind of thinking of that, I was like, ‘Does he know? And he’s coming to say that because of that? Or just appreciating good hockey?’”

That night, Team Trans and BPH met up for a long night of drinking before gathering for Game 2 the next day. The score wasn’t nearly as close, with BPH winning handily. When the final whistle sounded, Team Trans once again thanked the fans, and many of the players lingered in the small space between the rink and locker room, not wanting the experience to end.

Throughout the weekend, players discussed continuing Team Trans into the future. There’s a tentative plan to enter Team Trans into several LGBTQ hockey tournaments around North America, and encourage trans players anywhere to join — a sort of rotating roster on a barnstorming team. Each player interviewed said they couldn’t wait to skate in the blue, pink and white again.

They were supposed to get another chance soon. Team Trans had arranged for a second Friendship Series, this time traveling to Wisconsin to face off with MGHA in April, but were forced to postpone the event due to the coronavirus pandemic. But the feelings from the first Friendship Series endure.

“Hockey isn’t my everyday thing anymore, but I still love it,” Browne said. “These past two games have definitely ignited that love and camaraderie ... This was bigger than hockey for me and it was more than just a game. I was able to meet people that played my sport that were like me.”

Platt hopes that continuing Team Trans will help trans hockey players maintain their connection with the game as they work through their gender identities. She recalled what a team like this would have meant to her when she was growing up. “Maybe,” Platt said, “if something like [Team Trans] existed, I wouldn’t have quit.”

Chris Harrington

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180abroad · 5 years ago

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Days 168-174: Oberwesel and a Week on the Rhine

After a busy week in Munich, it was time for a scenic and relaxing week on the Rhine. We’d be staying in a charming little medieval town called Oberwesel, halfway between the cities of Frankfurt and Koblenz. None of the Germans we’d talked so far had ever heard of it. Which is a shame because it’s gorgeous–and also dead quiet. But we’ll get to that later.

We didn’t fit in quite as much sightseeing as we’d hoped, but we did get some rest and relaxation that we desperately needed. After nearly six months abroad and with only three weeks left, we were starting to feel the strain of constantly staying on the move.

The train ride from Munich to Oberwesel was long but easy, and toward the end we got to enjoy a lovely preview of the vineyard-laced Rhine river valley.

From the train station, we could just barely see the local castle–now a hotel and restaurant–peeking up from the top of a nearby hill.

Our host kindly offered to pick us up at the station and drive us to our Airbnb. It was only about half a mile away, and it might have been faster just to walk rather than wait, but after five and a half months on the road, we were grateful for any opportunity to not lug our packs across town.

Our Airbnb flat was wonderfully spacious and comfortable, with a large dining/living room, a full kitchen, and two full bedrooms. It was one of our best homes through the entire trip, right up there with those in Avignon and Betws-y-Coed.

After settling in, we set about finding something for dinner. It was a Sunday evening, so the grocery store and most of the restaurants were closed. Luckily, we found a delightful little garden restaurant where we enjoyed some great food and a tasty local wine–a perfect introduction to the region.

After dinner, there was still plenty of summer sunlight left, so we took a relaxing walk around the town.

The Rhine is positively peppered with old castles and walled towns, and Oberwesel has the best-preserved medieval walls of them all. Inside these walls is a charming collection of buildings that mostly date back to the 19th and early 20th centuries, but some of the houses and churches date back to the Middle Ages.

In the center of the town is a small but proudly ornamented market square, featuring the beautiful town hall, the local bank, and a statue of a giant wine glass.

Going out through the walls, Jessica and I walked along the waterfront. We spotted the ferry office where we’d need to book tickets for our Rhine cruise on a later date, and we got some more great views of the town.

—

The next day we visited Frankfurt. It was a fun if somewhat unstructured day trip to a very historic city, and we had a pretty good time. We’ll cover it all in our next post.

—

Our first full day in Oberwesel was a lazy one. We slept in, walked over to the local TI to get some information on the local wineries and wine bars, then went grocery shopping. There are two main grocery stores in Oberwesel, and they're both on the far southern outskirts of town--nearly a mile away from where we were staying. Not having a car, we would have to balance the number of trips we wanted to make with the amount of stuff we wanted to carry each time we went shopping.

After bringing our food haul home and fixing up some lunch--consisting of fresh rolls, knackwurst, and sweet mustard--we went out to wander some more around town.

Even in the middle of a weekday, Oberwesel was almost depressingly quiet. It seems like these Rhine villages only really come alive on Fridays, Saturdays, and festival days, when all the wine shops open. Otherwise, a lot of stores seem to stay closed during the week or else keep very short hours. Many storefronts were boarded up, and "For Lease" signs were visible on almost every corner outside the main market square.

Still, despite the borderline ghost-town atmosphere, it was spectacularly picturesque.

We wandered up toward the northern edge of town and eventually climbed a staircase leading up onto the walls. There was a group of wasps busy at work, but we gave them a wide berth and enjoyed some spectacular views of the town.

We took another path down from the wall and saw a little outdoor chapel, featuring icons of local patron saints.

Making our way back along the wall into town, we stumbled upon an old hotel bearing a commemoration plaque. Apparently, this hotel is the site of one of the first known performances of the German national anthem ("Deutschland, Deutschland uber Alles…").

Ironically, while this song's call to put Germany Above All was tainted by the Nazis, it was originally intended as a call for liberalization. At the time it was written in the 1800s, Germany was divided into a confederation of autocratic states that put their rulers' squabbles and ambitions above the welfare of the people. The anthem's call was meant to encourage a united Germany where the good of the people came above political infighting.

On a corner near the market square, we found another testament to the damage done by the Nazi regime--a holocaust memorial dedicated to the town's Jewish residents who were deported or arrested by the Nazi regime.

On a happier note, Jessica and I were able to make a purchase that we had long been looking forward too--a pair of Rhine wine glasses.

There seemed to be only a single tourist shop in town that was open that day, but they had a great selection of Rhine glasses and other souvenirs.

—

A cruise along the Rhine is an absolute must-do for anyone visiting the area. It proved a bit more complicated that we had anticipated, however, and we probably would have had an even better time if we had a bit more sense what we were getting into.

Ferries go up and down the river all day, but it's a long ride with a tight and complex timetable. Trying to figure out which tickets to buy was also a bit of a head-scratcher. You can get a hop-on-hop-off type ticket, but it's expensive and there aren't enough boats that you can take much advantage.

After puzzling it over between ourselves, Jessica and I eventually just decided to ask the ladies at the KD Rhine ticket counter what we should do. The first thing we should have done was to just go up and ask them in the first place, since they were able to sort us out very quickly.

Our plan was to start in Oberwesel, ride north downriver to Koblenz--a medium-sized city at the confluence of the Rhine and Mosel rivers--stop for lunch, then ride back upstream past Oberwesel to the popular tourist town of Bacharach. After exploring to our hearts' content, we would catch a quick train back home to Oberwesel.

After a couple minutes explaining this to the ticket ladies, they recommended a round-trip ticket from Bacharach to Koblenz as the most economical option.

Finally, our boat arrived and it was time to board. We were a little nervous when we first boarded. Far from the luxuriously lazy experience I was expecting, the boat was packed shoulder-to-shoulder with tourists and nowhere to sit down. There was also no wifi onboard, contrary to the cruise company’s advertisements. We had been hoping to get some work done on the return ride, but if the crowds stayed the same, that wouldn’t be an option anyway.

More concerning was the lack of any food service onboard–also contrary to the advertisements.

At one of the next stops, however, a large group disembarked, and there was room for us to sit down, for Jessica to take a Dramamine, and for both of us to just enjoy the ride. A huge chunk of the tourists who got off were Japanese. Apparently, one of the castles is privately owned by a Japanese businessman, and the nearby town of St. Goarshausen has become an object of fascination among Japanese tourists.

It's funny how different places become tourist destinations for different cultures. I'm sure Heidelburg would not have become a mecca for American tourists were it not for the American GI’s stationed there after WWII.

The Japanese castle is called Burg Katz, which means Cat Castle. Close by stands the rival Mouse Castle. And across the river from Burg Katz is the massive Rheinfels Castle in St. Goar, which Burg Katz was built to supplement. Between the two of them, the owners could command an entire stretch of the Rhine.

Because that's what all of these castles were built to do.

As we've learned so thoroughly, Germany spent the vast majority of its history as a constellation of semi-independent states that were allied more in theory than in practice. Local lords had free reign to raise money and fight for their own interests in pretty much any way they saw fit.

The Rhine was one of the busiest trade routes of them all, and everyone wanted a taste. Castles were erected every few miles, and sometimes much closer. Not for war or defense, but for toll collecting. Any trader wishing to raft their goods downstream would need cash for dozens of tolls along the way.

Most of those castles fell into ruin or were destroyed during various border wars with France, but a good handful have survived or been rebuilt by wealthy enthusiasts.

Nature provided its own set of obstacles as well. As idyllic as the sleepy valley seems to us, parts of it were a menace to sailors. Just downriver of Oberwesel lies a cluster of deadly reefs known as the Seven Sisters, followed by a narrow hairpin turn in the shadow of a massive, echoing cliffside known as the Loreley (a sort of Germanic equivalent to the mythological Green sirens). Simply making it the few miles from Oberwesel to St. Goar could be a day-long endeavor and would certainly merit an evening's celebration.

High-contrast signs and kilometer markers posted along the banks of the river make it easy to follow along in a guidebook.

Above St. Goar looms the aforementioned Rheinfels Castle. Now a hollow ruin, it was once one of the mightiest castles in the entire Holy Roman Empire--a bastion of vigilance against the threat of French invasion.

Further downriver stand the twin castles of Sterrenberg and Liebenstein, joined together by a long defensive wall.

Even further downriver are the charming town of Boppard--where we had originally considered staying--and the brilliantly whitewashed Marksburg Castle--possibly the best-looking of all the Rhine castles.

Marksburg was never destroyed, and it has been restored to look more or less like it would have back in the days of the Holy Roman Empire.

Learned from Rick Steves that there are two German words for "castle," each with its own meaning. A burg is a functional castle like pretty much all of the castles on the Rhine once were, whereas a schloss is luxurious castle used primarily as a prestigious residence, like Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau back in Bavaria.

The last stretch of the Rhine is mostly filled with long lonely vineyards and a constant stream of commercial barges going past in both directions. Even in the age of trains, planes, and ultramax cargo ships, the humble river barge remains a mainstay of European trade.

Finally, we arrived in Koblenz. It seems like a nice city, but we were hungry and in a hurry. Since there hadn't been any food on board, getting something to eat was top priority. Moreover, our boat was behind schedule, so we had just 30 minutes to get off the boat, find something to eat, eat it, and get back on the boat with enough time left to get a good seat.

The closest fast food or grocery store we could find on our phones was over 10 minutes’ walk each way, so we ended up just grabbing a bratwurst from a nearby stand, scarfing it down, and getting back onto the boat. Luckily for me, we had brought some meal bars just in case.

We decided to enjoy the upstream journey below-decks, where we could enjoy some comfortable seats, cold beers, and a table to set up our laptops and get a bit of planning done.

About halfway back, though, it started to rain–driving everyone above-deck down below. Then we picked up a huge crowd of people from one of the towns. Our quiet, comfy booth soon became a crowded, stuffy, and painfully noisy confinement. I must admit that the pressure of all the planning, moving, and sightseeing we'd been doing hit me especially hard that day, and that hour in particular was not my happiest. At least the beer helped once I finally broke down and ordered one, too.

The rain had mostly died down by the time we were nearing Oberwesel, so I went back above-decks to get some views and fresh air.

But remember, we weren't done yet. We'd be heading a few stops further upriver.

Just upriver from Oberwesel lies the painfully postcard-perfect town of Kaub. On the hillside nearby stands Gutenfels Castle, while its sister Pfalz Castle sits right in the river--the ideal spot for collecting tolls.

Finally, with the lowering sun piercing the clouds like a spotlight, we arrived at our final stop--Bacharach, a winemaking town named after the god of wine Bacchus himself.

Bacharach is Rick Steves’ top recommended place for staying on the Rhine, and after visiting it we can see why. It’s not as big as Oberwesel or dramatic as St. Goar, but its sweeping hillsides, cobbled streets, and half-timbered houses are a photographer’s delight. Seriously, if we had an extra day I’d be tempted to come back and spend it all just taking pictures.

Finally, we caught the train back to Oberwesel, arriving home tired and hungry but satisfied with the day’s adventure.

—

We spent the next day taking a trip to Cochem, a small town on the Mosel river known for its charming medieval architecture and abundance of wine shops. There was no question that Jessica and I had to go for ourselves. Things didn't all go quite as expected, that just meant that we got to learn a lot we didn't know about German wine tasting culture. It was a fun day, and we'll cover it in it's own post, too.

—

We had originally planned to spend the next day visiting St. Goar and Rheinfels Castle, but instead we decided to stay home and relax.

Well, we stayed home, but we didn’t do very much relaxing.

We decided to do some planning for our upcoming stay in Amsterdam, the penultimate destination of our trip. We hashed out our itinerary easily enough, but when it came to planning our transit strategy, things got very frustrating very quickly.

Public transit in Amsterdam is very easy and reasonably affordable, as long as you’re staying inside the city limits. We weren't staying that far outside the city center, but apparently it was enough to put us into a different municipality. Most major cities have transit cards or passes that you can buy and use to get cheap access to local transit and commuter trains. In Amsterdam, however, you can only get one of these cards if you're a resident. Rather than being able to use a discount transit pass like we had in many other European cities, we'd need to buy two sets of full-price tickets for every day we went into the city--one for the commuter train and one for the city transit system.

Lesson learned: If you're going to try and save money by being clever, make sure that you are actually being as clever as you think you are.

In the end, we at least managed to find a smartphone app by the Dutch rail system that would let us buy our tickets digitally--something that would prove far more important than we could have anticipated.

Anyway, all of that proved to be a headache that consumed much of our day.

Things got better that evening, when we went to a wine tasting and cellar tour at a local winery called Lanius-Knabb. We'd heard about the place when we were first researching Oberwesel, and when we visited the TI a few days earlier, they offered to call the place up and let them know we were coming.

We showed up right on time, but the owner didn't seem to have been expecting us. He let us in, however, and we joined a German couple who were already a couple glasses into the tasting. Perhaps the information in the TI brochure was out of date, or maybe Rhine time is just a bit like island time that way.

In any case, we had a great time. The German couple didn't speak much English, but their English was still far better than our German. They seemed very nice, and we learned they were from the town of Nürburg (not to be confused with Nuremberg, which is on the opposite side of the country).

Our first two wines were Pinot Noirs--one red and one white. They were interesting, but not particularly enjoyable (at least to me). The red tasted tight and sour, while the white seemed flat and a little boring. Jessica liked the white better, since it was a bit like an unoaked Chardonnay.

Next came the dry Rieslings, which were spectacular.

Their standard estate wine was light and fruity, with light and refreshing fruity flavors that sparkle and dance on the tongue.

The second Riesling--which they called their "Premier Cru"--was even better. It didn’t dance, but it had a more powerful and cohesive flavor profile.

The third Riesling–which they called their "Grand Cru"–blew everything else away. It was rich, fruity, tart, powerful, and refreshing all at once. And the owner of the winery (who was the one giving the tasting) said that it was still too young to really appreciate. Basic Rieslings should be drunk within a year or two, but he said that this one could be cellared for around ten years before it hits its prime.

This third Riesling was made exclusively with grapes from their Oelsberg vineyard--a distinctive sideways "Y" on the slopes just north of town. We'd seen it plenty of times by then and recognized its picture instantly.

We then moved on to the sweeter Rieslings, with one half-dry, one sweet, and one late harvest (very sweet). I liked them all, but the last two were too sweet for Jessica's taste. She did still appreciate them, though, comparing them favorably to some California dessert wines that failed to reach the same level of balance and delicacy as these Rieslings.

While we were enjoying our tasting, a bit of travel stress managed to force its way back in. Halfway through, our phones buzzed to inform us that our Airbnb host for Iceland had just cancelled our reservation.

Great.

But we couldn’t do anything about it then, so we resolved not to worry about it. It also gave us an excuse to stay in town the following day as well so that we could sort everything out.

After the tasting was finished, we bought two bottles of the Oelsberg Riesling, saddened to learn that the winery doesn't ship to the US. As we'd come to expect, our German friends bought far more wine. Then, unexpectedly, they left. Which left us to enjoy a 1-on-2 tour of the cellar with the owner.

Now, you might have already noticed something a bit strange. Every other time we've done a wine tasting with a cellar tour--at home or in Europe--the cellar tour always came before the tasting. And that seems like a very sensible idea, considering all the stairs, dark corridors, and industrial equipment that one has to traverse along the way.

We made it through just fine, however, and we had a good time listing to the owner. He told us about his passion for winemaking and the story of how he grew the estate from one small vineyard to a relatively large operation over the past twenty-something years.

Jessica particularly appreciated how the cellar reminded us of the ones we saw in Burgundy, filled with natural dust and molds. In the States, everything is sterile. Which isn’t to say that cleanliness is a bad thing, but sterility also means lifeless. And when it comes to things like wine or beer or even milk, cheese, and bread, food is alive. Sterile food is dead food. And it just doesn’t taste as good.

Thoroughly pleased and beginning to sober, we made our way home and enjoyed a nice, simple dinner–with a bottle of wine, of course.

Such a good wine…

—

On our last day in Oberwesel--time flies!--we slept in, made a nice big breakfast, and sorted out the Iceland situation. We were able to find a very nice place that was only a bit more expensive than our original place, and we booked it.

We later learned that our original host had to cancel all of her bookings because of an emergency situation that had rendered their home uninhabitable. We made sure to tell them not to worry about us and that we hoped their situation improved soon.

While we hadn't done nearly as much sightseeing as I had originally hoped, I at least wanted see more of Oberwesel itself. Luckily, our Rick Steves guidebook had a great walk mapped out for us, starting at the market square.

Like many towns along the Rhine, Oberwesel started as a Celtic settlement in pre-Roman times. After the Romans displaced the Celts from the European mainland, it became a Roman military base, and then a rest stop for Medieval loggers and traders moving their products downriver.

Today, the Rhine is as economically important as ever, but the diesel-powered barges no longer need to stop for a rest every few miles. The towns of the region are struggling to maintain their relevance and identity through winegrowing and tourism, but it's an uphill battle. The streets are all but abandoned on most days, and many of the vineyards lining the river valley have been left untended in the hope that future generations will have the will and resources to reclaim them.

In a way, it reminds me of all the small, struggling towns you might pass through on the old US Route 66, or any other bypassed backroads.

The main attraction of Oberwesel in particular is its exceptionally well-maintained medieval wall and its many surviving watchtowers--each of which has its own distinctive character.

The Hospital Tower--named for its proximity to the town's medieval hospital--was built too heavy for its foundations and started to lean over like the Tower of Pisa. Rather than start over, the builders simply lopped off the top at an angle to make the roof level.

A little further down is the chapel of the medieval hospital, which is built directly into the walls--perhaps so that the guardsmen of the town could pop in for a quick prayer while on their rounds.

Next is the Stein Tower, named for the town's first paved road. It has a similar canter to the Hospital Tower, but this one is climbable. Steep wooden stairs carried us up to the top, where we enjoyed an absolutely spectacular view.

Apparently, this very spot was enjoyed by some of the most famous Romantic writers and painters of the 19th century, including Victor Hugo.

Further downriver stand the beautiful and now-inaccessible Cat and Ox towers, which marked the northwestern corner of the town.

Having reached the end of this stretch of wall, we climbed down from the wall and climbed up to St. Martin's, the big white church overlooking the northern end of town.

Much like Frankfurt Cathedral (which we'd already seen but will cover in the next post), St. Martin's was built from cheap local stone, then plastered over and given a clever paint job to look like it was made with more exotic foreign stones. It's ironic and a bit telling of the human condition that wealthy people in slate-rich places showed off by building in limestone, while wealthy people in limestone-rich places showed off by building in slate.

The church's bell tower actually predates the rest of the church. It was originally a watchtower along the town wall, and the locals decided to convert it into a belltower and build the rest of the church out from it.

Around the back of the church is a peaceful community garden and a secluded cemetery with a chapel dedicated to the local men and boys who died during WWII.

That left the western town walls. We couldn't walk on top of them, but there is a little hiking path that runs just outside of them. Apparently, the town allows people to lease the old watchtowers and turn them into houses–as long as the buyers agree to restore and maintain the tower with their own money. One of these converted residential towers even has its own drawbridge.

According to Rick Steves, there is a local legend about its owner's then-teenage son. When his parents were away, he threw a big party. Locals complained about the noise, and the cops showed up. Unintimidated, the kids simply raised the drawbridge and kept on partying.

From there, it was a short walk to the end of the western walls, with some great views of the southern part of the town and the castle overlooking it all.

Back inside the old town, we peeked into a lovely little park where they shine lights up on the walls at night. There was a wedding reception going on, however, so we didn’t linger.

The last stop on the Rick Steves tour was the old Franciscan abbey. It was dissolved by Napoleon in the early 1800s and burned down shortly afterwards. But a couple generations later, when the local economy was suffering, desperate locals started moving into the ruins and setting up makeshift homes inside them. Local authorities have done some restoration work to expose the old abbey ruins, but the houses still stand and remain occupied to this day.

Satisfied with our day's walk, we made one last trip to the grocery store and headed home for relaxing afternoon before packing up. We didn’t get to do everything we had planned on doing in the Rhineland, but we had a great time with what we did. The Rhine isn't necessarily at the top of my list of places to visit again--unless as part of a wine tour--but I would still happily visit it again. It definitely feels like the sort of place where it's important to visit on the right days and with the right expectations.

Tomorrow, we would be heading to the Belgian coastal city of Bruges.

#180abroad #oberwesel #rhineland #germany #travel #castles #river cruise #koblenz #bacharach #cochem #wine #riesling #even travelers need days off

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newsfundastuff · 5 years ago

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This excerpt is from episode 182 of The Editors.Rich: All right, so, Jim Geraghty, we got history. We had a historic vote last night on the floor of the House. Two articles of impeachment charging President Trump with abuse of power and obstruction passed handily, with just a couple Democrats flaking off, two on abuse of power, three on obstruction, and Tulsi Gabbard taking the statesmanlike posture of voting present. What do you make of it?Jim: I’m sorry, I’ve got to stretch there and just get a—Rich: That’s a really good theatrical yawn. Did you work on that or—Jim: Yeah, a little bit extra.Rich: . . . did you just come up with that?Jim: A little. Yeah, well, I’m saving up my energy for the utterly exciting Democratic presidential debate tonight, because that’s well-scheduled. Yeah, six days before Christmas, opening night of Star Wars, good timing, DNC. Good job.Look, this was long predicted. The only part of this process that was the least bit surprising was I guess most people didn’t see Jeff Van Drew changing parties. As of this taping, that appears to be all systems go. And most of the purple and red district Democrats falling in line. I wonder if these two are related, that once Van Drew switched parties, that maybe Pelosi started arm-twisting on this.Rich: No, I think they’re related a different way. I think what happened to Van Drew, he voted against the inquiry, and he has a catastrophic drop of support in the party. He has like 20 percent approval, so he’s not getting nominated. He’s not winning that seat again as a Democrat. I am open to the idea a lot of these Democrats are genuinely outraged by Trump’s conduct, but I think they also saw that there’s no way out of this for them except for through. So if you voted against these articles, unless you’re in a real special very Trumpy district, like Collin Peterson is from Minnesota, that you just have to vote for it and grin and bear it and hope you can win over any swing voters and Republican voters you need in November down the line.Jim: Yeah, and I think also this may reveal that there probably weren’t that many Democrats in districts where this vote was going to make or break. The Joe Cunninghams of the world in South Carolina’s First District, that’s got where my parents live down in Hilton Head and all that quick-growing southern corner of the state, he’s probably toast anyway, so might as well vote his conscience. Why defy the party? All that kind of stuff.That was somewhat surprising and interesting, but I think the biggest number you heard tossed around for Democrats voting no was six to ten. Nobody expected this to really be that much of a close vote. Either due to whipping or the sense that most people said, “Well, no, might as well. In for a penny, in for a pound. Might as well vote for impeach and hope that our voters agree with us,” that was somewhat interesting. I’m sure we’ll talk a bit about the weird situation that Nancy Pelosi and the advocates for impeachment find themselves in now.Today’s Morning Jolt, I wrote a bunch about, was there a moment where you could’ve gotten a fairly bipartisan majority for a resolution of censure or some other sense of saying, “Mr. President, you shouldn’t have done this. You can’t do this. You don’t have this kind of authority. If you think there’s some sort of corruption going on with Joe Biden or something, we have a Department of Justice. This has to be done through official channels”? I went through and I found nine House Republicans who’d made various comments kind of in that vein, and maybe you could’ve gotten them onboard.Whatever Democrats and impeachment advocates think should be the case, you were just never going to get any House Republicans voting for this. Maybe you had a shot at one or two, like Rooney down in Florida, but really, it was always going to be a party-line vote. I don’t think Trump, to the extent Trump is capable of feeling shame, which is measured on the molecular scale, he’d probably be more annoyed by a bipartisan resolution of censure, I think, than by this then.He’s going to walk around with this as a badge of pride. He’s going to say, “This was a partisan vendetta. This was a witch hunt,” yadda yadda yadda. Whereas if you’d gotten a decent number of House Republicans to vote on something that didn’t call for impeachment, just said the president shouldn’t have done this, maybe it would’ve been a little more consequential. This was ultimately about making the base of the Democratic party happy, and I hope Democrats are happy now. You got what you want. I hope you walked around with a sad, somber spring in your step, as Nancy Pelosi said this morning.Rich: On censure, I thought that would be a better way for them to go. It would’ve become just as partisan as impeachment largely. Maybe, Jim, your nine, probably fewer than that. Maybe you get like five House Republicans. Better than zero and losing a couple cats and dogs on your own side. But I do think you’d get a real shot, and not a real shot, likelier than not to get over 50 votes for a censure in the Senate. That’d be a more bipartisan rebuke. It doesn’t live in history in quite the same way.Michael, obviously, address anything you’ve heard from Jim, but what do you make of the case substantively that the Democrats ended up landing on, which is, by and large, he’s a threat to the election, which has the backdrop that he somehow welcomed foreign interference into the last election, which they, incredibly enough, base on, when they talk about it in more detail, on Trump saying at that press conference, “If you can hack Hillary’s emails, find her old emails. Russians, if you’re listening, do it.” So they say he just can’t be trusted to run this next election because he welcomed Ukrainian interference this time around, and also that he endangered national security through this scheme.Michael: I don’t think a lot of the case. I do take the point that if you believe as I do . . . I believe the case can be made that the president abused his power, that there’s good-enough evidence at least to look into whether he asked for a sham investigation or just an announcement of an investigation for political benefit. I do take Luke’s constantly repeated point, though, that the United States has an interest in knowing what Joe and Hunter Biden were up to.On the obstruction, I think that’s just a joke at this point. Nancy Pelosi basically couldn’t even finish the sentence of asking for transcripts before the White House just released them, and there was nothing in the additional testimony that indicated that there was anything beyond the transcript that was really incriminating or that really added to the case. If anything, they should be passing a motion congratulating him for helping the case of impeachment, not obstructing it.It’s an odd thing. It’s funny, I was reading Alexander Hamilton on impeachment again, refreshing my memory once more, and he talks about it in these terms of that you have to construct it in this way because the Senate trial . . . What other body of men would have the confidence to sit between the president and the representatives of the people as his accuser? What’s interesting about it is it shows you in reality . . . And he worries that partisan passions would corrupt this. Well, that was very prescient, because partisan allegiance has totally eclipsed the sense of these three separate branches of government operating independently of one another. Legally, they operate independently, but practically speaking, the two parties are the motor running underneath our politics.I think in our lifetimes, impeachment has almost been destroyed as a constitutional provision because it’s been launched twice in the absence of a two-thirds majority sentiment for impeaching and removing the president, and so this thing has become defanged almost totally and looks partisan. Now it’s like our expectation is that you only launch impeachment because the base of one faction demands it, and that’s probably a tragedy for the American people.Also, it’s probably just bad politics long term for Democrats in the sense of he’s going to survive this. They knew he was going to survive this. Maybe they hoped they would put some Senate seats in play through this process. I don’t know if that’s . . . I don’t know if impeachment adds to the Trump effect on certain senatorial candidates that might be weak on the Republican side. But now they would have a very difficult time if Trump does something else, something that excites more outrage among a larger share of the public. This bomb has already gone off and already failed to remove him. It will fail to remove him from office.I don’t know. I thought it was just a very odd event. I thought the drama of it was kind of funny, with the Democrats wearing black and Nancy Pelosi trying to shush her—Rich: That was a very good shush move. Clearly, a grandmother with a lot of experience in shushing.Michael: Listen, Nancy Pelosi is fierce. The daughter of a Baltimore mayor is going to have some just natural authority. But it did give what Jim said, the somber spring in their step. It was bizarre. That’s all I can say about it. This was bizarre. This whole thing has been bizarre from beginning to end.Rich: Charlie, where are you on the substance? Because you’ve been excoriating about Trump’s conduct, but haven’t really . . . I don’t want to put words in your mouth . . . had a strong view one way or the other on impeachment or removal. It seems to me there are a couple different ways to look at it just within our own house.Andy McCarthy and myself tend to make the consequentialist argument, “Well, nothing came of this. They delayed the funding for two months. They get the funding. There’s no announcement of investigations.” I would even argue that even if they announced an investigation of Burisma, it would have zero effect on our election or, really, interfere in our election.But Ramesh, who favors impeachment, says, “Well, it doesn’t really matter what the consequence was, that the core impropriety here of being willing to leverage public resources for what was clearly something that had a political motive at bottom related to the election and mixing his official duties with that motive in this way is just intolerable. It didn’t matter whether it was stopped or not. It doesn’t matter whether it was a little thing or a big thing. It’s just that motive itself is disqualifying.”Charlie: I don’t buy the consequentialist case at all. Imagine if we had learned that President Obama had instructed Lois Lerner to go after Tea Party groups. Would we have said, “Well, she didn’t do it,” or, “Well, it was caught before tax season was over,” or, “In the grand scheme of things, it didn’t affect much.” No, of course not.Trump did this. The fact that it didn’t come to much is neither here nor there for me.That doesn’t mean, though, that I’m thrilled about what happened yesterday. In fact, when it happened, I felt irritated. I instantly thought just how close to the Clinton impeachment this has been. In both cases, the president did what he’d been accused of, and in both cases he was let off -- Trump’s case will be let off -- by his party.In both cases, critics of impeachment pretended that the president was being impeached for something innocuous. In neither case was that true.The language is similar. Representative Loudermilk -- there’s a name! -- compared the House of Representatives to Pontius Pilate yesterday, and the president, implicitly, to Jesus. Well, so did Steny Hoyer in 1998.Both impeachments settled on behavior that was, arguably, impeachable, but in both cases that was not really why the impeachment drive had begun. You go back to Clinton’s: Clinton’s impeachment came after years of Republicans saying that the guy was a philanderer, maybe a rapist, that he was dishonest, he was corrupt. It came after Whitewater and the cattle futures scandal and the travel agency scandal. By the point that the Republican House impeached Bill Clinton, it just knew that he was worse than the articles of impeachment themselves suggested.I think the same is true of Trump. Democrats have said for a long time now that he’s a philanderer, maybe a rapist, that he’s dishonest, that he’s corrupt. The impeachment has come after Mueller and the emoluments cases and watching Trump berate the media and tweet like an idiot. So by the point that they impeached him yesterday, they just knew that he was worse than the articles of impeachment suggested.I think I would’ve voted for neither. In fact, I think I would’ve opposed all three of the impeachments that we’ve seen in American history. I’ve said this before, but it is odd, given some of the terrible things presidents have done, including in my lifetime, that all three of the impeachments that we’ve seen seem so small, so partisan, so contingent upon the surrounding politics, rather than a break from it. And all three seemed so unlikely to prevail. It seems to me that, throughout their history, Americans have not breathed a great deal of seriousness into the Impeachment Clause of the Constitution, and this latest impeachment is no exception.I am -- what was the word you used? -- excoriating when it comes to Trump, including on this, and when it comes to the Republicans and the way that they have fallen in line with him and pretended his call was “perfect” and there’s nothing to see here. But I feel sad in general because I don’t think that anyone has taken this seriously from the beginning, including yesterday. Donald Trump certainly didn’t. The Republicans haven’t -- and aren’t -- and nor are the Democrats. Nancy Pelosi is not sad. She’s not somber. She doesn’t think this is grave. She’s not praying for the president. She’s not protecting or saving the Constitution. And the people who ultimately pushed Nancy Pelosi into this, because she didn’t want to do it, do not give two hoots about the Constitution. In fact, they generally loathe the Constitution, and they’re happy to say so.I find it odd that impeachment has come in America’s history when it has, on the topics that it has. It was said earlier that maybe a censure would have been a better option. Perhaps. But that’s what this is. That’s what this was for Clinton, and it’s what this is for Trump. When you know full well that the Senate is not going to convict and you push an impeachment through the House anyhow, you are effectively censuring the president. You’re using a different mechanism to do it, but you are effectively censuring the president. I think that that is a tactical mistake, even if you believe that the underlying high crimes and misdemeanors would warrant such a measure in a vacuum.Rich: On Pelosi, I actually may be naïve. I don’t doubt that she prays for Trump. I think the appropriate reaction when anyone says they’re praying for you, the appropriate reaction is “Thank you.” It’s not like, “No, there’s no way you’re doing that. Stop lying.” MBD, pick up on anything you heard from Charlie. I just think the norm . . . There’s a tendency to think, to Charlie’s point, the Nixon impeachment, that’s the model; that’s the norm. But now we have a different norm, where it’s inflamed partisan majorities in the House that do this with, at least, the recent example is no chance of convicting. They came within one vote of convicting Johnson.Michael: I really relate to Charlie’s feeling of almost being alienated from the process, because on the one hand what the president did was worth condemning, and on one level if you’re saying, “What are your standards, MBD, for impeachment?” this qualifies. But thank God we don’t go by my standards for public office. Duncan Hunter Jr. would’ve been horsewhipped in public. Several Congress members that were parading around yesterday would be tarred and feathered. It’s a great mercy to me and to all of my colleagues that my standards do not prevail in our country—Rich: What would you do to your colleagues?Michael: . . . in many ways.Rich: What punishments would they have? What chastisement would they suffer?Michael: But I agree with Charlie that—Rich: Maybe we could get some serious enforcement of deadlines here for once, Michael, if we put you in charge.Michael: I know. But I agree with . . . Except my own. But I agree with Charlie. Iran-Contra was a more serious offense than this. The Lincoln bedroom scandal was a more serious offense than this. The—Charlie: Invasion of Libya.Michael: The bombing of Sudan ahead of impeachment was a more serious offense than this. The invasion of Libya. Undeclared drone warfare in several countries. Attempts at regime change in Syria without congressional approval, actually even against congressional approval. Johnson siccing the intel community on Goldwater. There was so many offenses presidents of both parties have conducted in my lifetime that seem so much more serious than this idiotic phone call, which was wrong, that I find it hard. My sense is that the motive for impeachment isn’t actually the offense. The offense was just the usable excuse for impeachment.Rich: I think Charlie is right, though. In both cases, it had built up and went to a deeper issue than what the impeachment itself was about.Michael: Right, but fundamentally I think this is . . . In both the Clinton and the Trump impeachment, you have an opposition party in Congress that is shell-shocked by the political defeats the president has been inflicting on their party, and a party that is angry that the country doesn’t see the president as the fraud they see the president as. I think the Charlie’s comparison is very apt.Charlie: But also that believed that it was destined to rule now. If you look at the Republican party, it was shocked in 1992 that Bill Clinton, this draft-dodging, weed-smoking womanizer, had beaten George H. W. Bush after the corner—Michael: A war hero.Charlie: . . . that the Reagan Revolution had supposedly turned, and it was especially shocked when he won reelection fairly easily, and began to wonder, “Well, are we now going in a different direction?” I think the same thing happened with Trump. Although, it was far more appalling to progressives that Trump won, not only because he represents everything they hate -- and he is hateable in some ways -- but also because they are more prone than others to believe in the coming of the Age of Aquarius and the bending of the arc of history and so on. To replace Barack Obama with Donald Trump was a shock to the system.Rich: Jim, let’s dive a little bit. You touched on this earlier. The current Pelosi gambit, I cannot believe that this gambit will last much past the weekend, because it seems so pointlessly self-destructive. But the idea, and this is not a great credit to this idea, that apparently it originated with Laurence Tribe, of holding the articles, I think Tribe just wanted to hold them indefinitely so he wouldn’t get acquitted, but the idea is to hold them, and this is going to make Mitch McConnell so upset, he’s going to be so desperate to have the articles thrown over in his lap, that he’s going to say, “Okay, let’s have a trial the way Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer want it.”The problem here is Mitch McConnell isn’t going to feel that way, obviously. It contradicts the claim over the last month that Democrats can’t go get witnesses, more witnesses, firsthand witnesses, because it would take time, and this is an urgent priority. The nation is at risk every day that the president isn’t impeached and removed. Then, finally, it’s just obviously like a game. It makes it seem even more partisan and political than it has to this point.Jim: Yeah. The general gist is Trump is an authoritarian—Rich: Sorry, Jim. Go ahead. I’ll silence my phone.Jim: Okay.Michael: You should break out the blues version of this.Jim: Things are so bad for impeachment. In short, the message from the Democrats is Trump is an authoritarian, he has no regard for the Constitution, he is a threat, we cannot wait until the next election, he must be removed as quickly as possible, and it could wait until after the holidays. No contradiction there. By the way, the only way this could go any better . . . I know McConnell has already given his initial statement in scoffing about this, but if he had just gone out there and said, “Please don’t throw me in that briar patch. Oh, no, it would be terrible if my caucus couldn’t vote on Trump’s impeachment. We’d be broken up.”You could see Wednesday the thinking of Democrats, both in office and the activist left on Twitter, having this recognition. For a long time, they’d been trying to answer the question, “How can we impeach Trump?” and all of a sudden, around the middle of the week, it became the question of “Wait, how can we stop the Senate from acquitting Trump?” which is a very different question. This idea of “Well, the Constitution says the Senate holds the trial, but it doesn’t say when it has to hold the trial,” it’s an entire miscalculation of the orders and priorities and interests of Senate Republicans.Is it conceivable that four Senate Republicans would say, Mitt Romney at some point is going to say, “By golly, Nancy Pelosi is right. These rules are unfair. We do need to call a lot more witnesses and we do need to take a lot more time on this, so I will take a stance with the 47 Democrats to insist that Mitch McConnell take a fairer set of rules”?We’re all certain, by the way, that Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and Cory Booker and Amy Klobuchar and Michael Bennet all want as long a trial as possible, right? Everybody is on board for this whole thing where they’d hear from every witness, and this would drag on through January into February, and they wouldn’t be able to campaign in Iowa and New Hampshire. Everybody is on board? Okay, just wanted to make sure on that.It’s really bizarre. I now find myself thinking that this is the ridiculous cherry on top on what has been a largely bad-faith process since the beginning, that, in a way, for the House to impeach Trump and then to never send it to the Senate in order to have a trial . . . By the way, Democrats may well look at this and say, “Hey, you know what, that may violate the Constitution,” but as Charlie pointed out, they never really worried about that very much before.Trump getting acquitted would be worse for the country than us never sending it over to the Senate. We can all do math, right? You’re going to get most of the 47 Democrats voting for this, maybe not Joe Manchin. I think Doug Jones probably says in for a penny, in for a pound. Maybe you lose one or two other Democrats. Then you’d end up with maybe Romney would vote for it, maybe Murkowski, maybe one or two others. You’re not going to get the twelve that publications like The Bulwark were throwing around there. So you end up with a situation where it’s a vote that’s 49-51 or something, and you know Trump is going to go out onto the White House lawn and twerk in victory and see it as a complete exoneration because they couldn’t get the two-thirds of votes. If you really see Trump as this-Rich: Now I oppose his impeachment even more than I did at the start of the podcast.Jim: That’s why at the beginning I was saying, “Okay, would a bipartisan resolution of censure have done more, have actually sent the clearer signal to the president you shouldn’t do this?” I don’t know. But we all know where this is going, and we could see where this was going from the beginning. And it’s midday on Wednesday, Democrats suddenly realize, “Hey, wait a minute, we’re not going to get close to 67 votes. What are we going to do here?”Keeping the impeachment in limbo, taking the two articles of impeachment and freezing them in carbonite until they can work out the rules for weeks or months, it sounds like a great idea to me. I love this idea, just for the sheer ridiculousness of it.Michael: This is why partisan impeachment is such a disaster, because in a sense the way impeachment is set up is supposed to be the House, the elected representatives of the people, accuse the president, an impartial Senate tries the president. Without Republicans taking this seriously, the guilt that Democrats want to heap upon Trump for being okay with election interference, etc., inevitably spreads to all the Republican Party in their minds. The Senate become collaborators, and Mitch McConnell becomes Moscow Mitch again, and Vice President Pence because he’s not resigning in protest. Well, even if you impeach Trump, he is also in some way connected to this guilt. In a sense, it reveals itself as just a tool of partisanship and not some kind of solemn, sad duty that the Constitution imposes on Nancy Pelosi and her peers. It doesn’t work this way.Rich: Charlie, last question on impeachment. Do you care one way or the other whether the Senate trial has witnesses?Charlie: Well, I think it’s up to the Senate.I’m not sure that Jim presented the best argument from the Democratic side. The argument, as I see it, is that the Democrats believe, or at least their position is, that what Donald Trump demonstrated with his Ukraine phone call is that he’s prepared to cheat in the next election, and that, as a result, he needs to be removed before the next election. So it doesn’t matter if you wait until after Christmas because the key is getting him out before he can run again and, in their eyes, cheat again. From their perspective, it’s worth waiting because the Senate is not going to be fair, is not going to consider this seriously, and is therefore going to exonerate Trump, which will mean he will run in the next election.Now, I think this is a bad argument, not least because the House could have done everything that it wants the Senate to do. It could’ve brought in any other witness that it wanted to bring in. That it did not is not the leadership of the Senate’s problem, and the leadership in the Senate is in no way obliged to make up for the House’s mistakes or oversights.It’s also an extraordinarily silly idea because there is no leverage here. The Senate does not want to be sent these articles. The Republican Party doesn’t want to deal with it. It doesn’t want to vote on it. Susan Collins doesn’t want to vote on it. Cory Gardner doesn’t want to vote on it. McConnell doesn’t want to have those meetings, and he doesn’t want to be accused of being Moscow Mitch or a collaborator or any of the other things that Michael says.It’s a very silly plan that is built upon a misreading of what this would do. I don’t think that McConnell and Trump would sit there and say, “I can’t believe I’ve been left in limbo.” I think that McConnell would breathe a sigh of relief that he doesn’t have to deal with it, and Trump would run around the country saying, “They’re so weak, their case was so flimsy, it was such a stunt that they didn’t even transmit the articles to the Senate. These people wasted time, they wasted money, they sullied my good name, and they weren’t prepared to follow through.” We have all seen a Donald Trump rally. We’ve all seen how Donald Trump tweets.Taking advice from Laurence Tribe at this stage is perhaps not a good idea. In fact, this is such a bad idea that I wonder at one level whether it’s a pretext for essentially rendering the impeachment a censure vote and drawing a line under it.Rich: I think she’s transmitting them—Charlie: No, she will do it. I’m just saying that this argument, which has caught on in some quarters, makes no sense whatsoever, and so you have to assume Nancy Pelosi, who is not stupid and is not politically ignorant, will know that.But the specific question you asked: I don’t think the House should have any say over what the Senate does. The House had its turn. It could’ve lasted a year, this investigation, if it had wanted it to. It didn’t. Now it’s on to the next chamber.Rich: MBD, exit question to you, a special, historic, double-barreled exit question. The number of Republican senators voting to convict in the Senate will be what; and yes or no, will there be witnesses during a Senate trial?Michael: There will be witnesses, and zero Republicans will vote to convict.Rich: Jim Geraghty?Jim: Two. Minimal witnesses, if any. Basically, it’s going to be the McConnell plan of rules. Maybe he’ll throw them a bone here and there just to get this thing going, and it will be done by the end of January.Rich: But you say there are going to be two Republican votes to convict?Jim: Yeah, Romney and Murkowski probably.Rich: Wow. Charlie Cooke?Charlie: I don’t think there will be any votes to convict on the Republican side, and I think there will be a few Democratic defections, and no witnesses.Rich: That’s the correct answer. It’ll be zero and zero, no Republican votes to convict. Dan McLaughlin pointed out the other day there actually . . . Obviously, a really small sample size, but in the two prior Senate trials, no member of the president’s party has ever voted to convict. That was only nine, I believe, Democratic senators during the Johnson impeachment, but no Democratic senators during the Clinton impeachment. I think that will hold up here. I think if you’re just doing pure politics, it is a debacle for you if you’re Susan Collins or . . . Mitt Romney is different. He has a degree of independence. But you’re just going to lose your own party. Susan Collins, her career would be over if she votes to convict, in my estimation.Then on witnesses, I think that’s a closer call. If they’re going to flake on something, Romney, Murkowski, Collins, it would clearly be witnesses, in my view, not the ultimate question. But I think McConnell, he knows what he’s doing. He is going to . . . We’ll know more soon, but he’s trying to get a similar process to the Clinton impeachment, where you do the real basic ground rules first and you hear the basic case first and then you vote on witnesses. His calculation is just, after two weeks of this, and it would take about two weeks, there’s just going to be zero appetite for continuing.I think the default rule, as I understand it, someone was mentioning it to me, they go Monday through Saturday, which is unheard of for the Senate to not be able to run home on Thursday. You’ve got to sit there and you can’t say anything, and you’re going to hear these things over and over again we’ve already gotten sick of because we’ve heard it repeatedly over the last two months, and then you ask questions on a note card. By the time you’re in the second week of this, going up against a holiday weekend coming up early the next week after that, and I know that shouldn’t matter in the fifth great historic Senate trial, but it will, that probably Republicans will just be ready to vote and to end it. But as I said, we’ll know more soon.

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