#have gone to family's place in the east coast and they had a basement

[theycallmebeccawrites]

Chris & Ellie Series: Episode 21

Greetings all! I hope you guys are having a good day and if not, I hope it gets better for you. Today is a bittersweet day for me. I gave Ellie July 17th as her birthday in honor of my grandma, who passed away in 2016, a couple days after I started writing the Chris and Ellie series. My grandma would have been 92 today. ❤

My grandma always encouraged me to do what I love and I love to write, so I do. And I love sharing what I’ve written with you guys. So thank you for allowing me to share this little world I have created with all of you guys. And thank you all for reading.

xo Becca xo

Pairing: Chris Evans x Ellie Spencer (OFC)

Rating: PG-13

Warnings: language

Episode Summary: The lead up to Ellie's birthday and the surprise that Scott has planned for her.

Disclaimer: This work of fiction is not to be reposted, used or translated without my permission.

This episode can also be read on AO3.

The Chris and Ellie series is primarily chronological. It begins with a flash forward to 2016 and has a few other scenes in the future. However, the majority of their story is told in chronological order starting in 2013 and going through 2017. Each episode starts with a date to help you place it within the story.

The Chris & Ellie Series Masterlist | Chris & Ellie Masterlist

Episode 20.5

Episode 21: Birthday Confessions

July 2014

Music flowed through the speakers as Ellie merged off the freeway and onto the exit for LAX.

"I don't have to go, you know," Scott said as he looked over at her.

"Yes, you do," Ellie replied, glancing at him. "You're in a wedding and your family has been looking forward to seeing you."

"I just don't like the idea of you all alone," Scott admitted. He knew she had come a long way in the weeks since she'd started opening up about what had happened between her and Chris, but he hated leaving her there alone.

"I'll be fine," Ellie assured him with more confidence than she actually felt. She hadn't been by herself in the house since December and that felt like a lifetime ago. If she was being honest with herself, she'd never really liked being in the big house when it was empty, but now it was filled with memories she didn't want to revisit.

"Thanks for driving me," Scott said as Ellie navigated the departures drop off area.

"It was the only way for me to ensure you'd get on the plane," Ellie replied in a joking manner as she pulled over in front of the designated area for the airline he was flying.

Scott gave a mumbled 'ha' before he leaned over and gave her a hug and a peck on the cheek. Then he got out of the car and went back to the trunk to get his suitcase. He gave her another wave before he disappeared into the steady stream of people going into the airport.

Not ready to go home yet, Ellie ran a few errands before she made her way back to Chris's house. She parked her car in the garage and then made her way inside.

With no desire to hang out in the big house, she quickly made her way through the kitchen and out the backdoor. Using the patio off the kitchen and the steps down to the pool deck took longer than going out the door through the basement, but she didn't like going down to that room if she didn't have to.

Once inside the guesthouse, Ellie let Daisy out of her kennel and then sat down on her bed to check her email. She'd finished editing a book a couple weeks ago for a new author and was waiting for her next assignment. Instead of finding a new manuscript to read, she found an email saying that one of her main authors would have one ready for her soon, so they were keeping her schedule open.

After replying to the email, Ellie closed her laptop and leaned back against the pillows on her bed with a sigh. She had been hoping to distract herself with a new manuscript while Scott was gone, but now that wasn't an option. She'd already picked up a few extra shifts at the bookstore, helping people who wanted to take days off, but picking up seemed better than staying at Chris's more than necessary.

Picking up her phone, she sent a couple texts, seeing if anyone wanted to hang out that night. Unfortunately, no one was available, but she was able to make plans for other nights during the week when she wasn't working. Including accepting a couple invitations for the Fourth of July.

Thus, the first week Scott was gone went by in a breeze. She worked on the second and went to a movie with some friends after work on the third. Then she spent the morning of the fourth with her cousin and the late afternoon and evening with Pierre and some of his friends. She picked up another shift on Saturday and then spent Sunday with her cousin's family, not wanting to spend the whole day alone at Chris's house.

"You've had a busy week," Pierre reflected after she'd told him all about it during dinner at his condo during the second week. In fact, he'd already known how busy she was keeping herself, thanks to a group chat he'd found himself part of with her sisters, cousin and Scott. He wasn't convinced it was a good idea to have such a chat, but it made the others feel better.

"It feels good to be busy," Ellie said with a shrug before muttering, "Better than staying alone in the house, anyway."

Whether or not she wanted him to hear the last part, he had, and he realized her sisters were right to raise concern over her sudden shift in personality. Ellie, they had explained to him, was a homebody by nature. A trait she'd shared with Chris, Scott had told him privately.

"What's wrong with staying at home?" he asked, cautiously.

Ellie sighed and shoved her food around on her plate before looking up. "Other than that it's Chris's house and I'm just a house guest?" she asked.

She sounded snarky, but he sensed that she was trying to mask her true feelings. Instead of prying, he waited her out. They'd been friends for nearly two months and he'd learned quickly that she liked to process her thoughts before she could speak them aloud.

"It's the memories," she finally admitted. "There's nowhere in the house that I can go that doesn't have a million memories flooding back to my brain of happier times. Not even the guesthouse is memory free, but there, with my things, I can push him out. That isn't possible in the rest of the house though. He's fucking everywhere."

Pierre nodded consolingly. He'd been through many a breakup, but only one that had left him in a house full of memories. Of course, he'd had to suffer through the rest of his lease before he'd been able to move. But moving to this condo had been a fresh start.

"And I'm crying again," she said in an exasperated tone as she brushed away the tears. "I told myself that I'd cried enough over this whole situation." 

Pierre stood up and grabbed a box of tissues off the kitchen counter and brought them back to the table. Instead of sitting back down across from her, he took the seat next to her. He handed her a tissue and she gave him a weak smile before blotting the tears.

"Obviously, I don't know your financial situation or what your agreement is with Scott's mom regarding room and board, but have you thought about moving out?" he asked Ellie.

Ellie shook her head. "I hadn't gotten that far yet," she admitted. "Chris is gone for another few months and technically, living there when he isn't there is what I'm paid to do."

"Think about it," Pierre encouraged her. "It might be the next step you have to take."

The idea of finding her own place stayed at the forefront of Ellie's mind in the days that followed, but it wasn't until a night where she had nothing to do but sit in the guesthouse that she did anything about it. She went back to the links she'd found in her early days of living in the Los Angeles area and looked for availabilities within her price range. There were a few of them, but none in areas that she'd feel comfortable living by herself in.

Unlike the last time she'd been hunting for an apartment, she wasn't tied down to a specific part of town because of a job. Nor was she as strapped for cash as she had been. Thanks to the added income of editing manuscripts and not having to pay rent, she had managed to pay down a lot of her debt with the money that Chris's mom had paid her.

Despite having a wider area to search for a place to live, Ellie found herself struggling to find anything less than $1,000 a month that allowed dogs. Frustrated, she closed her laptop and leaned back against the headboard of the bed. Which only served to remind her that in addition to finding a place to live, she'd have to buy furniture as well as she didn't have any.

"We'll find a place, Daisy," she said, scratching her dog's head. "I don't know where yet, but we'll find a place."

By the time Scott returned from the east coast, a few days later, she'd sent off applications for a couple of apartments an hour or so away, but both had come back saying she'd been added to a waiting list for an apartment. She considered telling Scott that she was thinking about moving out but decided against it. She knew he was still worried about her with everything that had happened and she didn't want to worry him more than she had to.

"You're a doll for picking me up," Scott said once he was in the car and she had merged into the traffic leaving LAX.

"Gave me an excuse to get out of the house," Ellie replied before mentally kicking herself. "Daisy and I spent yesterday lounging by the pool."

Scott lowered his sunglasses and raised his eyebrows. "Under an umbrella?" he asked, seeing that her skin, while glowing, was still barely tan.

"And wearing lots of SPF," she replied with a laugh. "How was Massachusetts and the wedding?"

"The wedding was beautiful," Scott stated before going into a full rundown of the wedding. Followed by an elaborate explanation of his family's Fourth of July party and what he had done with his family while he'd been home.

"Sounds like you had a blast," Ellie said with a smile.

"Oh, I did, but it's nice to come home to some quiet," he replied and then smiled. "But don't worry. It won't be too quiet, after all, we both know what's happening on Thursday."

"I know my birthday is on Thursday," Ellie said, cautiously as she glanced at him. He wore a big smile on his face. "Scott Evans, what have you done?"

"You'll just have to wait and see," he replied, then mimed zipping his lips closed, locking them and throwing away the key.

He remained annoyingly tight lipped over the next few days, which put her slightly on edge because she had no idea what he had up his sleeve. She knew the two of them had two very different types of fun; she liked to stay home and play games while he liked to go out and dance.

Thursday morning, Ellie came up to the big house to find a cinnamon roll in a pastry box for her on the kitchen counter along with a note from Scott.

Izzy told me that you guys always had cinnamon rolls for breakfast whenever someone in the family had a birthday when you were growing up. I didn't make it (that would have been a disaster) but enjoy!

She cut the large cinnamon roll in half and ate half of it, then took the other half back to the guesthouse with her, to take to work. Once Daisy was settled in her kennel, Ellie grabbed her stuff and left for work.

The sense of relief that came over her as she drove away from the house was only more confirmation that it was time for her to move out.

Later, during her lunch break, she looked for apartments again and, after failing to find much in the Los Angeles area, decided to try looking in Oregon. She hated the idea of leaving LA and her friends, but the truth was she could live anywhere and still do her editing. 

————— 

“She’s coming!” Scott called as he ran down the stairs. "Everyone get away from the window!"

He heard her sisters scrambling into spots that couldn't be seen from the window as he made his way to the main floor. Hearing the garage door opening, he made his way down the hall to the kitchen and was waiting there when Ellie came into the house.

"Hey there, birthday girl!" he greeted her with a big grin. "I noticed you didn't leave me a piece of the cinnamon roll."

"You're damn right I didn't," Ellie replied with a tired smile.

"Before you go to your room, can you come look at something in the living room for me?" he asked.

"I have a call with my sisters in like ten minutes," she told him, glancing at the clock on the stove.

"It'll be fast, promise," Scott insisted. "Like a minute tops."

Sighing, Ellie put her stuff down on the counter and then followed him down the hall to the living room. "So what am I -" she started to ask, but shut her mouth when she saw her sisters sitting casually in the room.

She stared in disbelief as tears began to well up in her eyes. She felt Scott nudge her from behind, encouraging her to go to her sisters.

"Happy Birthday, El," Izzy said, reaching her first. She wrapped her around Ellie and hugged her tight.

"I'm happy you guys are here," Ellie said, through her tears. "But what are you doing here?"

"You didn't think we were going to make you celebrate all by yourself, did you?" her youngest sister, Riley, asked with a grin as she gave Ellie a hug. "We were here last year, too. This year we just brought Sydney with us."

"I'm here to make sure those two don't get too wild," Sydney said, jokingly as she gave Ellie a hug. "And to make sure we do things you like to do for your birthday weekend."

"Birthday weekend?" Ellie repeated. Then she saw Scott lingering in the doorway. "This is what you've been planning all week, isn't it?"

"Part of it anyway," Scott replied with a grin. "I'll let them tell you the rest."

"You're the best," Ellie told him. She reached her hand out to him and he took it, squeezing it. "What is the rest?"

"Our gift to you is a weekend getaway at a beach house about an hour from here," Sydney told her. "The five of us and Pierre, but he'll be coming tomorrow after work."

"When are we going?" Ellie asked.

"As soon as you can pack a bag," Izzy told her. 

"What about Daisy?" Ellie asked, only then spotting her dog curled up in her favorite chair in the corner.

"She's coming with us," Scott replied. "I've already packed her stuff."

"Thanks," Ellie said, smiling at him. "What do I need to bring?"

"I'll h-" Izzy and Riley started, but Sydney stepped forward and took Ellie's hand before saying, "I'll help you pack."

"Thank you," Ellie muttered under her breath as she and Sydney made their way to the guest house.

Twenty minutes later, she and Sydney came back into the main house, locking doors as they passed them. They followed the voices out to the garage and found Scott and Izzy loading things into his car while Riley played with Daisy.

"Isn't someone driving with Scott?" Ellie asked as Izzy took her bag and put it in the backseat.

"Daisy is going to be my copilot," Scott told her

"Are you sure?" Ellie asked him. "I can ride with you."

"Nah, you ride with your sisters, Daisy and I will be fine," Scott assured her. "Besides, she doesn't try to change the music like some people I know." He gave her a pointed look.

"I would be offended except you do the same thing to me when I'm driving you," Ellie retorted before maturely sticking her tongue out at him.

"Very mature for a 29-year-old," Scott commented.

"Let's get on the road, shall we?" Sydney interrupted in a mom tone.

"You guys head out, I'll do a quick check around the house to lock it up and then Daisy and I will follow," Scott offered.

"Shotgun!" Riley shouted out.

"It's Ellie's birthday, Riles," Izzy said, shaking her head. "The birthday person always gets the front seat."

"Fine," Riley sighed. "Let's go."

Thanks to traffic, the drive took longer than an hour, but Ellie didn't mind. It had been a long time since she'd gone anywhere with just her sisters and it was just like old times. Telling stories, laughing, and talking over each other as Sydney drove.

The beach house was down the street from the beach, rather than oceanfront, but they could see the ocean from the balcony off the largest of the three bedrooms. The house had a Mediterranean feel to it in its design and decor. The first floor had the smaller of the three bedrooms rooms, a half bath and an open concept living, dining and kitchen. The second floor had a full bathroom and two bedrooms, the largest of the two having two queen sized beds in it. The best part of the house, though, was the backyard that looked like it belonged in Italy instead of Southern California.

By the time Scott got to the house with Daisy, the sisters had unloaded the few things that had been in the trunk of Ellie's car and had ordered takeout from a nearby restaurant. They helped him unload his car, putting their luggage in the bedroom with the two queen sized beds, leaving the other two rooms for Scott and Pierre.

Then they all headed outside to relax on the back porch while they waited for their dinner to be delivered. Sydney poured everyone drinks, except for herself, a fact that her sisters quickly noticed.

"Are you pregnant?!" Riley demanded.

The corner of Sydney's mouth twitched, but she nodded. "I didn't want to say anything tonight, because it's Ellie's birthday, but -"

"Shut up," Ellie said laughing as she gave her sister a hug. "It's the best birthday present you could give me!"

Hearing the doorbell ring, Scott went to answer it, leaving the sisters to celebrate. Knowing the sisters had already paid for the meal, he gave the delivery person a cash tip, thanked them and closed the door.

As he carried the food back to the girls, he paused when he heard Ellie say: "I have some news myself."

Given what her sister had just announced, he froze, his mind instantly going to the idea that she might be pregnant with Chris's baby.

"Relax, I'm not pregnant," Ellie said with a nervous laugh.

"Fucking hell, Ellie," Izzy said in a relieved tone that matched how Scott was feeling. "Don't scare us like that."

"What's your news, Ellie?" Sydney asked, drawing everyone's attention back to Ellie.

"I'm going to move out of Chris's house," Ellie announced. "I don't feel comfortable there anymore. In fact, I hate being there by myself."

Scott could tell that she was holding something back and so could her sisters, because Riley called her out on it.

"What aren't you telling us?" Riley asked.

"I'm having a hard time finding a place here that I can afford," Ellie replied, her voice trailing off. "So I might be moving home. Want a roommate, Riles?"

Scott felt his stomach drop. He didn't want Ellie to go back to Oregon.

"I thought you were saving money," Sydney said, snapping into the protective older sister/mothering older sister mode.

Scott smirked. Her sisters had this.

"I paid off a lot of things," Ellie replied. "And I have some savings, but…"

Scott heard her sigh.

"After everything with Chris went downhill, I haven't felt right accepting the money that Lisa has been paying me," she confessed to her sisters. "I've been donating my paychecks to a non-profit organization that provides books to underprivileged kids in the LA area. It seemed fitting since she and I met at the bookstore."

"Oh Ellie," Sydney said, the tone not one of scolding but of compassion.

Backing up, Scott decided to put dinner on the dining room table and get dishes out so they could serve themselves in the house. Allowing the sisters and himself time to process Ellie's confession. All of them.

He hated the idea of her moving period, but especially the idea of her moving to another state. The paycheck donation was a whole different situation, one that he wasn't fully capable of processing just yet. Obviously, there was guilt on Ellie's part, but for what? Taking advantage of his mom's trust by boinking Chris? His mom liked Ellie and she would have loved holding the fact that she'd picked Chris's wife over his head.

Scott shook his head and sighed. Hearing footsteps, he looked up and saw Riley in the doorway. "I was just going to call you guys in," he told her, gesturing to the food that he'd laid out.

"Awesome, I'll get the others," Riley replied before disappearing outside again.

One thing he knew for sure was that if his mom ever found out that Ellie had donated her paychecks because Chris was a dumbass, Scott would pay top dollar to witness that confrontation.

He was still smirking to himself when the sisters filed in. He let them go first and then dished himself a plate of food.

No one said a word about Ellie's possible move until they were all seated at the table outside.

"For the record, I think you moving back to Oregon is a bad idea," Riley stated, looking at her older sister. "I've never seen you run away from your problems in my entire life. Never mind the fact that everyone will wonder why you left California. And you know how our family talks, it will be all over town within five days of you stepping foot on mom and dad's farm. We won't talk, but you know how they are, they'll figure it out. They always do."

Scott picked up his drink and took a sip, hiding his smile. Ellie was stubborn, but her sisters wouldn't let her do anything stupid. And neither would he. He was going to do everything in his power to get her to stay in LA.

Episode 21.5

Want to find me off tumblr? I'm @beccatheycallme on twitter. I also post my stories on AO3.

Tag List: @heather-lynn​, @alievans007​, @mycapt-ohcapt​, @nomadicpixel​, @sslater34​, @guera31​, @captaincorruptor​, @pegasusdragontiger​, @crispyearthquakezombie​, @avenger-nerd-mom​, @ariallane​, @badassbaker​, @prplprincez​, @anionthewrite​, @capcevans81​, @peaceinourtime82​, @patzammit​, @katiew1973​, @mizzzpink​, @feelmyroarrrr​, @toooottttttoooooooooooo​, @thewannabewriter​, @pineapplebooboo​, @50shadesofyes, @ladyamandapanda12​, @princess-evans-addict​, @mrs-captain-evans​, @aglarelen​, @terra-sem-fim​, @smoothdogsgirl​, @janeyboo​, @giftofdreams​, @gingerrootknits​, @jbug491, @furrywerewolfcollector​, @ek823​, @tvjunkie08​, @marvelouspottering​, @alitheamateur​, @jesseswartzwelder​, @firstangeldragonranch​, @kind-sober-fullydressed​

My tag list is always open, just let me know if you’d like to be added!

[nancypullen]

Where Is Home?

We talk about retirement a lot.  A LOT.  The mister wants out of the south because he hates the hot, sticky weather.  I want out of the south for a variety of different reasons.  He tears up when he thinks about leaving this house.  I get excited thinking of a house with better storage, maybe even a walk-in closet and a big pantry.  He loves the idea of townhouse living and all of the freedom it provides.  I love the idea of half a football field between me and a neighbor.  I wouldn’t mind being snug against a neighbor if we were in a walkable little town and I could have a white picket fence.  As we age into our golden years I want to be on city water and city sewer.  I do not want to be ninety when the well runs dry or the septic system has a fit.  Nope. No, thank you.  We have discussed towns from Maine to Arizona and are constantly trading articles about property taxes and real estate markets.  Night after night I search Zillow, Realtor, Trulia (oh, those handy dandy crime maps!) and so on.  I’ll send Mickey a house in Maryland to admire and mention that it’s just two hours from the world’s cutest grandgirl.  He responds that he loves it.  Then I send him a townhouse near Tucson and he says the same thing.  I’m getting nowhere with this guy. Side note: Yes, I know Arizona gets very hot, but it is not humid. HUGE difference. Also, Arizona has two enormous positives - we could escape allergies and my hair would behave.   If you had my hair you’d know that’s more important than the property taxes.  Two major negatives would be that it’s too far from family and I can’t imagine never experiencing another autumn. I’m happily willing to give the townhouse idea serious consideration.   I know that Mickey would love to never weed eat and edge another yard.  Remember the good old days when no one did that?  My main issue with townhouses is that they all tend to be multiple stories - sometimes three floors.  Wherever we retire, that’s where we’re going to die.  I don’t want to be unable to navigate my own home when I’m old.  Same reason I refuse to have a basement laundry, I don’t want to drag baskets of clothes up and down basement stairs when I’m a little old lady.  You know damn well a cat would trip me and Mickey wouldn’t miss me until he got hungry.  Of all the chores I’d be willing to expire while doing, laundry is not in the top three. We’re not lottery winners so our options are limited.  When we sell this house we’ll make a tasty profit that will allow us to find a comfortable home - nothing fancy, but we won’t be in a box under bridge.  I can make any home pretty, but the bones have to be good.  I’m more concerned with structure and mechanics.  Who needs a beautiful house with a bad roof or an hvac system on its last leg?   The region definitely determines what you get for your money.  For the same price you can have this sort of square footage in the south (complete with inground pool)...

or you can opt for proximity to Portland, Maine and get this.

The second house is new construction, but it’s itty bitty, has well water and septic, and is missing the all-important garage that we’d need up north.  This is a struggle, people.  We just want a nice little house in a nice little town, hopefully one that will meet our needs as we get older. Other items on our wish list?  Small town living with easy access to a larger city and a decent international airport.  Part of my hunt includes exploring each town’s library website (a vibrant, busy library says a lot about a place) as well as their Facebook page.  Looking past the mouthy keyboard warriors that lurk on every page, you can still get a good idea of the town’s vibe.  Let’s see - fair property taxes, decent cost of living, small town feel, good airport, seasons...sounds like we should stay put and just endure long, sticky summers, right?  Ugh, no.  Our reasons for wanting to relocate are so much more than just the summers.  Soooo, months and months of searching keep leading me to one state that ticks all of our boxes and then some.  Minnesota.  A myriad of cute towns surround Minneapolis and St. Paul, all with easy access to the fabulous airport.  I’m crazy about New Ulm (I love a town with lots of festivals) and I wouldn’t be heartbroken to live in Mankato, Owatonna, or a number of others.  Real estate is affordable, taxes are fair (and are used wisely!), all four seasons are present and accounted for, and quality of life seems really good - from healthcare to education to crime, they seem to have a handle on it.

and you knew there was a but, right?  We could happily move there knowing that we’d be close to at least one of our kids.  Matt lives in Minneapolis and the thought of having him nearby warms my heart.  But he’s weighing the pros and cons of an opportunity that would take him to the east coast and more likely to far flung parts of the world. It’s quite possible that he’d be gone in a flash and we’d be in Minnesota, once again far from family. Right now we’re a day’s drive from everyone except Matt. Truly, we could do it in a day but it would be a miserable thirteen to fourteen hours. I have scoured Maryland and settled on a little place called Ocean Pines.  It’s okay, a bit further than I’d like to be from airports, etc -  it’s between two to two and a half hours to Baltimore, D.C. or Philadelphia’s.  That also means it’s just two hours from my favorite little girl. That would be HEAVEN.  But who retires to one of the most expensive states to live in?  Would it make our golden years miserable?  Who wants to pinch pennies when you should be enjoying life?  HELP!!  Where is home?  I left Alaska more than twenty years ago, the mister was a Florida boy -  we don’t want to live in either place.  I love the prairie,  he loves the mountains.  At one point we were looking at real estate on Prince Edward Island  (affordable and gorgeous!) but Canada doesn’t want us. Seriously, we filled out the online immigration form.  We wouldn’t be able to live there year round  and I can’t imagine having to go squat across the border for a couple of months every year once we’re old and rickety.   There are pros and cons to every place we’ve looked.  No spot is perfect and we have to decide what we can and can’t live without.  If someone could just plop this house down next to my grandbaby I’ll shut up about this forever.

Imagine that house surrounded by hydrangeas in the summer.  I don’t think that’s too much to ask - just a little pink house near some people I love.  Some snow would be nice now and then. What a lovely dream. This boring blog post has been brought to you courtesy of my latest level of boredom.  It was either this or go dust the bedrooms, so you had to pay the price for my laziness.   My plan for this evening is to watch the Golden Globes and through that maybe find something interesting to watch.  We’re approaching the first anniversary of when we locked down here on the Pullen spread and we’ve run out of shows to binge.  Remember how naïve we all were when we thought we’d watch Tiger King and then lockdown would be over?  At least we’re headed in the right direction now.  That’s something.  I’m thrilled that my mother is fully vaccinated and so is Dr. Matt.  A handful of my dear friends are also protected now.  I’ve lost some friends to this horrible virus, including the husband of a dear Rat Patrol member.  Our little group now includes a widow for the first time. There’s been so much heartbreak over the last year.  I’m ready for it to stop. Okay - what a crazy, rambling post.  I think I’ll go dust.  It’s probably more productive.  If you’re still here, you deserve a cookie.  Treat yourself!  If you happen to know of the perfect town (I really just want to live in Stars Hollow) send me a message!  I’ll put my dust rag down and check it out! Sending out lots of love on this drippy Saturday. Stay safe, stay well, stay sane. XOXO - Nancy

[cianmars]

Cherry Wine (1/1) AO3

Emma thought that she shared True Love with Killian, not long after they're married she sees a darker side of him, she keeps trying, only to find herself without friends or family and forced to move out of town by him when Sophie is only a month old.

What will it take for her to leave?

A/N: This is very anti captain swan and Killian is abusive in this - I like Killian in general but not as part of this relationship. There are references and depictions of domestic abuse, if you are triggered by this please go careful or don't read at all.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The wedding was idyllic, at first, like something out of a fairy tale. It reminded her a lot of her parents marriage, they would cuddle up watching things on Netflix, go on little adventures, they’d surprise each other with little gifts: the only real difference was there was a lot more alcohol involved, but Emma knew her dad had issues surrounding alcohol and his own father so he barely drank, and Snow could easily outdrink any soldier but after having Emma and Neal she couldn’t hold her alcohol anymore.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Six months into their marriage came the first thing which shouldn’t have even been a red flag, it should have been a flashing neon sign, with loud music, telling her to run. It was a night after Killian had drunk a lot. They had argued about that, Emma telling him he should stop or at least slow down, there had been a lot of shouting, Emma had snatched the glass of rum from him, and thrown it into the kitchen sink, at first there was just the smashing of the glass, then there was a punch, not a slap, but a proper punch, Emma fell onto the hard kitchen floor.

Killian had apologised almost immediately, Emma had made him mad after all, and Killian had meant the apology, he made it up to her the entire next day, treating her like the princess she (technically) was, giving her gifts, and looking after her. He even stopping drinking for nearly a week.

Emma didn’t notice the change, at first. It had crept up on her like a monster under a child’s bed. The change happened slowly, the two battled each other like a dance, trying to find either equilibrium or power, depending on which person you were. Slowly, without her realising, Emma had lost while Killian had gained complete control. She suddenly saw less of her parents, her brother, her friends, her son, half the time because Killian had told her not to, and half the time because she didn’t want them to see her like she was. She was ashamed, because she truly believed that it was her fault, he reminded her (all the time) of the fact she had been the one to force The Darkness into him, he had a right to still be mad.

She had been in love, she was in love, true love…. Wasn’t she?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

She heard the door slam, she was lying in bed, her body was aching from an earlier disagreement, she had been trying to sleep but she was in too much pain.

She wasn’t sure if it was the actual smell or simply the memory of the smell of all the times it had happened before, but she knew that he smelt like a distillery. He no longer held out for rum, his alcohol of choice, he would accept any and all and all available.

She heard hit boots come down heavy on the wooden stairs, her heart quickened with every step. She couldn’t tell if his gait was just drunk or horny drunk, or angry drunk.

She heard him calling her name, her new name.

“Mrs Joooones”

Horny then.

She pretended to be asleep, it wouldn’t stop him, but it would at least mean she could try and protect herself as best as she could.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

She found out she was pregnant with only 4 months to go. She didn’t really show and didn’t have any symptoms, and when she found out she was she felt sick, Killian was there when she found out, and he was absolutely overjoyed. His pride and smile, a smile so full of love when he looked at her… it reminded her of when she had first believed they were in love.

He didn’t lay a hand on her anymore. Sure, he was still controlling, no, protective (she reminded herself) but she remembered her father being protective over her mother when she was pregnant with Neal (it wasn’t the same, she knew that deep down, but she kept trying to rationalise it). But she didn’t get a single bruise on her from him while she was pregnant, sure there were words and mind games, names, and taunts, but he didn’t hurt her physically.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Soon Emma gave birth, with her husband holding her hand, she had ghost memories of holding Henry after he was born, though she knew they weren’t real,she thought of them again while holding her newborn daughter.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What Emma didn’t know was that by the eighth month of Emma’s pregnancy Killian was feeling stifled by Emma’s family, her parents in particular, and Regina who had always thought that Emma was too good for him. He had been in the modern world for a long time now, he knew how things worked even outside of Storybrooke, he only played the fool.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

He stood watching Emma nursing their daughter, who currently had hair darker than his though he knew that could easily change, Emma looked up at him and smiled.

“I have a surprise for you.” He smiled. Her head tilted to the side a little. “I bought us a new house. I know I’ve always hated this place, too many bad memories, I swear I can still feel that bloody sword in the stone in the basement.”

Emma bit her lip. The guilt inside of her for her actions while dark was an endless well. “Okay. Where are we moving to? Nearer to my parents-?”

“No. I think we both need a new start, somewhere new, where we can just be us, not the daughter of Snow white and Prince Charming, and a villian.”

Emma hated when he put on a sneering voice to say her parent’s names.

“But, but what about Henry, I can’t leave him-”

“He’s practically a man, and he spends most of the time out with his mates or with Regina, he won’t want to come live full time with us. We’ll give him your old car he can drive and visit us. Emma, look down at Sophie.”

Emma did as she was told.

“Do you want her to be able to live to see the age of five.”

“Of course I do-”

“- She won’t if she lives here.”

Emma felt as though that sounded like a threat. She held Sophie closer to her.

“Emma think about all the threats, all the monsters, all the bloody portals. Sophie won’t stand a chance. I’ve made the decision Emma, for us, as a family. I have a job set up, a house, you can stay at home and look after our baby, the things you never got with Henry. You want that, right? We can come visit here, if you want, but I want you and Sophie to be safe.” He walked over to her, bent down, and tenderly kissed the top of her head. “You know I’m right, don’t be so bloody stubborn Swan, yeah?”

She felt his hold on her tighten. She nodded, not that it mattered.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sophie was a month old when Emma left all her loved ones behind, when she led on the floor on her new home bleeding and blaming herself for it she watched her goodbyes to her parents, son, and toddler brother in her head. She wondered what they really thought of her move, they had been crying and telling her to visit but they were trying to smile and telling her that this was going to be good for her. Perhaps Killian had told them that moving was her idea.

Their new home was hours away, in a place which was in a seaside town on the east coast, their house was smaller than their one in Storybrooke, and not as well done up, but Emma tried her best to make it a home.

She tried her best to ring her parents and Henry, she had tried facetiming but there were too often bruises on her face, if she had been crying too much then she would text.

She had tried to bring up visiting them… that had never gone well….

When Sophie was two Henry had invited her to his graduation, she had begged Killian to let her go, he had beat her up so bad that she had ended up in the hospital. She told the doctors she had slipped on one of Sophie’s toys. She didn’t realise until she was back and cradling her daughter in her arms that she was lying for her husband like she had lied for too many foster parents in her own childhood.

Killian no longer gave her apologetic gifts or even said sorry.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

3 Years (Sophie 5 1/2)

Emma was exhausted. Killian hadn’t let her sleep most of the night, he had gotten horny and drunk and the alcohol had stopped him from being able to get it up, which had made him angry at her.

She was pregnant again, only this time her husband didn’t care to keep his hands to himself, the worst of it was he didn’t seem to care that Sophie had heard him shouting at Emma many times now.

She had only just put Sophie to bed, she was trying her best to stay awake, but she had so many things on her list she needed to do, the most important was to tidy up the house and make Killian dinner for when he came home.

……. Only he came home early. He nearly slipped on one of Sophie’s toy cars. He saw red.

He threw the car at Emma, pushed her against the wall by her throat with his fake hand, he punched her in the face with the other. “I told you to keep her fucking toys tidy! It can’t be bloody hard! It’s just too hard for you, isn’t it?” He threw her to the ground.

Emma didn’t realise Sophie was heading downstairs until she already by her side.

“Daddy no! Mommy! Mommy!”

She was crying, terrified of actually seeing her father like this, Emma tried to hold her, to hold her as safe as she could. But Killian grabbed her, she let out a gasp and a whimper of pain, he had grabbed her roughly by the top of her arm and was half carrying half dragging her back up the stairs.

Emma whimpered and tried to push herself up, she needed to protect her daughter, she was frozen, absolutely terrified that he would hurt her daughter. He was back down the stairs quickly, too quickly to have actually hurt her, or so Emma hoped.

His booted foot came down hard next to her face, there was a smash as he completely totaled her cellphone. There would be no calling for help. “I expect this place to be bloody spotless when I get back from the pub, or you’re gonna wish you were never born.”

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

He had once boasted that he had knocked down her walls, and he had, like a fucking cannonball. But it didn’t feel like she had no walls, it felt like she was locked in the tallest tower with a fire breathing dragon, and there was no way out.

She felt a stab in her heart as she heard the crying coming from her daughter’s bedroom. Emma had been through a lot, she had been hit, mocked, verbally abused, she had been cheated on- she hadn’t even felt jealous at that because at least it meant that she didn’t have to spend the night with him. But this, hearing her daughter crying because her daddy hurt her mommy, knowing that he was only getting worse… knowing that Sophie, and their unborn child, were going to see this and think it was normal… or they would become victims to their father’s rage.

Over the past six years she had been so scared that she would simply freeze. No more.

She pushed herself to her feet. She was sore but it wasn’t nearly the worst. She placed her hand on her stomach. “It’s okay baby. We’re going to go home.”

She made it up the stairs, a small feat being twenty weeks pregnant and having been beaten, but she had steel in her blood. She pushed open her daughter’s bedroom door. “It’s okay baby.”

Sophie launched herself into her mom’s arms. “Mommy, are you okay? Daddy hurt you, I tried to stop him, he wouldn’t stop mommy.”

“You’re a very, very, brave girl Sophie.” She pressed a kiss onto her soft hair, as a newborn baby it had been dark but as she had grown it had become blonde, like her mother’s. “Honey, we have to go. I told you about your grandparents, and your uncle Neal, and your brother, Henry, we’re going to go to them, but we have to be very very quick, okay?”

“We’re leaving?”

“Yeah, honey, we are. We, we’re not safe here.”

“Daddy hurt my arm.”

Emma looked at it and could see a bruise already forming. “I’m sorry, I should have never, he shouldn’t have…. He’s never going to do it again. We need to pack your things up, just very special things okay, some clothes, your toothbrush, a couple of toys. You choose your favourite toys okay? We can buy you more so just your absolute favourites.” She grabbed a few bags from her own room. She packed a couple of outfits for Sophie, photographs of the two of them, and some of newborn Sophie with Emma’s family in Storybrooke, her blankie Ruby had knitted before she was born, and some of her special teddies. She made sure she had enough clothing for her daughter for nearly a week, she didn’t really have many outfits or toys anyway, Killian was in charge of their money and he choose to use it to fund his alcoholism. She felt sick looking at Killian’s face even in a photograph, but she put one of the photos of Killian and Sophie into the bag, in case Sophie wanted it one day.

She kept Sophie with her as she headed into her bedroom. She had changed her sense of clothes to nearly the equivalent of a 50’s housewife when she and Killian had been engaged, she didn’t know why, she wasn’t aware she even did it until now. She would leave them, she grabbed as many clothes of her old style she could fit into, there was only a couple of things. She saw her wedding dress.

“True Love.” She sneered under her breath. She realised now how wrong she had been. She wanted to cry but it would hurt too much and she didn’t have time right now, he could be gone for an hour or so, or a couple of days, she had to be fast. She grabbed a box from the bottom of the wardrobe, inside of it was her baby blanket, photographs of her family, and other memories.  

“Soph, slip your sneakers on, we’re going to go in a minute.” She went to Killian’s beside table, turning her nose up at the smell of his strong cologne, she knew he had some cash there, she grabbed the entire envelope full of cash leaving him nothing, it was less than he had taken from her over the years. His car keys weren’t there, but she hadn’t always been this shell of a woman she was right now, she had once stolen a car and later drove it to find her parents. She could do it again.

She lifted up the bags, making sure Sophie had her bag of toys, and they left their prison which not long ago they had been calling a home.

She used an old metal hanger to open up Killian’s car, he must have walked to whichever pub he was at now, she made quick work of hotwiring it, she opened the trunk and the backdoor, she quickly put the bags in the trunk and helped Sophie into her carseat in the back.

“Mommy, are we ever coming home?”

It was dark but Emma could see the dark bruise on Emma’s arm. “No, Sophie, we’re never coming back here. We’re going to have a new home, with Grandma and Grampa, and you’re never going to get hurt again.” She knew her daughter was looking confused and truthfully she felt confused too, she just had to get back to Storybrooke and then she could cry.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

About an hour away from Storybrooke Emma stopped at a superstore and grabbed a disposable cell. She put in her mom’s number but stopped before she pressed dial. She deleted the number and typed her father’s number instead, the same thing happened again, she just couldn’t press dial, she didn’t know what to say, how to explain, to explain that they had been right when they had asked her constantly if she was sure about marrying him so quickly. She had thought, hoped, she had shared true love with him. She had been so wrong, and both she and her daughter had suffered because of it, how could she admit that to them?

So instead she got back in her car and started to drive home, she could only tell them it in person, and she’d only be safe back in the barriers of her hometown.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Snow and David jerked awake at the sound of a banging noise.

“Wha’?” David slurred, less than intelligently. He looked at his wife then towards their bedroom door. “Neal?”

Snow was already getting out of bed. “It’s the front door.”

David shot up. ”Let me get it, it could be-”

“- A burglar knocking on the door?” She managed to quip. She heard a soft and sleepy laugh from her husband.

“It wouldn’t be the first time. Jesus, who needs us so badly at four in the morning? They’re clearly evil.”

The two headed down the stairs together, hurrying when the knocking carried on and knocked harder, they didn’t want it waking their son.

David’s mouth fell open. “Emma…” He gasped. She was covered in bruises, her eye was swollen and her nose had crusted blood under it, and she was obviously pregnant. At her side was a little girl, a few years younger than Neal, his granddaughter who he hadn’t seen in nearly six years. She looked small and scared, cuddled against her mom, it was too late (or early) for her to be properly awake but he could see her assessing him as subtibly as she could, exactly like Emma had when the first curse had broken, all those years ago.

“Emma!” Snow quickly assessed her and her daughter, while David was looking a little dumbfounded, understandably. “Hello Sophie, I don’t think you remember me, but I’m your grandma.”

“Mommy told me stories about you, and showed me pictures.” Sophie kept a hold of her mom’s hand.

Snow hadn’t received a text from Emma in over a year. She had a feeling now that it wasn’t down to Emma.  “Well, it’s very nice to see you again.”

“Mom?” Emma’s voice caught in her throat, it came out too voice, and she fought the need to cry. “Can we stay here a while? Please?”

“Of course you can!”

“Of course!”

Both David and Snow said at the same time.

Emma was surprised at the lack of hesitation, she wasn’t used to that, not anymore. She allowed Snow to usher them inside She placed down the duffle in her hand onto the wooden floor of the hallway. There was a small thud as she did. Then she was pulled into their arms. She felt tears pour from her eyes her body shudder as she choked down sobs. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I couldn’t…”

David’s hand cupped the back of her head. “It’s not your fault. Em, I, you shouldn’t have had to, I should have stepped in. Where is he?” He whispered, his voice was strained, and he was trying his best to hide his anger from his granddaughter.

“He’s not here, he’s, we ran away, as soon as he left. He grabbed Soph, he hurt her arm, I think he wanted to hurt her more… he didn’t but… I couldn’t let him hurt her, or our next kid, I shouldn’t have stayed that long.”

“It’s not your fault sweetheart. He shouldn’t have done that, he’s at fault, not you. He’s never going to get into this town, I promise you.” Snow kissed the side of her head and felt her wince in response.

David did too because he crouched down next to his grandaughter. “Hey there Soph, I know this must have been a very scary day, both for you and your mommy. Have you had hot chocolate before?”

“M-Me and mommy have it when daddy’s not home.”

David gritted his teeth before relaxing to give her a small calm smile. “Do you want to help me make some hot chocolate? Grandma’s going to help clean your mommy up which is going to be pretty boring, and I’ll show you my secret recipe for it.”

Sophie looked to her mother. She bit her lip and fidgetted.

“It’s okay Sophie, you go with Grandpa, I’ll be right here.” Emma watched as her daughter headed to the kitchen with David.

“How far along are you?”

Emma did a quick double take at her mom as it took her a minute to realise what she said. “Oh, erm, 20 weeks, I think. I haven’t had a scan, I tried but Kil- Hook, he wouldn’t-”

Snow gently cupped her cheek. “Emma,” She interrupted, “you don’t have to explain or try to make excuses, we all understand it, and why it was so hard for you to leave. I grew up seeing my father being abusive to both my mother and Regina, and abusing me in a very different way than he abused them, I understand. Your father was neglected and abused by Robert, his mother experienced domestic violence, he understands. What’s good is that you left him, now the even harder part is that you have to rebuild, for you and your kids.”

“I- I don’t know if I can.”

“You can. And you won’t be alone, you have me, and your father, Henry, Neal, Regina, you have all of us. You’re staying here, god knows we have the room, and you’ll need help, both you and the kids, we’re here for you. We’ll take you to the hospital to get a checkup and a scan tomorrow, and we’ll sort out your and Sophie’s rooms.”

“Thank you.” Emma’s voice was quiet and broken and despite the pain in her face as she heard her daughter’s giggles coming from the kitchen. At least out of this entire horrible ordeal she had her kids, she could build them a better life, with the help of her parents. “I missed you guys, a lot.”

[lordittetsu]

#15: No Prompt Today!

I have heard that @sea-wolf-coast-to-coast Chose a prompt with an idea in mind and didn’t get that idea. I also decided that the last few entries I have made were kind of dark, so here, have some warmth.

Tegah’a sat on the couch of his Lavender Bed home, staring quietly at the golden furred canine who had approached him shortly after Gan had gone home for the night. The dog, a breed far more common in the Far East, quietly ate the dumplings he had given her, as he really had nothing else. Originally, she had looked tired, her fur was matted by mud, and her spirits broken. Now she was on her third helping of Tegah’s favorite treat, tail swaying lazily, washed and brushed, with a cute bow tied around her neck. He knew it wasn’t uncommon for strays, Noise had taken care of so many, but he hadn’t had many dogs approach him since his change. To him, it was like she was desperate enough for a place to stay that she came to him. He could sense the unease at first, but since she had warmed up slightly. Tegah’a didn’t try to approach her too closely, as she always seemed to keep her distance, so he didn’t even try. Instead he decided to turn in for the night. He stood up with a yawned stretch, taking the long way around the coffee table to not disturb her. “I am going to bed, if you want, you are welcome to join.” She perked her ears toward the voice and nothing more. The Miqo’te stripped down to his pants on his way toward the lofted room, leaving a wake of clothing in his path. He had made sure to clean up the area that usually was a disaster. If he was going to be gone for a few suns, he may as well. He was tired, mostly mentally, and easily collapsed onto the futon for sleep. Not much longer than it took him to get comfortable, he heard the gentle steps as he was approached. A smile formed on his face as the warmth pressed to his back. This was nice, he missed Gilbert so much, but he would never admit it. Sleep came easily that night. He couldn’t tell what time it was in the windowless basement, what he could tell was that he was woken by an unusual sound, a sound that caused panic deep inside. The area was only lit by the fish tank he kept near his bed, but it was enough to allow his eyes to adjust to the sight. His new companion had fully taken the spare futon and it was a mess. He couldn’t quite tell the extent of the situation, but he could smell the scent. It almost attacked his senses. Overwhelmed for a moment he was fearful of the situation, that was until his ears were met with the smallest of sounds. 

Fumbling, he reached for the lamp that was kept near the head of the futon. Light flooded his darkness adjusted eyes, causing him to clench them shut but a moment. When his sight finally could return, his eyes searched for the sound.  The new mother was carefully cleaning a pair of puppies. The two seemed to be a bit lost as they searched for their meal, but bath time was in order first. He quickly searched about for any others, but it was only the two small pups. One a vibrant pale white and the other black. 

It was in that moment he understood why she was so willing to approach, she needed a safe place for her family. He moved over to her to brush along her head, “Don’t worry, I will get the mess in the morning. You can stay here as long as you need.” He knew she couldn’t understand him, but his touch made her wag her tail as she looked toward him, and that at least warmed his heart.

[zaattie]

fuck it, here are my preliminary notes for episode 1. idk if any of my rambelings make sense but maybe they’ll help someone

Ep. 1

On the night of June 12, 2004 Seattle PD arrested Nathan Wesninski, a resident of Baltimore, Maryland, with possession of illegal firearms.

Arrested in Seattle. Why was he in Seattle?

What was he doing with firearms in Seattle?

Did the Butcher’s territory extend to the west coast, or was it only on the east coast?

I didn’t think it was big enough to extend across the whole country? Since it’s centered out of Baltimore…

Other west coast crime families

Connections to the Wesninski’s?

The real reason Nathan Wesninski was arrested in Seattle Washington on the night of June 12, 2004, was due to eyewitness accounts of a fire fight against what was described as a middle-aged woman and boy.

This could have been mary and nathaniel. The implications if it were though are..... A lot

So the two possibilities are:

A. Mary and Nathaniel were already on the run from Nathan, and the only reason he was in Seattle was to find them.

B. This is the moment they went "missing", the moment they got out, or perhaps died. The moment where, in some aspect, they got away

Looking into this with the viewpoint of theory A:

It implies Nathaniel and Mary were already in Seattle at the time, though people only noticed they were missing after Nathan's arrest...

It implies that perhaps they had been gone quite a while before hand

When had they run initially? For how long had this been going on? Why had no one noticed?

It implies that perhaps Nathan was only in Seattle to find them

Had he been chasing them and Seattle is where he caught up?

Other potential reasons for being in Seattle?

And a fire fight ensued because they didn't want to be found?

They were defending themselves?

....or perhaps caught?

The other possibility is that, if these two were Mary and Nathaniel, they were with Nathan in Seattle doing ... Something, then got in a fight and... Ran? Escaped?

Reasons for being in Seattle???

Crime stuff?

Could have been on west coast to...idk like talk with connections? Another crime ring?

Missing information

They’ve been missing for 15 years, no missing persons report was ever submitted

Why wouldn't anyone care? These are key witnesses.

They could give so much evidence against Wesninski

nathan had been terrorizing the nation for 19 years before 2004, since 1985. not a small case.

From what I understand, they accepted this disappearance as if it were expected.

.....i have a theory and it ties in with the call. What if the fbi let them get away? Like if Mary sent in the call, but as an ultimatum for the information she made it so the feds wouldn't look for them when they disappeared ....

Or perhaps wouldn't continue looking for them?

If they had been gone longer than 2004,that is....

Still more suspect that Mrs. Wesninski had ties to another crime family

.......which one? One of the other us based families or international?

anon who tipped the authorities to the hidden basement

Mary, quite a possibility

It definitely had to be someone who knew.... It could have been nathaniel, i guess

Other people from within Nathan’s circle?

someone who the police ended up taking down? Or someone they left alone?

Who was all within this crime family in the first place?

Why does no one talk about the others?

why haven't Mary or Nathaniel resurfaced in the past two years?

I feel like something definitely happened two years ago (probably bad) but idk what

Do they have skeletons of their own to hide?

Quite possibly considering the man they lived with. There's no telling how much they were involved.

They also could totally believe there are people out looking for them.

There might even be people out looking for them.

Nathan was a mob boss but he had subordinates and probably has connections to other mob families.

There's a high possibility he's still able to pull strings from within jail. Corruption is everywhere

If authorities have notified us correctly, whatever contacts or associates Nathan had been working with have been successfully snuffed out as well.

Have they though?????

That’s a BIG IF

What was the fuck up that set the police on Wesninski’s trail?

was it his own or someone else’s?

A warrant was issued to search the Wesninski’s quiet suburban home and a suspiciously well-timed anonymous call tipped the FBI to a hidden basement on the property.

Fire fight, arrest, then warrant to search house, then tip off while police were searching the house?.

Only someone on the inside could have known about the basement

Person must have also know Wesninski had been arrested.

Did they only give the tip because they’d heard Wesninki was arrested?

Possession of firearms is not a long sentence, so someone who knew him, and wanted him gone for a very long time would give the tip off.

The State of Maryland held no reservations about their oft times controversial death penalty.

Why wasn’t he given the death penalty then?????

who wanted him kept alive? and why?

2013 death penalty went away in maryland

but nathan convicted in 2010

there is definitely something someone is covering up, and authorities might even know about it

or they might be in someones pocket.... :/

[kingofthenorth49]

the world as we thought we know it

Ed. Note -- As I wrote this blog this morning, yet another Ontario family is moving into my neighbourhood, escaping the clutches of a tyrannical woke Ontario (their words, not mine) for the peace of the east coast. I’m pretty sure when this all shakes out this town is going to be radically changed for years to come, but here’s to hoping. - Jim

I know, ya’ll think my tinfoil hat is on too tight these days. Maybe it is, and maybe that’s not a bad thing, but at this point does it even matter, we are watching a train wreck of epic proportions and no one seems to care. It’s like the words from Trooper’s Santa Maria, “But nobody moved, from where they were laying, cause nobody really cared”. I guess Netflix and Chill means more than I had thought.

I was watching (listening) to Scott Adams last evening as I do every few nights and for those who don’t know Scott, He’s the guy who draws Dilbert, and hosts a daily vlog (or whatever the kids are calling them these days) which I enjoy, as there are few left leaning types I can really listen too, and he’s one of the best. We don’t often agree, but the past few nights he and I have been in lockstep on a few things, and that’s very rare but interesting when it happens. Last night however it was something he said about midway through his podcast that really caught my attention. He started out by saying that as you get pulled “behind the curtain” (a showbiz reference I guess) you get to see/learn things that most of the world doesn’t, as if the elites really do run the world (hint: they do) and he teased the crowd by saying something to the effect that he learned something this week that’s bigger than any news story, something so large it would shift people’s minds completely. He went on to say that he couldn’t say what it was because they’d come after him, but that people should question more of what they see and hear. He framed it in the context that people would not even believe the truth if they heard it.

I agree 100%. I believe the average person on this planet now is so afraid, confused, and polarized that they don’t know which way is up, hell just the fact that the world rolled over so quickly makes me sad, but it wasn’t unexpected. We are weak, soft, entitled humans.

As much as you want to deny it, we are in the world’s largest Psyops experiment right now. Governments are pushing the boundaries of human endurance, and we are beginning to turn on one another, whether it’s for not wearing a government mandated facial shaming device when outside your home, or if your neighbours son, fresh home from out-of-province school is out on the patio on his tablet chatting with his best girl when he’s suppose to be self isolating in the basement chained to the wall and fed with a stick.

Disclaimer: Yes, it’s a particularly bad flu. Yes, people will die from it. Yes we should be cautious and prevent catastrophe.

Speaking of being cautious, what is up with the average person beating down their neighbours in the rush to get an experimental unapproved chemical concoction thrust into their arms? WTF dude?

I’ll never understand that mentality. Yes, vaccines save lives and can stop the spread of viruses. Yes vaccines form part of any strategy to manage a pandemic, but it’s just one part. The idea that people are lining up 9 months after a vaccine is started into development for a “new” coronavirus and calling for a mandate to compel every human to take this vaccine is absurd.

It’s madness.

First of all, the concoction they are jabbing into your arms at 0.5 mg/dose isn’t even technically a vaccine. The CDC states a vaccine is “a product that stimulates a Peron’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease. It also defines Immunity as part of the vaccination process to say you can be exposed to the disease without becoming infected.

The current “vaccines” do neither. You can still become sick, and you can still spread it, there are several examples from Washington State, Florida, and Pennsylvania right now where fully vaccinated individuals now have the Coronavirus.

So why get the jab if you can still get it (albeit not be as sick) but you can still spread it? Why are we on a full out campaign war on “getting the jab” followed closely by “vaccination passports”.

It’s about control. It’s about gaining your compliance when told to do something. It’s about stripping your freedoms away all the while you feel like you don’t need them anyway.

I posted a video on social media yesterday of a Pastor of a Calgary church on Good Friday telling a bunch of Calgary police to leave the property and not come back without a warrant. He was very passionate in his calls for them to leave, and believe me when I say that video made me feel great despite the insults he was hurling at my brother’s and sister’s who were sent there to bring justice to the community.

Watch the video, it does a heart good.

Why? Because we have something called the Bill of Rights, and despite the fact it’s “granted” by our “government” it’s the only thing that holds this country together under one set of guiding principles, and despite some doctors proclamation of doom and gloom, people have the right to practice religion, they have freedom of speech, and security of the person and property. Our forefathers fought and died for those rights and we should be a bit more like the Pastor in preserving them. He’s a Polish pastor, who knows what happens when a government is allowed to run unchecked and what happens to the population when it does, and he wasn’t having any of it.

But the more telling story isn’t his fire and brimstone sermon aimed at the poor police (I bet his Good Friday sermon was off the charts!), it was what the police did next.

They left. As Monty Python would sing with a minstrel or two, “They turned their tails and ran they did, they turned their tails and ran and hid). Sorry, but the police don’t just leave when a crime has been committed, or they feel a crime will be committed by the parties in question. He literally shouted them away. Why did they leave?

Likely for a couple reasons. One, they didn’t want to be there in the first place. They were following orders or were dispatched to the church because some politician or Karen felt there were too many people practicing their religion on the holiest of days in the church. Two, they knew there were no grounds to be there because of the recent court ruling that freed the other Alberta pastor who was jailed for holding religious services, remember him? In Canada we jail religious leaders.

Say that again real slow. In Canada, we jail human beings who bring comfort and relief to those who need it in the name of a higher power under a constitutionally protected provision of religious freedoms. Or at least we used to. Now we are no better than the backwater republics we shamed as the former leader of the free world.

So if they knew the courts were not going to support them, why bother? That’s a great question.

I’m not even a religious person, we had Chinese (am I allowed to say that?) food for supper Easter Sunday, but I will fight for your right to practice yours just as hard as I’ll fight against any government mandating forced vaccinations or passports against freedoms.

Over a year ago we were told it was 15-days to “bend the curve” to get back to the “new normal” and such and now look at us a year later at the hands of a government run amok led by over-jealous reality tv stars who haven’t the first clue how to govern and couldn’t stick a hot poker in a snow bank to save their lives.

Folks we are rolling over at an alarming rate and accepting the removal of our rights and freedoms under suspicious circumstances, and you can “tin foil hat” me all day long, I don’t care. Things don’t add up, there’s too many red flags flying and yet as a society we simply want to turn to those “in charge” and say “Please sir, may I have some more”.

They say you won’t miss it until it’s gone and I firmly believe this to be true, especially when it comes to things like mobility rights. Imagine now if they do require vaccinations before you can travel, work, shop etc., (especially ones that provide no protection to others and only minimize your symptoms). We haven’t even talked about those who’ve died, or those who have had their lives changed forever from the initial side effects of the vaccines.

Yes, I said initial. What will happen a year from now as the COV-SARS-19 virus continues to produce hundreds of variants a day (despite what they want you to focus on like some B.1.1.3 etc.) and you come to find out in that rush to get jabs in the arms that the vaccination of the older population first drives the virus into the younger people who then start getting sicker than they originally did because the virus is morphing to stay alive. That’s right, things like Antibody Dependant Enhancement[1] can occur when you start messing with the human bodies abilities to fight off disease naturally as it has for hundreds of thousands of years.

All I’d ask is for you to do your research and have informed consent before you get the jab, and don’t shame others’ who chose not to for their own personal reasons. Like me. I won’t be getting the jab because there’s no compelling reason for me to do so at this time. I’m relatively  healthy (Yes, I’m obese so I fall into that risk category) but I have no real heath issues aside from the extra weight I carry around, and I know how to protect myself from the virus, so I’m choosing not to get vaccinated. I. Or people like me, shouldn’t be shamed because our beliefs are different from yours, and the solution doesn’t solve the problem, you only think it does because that’s what you are being told. \

Make your own decision and live with it. If I get the COVID and get sick enough (4% of my age category) to be hospitalized, so be it. I’ll take my chances on that versus being forced to have a chemical injected into my body that will do Gawd knows what to my immune system or any other system for that matter.

The other thing that just baffles me is how people actually believe the flu was eradicated this year. Sorry, are you serious? Do you think every single person in Canada was so diligent at washing their hands that we had no flu season this year?

I should have been a real estate salesperson in Florida selling swampland to tourists. Actually, that doesn’t sound like a bad idea for the next phase.

Anyway, wash your hands, stay socially distant, stay home if you’re sick, and wear a government mandated facial shaming device so you can conform and not be publically humiliated by Karen at Costco as you go to give your Easter offerings to the commerce Gods when you aren’t allowed to go to church to pray to whatever God the constitutions protects your right to bow to.

Get it yet?

Jim Out.

[1] Informed consent disclosure to vaccine trial subjects of risk of COVID-19 vaccines worsening clinical disease, Timothy Cardoza, Ronald Veazey

[marypsue]

Nonny, I don’t have thoughts.

...I have an entire AU.

(Here’s a link to Hive, in case you haven’t already read it and don’t know what the fuss is about)

...

Dipper and Mabel leave without a fuss at the end of the summer. It’s best for everyone, this way. Fewer questions.

Each of the twins have been ‘the weird one’, at one point or another. They haven’t yet both been ‘the weird one’. There are whispers about flowers in the attic, about birth defects, about demons. At least they have each other, but the distance between Piedmont and Gravity Falls is excruciating, and grows more so by the day.

The forensic report, afterwards, says that the fire was started by a filmy scarf that Mabel had carelessly left draped over a lamp too long, too close to the bulb. Only the bones of the house remain, scorched black and warped with heat. Only the bones of the Pines parents remain, scorched black and fragile with ash. Nobody’s fault. 

The children’s great-uncles are already waiting at the hospital when the ambulance arrives. 

...

Gravity Falls is home, and family, and heart, and everything else that anyone could ever want, a perfect little sanctuary tucked away in the hollow of a valley in the middle of nowhere. 

Mabel is content there. Dipper is not. 

It’s - difficult - to want something for yourself, when you’re part of something so cohesive, something that is so good and warm and right. But Dipper’s very expensive camera equipment is gathering dust, and the anomalies of Gravity Falls still haven’t returned, and - somewhere, very deeply buried, he and Stan both remember Mabel’s carelessly-tossed scarf.

In the end, Stan takes Dipper’s side, and Dipper takes his first Bigfoot-hunting trip.

It’s only a day trip, a little ways down the coast. He can’t imagine being away any longer, any farther, not now. Not yet. But - it’s exhilarating. Like a salt sea wind to the inside of the head.

The world doesn’t have to be bound by the town limits of Gravity Falls. 

...

While Dipper’s becoming the darling of the online cryptid-hunting community, Mabel’s building a sweater empire. She’s manning (womanning?) her booth at the Bend farmers’ market when she meets Henry. 

Henry is six feet seven inches of gangly, freckled, bespectacled redhead, and Mabel looks up into his hazel eyes and has to have him. Not like she had to have the Princess Cornicorn playset for Christmas when she was eight years old. More like she had to have her brother when he was only halfway assimilated and there was a hollow spot in the middle of her and she needed she needed she needs -

It’s a year before she tells Henry what her family, her town is. Before she gives him the choice.

He chooses to stay, of course. By now he’s already practically one of them.

(Mabel doesn’t turn him. Not yet. But it’s not as though he’s leaving, not now. It’s not as though he has anything else left.)

...

Memory is a tricky thing.

Removing memories is an even trickier thing. And, while it’s possible to explain the existence of physical evidence left behind when the memories are erased, it makes it much harder to keep the dam from breaking.

Agents Powers and Trigger return to Washington uncertain of what they were doing in Gravity Falls in the first place. What they find in Washington only leads to more confusion. They were investigating Gravity Falls, but why? What was there that warranted so much surveillance? So much intrigue? 

They’re the laughingstock of the FBI. They’re pulled up before their superiors more than once for pursuing a will-o’-the-wisp. Chasing down an x-file. Following a hunch.

But there’s something in Gravity Falls. And eventually, the agents make their way back to the source.

...

The longer and the farther Dipper stays away, the more his mind feels like his own.

He’s a fixture at conventions. He joins other hunters’ videos and drops in on podcasts. He’s always chasing myths and monsters across countries, continents. So long as he always returns to Gravity Falls, nothing stops him. 

Her name is Mikaela, Kay for short. Her focus is ghost hunting. She and Dipper have run into each other at four of the five last conventions he’s been to. He’s sat in some of her panels. She’s insightful and brilliant and funny. 

The thing in the back of his head snaps and snarls, but the convention’s in Maine and Dipper, emboldened by the distance and the head-rush of defiance, asks her if she wants to get drinks. 

...

Mabel doesn’t assimilate Henry.

And doesn’t assimilate Henry.

And doesn’t assimilate Henry.

Sure, he asked her not to. Sure, his entire life is basically within Gravity Falls now anyway. But - Mabel wants him. She wants, and yet, it feels like...like she’s waiting for something. Like Christmas morning. Like the spotlight to come up.

It’s exhilarating when they both propose (on the same day, through an honestly hilarious twist of fate), it’s brilliant, it’s wonderful, it’s everything...except, it’s not time yet. Dipper comes back for the wedding and everyone is home and even Grunkle Stan seems happy, genuinely happy and not just background happy, when Henry leans down and kisses Mabel, and if ever there was a perfect dramatic moment to give him a lungful of spores it would be this one, but...she doesn’t. Even she isn’t sure why.

And then, there comes a day when one, two, three little brand new sparks tug briefly at the back of her mind, and Mabel realises, oh. That’s why.

...

They’re in Japan, and it’s the middle of the night, and they’re flying out at an ungodly hour of the morning, but Dipper wakes up and knows that this is it. This is going to be his one chance.

He leans across the bed and shakes Kay awake, grips her by the shoulders like he can embed what he knows into her flesh. The basement. Mabel’s scarf. The sickening, sweet, slow tug of contentment.

“Whatever happens,” Dipper demands, giving Kay another shake. Her eyes are wide, frightened, and he thinks good. She ought to be afraid. Of this, of him. “Don’t - don’t let me convince you to join.”

“What?” Kay asks, and Dipper shakes his head. It’s already creeping back up on him, driving its hooks into his consciousness. There’s nowhere on this planet far enough away to be free. 

“I’m going to try to tell you I’m happy. That we’re all happier, better, that you’d be happier and better too. Don’t listen to me. Whatever you do, don’t listen -”

When Dipper wakes up, Kay starts. She’s up, a toothbrush sticking out of her mouth as she throws the rest of her toiletries back into her suitcase.

“Hey,” Dipper says. “Was I talking in my sleep last night?” 

...

Stan hasn’t been himself, since.

Strictly speaking, none of them have been quite themselves, since strictly speaking none of them are separate individuals any longer. But Stan - Ford thinks he took it hard. Possibly because of his age. Possibly because he fought. 

A lot of things, Ford thinks, would be better if Stan hadn’t fought. 

But he had, and now the damage is done, and Stan’s...not unhappy. The hive supports him, of course, provides a hammock of love and joy and positivity even when Stan’s own inclination is towards a low. There’s something melancholy in him, something Ford almost wishes he’d recognised when they were still children. Perhaps then things would have turned out differently.

Perhaps not.

But whatever the melancholy, it seems to have been the thing that gave Stan his edge. He doesn’t joke, as much, anymore. Doesn’t laugh like he used to. Of course he’s content, no one could be part of something as wonderful as their hive and be unhappy, but - every so often Ford can’t help a traitor thought that Stan could be happier. 

So perhaps he has encouraged Stan’s tendency towards solitude. The taxidermy in the shed, the lone hunting trips - it’s all right, now. Stan’s one of them, part of them. Giving him his space won’t do any further harm. 

It’s only when Stan’s thoughts explode with fear and pain all over the inside of Ford’s head that Ford realises how wrong he was.

...

The site is an abandoned mental hospital, shut down due to flooding in the lower levels. Kay’s got a new EMF ‘ghost box’ apparatus that’s supposed to let spirits speak in real-time using electromagnetic frequencies that she’s been dying to test out. Dipper’s behind the camera for once.

The first floor is uneventful. There isn’t much by way of activity, and Kay seems disappointed. The second floor, though, is full of cold spots and eerie feelings, sudden inexplicable anxiety and overwhelming sadness. 

Kay’s in the middle of excitedly telling the viewers why these emotions might be transferred from spiritual residue when Dipper hears it. A bang, away down the closed-off hall to their right. He can’t help himself, he whips the camera away from Kay’s face to look through the window, and could swear he sees a flash of light through the dingy window set into the metal double doors.

“Did you see that?” he demands, pointing at the hall. Kay’s there in an instant, turning to mug surprise and excitement at the camera as she pushes open the doors and steps through.

And then she’s gone.

The forensic report, afterwards, notes that the damp from the flooded basement had caused the entire east wing to rot out from the inside. The first and second floors had both collapsed long before Mikaela ever set foot within its doors. She fell three stories.

Dipper stops going to conventions, after that.

...

The two government agents have cornered Stan, on a lone hunt. One of them’s shot him, while his mouth was open. One petal of flesh dangles limp, teeth chattering, from the bottom of his face. 

Mabel pulls him back, into the crowd, out of harm’s way as the townsfolk press in. The younger of the two government agents is still waving his pistol around, like it’ll do anything, naked fear in his eyes. The older of the two has his back against a tree and the look of a man condemned to death.

“Stay back, all of you!” the younger agent yells, pointing his pistol in Ford’s general direction. Ford wonders if he’s the one who shot Stanley. “I’m warning, you, I’m - I -”

The hive closes like a fist.

...

“Congratulations!” the nurse at the hospital in Bend says, looking from Henry to Mabel. Her smile falters slightly at the sight of Mabel’s eyes, but she recovers impressively, tucking a baby into each of Mabel’s arms and one into Henry’s. “You’ve delivered three healthy, happy infants.” She looks at Mabel a bit oddly, again, as she adds, “They’re certainly the happiest, calmest infants I’ve seen in a long time.”

Mabel beams at the nurse. The nurse gives her a strained smile, and pats her knee through the hospital blanket. “Anything I can get you...dear...before I go?”

“No,” Mabel says, looking down at the little bundles in her arms. “Thank you!”

Three healthy, happy babies, she thinks, rocking the girls gently in her arms while Henry stares with astonished wonder down at his son. Three healthy, happy little queens-to-be.

Very soon, the Gravity Falls hive will no longer be alone.

[itsyourturnblog]

Arlene, Bret, Cindy, Dennis, Emily, Franklin, Gert, Harvey, Irene, Ten and Jose. A motley crew of ruckus makers if there ever was one.

By the fourth week of August 2005 fatigue had set in for residents of the Northern Gulf of Mexico. Eleven Atlantic storms had materialized, seven of those had entered the Gulf. Most had largely been non-events for those of us along the Mississippi Coast.

On that Saturday, I grumbled to my friend as he helped me board up our cottage on Beach Boulevard. It was a typical August day south of I-10 — very hot, smotheringly humid and blindingly bright. I made an offhand comment that “…maybe one of these damn storms would take out the highway and give us unfettered access to the beach.”

Be careful what you wish for.

We were planning a party for Sunday night — Holly and her team at work were to be featured on HGTV promoting a product they’d developed. We prepped food and bev accordingly, vacuumed the house and proceeded like it was any other day. The storm seemed to be heading south and west of us; we went to sleep excited about the party, mildly annoyed at the most recent storm distraction.

We were awakened by the phone ringing early Sunday morning. The voice on the other end said, with notable urgency “get up, it’s coming our way, it’s time to go.”

We made a few final preparations — put tarps over some heirloom furniture pieces, put some items on countertops or places where, if there might be water intrusion, they’d be more likely to stay dry.

We also helped some others finalize their own preparations, then grabbed a few days clothes, our dog and a wedding album. Making our way East and slightly inland. we took the back roads toward Mobile, AL as the Interstate was essentially gridlocked.

A week ago today (Tuesday 3/10/20), things here were normal. Everyone was in their respective offices. Schools that weren’t yet on spring break were meeting as usual. Life was clicking along normally. By Wednesday (3/11/20), tensions were rapidly rising. Forms of Pandemic Panic were beginning to show up.

Hurricanes and Pandemics are each natural disasters. Unlike tornadoes or earthquakes, you can know they’re coming with some certainty and even watch their progression over time. Predictive models, water temperature monitoring, Hurricane hunters. Test results, hospital capacity and visualization maps.

As Hurricane ‘alumni’, it has been interesting to watch the social evolution of the Covid-19 Pandemic. Mad runs on bottled water, toilet paper and grocery staples are standard issue Hurricane Panic behaviors. They apparently apply in Pandemics too.

In a Hurricane scenario, the cone of uncertainty is finite — we know, with a comfortable degree of accuracy where the boundaries of landfall are likely to be and consequently where the damage will occur. The models tell us the sorts of impacts the storm will have and we know where we ought send the supplies and the work crews.

In a Pandemic, we also know where the impacts will be — we know, with an uncomfortable degree of accuracy where the boundaries will not be. We aren’t managing where to send supplies as much as we are attempting to manage when they’ll be needed. In some ways it is more like a hurricane season than a single hurricane.

In both Hurricanes and Pandemics, we need Movements of Love.

Lois, Doug, Laura, Bobby, Holly, Batch and Luke the dog. Also a motley crew of ruckus makers, albeit of a different sort.

We settled into our accommodations, a basement in small church. We grilled out that evening as the winds picked up.

Hunker down. Shelter in place. Forms of social distancing I suppose, before we even knew what that was.

Katrina.

She made landfall around 6AM Monday near the Louisiana, Mississippi border, August 29, 2005.

As we listened to the radio reports of extensive damage and destruction, we made a pact among the families we were with — if any of our homes were damaged, those less impacted would take in the others.

The six of us loaded up into the largest vehicle for the drive from Mobile to Gulfport/Biloxi early Tuesday morning. Nerves were frayed, aimless chatter punctuated the pensive silence. As we drove along I-10 and then southward into town, the damage didn’t seem as bad as we’d heard. We were hopeful, encouraged even.

As we proceeded further south and nearer the water, the damage became more apparent. The railroad runs parallel to the coastline there, about 2–3 blocks inland, forming a levee of sorts. About two blocks North of the tracks we were forced to park and walk. As we stepped up the gentile incline of the railbed, the Mississippi Sound came into full view — our house and most of our neighbors’ homes were completely gone.

Holly and I were in a daze.

We expected to come home to a mess; instead we came home to nothing. We found furniture 2 blocks north and three blocks west. Eventually, I found my tool chest and our TV in the shallow waters of The Sound. We found two walls of our bedroom still intact — sconces still on the wall — a few blocks away. Our shock persisted as we made our way to the other families’ homes. Bobby and Laura had some impact but their house was livable. Doug and Lois fared the best. They insisted we move in with them.

So we did. For 10 months. A remarkable Movement of Love.

Our hosts and their family helped form a relief center out of the church we all attended. Donations of food, water, clothing and cleaning supplies were coordinated from across the country.

Sheds of hope were erected.

Crews were deployed to clean up what could be salvaged.

FEMA trailers began to arrive.

All of these Movements of Love — laying down one’s life for another — became almost normal.

Our friends at work raised money — lots of it — to help get us back on our feet.

Then they came from across the country to help us work on the house we’d purchased after the storm to restore.

More Movements of Love.

Katrina took out the highway in chunks, along with 90% of the structures within half a mile of the coastline.

Her highest winds (1-minute sustained) clocked in at 175 mph (280 km/h). Fatalities are estimated between 1,245 and 1,836. Economic damages were estimated at $125 billion. 15 years later, the community there is still recovering.

Lee, Maria, Nate, Ophelia, Philippe, Rita, Nineteen, Stan, Unnamed, Tammy, Twenty-Two, Vince, Wilma, Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon, Zeta.

By the end, it was the most active Atlantic Hurricane season in recorded history.

28 Tropical storms, 15 Hurricanes, 7of those major.

Much like in storms past, this week as we grow accustomed to Pandemic Preparations, we need Movements of Love.

These Movements can take many forms:

Make grocery runs for people more at risk than you

Care for those who are sick with other ailments

Call friends and family or set up video conferences with them

Teach others how to attend a video conference so they can stay connected

Help people who aren’t financially secure bridge this season of uncertainty

Run errands for the elderly

Tip generously in all service industries

Donate to food pantries & shelters

As much as you’re able, ensure your employees are paid even if circumstances prohibit their working a full load

Check-in with those who struggle with anxiety

Take time for self-care; take vitamins, eat well, break a sweat, get lots of sleep

Organize support for single parents

Check in on and encourage those who are in self-quarantine

Wash your hands; sanitize every surface

Stay home — establish and keep social distance

Find out of the ordinary ways to pitch in — at work, home, church, for your neighbors, for strangers — let’s lay down our lives for another in simply, wise, everyday way — let’s create Movements of Love…

What other ideas do you have?

Let’s spark a Movement of Love

Hurricanes, Pandemics and the Movements of Love was originally published in It's Your Turn on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

by Batch Batchelder via It's Your Turn - Medium #itsyourturn #altMBA #SethGodin #quotes #inspiration #stories #change #transformation #writers #writing #self #shipping #personaldevelopment #growth #education #marketing #entrepreneurship #leadership #personaldev #wellness #medium #blogging #quoteoftheday #inspirationoftheday

[nightmare-afton-cosplay]

Attention, Bargain Hunters! Here Are the 10 Cities With the Most Homes Under $100K

iStock; realtor.com

The U.S. housing market has been on a wild, high-octane thrill ride these past few years, mostly with prices climbing up and up and up. But while it may seem that inexpensive homes have gone the way of the Razr flip phone (hey, aren’t those things coming back?), there’s some hope for would-be home buyers with a budget that barely cracks six figures.

Yes, you can find a home for less than $100,000—it just probably won’t be in the heart of New York City. Or San Fransisco. Or, heck, Miami. But where? Our thrifty data team set out to find out which metros are listing the most single-family homes for sale at that seemingly mythical sub-$100K price point in sheer numbers on realtor.com®—and pinpoint just what home buyers can expect from these homes and their communities.*

“If you’re looking for affordability, you’ll find it in the South, Midwest, and [more remote] parts of the Northeast,” says Danielle Hale, chief economist for realtor.com. And, as you might have guessed, that’s because the East and West coasts are dominated by big, often prohibitively pricey cities.

Inexpensive land “plays a big role in the total home price falling under a certain threshold,” Hale adds.

We won’t deny that in larger cities where these ultra-affordable homes can be found, crime may be an issue. But locals have found pockets with a reasonable balance between affordability and safety. In smaller towns, you’ll get more peace of mind—and more home for the few bucks you’ll be shelling out.

Below are 10 places where a home costs about the same as a Tesla Model S, a few semesters at Harvard, or a small pile of bitcoins. Pick your poison!

Metros with most homes for $100K and less

Tony Frenzel

1. Pittsburgh, PA

Median home sales price: $168,000 Number of under-$100K homes** listed on realtor.com: 2,452

This three-bed, one-bath home in the Bellevue neighborhood of Pittsburgh is listed at $99,900.

realtor.com

Forget the old Steel City image: Pittsburgh is making some progress shedding its tarnished Rust Belt past and transforming into a technology hub, with businesses such as Microsoft, Google, and Uber opening offices there. The homegrown startup Duolingo, which makes a popular language app, is preparing for an initial public offering next year.

The revival of the city is also spurring home prices upward.

Bob Moncavage, broker and owner of Priority Realty in Pittsburgh, says there’s been an influx of “upscale urban, contemporary development and redevelopment” around those employment centers, and it comes at a higher price.

Lawrenceville, the city’s largest neighborhood, used to be a blue-collar area. Now it’s gone hip, and $100,000 won’t buy more than a teardown, Moncavage says.

Instead, buyers looking for bargain-basement deals can still find some in the neighborhoods of Bellevue, Dormont, and Castle Shannon. The homes in these neighborhoods are typically 800 to 1,200 square feet and have been maintained, but not updated, says Moncavage.

“Typically it will need paint and carpet at a minimum,” he says. “The kitchen or bathroom may have been replaced in the last 15 to 30 years, but they are not likely to be the shiny and new [ones] that a buyer may be hoping for.”

2. Detroit, MI

Median home sales price: $180,000 Number of under-$100K homes listed on realtor.com: 2,402

In the Detroit neighborhood of University Village, this three-bed, two-bath home is $95,900.

realtor.com

The Detroit metro area has had a bumpy ride economically in recent years—um, decades—but things are beginning to finally pick up. There are still an awful lot of inexpensive single-family homes here. But lately the real estate market has become more competitive.

“There’s a couple stable neighborhoods that are coming back to life, and we’re seeing some growth,” says Tom Nanes, a Realtor® with Community Choice Realty in Livonia, MI.

Yes, urban blight is still a problem: The Detroit News reports the city owns about 92,000 parcels of land. Many of the houses under $100,000 have been neglected and require repairs. Often lots of repairs. Plus, safety is an issue in many low-cost neighborhoods.

Buyers should try Rosedale Park, Redford Township, and the University District neighborhoods for houses under $100,000, Nanes says.

In Redford Township, buyers can find a two-bedroom, move-in ready home, says Nanes. In Rosedale Park or English Village, however, the homes will need a major renovation.

In these neighborhoods, “$100,000 will get you a fixed-up house,” he says. “A three-bedroom with a basement and a garage. Maybe a second bath, a half-bath in a semi-decent neighborhood.”

When assessing Detroit neighborhoods for safety, it’s important to get granular, he says. “Maybe that one block [you’re looking at] is good, but you go two blocks away and it’s a war zone.”

Adjacent Warren, which is part of the Detroit metropolitan area, is known as a hot spot for entry-level housing, according to the Detroit Free Press, with plenty of homes under $100,000.

3. Chicago, IL

Median home sales price: $252,000 Number of under-$100K homes listed on realtor.com: 2,070

In Chicago, a one-bed, one-bath condo in this Rogers Park building goes for $69,000.

realtor.com

The charms of Chicago are often overshadowed by its bigger and more glamorous cousins on the coasts, New York and Los Angeles, but when it comes to bargain home prices, it really shines, says Maurice Hampton, president-elect for the Chicago Association of Realtors.

“When you’ve looked at New York real estate, L.A., Florida, Singapore, London, Paris … none of it is anywhere near the affordability that Chicago’s housing stock is,” he says.

Deals can actually be found within the Chicago city limits, though they’re much scarcer in the pricier areas like Lincoln Park or the Gold Coast.

You can acquire a spacious duplex or a condo in the city for $100,000, Hampton says. “It just really depends on what characteristics you’re prioritizing.”

Buyers on the North Side can look in neighborhoods such as West Rogers Park, Lake View East, or Edgewater, and find a well-maintained one-bedroom, one-bath condo for less than $100,000. On the South Side, buyers in West Pullman can find a single-family home with three bedrooms or more, being sold as is, at the same price point.

4. St. Louis, MO

Median home sales price: $185,000 Number of under-$100K homes listed on realtor.com: 1,900

In the Ferguson neighborhood of St. Louis, this three-bed, 2.5-bath home is listed at $99,000.

realtor.com

Although the Brookings Institution cites St. Louis as an industrial city with a strong economy on the path to renewal, its national reputation is a bit bleaker, linked to its high rate of violent crimes. (It had the most murders per capita of any large U.S. city in 2017.)

“Unfortunately we get a lot of publicity for the murder rate, but [those crimes] are mostly in a small area of the city,” says Dennis Norman, broker and owner for St. Louis Real Estate Search. “An overwhelming majority of the area is extremely safe.”

Buyers wanting deals can look into St. Louis County, which is outside the city proper. One-fourth of the sales in the county are distressed, many of them foreclosures.

“A lot of these homes are selling for less than they sold for in the early ’90s,” Norman says, noting that the area was slammed hard by the housing crash.

While investors have dominated the lower-end housing, there are plenty of good deals in areas such as Florissant, Normandy, and Ferguson—the latter known for the protests and clashes with police after the killing of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, by a white police officer in August 2014.

“There’s a lot of great value in the $70,000 to $100,000 range,” Norman says. Buyers can get a three-bedroom, two-bath ranch home with a one-car garage for less than $100,000 in parts of Florissant.

Katie Luster, a real estate agent with Re/Max Results in St. Louis, says those wanting to stay in town should look in the South City, Tower Grove East, and Tower Grove South neighborhoods. Buyers can find a 1900s shotgun home or a 1950s bungalow, she says, “complete with cozy charm and historic decadence.”

5. Cleveland, OH

Median home sales price: $146,000 Number of under-$100K homes listed on realtor.com: 1,587

Three bedrooms and one bath for $94,900 in the Old Brooklyn neighborhood of Cleveland

realtor.com

Cleveland is yet another city whose economy and population declined with the loss of manufacturing jobs starting in the middle of the past century. According to the U.S. Census, Cleveland’s population declined 56% between 1950 and 2010.

The decline has slowed, but its effects remain, says David Sharkey, president of Progressive Urban Real Estate in Cleveland: “There’s less people looking and prices go down.”

Still, all’s not gloom here. “It’s easy to live in Cleveland,” says  Sharkey. “You’ve got sports, arts, and the lake. You can pretty much do anything you want in Cleveland … without a big hassle. You can do a lot with your money here.”

Old Brooklyn, Jefferson, and North Collinwood neighborhoods all have large inventory of houses that cost less than $100,000. Sharkey says that amount will get a buyer a Colonial house with a front porch, newer windows, and kitchen and bath updates, but not a full remodel.

6. Memphis, TN

Median home sales price: $185,872 Number of under-$100K homes listed on realtor.com: 1,083

This three-bed, two-bath home in Hunters Hollow, adjacent to Cordova in Memphis, is $100,000.

realtor.com

Graceland, barbecue, and blues? If you thought Memphis already had it all, here’s something else to add to the list: cheap single-family homes! Kiplinger listed Memphis at No. 4 on its 2019 list of “Cheapest U.S. Cities to Live In.”

As always, there’s a catch.

“When there’s a home in good shape for under $100,000, the biggest challenge for people who live here is the cash investors,” says Katie Bigus, a real estate agent with Re/Max Experts in Germantown, TN. “It’s very hard to get under contract when there are investors who will pay all-cash to take a home as is.”

Depending on location, $100,000 will get a buyer a move-in ready home in Cordova or a fixer-upper in the Crosstown area.

And there are good prospects for employment, too. Kiplinger notes that the city’s location on the Mississippi River has long made it a hub for the shipping and transportation industries. It’s also home to three Fortune 500 companies: FedEx, International Paper, and AutoZone.

7. Philadelphia, PA

Median home sales price: $250,000 Number of under-$100K homes listed on realtor.com: 1,004

A two-bed, one-bath in North Philadelphia for $69,900

realtor.com

Philadelphia’s market has been on fire in recent years, with many homes receiving multiple offers, although that’s started to slow slightly.

“When you go from crazy hot to hot, it’s still strong,” says Christopher Somers, a real estate agent with The Somers Team in Philadelphia and the 2019 president of the Greater Philadelphia Association of Realtors.

However, hardship has kept prices in certain neighborhoods lower than the national average. The Pew Charitable Trust reports that about 26% of Philly residents lived below the poverty line in 2017. The deep poverty rate—a household of four making $12,300 or less in a year—rose in 2017 to 14%.

It’s mostly in these neighborhoods that buyers and investors can find homes under $100,000.

“Neighborhoods that are struggling have not had as much appreciation due to less demand,” Somers says. “These areas have more poverty, crime, and a low owner-occupant percentage.”

Naturally, the homes closer to the walkable center of town go for higher prices.

The sum of $100,000 in Philadelphia will get a buyer a 1,100-square-foot, two-story home, possibly with a basement, says Somers. In some areas such as North Philadelphia, the home might be partly updated. In other areas such as Kensington, the home “would be a shell of sorts” in need of a full remodel.

8. Lynchburg, VA

Median home sales price: $194,600 Number of under-$100K homes listed on realtor.com: 936

This three-bed, one-bath home in Lynchburg is listed at $83,900.

realtor.com

Lynchburg might best be known as the second home of Thomas Jefferson, whose Poplar Forest vacation home was set in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains and along the James River. Today, Lynchburg is at the center of a sprawling metro market where a low cost of living is paired with low unemployment.

“The Lynchburg real estate market operates rather independently from the larger cities, and this tends to result in lower average sales prices for residential properties,” says Scott Ehrhorn, professor of finance and real estate at Liberty University School of Business.

$100,000 in Lynchburg will get you a two- or three-bedroom home or condo.

“Land is generally much less expensive in smaller towns and rural areas than urban areas,” says Hale of realtor.com. “That plays a big role in being able to see a home price fall under a certain threshold.”

“Lynchburg is a growing community with a low cost of living,” says Crysty Knowles, a Realtor with Lynchburg’s Finest Real Estate. “It’s thriving with natural beauty as well as a revitalized downtown.”

9. Birmingham, AL

Median home sales price: $191,000 Number of under-$100K homes listed on realtor.com: 925 

In Birmingham, this three-bed, two-bath is listed for $89,000.

realtor.com

Located within driving distance of the beach and mountains—as well as Nashville, TN; Atlanta; and New Orleans—Birmingham is aptly nicknamed “The Magic City.”

Buyers trying to stay under $100,000 can look near downtown, says Bob KuyKendall, a Realtor with ARC Realty in Birmingham. He also suggests the suburb of Leeds as a burgeoning city with many low-priced homes available.

In Birmingham, $100,000 will get the buyer three bedrooms and at least one bath, possibly with air conditioning. Most of the houses are typically purchased by blue-collar workers, first-time buyers, or investors, says KuyKendall.

10. Atlanta, GA

Median home sales price: $248,000 Number of under-$100K homes listed on realtor.com: 864

Just outside Atlanta, this three-bed, two-bath home in Marietta goes for $90,000.

realtor.com

The Atlanta metro area is booming, and supply simply can’t keep up with demand. If you want to find a deal, you’ll have to do some work.

“There’s so much flipping going on and so much investing going on, it’s hard for an average person to buy a house here,” says Keith Hollingsworth, professor of business administration at Howard University in Atlanta. “The in-town markets have become very hot. When you’re talking about houses less than $100,000, that’s going to be hard to do inside [Highway] 285 right now unless you’re in a rougher section of town.”

Buyers looking for a deal need to look outside of Atlanta. In neighboring Marietta, $100,000 will get a buyer a move-in ready one- or two-bedroom townhouse or condo.

* U.S. metropolitan areas include the main cities and surrounding towns and suburbs.

** Data from April 2019 on realtor.com

The post Attention, Bargain Hunters! Here Are the 10 Cities With the Most Homes Under $100K appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com®.

from https://www.realtor.com/news/trends/10-us-markets-with-homes-for-100k-and-less/

[dustedmagazine]

Listed: Silver Torches

With some time spent in the Globes and as a touring musician for Perfume Genius and David Bazan, multi-instrumentalist songwriter Erik Walters has come into his own as Silver Torches. His Americana stylings build on their indie influences and Pacific Northwest roots while Walters responds to this distinct time with a personal vision. Aided by guests like Greg Leisz, Noah Gunderson, and Courtney Marie Andrews (as well as a fuller band), Walters has refined his sound for second album Let It Be a Dream. At times, Silver Torches drifts toward country; other times they're one step away from a pop album (which previous track “Woman in Rust” might have suggested). The disc maintains a steady atmosphere around the flexible band, letting Walters's strong melodies and careful lyrics define his work. While Walters might still be assembling a steady band (or not), he's found his place with this release. For this Listed entry, Walters connects his listening with personal moments, saying, “I’m going for specific memories or feelings that certain records give me or remind me of. Figured something anecdotal would be more interesting.”

Big Star – #1 Record

This record will always remind me of living in Spokane, driving around town listening to records because there was nothing else to do. I'd ride around with my friend Nathan, who owned this big Buick sedan, listening to Bowie, Pixies, The Stones, The Beatles, lots of Weezer. He introduced me to Big Star. Thirteen is one of my favorite songs. I still always skip past The India Song, though.

Wilco – A Ghost Is Born

I sat next to my friend Cole on a long bus ride we took to a jazz festival in high school and he played me this record. I didn't get it. I liked Summerteeth better because it was brighter and more pop, not realizing how dark that record really is. When I finally dove into Yankee Hotel Foxtrot my whole world changed. That album made me want to make records, but A Ghost Is Born has been the record I come back to most often. It's still exciting to me. So raw, so dynamic and bold.

David Bowie – Blackstar

The first time I heard Blackstar was driving back from a show somewhere out of town. Everyone was talking and the stereo wasn't great so I could kind of hear it. I remember thinking it was pretty weird and the drums were cool. It may have been that night, or the next, when I was sitting up in my living room and saw the tweets pouring in. When I saw the New York Times report it I knew it was real. My girlfriend and I listened to the record the next day at home and were so moved by it. Bowie creates another world inside this record. You put it on and step inside a dark, chaotic, beautiful place.

Bon Iver – 22, A Million

I was on the east coast for a short run of shows with my friend Kris last fall. This had just come out and we listened front to back at least once a day on our drives. We had a rental car and were making our way out of New York when we decided to park somewhere we weren't supposed to so we could make a bathroom stop. We were gone maybe ten minutes, confident the car would be alright where we left it. When we came back our car was gone. 2 hours and a few hundred dollars later, we were back in business and had 22, A Million on the speakers right away. NYPD tow trucks don't mess around.

Refused – The Shape Of Punk To Come

It was the crack of dawn in Denver and I climbed into the passenger seat of the van on our way to play SXSW in Austin with my old band, back in 2009 or '10. We were about to embark on the long drive when our friend, Ben, who was traveling with us, put on this record, super loud, as the sun was coming up. It cured my hangover and blew my mind. One of the best shows I've seen, too.

Foals – Total Life Forever

I'd moved back to Spokane and was working at the now defunct and sorely missed Empyrean, an all ages venue downtown. I would listen to the first half of this record on my way to work and the second half on my way home on the nights I didn't go to Baby Bar after my shift. My favorite moment on the album is the end of 'Spanish Sahara" when the drums come in with that straight beat after a long build, and just rides on it for a while. It feels so damn good, every time.

Portishead – Third

When this record came out I played it almost every day. I was living with my band in the Central District neighborhood. We had a weird hexagonal shelf where our turn table lived that lit up and had a disco ball inside of it that I'd turn on when I played records. I remember putting it on in the mornings, making coffee, having a cigarette on the porch with the window open, listening to the speakers from the living room. This record and PJ Harvey's White Chalk give me a similar, foreboding feeling. When I saw Portishead in Seattle and I'm pretty sure they blew the subs at the venue when they played "Machine Gun". I thought it was fantastic.

Autolux – Future Perfect

I was in a band called The Globes that formed in high school and was a thing until 2012 or so. We only made one record, but were fortunate enough to make it with John Goodmanson, (Blonde Redhead, Unwound, Death Cab For Cutie) and had it released on Barsuk. We were all obsessed with Future Perfect, especially the drum work by Carla Azar. Every time I put this one on I'm reminded of long drives in the van, long days in our basement rehearsal room, late nights with friends listening to records, Rainer beer, dive bars and bad PAs.

Steve Reich – Music For 18 Musicians

It was the middle of winter and I was driving across the state with my friend Marcus in a blizzard. We were in the band van, which was his family's Ford Excursion, which is very heavy. Even with four wheel drive and all of the weight we were sliding, and to make things worse, visibility was nonexistent. We couldn't see the lines of the road, and could barely see 10 feet in front of us. Being young and stupid we persevered, almost rear ended a semi, had some other close calls, but were kept focused by Steve Reich's "Music For 18 Musicians". It is truly an incredible piece and musical feat, beautiful and mesmerizing. I'll never forget getting lost in the sound with the snow coming down in our high beams against this blue/black, endless background. Surreal.

Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavillion

This album will always make me think of a very specific time in my life. I was interning at KEXP in Seattle, I met my girlfriend, I was getting to know the city, myself, learning, touring, exploring. It was a really fun, good time. The lyrics on this record are smart, the melodies are brilliant, and under all of the crazy production and sounds are really great songs. I played this a lot and still do.

[friendeel9-blog]

Dr. Lloyd's Sanitarium - 6-8 St. Nicholas Place

In 1884 John Fink commissioned architect Richard S. Rosenstock to design a commodious suburban home in the area that would later be dubbed Sugar Hill.  The principal in the pork packing firm of John Fink & Son, his new residence would reflect his significant personal wealth. Rosenstock designed a three-story, freestanding residence in the trendy Queen Anne Style.  Although his plans called for a "brown stone front dwelling," only the basement and first floor were faced in rough cut stone.  The second floor was clad in brick and the top floor in wood.  True to the Queen Anne style, the house featured a riot of angles, shapes, and colors.  Dormers poked through the fanciful jerkinhead gables, and a corner tower clung to the two upper floors.  A profusion of stained glass and scattered carvings delighted the eye.  The cost of construction would be equal to about $924,000 today.

Carved portrait keystones and stained glass transoms survive at the northern corner.

Located at No. 8 St. Nicholas Place, on the northeast corner of 150th Street, Fink's stylish home and its bucolic hilltop location may have been a deciding factor in James A. Bailey's decision to built his imposing mansion on across the street, at No. 10.  The Real Estate Record & Builders' Guide, on January 16, 1896, commented "One of handsomest residences on this avenue is that of John W. Fink, son of Commissioner Fink of railroad fame.  It is situated o the northeast corner of One Hundred and Fiftieth street, and is a three-story ornate stone front building, having all the modern improvements."

The original entrance porch with its sideways stoop is evident in this early photo, as is the wonderful turret.  Directly behind is the James A. Bailey house.  from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York 

An avid boater, Fink was active among the wealthy sportsmen of northern Manhattan.  On May 29, 1888, for instance, The Evening World commented, "John W. Fink, of the Friendship Boat Club, is said to be the probable winner of the junior singles of the Harlem River regatta."

The construction date is worked into the elaborate carving on the first floor chimney back.

A delightful detail is Stein's continuing the gable level over the chambered rear corner.

That same year Fink sold the house, along with the vacant property extending east to Edgecomb Avenue, to real estate operator Charles E. Runk and his wife, Aurelia.  Runk was also the treasurer of the Washington Heights Taxpayers' Association, and a partner in the Oneota Fertilizer and Chemical Co. The Runks' ownership would be short-lived.  On March 9, 1891 they sold No. 8 to Sigmund Bergmann for $31,750, just over $900,000 today.  Bergmann was a partner with Edward H. Johnson and Thomas Alva Edison in the Bergmann Electric & Gas Fixture Co.

Sigmund Bergmann was a partner with inventor Thomas A. Edison.  Electrical Review and Western Electrician, December 21, 1912 (copyright expired)

Bergmann had left his native Germany in 1870 at the age of 21, already trained as an engineer.  The Electrical Review and Western Electrician later explained "He was associated with Edison for several years and being imbued with the idea that he should turn his talents in a direction that would insure to him the greatest possible personal reward he established a business of his own."  That move did not injure his friendship with Edison nor their businesses connections.  His lifelong friend, Francis Jehl, later said "many of Edison's experiments were made in the Bergmann shop, while the phonograph was to a great extent developed with Bergmann's assistance." In 1893 Charles Runk sold the undeveloped eastern plot and at the same time removed the restrictive covenants John Fink had originally built into the deeds.  It was a move that would have serious impact on No. 8 a few decades later. Simultaneously Jacob P. Baiter and his wife, Kate, began construction on their upscale residence next door at No. 6.  Their architect, Theodore G. Stein, file plans on May 26 for a 25-foot wide, four story brick dwelling to cost $35,000 (or about $1 million today).  Completed the following year, it could not have been more different than its neighbor.

Stein had turned to the more formal Renaissance Revival style with undeniable Romanesque Revival influences.  He embellished the beige brick with terra cotta decorations and included a rounded bay at the second floor.  The top floor took the form of a steep mansard, its gabled dormer ornamented with an intricate panel of tangled bows, wreaths and swags. Jacob Baiter was the East Coast manager of the Fleischmann Yeast Company, and so it is most likely not a coincidence that Max Fleischmann would soon live almost directly across the street at No. 400 West 149th Street.  Yeast was an important part in the making of alcohol, and both men were involved, as well, in the Ridgewood Distillery, the Eastern Distilling Co., and the Somerset Distilling Co.

Originally a high sideways stoop led to the doorway.

Jacob and Kate had two sons, Charles William Grevell and Louis J. Baiter.  Kate Baiter died in the house on October 26, 1898.  Her funeral was held here three days later. Jacob's grief was rather short lived.  The following year he married and transferred title to No. 6 to his new wife, Carrie.  The Evening Post Record of Real Estate Sales listed the transaction as "gift." In 1909, the same year that Charles Baiter was married, Dr. Henry William Lloyd purchased No. 8.  Charles Runk's removal of the deed restrictions allowed Lloyd to convert the house to The Audubon Sanitarium.  Having a private hospital next door may have been too much for the Baiters, and in October 1911 they sold their home to Dr. Lloyd for $75,000.  The Sun reported that he "will use it for his own occupancy." And, indeed, he did--for a few months.  In 1912 he joined the two structures with a somewhat ungainly addition.  A new entrance was established within the new portion.

In 1942 the former Baiter house still retained its stoop.  via the Office for Metropolitan History

Things inside the upscale sanitarium did not always go smoothly, sometimes resulting in unwanted publicity.  On March 18, 1912, for instance, The Sun reported on the investigation by Coroner Holzhauser and the police into "the death of Miss Alice Anderson in the sanitarium of Dr. Henry W. Lloyd at 8 St. Nicholas place early yesterday morning." The article carefully tip-toed around the fact that Alice, who was 30-years-old, had come for an abortion.  According to Dr. Lloyd, she had already received a botched procedure and that he told her "that she probably would not survive the second operation."  So certain was he that his patient would die, before starting the procedure he sent for a priest to hear her confession.  Before she died she "told her three sisters who was responsible for her condition," said The Sun. Five months later a journalist from The Sun was back, this time at the request of Mrs. Sarah Harris.  The 34-year-old, referred to as "the sufferer" by the newspaper, had been stricken with a "strange malady" three years earlier which paralyzed her from the neck down.  Able to move only her head, she had lain in the same position the entire time. On August 31, 1912 the newspaper entitled its article "Woman Paralytic Begs State To End Her Life."  In it Sarah pleaded "We have our Societies for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, which put out of their agony injured and sick animals, but human beings for whom medicine can do nothing are kept on in their torture.  Why should this be?" Mrs. Harris did not get her wish and in 1915, when Dr. Lloyd hired architect George H. Hardway to enlarge the sanitarium, she was still a patient.  The addition housed a "new maternity hospital," as described by The New York Times.

Close inspection reveals a winged, terra cotta rampant lion atop the gable.  The stylized sunflower on the metal facing below is a familiar Queen Anne motif.

Dr. Lloyd's Audubon Sanitarium saw celebrated figures come and go.  In 1917 the wife of preacher Billy Sunday received an emergency appendectomy.  The operation removed a "strangulated tumor" as well.  On May 20 The New York Times noted "Though deeply distressed by his wife's illness, Billy Sunday preached last night to 22,000 persons." The same operation was performed on Lucien Muratore, principal tenor of the Chicago Opera Company in February 1922.  Newspapers carried updates on his condition for days. Dr. Henry W. Lloyd sold the properties in January 1925 to the Louis H. Low Syndicate.  There were 100 rooms in the complex at the time.  The new owners, according to The Times on January 24, had already leased it to the newly-formed Lloyd's Sanitarium, Inc. (headed by Dr. Victor Low) "who will continue the operation of same after extensive alterations and improvements."  Architect Henry F. Schlumbohn, Jr. was called upon to update the hospital and dispensary. By 1935 the name had been changed to The Community Hospital.  The admission fee was 35 cents and a "revisit fee" was a quarter. The clinic was gone by mid-century, when the mish-mash of buildings was operated as a 53-room hotel.  As the neighborhood declined, so did the the property and by 1983 it was run by the city's welfare program as the Dawn Hotel, "housing formerly homeless families," according to The New York Times on August 25 that year.

The Dawn Hotel sat within what had become a gritty neighborhood.  Late on the night of December 6 a man entered the lobby and got into an argument with the clerk.  At around 1:00 on the morning he returned, armed with a pistol  and, according to police, "shot the clerk in the chest and fled from the hotel."  

As the Sugar Hill neighborhood improved in the 21st century, the Dawn Hotel did not.  A New York Senate report in January 2017 on the State's "unclean, unsafe, dangerous temporary shelter system" awarded the Dawn Hotel the uncomplimentary title of No. 1 in the top ten hotel violators in the state.  The facility was closed by 2018.

The once handsome houses have been sorely abused throughout their various connected uses.  And yet glimpses of their former splendor still manage to seep through. photographs by the author

Source: http://daytoninmanhattan.blogspot.com/2019/07/dr-lloyds-sanitarium-6-8-st-nicholas.html

[lyrics2world]

Under Pressure Lyrics Logic

Under Pressure Lyrics Logic Song From Under Pressure.Song Sung By Logic.Song published 2014.

Song Credit

Song - Under Pressure Artist - Logic Album - Under Pressure Released - 2014 Genres - East Coast Hip-Hop, Hip-Hop/Rap

Under Pressure Lyrics Logic

Work so fucking much my greatest fear is I'ma die alone Every diamond in my chain, yeah, that's a milestone (Keep doing it, I'm loving it) People calling me, asking me for money, man The only thing I'mma give you motherfuckers is the dial tone

Flashbacks of a youngin' sipping that purple Kool Aid Skipping school with my homies and chiefing reefer for two days Running from the law, living how I'm living, fuck 'em all Bumping Triple Six Hennessy in my cup, driving through the sticks Who the bitch riding with me? Man, the devil tryna get me Motivated, under-educated, and hated But finally getting cake like a happy belated Bitch I made it, we on Buy it, break it, roll it, light it, smoke it, inhale it Write it, record it, mix it, master it, press it up, unveil it Feel like I've been waiting forever, forever to inherit This is war, I declare it Time is money, I can't spare it Futuristic, so simplistic Please decipher my linguistics Slow it down, Robitussin I'm the king, ain't no discussion And now we blowing up like spontaneous human combustion My consumption is the illest Section eight, I know you feel this On the come up, where they run up on you for nothing at all Brighter than eleven suns, this the first, where my funds? EBT, that's the card I thank God, I thank God, but it's hard, but it's hard

Work so fucking much my greatest fear is I'mma die alone Every diamond in my chain, yeah, that's a milestone People calling me, asking me for money, man The only thing I'mma give you motherfuckers is the dial tone

God damn, god damn, we at it again Me and my homies that know me blowing up like the Taliban Yeah, my stress up, but I'm blessed up Fuck around and get messed up When I murder the rhyme, I'm living divine You know that I'm one of a kind Lemme get it right now, ho Draped up and I'm dripped out, right now, ho Caked up 'til I cash out and I got 'em all wondering how, so On the down low, haters drown slow On the down low, haters drown slow Oh God, my God, we got it all right Oh God, my God, we gotta get it, right? These fuckers facades, they just a mirage, right? I said these fuckers facades, they just a mirage, right? Tell me that they love me, know damn well that they don't give a fuck I be on that finger flipping killing shit up in the cut That's what's up All these bitches out here tryna gas it up This is everything I ever wanted, I can't pass it up Life changed in a year, couldn't happen fast enough "Can I do it like you do it?" That's what they be asking us White Benz, black card, bitch better get your plastic up Man, this shit is hella hard, but we never acting up Live it up, hold on to your dream, don't ever give it up Finally had my share of success, and shit, I can't get enough Now they know my name through the nation Cause my single like that good shit, man, always in rotation Now they know Logic for Logic, not through my affiliations Stacking profit on profit, from this music I'm making Even Jesus had haters, so when you feeling forsaken Tell 'em jealous Judases who this is, and man, that'll break 'em And bitch I'm still the same Dash of auto tune so y'all can feel the pain Broke as fuck, back in that basement, not a dollar to my name (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); Chasing fame, chasing glory, 'til the day we make a story Positive that life ain't mine, bitch you can take that shit to Maury

Work so fucking much my greatest fear is I'mma die alone Every diamond in my chain, yeah, that's a milestone People calling me, asking me for money, man The only thing I'mma give you motherfuckers is the dial tone

(Hello, no one is available to take your call) I been working hard, I been searching for God I been working hard, I been searching for God (Please leave a message after the tone) Little brother, this is your sister, you're busy, I get you But I insist you call me back cause I miss you I wish you well, well, I wish you would call Cause lately it feel like I’m just not your sister at all, all I’m sorry for calling and bawling, I’m all in And I feel like I'm falling lately, it feel like my children hate me You tell me I'm beautiful and yet no man wanna date me Haunted by vivid memories of that man who raped me And lately I, I feel more and more like mommy, I know I’m me, but still You always seemed to pick up the phone and somehow I feel Better, but you been answering me lesser and lesser So I resorted to the pills in my dresser, I'm gone And as for... he left and he ain’t coming back I hate him and if I see him I swear I tell him that No longer cooking crack in my kitchen, cutting an' selling that He broke my heart, that relationship been to hell and back I been working hard, I been searching for God I can feel the Devil around me as they all applaud Promise you won't forget me, that you'll always be with me And even when you gone I can call whenever he hit me Under pressure, I've been feeling under pressure

Hey, son, this is your father, don't mean to bother How are you? Heard you were in town, but I never saw ya Tried to call ya, where are ya? In Paris? What a beautiful destination To perish right by the Eiffel, come now, please don't be spiteful Of all my small talk, I think we're overdue a long talk When I see kids around the way I say how I'm your dad It gets me thinking 'bout incredible moments we've had And on the real I'm trying so hard not to bug you But do you think you could stop rapping about my drug use? I'm two years clean, no longer a fiend Yeah, I'm 57, but I feel 19 And I love you I swear, Bobby, I know you're there And when the time is right I know that you gon' take care Of anything I need, of your family Can I have some tickets to your next show? Would you stand with me? Can I have some money for my new honey that's hella fine? I forgot to mention I got divorced from your step-mom My mind going crazy, but I still look hella calm Maybe you could tell *beep* I've been feeling under pressure

Hey, what's up, bro? This Ralph, I didn't want much, man, just calling to see what's going on. I know you're busy. Dad hit me up, it's his birthday today, but I know you know that. Yeah, he calling, he be tryna introduce me to his new chick and stuff, man, I don't know how to handle that. I don't wanna tell him like nah, I ain't trying to meet her off top, you know. So what you think I should do? Text me, I know you're busy, dawg. But he been calling me saying he wanna come down, he wanna bring his new chick and Brenda's like "damn, he really tryna rock out with his new chick" cause you know we all talk to Debbie. But I don't know, I don't know how to tell him this shit so just hit me back whenever you got the time, man, I know there's more shit on your plate. You ain't gotta hit me, dawg, but if you do I'd appreciate it. When you back, love you, do your thing. Swag RattPack all day, boy. Alright, nigga

(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});

Yeah, dear family, I'm so sorry that I've been distant Everything changed in an instant, my time has been inconsistent I know that you been insisting, I know that birthday I missed it I swore I told my assistant, but I guess my mind is in another place Thoughts often in another world, I started seeing another girl It fell through, man, what a world But I'm so focused on my craft, on employing my staff Such a perfectionist, I can't even finish this draft This letter to the ones I love, the ones that I miss Brothers and sisters that hit me up just to reminisce Meanwhile people outside of my blood asking for favors I don't owe you a fucking thing, you best switch your behavior Truly remarkable how I barely know you, but somehow owe you When you don't even know 'bout the shit I go through We ain't spoken in a while, tell me sister, how your child? Come now, girl, give me a smile, come on, girl, don't do me foul Sorry I ain't call before, but I'm calling you right now I heard that you was popping E, stop resorting to the vowel How my mama, how she doing, does she know what I'm pursuing? I ain't talk to her in years, that relationship she ruined But sometimes I wake up and wonder just what the fuck I'm doing They say family is everything, I swear that shit the truth I should spend it all with y'all, but I spend it in the booth This is everything I love, this is everything I need Never sacrifice this feeling even though my heart it bleed This is everything I love, everything I need Never sacrifice this feeling even though my heart bleed Under pressure, I've been feeling under pressure

(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});

Hey, son, I'm sorry I missed your call today, but I was in an AA meeting. A friend of mine was celebrating four years so I couldn't get you right then. And then when I did call you weren't able to answer or whatever. Just wondering how things are going. Jenn and I aren't together anymore. Living on my own, you know. Anyway, the whole family, even the family that you don’t know, my sisters and your aunts that you've never met are very proud of you. Your cousins just love you too. Anyway, son, I love you, I just want you to know that. And just keep grinding, you know. And I don't wanna hear you joining the Illuminati cause then I gotta kill ya. I love you, son, bye

from Blogger https://ift.tt/3gbODAJ via IFTTT

[birdsofchristmas]

Chapter 1: The Lamp

Our story starts off in a more humble climate than others you may have heard, moreso than Manhatten, suburban chicago, the North Pole or a giant department store. The camera starts at my feet and pans upwards to a sign reading “East Hastings” in Vancouver’s iconic Downtown Eastside, revealing the Carnegie Hall in the background.

My first apartment in Vancouver is just around the corner on Cordova & Princess. Down the street in Gastown is the first restaurant I took a job doing dishes at, during my first Christmas in Vancouver. Incidentally, this would end up being the last house I lived in while I still had both my feet.

Not long after I moved to this interesting winter wonderland shared with cockroaches, rats, traffic noise, lineups towards a soup kitchen, and the occasional flooded basement a doctor said my right foot had had enough. My poor foot had done it’s best to support me for years after a childhood accident and it was time to send it to foot heaven. I wondered if foot heaven was the same as cat heaven, which is where my mom said my brown cat went to after it fell out of a 2 story window.

It shouldn’t be too surprising my right limb and I had to part ways- honestly I’m surprised it hadn’t gone sooner, or that it wasn’t joined by another appendage. You would be too if you’d seen some of the crazy winter antics my dad and my two brothers and sister got upto each year around december.

One year in the 90s saw our family cross country skiing when a blizzard brought the entire city of Nanaimo to a standstill. The marsh is perfectly safe, it’s frozen over he would say as we coasted confidently onto its icy surface. Or the time my dad tied a GT Racer sled to the trailer hitch of his 15 passenger van towing it on the backroads of mount benson, only stopping when he would notice the sled veering off towards a ditch.

Not long after losing the foot I also lost the apartment I was living in while trying against my sister’s advice to carry on as if things were normal.

At the time the housing crisis in Vancouver was in full swing, and when most folks weren’t either ice skating down on Robson or taking in the German Christmas market they were looking for a place to live for January.

They like me had done the best with the apartment they had- they had put plastic over their heritage windows to cut down on the BC hydro bill, they had placed the Christmas tree in front of the large hole in the drywall the last tenants had left, they had poured nearly half a bottle of pine extract into their scent diffusers to cover up the cigarette smell in the hallway, they had set up all manner of elaborate rat traps to avoid being contaminated by the plague, they had insisted to the landlord that, yes, those dark looking spots under the sink are black mold, all the while dreaming of finding a more ideal living situation.

To put it simply, it’s difficult trying to find one of these rumored nice apartments, much less trying to do so with only one foot, hopping from one viewing to the next trying to outrun the rest of the marathon of young professionals in search of the holy grails of affordable living.

At last I resigned, calling my parents half a month before Christmas to tell them about my housing woes. Well, just come home for the season, my dad said on the phone, it’ll just be for a few months until your foot man or whatever you call him makes you a new leg and you’ll be walking again in no time! Really, it’s what you should  done in the first place, come home and we’ll take care of you.

So on to the ferry I went with a backpack containing a modestly redacted version of my life in Vancouver, the rest of it residing in a friend’s garage for the winter. I was trying not to slip and fall with my single blundstone and crutches, somehow avoiding the 3 ferry sailing waits that would transpire in the days to follow.

As luck would have it I arrived just in time to help my mom set up her elaborate Christmas village- arranged with a stunning eye for detail and careful planning- most towns and cities in Canada would have a hard time comparing to the structural engineering marvel and ease of traffic infrastructure my mom had created.

There was hardly ever a traffic jam in “The Winter village of Avonlea”, and the crime rate was next to zero. “Over here we’ll put the post office, and across the way we’ll place the butcher adjacent to the bakery” she would instruct me, “so the postman will save time gathering groceries on his way home from work, and we’ll place the city hall on the corner of Bedford Halls Lane and Bing Boulevard.”

Oh and don’t get me started on the tree decorations. My dad was allowed to pick the tree out, and that was the full extent of his involvement. Every year it became the host to a multitude of angels, small wooden sleds, doves, owls, pigeons, even the occasional crow. There were glass spheres coated with gold, silver, and platinum. Snowglobes snowed every day of the week, lords leaping and ladies dancing in circles all the way to the shining pinnacle on top of the tree. Some years it was another larger angel, other years a star, one year it was curiously a picture of elvis.

When it came to Christmas decorating my mom was the queen of the ice castle. My dad was self-decidedly in charge of creating our seasonal chaos scenarios to prepare us for adulthood, while my mom was in charge of everything inside the house. You dared not alter the carefully planned set up in any way lest you awaken the demon Krampus.

That was about 6 years ago, and of course things have changed since then. I now have 4 legs instead of only 1. I have my actual leg, my brand new prosthetic leg, and a climbing leg and a running leg. You have every leg you’ll need to carry out a great bank heist, my sister-in-law joked. I would need to I figured in order to continue paying for them. All said and done the price of a leg is pretty well comparable to a brand new honda accord.

After a harrowing few years of recovering and moving back to Vancouver, going from one house to the next, and I was finally in a moderately stable fairly well priced townhouse. It was Christmas again and this year I was heading to the ferry to see my mom and dad who still lived on the island. I had a smaller backpack this time as well as a curiously shaped duffel bag with a surprise for mom. Looking at the bag you might think it was a pile of field hockey sticks, or a set of broken golf clubs. In reality it was one of my retired legs, refashioned with a black fishnet stocking, a black high heel and a detachable light and lampshape.

You see every few years the legs wear down and they need to be replaced. like a ford car or an apple computer these things don’t last long, even with casual use. Once they’re retired they make a surprisingly great basis for all kinds of creative art sculptures. Thus was born a beautiful lamp centerpiece to my mom’s carefully thought out Christmas decoration extravaganza, which I had assumed she would love.

Arriving at the house I almost slipped on every icy step to the front door. The sandpaper I’d nailed to the stairs when I first moved home had worn down from repeated use. It didn’t help I was half blinded by a recently updated series of LED lights surrounding every tree, shrub, corner of the house, and window. Even the snowpeople couldn’t escape the maniacal creeping LED vines.

The house inside was decorated equally as elaborately with little left to the imagination. I hugged my mom and dad, carefully moving my body in twists and turns to avoid knocking any of the holiday flourishes over, like those  weird people you see in grocery stores who try to sneak past you without touching you or making eye contact.

Since all the siblings have moved away home and founded small Christmas-minded colonies of their own my mom had gotten even more carried away with the decorations, making you feel like you were stepping into a densely forested North Pole mock up in a department store. She loved it, Dad appreciated it, and the grandkids were only allowed in with careful supervision.

“Well mom, I brought you a gift for your decorations” I said with a laugh opening the bag. I pulled out the awful, gloriously gaudy leg dressed in holiday cheer, in my mind a beautiful iconic recollection of the great holiday movies of old. I traipsed through the dense menagerie of holiday decorations and gingerly placed the lamp in the picture window, fully in view from the sidewalk.

Plugging it in the light sprung to life with a soft brownish glow emitted by an edison style bulb. My mom’s face was aghast at first, as if she had seen jacob marley ascending the staircase towards her room covered in chains.

Her expression then softened up a little bit and she said with a smile “Oh dear, that’s awful… just terrible”. My dad was laughing as he walked to the kitchen and back with 2 cans of Wildcat in hand. I pulled off my leg for the night and we sat under the glow of the lamp, the tree, the village, the decorations, and the christmas hearth log on channel 3 and talked cheerfully until I fell asleep on the couch.

The next morning I woke up at instinctively at 7am to see the morning sunrise reflect off Mount Benson and reached for my leg.

Now, one thing you might not realize about putting on a prosthetic leg is there’s a process to it, like putting together a desk from Ikea. It starts with either a polyurethane or silicone liner you roll onto your leg, followed by a gel sock covered in fabric or a few layers of wool socks before putting on the leg itself, in my case followed by rolling on another silicone sleeve that attaches the prosthetic to the rest of my leg holding it all together.

I stood up and walked towards the kitchen for a coffee, as I did I noticed something was off in the living room. The lampshade was missing. In its place in the reflection of the picture window I saw a red and white cylinder shape that ascended into a curve. While I was sleeping my mom had replaced my prosthetic leg lamp with a candy cane, and the lamp was nowhere to be found. “Hey Mom”, I shouted upstairs, “my lamp! Where did you put it?” “It’s in the trash out by the the curb” she shouted back, “out front.”

Just then a sanitation truck was pulling up beside the bins on the front sidewalk. One of the bins was overflowing with a familiar looking piece of footwear sticking out prominently from one side. It was my new $35,000 prosthetic leg with a brown leather blundstone still attached to it, being lifted up towards the crusher.

I lept for the door and ran down the stairs slipping on the icy porch! “ hey wait!” I shouted, “my foot!!!” As I ran my right foot was snagged by a lights cord and I fell flat onto my face in the snow, then snapped back. By the time I reached the sanitation worker he was laughing and he said, “hey, what’s with the fishnet?” I looked down, and adorned on my right side was the bottom half of the leg lamp I’d made for my mom, complete with a fishnet stocking, a black high heel, and a long brown extension cord.

By some weird twist of fate she confused the two and had thrown my good leg in the trash in a careless effort to rid her house of my hilariously ironic gift! I had tripped face first into the snow because the leg lamp was still plugged in!

[crimsonblackrose]

I’m here with an extra post. It’s not something I usually do. I usually write and then queue my posts in the order in which they happened. But in this case that would mean this post wouldn’t go up until 2019. Normally I wouldn’t mind but the Gwangju Biennale is an event that changes and is only every other year. Which means any readers who live in Korea or are visiting would miss out on this event and this experience. It was an experience I wasn’t expecting to have but I’m glad I did. The art exhibition is filled with stories and voices that thankfully have been given a platform to be shared. I hope, if you’ve time and in the area, you’ll go and listen.

The Gwangju Biennale is an international art exhibition that happens every other year (even years, like 2018) in the city of Gwangju.  This is the 12th Biennale and the next one won’t be until 2020. Tickets are 14,000 won which will get you into the Biennale and Asian Culture Center’s exhibits.

The view between galleries

Getting to the Biennale, which is the actually name of the building in which the show is housed was easy but long. I caught a bus and waited until it got to it’s last stop, which thankfully was also called the Biennale in both English and Korean and then asked for directions. Tickets were sold on the second floor and then I headed to the entrance where they asked if I spoke Korean. I said no and a staff member ran off to get me a pamphlet. I expected a thin thing with a little bit of English but ended with a book in full detail about everything. (Which I’m grateful for as I write this post) The whole show is translated into text into a little blue booklet. I also received a smaller one with highlights and locations. I was told that there was a secondary part of the event at the Asian Culture Center and that another part of my ticket would let me in there until the show ended on November 11th. I’m going to talk about both in this post so buckle up. It’s going to be a long one.

Ticket for the Imagined Borders exhibition. The left part in teal is the ticket for the Asia Culture Center and the right side ticket in orange is for the Biennale Exhibition Hall.

Day 1: The Biennale 비엔날레로

Leonor Antune’s “A secluded and pleasant land. In this land I wish to dwell” made of bamboo, silk and wengue wood

At first I wasn’t particularly impressed. There were sketches, photographs, and models of buildings. The theme of the event hadn’t really sunk in until I turned a corner and found myself looking at floor covered in rubble surrounded by walls covered in pictures of the buildings the rubble had once belonged to.

Tanya Goel’s work called “Carbon (Frequencies on x-y axis)” and “Frescos”

Tanya Goel’s “Vanishing Site’s”

Close up of Tanya Goel’s “Frescos”: debris fragments of stone, cement, plaster and tiles collected from demolition sites across Delhi

A close up of a picture that matches one of the Frescos from Tanya Goel’s “Vanishing Sites”

Imagined Borders is broken up into 7 sections like a research paper where the art is the proof of an argument of the way we look at the world. Think about borders for a second. Large borders, be it the ones between countries, the border between your home and the one next to it or your apartment, to small borders like the space between you and anything near you. Physical borders, ideological borders, political borders and pretty much anything and everything was set up into these 7 sections.

Imagined Nations/ Modern Utopias

Shezad Dawood’s “Anarchitecture”

“This Exhibition explores the intersection of modernism, architecture and nation-building in the 1950’s-70’s in Latin America, the Middle East and Asia, during crucial moments of social and political change. New capital cities, urban planning projects, government buildings, embassies, public housing and university cities gave form to modernist Utopian dreams wrapped up in a rhetoric of promise and hope, of progress and equity.

However, this is not a conventional architecture exhibition with the usual display of models, sketches and blueprints. Rather it aims to read architecture from the benefit of hindsight, from the point of view of its users and inhabitants and not just from the agendas and architects, designers or public officials.” -Clara Kim

  You first start with architecture. The borders of places and how they can be affected by people, the changes in times, opinions, and political climates. Arguably one of the most constant and large portion of borders in our daily lives that we tend to not think about. In Korea after all it’s easily noticed how quickly buildings rise and fall and how the physical landscape changes, one week you may be visiting your favorite cafe and the next week it’s gone and is something else.

Ram Rahman’s “Sites of Conflict”

more of “Ram Rahman’s “sites of Conflict”

Marwan Rechmaoui’s “Blazon: The Korean Delegation” a combination of blazonry and heraldy is a map of coat of arms for districts of Beruit

Clarissa Tossin’s “Monument to Sacondâia” made out of cement-bags is a model of the presidential palace of Brailia.

Another look at Clarissa Tossin’s “Monument to Sacondâia”

Monument to Sacondâia shown floating about on the water. The video is three minutes and 15 seconds.

The artist’s statement was postcards, which was fascinating and such an cool idea.

The art varied, there were many videos and photographs, some were models or wall hangings and others show cased the life of buildings and their destruction. It was stark to see the early articles about buildings singing praise and the pride of their accomplishments next to a picture of the architect on their death bed followed by articles of the destruction of their buildings due to the change in climate, conflict and survivors of horrifying destruction that happened in those buildings. This was the first moment I realized that I’d walked into a conversation that wasn’t going to let me leave unaffected.

Lawrence Sumulong’s “Urban Legend” which shows photos from The Manila Film Center, a building with a dark past but now shows “the Amazing Show” which is a Filipino trans variety show

More of the “Urban Legend” photos

I continued on to a room with the story and history of a National Museum that never finished and never opened. The history of the country, the artifacts and everything just still sit in the basement. It was fascinating and sad, leaving an intense wave of melancholy as I moved to the next section.

Shezad Dawood’s “Cities of the Future”

Shezad Dawood’s “Cities of the Future”

Kiluanji Kia Henda’s “Concrete Affection- Zopo Lady”

Los Carpinteros’s “Coppelia Biblioteca del Helado” which are “inspired by panopticon or buildings that allow one person physical and psychological domain over the space”

More of Los Carpinteros’s “Coppelia Biblioteca del Helado”

Pio Abad’s “Oh! Oh! Oh! (A Universal History of Iniquity) of digital wallpaper and plastic perfume bottles

Close up of Pio Abad’s “Oh! Oh! Oh! (A Universal History of Iniquity) of a plastic perfume bottle in the shape of a camel

  Facing Phantom Borders

“…Today, geopolitics and migration are a critical issue for global citizens. Immigration is seen as a threat and has led the world to rethink borders and social control, exclusion and inclusion, humanitarianism and national security. FPB explores both internal and external migration within Asia and beyond, and unravels the complex connectivity through borders and migration, showing how the intra-Asia connection and beyond has shifted the dynamics of mobility” – Gridthiya Gaweewong

The beginning of this FPB held a little lingering feeling of the previous section. There were photos of partial places. Places that were built, created as utopias and then due to conflict are now ghost towns, never fully completed. Nearby were travel photos of popular destinations and a suitcase with passports of different colors, a comment on how depending on where you’re born and the color of your passport your ability to travel and traverse borders is either easy or hindered.

Rafal Milach’s “Chasing a White Horse”

Rafal Milach’s “Chasing a White Horse”

Didem Özbek’s “Dream Trip”

Close up of Didem Özbek’s “Dream Trip”

I watched a video of an Oud floating at sea as a man told his story in his native language and it was translated. A refugee forced at gunpoint by a smuggler he’d already paid a fortune to, to choose between his beloved instrument or his life. (Pinar Öǧrenci’s “A Gentle breeze passed over us”)

Jun Yang and Michikazu Matsune’s “The past is a foreign country – landscape in 4 scenes”

Jun Yang and Michikazu Matsune’s “The past is a foreign country – landscape in 4 scenes”

I turned into a section that was several parts, yet a bit brighter in color than the dimly lit videos I’d just left. There were two videos in this section. A video about a fake island’s journey to the ocean called “Phantom Island” by Jun Yang and in collection with a moon rock, two clocks showing the same time and some paintings and pictures with a video explaining a correlation of their stories: “The past is a foreign country- a landscape in 4 scenes”.  It talked about Japan, the history of the country and the time it closed itself off from the world by penalty of death to those who tried to leave or those who tried to enter, how children who weren’t Japanese weren’t allowed and their families could be punished. About the ocean and who calls claim to it and how it changes depending on who is in charge. About space, how Richard Nixon had a speech prepared if the first men to the moon didn’t make it back (and died in space), and the humorous tidbit that when they landed off the coast of Hawaii that they had to go through customs and immigration. The clocks were about the meeting between North and South Korea and what happened then, and showed how the clocks changed to now show the same time, when they hadn’t before. It was a forty five minute video and I sat there enthralled, learning details about things I knew about and things I didn’t with pictures slid onto a pile on the screen in front of me and Korean text translating the English spoken. It spoke of how different life could be if things in the past went differently and how to us now the past can look quite strange.

Kiluanji Kia Henda’s “Concrete Affection- Zopo Lady”

Los Carpinteros’s “Coppelia Biblioteca del Helado” which are “inspired by panopticon or buildings that allow one person physical and psychological domain over the space”

More of Los Carpinteros’s “Coppelia Biblioteca del Helado”

Pio Abad’s “Oh! Oh! Oh! (A Universal History of Iniquity) of digital wallpaper and plastic perfume bottles

Close up of Pio Abad’s “Oh! Oh! Oh! (A Universal History of Iniquity) of a plastic perfume bottle in the shape of a camel

Shezad Dawood’s “Cities of the Future”

Shezad Dawood’s “Cities of the Future”

This section on Facing Phantom Borders continued onto another section that dealt more heavily on topics of immigration and refugees and their stories. It got dark. Both figuratively and literally. The first piece was pretty hard to ignore, a giant orange wall with black block lettering. One side of it in English the other in Korean by SUPERFLEX.

The other piece that immediately caught my eye was “Reconstructing an exodus history: flight routes from camps and ODP cases” which was in part with videos with stories of people stuck between borders not allowed into any countries, the countries they’d been born in or the countries their ancestors had left, with a specific focus on “The Orderly Departure Program” of Vietnamese refugees.

Tiffany Chung’s “reconstructing an exodus history: flight routes from camps and of ODP cases”

Shortly after leaving this area I continued into darkness. It was disconcerting. Mostly videos, with some highlights over sculptures and coming from various tv’s showing videos. There were, throughout the entirety of the galleries many long black curtains, behind which were rooms where you could watch a short film. I sat and watched the entirety of an interview with an ex-spy who spoke about his survival in the middle of night surrounded by the orphans he was taking care of. (Chia-Wei Hsu’s “Huai Mo Village”)

I’d peeked in at another room, behind thick black curtains, expecting something similar,  and found myself looking in an empty room with a bizarre disconcerting monster talking from the screen. I backed away, chastised myself because it was art and decided to try again. This time a young gentleman sat down in front of the monster like a writer and as I entered the center of the room the set up of the audio had a male voice speaking at a loud volume with music but then from each speaker was a voice whispering and it made my skin crawl. I was out of there faster than I realized I was moving. On the other side of it was another with a different man and a different monster, this one a typewriter transformed and the man stuck his hands in the alien creature’s mouth and it dripped goo and I once again decided nope. (Ho Tzu Nyen’s “The Nameless & the Name”)

Agnieszka Kalinowska “Draughty House” “The Fence”

Tom Nicholson with Grace Samboh’s “Towards figures of dedication, and a flood”

Tom Nicholson with Grace Samboh’s “Towards figures of dedication, and a flood”

Studio Revolt’s “Take a Seat”

Chris Chong Chan Fui’s “Endemic”

I walked past more videos in a dark section and spotted a little flash of light in a space with between walls. Outside was a little artist’s plaque stating “Take a Seat” by Studio Revolt. I squeezed into the room and found a large screen, the room split in half by chairs that lined the room from end to end facing away from the screen. They faced a wall with “The Pledge of Allegiance” written on the wall in English and Korean. The video was interviews with deportees who’d been sent to countries they’d never known before away from their children who they’d (under the current laws during filming and the way things currently are) from ever seeing again as they’re not allowed back into the states. It ends with a plea to people in government from the men and woman to be able to visit their families and a black screen that states that the video was suppose to be sent to the white house but never was shown due to “Our voices being silenced”.

A little uneasy and a little low from spending awhile in darkness I left and headed to the next section which had a parental advisory at the entrance.

“The Ends: The politics of Participation in the Post-Internet Age”

“Whether assuming the stance of a counterfeit ideology, plummeting into the depths of online protest culture, or envisioning present and future outcomes, these artists propose alternative perspectives on a long and treacherous journey into 21st century globalization. They also provide reflection in an age when threats to privacy, facts, journalism and justice are not only clear, their fate ultimately rests in hands of the politically and economically empowered.” – Christine Y. Kim and Rita Gonzalez

Martine Syms’s “Text Back”, “Threat Model”, and “Mythiccbeing”

With a parental advisory at the entrance to this section I braced myself for things to be darker and more disturbing but I didn’t find too much that affected me more than the previous sections. Though I also didn’t stay and watch all of “Jubilee”. (By Zach Blas this short film is over a half hour long in a space with no seats where guests chose to stand along the edge due to what seemed like a continuation of florescent art on the ground, however this art is on a lot of the promotional art and seems to be an important voice amongst the collection.) I was a little done with videos and a bit emotionally drained for the day and instead moved through the section rather quickly. There were interesting pieces though, a board game called “founders” based off previously made art called the “Founder’s paradox” which seems to poke fun at the idea of the founders of an area when people and societies had already been before in a sort of satire of “Settlers of Catan”.

Kirill Savchenkov’s “Fireworks and Gunpowder” legs by Dmitri Lookianov

Kirill Savchenkov’s “Fireworks and Gunpowder”

Kirill Savchenkov’s “Fireworks and Gunpowder”

Lara Baladi’s “Arabic, Watch out for Zuzu”

Lara Baladi’s “Arabic, Watch out for Zuzu”

Simon Denny’s “Founders Board Game Display Prototype/ Founders Rules”

There was also another game in a section called “Fireworks and Gunpowder” which includes a game “patterned after one used by the CIA in their training of operatives to deal with unfolding crises”.

“Returns”

“A ‘walk-in magazine,’ furnished with stories and images from the Biennale’s first four editions (1995-2002). …Rather than trying to summarize the legacy of this expansive platform, my aim was to add an historical layer to the viewer’s experience, whilst arousing the institutional memory of the Biennale itself.”- David Teh

This section I spent the least amount of time in, mostly due to the bizarre sounds coming from the sound system coupled with exhaustion. But if you have any interest in archives then this place is heaven. Throughout the section are tables with book where you can look at art from the past shows.

When I was finished and heading to the cafe/shop a staff worker came over and asked if I’d fill out a questionnaire. I got a cool cup with that show’s promotional art on it and I was asked a question that had changed from when I’d entered the show and when I left it.

“Do you think you’ll visit the Asian Cultural Center’s after this?”

At the beginning of my journey I probably would’ve said no. But standing with the staff at the end of this journey through the Biennale having forced myself not to cry while listening and reading stories, laughed at others and then felt my skin scream at me to run I was determined that that’s what I’d do the next day. I was, after all, in Gwangju for two days, so why not? The staff seemed both delighted and surprised by this. And I headed out, first awkwardly through a door that didn’t open, like I was a dazed and art-drunk being before figuring out which door would let me out, only to realize belatedly that having gone out the exit I could no longer go into the cafe/art shop and would never know what was in there and kicked myself for it.

Day 2: Asian Culture Center

국립아시아문화전당

I did other stuff, but that’s for later posts (2019 really) and I over did it. But I was determined on day 2 to get to the Asian Culture Center to finish this journey that was the Gwangju Biennale. While the Biennale took awhile to get to via bus the Asian Culture Center was very easy. I took the train to the Culture Complex. Note: the trains don’t come as often as they do in Seoul so be patient. (Though they come more often than they do where I live.)

The Culture Complex is complex. It’s a little overwhelming. I wandered around trying to figure out which building housed the rest of the Biennale. I walked through a garden, past a building filled with children playing and through an outdoor festival for kids until I gave in/finally found the tourist information. It turned out to be in B5, so I headed down in the direction I’d been pointed.

I used the rest of my ticket to get in and was ready for more emotionally charged art. While the Biennale had a large international vibe and discussion the Asian Culture Center felt like a mirror of Gwangju and the world. It started with a white wall covered in English text. The artist’s statement was a full thesis with little reference notes and author’s explanations to terms or ideas explained in more detail. This bright white wall stood in contrast with the actual art which was on the other side. A huge warehouse style space, vast, empty and dark with concrete floors and the only light coming from the screen. People sat on the floor and watched this invasive daily life of Korean people interspersed with pictures of their homes, animals in various places and loud sounds that didn’t seem to fully fit it. There was a set of escalators and a staff member waiting with a flashlight to guide people to it, but on the other side of the screen was another screen with a different film, which seemed to be an elderly woman watching the previous film in her home. (Adrian Villar Rojas’s “The War of the Stars”)

The Art of Survival: Assembly, Sustainability, Shift

(three parts, part one)

Assembly Place and Non-Place

“In the Korean language, the expression “assembly place” is generally often used in two contexts: a military context and a context of sexual exchange/exploitation. In military context, “assembly place” refers to an area of a random place selected temporarily for tactical and strategic purposes where soldiers assemble and disperse quickly. Although an assembly place is of great importance from a military viewpoint, it cannot be an established place of permanence where lives and life exists because the place exists only momentarily. In addition to assembly places in military context, there are countless types of assembly places in contemporary social environments: small stores and franchises that continuously proliferate and die out; traffic-related assembly places, such as airports, terminals, stations and rest stops; and factories (or workshops).

By contrast, there is a type of assembly place that is not perceived or concealed. These are assembly places of sexual exchange/exploitation where prostitution still occurs. The places are visible to all but no one sees them, and there countless assembly places for prostitution in Korean society.”- Man Seok Kim, Sung woo Kim, Chong-Ok Paek

  View of the exhibition including funeral streamers by called “between sky and land 4” by Yeongyung Kang

After passing through a section by Bark Sehee called “passengers” which was set up like an airport the space opened into a circular viewing experience with rooms. You essentially had to walk in circles and up levels, all open so you could see below, above and across from you before you headed into rooms. The first floor was filled with wooden blocks with paintings of women on them holding burned pieces of paper, statements of woman from all over Asia raped by Japanese soldiers during the Pacific War. This collection of pieces is by Akira Tsuboi and is a series called “Sex Slaves by the Japanese Military”. The floor further on has lights hanging over tombstones called “Black ground”  by Yeo Sang Hee and the stones hold records of “victims of extensive state violence that occurred in modern and contemporary Korean history.”

“Epoxyfilm” by Byun Jaekyu

“Ground of POW” by Yeo Sang Hee, broken into 1 and 2 parts

Close up of “Ground of POW” by Yeo Sang Hee, broken into 1 and 2 parts

“People I met in open space” by Park Hwayeon

Another section on one of the higher floors deals with prostitution specifically in South Korea and Gwangju. That second version of non-place mentioned at the beginning of the section. One is a set of two films shown side by side showing “Day and night of Brothel District” and another room is a map of South Korea made out of pharmaceuticals that sex workers tend to rely on, a third room has holographic books filled with statements in either English or Korean from sex workers with space to sit and lights to read like one is studying at the library. (All three by Youseung Jeong.) I read the English one its entirety and it was disheartening to read the commonality of fear, hopelessness and no-escape from debt owed.

“Landmark, Land market” by Youseung Jeong

“Returning of the Viewpoint” by Youseung Jeong

After this dimly lit section I had to ask how to leave, having walked around in circles for about four floors and unsure where to go next. The next section was brighter.

Faultlines

“In Faultlines, we look at the uncertainty of our imagined belonging when the values that we share, and which forms our borders, are threatened, broken, ignored or denied. In these unsettled times, we ask: Is imagination — and its promise of fantasy, fiction, emotion and abstraction — a better way of facing our social and political realities?” – Yeon Shim Chung and Yeewan Koon

Xiyadie’s “Butterfly”

In this section I realized the time and hurried more than I should’ve, walking through videos of ruins where kids whistled through bird whistles, cut up photographs and words, paintings of bruises and a section by an artist’s work with students where the artists questioned the students on borders and another part of vials of water with pictures of boarders between countries that are bodies of water.

“I traded their “stories” about their everyday borders for my “water” that I took from the Imjin river.” part of “14 years old & the world & borders” and “Fragments of Borders” by Shitamichi Motoyuki

Another section I enjoyed was called “Tobiu”, it’s a section specifically requested that the viewer not take pictures. The artist stayed at a residency program in a place called Tobiu that doesn’t exist on any maps. “It comprises only ten homes, mostly inhabited by elderly retirees, and buildings now abandoned.” He worked with locals on a forestation project and visited a place called Ahunrupar which “according to Ainu myths, is a magical cave that leads to the playground of the gods”. The art was made with locally created materials (he made his own charcoal to draw portraits of the children), and photos were included as well as magical sculptures.

“Thousand Little Brothers” by Hasan Elahi

close up of a section of “Thousand Little Brothers” by Hasan Elahi

Right outside Tobiu is a large pigment print called “Thousand Little Brothers” by Hasan Elahi which is another piece that’s story adds so much more to it. “Hasan’s work is closely related to his personal experience on September 11, 2001. After an erroneous tip linking Elahi to terrorist activities led to a six-month FBI investigation, Hasan responded by upturning the process of surveillance by self monitoring and documenting every mundane aspect of his life, which he then sent the FBI. A decade later, he continues to voluntarily monitor himself and updating the agency with his self-produced surveillance report.”

The Art of Survival: Assembly, Sustainability, Shift

(another part of three)

Symmetrical Imagination

“This exhibition was inspired by the concept of Symmetrical Thinking advanced by Japanese philosopher Shinichi Nakazawa. In symmetrical thinking, the world is recognized as a place where there is no boundary between humanity and nature, and humans, animals, plants, minerals, ect. are transformed and mixed with each other.” – Man seok Kim, Sung woo Kim, Chong-Ok Paek

“Mudeung Fantasia- Virtual Garden of Cogitation” by Park Sang Hwa

This section was the most whimsical, in the most bizarre way that I loved. Like a twisted fairy tale. First I walked through “Mudeung Fantasia-Virtual Garden of Cogitation” (or really tried to, there was a couple having a photo shoot in the art piece and it was hard to avoid photo bombing them since it was the only way into the next section)

In this case I’ll let the photos do the justice of this whimsical section, there’s not as many stories to go with them.

“Overlapped Sensibility: Carousel” by Min Sung Hng

“Private Sanctuary #3 Series” by Lee, Jeong Iok

“Come into Bloom” by Jung Chanboo

“Playing with Everyone: Symmetric Imbalance” by Min Sung Hong

“Combi” by So Yun Kyoung

“Combi” by So Yun Kyoung, honestly this was some of the most charming art I saw while there

“The Material Does Not Have the Nature of Its Own” by Min Sung Hong

“Grass Bridge” by Park. Il-Jeung

Another view of “Grass Bridge” by Park. Il-Jeung

“Hybrid Sapiens Series” by Kang Dong Ho

“Becoming Space” by Youn, Seyoung

Momentum Temporary

“This exhibition aims to explore the acceptance and rejection of individuals and the collective as well as the structure of endless unity and discord in the contemporary context.”- Man seok Kim, Sung woo Kim, Chong-Ok Paek

I probably spent the least amount of time in this section due to running out of time before the exhibit closed. (In reality I was fine on time but I got anxious.)

Poster’s part of a collection of different named pigment prints by Mun Seon Hee: section includes “Rat-a-tat-tat”, “Bang!”, “Run!” “I Didn’t See Anything”, “We’re Running Short On Blood”, “Spy”, “Whew!”, “Don’t Forget Us”, “Hush!” and “Pit-a-Pat” not all shown in this photo.

The final section was another part with no photography allowed.

North Korean Art: Paradoxical Realism

“There is an assumption that only State-ordered propaganda art exists in the DPRK. It is true that North Korean art is largely propaganda art, but that is not all of what it is. This exhibition explores various genres and expressions of Chosonhwa.”- BG Muhn

This section was several pieces of art that showed a study of Chosonhwa “the North Korean name for traditional ink wash painting on rice paper”. It showed the various genres that might be found done by an artist in North Korea, starting with ideological art. The ideological art were vast paintings of people working happily and determinedly together in what looks like dangerous situations. Then the second genre was landscape paintings which were beautiful and impressive. “The white portions of an image are created by leaving the natural white color of the rice paper untouched.” Reading this while looking at a vast mountain was mind boggling and the statement on the explanation “techniques such as this require great skill and planning” felt like an understatement.

The third genre was “Literati” painting which there weren’t many examples of but reminded me a bit of traditional calligraphy style art.

The final genre was animal paintings. There was a huge beautiful painting of a tiger and next to it in the explanation; “After the most talented and elite North Korean artists serve their country by generating ideological paintings while they are younger, they often move on to creating either landscape, bird-and-flower, or animal paintings during the remainder of their careers”.

With this I exited through the gift shop which, if it was the same as the other gift shop than I’m okay I missed it. Nothing screamed buy me, but there was stuff I liked. I just already had bought a ton of books at Aladdin and didn’t see myself lugging thick art books home

With that I was done. I hadn’t seen everything, there was at least one section not up and a couple other spots in Gwangju showcasing more art. (Such as the Former Armed Forces Gwangju Hospital) But I for sure left art drunk, itching to write a thesis paper about borders. I really truly hadn’t know what to expect and was stunned. There was so much English, an over abundance of it in spaces more so than Korean that surprised me and from time to time I felt a bit nostalgically homesick for college. (I went to an art school) I loved the way that things were show cased. Each section was different and reflected the topic and the artist’s work. There were bright sections and dark hard to get through areas that reflected the story being told.

The Gwangju Biennale is from September 7, 2018 until November 11, 2018. After which “Imagines Borders” will be over and the art from 165 artists from around 43 countries and their stories and experiences will disperse. And “the grave discourse of contemporary” will move on. All quotes used during this blog post were pulled from their English Guidebook and can also be found at the start of each section when at the exhibition or next to the art in the artist’s statements.

The Asian Culture Center is closed on Mondays but the Biennale is open all week long from 9am until 6pm. The Asian Culture Center is open from 10am until 6pm though on some days maybe 7pm. Tours are also available. Information from their website on how to get to the locations can be found here.

If you’re in the area I highly suggest visiting. I didn’t include every single piece that moved me but I tried to include many and I’m sure you’d have your own experience. Also give yourself time if you have it to experience the exhibition. It took me two days to get through (and have time to eat and do other things) and I still felt a bit rushed.

  Gwangju Biennale: Imagined Borders I'm here with an extra post. It's not something I usually do. I usually write and then queue my posts in the order in which they happened.

[adamroper]

A Christmas Foot, Chapter 1: The Lamp

Our story starts off in a more humble climate than others you may have heard, moreso than Manhatten, suburban chicago, the North Pole or a giant department store. The camera starts at my feet and pans upwards to a sign reading “East Hastings” in Vancouver’s iconic Downtown Eastside, revealing the Carnegie Hall in the background.

My first apartment in Vancouver is just around the corner on Cordova & Princess. Down the street in Gastown is the first restaurant I took a job doing dishes at, during my first Christmas in Vancouver. Incidentally, this would end up being the last house I lived in while I still had both my feet.

Not long after I moved to this interesting winter wonderland shared with cockroaches, rats, traffic noise, lineups towards a soup kitchen, and the occasional flooded basement a doctor said my right foot had had enough. My poor foot had done it’s best to support me for years after a childhood accident and it was time to send it to foot heaven. I wondered if foot heaven was the same as cat heaven, which is where my mom said my brown cat went to after it fell out of a 2 story window.

It shouldn’t be too surprising my right limb and I had to part ways- honestly I’m surprised it hadn’t gone sooner, or that it wasn’t joined by another appendage. You would be too if you’d seen some of the crazy winter antics my dad and my two brothers and sister got upto each year around december.

One year in the 90s saw our family cross country skiing when a blizzard brought the entire city of Nanaimo to a standstill. The marsh is perfectly safe, it’s frozen over he would say as we coasted confidently onto its icy surface. Or the time my dad tied a GT Racer sled to the trailer hitch of his 15 passenger van towing it on the backroads of mount benson, only stopping when he would notice the sled veering off towards a ditch.

Not long after losing the foot I also lost the apartment I was living in while trying against my sister’s advice to carry on as if things were normal.

At the time the housing crisis in Vancouver was in full swing, and when most folks weren’t either ice skating down on Robson or taking in the German Christmas market they were looking for a place to live for January.

They like me had done the best with the apartment they had- they had put plastic over their heritage windows to cut down on the BC hydro bill, they had placed the Christmas tree in front of the large hole in the drywall the last tenants had left, they had poured nearly half a bottle of pine extract into their scent diffusers to cover up the cigarette smell in the hallway, they had set up all manner of elaborate rat traps to avoid being contaminated by the plague, they had insisted to the landlord that, yes, those dark looking spots under the sink are black mold, all the while dreaming of finding a more ideal living situation.

To put it simply, it’s difficult trying to find one of these rumored nice apartments, much less trying to do so with only one foot, hopping from one viewing to the next trying to outrun the rest of the marathon of young professionals in search of the holy grails of affordable living.

At last I resigned, calling my parents half a month before Christmas to tell them about my housing woes. Well, just come home for the season, my dad said on the phone, it’ll just be for a few months until your foot man or whatever you call him makes you a new leg and you’ll be walking again in no time! Really, it’s what you should  done in the first place, come home and we’ll take care of you.

So on to the ferry I went with a backpack containing a modestly redacted version of my life in Vancouver, the rest of it residing in a friend’s garage for the winter. I was trying not to slip and fall with my single blundstone and crutches, somehow avoiding the 3 ferry sailing waits that would transpire in the days to follow.

As luck would have it I arrived just in time to help my mom set up her elaborate Christmas village- arranged with a stunning eye for detail and careful planning- most towns and cities in Canada would have a hard time comparing to the structural engineering marvel and ease of traffic infrastructure my mom had created.

There was hardly ever a traffic jam in “The Winter village of Avonlea”, and the crime rate was next to zero. “Over here we’ll put the post office, and across the way we’ll place the butcher adjacent to the bakery” she would instruct me, “so the postman will save time gathering groceries on his way home from work, and we’ll place the city hall on the corner of Bedford Halls Lane and Bing Boulevard.”

Oh and don’t get me started on the tree decorations. My dad was allowed to pick the tree out, and that was the full extent of his involvement. Every year it became the host to a multitude of angels, small wooden sleds, doves, owls, pigeons, even the occasional crow. There were glass spheres coated with gold, silver, and platinum. Snowglobes snowed every day of the week, lords leaping and ladies dancing in circles all the way to the shining pinnacle on top of the tree. Some years it was another larger angel, other years a star, one year it was curiously a picture of elvis.

When it came to Christmas decorating my mom was the queen of the ice castle. My dad was self-decidedly in charge of creating our seasonal chaos scenarios to prepare us for adulthood, while my mom was in charge of everything inside the house. You dared not alter the carefully planned set up in any way lest you awaken the demon Krampus.

That was about 6 years ago, and of course things have changed since then. I now have 4 legs instead of only 1. I have my actual leg, my brand new prosthetic leg, and a climbing leg and a running leg. You have every leg you’ll need to carry out a great bank heist, my sister-in-law joked. I would need to I figured in order to continue paying for them. All said and done the price of a leg is pretty well comparable to a brand new honda accord.

After a harrowing few years of recovering and moving back to Vancouver, going from one house to the next, and I was finally in a moderately stable fairly well priced townhouse. It was Christmas again and this year I was heading to the ferry to see my mom and dad who still lived on the island. I had a smaller backpack this time as well as a curiously shaped duffel bag with a surprise for mom. Looking at the bag you might think it was a pile of field hockey sticks, or a set of broken golf clubs. In reality it was one of my retired legs, refashioned with a black fishnet stocking, a black high heel and a detachable light and lampshape.

You see every few years the legs wear down and they need to be replaced. like a ford car or an apple computer these things don't last long, even with casual use. Once they’re retired they make a surprisingly great basis for all kinds of creative art sculptures. Thus was born a beautiful lamp centerpiece to my mom’s carefully thought out Christmas decoration extravaganza, which I had assumed she would love.

Arriving at the house I almost slipped on every icy step to the front door. The sandpaper I’d nailed to the stairs when I first moved home had worn down from repeated use. It didn’t help I was half blinded by a recently updated series of LED lights surrounding every tree, shrub, corner of the house, and window. Even the snowpeople couldn’t escape the maniacal creeping LED vines.

The house inside was decorated equally as elaborately with little left to the imagination. I hugged my mom and dad, carefully moving my body in twists and turns to avoid knocking any of the holiday flourishes over, like those  weird people you see in grocery stores who try to sneak past you without touching you or making eye contact.

Since all the siblings have moved away home and founded small Christmas-minded colonies of their own my mom had gotten even more carried away with the decorations, making you feel like you were stepping into a densely forested North Pole mock up in a department store. She loved it, Dad appreciated it, and the grandkids were only allowed in with careful supervision.

“Well mom, I brought you a gift for your decorations” I said with a laugh opening the bag. I pulled out the awful, gloriously gaudy leg dressed in holiday cheer, in my mind a beautiful iconic recollection of the great holiday movies of old. I traipsed through the dense menagerie of holiday decorations and gingerly placed the lamp in the picture window, fully in view from the sidewalk.

Plugging it in the light sprung to life with a soft brownish glow emitted by an edison style bulb. My mom’s face was aghast at first, as if she had seen jacob marley ascending the staircase towards her room covered in chains.

Her expression then softened up a little bit and she said with a smile “Oh dear, that’s awful... just terrible”. My dad was laughing as he walked to the kitchen and back with 2 cans of Wildcat in hand. I pulled off my leg for the night and we sat under the glow of the lamp, the tree, the village, the decorations, and the christmas hearth log on channel 3 and talked cheerfully until I fell asleep on the couch.

The next morning I woke up at instinctively at 7am to see the morning sunrise reflect off Mount Benson and reached for my leg.

Now, one thing you might not realize about putting on a prosthetic leg is there's a process to it, like putting together a desk from Ikea. It starts with either a polyurethane or silicone liner you roll onto your leg, followed by a gel sock covered in fabric or a few layers of wool socks before putting on the leg itself, in my case followed by rolling on another silicone sleeve that attaches the prosthetic to the rest of my leg holding it all together.

I stood up and walked towards the kitchen for a coffee, as I did I noticed something was off in the living room. The lampshade was missing. In its place in the reflection of the picture window I saw a red and white cylinder shape that ascended into a curve. While I was sleeping my mom had replaced my prosthetic leg lamp with a candy cane, and the lamp was nowhere to be found. “Hey Mom”, I shouted upstairs, “my lamp! Where did you put it?” “It’s in the trash out by the the curb” she shouted back, “out front.”

Just then a sanitation truck was pulling up beside the bins on the front sidewalk. One of the bins was overflowing with a familiar looking piece of footwear sticking out prominently from one side. It was my new $35,000 prosthetic leg with a brown leather blundstone still attached to it, being lifted up towards the crusher.

I lept for the door and ran down the stairs slipping on the icy porch! “ hey wait!” I shouted, “my foot!!!” As I ran my right foot was snagged by a lights cord and I fell flat onto my face in the snow, then snapped back. By the time I reached the sanitation worker he was laughing and he said, “hey, what’s with the fishnet?” I looked down, and adorned on my right side was the bottom half of the leg lamp I’d made for my mom, complete with a fishnet stocking, a black high heel, and a long brown extension cord.

By some weird twist of fate she confused the two and had thrown my good leg in the trash in a careless effort to rid her house of my hilariously ironic gift! I had tripped face first into the snow because the leg lamp was still plugged in!

[philpenmanblog]

TWO HOURS IN TIME ON 9/11

TWO HOURS IN TIME ON 9/11

My cellphone rings so I ignore it. I figured it was work and I had just worked 6 months straight.  Splash News had sent myself and another photographer to head up their new East Coast office for the company. This involved being on the road traveling for 6 solid months in every state of the US and often getting last minute calls saying “You have one hour to get to JFK, you’re on a flight to Argentina for a shoot that is at 10am tomorrow.”

September 11th was to be my first official day off and I had just worked to 3am that previous evening so I was not in the mood to pick up my cell. The usual protocol was cellphone would run off, then my house line would start ringing continuously until I picked up.

This time my landline did not go off and I heard a beep indicating a voicemail had recorded. Figuring it was one of my parents I listened, it was in fact a Splash reporter who said: “Phil a plane has flown into one of the World Trade Center towers, you might want to check it out.”

I switched on my television to see the live images being shown by NY1 and thought to myself -Holy shit !- and you might want to check it out? of course I will I’m headed down there now.

I jumped out of bed threw on whatever t-shirt and pants I could find, grabbed my camera bag and jumped on my bicycle and cycled like a man possessed to get to the towers as quickly as possible.

At this point I had not even known that a second plane had hit the other tower as I had left my TV in such a hurry that I was down at the site within 10 minutes. I was making stops along the way where I knew their was a good vantage point to show the size of the towers with the flames engulfing the top of the towers.

First stop was on West Broadway in Soho. People were just watching dumb struck with what was unfolding before their eyes. At this point I was so out of it that all I was thinking about was getting the best angle.

I raced down Broadway where people were being held back, from what looked like a part from one of the planes. I was still blocks away so it did not really register. I stopped took a picture and jumped back on the bike.

Everything was in fast forward mode for me as I wanted to get these pictures but my main goal was to get below the towers as I knew it would not be long before the Police roped everything off with tape and I would not get near.

This may sound stupid now but I got to the site and locked my bike up. I had absolutely no idea how my day was going to be and I had no intentions of losing my bike to theft. I arrived to what has become my place to go every year to mourn, by Trinity Church and what used to be where I bought all my DVD’s and CD’S at “ J & R music.” 

It was a real mix of businessmen in suits, tourists, construction workers, and local store clerks staring up at the towers. Some people were screaming others with their hands over their eyes struck in disbelief of what was unfolding before them.

I could hear loud screams as people were jumping from the top of the building. 

I’m not going to pretend that I was really registering what was going on. I was a young kid in my early twenties that was a news photographer. These stories were what I had always hoped I had not witnessed but if they did happen, I was going to make sure I was there to cover them.

The Police started to move people away from the Park row area. Television crews were doing their live feeds around me and ambulances were attending to people struck by what they were witnessing.

The area had started to clear out and I was focused on getting shots of the church with the towers in the background.

As I was shooting all of a sudden I could hear a loud noise and the building was collapsing in front of my very eyes through my viewfinder. I clicked away just watching the tower come down further and further as the large beams from the towers got bigger and bigger in my camera.

I pulled my camera down from my face and a bunch of fireman were running past me shouting “Run kid the towers falling this way.” I ran into J & R music to see Policemen and people headed to the back of the store.

Within seconds the windows that looked onto the street had turned black. You could see nothing. 

A man runs in screaming “Fuck! I made it” he was covered head to toe in debris. A policeman gives him a bottle of water. The man looks possessed as he had literally just ran for his life.

I go up to the guy and say do you mind if I take a couple of pictures. He says “go ahead Kid!”

I started taking some shots. The contrast between this Man completely covered in debris whilst people were fresh in their suits in the middle of a CD section was just surreal to me.

If you were just standing at the back of the store you would have absolutely no idea what was happening outside.

I walked to the front and could see that the visibility was getting better. I stepped out the store to what seemed like a parallel universe from the store I had just been standing in.

Paperwork was falling from the sky all around me and the streets were covered in debris. There was a deadly silence and it took a few minutes to register what had happened.

As I stood there I started to see the resemblance of what looked like people walking, some being held up by friends and co workers, others sat in shock.

I pulled my camera up to take a picture of a Woman being helped by what looked like a traffic warden.

They were both covered head to toe and she was crying. I questioned myself, could I do this? take pictures of people at their weakest moment.

In the past all I had to shoot was football fans rioting or celebrities. The closest I had come to this was photographing people after they had lost a close one but the shoots were always official and the people wanted to tell their stories. 

It’s not like I thought this is history playing out in front of me and I have to record it because at that space in time I was really not with it at all. A building had just come down in front of me and I had put myself in this position. I had always wanted to photograph these types of moments and all the photographers I grew admiring were war photographers like James Nachtwey and The Bang Bang club.

I started to document the history unfolding in front of me but when in reality, these were human beings, someone’s loved one, a friend and family member.

It was at this point that I thought about my family and friends. The cellphone networks were overloaded so no calls were coming through at all. I knew my family would be panicking and be trying to get hold of me but I could not call out and knew they would be worried. 

I learnt soon after that my parents knew I was down at the World trade center. They were watching a live stream on television in the UK, and saw me on television taking pictures of the people walking through the debris. This was just after the first tower had fallen. I cannot imagine how difficult it must have been for them to know that their son was there and ok but this was before the second tower had come down.

All of a sudden firemen were running up the street towards me. “Run! the second one is about to come down.” Myself and a few other people who were there started knocking on the door of a building.

A man came to the door but did not want to let us in. I’m not sure if he was afraid or in shock but a policeman with us screamed at him to “open the door!” We all rushed in.

We quickly ran down to the basement of the building where others were waiting. I did not hear the second tower come down but after a few minutes I went back upstairs where the same man who had told me we could not come in was handing out face masks to people headed back outside.

Again the debris was coming down around us. I Saw a good friend of mine Jason a fellow photographer covered from head to toe in shock. I asked him if he was ok, his reply was more along the lines of “I’m fucking freaked out” as you would expect any person to say.

I continued to carry on taking pictures of people being helped by firemen, Policemen and EMT’s.

I could see Policemen taking sips of water and sharing the bottle with us all.

Out of this huge disaster I was witnessing how people really come together and look out for each other right before my eyes. Too often in NY we get too angry and are quick to jump down each other’s throats but deep down you can see that when something like this happens we are altogether. 

My first trip to New York was in 1994 and then I knew this is where I wanted to live. The energy, the people! I spent the next 6 years or more trying everything I could to get here. My Dream of being a New Yorker never wavered. 

I have now been here over 15 years and still wake up everyday loving it. We all have days when the city can beat us down, but I see the city as a friend. It may sound strange but after riding around the streets of NYC for 15 years you get to notice everything. What new stores open, which places close. 

You get to know the homeless guys on the street by name and enjoy chats together over coffee in the mornings. NYC is everything to me so when I witnessed how New Yorker’s came together during this time it gets to me emotionally.

Things had gotten very silent. You would maybe hear alarms going off or a siren from a police car, but generally everyone was in a daze about what we had all just witnessed.

My phone rang. It was my friend from Rotterdam, Debbie who I had gone to College in the UK with. I told her I could not really talk but that I was okay and to call my parents and let them know I was fine. 

I went back to shooting pictures of a priest helping a lady bloodied up and crying whilst sitting by an ambulance.

It was then I saw three men walking through the debris towards me. One now a good friend called George was still holding his briefcase.

The phone rings again. Its my boss Kevin who is in Los Angeles. He says “I know you do not want to leave the site, but you have to get back to the office to send as the papers were waiting.” This is still one of the biggest regrets I have ever made as a photographer, was to leave the World Trade center site as I knew there would be no way back in. 

I started to look for my bike but it was gone. I had no way to get it so I started to run.

Our office at the time was basically a two bedroom flat in Hell’s Kitchen. I shared this apartment with my co-worker Dan, but in reality we were never there as we were always traveling on assignment.

As I was running I stopped at a coffee cart to get some water. For some reason I went to pay which sounds normal but at the time and place it was weird. The guy gave me a bottle and said, “Don’t be crazy, have it “.

I continued to run with my camera round my neck, covered in debris with a facemask covering me. People were looking at me like I was some kind of weirdo.

People were gathered around televisions on the street, some rushing to get uptown, others going about their business.

The run from the World Trade center to 38th and 9th is a few miles but I could not find a cab and the subways were not an option. 

I got into the flat/office and quickly started to edit as I knew the Internet would likely go down fast. I managed to get my pictures moving to the papers and then Dan came in with his pictures. Of course the internet did go down, and Dan was left struggling to figure out how to get his images sent.

These two hours of my life were to be just the beginning. 

The years after were some of the most painful. For a year straight I was having to photograph funerals, features with people who had lost loved ones, and anything related to the ongoing story. I remember having to shoot a feature on a man who was selling toilet roll with Osama Bin Laden’s face on it. When I say difficult its not like I lost a loved one but emotionally it really breaks you. Seeing such pain people are going through.

I have since connected with a lot of the people I photographed that day and we stay in touch and reach out to see how we are all doing every year.

One day a few years after the attack on the World Trade Center I received an email, whilst coming out of a cinema in the East Village with my wife Karen. It was from George who I had photographed that day. We had shot a feature together a year after 9/11, where we’re- united the three men I had photographed.

George had written to me to see how I was doing, I literally broke down in tears on the middle of 2nd Avenue. The emotion of the day had gotten to me. I still break down from time to time every time I think about that day and do not believe I will ever truly understand or realize the size and magnitude of what happened.

If the Building’s had come down any other way I would be dead. That’s a strange thing to wrap your head around.

WORDS AND PICTURES BY PHIL PENMAN

Listen to an interview recorded with Steve Harris of the BBC about my memories of that day.