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lightofthemoonglow · 5 years ago

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Hey there, I was hoping you could write something Herbert West x reader related that would involve Herbert crushing on another med student who is just as snarky as him. I think it would be interesting to see something were the reader and Herbert are at a similar IQ. Thank you btw 💕 (This is my first time making a request so I have no clue if I’m doing this right.)

Well, I’ve only been taking requests for a day, but you seem to be doing just fine in my book! Hope you enjoy! Also, I do not know much about how med school operates, so things in regards to that are vague.

“Will you two be canoodling in here all night?” Herbert gave Dan and Megan his signature look of vague disdain as they sat on the couch, their study materials spread out on the coffee table in front of them. The fall semester was about to end, so everyone needed time and space to study. Even Herbert West.

“Why do you care?” Dan asked, even though he knew perfectly well why Herbert suddenly cared about something happening outside of his room or the basement. “Is it because Y/N is coming over?”

“You know that she is. You were right there when we discussed it.” They had been walking across campus when the woman in question had approached them.

“Up for another study session, West?” You had been carrying a pile of books and papers, a pen in your hair and ink staining your fingers. “My roommate bailed on me so I’m up for giving you another beatdown tonight.”

“I do have the evening free, Miss. L/N,” Herbert said crisply, the corners of his mouth faintly twitching up for a second as he accepted your challenge. “Though I wouldn’t be so confident if I were you. Last weekend was a fluke.”

“We’ll see, West. Don’t write checks your ass can’t cash.” You blew a mocking kiss in his direction, which caused Herbert to make a face. Of course he didn’t bother to act like he was catching the imaginary kiss. “Hi, Dan. Sorry you gotta live with this guy. See you at six.”

“When are you going to ask her out, Herbert?” Dan was mostly serious when he posed the question.

“Now why would I do something like that?” Herbert sounded almost offended at the question, his eyebrows going up for a moment.

“You two spend almost as much time together as Meg and I.” Which was true, though Herbert would never admit it. But there was a logical reason for it. You were the only person who was his intellectual equal that had several classes with him. Though others would also add that neither of you were going to win any popularity contests. The two of you were equally snarky and abrasive, but you were the fire to his ice, to put it simply.

“People can spend time together without being involved.” The last word was spat out with more than his usual amount of disdain. “That would distract both of us from our work. And distracting someone with her mind would be criminal.”

Herbert had known your name before the two of you had even met. Your mentor at Johns Hopkins was a friend of Dr. Gruber’s and the two had talked about their proteges. Gruber’s had spoken of you to Herbert and had once off-handedly wished the two of you could meet. All Herbert had known of you was your name and your area of interest. Your name was rather gender neutral, so even if he had been the sort of try and form a mental picture of someone, he wouldn’t have been able to form a clear one. He had never expected to meet you. And yet he had.

The first time he had seen you, you had been walking into Dr. Hill’s class. Under your white lab coat, you had been wearing a bright, colorful sweater and jeans, with your hair in a side ponytail. You looked rather out of place, but Herbert didn’t think of you much more, as class had begun shortly afterwards.

“It is going to be a pleasure to fail you,” Dr. Hill said, barely hiding his pleasure at the thought. Most of the class just stood there in disbelief, but there was one scoffing sound coming from the woman with the ponytail. Coming from you. “Do you have something to say, Miss L/N?”

“Are you aware that we can all hear you?” Your tone was as scornful as Herbert’s had just been and you stepped closer to them. “If you’re going to threaten to fail a student unfairly, at least do it behind closed doors. Doing it in front of your entire class is just embarrassing, Dr. Hill.”

“Miss. L/N, you might have been a darling at your last school, but don’t think that you can get away with saying whatever you want here,” Hill snapped before storming out of the room. You just rolled your eyes and grabbed a tube of lip balm from your jeans pocket.

“I could have stood up for myself,” Herbert said sharply, which made you turn on your heel to face him and Dan. “I don’t need a stranger to fight my battles for me.”

“Your ego is just as described, West,” you said dryly. “I wasn’t standing up for you. Hill is a fuckwit who doesn’t deserve to be called Doctor. You were right, though. He did steal Dr Gruber’s work and didn’t even have the decency to do it well.”

“You’re familiar with Dr. Gruber?” Herbert was now intrigued by this strange woman who looked more like she should have been at the mall than in this classroom, his eyes sweeping over her.

“I never met him, but my mentor at Johns Hopkins was friends with him. Apparently, Gruber thought highly of you for some reason.” You didn’t bother to hide that you were studying him as well, which Herbert appreciated. “I wonder if you are as brilliant as advertised.” There was a pause and she perked up, as if she remembered something she had forgotten. “I’m Y/N L/N.” She didn’t bother extending her hand for a shake, though it was because her arms were full.

“Gruber mentioned you,” Herbert said. “He was also told that you were intelligent. He was told that you are going to change the world.”

“Funny,” you said. “The same was said about you.”

Herbert did enjoy your company, at least as much as he enjoyed anyone’s. It was rare for someone to not get on his nerves when they spent a lot of time together. But you were able to keep up with him, which made studying together actually bearable. The two of you had even made a bit of a game of it, quizzing each other and keeping score. The loser had to buy the winner something at the cafeteria, the two of you coming to that agreement because neither of you had much of a life outside of school, so what else could they do? The last few times, Herbert had found himself sitting down with you in a secluded corner of campus and actually eating something with you.

Though sometimes you did drive him mad. You could be so stubborn and you didn’t hold your tongue, even when it was something small. The two of you didn’t always agree, even with so much in common. So the two of you could argue for hours. Dan had once left the house when one of your arguments had begun and had fled to the mall with Megan. They had gone shopping, seen a movie, had dinner and since her father was out of town, they had gone back to her house for some ‘alone time’. When he had come home that evening, you two were still yelling at each other in the basement, as if you had just started. Though for all he knew, you two had stopped fighting about the original issue and then had started a whole new argument.

He also didn’t understand your need for interests outside of science. What else could there be? No matter what you said, he could not see himself being convinced that he needed to broaden his horizons. You were annoyed by his insistence that you didn’t need anything else and that it was just a waste of your brilliance to have outside hobbies. For some reason, you had been insulted by that.

“You did just compliment her without also complimenting yourself,” Megan said, earning another Look from Herbert. “Just think about why you want to be alone with her so badly.”

“I think you have it bad, buddy,” Dan said, trying and failing not to grin like a madman.

Before Herbert could retort, there was a knock on the door and he went to answer it. You were there, of course, with your overstuffed bag on your shoulder and a rather large coat on.

“We will be studying in my room as the living room is…occupied,” Herbert said instead of a greeting.

“Good evening to you too,” you said, taking off your coat and hat, hanging them up by the door. “Traffic was a nightmare. I am never taking an aerobics class at this time of day ever again.”

After you made some small talk with Dan and Megan, Hebert grabbed your elbow and led you to his room. Neither of you saw the expressions that the other two made.

“So, this is the bedroom of the great Herbert West,” you said as you stood in the doorway. “I always pictured you sleeping in a coffin.”

Herbert went to get his things out of his desk while you walked over to his bed. He just happened to look over as you mumbled something about still feeling like you were in a furnace while you took off your sweatshirt. You were wearing jeans, as usual, but under the sweatshirt was a brightly colored leotard, the sort of thing that the women in the workout videos his roommate in undergrad had been fond of watching. He realized that this was the first time he had seen you not wearing some sort of bulky top and he had never really noticed how…nicely you were shaped.

He did his best to push those thoughts out of his mind. Because he had no time for thinking of you that way. You were his friend, but you were also a future colleague, research partner, and maybe co-writer on a ground-breaking paper. That was why he had noticed that your hands moved with a grace that made him want to keep watching you do things.

“Yo, West, you still here?” you asked, snapping your fingers. “What’s up? Have you finally realized that I’m the brains of this operation?”

“I can assure you that is not the case. Some of us have scientific advancements to think about instead of…aerobics…” Herbert replied, getting out the last of his notes.

“Hey, considering what you’re planning on doing with your life, you might want to take some self-defense classes. I won’t always be around to save you from whatever idiocy you get yourself into.” You sat with your back against the wall, looking rather comfortable on his bed, making his stomach do an odd little turn. “You better not get yourself killed over break.”

“You won’t be here during the winter break?” Herbert asked, wondering where you were going and how long you would be gone. And again, there was that sensation.

“Hold on, I have to get something from my car,” you said, hopping off his bed and leaving the room. And for once, Herbert found himself watching you leave.

This was all Dan and Megan’s fault. They had put the idea in his head. Now, he was wondering why it had worked. Of course, he did enjoy your company. But he did like other things about you. He had realized that you dressed the way you did because you were brilliant and knew it. So you didn’t feel the need to prove it by fitting into the mold of what a doctor should be like. That applied to other parts of you that he enjoyed. You challenged him, which he appreciated. After all, if you didn’t challenge each other, then both of you would have gotten bored within the first month of the school year and wouldn’t have been spending so much time together.

He liked the way your eyes lit up when you realized something, the way your voice got when you were passionate about a topic or when you were working through a theory. How you weren’t afraid of anything, even upsetting him. You had found out about his experiments and your only comment was that as long as things didn’t get outright illegal, then this was ‘bitching’.

Honestly, arguing with you was better than pleasant conversations with most people.

“Sorry about that. Forgot the snacks,” you said when you returned, smiling as you held up a plastic bag. Herbert found himself realizing that you had a lovely smile that he wanted to see more of.

Oh hell.

Dan was right.

Wow, this turned out longer than I expected and I hope it filled the request! Honestly, I’d be down to write a part 2. The image of Herbert’s crush looking like the 80s threw up all over her entered my mind and I just ran with it.

#slasher x reader #herbert west #herbert west x reader #reanimator fic #Anonymous

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toliveanddieinstarlight · 5 years ago

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Season 3, Episodes 3 and 4

Episode 3: A Day in the Strife

JESUS DELENN

For fuck's sake, Londo, can you please go at least five minutes without being the absolute worst. It’s a miracle Delenn didn’t have to immediately visit MedLab for conversational whiplash.

I really enjoy Ta’Lon as a character - the episode in which he was introduced was so weird to me, but at least we got him. Nice to see him and Sheridan getting a drink together.

Corwin has learned that Ivanova isn’t as scary as she seems and that is awesome.

Aaaaa fuck Ta'Lon you excellent dude.

Episode 4:

PASSING THROUGH GETHSEMANE

Brad Dourif is so fucking incredible. His performance just makes this episode. The religious themes here captivated me, the way it deals with forgiveness, redemption, the shouldering of one's burdens.

Lyta's throwing of some hardcore brainwashed/culty vibes, and of course Garibaldi is suspicious as hell. I mean, this is suspicious as hell.

Delenn is 0% interested in Garibaldi's position on capital punishment.

Brad Dourif played a very intense character for a while on Star Trek: Voyager that I was also fascinated with. He improves everything that he's in, and there have definitely been a handful of appearances he's made that have woefully underused him (LOOKING AT YOU, AGENTS OF SHIELD). Him telling Delenn and Lennier the story of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, and what it means to him really stuck with me - it's very much one of my favorite episodes.

And hey, Lennier's a Valen fanboy! God that's cute.

Ok, so A - one murder is a hell of a thing to get sentenced to a mind wipe. B - without an official station telepath, now that Talia is gone, who did the mind wipe?

I've mentioned before that B5 can get some legit guest stars - I’m sure there are some heavy-hitters that I'm just not aware of, but something I noticed in later watches is that there are 5 significant horror movie actors that show up as guest stars. First is Jeffrey Combs (who, I have to brag, I met at a horror convention several years ago and he was an absolute delight) in Eyes, playing a very intense young telepath - he's probably best known for playing Herbert West in the Re-Animator films, as well as a number of roles in Star Trek. Second is Ken Foree in GROPOS - my personal favorite film of his is Devil's Den, but I guess most people would know him from Dawn of the Dead. Third is Brad Dourif, who is fuckin CHUCKY! And the last one is Robert Englund, motherfuckin Freddy Krueger! Now, you can make a pretty good case to include Patricia Tallman (recently-reappeared resident telepath Lyta Alexander), thanks to her appearance in Dawn of the Dead remake Night of the Living Dead, but she's basically a series regular.

I did not watch horror movies in high school. I was a hugely scared baby as a teen and didn't really start seeing any significant horror movies until I was in college, so there was no way I was recognizing any of these folks when I was first watching. Either way, it's been very fun for me to see these actors that I really enjoy in horror doing cool things in a show I love.

#babylon 5 #babylon 5 spoilers #londo mollari #delenn #john sheridan #brother theo #susan ivanova #david corwin #g'kar

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meetnategreen · 5 years ago

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Glenn Kessler

Oct. 22, 2019 at 12:00 a.m. PDT

We originally had planned to offer a deconstruction of one of President Trump’s Four-Pinocchio tweets over the weekend, as an example of how many things the president can get wrong in fewer than 280 characters.

But then the president had his wild Cabinet session with reporters, and we shifted course.

So please watch the video above for the deconstruction of the tweet. Below is a quick roundup of some of the more notable claims the president made to reporters.

#1) “I don’t want to leave troops there. It’s very dangerous for — you know, we had 28 troops, as it turned out. People said 50. It was 28. And you had an army on both sides of those troops. Those troops could have been wiped out.”

It was Trump that had said 50 troops. But these tiny numbers belie the fact that Trump ordered the withdrawal of about 1,000 U.S. troops from northeastern Syria from about a dozen bases and outposts scattered across the region, where they worked alongside Syrian Kurdish partners. The hasty withdrawal, prompted by Trump’s decision to let Turkey invade, meant many of these bases had to be quickly abandoned.

#2) “I always thought if you’re going in, keep the oil. Same thing here. Keep the oil. … We’ve secured the oil.”

Trump appears to be talking about a plan to leave a few hundred troops along the Iraqi border area, to prevent the Islamic State from reestablishing its self-described caliphate in the area. That would also help the Kurds keep control of oil fields in the region. Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper hinted at such a move when he told reporters over the weekend that all forces would be removed from Syria in the coming weeks “except for — the president has approved the — keeping some forces at Tanf garrison in the south.”

But the plan still has to be put into action. Trump’s language suggests the United States is taking control of the oil. But the U.S. military does not seize foreign oil because it’s against international law “to destroy or seize the enemy’s property.”

#3) “We have a good relationship with the Kurds. But we never agreed to, you know, protect the Kurds. We fought with them for 3½ to four years. We never agreed to protect the Kurds for the rest of their lives.”

Trump misleadingly frames the agreement as the “rest of their lives.” But the United States had certainly made a deal with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which is said to have lost about 11,000 soldiers in defeating the Islamic State, after being trained and equipped by the United States. (Turkey considers elements of this force to be a terrorist threat.) To prevent a Turkish invasion, the United States persuaded the SDF to pull back up to nine miles from the Turkish border. In August, the SDF destroyed its own military posts after assurances the United States would not let thousands of Turkish troops invade. But then Trump tossed that aside.

For context, here’s how Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke of the Kurds in 2018.

Secretary of State Pompeo: "…Syrian Kurds have been great partners. We are now driving to make sure that they have a seat at the table.." @jinsadc

229 people are talking about this

#4) “They’ve been fighting for 300 years that we know of, 300 years.”

Trump frequently and misleadingly frames this as a “hundreds of years” conflict between the Turks and the Kurds. There has been a hundred-year effort to create a Kurdish state in the aftermath of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, with the Kurds frequently manipulated by great powers seeking to flex their muscles against a particular nation, such as Iraq. The United States, for instance, spent $16 million promoting a rebellion in Iraqi Kurdistan in the early 1970s, only to step aside when the Shah of Iran (then a U.S. ally) decided to cut a border deal in 1975 with Iraq. “There is confusion and dismay among our people and force,” the Kurdish leadership cabled the CIA. “Our people’s fate in unprecedented danger. Complete destruction hanging over our head. No explanation for all of this.”

#5) “The whistleblower gave a false account. Now we have to say, well, do we have to protect somebody that gave a false account?”

Trump says this repeatedly — he’s already earned a Bottomless Pinocchio — but it’s simply not true. Our line-by-line look at the whistleblower complaint, compared to the rough transcript of the July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and other information, shows that it was fairly accurate.

#6) “So was there actually an informant? Maybe the informant was Schiff. It could be Shifty Schiff. In my opinion, it’s possibly Schiff. He and his staff, or his staff or a whole group.”

This is ridiculous speculation. Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) is not the informant. The whistleblower complaint was investigated by the inspector general for the intelligence community, found to be credible and then submitted to Congress.

#7) “I gave away my salary. It’s, I guess, close to $450,000. I give it away. Nobody ever said, ‘He gives away his salary.’ Now it comes up because of this. But I give away my presidential salary. They say that no other president has done it. … They actually say that George Washington may — may have been the only other president to do — but see whether or not Obama gave up his salary.”

The president’s annual salary is currently $400,000 — and Trump is the third president to give away his salary. Herbert Hoover and John F. Kennedy, both very wealthy at the time, gave their salaries to charity. Barack Obama gave about $1.1 million to charity during the eight years he was president, according to a Forbes analysis. His presidential salary during that period was $3.1 million, though he made millions more from book sales.

#8) “Best location, right next to the airport, Miami International, one of the biggest airports in the world. Some people say it’s the biggest, but one of the biggest airports in the world.”

Trump defended his now-abandoned decision to hold the Group of Seven summit at the Trump National Doral resort, but he needs to get his airport rankings straight. Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport is No. 1 in the world by passenger volume, with more than 100 million passengers, but Miami does not even rank in the top 20. In 2017, it ranked 40th, according to the Airports Council International.

#9) “Doral was setting records when I bought it, because I owned it for a period of time. Setting records. It was going to — there was nothing like it. It was making a fortune. And then what happened? I announce I’m going to run for office, right? And all of a — and I say we got to build a wall, we got to have borders, we’ve got to have this, we’ve got to have that. All of a sudden, people — some people didn’t like it. They thought the rhetoric was too tough. And it went from doing great to doing fine. It does very nicely now. It’s actually coming back, I understand, very strongly. But Doral was setting records.”

Trump’s Doral resort has been in sharp decline in recent years, according to the Trump Organization’s own records. Its net operating income fell 69 percent from 2015 to 2017; a Trump Organization representative testified last year that the reason was Trump’s damaged brand since he became president. Trump bought it in 2012 and spent several years renovating it, so it’s possible 2015 was the resort’s best year. There is no evidence as yet that it is coming back “very strongly.”

#10) “I don’t know if you know George Washington, he ran his business simultaneously while he was president. … George Washington, they say, had two desks. He had a presidential desk and a business desk.”

We will leave it to readers to decide if the practices at the nation’s founding are relevant today. Washington was one of the nation’s largest landowners when he became president, though they were of dubious value, and he was a shareholder in the Patowmack Co., which aimed to build canals that would have given his land more value. Some historians have been critical — one wrote that Washington “betrayed private trusts in pursuit of private gain” — but our colleague Joel Achenbach, in his 2005 book, “The Grand Idea: George Washington’s Potomac and the Race to the West,” concluded: “There is remarkably little tarnish to be mined in the Washington archive. We can be confident that his reputation as an honest man is not the product of a historical whitewash.”

Achenbach told The Fact Checker: “My thinking is that he did remotely run Mount Vernon as a going concern during his presidency, via letters to his farm manager, but it was a completely different era. Back then he had to borrow cash just to make the trip to get inaugurated.”

#11) “Hey, Obama made a deal for a book. Is that running a business? I’m sure he didn’t even discuss it while he was president, yeah. He has a deal with Netflix. When did they start talking about that? That’s only, you know, a couple of examples.”

In defending the Doral deal, Trump mentions deals that Obama arranged after he left office, speculating without evidence that Obama started negotiating them when he was president.

#12) “I don’t think you people, with this phony emoluments clause — and by the way, I would say that it’s cost me anywhere from $2 billion to $5 billion to be president — and that’s okay — between what I lose and what I could have made.”

The emoluments clause is not phony; it’s right in the Constitution (Article I, Section 9, Paragraph 8): “No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”

Trump’s net worth is valued at $3 billion, so it’s difficult to see how being president could cost him even more than his net worth. Bloomberg News recently estimated that his net worth grew 5 percent in 2018, following two years of declines, bringing it back to the level calculated in 2016. Forbes calculated that as of September, his net worth is $3.1 billion.

#13) “You could end up in a war. President Obama told me that. He said, ‘The biggest problem, I don’t know how to solve it.’ He told me he doesn’t know how to solve it. I said, ‘Did you ever call him?’ ‘No.’ Actually, he tried 11 times, but the man on the other side, the gentleman on the other side, did not take his calls, okay? Lack of respect. But he takes my call.”

We gave this claim Four Pinocchios in July. There is absolutely no evidence that Obama tried to call North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, let alone meet him.

#14) “I see this guy, Congressman Al Green, say, ‘We have to impeach him, otherwise he’s going to win the election.’ What’s that all about? But that’s exactly what they’re saying. ‘We have to impeach him, because otherwise he’s going to win.’ I’m going to win the election.”

One problem with this complaint: Rep. Al Green (D-Tex.) says he never said that. The Texas congressman noted that on Twitter, writing, “It’s no surprise that @realDonaldTrump, who promoted birther conspiracies about President Obama, who claimed there were nice people among the bigots and racists in Charlottesville, and who consistently engages in perfidy, would tweet another untruth. I never said that.”

#15) “They’re interviewing ambassadors who I’d never heard of. I don’t know who these people are. I’ve never heard of them.”

This is false. Gordon Sondland, the ambassador to the European Union and a big donor to Trump’s inauguration, testified to Congress on Oct. 17 that Trump in an Oval Office meeting on May 23 directed him, special envoy Kurt Volker and Energy Secretary Rick Perry to talk to his personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani about Ukraine issues.

“We asked the White House to arrange a working phone call from President Trump and a working Oval Office visit,” Sondland said. “However, President Trump was skeptical that Ukraine was serious about reforms and anti-corruption, and he directed those of us present at the meeting to talk to Mr. Giuliani, his personal attorney, about his concerns. It was apparent to all of us that the key to changing the President’s mind on Ukraine was Mr. Giuliani.”

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patriotsnet · 3 years ago

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Which Regions Tend To Favor The Republicans

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/which-regions-tend-to-favor-the-republicans/

Which Regions Tend To Favor The Republicans

With That Said It Is More Complex Than We Can Just Say

SHOCK POLL: 2 Out of 3 Southern Republicans Want to Secede from the US

With everything thus far said, we have only skimmed the surface.

The truth is, be we talking about the South or not, not every faction changes, and we have to account for more history than can fit in any essay. We have to account for;changing platforms, changing voter bases, congressional changes over decades, battles between factions within states and parties, the changing ideologies of factions and parties, technological changes of automation and modernization, business interested elites in both parties who tend to organize better and dominate, populists in both parties who cant always agree on divisive social issues, the general rift between key voter issues and social issues vs. economic issues, arguments over the size of state within parties, voter issues taking on new importances, single issue third parties, global politics, and so much else to fully tell this story.

This is to say, the;history of the major U.S. political parties if of course more complex than can just be said which is why we use terms like parties switched and party systems to preface this;long in depth essay.

Y Affiliation By Region

Party affiliation by region Switch to:Region by political party

% of adults who identify as

Democrat/lean Dem. Sample Size

Sample size = 6,516. Visit this table to see approximate margins of error for a group of a given size. For full question wording, see the survey questionnaire.Sample sizes and margins of error vary from subgroup to subgroup, from year to year and from state to state. You can see the sample size for the estimates in this chart on rollover or in the last column of the table. And visit this table to see approximate margins of error for a group of a given size. Readers should always bear in mind the approximate margin of error for the group they are examining when making comparisons with other groups or assessing the significance of trends over time. For full question wording, see the survey questionnaire.

Northeast

Other Factors Of Note Regarding Switching Platforms Progressivism The Red Scare Immigration Religion And Civil Rights In 54

Other key factors involve;the Red Scare , the effect of immigration, unions, and the Catholic vote on the parties.

The Republican party changed after losing to Wilson and moved away from progressivism and toward classical liberal values under Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover. In this time they also became increasingly anti-Communist following WWI . While both parties were anti-Communist and pro-Capitalist, Wilsons brand of progressive southern bourbon liberalism and his New Freedom plan and then FDRs brand of progressive liberalism and his New Deal were opposed by Republicans like Hoover due to their;use of the state to ensure social justice. Then after WWII,;the Second Red Scare;reignited the conversation, further dividing factions and parties.

Another;important thing to note is;that the Democratic party has historically been pro-immigrant . Over time this;attracted new immigrant groups like Northern Catholics ;and earned;them the support of;Unions;. Big City Machines like Tammany Hall;also play a role in this aspect of the story as well. The immigrant vote is one of the key factors in changing the Democratic party over time in terms of progressivism, unions, religion, and geolocation , and it is well suited to be its own subject.

Despite these general;truisms, the parties themselves have typically been factionalized over;complex factors relating to;left-right ideology, single issues, and the general meaning of;liberty.

Recommended Reading: Donald Trump Calls Republicans Stupid

Despite The State Of Our Politics Hope For America Is Rising And So Is Youths Faith In Their Fellow Americans

In the fall of 2017, only 31% of young Americans said they were hopeful about the future of America; 67% were fearful. Nearly four years later, we find that 56% have hope. While the hopefulness of young whites has increased 11 points, from 35% to 46% — the changes in attitudes among young people of color are striking. Whereas only 18% of young Blacks had hope in 2017, today 72% are hopeful . In 2017, 29% of Hispanics called themselves hopeful, today that number is 69% .

By a margin of nearly three-to-one, we found that youth agreed with the sentiment, Americans with different political views from me still want whats best for the country — in total, 50% agreed, 18% disagreed, and 31% were recorded as neutral. In a hopeful sign, no significant difference was recorded between Democrats and Republicans .

Homosexuals Do Not Deserve Equal Rights

This comes from their religious beliefs, which form the basis for a lot of policy. Republicans believe that homosexuality is a choice and, as such, gay people should not be acknowledged in the same way as other groups. Therefore, according to a Republican, homosexuals should not be allowed to marry, nor should they be allowed to adopt children.

Also Check: Who Is Right Republicans Or Democrats

Progressive Era And The Great Depression

Because of the Republican Partys association with business interests, by the early 20th century it was increasingly seen as the party of the upper-class elite.

With the rise of the Progressive movement, which sought to improve life for working-class Americans and encourage Protestant values such as temperance , some Republicans championed progressive social, economic and labor reforms, including President Theodore Roosevelt, who split from the more conservative wing of the party after leaving office.

Republicans benefited from the prosperity of the 1920s, but after the stock market crash of 1929 ushered in the Great Depression, many Americans blamed them for the crisis and deplored their resistance to use direct government intervention to help people. This dissatisfaction allowed Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt to easily defeat the Republican incumbent, Herbert Hoover, in 1932.

Changes To Achieve Competitive Elections

Due to the perceived issues associated with gerrymandering and its effect on competitive elections and democratic accountability, numerous countries have enacted reforms making the practice either more difficult or less effective. Countries such as the U.K., Australia, Canada and most of those in Europe have transferred responsibility for defining constituency boundaries to neutral or cross-party bodies. In Spain, they are constitutionally fixed since 1978.

In the United States, however, such reforms are controversial and frequently meet particularly strong opposition from groups that benefit from gerrymandering. In a more neutral system, they might lose considerable influence.

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Some Possible New Congressional Districts For Montana And The Politics To Go With Them

HELENA Drawing two new, compact congressional districts for Montana in 2022 with equal populations is a piece of cake but, when their political leaning is a consideration, things get prickly.

Joe Lamson, one of two Democratic members of the five-member commission that will decide the boundary by November, says a goal should be to create one competitive district where a Democratic and Republican candidate each have a legitimate chance to win.

When we held public hearings, we heard loud and strong from Montanans that when it came to congressional districts, they would like one of those districts to be competitive, he told MTN News last week.

Yet Dan Stusek, one of two GOP members of the Districting and Apportionment Commission, says the politics of the districts should not be a priority.

That is not one of the commissions mandatory criteria, nor is it in our Montana constitution or state law, he said last week. The concept of `competitiveness inherently requires us to look at political data, which the public well knows is what people use to gerrymander districts.

The commission has two Republican members, two Democratic members and a non-partisan chair appointed by the Montana Supreme Court: Maylinn Smith, an attorney for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes.

But its no secret what the general types of plans will be, and MTN News, using online tools, drew up several possibilities complete with a political analysis.

Pros And Cons Of Bernie Sanders

Florida RIPS CDC Over Covid Misinfo, DEMANDS Correction As Guidance Whiplash SINKS GOP Support

Even though Bernie Sanders is behind in the delegate count, the upcoming primaries have a higher delegates numbers and he believes the majority of them will favor him instead of Hillary Clinton. Bernie has received 6 representatives from the house for endorsements, while Clinton has 159 representatives, 40 senators and 13 governors for her endorsements. Clinton is way in the lead for endorsement so, I don ‘t think Sanders will have a chance to catch up. Dr. Cornel West, Ed Schultz and Neil Young are individuals who are contributing to his

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Nearly A Third Of Young Americans Say That Politics Has Gotten In The Way Of A Friendship; Differences Of Opinion On Race

Thirty-one percent of young Americans, but 37% of young Biden voters and 32% of young Trump voters say that politics has gotten in the way of a friendship before. Gender is not a strong predictor of whether or not politics has invaded personal space, but race and ethnicity are. Young whites are more likely than young Blacks to say that politics has gotten in the way–and nearly half of white Biden voters say politics has negatively impacted a friendship; 30% of white Trump voters say the same.

When young Americans were asked whether a difference of opinion on several political issues might impact a friendship, 44% of all young Americans said that they could not be friends with someone who disagreed with them on race relations. Sixty percent of Biden voters agreed with this sentiment, as did a majority of women and Blacks . Americans between 18 and 24 were more likely than those slightly older to feel that race relations would cause a problem with friendships. Differences of opinion on whether or not to support Trump was an issue for slightly more than a third , followed by immigration , police reform , abortion , climate change , and guns .

Urban And Rural Republicans Have Somewhat Different Views On Trump

Asked to rate President Trump on a feeling thermometer ranging from 0 to 100, a majority of Americans give Trump a very cold or somewhat cool rating, while 10% rate him a neutral 50 on the 0-100 point thermometer. By contrast, 31% of Americans give him a very warm or somewhat warm rating.

Trumps ratings are particularly warm in rural areas, where four-in-ten rate him warmly. By contrast, 19% of people in urban areas give Trump a warm rating.

These differences by community type remain, even after controlling for party. Among Republicans, 56% of rural residents give Trump a very warm rating, compared with 48% of suburban and 46% of urban Republicans.

Within the Republican coalition, there are significant age gaps in views of Trump. In the suburbs, the share rating Trump very warmly is substantially higher among Republicans ages 50 and older than among Republicans younger than 50 .

This gap persists among rural Republicans, a group largely considered central to Trumps base. Younger rural Republicans are less likely than their older counterparts to rate Trump very warmly .

Among Democrats, community type differences are more modest: 84% of suburban Democrats give President Trump a very cold rating, compared with 78% of urban Democrats and 75% of rural Democrats. And across community types, age plays less of a role in Democrats views of Trump than among Republicans.

Urban Republicans are more evenly split on social issues than rural Republicans

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Summarizing The Party Systems As A Two

Current events and complexities aside, there has almost always been a two-party system in the United States. The mentality of each party can be expressed as northern;interests and southern interests, although I strongly prefer city interests and rural interests . Sometimes we see both;interests;in the same party, as;with Humphrey and LBJ, and sometimes it is less clear cut, but we can always spot it in any era.

Thus, we can use a simple two party answer as to which factions;held which interests over time, which I hope will be seen as helpful, and not divisive.;Remember the U.S. is a diverse Union;of 50 sovereign states and commonwealths where the need to get a majority divides us into red states and blue states as a matter of custom, not as enemies, but as a United Republic with a democratic spirit.

Northern City Interests: Federalists, Whigs, Third Party Republicans, Fourth Party Progressive era Republicans , Fifth Party Democrats , Modern Democrats.

Southern Rural Interests: Anti-Federalists, Democratic-Republicans, Third Party Democrats, Fourth Party Progressive Era Democrats , Fifth Party Republicans , Modern Republicans.

TIP: One way to;summarize all of this is by saying the changes happened under, or as a result of, key figures including Jefferson and Hamilton, Adams and Jackson, Lincoln, Grant, Cleveland, Bryan, the Roosevelts, Wilson, Hoover, LBJ, and Clinton. See a;comparison of the political ideology of each President from Washington to Obama.

Black Hispanic And Asian Voters Remain Overwhelmingly Democratic

There are sizable and long-standing racial and ethnic differences in partisan affiliation, and they have shifted only modestly in recent years.

White voters continue to be somewhat more likely to affiliate with or lean toward the Republican Party than the Democratic Party .

Since 2010, white voters have been more likely to align with the GOP than with the Democrats. However, the share of whites identifying as Democrats or leaning Democratic has edged upward . This growth is attributable to a slight increase in Democratic-leaning independents, rather than a rise in Democratic affiliation.

While black voters remain solidly Democratic, identification with the Democratic Party has declined modestly in recent years: About two-thirds of African Americans have identified as Democrats in the last several years, down slightly from the first half of Barack Obamas presidency, when about three-quarters affiliated with the Democratic Party.

There is a similar balance of partisanship among Asian American registered voters: 65% identify with the Democratic Party or lean Democratic, compared with 27% who identify as or lean Republican.

In 1998 , 53% of Asians identified with or leaned toward the Democratic Party and 33% identified with or leaned toward the Republican Party. .

A gender gap in partisan affiliation and leaning is seen across racial and ethnic groups.

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Understanding The Basics: How The Parties Changed General Us Party History And Why The Big Switch Isnt A Myth

Above we did an introduction, this next section takes a very general look at how the major parties changed and how factions changed parties.

To sum things up before we get started discussing specific switches, both major U.S. parties used to have notable;progressive socially liberal left-wing;and socially conservative right-wing;factions, and now they dont.

Originally, like today, one party was for big government and one party was for small government .

However, unlike today, party lines were originally drawn over;elitism and populism; and preferred;government type more than by the;left-right social;issues;that define the parties today, as the namesake of the parties themselves imply;.

In those days both parties had progressive and conservative wings, but the Southern Anti-Federalist, Democratic-Republican, and then Democratic Party was populist and favored small government, and the Northern Federalist, Whig, and then Republican Party was elite and favored bigger central government.

However,;from the lines drawn during the Civil War, to Bryan in the Gilded Age, to Teddy Roosevelt leaving the Republican Party to form the Progressive Party in 1912, to FDRs New Deal, to LBJs Civil Rights, to the Clinton and Bush era, the above;became less and less true.

Instead, today the parties are polarized;by left-right social issues, and;each party has a notable populist and elitist wing.

Changes In Party Polarization In Congress

Some changes in party polarization in Congress over the last several decades are the party division between Republicans and Democrats as having widened over the last several decades, leading to greater partisanship. What caused this change was increasing homogeneous districts and increasing alignment between ideology and partisanship among voters. I feel this can be good because the original congress was just one and if you did not agree with this opinion you could not do anything about it. Now at least you can fall under a category which is Republican or Democrat. In fact, I believe there should be more than just two parties because I know most people like some of the ideologies from Democrats but they also like

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States Of Change: How Demographic Change Is Transforming The Republican And Democratic Parties

Full report

Demographics are not destiny, but steady and predictable changes to the electorate play an important role in defining the landscape of American politics. Most demographic groups have a political lean, so a group increasing or decreasing in size over time will tend to benefit one party or type of politics over another. The most well-known example is the growth of the nonwhite population in the United States, whichsince nonwhites tend to lean heavily Democraticis typically viewed as tilting the electoral terrain somewhat toward the Democrats over time as well as increasing the weight of nonwhite voters within the Democratic Party over time. But other changes are important, such as the decline of noncollege educated voters, particularly whites; the aging of the adult population; and the rise of new generations to replace older ones.

A Response To The Claim Welfare Is Equatable To Slavery

Life after Trump: whats the future of the Republican Party? | The Economist

In the 1850s, inequality in the Northern big government cities, northern immigration in the big cities , and African slavery in the small government south all existed side-by-side. and in ways, so it is today . Northern cities still favor bigger government, and they still have problems of racism and inequality, Rural South still favors small government . This does not make the North of today equatable to the slave economy of the South of yesterday however.

There is this idea that welfare is equatable to slavery in this respect, as in both cases a societal structure is providing basic essentials for a class of people . This argument, often presented in tandem with the claim the parties didnt switch/change is essentially a red herring that misses the nuances we describe on this page .

The southern conservatives who held slaves and fought for the Confederacy essentially switched out of the Democratic party starting in the 1960s, and even continuing to the modern day , in response to LBJs welfare programs . In other words, if the southern conservative had wanted to oppress a class of people with welfare, one would logically assume they wouldnt have switched out of the Democratic party over time in response to welfare programs.

Today it is a Southern Republican who flies to Confederate flag, today it is a Republican who champions small government in America. Yesterday, it was a Southern Democrat.

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nelliievance · 4 years ago

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Meditation Is More Than Stress Relief: The Transformational Path

In a recent post, I mentioned that I’ve tried to reframe sheltering-in-place during the Covid-19 crisis as a retreat. This has worked pretty well. I’ve made progress in my “mental fitness” during this time, so I’ve decided to go into a few blog posts about it, which this post will kick off.

Meditation is great for relieving stress and other health effects, as I reviewed here. But if you practice it and other disciplines that go along with it consistently, its benefits go beyond that. We know there are some healthful aspects of physical fitness, but if you put in the astonishing amount of dedication elite athletes put in, you can totally transform yourself physically. There is a mental analogy to this. The more you put into it, the more you get out.

Many people, myself included, believe that we can aspire to becoming a better version of ourselves: kinder, calmer, more compassionate, etc. There are specific techniques to do this, and if you follow them consistently, they form a “path” to follow. This is often referred to a spiritual path, but “spiritual” can have connotations, like the occult or wearing exotic robes and burning incense, that can turn some people off, so I prefer to call it transformational.

I’ve been following such a path since 1992, as I’ll describe in a bit. All the world’s religions have some concept of a higher self [1,2]. But this higher self, or better version of yourself, can also be interpreted psychologically and through neuroscience. For example, if you can calm down your amygdala a bit and improve the activity of your prefrontal cortex, you can overreact less and think things through more. Also, as I recently described, we can change our brains by using willpower. By working at it diligently, we can train our brains and get better at it.

This allows us to live less compulsively, as in being more able to enjoy eating healthy food but easily stop when we’ve had enough. Beyond that, it helps us to live from our highest ideals, being more loving, kinder, compassionate, less hostile and selfish.

Practicing transformational techniques does not require joining a monastery or ashram or living in a cave in the Himalayas, but can be done as part of regular life. This introduction is for motivation. Subsequent posts will go into the details of how to do it.

My Story

I was raised as a Catholic in the pre-Vatican II era, including attending first and second grade in Catholic school. My exposure to religion was pretty negative, with a picture of a stern, judgemental God. The purpose of being good, and following the ten commandments, was to assure going to the good place instead of the bad when I died. I was not exposed to the notion that ethical behavior might actually make me a happier person now I rejected this belief system upon reaching adulthood, but didn’t replace it with anything else because I was too busy making my way in life. This happened around the time I left West Point.

I’ve mentioned previously that I attended West Point for plebe year in 1970. That had been a childhood dream. I had an Uncle I admired that was a career Army officer, and his son was a historian who regaled me with stories of heroic deeds of my ancestors. 1970 was unfortunately not a good time to be there, it was the height of the Vietnam war and morale was not great, so it was a pretty cynical place. I was disillusioned by the end of the first year (plebe year) and left. I at least can take pride that I didn’t leave because I couldn’t hack it, because plebe year is the toughest. But this ended up being a bad idea psychologically. It was pointed out to us, while I was there, that one of the purposes of plebe year is to break you down, so they can then build you back up as a future leader. Having left at that point, I had been through the breaking down part, but not the building back up part.

So I went home with the dreams of my youth unfulfilled. I questioned a lot of my earlier beliefs at that time, which fit in well with the counterculture attitude prevalent in society at the time. Fortunately I had my then girlfriend, Karen to provide an anchor or I may have run off to a hippie commune or something. I was also an angry young man, tending to overreact. Things that perhaps should have annoyed me made me lose my temper. I don’t know how Karen hung with me during that period. But with her help I made it through school and graduated as a civil engineer. My temper still reared its ugly head occasionally. Thank goodness I was never physically abusive, but I would yell when I “lost it”.

Slide Mountain in the Catskills

Around this time I had the first of a few spontaneous “transcendent” experiences I’ve had. It was my first time hiking in the mountains for fun. I had done plenty of hiking at West Point with full a pack and an m14 rifle, but not for fun. I was on a trip with some college friends to hike up Slide mountain, the highest in the Catskills of New York at 4190 feet. I wasn’t in the greatest of shape at the time so it was a long slog. We got to the top, where we would camp for the night, just as the sun was going down. I could see a beautiful panorama. This took my breath away, but also temporarily took my thoughts away. I felt incredibly at peace and at one with all I saw. So a little before John Denver’s “Rocky Mountain high” came out, I guess I had a Catskill mountain high. I didn’t know what to make of the experience, it did not occur to me there might be techniques for cultivating feeling this way. But I think it planted a seed of loving nature and I always seek to have some sort of blissful peak experience when I’m doing athletic adventures. Trail runners call it “looking for the pixie dust”. You can’t force it, I’ve found, but you can encourage the conditions that allow it. I’ve had a few of these experiences since, always in beautiful settings: like seeing an incredible view of the milky way at high elevation in Colorado, or watching the sunset over the ocean in Pacific Grove.

I now took my first full time job, working for a civil engineering consulting firm in Camp Hill (central Penssylvania). I liked it for the first few months, it was exciting to be using engineering concepts, and techniques I’d learned in school, for something useful (designing water treatment plants). But when we started our second project I realized it was pretty similar to the first. I wasn’t learning much new. I could see a future of this stretched out in front of me, and it seemed pretty dull, so I was depressed.

This was around the time that transcendental meditation (TM) was at its peak of popularity. The Beatles had been to visit Maharishi in India, and TM had been highlighted on the cover of Time magazine. It was being touted for scientifically proven benefits, which appealed to me. So Karen and I signed up for a course that lasted several nights and learned TM. We practiced it pretty diligently for the first few months (twice a day, 20 minutes), and it helped. The technique (explained in the next post under mantra meditation) was effortless. The ceaseless chatter in my mind just naturally calmed, at least for short stretches, and I felt at peace. Yes it did relieve stress. But in my case it had a more profound effect. It practically cured my temper. I won’t say I never raised my voice since, but it took much more provocation, I no longer “flew off the handle at the drop of a hat”. This was a pretty solid example that meditation can actually make a dramatic change in your personality. I later learned of the work of Dr. Herbert Benson (author of The Relaxation Response) and realized the benefits could have come from various meditation techniques, they were not limited to TM.

Around this time we moved to northern California where I continued to work as a Civil engineer, this time on sewage treatment plants. That didn’t always work out well at dinner parties. “So, what do you do for a living?”. But the work done nationwide on quality of sewage treatment in that era improved water quality considerably, which I was glad to be a part of. Nevertheless, the actual work was still pretty dull for me. Fortunately I was able to get into grad school at Stanford, and got a fellowship so I could afford it.

That was huge for me, I now went through several years of profound learning, and afterwards I never had a dull job. I was always working on cutting edge things and continued to learn. Meditation had been long forgotten by this point, because I didn’t feel I needed it. But while my temper remained calmed down, life was still not perfect. Any job has some tedium, even an interesting one. And there are always personality issues with neighbors, coworkers etc. But life was still pretty good.

My first job was with the the US National Bureau of Standards in Boulder, Colorado (now National Institute of Science and Technology). The work was great, and so were my co-workers, and Boulder was beautiful. If we had moved straight from New Jersey or Pennsylvania to Colorado, I think Karen and I would still live there. Unfortunately we’d been spoiled by the northern California weather and after 3 years we moved back. This time I got work at IBM research in south San Jose.

IBM Almaden Research Center. I was working here, and got to ride my bike to work on a nice country road. And I left for another job with a horrible commute in North San Jose? Hmmm…

Hitting Bottom

After three years I quit my job at IBM research to do a start up. That was a much more stressful environment because of all the pressure we were under, and it also involved a nasty commute. This came to a head a few years later during the buildup to a big new software release where I really felt the spotlight was on me. I was using running to control my stress, but got injured so I couldn’t do that for awhile. I got so stressed out I didn’t sleep much for about 3 weeks, and ended up having a breakdown and spent a few days in a hospital. Wake up call, big time!

After this I went to a therapist for a while. It came out that part of me regretted having quit West Point, and part of me wished I had never gone at all. I was 39, and here I was deciding one way or another I’d ruined my life with a mistake I made as a teenager. We worked through this, and I felt ready to move on. But I figured there had to be a better way to live and something was missing.

Discovering the Transformational Path and the Perennial Philosophy

That was when I blundered into Eknath Easwaran’s book Conquest of Mind [1]. There was an interesting serendipity in that particular book being the one the bookstore had: I was still pretty skeptical of religion at the time, and could have been easily turned off. It turned out that of all his books, Conquest of Mind was based mostly on Buddhist teachings, and had the subtitle “Take charge of your thoughts and reshape your life through meditation”. The emphasis was very practical, but introduced me to what I now call the transformational path. I had always been into amateur athletics in one form or another as a hobby, and Easwaran made the analogy of how hard someone would train to go to the Olympics, and said if you put that kind of effort into meditation and what he called allied disciplines, you could dramatically change your life for the better. I was hooked. This book had an appendix with a brief description of his transformational program, which I followed diligently.

After a couple of months, I read his book Meditation which gave more detail about his style of meditation and the other disciplines, as well as showing that these teachings could be found in the core of all the world’s religions or could be interpreted psychologically,. By now I was more prepared to consider that idea. Of especial interest to me was how this related to Christianity. He described the lives and writings of St. Francis of Assisi, St. Theresa of Avila, and others. Now why was I never told about them in Catholic school as a kid?

This was my introduction to the concept of the perennial philosophy: this is a concept dating back at least to the renaissance in the west, and further in Asia, that “all religions, underneath seeming differences, point to the same Truth”. Human beings have a false self, referred to as the “ego” or “small self” which is basically the combination of our instinctive behaviors and our untrained minds. Through transformational practice we can transcend this, and discover our true nature, which is one with ultimate reality. This reality is referred to in most religions by terms like cosmic consciousness, God, or in Native American wisdom as “the Great Spirit”.

In Buddhism, however, it is often not specified. Teachers will just say “go and see for yourself”. But our true nature is described in terms like “pure unconditioned awareness” [2]. This is why Buddhism is more accessible to skeptics and amenable to scientific inquiry, because it does not require belief in something which might be thought of as “supernatural” [3]. Of course, this all made me wonder if the spontaneous peak experiences I’d had were some sort of glimpse into my true nature (or a glimpse of ultimate reality), and eager to try techniques to make that type of experience more accessible.

I read books by various other authors at the time, from various traditions, including The Miracle of Mindfulness by Thich Nhat Hanh, and books on Insight Meditation and Centering Prayer, coming away convinced that there are many valid approaches but with common elements.

That all started around 1992, and I have been following the path ever since, with varying degrees of diligence. The same is true for my physical training, it ebbs and flows, but I never let it go to less than about 30 minutes a day, while other times I may get more enthused and train for a marathon, a century bike ride, or equivalent. With self-transformation, I keep meditation up at least 30 minutes a day, and sometimes do more, and I vary in how well I follow the other elements. I also try to be mindful, one of the elements, as often as I remember to.

Benefits

The result of 28 years of doing this? I haven’t reached enlightenment or Nirvana, but I’m a lot calmer. I don’t sweat the small stuff very much anymore. It feels like I’m in more control, like there is a slight buffer of time between stimulus and response. It’s nice to be able to catch myself and not overreact. I’m not always perfect at it, but a lot better than I used to be. And during meditation I often get glimpses of the feeling of “oneness” I mentioned, that previously only came spontaneously in peak experiences.

Some other benefits:

Calming your inner voice, the one that’s always commenting/interpreting/criticising, etc. In the book No, Self, No Problem, Dr. Chris Niebauer discusses the crucial importance of getting control of this inner voice from the perspective of neuroscience and psychology.

Behaving more inline with your highest ideals. Reading inspirational books, or going to church or temple may motivate us to be better people. But even if you believe in the golden rule, being kinder, more courageous, etc, it is easier said than done. because our behaviour is often more of a conditioned response than rational. I’ve found that meditation and similar disciplines can help.

As I mentioned, I’ve taken my practice up another notch during the Covid19 shutdown. And I’m starting to notice a difference. I mentioned previously how working on being more unconditionally loving towards my shelter-mate has benefitted us both. My meditation is going a bit deeper, I seem to be more mindful during the day, and able to make better decisions and act less compulsively, especially with my eating habits.

And what of my beliefs now, someone who started out pretty skeptical? What is this oneness? It’s possible it’s just some phenomenon in my brain, like my logical left brain has calmed down and my more holistic right brain has taken over. But it doesn’t feel like that. It feels like something more. It definitely doesn’t feel like some stern judgemental old guy on a throne in the clouds. It’s more like connecting with an unconditionally loving spirit or intelligence. Maybe this is what Native American’s mean by “the Great Spirit that moves through all things”. But I’m not trying to convert anybody. Go and see for yourself. For me, the journey on the transformational path to “go and see” is its own reward. It gives life meaning, helps me to better be of service, and makes me happier.

For those who think all of this might be useful, I’ll discuss the elements of self-transformation in my next post.

References

Easwaran, Eknath, Conquest of Mind, Nilgiri Press, 2019.

Richard, Matthieu, Singer, Rolf, Beyond the Self: Conversations between Buddhism and Neuroscience, MIT Press, 2017.

Batchelor, Stephen, Buddhism without Beliefs: A Contemporary Guide to Awakening, Riverhead Books, 1998.

Meditation Is More Than Stress Relief: The Transformational Path published first on https://steroidsca.tumblr.com/

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darnedchild · 7 years ago

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Molly Hooper - (Assistant) Reanimator : Part Four

Also on FFdotnet and Ao3

With apologies to H.P. Lovecraft - A modern retelling of Herbert West - Reanimator. Written for the 2017 Sherlolly Halloween fest.

Part Four - Six Shots by Midnight

“Christ, Molly. Why didn’t you tell me?” He ran a hand through his hair, ruffling his curls into the sort of disarray she would have normally found adorable.

“What was I supposed to say?” she scoffed, followed by a quick inhale that was almost a sob. “Oh, by the way, I had a friend in uni who discovered the secret to reanimating dead flesh. Unfortunately, the process had a rather inconvenient side effect of turning the test subjects into flesh-eating ghouls. How, exactly, should I have tried to work that into a casual conversation, Sherlock?” Molly’s was voice growing shriller with each new word; which she seemed to realize because she clamped her lips together to hold in whatever nervous noise was trying to break free.

“I see your point.” He slumped, his head coming to rest on the back of the chair so he could stare up at the tiled ceiling. “That’s all of it, though. Right?” Sherlock lifted his head at her silence. “Right, Molly?”

Her skin had, somehow, gone even paler than before. He began to worry that she was going to be sick all over her desk.

She winced. “No.”

Acting purely on instinct, he slid from the chair and knelt at her feet. He grabbed both of her hands, which were far too cold to the touch for his liking. In his most calming voice he said, “Take a deep breath for me. Now let it go. And another one. In. And out. There we go, that’s my girl.”

“Your what?” Molly blinked, her fearful expression momentarily morphed into bewilderment.

“My . . . We’ll talk about that later.” Now that she had regained some of her colour, Sherlock sat back on his heels. “All right. Tell me the rest.”

இڿڰۣ-ڰۣ—

The experiments stopped after the Halsey incident. Or, more likely, Herbert had simply stopped asking for Molly’s assistance. Not that she would have given it.

Not then, at any rate.

Molly’s father’s condition continued to worsen. Eventually the American doctor told them there was nothing more he could do. Her father wanted to spend his last few months in his familiar family home, so the Hoopers returned to Lincolnshire. Molly was relieved to leave Miskatonic University (and Herbert West) behind.

After her father died, she redoubled her efforts to finish her schooling. Her father had told her that his greatest wish had been for her to become Doctor Hooper, and while he wouldn’t be around to see it, she made sure his wish was fulfilled. There were some who called her heartless and cold—her mother included—because she took no more than a week off when he died, just long enough to help make arrangements for and to attend his funeral, but she had a mission. No one understood that this was her way to grieve. Her penance for not being able to save him.

Her first job after becoming a doctor was at a small medical practice in Louth. It took months, but she eventually came out of her shell and her old personality broke free. She made friends with the other clinic staff and Milly at the diner.

One dreary day the next spring, she pushed through the front door of the clinic, her usual friendly greeting for the young receptionist dying on her lips at the sight of Herbert West leaning against the counter.

“And there she is,” Herbert laughed. “I was just about to leave a note for you.”

“How-how did you-Why?“ she stuttered.

He quickly interrupted her with a sharp glance at the receptionist who was watching them, obviously hoping for a juicy bit of gossip about the newest doctor. “Surprise you? I thought it would be more fun if I didn’t call ahead.”

Which would have been a nice trick, considering he shouldn’t have had her number. Or her address. She’d cut off all ties to him and nearly everyone else from the States when she’d left.

“Well, I am definitely surprised.” And it wasn’t particularly pleasant.

“I’ve a meeting this afternoon, but how about dinner tonight? We’ve got a lot to catch up on.” Herbert offered a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes.

Over a too-large portion of Shephard’s Pie that evening, Herbert told her that he’d kept an eye on her academic progress since she’d left. He’d even managed to read her thesis. When he had heard that one of the partners in her practice was getting ready to retire just as he was looking to make a change and leave Arkham, Herbert decided it was clearly a matter of fate.

“I’m sorry? Are you saying you’re replacing Doctor Masters?”

“Not replacing, per se.” He set aside his own plate of barely touched food. “I’ll be taking over his caseload over the next month or two, on a probationary basis, to see if I’ll be a good fit in your quaint little community.”

She got the impression he was mocking either her village or her boss. Or both.

“So, why did you leave Massachusetts?” People didn’t just drop everything and move to Louth on a whim.

“I told you, Molly, I was ready for a change.”

She had resolved to hop on-line as soon as she got back to her tiny cottage and look for any strange news out of Arkham over the last few months, and was relieved to see nothing of note had been reported.

Months later, Herbert had settled into the practice with little trouble. He was extremely competent as a doctor, but had little to no bedside manner. There were the occasional mutterings about his abrasive nature over the reception desk.

He’d purchased a small house for a song, simply because it shared a fence with the cemetery and therefore was rumoured to be haunted. He’d hired workmen to complete much needed repairs around the long empty home and to enlarge the small cellar into a workspace.

It took a while, but Molly eventually found herself warming toward her old friend once more, and falling into old habits. At first it was just reminiscing about their former research (while carefully avoiding any mention of Doctor Halsey’s death and subsequent reawakening). Then it became shared meals and looking over a few notes to try to figure out where they had gone wrong, purely a hypothetical exercise of course. And then the odd evening down in the cellar, messing about with reagents and new formulas.

Before she knew it, Molly was pulled back in. Rather than risk another Halsey incident, they concentrated their work on a much smaller scale, the overly abundant rat population. Not even the entire rat. Miraculously, Herbert’s latest serum was capable of reanimating dismembered limbs, organs, even the severed head of a particularly large rodent specimen.

“Think of it, Molly. We could revolutionize transplant procedures. No more wasting time waiting for a suitable organ donor to get caught in a traffic accident. Part out a donor corpse, inject the serum, then put it all in cold storage until needed.”

His enthusiasm was infectious, but she couldn’t help but wince at his phrasing. “Part out? You’ll need to work on your wording if you hope to ever convince the medical community to accept your work.”

Herbert rolled his eyes. “On the whole, most of them are feeble minded sheep anyway. Sticking to what they were taught without a thought toward innovation or advancements.”

“Be that as it may, you’ll need funding if you want to take this large scale.” It would do him no good to alienate the people who cut the checks.

“Trust me, my dear, there will always be someone searching for the secret to immortality and willing to pay for it.” He sighed as he stared at their latest experiment. “There are so many variables that need to be calculated. Trials with rats won’t be enough for us to go public. If only we had a human specimen to work with.”

Molly shook her head with a grimace. “I am not going to help you dig up another body. I know these people, Herbert. I work with them, they wave to me when I walk down the main street, I talk to them at the diner.”

He sighed and agreed, a tad too quickly for her comfort.

Suddenly the doorbell echoed through the ground floor of the house and through the open door to the cellar. They looked at each other, then up as if they thought they would be able to see through the floorboards.

“Who’s that?” Molly asked.

“Probably one of the yokels, asking if I could come ‘out to the farm and help Bessie birth a calf’, as if I were a common veterinarian. You answer it, tell them I’m busy doing . . . anything.” He waved her off. Molly stuck her tongue out at his back, before trudging up the stairs.

It wasn’t a rancher worried about his cattle. It was one of the men who worked at city hall. He looked nervous, and the stench of alcohol and cigarette smoke assaulted her nose as soon as she pushed the screen door open.

“Hey, Frank.”

He seemed surprised to see her. “Uh, hello, Miss Molly. Is, uh, Dr West here?”

Molly wondered yet again why everyone insisted on calling her by her first name when Herbert was still known as Dr West. “He’s a bit busy at the moment. Is there something I can help you with?”

He opened and closed his mouth a few times, then sharply nodded his head as if he’d come to a decision of some sort. “You gotta come help, there’s been a-an accident.”

She immediately straightened from where she’d been leaning against the door frame. “What happened?”

“At the pub, there was . . . He fell in the basement. Banged his head up pretty bad. There’s a lot of blood, ma’am. I don’t know if he’ll make it.”

It was a widely known but unspoken secret that certain men from the village liked to gather in the basement of the pub and pummel themselves silly on a semi-regular basis. She didn’t believe the injured man had fallen on his own, not for a minute.

Molly hurried to the cellar door and called down to Herbert, “I need to head out, someone’s hurt. I don’t have my bag with me, where’s yours?”

Herbert stomped up the stairs, visibly irritated at the interruption and the loss of his assistant. “In the hall closet. What do you mean, someone’s hurt?”

She quietly filled him in as she pulled Herbert’s medical bag from the shelf in the closet, including her suspicions that the injury was boxing related. “Frank thinks he might not live.”

“Interesting. I suppose we’ll be the judge of that, won’t we?” Herbert took the bag from Molly’s hands and gestured for her to precede him out the front door. “Tell me, Frank. Who is it who . . . fell?”

Frank led the way toward the cars parked in the short gravel drive. “You wouldn’t know him, just a bloke who’s been hanging around the village, looking for work the last few weeks. You’ve probably never even seen him. Geoff bought him a few drinks, to be friendly. You know.”

So drunk and clumsy was going to be the story the boys at the pub were going to tell, Molly thought as she settled into the front seat next to Herbert. They followed Frank’s car into the village, although Herbert drove around to the alley behind the pub and parked there.

Frank had been right. By the time they arrived, the drifter had stopped breathing; which was probably for the best as she could see brain matter through the fractured skull. “This wasn’t just a fall,” she whispered to Herbert as they examined the massive body of a man who was clearly used to hard manual labour.

He grunted in reply, then stood up and wiped his hands against his shirt, leaving a smear of blood against the white material. “Frank, a word, if you please.”

She watched the two men move to a corner of the room. The handful of other village men stood to the side, whispering to themselves. Probably making sure they had their stories straight, she thought.

Minutes later, Herbert returned to her side and Frank crossed the room to speak with his friends. Some of them gave her and Herbert a look, then the entire lot of them hurried up the stairs.

“What’s going on?”

“They’re going to their respective homes to pretend that none of this happened, and I have agreed that we will deal with our friend here out of the goodness of our hearts and to protect the reputations of several of those fine gentlemen.” Herbert looked around and found a tarp, which he quickly laid down next to the body. “Help me roll him on to this.”

“I’m sorry, we’re what?” Molly questioned, even as she did as he’d asked and tried to help push the heavy body onto the tarp.

“We’re taking him back to the house. If you remember, I was just lamenting the lack of human specimens to test our new serum on. Ask and you shall receive.”

It took considerable effort to haul the dead weight up the stairs into the kitchen and out the back door of the pub. Molly spent the entire drive back to Herbert’s house praying that they weren’t pulled over for a traffic stop, and that no one would ask to look in the trunk.

By the time they dragged the corpse into the house (literally dragged, because Molly was surprisingly strong for her size but the drifter had outweighed her by more than seven stone), they were both tired. Rather than risk injuring themselves trying to get their burden down to the cellar, Herbert brought the absolutely necessary equipment up to the kitchen front hall where they had dumped the tarp wrapped drifter.

“Shouldn’t we tie him up or something?” Molly worried her lower lip as she stared at the large body splayed out on the floor. She still remembered Halsey and the damage he’d done before he’d been caught and contained.

“The rats were docile enough, I don’t think that’s necess-“ Herbert slowly stopped talking as Molly narrowed her eyes and glared. “I’ve got some rope in the shed.”

Unfortunately, the serum didn’t work. They waited nearly thirty minutes, used six vials of the glowing liquid, chest compressions, everything they could think of . . . and nothing.

In all honesty, Molly was relieved that the experiment had been a failure. The work they’d been doing in the cellar could someday save lives. How many people died waiting on a transplant list every year?

But that, the corpse currently bound in rope and anchored to the radiator in Herbert’s sitting room . . . That had the potential to become dangerous in the blink of an eye.

They’d worked hard to modify the serum’s formula. None of the rodent body parts they’d managed to reanimate had shown any signs of aggression, not even the severed head. She’d let their small successes and Herbert’s enthusiasm override her cautious nature. Thank God no one had been forced to pay the price for their hubris this time.

Herbert sat back on his heels and grimaced. “What is it? What variables are we overlooking?”

“Herbert.”

He tapped his fingers against the drifter’s still chest and continued to think out loud. “How long would you say he was dead? Those buffoons had to stand around until one of them had the bright idea to summon a doctor. Five minutes lost there, if I’m being generous.”

“Herbert.”

“Another thirty for Frank to get in his car and drive here, he wouldn’t have sped because he didn’t want the constable to have any reason to pull him over. Twenty-five for us to get to the pub. Then another-“

“Herbert!” Molly nearly shouted. “Stop.”

“But don’t you see? It’s the decomposition. He’s been dead three, possibly four hours before we began.” He hopped up and gesticulated wildly. “The rats were all fresh, still warm when we dismembered them. No chance for decomp to set in before we injected the serum.”

Molly used an end table to slowly pull herself up. Her muscles ached from hauling so much dead weight around. “We can’t keep doing this.”

He frowned, looking at her as if he didn’t even recognize her, and then his expression cleared and he nodded. “You’re right. We’ve been coming at this from the wrong direction.”

That hadn’t been what she’d meant at all, but she was tired and they still had to figure out what to do with the dead man. “Do I even want to know what you’re talking about?”

“We have to stop the deterioration of the brain matter. I’m almost positive that is what has been causing the regression to primitive instincts.”

“And violent,” Molly felt the need to remind him.

He waved her off. “The important thing is that the serum works.“

“We don’t really know that,” Molly quickly interjected.

Herbert ignored her. “Clearly, the next step is to find a way to slow down, or even stop, decomposition.”

That seemed like a bit of a leap, but if it meant no more cannibalistic half-zombies then Molly was all for it. “In the meantime, what do we do with him?” She nodded toward the body.

After a moment’s thought, Herbert gestured toward the tarp they’d abandoned when they first tied the drifter’s corpse up. “I’ll wrap him up, you get the shovel out of the shed.”

இڿڰۣ-ڰۣ—

“Considering what you told me earlier, that could have gone much worse,” Sherlock offered.

“Oh, no. We’re not done.” Molly rubbed at her forehead. “Not even close.”

“Damn.” Sherlock stood up from the floor and took her hand. “Let’s move to the sofa than. I’m tired of kneeling.”

Once they were settled on the small loveseat, he put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close enough that she could tuck her head under his chin. He thought it might be easier for her to talk if she didn’t have to look him in the eye.

“Herbert dug a shallow grave behind one of the mausoleums. Half the village still treated the cemetery as if it were haunted so there wasn’t much chance that anyone would be wandering around the place and stumble across it.” She took a deep breath and reached for his free hand, tucking her fingers between his. “For two days everything was fine. And then the Meynard boy went missing.”

“Fuck,” Sherlock whispered under his breath. He felt her tense, and held her hand even tighter to show her that he wasn’t going to run off. “Did . . . Did they find him?”

“Yeah.” Molly’s voice broke. She had to take a minute to compose herself. “In the meantime, his mother couldn’t handle the stress and worry. Sherry had always been high strung and delicate. Bad heart. She collapsed in a fit of hysteria, and Herbert happened to be the doctor on call that day. He went out to their house, thinking that he’d be able to sedate her a bit, calm her down. Maybe convince Ralph to drive her into the city so she could be admitted to hospital. She had a heart attack while arguing with them both that she wasn’t leaving until they found her little boy. Herbert couldn’t save her.”

She tilted her head up. He could feel the brush of her eyelashes against his jaw as she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Ralph tried to beat the crap out of him, said Herbert didn’t try hard enough. Pretty sure the only thing that saved Herbert was the constable coming by to check in with a progress report on the search.”

She sniffled, and Sherlock knew that whatever was coming was going to be bad. Very bad.

“Gossip being what it is in a small community, I headed out to Herbert’s that evening. I wanted to make sure he was okay. He answered the door with a revolver in his hand. I have no idea how he managed to get his hands on one, or how long he’d had it. He said he had thought I was Ralph, come to finish the job. I’d barely been there twenty minutes when someone started pounding on the kitchen door, hard enough to make it shake.”

Even though he knew the answer already, he still asked, “Ralph?”

Molly made a noise that was a cross between a choke and a sob. “I wish. Herbert ripped open the door, revolver pointed at his visitor. It was the drifter, hunched over low enough that his knuckles almost scraped against the broken concrete step outside the door. I remember thinking he looked like a gorilla. And then I realized that was because he was covered in dirt and grave moss and-and viscera. He had, hanging out of his mouth he had-“

Sherlock rubbed his cheek against the top of her head. “Shh, it’s okay. You don’t have to say it.”

He felt her nod. “Thank you. Herbert emptied his revolver into it. All six bullets. One right in the forehead.”

“How did he explain any of it? Surely the others had to have said something. The men in the pub?”

“When Frank asked, Herbert told him there were cases of people being clinically dead and then waking up on the autopsy table. The drifter must not have been truly dead when he buried him. And when he woke up and dug himself out, the extensive brain damage from the ‘fall’ must have made him go berserk. Frank backed off once Herbert mentioned the incident in the pub.”

Molly sighed and sniffled again. “Ralph laid his wife and son to rest on the same day. There wasn’t really a need for the second casket, but they buried one anyway.”

#sherlolly halloween at 221b

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bigyack-com · 5 years ago

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Kanye, Out West - The New York Times

CODY, Wyo. — It’s surprising that a global celebrity who frequently self-identifies as the greatest artist living or dead has become an everyday presence in a tightly connected town of about 10,000 people. It’s more surprising just how much the town’s leaders want him to stay.There Kanye West is at the McDonald’s, the Best Western and the Boot Barn. He hangs out at the Cody Steakhouse on the main drag, where he met one of his intern videographers, a student at Cody High School. His ranch is close to town, and to get where he needs to go, Kanye drives around town in a fleet of blacked-out Ford Raptors, the exact number of which is a topic of local speculation. Gina Mummery, the saleswoman at the Fremont Motor Company dealership, would only say that she sold him between two and six.Kanye started taking trips to Wyoming regularly in 2017, shortly after he was hospitalized for what was characterized on a dispatch call as a “psychiatric emergency.” He spent lots of time making music in the state in 2018, holding an incredible listening party for his album “Ye” in late May in Jackson, a town famous for its skiing, fishing and ultrawealthy residents.And then, in September, The Cody Enterprise reported that he’d bought a property called Monster Lake Ranch, about eight miles outside Cody, which is a five-hour drive northeast from Jackson. Suddenly, he and his family, including his spouse, Kim Kardashian West, who is an entrepreneur, television star and law school student, were there: zooming around on four-wheelers, crashing wedding preparations and shopping for clothing and jewelry on the town’s main street, Sheridan Avenue.Since then, Kanye has recorded portions of his ninth studio album, “Jesus Is King,” in Cody. He purchased about 11 acres of commercial property within the town’s limits. He also purchased a second ranch about an hour away in the town of Greybull.He has moved members of the Yeezy team into the area. In plans submitted to the city, he has detailed his intention to establish a prototype lab for the brand, in a warehouse on Road 2AB.And he has been characteristically forthcoming about his long-term intentions. He has talked about going from “seed to sew” in Cody — that means farming the raw material and doing the manufacturing all in one place. He’s said he hopes the town will be for him what Dayton, Ohio was for the Wright brothers.But in the past several years, Kanye has announced so many plans. That he wants to start a church. That he plans to run for president in 2024. That he will invent a method for autocorrecting emoticons. That he aims to redesign the standard American home. That he might legally change his name to “Christian Genius Billionaire Kanye West” for a year.It can be hard, with Kanye West, to separate concrete plans from jokes, fancies or outlandish aspirations. For now, the people of Cody have to wait and see what develops.

Enter the Sage Grouse

Even if it were just a place to relax, Cody is a cheaper escape than places like Jackson. “He’s doing things up there that would have taken another zero to do down here,” said Matt Faupel, a Jackson Hole real estate broker.The snowcapped forests and mountains northwest of Cody do attract plenty of people with money. Those with luxury ranches near town include Bill Gates and Herbert Allen, the financier best known for throwing a highly exclusive summer conference for the wealthy in Sun Valley, Idaho. Warren Buffett is also a frequent visitor.Unlike Kanye, these men often slip in and out of the area unseen, leaving residents at a remove. “I’ve lived here all my life. I haven’t seen them,” said Dick Nelson, the 79-year-old chairman of the board of a local bank.Still, some of Cody’s more prominent residents — including those who claim lineage of the town’s founder, Buffalo Bill Cody — haven’t met Kanye, yet. The people who serve food and drink and sell cars and Sherp all-terrain vehicles have.Tyler Stonehouse, a salesman at Whitlock Motors and sometime employee of the Cody steakhouse, said that “there’s not an easier guy to talk to.”Mr. Stonehouse, 30, is in recovery from drugs and alcohol. “Kanye is all about that,” he said. “I told him my whole story and he told me about his.”Of course, there are surreal moments when chatting with a global superstar.“Just in a casual conversation, he’s like, ‘Hey, this is my buddy, Rick, you know, and I started talking to this guy and making jokes because that’s my dad’s name,” Mr. Stonehouse said. “And turns out it’s Rick Rubin.”The Cody Enterprise, which publishes in print twice a week, has refrained from printing local gossip about Kanye, even though its building sits several lots down from the celebrity’s commercial property on Big Horn Avenue.But where the paper’s reporters have been circumspect, its columnists, letter-writers and commenters have flooded the Enterprise with their takes on the Kardashian-Wests. The conversation was kicked off by Doug Blough, a regular columnist for the paper, who worried that the celebrity couple would clog the town with “paparazzi, movie stars, directors and Victoria Secret runway models.”“I’m sure you’re heard the hubbub and hoopla going around our little town this week,” he wrote in September. “If not, here’s a couple hints: He’s a famous, self-absorbed rapper who thinks homeboy Donald Trump is the cat’s meow, and she’s got a keester that knocks cans off grocery store shelves.”The condemnation was swift. One letter-writer chastised the paper for allowing Mr. Blough to “make fun of a new family in our community,” saying she wanted her 75 cents back.“We do not know the hearts of famous people or non-famous people moving to our town,” she wrote. “People who move here, do so because they are attracted to this way of life that we all hold dear. Mutual love for freedom, tolerance, nature and wide open spaces, draw us to Wyoming and keep us here.”In December, The Cody Enterprise reported that construction of a meditation center on Kanye’s ranch was thwarted by birds. The structure, proposed to be a 70,000-square-foot concrete amphitheater, was complicated by a statewide order to protect a threatened species called the sage grouse, a grass dweller with the stature of a chicken and the strut of a peacock.“I felt like it was distasteful,” Rand Cole, who helps to manage the local cemeteries and works part time as a personal trainer, said of the sage grouse coverage. “Because he’s famous they put it in the paper. Had that been someone like me, that’s not going to be in the newspaper.”It wasn’t the first time Kanye had run afoul of the Wyoming Game and Fish Department. In one of the earliest video clips the West family filmed in the area, Kanye and Kim can be seen in what looks to be a four-by-four, driving briefly behind and then alongside a flock of antelope, known as pronghorns.The video attracted the attention of the authorities, and a Wyoming Game and Fish law enforcement officer paid a visit to the ranch, which has been renamed West Lake Ranch. Sara DiRienzo, a spokeswoman for the agency, said that the officer delivered an official warning — chasing pronghorns is a form of wildlife harassment — but no citation.“He was not doing anything different than everybody local probably does at some time or another, internationally or not,” said Rebecca West, who is no relation and is a director and curator at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, where Kanye held a surprise Sunday Service, one of his gospel concerts that were held throughout 2019.“It just happens,” she said of the accidental pronghorn harassment. “It’s part of the learning experience. You see a group and they’re running. Just stop and let them do their thing.”

The Business Development Business

For the town’s leaders, incidents like those with Wyoming Game and Fish cause concern. They worry that dealing with sage grouse-related-regulation — and other such headaches — may dampen Kanye’s enthusiasm for the town.“It’s a little nerve-racking,” Mayor Matt Hall said, sitting next to the framed portrait of a sage grouse that hangs in his office. “When he does run into those things, I’m at least there. He’s called me on at least one occasion to try and help work it out.”Mr. Hall’s desire to keep Kanye happy has much to do with the economy of Wyoming, which is at a crossroads.Cody is near Yellowstone National Park, and so its biggest industry is tourism. On summer weekends, its population can grow by about 50 percent, with visitors stopping in to see the rodeo and the nightly recreations of Old West gunfights before heading west to the park.Still, Cody’s economy has long been yoked to the oil and gas industry (a little more than half of the state’s annual revenue comes from natural resources, including oil, gas and coal). Once-major employers, including Marathon Oil, have moved out of the Cody area in the past decade, leaving hundreds of employees scrambling for work.“There is an employment deficit that we deal with in this community,” said Hunter Old Elk, 25, who works full-time at the Buffalo Bill Center. “You have many people who work several part time jobs.”James Klessens, the head of an organization called Forward Cody, hopes to expand manufacturing in the area. Mr. Klessens and Kanye have spoken about transforming Cody into an old-school company town with a Yeezy-powered economy, but said he didn’t know anything further than what Kanye had made public.“I’m in the business development business so when I deal with a business about their business it is just that: their business,” Mr. Klessens said.Mr. Klessens spent more than a decade trying to bring pharmaceutical industry to Cody. In 2007, a local opioid-maker, Cody Labs, was acquired by the Philadelphia-based conglomerate Lannett.“It was an awesome economic development project for a rural community. We went all in with this project,” Mr. Klessens said.But as the opioid crisis deepened; the prices of Lannett’s drugs rose sharply. The company attracted scrutiny from the press and lawmakers. Multiple investigations were launched. The company faced lawsuits, including at least one accusing it of price-fixing. In June, it announced that it was shutting down Cody Labs.“Economic development is a marathon, not a sprint,” Mr. Klessens said. “That’s why when things fall apart, it’s such a blow.”Two months later, he received a phone call from a New York number that he didn’t recognize. The person on the other line asked him if he had a moment to speak to Kanye West.

Fame, Then and Now

Cody was brought into being by Buffalo Bill Cody, another bombastic showman who was, in the second half of the nineteenth century, the biggest celebrity in the world. More famous in his time than Theodore Roosevelt and better-traveled than The Grateful Dead in ours, Buffalo Bill basically invented the fantasy of the American West through his touring Wild West Show.Founding a town in Wyoming was just one of Buffalo Bill’s many late-life enterprises. It has proved, in some ways, to be his most concrete legacy.Cody was incorporated in 1901, becoming “the new center of William Cody’s continuing, almost manic entrepreneurialism,” the historian Louis S. Warren wrote in his 2005 book “Buffalo Bill’s America.”Buffalo Bill advertised Cody in a Wild West show program, promising air that was “so pure, so sweet and so bracing” that it would act as an intoxicant to city-clogged lungs. In reality, the settlement was plopped down in the arid Big Horn Basin where the wind rarely stops blowing and there was once so much sulfur in the river that it was known as Stinking Water.The town wasn’t even properly irrigated. By 1910, Mr. Warren wrote, “Cody and his partners had been sued at least twenty-six times.”Buffalo Bill, under pressure, ceded the right to develop the town to the U.S. Reclamation Service.He died in 1917 but Buffalo Bill’s spirit is alive in Cody. A half dozen people who say they are his descendants live here, including Bill Garlow, who owns the Best Western Sunset and the Best Western Ivy, an occasional hangout for Kanye and his employees.Were Kanye interested in doing so, he could single-handedly transform Cody, said Robert W. Godby, a professor at the University of Wyoming and the deputy director for the school’s Center for Energy and Regulatory Policy. “It’s a small community, so it doesn’t take a lot to turn the boat,” Mr. Godby said. “One person can make a difference.”Mr. Hall, the mayor, is expecting at least some modest tourism growth. Of Kanye’s presence, he said, “I’m kind of at least hoping that it can bear a little bit of fruit for the town overall.”That idea is a worst-case scenario to others.In January, The Cody Enterprise printed a letter from a writer who expressed his disappointment that Kanye and Kim West were “starting to diminish the authenticity of the state” and said he was “heartbroken to see the real Wyoming may no longer be a tourism draw for me and others.”A columnist, Lew Freedman, responded at length: “Saying West’s arrival means Wyoming is no longer worth visiting on vacation is preposterous.” He added: “There is inevitably an undercurrent of racism attached to this too, because West is African-American.”Cody is about 92 percent white; a reporter for Billboard who visited last October spoke to residents who associated Kanye’s presence in town with racist tropes, such as increased crime levels.Ms. Old Elk, who is an indigenous woman of the Crow and Yakama Nations, bristled at any attempt to “typecast Wyoming as a place of intolerance.”“Of course, you’re going to find people that have certain biases,” she said. “You try your best to speak to those people and understand that hate is at the root at a lot of that, hate and ignorance.”“Is there room for more racial equity? Absolutely. Across the board, the state needs more people of color and people of different religions. But you can’t make people move here, you have to create a community that’s inviting of that,” she said. “That’s true of any American town.”

‘The Euphoria of Potential’

For now, the Wests continue to win Cody over. When, in November, Kanye rented out the auditorium of Cody High School to piece together and rehearse his debut opera, “Nebuchadnezzar,” he was “very open to letting kids come in and watch,” said Cody High’s principal, Jeremiah Johnston.One student, Kate Beardall, played with the orchestra when an extra saxophonist was needed. She told a local news station that the experience had been life-changing. “They just really just opened my eyes to what I want to do,” she said of Kanye’s crew.Kanye’s team was spotted cleaning up roadside trash, a win in any community. “We notice those little things,” said Tina Hoebelheinrich, the executive director of the Cody Chamber of Commerce. Actions like these mattered far more to the town than Kanye’s celebrity, she said.Even Doug Blough, the newspaper columnist, announced that he had changed his mind. In a column about his end of year regrets, he listed the “Kanye-Kim column that drew a smattering of boos.” After he published the column, he wrote, the bowling league had given him a “unanimous ‘too mean; not funny’ thumbs-down” on his article.More to the point, he wrote: “I’m actually becoming a Kanye fan and watched Kim on a talk show to see if she’d talk about Wyoming. Indeed she did.”Everyone who hopes that Kanye will bring jobs to town is aware that they’re taking an emotional gamble, especially given how frequently he changes his mind. (A representative of Kanye reached out, he agreed to talk for this story, and then did not.) Mr. Klessens said that those gambles are always part of the business, but that it never gets easier.“You have to really guard against the euphoria of the potential,” he said. “I’ve spent 32 years struggling with that problem. It’s really easy to get excited about good projects.”John Malmberg, the publisher of the Cody Enterprise, said that the town needs any economic stimulus it can get, but that there were plenty other things important to Cody.“Grizzly bears is probably a bigger story here that impacts more people,” Mr. Malmberg said. “They come down and attack people and chew them up. In the park they killed and ate a person. Those are bigger stories than Kanye West.” Read the full article

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limejuicer1862 · 6 years ago

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Wombwell Rainbow Interviews

I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me. I gave the writers two options: an emailed list of questions or a more fluid interview via messenger.

The usual ground is covered about motivation, daily routines and work ethic, but some surprises too. Some of these poets you may know, others may be new to you. I hope you enjoy the experience as much as I do.

John Huey’s

student work of the 60’s-70’s was influenced by teachers in Vermont such as John Irving at Windham College and William Meredith at Bread Loaf. After many years he returned to writing poetry in 2011. He has had poems presented in ‘Poetry Quarterly’ and in the ‘Temptation’ anthology published in London by Lost Tower Publications. Work has also appeared in ‘Leannan Magazine’, ‘Sein und Werden’, at ‘In Between Hangovers’, ‘Bourgeon’, ‘The Lost River Review’, ‘Red Wolf Journal’, ‘Perfume River Poetry Review’, ‘What Rough Beast’, ‘Poydras Review’, ‘Flatbush Review’ and ‘Memoir Mixtapes’. In 2018 he appeared in two further Anthologies, ‘Unbelief’, published by Local Gems Press, and ‘Addiction/Recovery Anthology’, published by Madness Muse Press. His full-length book, ‘The Moscow Poetry File’, was published by Finishing Line Press in November 2017. Full information and Amazon links can be found at www.john-huey.com .

The Interview

When and why did you start writing poetry?

I started writing poetry in late 1964 or there about as a very young American High School student in Suburban Washington, DC, who had, quite fortunately, received some great guidance form an inspired teacher and his wife who pointed me in the direction of Ginsburg and Ferlinghetti who, though not available in the school library or formal course of study, I did find in a local chain bookstore and devoured immediately. Whitman, of course, was more readily available, and he was also an early major influence. Bob Dylan also had a great deal to do with this awakening in another realm and history has shown that I was right in picking him out as a primary and early source of inspiration.

As a kid who “didn’t quit fit” I noticed, that despite a stable home and family environment in 1950’s – early 1960’s “White Bread America”, that something was “off” and missing in that long gone world and I started to wonder why.

As I had already noticed poets who had come before questioning their place in society I felt that writing something on my own might help with my own questions. To both my delight and relief it did and sorting things out on the page through poetry quickly became a regular, then daily, habit of mind.

So would you say it was the inspired teacher and his wife who introduced you to poetry?

It was in the air. The teachers lit the flame but I would have picked it up within a year of that one way or the other. There was only one other real poet kid in my High School and I met him in 1965 and he was into all the beats that you could find in our environment there. Right place, right time.

How aware are and were you of the dominating presence of older poets traditional and contemporary?

Context is everything, a bit later, in college, I came under the influence of visionaries such as Hart Crane who, for a while, totally dominated my writing as the beats and Bob Dylan had done a bit earlier on. The British kicked in with Blake (psychedelic visions thereof) and a college professor friend introduced me to Donne and the other 17th Century influences like Herbert. The Earl of Rochester fascinated me for other reasons but somehow I did manage to stand my own ground with, for better or worse, my own voice though the 19th century romantics such as Keats had their way with me as did Coleridge (more drug influences included there)..

This is a difficult question of course and there are dozens of important influences on me such as Edward Thomas, Dylan Thomas, Yeats, Auden, Plath and later, lesser known voices such as Weldon Keys who played a major role. While still alive, Berryman was looming at the time as was Lowell in their obsessions and brilliant downward spirals.

Every worthwhile poet is, to some degree, responsive to the sum-total of his or her influences but stands up for their own vision in the end.

What is your daily writing routine?

It varies greatly and I wish I had the discipline of some my great old poet friends like Gary Lemons (‘Snake’ series of books that are a must read) who can write every morning.

Much of what I like best takes place past midnight and is written, not without irony, on this handheld device with rough cuts emailed to myself to work on later.

For major projects like my recently completed 60’s-early 70’s book I have have a full vision and a deadline in mind and write to that.

I was stuck on the final section of this book, called ‘The Sunset Fires’, and exiled myself for a week to Putney, VT where a large chunk of the book takes place to “workshop” the final ten poems in a week. That tactic worked in that case but most of the time I write late at night only when so moved and revise in the mornings on the big screen.

What motivates you to write?

Another variable open ended question!

Initially, as a young person, it was a quest for identity combined with a desire to communicate in a unique and visionary way. All high mountaintops and idealization mixed with the ever present emotional upheaval of the young.

By the late 70’s I had burned through this vein and when some personally acquired bad habits, along with an unwise marriage, really kicked in I had an all purpose reason to stop and that’s exactly what I did.

The “bad habits” continued into the 80’s where, after leaving the idealizations surrounding a yet to be fully kindled academic career behind, I somehow figured out how to make money in a totally unrelated career that eventually took me to every corner of the earth.

After taking my last drink in early 1987 I embarked on a second marriage and a family and was just too crazy busy to think of anything else. At least that’s what I told myself at the time when I saw my friends still writing oand publishing.

By 2004 the second marriage was effectively over and an opportunity presented itself to take my then thriving consulting business to Russia where I became a distributor of security screening equipment.

In early 2006 I met, in Moscow, the woman who is my current wife and the intensity and excitement of our life in Russia together became something that literally few people in the West could believe much less understand.

After the inevitable end of my Russian businessi in 2009 we came back to the US where I knew, in my bones, that the Russia “adventure” needed to be chronicled somehow. Though I didn’t fully extract myself from that place until 2013 in 2011 I began writing what became ‘The Moscow Poetry File’ which was my attempt to somehow transfer some of that undefinable and amazing experience into verse. I think I at least partially succeeded on that score.

After the Moscow book I completed two further collections that are still seeking publishers while being fortunate enough to appear in three anthologies as well as numerous magazines both on line and in print.

These books proved to be “event driven” as well and I find that the observable world provides more than enough incentive and stimulus to be both the subject and motivator for poetry.

I’m looking for the essence of both the times and the situations that unfold at this later stage of life and time itself, at age 70, gives me more than enough motivation to “get it down” while and where I can.

5.1. What does “event-driven” and “observable world” mean to you?

In addition to how I address this indirectly in my introduction to ‘The Sunset Fires’ (PDF attached) I am, at root, a determined lifelong atheist and dialectical materialist who only believes what is perceived by the senses in the observable universe. What moves people is both internal and external but all of human history and motivation can be explained by physical/chemical/biological properties as they interact with human populations over time. My favorite Englishman, by many a mile, is Charles Darwin, and I view the world through the lenses developed by Darwin and his fellow geniuses’ of Science and Nature.

But “where is the mystery” you might say? To me there is more than enough “mystery” to go around…. For example, “Where the hell did Trump come from and why is he the embodiment of pure human evil?”, “Why do some people recover from alcoholism and addiction and others die horribly and alone? “, “Why do some find love and lifelong happiness while others, just as capable, end up bereft?”, “Why does randomness determine so many final outcomes in life and are there any external reasons for these effects?”…The list goes on and on, is endless, and would provide countless subjects for Poetry over countless lifetimes.

What is your work ethic?

My “work ethic” goes back to the days of my late mother who, along with many other old time, Protestant American verities, instilled in us the proposition that “when you start something you finish it” which, these days, leads to very few incomplete fragments in the work I attempt now.

The exception to this is when I’m outside my wheelhouse as when I try to write fiction where an idea for a long incomplete novel has been kicking around in fragments for nearly a decade.

Poems however, when started, are always completed as are books.

I wasted enough time when I was on my “hiatus” from writing between 1978 and 2011 to waste any time now.

How do the writers you read when you were young influence you today?

All of the writers who influenced me in my youth still resonate of course but there are several who are still a never ending presence.

Ginsburg, despite the overdone hippie trappings and embellishments, still remains central in his revolution of style and strength of spirit that propelled him forward as the indisputably essential beat poet. His shadow is long and his diction and unrelenting cadence still occupy the background in everything I write.

As a lifelong resident of Washington, DC the ghost of Walt Whitman, in his Civil War years, has been present in the city and in my writing as a beacon of goodness in the midst of the death and dismemberment of the hospitals he visited daily during those times. A visionary artist can live a visionary life and while I have never been able to achieve such goodness that great, generous spirit shows me the way to a better way always despite the small chance of fully achieving anything approaching that.

Hart Crane was another gay man who suffered terribly when alive without Whitman’s vast resources of compassion and self love.

Through the alcoholic suffering Crane always showed great courage as a writer and his transcendent lyrical beauty is something I have always reached for but have never, of course, been able to fully grasp.

The writers I most admire are better than I can ever hope to be and triumph over history and adversity to get to the palace of the “gods” with the only form of immortality available to us. The transmission of exactly where they wanted to be over time and the truth of the message, sometimes at the peril of the messenger, is all that any poet, as he or she ages, could aspire to.

There are many others other than these three of course but it is these voices I hear most clearly down to these days.

Whom of today’s writers do you admire the most and why?

There are people I really respect writing now like John Robinson and Charles Wright but most of what I see in the major journals passes me right by. I’m either too old to “get it” or not “tuned in” to most of what’s out there these days. I guess you will never find me in the audience at a “poetry slam”… Enough said on that. Dylan said, when I was young, “Don’t criticize what you can’t understand.” I really should leave it there before I start a riot or burn someone else’s house down.

My good friends who I know personally and who I have watched develop are a whole other matter and I get a world of good from the work of Gregory Luce who I have known for over 20 years and Gary Lemons who I have known for 50. These poets really encouraged and nurtured me when I returned to writing and their ability to hang in there for the “long haul” is really inspiring as are their books.

A great regret was the premature death, in 2006, of my wonderful friend from my college days in Vermont, and fine poet, Gregory Jerozal. He was never properly published in book form during his life and I’m on a mission, with his wife’s permission, to try to pull a proper book together from his many existing journal publications and old manuscripts I have. I’m being remiss for not completing this project and I hope I’m done before life is finished with me. He was a really fine poet and I miss him greatly. He would be a shining light if alive today.

8.1. Why do you admire these writers?

9. What would you say to someone who asked you “How do you become a writer?”

I don’t think that you “become” a writer at all. It’s something you are. When I was 15 I was a writer and have no recollection of how that happened. It’s just something I had to do after having read some things that moved me. Artists in that sense are born, not made. at least that’s the way I look at it. The idea of writers “schools” has always amused me though I was, myself, greatly encouraged by my undergraduate creative writing teacher, John Irving, who, in terms of poetry, was more of a friend, coach and cheerleader than teacher. Likewise, when I went to Bread Loaf the one on one sessions I had with the fine poet William Meredith were also more of the same coaching and encouragement I had experienced with John. Those fine writers didn’t teach me, they inspired.

I was a writer even in those many years that I wasn’t involved at all and I know that because of the fact that things I have written since my “return” in 2011 have a tenor and a voice that I know was in gestation while I was dormant.

Back in the 90’s one of my friends I met in Secular AA was the late Washington DC cultural luminary and black arts movement poet Gaston Neal. I spent a great deal of time with him the year before his death in 1999 and he looked at me one day and told me “You are a poet, always have been and always will be and I know you will write again.” 12 years later I did.

Tell me about the writing projects you have on at the moment.

In addition to trying to get two further volumes of poetry published and continuing to write individual poems to send around to the journals I have had, as I mentioned earlier in response to one of the questions, a long delayed novel in the works that may prove too daunting to complete any time in the near term. The project in question takes place in a timeline from the late 60’s to the early 90’s and involves hippie thieves based in Vermont, the scene around a long defunct artists bar on Lower Broadway in Manhattan called St Adrian’s, a Washington Post journalist and some unique and disturbing circumstances involving parties known and now departed as well as a purely fictional cast of characters who propel the narrative forward despite their early and premature demise.

I’m not at all happy defining my own limitations but I may have met them here. I’m spending a week with an old poet friend in Vermont this coming May to get close to some primary sources with a person who was there

“When” who may be able to help me in moving this difficult (for me) manuscript off the proverbial dime at last. We shall see.

Wombwell Rainbow Interviews: John Huey Wombwell Rainbow Interviews I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me.

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The Story Behind a Nonfiction NovelJanuary 16, 1966

The Story Behind a Nonfiction Novel

By GEORGE PLIMPTON

n Cold Blood" is remarkable for its objectivity--nowhere, despite his involvement, does the author intrude. In the following interview, done a few weeks ago, Truman Capote presents his own views on the case, its principals, and in particular he discusses the new literary art form which he calls the nonfiction novel...

Why did you select this particular subject matter of murder; had you previously been interested in crime?

Not really, no. During the last years I've learned a good deal about crime, and the origins of the homicidal mentality. Still, it is a layman's knowledge and I don't pretend to anything deeper. The motivating factor in my choice of material--that is, choosing to write a true account of an actual murder case--was altogether literary. The decision was based on a theory I've harbored since I first began to write professionally, which is well over 20 years ago. It seemed to me that journalism, reportage, could be forced to yield a serious new art form: the "nonfiction novel," as I thought of it. Several admirable reporters--Rebecca West for one, and Joseph Mitchell and Lillian Ross--have shown the possibilities of narrative reportage; and Miss Ross, in her brilliant "Picture," achieved at least a nonfiction novella. Still, on the whole, journalism is the most underestimated, the least explored of literary mediums.

Why should that be so?

Because few first-class creative writers have ever bothered with journalism, except as a sideline, "hackwork," something to be done when the creative spirit is lacking, or as a means of making money quickly. Such writers say in effect: Why should we trouble with factual writing when we're able to invent our own stories, contrive our own characters and themes?--journalism is only literary photography, and unbecoming to the serious writer's artistic dignity.

Another deterrent--and not the smallest--is that the reporter, unlike the fantasist, has to deal with actual people who have real names. If they feel maligned, or just contrary, or greedy, they enrich lawyers (though rarely themselves) by instigating libel actions. This last is certainly a factor to consider, a most oppressive and repressive one. Because it's indeed difficult to portray, in any meaningful depth, another being, his appearance, speech, mentality, without to some degree, and often for quite trifling cause, offending him. The truth seems to be that no one likes to see himself described as he is, or cares to see exactly set down what he said and did. Well, even I even can understand that--because I don't like it myself when I am the sitter and not the portraitist; the frailty of egos!--and the more accurate the strokes, the greater the resentment.

When I first formed my theories concerning the nonfiction novel, many people with whom I discussed the matter were unsympathetic. They felt that what I proposed, a narrative form that employed all the techniques of fictional art but was nevertheless immaculately factual, was little more than a literary solution for fatigued novelists suffering from "failure of imagination." Personally, I felt that this attitude represented a "failure of imagination" on their part.

Of course a properly done piece of narrative reporting requires imagination!--and a good deal of special technical equipment that is usually beyond the resources--and I don't doubt the interests-- of most fictional writers: an ability to transcribe verbatim long conversations, and to do so without taking notes or using tape-recordings. Also, it is necessary to have a 20/20 eye for visual detail--in this sense, it is quite true that one must be a "literary photographer," though an exceedingly selective one. But, above all, the reporter must be able to empathize with personalities outside his usual imaginative range, mentalities unlike his own, kinds of people he would never have written about had he not been forced to by encountering them inside the journalistic situation. This last is what first attracted me to the notion of narrative reportage.

It seems to me that most contemporary novelists, especially the Americans and the French, are too subjective, mesmerized by private demons; they're enraptured by their navels, and confined by a view that ends with their own toes. If I were naming names, I'd name myself among others. At any rate, I did at one time feel an artistic need to escape my self-created world. I wanted to exchange it, creatively speaking, for the everyday objective world we all inhabit. Not that I'd never written nonfiction before--I kept journals, and had published a small truthful book of travel impressions: "Local Color." But I had never attempted an ambitious piece of reportage until 1956, when I wrote "The Muses Are Heard," an account of the first theatrical cultural exchange between the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R.--that is, the "Porgy and Bess" tour of Russia. It was published in The New Yorker, the only magazine I know of that encourages the serious practitioners of this art form. Later, I contributed a few other reportorial finger-exercises to the same magazine. Finally, I felt equipped and ready to undertake a full-scale narrative--in other words, a "nonfiction novel."

How does John Hersey's "Hiroshima" or Oscar Lewis's "Children of Sanchez" compare with "the nonfiction novel?"

The Oscar Lewis book is a documentary, a job of editing from tapes, and however skillful and moving, it is not creative writing. "Hiroshima" is creative--in the sense that Hersey isn't taking something off a tape recorder and editing it--but it still hasn't got anything to do with what I'm talking about. "Hiroshima" is a strict classical journalistic piece. What is closer is what Lillian Ross did with "Picture." Or my own book, "The Muses Are Heard"--which uses the techniques of the comic short novel.

It was natural that I should progress from that experiment, and get myself in much deeper water. I read in the paper the other day that I had been quoted as saying that reporting is now more interesting than fiction. Now that's not what I said, and it's important to me to get this straight. What I think is that reporting can be made as interesting as fiction, and done as artistically--underlining those two "as" es. I don't mean to say that one is a superior form to the other. I feel that creative reportage has been neglected and has great relevance to 20th-century writing. And while it can be an artistic outlet for the creative writer, it has never been particularly explored.

What is your opinion of the so-called New Journalism--as it is practiced particularly at The Herald Tribune?

If you mean James Breslin and Tom Wolfe, and that crowd, they have nothing to do with creative journalism--in the sense that I use the term--because neither of them, nor any of that school of reporting, have the proper fictional technical equipment. It's useless for a writer whose talent is essentially journalistic to attempt creative reportage, because it simply won't work. A writer like Rebecca West--always a good reporter--has never really used the form of creative reportage because the form, by necessity, demands that the writer be completely in control of fictional techniques--which means that, to be a good creative reporter, you have to be a very good fiction writer.

Would it be fair to say, then, since many reporters use nonfiction techniques--Meyer Levin in "Compulsion," Walter Lord in "A Night to Remember," and so forth--that the nonfiction novel can be defined by the degree of the fiction skills involved, and theextentof the author's absorption with his subject?

"Compulsion" is a fictional novel suggested by fact, but no way bound to it. I never read the other book. The nonfiction novel should not be confused with the documentary novel--a popular and interesting but impure genre, which allows all the latitude of the fiction writer, but usually contains neither the persuasiveness of fact nor the poetic attitude fiction is capable of reaching. The author lets his imagination run riot over the facts! If I sound querulous or arrogant about this, it's not only that I have to protect my child, but that I truly don't believe anything like it exists in the history of journalism.

What is the first step in producing a "nonfiction novel?"

The difficulty was to choose a promising subject. If you intend to spend three or four or five years with a book, as I planned to do, then you want to be reasonably certain that the material not soon "date." The content of much journalism so swiftly does, which is another of the medium's deterrents. A number of ideas occurred, but one after the other, and for one reason or another, each was eventually discarded, often after I'd done considerable preliminary work. Then one morning in November, 1959, while flicking through The New York Times, I encountered on a deep-inside page, this headline: Wealthy Farmer, 3 of Family Slain.

The story was brief, just several paragraphs stating the facts: A Mr. Herbert W. Clutter, who had served on the Farm Credit Board during the Eisenhower Administration, his wife and two teen-aged children, had been brutally, entirely mysteriously, murdered on a lonely wheat and cattle ranch in a remote part of Kansas. There was nothing really exceptional about it; one reads items concerning multiple murders many times in the course of a year.

Then why did you decide it was the subject you had been looking for?

I didn't. Not immediately. But after reading the story it suddenly struck me that a crime, the study of one such, might provide the broad scope I needed to write the kind of book I wanted to write. Moreover, the human heart being what it is, murder was a theme not likely to darken and yellow with time.

I thought about it all that November day, and part of the next; and then I said to myself: Well, why not this crime? The Clutter case. Why not pack up and go to Kansas and see what happens? Of course it was rather frightening thought--to arrive alone in a small, strange town, a town in the grip of an unsolved mass murder. Still, the circumstances of the place being altogether unfamiliar, geographically and atmospherically, made it that much more tempting. Everything would seem freshly minted--the people, their accents and attitudes, the landscape, its contours, the weather. All this, it seemed to me, could only sharpen my eye and quicken my ear.

In the end, I did not go alone. I went with a lifelong friend, Harper Lee. She is a gifted woman, courageous, and with a warmth that instantly kindles most people, however suspicious or dour. She had recently completed a first novel ("To Kill a Mockingbird"), and, feeling at loose ends, she said she would accompany me in the role of assistant researchist.

We traveled by train to St. Louis, changed trains and went to Manhattan, Kan., where we got off to consult Dr. James McClain, president of Mr. Clutter's alma mater, Kansas State University. Dr. McClain, a gracious man, seemed a little nonplussed by our interest in the case; but he gave us letters of introduction to several people in western Kansas. We rented a car and drove some 400 miles to Garden City. It was twilight when we arrived. I remember the car-radio was playing, and we heard: "Police authorities, continuing their investigation of the tragic Clutter slayings, have requested that anyone with pertinent information please contact the Sheriff's office. . . ."

If I had realized then what the future held, I never would have stopped in Garden City. I would have driven straight on. Like a bat out of hell.

What was Harper Lee's contribution to your work?

She kept me company when I was based out there. I suppose she was with me about two months altogether. She went on a number of interviews; she typed her own notes, and I had these and could refer to them. She was extremely helpful in the beginning, when we weren't making much headway with the towns people, by making friends with the wives of the people I wanted to meet. She became friendly with all the churchgoers. A Kansas paper said the other day that everyone out there was so wonderfully cooperative because I was a famous writer. The fact of the matter is that not one single person in the town had ever heard of me.

How long did it take for the town to thaw out enough so that you were accepted and you could get to your interviewing?

About a month. I think they finally just realized that we were there to stay--they'd have to make the best of it. Under the circumstances, they were suspicious. After all, there was an unsolved murder case, and the people in the town were tired of the thing, and frightened. But then after it all quieted down--after Perry and Dick were arrested--that was when we did most of the original interviews. Some of them went on for three years--though not on the same subject, of course. I suppose if I used just 20 percent of all the material I put together over those years of interviewing, I'd still have a book two thousand pages long!

How much research did you do other than through interviews with the principals in the case?

Oh, a great deal. I did months of comparative research on murder, murderers, the criminal mentality, and I interviewed quite a number of murderers--solely to give me a perspective on these two boys. And then crime. I didn't know anything about crime or criminals when I began to do the book. I certainly do now! I'd say 80 percent of the research I did I have never used. But it gave me such a grounding that I never had any hesitation in my consideration of the subject.

What was the most singular interview you conducted?

I suppose the most startled interviewee was Mr. Bell, the meat-packing executive from Omaha. He was the man who picked up Perry and Dick when they were hitchhiking across Nebraska. They planned to murder him and then make off with his car. Quite unaware of all this, Bell was saved, as you'll remember, just as Perry was going to smash in his head from the seat behind, because he slowed down to pick up another hitchhiker, a Negro. The boys told me this story, and they had this man's business card. I decided to interview him. I wrote him a letter, but got no answer. Then I wrote a letter to the personnel manager of the meat-packing company in Omaha, asking if they had a Mr. Bell in their employ. I told them I wanted to talk to him about a pair of hitchhikers he'd picked up four months previously. The manager wrote back and said they did have a Mr. Bell on their staff, but it was surely the wrong Mr. Bell, since it was against company policy for employees to take hitchhikers in their cars. So I telephoned Mr. Bell and when he got on the phone he was very brusque; he said I didn't know what I was talking about.

The only thing to do was to go to Omaha personally. I went up there and walked in on Mr. Bell and put two photographs down on his desk. I asked him if he recognized the two men. He said, why? So I told him that the two were the hitchhikers he said he had never given a ride to, that they had planned to kill him and then bury him in the prairie--and how close they'd come to it. Well, he turned every conceivable kind of color. You can imagine. He recognized them all right. He was quite cooperative about telling me about the trip, but he asked me not to use his real name. There are only three people in the book whose names I've changed--his, the convict Perry admired so much (Willie-Jay he's called in the book), and also I changed Perry Smith's sister's name.

How long after you went to Kansas did you sense the form of the book? Were there many false starts?

I worked for a year on the notes before I ever wrote one line. And when I wrote the first word, I had done the entire book in outline, down to the finest detail. Except for the last part, the final dispensation of the case--that was an evolving case--that was an evolving matter. It began, of course, with interviews--with all the different characters of the book. Let me give you two examples of how I worked from these interviews. In the first part of the book--the part that's called "The Last to See Them Alive"--there's a long narration, word for word, given by the school teacher who went with the sheriff to the Clutter house and found the four bodies. Well, I simply set that into the book as a straight complete interview--though it was, in fact, done several times: each time there'd be some little thing which I'd add or change. But I hardly interfered at all. A slight editing job. The school teacher tells the whole story himself--exactly what happened from the moment they got to the house, and what they found there.

On the other hand, in that same first part, there's a scene between the postmistress and her mother when the mother reports that the ambulances have gone to the Clutter house. That's a straight dramatic scene--with quotes, dialogue, action, everything. But it evolved out of interviews just like the one with the school teacher. Except in this case I took what they had told me and transposed it into straight narrative terms. Of course, elsewhere in the book, very often it's direct observation, events I saw myself--the trial, the executions.

You never used a tape-recorder?

Twelve years ago I began to train myself, for the purpose of this sort of book, to transcribe conversation without using a tape-recorder. I did it by having a friend read passages from a book, and then later I'd write them down to see how close I could come to the original. I had a natural facility for it, but after doing these exercises for a year and a half, for a couple of hours a day, I could get within 95 percent of absolute accuracy, which is as close as you need. I felt it was essential. Even note-taking artificializes the atmosphere of an interview, or a scene-in- progress; it interferes with the communication between author and subject--the latter is usually self-conscious or an untrusting wariness is induced. Certainly, a tape-recorder does so. Not long ago, a French literary critic turned up with a tape-recorder. I don't like them, as I say, but I agreed to its use. In the middle of the interview it broke down. The French literary critic was desperately unhappy. He didn't know what to do. I said, "Well, let's just go on as if nothing had happened." He said, "It's not the same. I'm not accustomed to listen to what you're saying."

You've kept yourself out of the book entirely. Why was that--considering your own involvement in the case?

My feeling is that for the nonfiction-novel form to be entirely successful, the author should not appear in the work. Ideally. Once the narrator does appear, he has to appear throughout, all the way down the line, and the I-I-I intrudes when it really shouldn't. I think the single most difficult thing in my book, technically, was to write it without ever appearing myself, and yet, at the same time, create total credibility.

Being removed from the book, that is to say, keeping yourself out of it, do you find it difficult to present your own point of view? For example, your own view as to why Perry Smith committed the murders.

Of course it's by the selection of what you choose to tell. I believe Perry did what he did for the reasons he himself states--that his life was a constant accumulation of disillusionments and reverses and he suddenly found himself (in the Clutter house that night) in a psychological cul-de- sac. The Clutters were such a perfect set of symbols for every frustration in his life. As Perry himself said, "I didn't have anything against them, and they never did anything wrong to me--the way other people have all my life. Maybe they're just the ones who had to pay for it." Now in that particular section where Perry talks about the reason for the murders, I could have included other views. Perry's happens to be the one I believe is the right one, and it's the one that Dr. Satten at the Menninger Clinic arrived at quite independently, never having done any interviews with Perry.

I could have added a lot of other opinions. But that would have confused the issue, and indeed the book. I had to make up my mind and move toward that one view, always. You can say that the reportage is incomplete. But then it has to be. It's a question of selection, you wouldn't get anywhere if it wasn't for that. I've often thought of the book as being like something reduced to a seed. Instead of presenting the reader with a full plant, with all the foliage, a seed is planted in the soil of his mind. I've often thought of the book in that sense. I make my own comment by what I choose to tell and how I choose to tell it. It is true that an author is more in control of fictional characters because he do anything he wants with them as long as they stay credible. But in the nonfiction novel one can also manipulate: If I put something in which I don't agree about I can always set it in a context of qualification without having to step into the story myself to set the reader straight.

When did you first see the murderers--Perry and Dick?

The first time I ever saw them was the day they were returned to Garden City. I had been waiting in the crowd in the square for nearly five hours, frozen to death. That was the first time. I tried to interview them the next day--both completely unsuccessful interviews. I saw Perry first, but he was so cornered and suspicious--and quite rightly so--and paranoid that he couldn't have been less communicative. It was always easier with Dick. He was like someone you meet on a train, immensely garrulous, who starts up a conversation and is only too obliged to tell you everything. Perry much easier after the third or fourth month, but it wasn't until the last five years of his life that he was totally and absolutely honest with me, and came to trust me. I came to have great rapport with him right up through his last day. For the first year and a half, though, he would come just so close, and then no closer. He'd retreat into the forest and leave me standing outside. I'd hear him laugh in the dark. Then gradually he would come back. In the end, he could not have been more complete and candid.

How did the two accept being used as subjects for a book?

They had no idea what I was going to do. Well, of course, at the end they did. Perry was always asking me: Why are you writing this book? What is it supposed to mean? I don't understand why you're doing it. Tell me in one sentence why you want to do it. So I would say that it didn't have anything to do with changing the readers' opinion about anything, nor did I have any moral reasons worthy of calling them such--it was just that I had a strictly aesthetic theory about creating a book which could result in a work of art.

"That's really the truth, Perry," I'd tell him, and Perry would say, "A work of art, a work of art," and then he'd laugh and say, "What an irony, what an irony." I'd ask what he meant, and he'd tell me that all he ever wanted to do in his life was to produce a work of art. "That's all I ever wanted in my whole life," he said. "And now, what was happened? An incredible situation where I kill four people, and you're going to produce a work of art." Well, I'd have to agree with him. It was a pretty ironic situation.

Did you ever show sections of the book to witnesses as you went along?

I have done it, but I don't believe in it. It's a mistake because it's almost impossible to write about anybody objectively and have that person really like it. People simply do not like to see themselves put down on paper. They're like somebody who goes to see his portrait in a gallery. He doesn't like it unless it's overwhelmingly flattering--I mean the ordinary person, not someone with genuine creative perception. Showing the thing in progress usually frightens the person and there's nothing to be gained by it. I showed various sections to five people in the book, and without exception each of them found something that he desperately wanted to change. Of the whole bunch, I changed my text for one of them because, although it was a silly thing, the person genuinely believed his entire life was going to be ruined if I didn't make the change.

Did Dick and Perry see sections of the book?

They saw some sections of it. Perry wanted terribly much to see the book. I had to let him see it because it just would have been too unkind not to. Each only saw the manuscript in little pieces. Everything mailed to the prison went through the censor. I wasn't about to have my manuscript floating around between those censors--not with those Xerox machines going clickety-clack. So when I went to the prison to visit I would bring parts, some little thing for Perry to read. Perry's greatest objection was the title. He didn't like it because he said the crime wasn't committed in cold blood. I told him the title had a double meaning. What was the other meaning? he wanted to know. Well, that wasn't something I was going to tell him. Dick's reaction to the book was to start switching and changing his story. . .saying what I had written wasn't exactly true. He wasn't trying to flatter himself; he tried to change it to serve his purposes legally, to support the various appeals he was sending through the courts. He wanted the book to read as if it was a legal brief for presentation in his behalf before the Supreme Court. But you see I had a perfect control-agent--I could always tell when Dick or Perry wasn't telling the truth. During the first few months or so of interviewing them, they weren't allowed to speak to each other. So I would keep crossing their stories, and what correlated, what checked out identically, was the truth.

How did the two compare in their recounting of the events?

Dick had an absolutely fantastic memory--one of the greatest memories I have ever come across. The reason I know it's great is that I lived the entire trip the boys went on from the time of the murders up to the moment of their arrest in Las Vegas thousands of miles, what the boys called "the long ride." I went everywhere the boys had gone, all the hotel rooms, every single place in the book. Mexico, Acapulco, all of it. In the hotel in Miami Beach I stayed for three days until the manager realized why I was there and asked me to leave, which I was only too glad to do. Well, Dick could give me the names and addresses of any hotel or place along the route where they'd spent maybe just half a night. He told me when I got to Miami to take a taxi to such-and- such a place and get out on the boardwalk and it would be southwest of there, number 232, and opposite I'd find two umbrellas in the sand which advertised "Tan with Coppertone." That was how exact he was. He was the one who remembered the little card in the Mexico City hotel room in the corner of the mirror that reads "Your day ends at 2 p.m." He was extraordinary. Perry, on the other hand, was very bad at details of that sort, though he was good at remembering conversations and moods. He was concerned altogether in the overtones of things. He was much better at describing a general sort of mood or atmosphere than Dick who, though very sensitive, was impervious to that sort of thing.

What turned them back to the Clutter house after they'd almost decided to give up on the job?

Oh, Dick was always quite frank about that. I mean after it was all over. When they set out for the house that night, Dick was determined, before he ever went that if the girl, Nancy, was there he was going to rape her. It wouldn't have been an act of the moment--he had been thinking about it for weeks. He told me that was one of the main reasons he was so determined to go back after they thought, you know, for a moment, they wouldn't go. Because he'd been thinking about raping this girl for weeks and weeks. He had no idea what she looked like--after all. Floyd Wells, the man in prison who told them about the Clutters hadn't seen the girl in 10 years: it had to do with the fact that she was 15 or 16. He liked young girls much younger than Nancy Clutter actually.

What do you think would have happened if Perry had altered and not begun the killings. Do you think Dick would have done it?

No. There is such a thing as the ability to kill. Perry's particular psychosis had produced this ability. Dick was merely ambitious--he could plan the murder, but not commit it.

What was the boys' reaction to the killing?

They both finally decided that they had thoroughly enjoyed it. Once they started going, it became an immense emotional release. And they thought it was funny. With the criminal mind-- and both boys had criminal minds, believe me--what seems most extreme to us is very often, if it's the most expedient thing to do, the easiest thing for a criminal to do. Perry and Dick both used to say (a memorable phrase) that it was much easier to kill somebody than it was to cash a bad check. Passing a bad check requires a great deal of artistry and style, whereas just going in and killing somebody requires only that you pull a trigger.

There are some instances of this that aren't in the book. At one point, in Mexico, Perry and Dick had a terrific falling-out, and Perry said he was going to kill Dick. He said that he'd already killed five people--he was lying, adding one more than he should have (that was the Negro he kept telling Dick he'd killed years before in Las Vegas) and that one more murder wouldn't matter. It was simple enough. Perry's cliché about it was that if you've killed one person you can kill anybody. He'd look at Dick, as they drove along together, and he'd say to himself, Well, I really ought to kill him, it's a question of expediency.

They had two other murders planned that aren't mentioned in the book. Neither of them came off. One "victim" was a man who ran a restaurant in Mexico City--a Swiss. They had become friendly with him eating in his restaurant and when they were out of money they evolved this whole plan about robbing and murdering him. They went to his apartment in Mexico City and waited for him all night long. He never showed up. The other "victim" was a man they never even knew--like the Clutters. He was a banker in a small Kansas town. Dick kept telling Perry that sure, they might have failed with the Clutter score, but this Kansas banker job was absolutely for certain. They were going to kidnap him and ask for ransom, though the plan was, as you might imagine, to murder him right away.

When they went back to Kansas completely broke, that was the main plot they had in mind. What saved the banker was the ride the two boys took with Mr. Bell, yet another "victim" who was spared, as you remember, when he slowed down the car to pick up the Negro hitchhiker. Mr. Bell offered Dick a job in his meat-packing company. Dick took him up on it and spent two days there on the pickle line--putting pickles in ham sandwiches. I think it was before he and Perry went back on the road again.

Do you think Perry and Dick were surprised by what they were doing when they began the killings?

Perry never meant to kill the Clutters at all. He had a brain explosion. I don't think Dick was surprised, although later oh he pretended he was. He knew, even if Perry didn't, that Perry would do it, and he was right. It showed an awfully shrewd instinct on Dick's part. Perry was bothered by it to a certain extent because he'd actually done it. He was always trying to find out in his own mind why he did it. He was amazed he'd done it. Dick, on the other hand, wasn't amazed, didn't want to talk about it, and simply wanted to forget the whole thing: he wanted to get on with life.

Was there any sexual relationship, or such tendencies, between them?

No. None at all. Dick was aggressively heterosexual and had great success. Women liked him. As for Perry, his love for Willie-Jay in the State Prison was profound--and it was reciprocated, but never consummated physically, though there was the opportunity. The relationship between Perry and Dick was quite another matter. What is misleading, perhaps, is that in comparing himself with Dick, Perry used to say how totally "virile" Dick was. But he was referring, I think, to the practical and pragmatic sides of Dick--admiring them because as a dreamer he had none of that toughness himself at all.

Perry's sexual interests were practically nil. When Dick went to the whorehouses, Perry sat in the cafes, waiting. There was only one occasion--that was their first night in Mexico when the two of them went to a bordello run by an "old queen," according to Dick. Ten dollars was the price--which they weren't about to pay, and they said so. Well, the old queen looked at them and said perhaps he could arrange something for less: he disappeared and came out with this female midget about 3 feet 2 inches tall. Dick was disgusted, but Perry was madly excited. That was the only instance. Perry was such a little moralist after all.

How long do you think the two would have stayed together had they not been picked up in Las Vegas? Was the odd bond that kept them together beginning to fray? One senses in the rashness of their acts and plans a subconscious urge to be captured.

Dick planned to ditch Perry in Las Vegas, and I think he would have done so. No, I certainly don't think this particular pair wanted to be caught--though this is a common criminal phenomenon.

How do you yourself equate the sort of petty punk that Detective Alvin Dewey feels Dick is with the extraordinary violence in him--to "see hair all over the walls"?

Dick's was definitely a small-scale criminal mind. These violent phrases were simply a form of bragging meant to impress Perry, who wasimpressed, for he liked to think of Dick as being "tough." Perry was too sensitive to be "tough." Sensitive. But himself able to kill.

Is it one of the artistic limitations of the nonfiction novel that the writer is placed at the whim of chance? Suppose, in the case of "In Cold Blood," clemency had been granted? Or the two boys had been less interesting? Wouldn't the artistry of the book have suffered? Isn't luck involved?

It is true that I was in the peculiar situation of being involved in a slowly developing situation. I never knew until the events were well along whether a book was going to be possible. There was always the choice, after all, of whether to stop or go on. The book could have ended with the trial, with just a coda at the end explaining what had finally happened. If the principals had been uninteresting or completely uncooperative, I could have stopped and looked elsewhere, perhaps not very far. A nonfiction novel would have been written about any of the other prisoners in Death Row--York and Latham, or especially Lee Andrews. Andrews was the most subtly crazy person you can imagine--I mean there was just one thing wrong with him. He was the most rational, calm, bright young boy you'd ever want to meet. I mean really bright--which is what made him a truly awesome kind of person. Because his one flaw was, it didn't bother him at all to kill. Which is quite a trait. The people who crossed his path, well, to his way of thinking, the best thing to do with them was just to put them in their graves.

What other than murder might be a subject suitable for the nonfiction novel?

The other day someone suggested that the break-up of a marriage would be an interesting topic for a nonfiction novel. I disagreed. First of all, you'd have to find two people who would be willing--who'd sign a release. Second, their respective views on the subject-matter would be incoherent. And third, any couple who'd subject themselves to the scrutiny demanded would quite likely be a pair of kooks. But it's amazing how many events would work with the theory of the nonfiction novel in mind?the Watts riots, for example. They would provide a subject that satisfied the first essential of the nonfiction novel--that there is a timeless quality about the cause and events. That's important. If it's going to date, it can't be a work of art. The requisite would also be that you would have had to live through the riots, at least part of them, as a witness, so that a depth of perception could be acquired. That event, just three days. It would take years to do. You'd start with the family that instigated the riots without even meaning to.

With the nonfiction novel I suppose the temptation to fictionalize events, or a line of dialogue, for example, must at times be overwhelming. With "In Cold Blood" was there any invention of this sort to speak of--I was thinking specifically of the dog you described trotting along the road at the end of the section on Perry and Dick, and then later you introduce the next section on the two with Dick swerving to hit the dog. Was there actually a dog at that exact point in the narrative, or were you using this habit of Dick's as a fiction device to bridge the two sections?

No. There was a dog, and it was precisely as described. One doesn't spend almost six years on a book, the point of which is factual accuracy, and then give way to minor distortions. People are so suspicious. They ask, "How can you reconstruct the conversation of a dead girl, Nancy Clutter, without fictionalizing?" If they read the book carefully, they can see readily enough how it's done. It's a silly question. Each time Nancy appears in the narrative, there are witnesses to what she is saying and doing--phone calls, conversations, being overheard. When she walks the horse up from the river in the twilight, the hired man is a witness and talked to her then. The last time we see her, in her bedroom, Perry and Dick themselves were the witnesses, and told me what she had said. What is reported of her, even in the narrative form, is as accurate as many hours of questioning, over and over again, can make it. All of it is reconstructed from the evidence of witnesses which is implicit in the title of the first section of the book "The Last to See Them Alive."

How conscious were you of film techniques in planning the book?

Consciously, not at all. Subconsciously, who knows?

After their conviction, you spent years corresponding and visiting with the prisoners. What was the relationship between the two of them?

When they were taken to Death Row, they were right next door to each other. But they didn't talk much. Perry was intensely secretive and wouldn't ever talk because he didn't want the other prisoners--York, Latham, and particularly Andrews, whom he despised to hear anything that he had to say. He would write Dick notes on "kites" as he called them. He would reach out his hand and zip the "kite" into Dick's cell. Dick didn't much enjoy receiving these communications because they were always one form or another of recrimination--nothing to do with the Clutter crime, but just general dissatisfaction with things there in prison and. . .the people, very often Dick himself. Perry'd send Dick a note: "If I hear you tell another of those filthy jokes again I'll kill you when we go to the shower!" He was quite a little moralist, Perry, as I've said.

It was over a moral question that he and I had a tremendous falling-out once. It lasted for about two months. I used to send them things to read--both books and magazines. Dick only wanted girlie magazines--either those or magazines that had to do with cars and motors. I sent them both whatever they wanted. Well, Perry said to me one time: "How could a person like you go on contributing to the degeneracy of Dick's mind by sending him all this degenerate filthy literature?" Weren't they all sick enough without this further contribution towards their total moral decay? He'd got very grand talking in terms that way. I tried to explain to him that I was neither his judge nor Dick's--and if this was what Dick wanted to read, that was his business. Perry felt that was entirely wrong--that people had to fulfill an obligation towards moral leadership. Very grand. Well, I agree with him up to a point, but in the case of Dick's reading matter it was absurd, of course, and so we got into such a really serious argument about it that afterwards, for two months, he wouldn't speak or even write to me.

How often did the two correspond with you?

Except for those occasional fallings-out, they'd write twice a week. I wrote them both twice a week all those years. One letter to the both of them didn't work. I had to write them both, and I had to be careful not to be repetitious, because they were very jealous of each other. Or rather, Perry was terribly jealous of Dick, and if Dick got one more letter than he did, that would create a great crisis. I wrote them about what I was doing, and where I was living, describing everything in the most careful detail. Perry was interested in my dog, and I would always write about him, and send along pictures. I often wrote them about their legal problems.

Do you think if the social positions of the two boys had been different that their personalities would have been markedly different?

Of course, there wasn't anything peculiar about Dick's social position. He was a very ordinary boy who simply couldn't sustain any kind of normal relationship with anybody. If he had been given $10,000, perhaps he might have settled into some small business. But I don't think so. He had a very natural criminal instinct towards everything. He was oriented towards stealing from the beginning. On the other hand, I think Perry could have been an entirely different person. I really do. His life had been so incredibly abysmal that I don't see what chance he had as a little child except to steal and run wild.

Of course, you could say that his brother, with exactly the same background, went ahead and became the head of his class. What does it matter that he later killed himself. No, it's there--it's the fact that the brother did kill himself, in spite of his success, that shows how really awry the background of the Smiths' lives were. Terrifying. Perry had extraordinary qualities, but they just weren't channeled properly to put it mildly. He was a really a talented boy in a limited way--he had genuine sensitivity--and, as I've said, when he talked about himself as an artist, he wasn't really joking at all.

You once said that emotionality made you lose writing control--that you had to exhaust emotion before you could get to work. Was there a problem with "In Cold Blood," considering your involvement with the case and its principals?

Yes, it was a problem. Nevertheless, I felt in control throughout. However, I had great difficulty writing the last six or seven pages. This even took a physical form: hand paralysis. I finally used a typewriter--very awkward as I always write in longhand.

Your feeling about capital punishment is implicit in the title of the book. How do you feel the lot of Perry and Dick should have been resolved?

I feel that capital crimes should all be handled by Federal Courts, and that those convicted should be imprisoned in a special Federal prison where, conceivably, a life-sentence could mean, as it does not in state courts, just that.

Did you see the prisoners on their final day? Perry wrote you a 100-page letter that you received after the execution. Did he mention that he had written it?

Yes, I was with them the last hour before execution. No, Perry did not mention the letter. He only kissed me on the cheek, and said, "Adios, amigo."

What was the letter about?

It was a rambling letter, often intensely personal, often setting forth his various philosophies. He had been reading Santayana. Somewhere he had read "The Last Puritan," and had been very impressed by it. What I really think impressed him about me was that I had once visited Santayana at the Convent of the Blue Nuns in Rome. He always wanted me to go into great detail about that visit, Santayana had looked like, and the nuns, and all the physical details. Also, he had been reading Thoreau. Narratives didn't interest him at all. So in his letter he would write: "As Santayana says"--and then there'd be five pages of Santayana did say. Or he'd write: "I agree with Thoreau about this. Do you?"--then he'd write that he didn't care what I thought, and he'd add five or ten pages of what he agreed with Thoreau about.

The case must have left you with an extraordinary collection of memorabilia.

My files would almost fill a whole small room, right up to the ceiling. All my research. Hundreds of letters. Newspaper clippings. Court records--the court records almost fill two trunks. There were so many Federal hearings on the case. One Federal hearing was twice as long as the original court trial. A huge assemblage of stuff. I have some of the personal belongings--all of Perry's because he left me everything he owned; it was miserably little, his books, written in and annotated; the letters he received while in prison. . .not very many. . .his paintings and drawings. Rather a heartbreaking assemblage that arrived about a month after the execution. I simply couldn't bear to look at it for a long time. I finally sorted everything. Then, also, after the execution, that 100-age letter from Perry got to me. The last line of the letter--it's Thoreau, I think, a paraphrase, goes "And suddenly I realize life is the father and death is the mother." The last line. Extraordinary.

What will you do with this collection?

I think I may burn it all. You think I'm kidding? I'm not. The book is what is important. It exists in its own right. The rest of the material is extraneous, and it's personal. What's more, I don't really want people poking around in the material of six years of work and research. The book is the end result of all that, and it's exactly what I wanted to do from it.

Detective Dewey told me that he felt the case and your stays in Garden City had changed you--even your style of dress. . .that you were more "conservative" now, and had given up detachable collars. . .

Of course the case changed me! How could anyone live through such an experience without it profoundly affecting him? I've always been almost overly aware of the precipice we all walk along, the ridge and the abyss on either side; the last six years have increased this awareness to an almost all-pervading point. As for the rest--Mr. Dewey, a man for whom I have the utmost affection and respect, is perhaps confusing comparative youth (I was 35 when we first met) with the normal aging process. Six years ago I had four more teeth and considerably more hair than is now the case, and furthermore, I lost 20 pounds. I dress to accommodate the physical situation. By the way, I have never worn a detachable collar.

What are you going to work on now?

Well, having talked at such length about the nonfiction novel, I must admit I'm going to write a novel, a straight novel, one I've had in mind for about 15 years. But I will attempt the nonfiction form again--when the time comes and the subject appears and I recognize the possibilities. I have one very good idea for another one, but I'm going to let it simmer on the back of my head for awhile. It's quite a step--to undertake the nonfiction novel. Because the amount of work is enormous. The relationship between the author and all the people he must deal with if he does the job properly--well, it's a full 24-hour-a-day job. Even when I wasn't working on the book, I was somehow involved with all the characters in it with their personal lives, writing six or seven letters a day, taken up with their problems, a complete involvement. It's extraordinarily difficult and consuming, but for a writer who tries, doing it all the way down the line, the result can be a unique and exciting form of writing.

What has been the response of readers of "In Cold Blood" to date?

I've been staggered by the letters I've received, their quality of sensibility, their articulateness, the compassion of their authors. The letters are not fan letters. They're from people deeply concerned about what it is I've written about. About 70 percent of the letters think of the book as a reflection on American life, this collision between the desperate, ruthless, wandering, savage part of American life, and the other, which is insular and safe, more or less. It has struck them because there is something so awfully inevitable about what is going to happen: the people in the book are completely beyond their own control. For example, Perry wasn't an evil person. If he'd had any chance in life, things would have been different. But every illusion he'd ever had, well, they all evaporated, so that on that night he was so full of self-hatred and self-pity that I think he would have killedsomebody--perhaps not that night, or the next, or the next. You can't go through life without ever getting anything you want, ever.

At the very end of the book you give Alvin Dewey a scene in the country cemetery, a chance meeting with Sue Kidwell, which seems to synthesize the whole experience for him. Is there such a moment in your own case?

I'm still very much haunted by the whole thing. I have finished the book, but in a sense I haven't finished it: it keeps churning around in my head. It particularizes itself now and then, but not in the sense that it brings about a total conclusion. It's like the echo of E.M. Forster's Malabar Caves, the echo that's meaningless and yet it's there: one keeps hearing it all the time.

Mr. Plimpton is editor of The Paris Review, which has made a specialty of the long, tape- recorded literary review.

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