#i did not have the capacity for empathy until i turned 18 and then i suddenly became emo

[sailordiavolo]

Sparda Headcanons

nobody asked, but i’ve had many thoughts about Sparda lately, and i need to get them out before i go mentally insane

[ mostly general headcanons about Sparda himself, with some including his relationship with eva and the twins. ]

sparda started out like trish; a full demon who learned compassion, love and empathy, despite those traits not occurring naturally to demon kind.

when he did experience these emotions for the first time, it completely blew him away and fundamentally changed him. he became horrified by things such as the qliphoth tree, which eventually motivated his rebellion.

sparda, similar to mundus, could spiritually inhabit statues that were made in his likeness. there was one placed in fortuna, the purpose of which was originally to watch the hell gate for potential activity

though he would quickly dispatch of demons that tore into the human world, he wouldn’t meddle with human politics or affairs.

unlike vergil, sparda’s hair (in his human form) naturally grew out of his head in that slicked-back manner because that was how his horns grew (curled backwards). his hair even curved out and around like his horns did if he let it grow long enough

he had a romanticised view of humanity. he loved humanity like a neurodivergent person loves their hyperfixation

sparda spent most of his time in the human world in his demon form. he would occasionally take a human form when he wished to experience certain human things firsthand, or if he wanted to blend in, but he did this sparingly

while sparda was alive and at his strongest, there were a lot less demons trying to break into the human world, so the dark knight was often left with long periods of time to himself.

though he had learned empathy and compassion, sparda did not form close, loving bonds with humans for many centuries. thus the dark knight did not really have a concept of loneliness. he read about it, but didn’t really understand.

sparda was very reluctant to let people into his inner world, especially humans, who lived their entire lives and died before he could so much as draw a breath. there had been attempts to mingle with humans, but he stuck out like a sore thumb, or would outright scare people if he was in his demon form.

in his spare time, sparda liked to travel the world and visit various places, observing people, cultures, languages, arts and customs.

several different cultures have legends that somewhat fit the description of the legendary dark knight, but at present, nobody knows how accurate these legends are, and many of these legends do not mention him by name. they tell of his bravery and heroism.

sparda, like vergil, loved poetry and the artistic pursuits that humans created. (after all, swordsmanship is an art, too.) he admired the beauty of human art, especially the ways they used it to express emotions or tell stories

sparda liked to collect weapons and armor, even ones of human creation because they fascinated him. contrary to popular belief, sparda had been wielding guns since they were first invented, although for several hundred years they weren’t any match for most demons.

sparda’s mansion was like his den. it was filled with human literature, a lot of ancient texts in ancient languages; including various works of art, textiles, collections of weapons (including Luce & Ombra) and various items he’d been given as acts of worship. The doors and ceilings were very high because of how tall Sparda was in his demon form.

he had a colllection of human trinkets, various things he’d find that he thought were interesting, but didn’t really know what they were for. random mundane items, like an egg beater, hot water bottle, electric appliances that he doesn’t know how to turn on, spinning tops, and the like. he’d sort of just guess what they were for and put them up in places.

in his human form, he liked to dress in ways that imitated his favorite characters in books.

sparda had wished to know love like what he read about, like in the stories humans love to tell, which just seemed to be intrinsic to their nature. he could sort of understand shakespearean tragedies with his own understanding of love and compassion, yet for many centuries he still found the true meaning of such love to remain elusive to him.

eva was as curious about him as he was about her and humans in general. he would ask her questions about humans (initially, he had a lot of misconceptions about humans) and she would ask questions about him. when he was more comfortable around her, he showed her his human trinkets collection and asked her to explain what they were for. (he did not think that the egg beater was for mixing eggs).

he was bad at socialising and often spoke in a way that sounded ancient and out-of-place, sometimes mixing middle english with modern english, but he improved after meeting eva, since he had more practice after that.

after finding out sparda liked things such as poetry and literature, eva would bring him other human things to try; films, music, food and the like. just as vergil got his love of literature from his parents, dante got his love of music, dance and film from his parents, too. (sparda a fan of old western films? more likely than you’d think)

like dante and vergil, sparda was prone to aging in his human form. that’s why you see the version of him in dmc1 (pretty young-looking) and the older version of him as seen in the family portrait. ( see below )

therefore, it was a HUGE decision to marry eva and stay with her. it meant staying in human form, which meant aging, which meant shortening his own lifespan. although it was a big decision to make the commitment to marry eva, when the time came, he made the decision instantly.

he could’ve lived thousands of years longer had he left her alone, or had he resolved to watching her wither away and die from old age, but that was a very lonely existence, and once he had known eva, he had known loneliness and he had known sorrow.

eva and sparda were married for many years before the children came into the picture. (eva has a banging skin care routine btw)

sparda actually wanted children because of the many times he’d witnessed the loving bond between a human parent and child. it was a type of love he’d secretly longed for

though he wanted children, he was very reluctant to actually create them with eva, because of the potential risks involved with carrying hybrid offspring. not only that, but eva being the mother to his offspring would only put her in even more mortal danger from his enemies.

but eva had insisted, soothed him and reassured him. eva understood the risks of becoming a mother this way, and she was prepared to go through with it anyway.

dante was a mommy’s boy and vergil was a daddy’s boy

sparda was a great storyteller. he would recount in great detail his various adventures to the children, or sometimes read his favourite books to them. dante was only interested in stories where the hero defeats the bad guy, whereas vergil would soak up anything his father told him. thus, vergil was privy to many stories that dante wasn’t.

by the time the twins were young children, sparda had aged considerably since he first married eva, meaning his power had begun to dwindle. this meant he was away from home more often, because more and more demons were beginning to break into the human world.

and once mundus figured out that sparda had fathered children (with a human woman, no less) they’d begun to target the wife and kids.

dante specifically remembered waiting for his father to return on several different occasions, but being disappointed many times. vergil however, understood that sparda was protecting them, because he was the strongest, and there was no one else who could.

the twins often bickered about this. vergil would remind him that his little attitude towards father was “foolish”. at which point dante would try and hit him in the face. (he only managed to actually hit vergil half the time)

while sparda was gone, the twins would stay with eva. sparda’s excursions grew longer and longer, until one day he did not return at all.

dante in his youth held a grudge against his father for his absentee behavior, but it wasn’t until he was much older where he finally understood where his father was coming from. and dante too had become like his old man in thay regard, pushing loved ones away with the intention of protecting them.

and it wasn’t until much later that vergil had finally realised that sparda’s love was his driving force behind the immense power he wielded; sparda’s love for the beauty of humanity. a realisation that had come far too late for vergil.

if sparda and eva had’ve known how it ended for them and given a chance to take it all back, they wouldn’t do it. they knew what they were getting themselves into when they chose to bring dante and vergil into the world. the only regret they would’ve had is not being able to spend more time together as a family.

[rebeccccccaaa]

𝒻𝒶𝓁𝓁𝑒𝓃 𝒶𝓃𝑔𝑒𝓁

__________________________________

sᴛᴇᴠᴇ ʀᴏɢᴇʀs x ʀᴇᴀᴅᴇʀ

𝓈𝓊𝓂𝓂𝒶𝓇𝓎: You’re a hydra experiment gone wrong. Not to mention Steve Rogers hates you; and you have no idea why.

𝓌𝒶𝓇𝓃𝒾𝓃𝑔𝓈: angst, substance abuse, alcohol consumption, enemies to lovers kingda but not really, smut 18+  (slight praise?, a bit of pet names? protected sex ;), riding, cockwarming, choking)

𝒶/𝓃: might do a part 2 blurb, but i’mbeginning to run out of ideas so send some requests! also thanks for 100 followers!! :,)

𝓌𝑜𝓇𝒹 𝒸𝑜𝓊𝓃𝓉: 3.3k

___________________________________

You sat by the window of your  room with a cup of coffee as always wishing life would be different; but also not. You were grateful for your life you’re able to have now; being with the Avengers, learning how to control the powers you now possess. Grateful to have a home again.

Years ago you were out with your friends for the fifth time that week, getting drunk and high off of anything you could get your hands on. Your fiance broke off your engagement for his secretary; typical. You got fired from your job the week prior. You were days away from being evicted from your  apartment. You had no family; your life was falling apart. 

You were also the perfect target. Stumbling out of the club black out drunk and high as shit you were taken into the darkness never to be seen again. You woke up surrounded by darkness freezing, shivering from the cold. You had no idea where you were, what day it was, who was staring at you from the shadows.

“Welcome home,” the voice taunted you.

You spent years in that cell. They wanted you to possess dark magic. And you did, oh did possess alright. You remember that night like it was yesterday; that night haunted your dreams every night. 

You would sit in your cell, moving the toy blocks they left for you to use. You mostly practiced your magic with them considering no one taught you how to use them, they only wrote shit down whenever you saw them. No one ever spoke to you and whatever voices you did hear were whispers in languages you couldn’t understand.

Earlier that day so long ago, a ‘doctor’ injected you with this thick disgusting black liquid. They had been at  your door all day waiting for something to happen. But they got what they were looking for; experimenting on you for. 

Your back burned and ached as if  there were nails clawing at your skin. You screamed in agony, begging someone to help you, to take the pain away. You could see your once blue veins that ran through your body turn black.  Your skin ripped on your back, bruises forming, black feathers growing out your body.

Once they were entirely out of your body they applauded. They actually praised the ‘doctor’ who made you into this, this creature. They left you to deal with the pain. You shook in fear and agony. You had wings. Fucking black wings. 

They called you the Fallen Angel. You possessed the powers of Lucifer himself. You didn’t fully know it however.

Months later the avengers infiltrated the base. Natasha found you; you were severely dehydrated and malnourished. But you recovered quickly and here you were staying with the avengers fighting alongside them taking down bad guys and shit. 

There was a light knock on your door taking you out of your horrid memories. 

“Hey, babe,” Natasha opened your door and peeked her head around.

“Hey, Nat,” you replied.

“How are the wings?”

Since you’ve been with the avengers you’ve become happier with your life again and your wings started getting light in color, they’re still not white however and you don’t know why.

“Still gray,” you chuckled.

“That’s so weird. You haven’t done anything and that goop that was in your system is filtered out. What’s making them gray?”

“I have no idea. Anyway are we even sure they're supposed to turn white? I mean I’m no angel; I had a shit life before all of this happened. Maybe it’s just baggage.”

“But it makes sense, you know,” she defended.

“Not everything makes sense.”

“You hungry? Sam was thinking chinese takeout, Tony said shawarma and you’re the tie breaker.”

“Awe man, you guys suck. What do you want?”

“Shawarma,” she whispered.

“Ok. shawarma,” you agreed.

She grabbed your hand and led you to the living where everyone waited for the tie breaker. Your wings were so big and they dragged behind you every time you walked, ran, anything. It was hard sometimes, they were heavy too but you got used to it.

“She said shawarma!” Nat shouted.

Half the crowded cheer and the other half whined. Delivery came fast thankfully and everyone gathered on the couch, Tony putting a movie on while you guys ate. You sat with Bucky and Nat; usually Steve sits with Bucky but Sam was also on the couch next to Buck. 

Steve came up to you making your stomach drop; he was so handsome but here’s the thing, he hated you. Since you came to the tower, he always said they shouldn’t have brought you. That you were too dangerous and you could hurt someone; that hurt you. 

You spent so long hating yourself for what you became but with the avengers help, excluding Steve, you’ve been able to learn to start loving yourself and appreciate how you can use your powers for good and saving people. But every time your name came out of Steve’s mouth, it was degrading and you hated yourself a little more each time. 

And you don’t know why.

“Move.”

“I’m sorry?” you questioned, taken aback.

“I said move,” he said sternly.

“Steve, she was here first. Don’t be a baby. Go sit down somewhere else,” Nat said.

Steve stared at you making you look away in discomfort. He sat in the loveseat alone glaring at you like you had killed his mother or something. The movie continued however and people kept eating. Steve was still grumpy glaring at you whenever you laughed at a scene or said something out loud or literally did anything.

“Rogers, L/n. Briefing, now,” you snapped your head to the voice who was Nick Fury.

“You two doing anything?”he asked when you three were alone.

“We were-”

“Good,” he interrupted.

“I have a mission for you two. We’ve been getting hyperactivity on our radar at these coordinates for the past week now. We do have reason to believe it may be another hydra base trying to regroup maybe, get the band back together type of shit.”

“And you need us why? The rest of the team is in the living room,” Steve asked him.

“You two know hydra best and it’s too soon to put Bucky on a mission that involves Hydra. I’d like you two to complete this with no casualties. We have authorities ready to arrest them, they're just waiting for you,” Nick gave you both a file. 

“I want you both on the plane in 5. And please for fuck’s sake, try not to yell at each other. Y/n, Steve is your captain just do what he says,” He walked out of the room and you rolled your eyes. Whenever you guys go on a mission together he always has you stand back and even stay on the plane with Bruce sometimes. You more than once rejected his instructions; now thinking about it might be the reason he hates you… 

“Try not to kill yourself this time,” Steve said before leaving to suit up. 

The mission was going well and all fell into place. Until while the bastards were under arrest getting ready to be transported, one of the Hydra agents recognized you. He mocked you and laughed at you. Taunted you and brought memories of your time with them back to your mind. 

Tears formed in your eyes, you were so angry. You used your powers, developed from the darkness and began slowly killing him. He turned red and choked gasping for air. Steve watched you begin to get angry, feeling empathy for you. But when he saw you snap, he knew he couldn't trust that you’d cause trouble. 

“Y/n, stop,” he said. But you didn’t stop; you wanted the bastard dead.

“Y/n!” you ignored him.

Your brain drowning all sounds except your breathing and his lack of. Steve grabbed your arms and dragged you, you bursted into tears, memories and trauma flooding back. Steve was pissed that you couldn’t go a single mission without doing something you weren’t supposed to. But he also knew that what you had gone through was torture and he felt sorry for you.

He somewhat knows about the torture that Hydra has inflcited in the past. Bucky talked about it with him and sometimes still has nightmares about it. His behavior probably doesn’t make you feel better. He didn’t mean it to get this far.

When Nat brought you on the plane, he was hesitant. But he knew if they left you there you would die in no time. After you rested, ate, and cleaned up, he was mesmerized. You were very beautiful but Steve felt like because of Peggy he shouldn’t love another person. Like she would be mad if he moved on. 

So, he avoided you at first. Absence turned to frustration when you wouldn’t leave him alone like he had thought. Frustration led to insults and now you think he hates you with everything in his body. But he couldn’t feel further from hate for you. 

Sure, he got frustrated when you didn’t listen to him on missions; primarily because you thought he was being a dick on purpose to antagonize you. But when you came home, safely, and laughed with everyone about Bucky tripping and falling on his face, he fell in love a little bit more with you and your laugh. You looked so happy; without him.

But Steve can’t let it happen, so now he stomped away from you pretending to be upset over something so stupid. 

“Where are you going?” you yelled at him.

“I really don’t need your shit right now, Y/n,” he snapped.

“No, you’re gonna deal with it. It’s been more than a year, Steve! Grow up and talk to me like a real man! Why do you hate me so much?”

“Enough!” he boomed, scaring you.

“Leave me alone,” he said lowly, having more impact than if he were to yell.

“Please,” you cried, “Talk to me. What did I do?”

“You want to know the truth? You’re too powerful. You’re already reckless and if you knew the capacity of your abilities you'd become more reckless. If you’re more reckless you’ll die; and if  you die, that's on me. I can’t let that happen,” there was sincerity in his voice for once; the truth but not the one he wanted to really admit.

“That doesn’t explain why you hate me.”

“God I don’t fucking hate you!”

“Then tell me the truth!” you yelled back.

“I hate myself. I hate myself for feeling the way I do. It's not  fair to her.”

“Not fair to who?” 

“To Peggy.”

“I thought Peggy passed away.”

“She did,” he went into his room and sat on his bed head in his hands.

“I’m confused.”

“I can’t help what I feel for you; and that’s not fair to Peggy. I feel like I should still be in love with her but I’m not.”

You stood by the closed door listening to him. 

“You like me?”

“No, I think I fell in love with you. I thought I could stop by avoiding you but your so fuckin stubborn. You were determined to be my friend; and I don’t want to just be your friend. So I said a couple of mean things and it went too far. I never meant for you to hate me or for you to think I hated you. I was just stupid.”

“Yeah, it was little stupid,” he chuckled at what you said.

You walked towards him and stepped between his legs. He grabbed a hold of your hips and buried his face in your stomach. You held his head brushing your fingers through his hair softly. He looked up at you with soft eyes filled with regret and sorrow. You could tell he was frustrated.

“Is it wrong? To love you?” he whispered.

“No, Peggy wouldn’t want you to spend the rest of your life moping when  you could choose to be happy, like she did. She would want you to move on, live life. And that doesn't mean with me. I mean in general. Does that make sense?”

He nodded sincerely.

He slid his hands to the back of your thighs and sat on his lap. You gasped and your wings fluttered behind you, expanding with excitement. Steve chuckled at that and you buried your face in  his neck feeling embarrassed. He cupped his hand on your face and naturally  you leaned into his hand looking into his blue eyes. 

“Can I kiss you?” he asked.

You simply nodded before leaning up to him to connect your lips with his. Your wings once again expanded; lightly ruffling against each other. You pulled away and attached your lips to his neck peppering light kisses all around. 

You connected your lips once again and it was Steve’s turn to attack your neck with pecks. You’ve alway worn shirts that were either very low in the back or cut to make room for your wings. Either way Steve slowly pulled your shirt over your shoulder trailing kisses along your chest and collarbone. 

“I really care about you, Y/n. Please let me show you.”

You hesitated only because it’s been so long since you had been intimate with someone.

“We don’t have to-” he started.

“No, I do. I really do; it’s just been a while, you know? Being held hostage and all,” you joked.

“I understand. We still don’t have to.”

“Steve,” you whispered in his ear.

“I want you. I want you to fuck me.”

You heard him growl lowly before he stood up with you and almost laid you on your back.

“Steve, I can’t lay on my back!” you laughed.

“Oh that’s right! I’m so sorry,” you both laughed for a second.

He set you down on your feet and stripped his shirt. Your eyes shot straight to his chest, your hands reaching out to touch his chest.  He smirked at you before taking his pants off leaving him in boxers; for now. He reached for your pants as well eyeing you to make sure he wasn’t moving to fast but after a smile and a nod he slowly pulled your own pants to join his discarded on the floor.  

He kissed your thighs that were slightly scarred from your time with hydra. He stood up and you pulled your shirt down off your shoulders letting it fall to the floor. Steve’s eyes watched your breasts. His hands reached for them as you did to his chest when he took his shirt off. 

You pulled in for another kiss until Steve had enough.

“I need to be inside you, baby girl,” he pulled his boxer down, taking your panties off after. He grabbed your hand sitting on the bed. His back leaned against the headboard and you crawled into his lap, your knees falling to either side of his hips. His hands rubbed up and down your thighs and hips.

He reached for a condom and handed it to you winking and smirking. You tore the foil with your teeth keeping direct eye contact with him, Steve getting harder and harder every second passing. Your took his cock in your hands, bigger than you thought it would be, and rolled the condom on squeezing a bit making his hips jerk up into your hand.

“Knock it off, pretty girl.”

You leaned forward and lined your entrance with his cock moving your hips around a bit teasing him before you actually sink down. Steve was so impatient though, he gripped your hips and thrusted quickly into you making you gasp loudly and moan not long after.

You moved quickly, breasts bouncing with each thrust. Steve groaned under you, fingers digging into your hips. 

“My angel. You feel so fucking good,” he grunted.

You simply whined and moaned, feeling euphoric being around Steve. Your wings moved along with you guys gracefully expanding further as you got closer to your oragsm. Steve’s hand moved up your body to wrap around your throat, his thrust getting more sporadic. He squeezed gently making your eyes roll back; your wings getting bigger.

“Your fucking perfect, angel. You gonna cum soon? You gonna cum around my cock?”

“Yes, Stevie. Oh god!” you moaned. 

Your moans got louder, echoing in the room. Skin slapping against each other mixing with the lude sounds of you both where you were connected. Steve released his hold on your neck and grabbed your waist moving wildly in and out of you. 

Your pussy pulsed around Steve’s cocked. When the pressure building in the pit your stomach finally bursted your wings fully expanded and your back arched. You felt Steve’s dick throbbing until it went soft inside you. You collapsed on his chest trying to catch your breath again. 

Steve moved you for a minute taking his cock out of you; discarding the condom in a trash bin. He grabbed a towel and iped you clean first then cleaning himself. He crawled into bed with you and you moved your knee over his hips as before making him laugh. 

“What’s wrong, angel?” you liked that name he gave you.

“Can you…?” you mumbled into his chest.

“What was that?”

“Can you put it back in?” you asked louder.

“My cock?” you nodded shyly.

“Anything for you, angel.”

You laid on his chest with his cock settled inside you and you dozed off. Steve lightly scratched your back after turning his bedside light off. Before he fell asleep he saw a soft glow of wings turning white. He questioned it but ultimately fell asleep. He’d ask you about it tomorrow morning.

================

You woke up with your head on Steve’s chest, naked limbs tangled with the sheets. Steve was on his phone, his hand scratching your head gently. 

“Good morning.”

“Morning, bug.”

“Sorry to keep you in bed,” you said sitting up; you pulled the sheet with you to cover your chest.

“Don’t be sorry, angel.”

“I’m really hungry.”

“Want to grab breakfast downstairs? We’ll come back up afterwards. We can cuddle some more,” Steve kissed you with a smile.

You stood up grabbing your shirt from last night and Steve handed you a pair of cledan boxers to wear. He dressed himself before walking with you downstairs to the kitchen. 

You walked into the kitchen first everyone’s eyes wide. You thought at first maybe it was because they might have heard you and Steve last night but Nat spoke up before you could ask.

“Your wings! Their white!”

“What?” you asked shocked. You opened your wings so you could see them in front of you to see that they were in fact white. 

“How did that happen?” Nat came up to you.

“They weren’t white last night.”

“They changed after you fell asleep, angel,” Steve spoke up; everyone’s heads snapping toward him, confused.

“They did?” you asked, he nodded and smiled coming up to you grabbing your hand.

“What the fuck?” Tony said.

“What the hell happened? I thought you guys hated each other?” Bucky asked.

“It’s a little complicated,” you said. 

“Ok but that doesn’t really explain why they’re white now,” Nat spoke up.

“I think it’s because I wasn’t truly happy and fully free of my past until yesterday. I was able to move on and now being with Steve now makes me happy.”

“Really?” Sam joked.

“Yes, really,” you laughed.

“This is gonna take some getting used to,” Tony said. 

“Did you guys…?” Nat asked suggestively.

Your eyes grew wide and you got hot. Steve only laughed which was enough of an answer for everyone. 

“As long as you’re both happy,” Bucky said.

“We are,” you looked up at Steve, wrapping your wings yourselves and shielding a heated kiss with Steve. 

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Pluralistic: 18 Mar 2020 (Ethopia's Jack Ma infatuation, Charter's infect-the-world plan, Trumpist firefighters dismiss covid, Flatter Me, aviation bailouts need strings attached, the only way through is together, ventilator sharing, explainers, patents vs respirators, covid stimulus, DIY TP, 1665 plague orders+

Today's links

Ethiopian factory sports Jack Ma quotes: Global trade currents are shifting fast.

Charter orders all workers to keep showing up: Even the 15% of its workforce who could work from home.

MAGA firefighters dismiss coronavirus as Democrat hoax: And/or a Chinese bioweapon.

Flatter Me, a compliments card game: Kickstarting now.

American Airlines blew billions, now it wants a bailout: Socializing losses, privatizing gains.

John Green's mutual aid manifesto: The only way through is together.

How to split a single ventilator for four patients: Peer-reviewed simulations.

Bigoted Republican Congressjerk votes against coronavirus relief because it might cover same-sex partnerships: Rep Andy Biggs wants to send us all to meet Jesus.

Epidemiology and public health in 14 minutes: An epidemiologist and an sf writer make an outstanding science communications team.

3D printed ventilator hero got a patent threat: Human rights vs property rights.

If nothing is for sale, how will covid stimulus work? Can you fix a supply shock with stimulus?

How to make your own toilet paper: A craft for your isolated kiddos.

Plague precautions from 1665: No feasting, but you can tipple in a bar until 9PM.

This day in history: 2005, 2010, 2015, 2019

Colophon: Recent publications, current writing projects, upcoming appearances, current reading

Ethiopian factory sports Jack Ma quotes (permalink)

This pic was taken by researchers from Caribou Data at a textiles factory in Ethiopia. Every curtain on every window bore silk-screened quotes from Jack Ma's book (the name of the factory has been redacted to preserve the owner's privacy).

The researchers told me that 72 hours after Alibaba moved into Rwanda, every coffee farmer using the platform had sold out of their inventory.

It's a potent and visually arresting reminder of how global trade currents are shifting.

Charter orders all workers to keep showing up (permalink)

My local monopoly ISP is Charter. They're terrible in every single way. What's more, my city, Burbank, owns 100GB fiber that runs under my home's foundation slab, but I can't access it because of Charter's deal with the city. In addition to delivering slow-as-molasses connectivity at nosebleed prices (and relentlessly advertising upsells, dozens every week, print and digital), the company is also forcing all workers to show up in person during the pandemic – even those who could work from home.

They basically forced Nick Wheeler, an engineer who complained about this, to resign, calling his short, measured complaint about the policy "irresponsible," accusing him of "inciting fear."

https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/16/charter-coronavirus-work-home/

Charter gives its workers a single annual week's worth of sick-leave. Workers have to use that leave time if they are worried about contracting or transmitting coronavirus. Medical advice for coronavirus infections is to self-isolate for two weeks, though.

Even other telcos (AT&T, Comcast) are asking workers to work from home. Charter CEO Tom Rutledge has doubled down on his infect-the-world policy, because "While back office and management functions can be performed remotely, they are more effective from the office."

Charter is a tremendous beneficiary of public largesse. It gets access to our rights-of-way, something they couldn't hope to afford at market rates. It received billions in tax-cuts (which it squandered on stock buybacks). The company got Net Neutrality dismantled, and is given monopolies wherever it operates.

This largesse is predicated on the idea that Charter views itself as a steward and can be trusted with monopoly self-regulation. If you had any doubt that the company can't be trusted to pour piss out of a boot with instructions printed on the heel, this should dispel it forever.

What I'm saying is, if you ever have a Charter exec in your home, count the spoons before you let him leave.

MAGA firefighters dismiss coronavirus as Democrat hoax (permalink)

"IAFF Union Firefighters for Trump" is a 27,000 member Facebook group of first responders who split from their union over its endorsement of Biden; Trump himself has endorsed the group.

Today, it is full of firefighters and EMTs who say that coronavirus is no big deal.

Some of the group's members are posting evidence to the contrary from their working experience, talking about the devastation they're witnessing firsthand. Their colleagues reply with poop emojis and "Trump2020."

https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-firefighters-corona#179168

The group is infected with the conspiracy theory that coronvirus is a panic cooked up by Democrats to discredit Trump, or that it's a Chinese bioweapon, an idea that Trump and his Congressional and Senate supporters have tacitly (or explicitly) endorsed.

This is especially worrying as EMTs and firefighters are at high risk of contracting coronovirus. If they don't take the risk seriously, they could spread it to vulnerable people, or reduce emergency capacity while they are quarantined (they also risk their own health).

Group founder Kelly Hallman told Propublica that "There's never been this much hoopla given to the other things. They're doing it to crash the economy and make Trump look bad…If you had to point a finger at why the leftist media and the left in general has a smile on their face about this, it's the Dow. My wife and kids are scared, believing what they're seeing on TV. I'm telling them it's not as bad as the media makes out."

Flatter Me, a compliments card game (permalink)

Flatter Me is Ami Baio's latest kickstarted card-game: "a two-player game for all ages with 250 unique compliments to play with friends, family, and partners."

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/amibaio/flatter-me-a-compliment-battle-card-game

Its creator Ami Baio specialises in games that turn on kindness and connection; her last project was "You Don't Know Me."

https://youthinkyouknowme.cards/

A $20 pledge gets you one Flatter Me deck, $35 gets a two-pack. The cards are also designed to be given as gifts: "given to friends who need a boost, tucked into cards or gift bags, or left for friends to find."

Baio is seeking $12k in pre-orders and is delivers in Oct.

American Airlines blew billions, now it wants a bailout (permalink)

Since 2014, American Airlines has accumulated a $30B debt. It did so while paying its shareholders $15B through stock buybacks, and while raising prices on fliers, nickel-and-diming on bag charges and other extras. Now its industry group – whose members spent 96% of their free cash-flow on buybacks – is seeking a $50B coronavirus bailout, with no strings attached. That's 300% more than the industry got after 9/11.

This is shareholder capitalism working as intended. As Matt Levine writes, "it is optimized to extract money for shareholders when things go well and minimize the amount of shareholder money that is at risk when things go very wrong."

http://link.mail.bloombergbusiness.com/join/4wm/moneystuff-signup

But as Tim Wu writes, bailouts should come with strings attached. The airlines engineered this situation for themselves. If we let them socialized their losses and privatize their gains (again), they'll do it again (again).

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/16/opinion/airlines-bailout.html

"Change fees should be capped at $50 and baggage fees tied to some ratio of costs. The change fees don't just irritate; they are a drag on the broader economy, making the transport system less flexible and discouraging otherwise efficient changes to travel plans."

"We should end the airlines' pursuit of smaller and smaller seats, which are not only uncomfortable and even physically harmful, but also foster in-flight rage and make the job of flight attendants nigh unbearable."

"Finally, we have allowed too much common ownership, permitting large shareholders to take a stake in each of the major airlines, creating incentives to collude instead of compete."

As Naomi Klein has reminded us, the Shock Doctrine (can) cut both ways: the Great Depression catalyzed transformative change and the New Deal. Let's not permit this disaster be seized by the people responsible for it.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/17/pluralistic-17-mar-2020/#disaster-socialism

John Green's mutual aid manifesto (permalink)

This video from John Green is a tonic: a reminder that humanity has a shared destiny and that cooperation is the human condition. and that mutual aid is key.

"The only way out is through, and the only way through is together."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dh23nwxpfe8

How to split a single ventilator for four patients (permalink)

In 2008, Greg Neyman and Charlene Babcock Irvin published "A Single Ventilator for Multiple Simulated Patients to Meet Disaster Surge" in the peer-reviewed Society for Academic Emergency Medicine journal.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1197/j.aem.2006.05.009

In this video, Dr Babcock demonstrates how to split a single ventilator to safely and effectively treat up to four patients.

As she points out, there have been no studies of this, but it has been (temporarily) used successfully in the field.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uClq978oohY

Bigoted Republican Congressjerk votes against coronavirus relief because it might cover same-sex partnerships (permalink)

You may not get paid leave during the coronavirus crisis in part because Rep Andy Biggs (R-AZ) voted against it because his homophobia was more salient than his empathy.

https://theintercept.com/2020/03/17/coronavirus-stimulus-bill-andy-biggs/

He claimed (wrongly) that this was novel federal legislation in that it included domestic partnerships.

He was objecting to the provision of assistance to family members, including "biological, foster, or adopted child, a stepchild, a child of a domestic partner."

As Lee Fang writes, "The exact same legislative text around domestic partnerships and committed relationships is found in several bills in Congress, including paid sick leave legislation proposed as far back as 2015."

Biggs also lied and said that he objected to coronavirus relief because it would repeal the Hyde Amendment ("Two provisions that have nothing to do with the coronavirus are basically thrown into this thing. That's par for the course for the left").

The bill does not repeal the Hyde Amendment.

The Republican Party, folks. The party of death and poverty and tragedy and hate. Remember that in November.

Epidemiology and public health in 14 minutes (permalink)

Epidemiologist Dr. Ross Kauffman and sf writer Tobias Buckell teamed up to produce this short video explaining the costs of a runaway coronavirus epidemic to explain the need for drastic measures to their local Ohio town council.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqgINxGQB5w

It's a spectacular piece of science communications: grave without being alarmist, calm and measured, informative and plainspoken. It's a really important piece of video and I hope you'll watch it.

3D printed ventilator hero got a patent threat (permalink)

Remember the heartwarming story of the Italian makers who volunteered to fix their hospital's busted ventilators with 3D printed parts that they designed and produced on the spot?

https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/16/tiktoks-secrets/#3dp-breathfree

It turns out that these makers weren't just saving lives, they were also taking a legal risk. That's because when they asked the manufacturer for help with the project, the manufacturer countered by threatening to sue them for patent infringement.

https://it.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-manca-la-valvola-per-uno-strumento-di-rianimazione-e-noi-la-stampiamo-in-3d-accade-nellospedale-di-chiari-brescia/

The part they printed cost them 1 euro, while replacing the system would cost a reported EUR10,000.

In a heartfelt, and soul-searching post, one of the people behind the project says he won't try to distribute the files he created.

https://www.facebook.com/Ing.Cristian.Fracassi/posts/10222339428782713

I can't help but wonder if he's hoping to mollify the corporation whose threats he ignored to help save lives.

Postscript: If you're pondering the issues of open source/homebrew respirator design, check out this excellent thread on the material constraints and challenges of med-tech.

https://twitter.com/turzaak/status/1239544498553860096

If nothing is for sale, how will covid stimulus work? (permalink)

I'm a believer in Modern Monetary Theory and the idea that state deficit spending is not intrinsically inflationary – only when the state is trying to procure things the private sector wants, so they get into a bidding war.

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/4/16/18251646/modern-monetary-theory-new-moment-explained

In theory, the covid contraction is a great candidate for MMT stimulus. If people are stockpiling cash and thus eliminating their discretionary spending (40% of US GDP!), then the state can procure the discretionary items without triggering inflation.

Or there could be a hybrid, such as distributing vouchers to the public, redeemable for discretionary purchases – instead of bailing out aviation, we could buy people plane tickets, for example.

But that runs into a big problem: there's another reason people aren't making discretionary purchases, which is that those goods and services aren't available (manufacture has been disrupted by social distancing) or aren't safe (flying is incompatible with social distancing).

In this case, it seems to me that stimulus spending runs the risk of being inflationary (when everyone tries to redeem their plane ticket vouchers at once) or useless (people throw away their vouchers). Stimulus + supply shock = ??

That's not to rule out stimulus altogether, but it does suggest that the stimulus needs to be targeted, especially considering the size of the bailout that Wall Street is bandying about: trillions, in a matter of days.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-coronavirus-calls-for-wartime-economic-thinking

The GOP is calling for a $1,000/person bailout, but as @yvessmith says, this isn't much when it comes to the immediate expenses that affected people need to cover, like rent, mortgage, and, of course, treating covid-related illness without insurance.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2020/03/why-sending-1000-checks-to-everyone-wont-solve-the-coronavirus

Maybe, instead, help to cover mortgage and rent, along with anti-eviction/foreclosure rules; help with utilities, expanded food aid, and swift Medicare for All. Then, once the crisis is passed, a big stimulus package – for people, not banks – that gets us buying stuff again?

TBH, I don't know. It's weird to feel skeptical of stimulus, given how valuable demand-side relief would have been over the past decade+. Obviously we don't want another 2008 plute bonanza giveaway, but we also don't want to inject ever more money to chase ever-fewer goods.

How to make your own toilet paper (permalink)

Making toilet paper at home is a pretty on-the-nose craft to try with your covid-isolated kiddos. You need newsprint, leaves/grass (as a cellulosic binder) and baby oil.

https://www.ehow.com/how_4514690_make-toilet-paper.html

Soak the paper until ink is mostly gone, slowly boil with leaves/grass, simmer 1h, bring to boil for 30m, adding water and skimming foam. Remove, ladle out excess water. Mix 4tbsps of baby oil in with pulp. Scoop pulp onto a towel, press with a rolling pin.

Gently beat out lumps with a rubber mallet, add another towel on top. Cover with a board and add weights. Wait 30m. Flip over, remove towel and leave to dry in sun. Cut into strips and use (sparingly).

Plague precautions from 1665 (permalink)

ORDERS CONCEIVED AND PUBLISHED BY THE LORD MAYOR AND ALDERMEN OF THE CITY OF LONDON CONCERNING THE INFECTION OF THE PLAGUE, 1665

https://brucesterling.tumblr.com/post/612917764072636416/orders-conceived-and-published-by-the-lord-mayor

Every parish needs examiners. Refuse duty and you go to prison: "persons of good sort and credit chosen and appointed by the alderman, his deputy, and common council of every ward, by the name of examiners, to continue in that office the space of two months at least."

Examiners must "inquire and learn from time to time what houses in every parish be visited, and what persons be sick, and of what diseases…[I]f they find any person sick of the infection, to give order to the constable that the house be shut up."

Infected homs get 24/7 surveillance two watchmen: "these watchmen have a special care that no person go in or out of such infected houses whereof they have the charge, upon pain of severe punishment."

They'll also get you groceries and lock up your shop.

Women "of honest reputation" are appointed by physicians as "searchers" to inspect the dead and determine cause of death. Searchers are helped by newly appointed "able and discreet chirurgeons," charged with ensuring that "a true report made of the disease."

Nurse-keepers have to be quarantined for 28 days after their patients die.

If plague is found in a house, the whole household is locked in for 28 days. Prior to sequestration, their personal effects have to be aired, treated with fire, and then perfumed. Anyone known to have visited a plague house is locked down for 28 days, along with their household, with the same airing, flaming and perfuming business.

Plague-dead may only be buried after sunset and before sunrise, with no mourners in attendance. No sermons or eulogies allowed. Graves must be 6 feet deep. All funerals are banned. Personal effects of the plague-dead must be destroyed, not given away or sold.

Public notice: "Every house visited be marked with a red cross of a foot long in the middle of the door.. and with these usual printed words… 'Lord, have mercy upon us,' to be set close over the same cross, there to continue until lawful opening of the same house."

Cab drivers can continue as normal, but if they carry someone thought to have plague they have to retire their hackney-coaches for 5-6 days and give them a thorough airing.

[[I sense that this may be a weak spot in the whole plan]]

There's also new sanitation rules requiring regular sweepings and rakings of "filth" from the streets, with all the human waste being dumped far from the city and not in local gardens. Smelly or rotten food-sales are banned.

Cops are charged with sweeping up and punishing beggars, who are banned from the streets.

No live entertainment: "all plays, bear-baitings, games, singing of ballads, buckler-play, or such-like causes of assemblies of people be utterly prohibited."

All restaurants are closed. Feasting is banned.

Bars are OK, but under suspicion, and must close by 9PM. The rule covers "tippling in taverns, ale-houses, coffee-houses, and cellars."

[[Again, this seems like a weak spot]]

This day in history (permalink)

#15yrsago Andre Norton, RIP https://web.archive.org/web/20050318045717/http://www.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/books/03/17/obit.norton.ap/index.html

#15yrsago Orrin Hatch is head of new IP subcommitee https://www.technewsworld.com/story/41548.html

#10yrsago Is the UK record industry arrogant or stupid? https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/mar/18/digital-economy-bill-calculated-loss

#10yrsago Entertainment industry sours on term "pirate" — too sexy https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2010/03/piracy-sounds-too-sexy-say-rightsholders/

#10yrsago YouTube: Viacom secretly posted its videos even as they sued us for not taking down Viacom videos https://youtube.googleblog.com/2010/03/broadcast-yourself.html

#10yrsago Michael Lewis's THE BIG SHORT, visiting the econopocalypse through the lens of LIAR'S POKER https://boingboing.net/2010/03/18/michael-lewiss-the-b.html

#5yrsago Insider view of the cash-for-gold ripoff https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/swindle-fraud/we-buy-broken-gold

#5yrsago Terry Pratchett's advice to booksellers https://www.thebookseller.com/blogs/advice-booksellers

#1yrago Facebook's year-old "improvements" to the newsfeed have elevated enraging Fox News posts to the service's dominant form https://www.niemanlab.org/2019/03/one-year-in-facebooks-big-algorithm-change-has-spurred-an-angry-fox-news-dominated-and-very-engaged-news-feed/

#1yrago Electronic Health Records: a murderous, publicly subsidized, $13B/year grift by way of shitty software https://khn.org/news/death-by-a-thousand-clicks/

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources: Mitch Wagner (http://mitchwagner.com/blog/), Kottke (https://kottke.org), Laurent Stanevich (https://twitter.com/LairBob), Naked Capitalism (https://www.nakedcapitalism.com), Slashdot (https://slashdot.org).

Currently writing: I've just finished rewrites on a short story, "The Canadian Miracle," for MIT Tech Review. It's a story set in the world of my next novel, "The Lost Cause," a post-GND novel about truth and reconciliation. I've also just completed "Baby Twitter," a piece of design fiction also set in The Lost Cause's prehistory, for a British think-tank. I'm getting geared up to start work on the novel next.

Currently reading: Just started Lauren Beukes's forthcoming Afterland: it's Y the Last Man plus plus, and two chapters in, it's amazeballs. Last month, I finished Andrea Bernstein's "American Oligarchs"; it's a magnificent history of the Kushner and Trump families, showing how they cheated, stole and lied their way into power. I'm getting really into Anna Weiner's memoir about tech, "Uncanny Valley." I just loaded Matt Stoller's "Goliath" onto my underwater MP3 player and I'm listening to it as I swim laps.

Latest podcast: The Masque of the Red Death and Punch Brothers Punch https://craphound.com/podcast/2020/03/16/the-masque-of-the-red-death-and-punch-brothers-punch/

Upcoming books: "Poesy the Monster Slayer" (Jul 2020), a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Pre-order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627?utm_source=socialmedia&utm_medium=socialpost&utm_term=na-poesycorypreorder&utm_content=na-preorder-buynow&utm_campaign=9781626723627

(we're having a launch for it in Burbank on July 11 at Dark Delicacies and you can get me AND Poesy to sign it and Dark Del will ship it to the monster kids in your life in time for the release date).

"Attack Surface": The third Little Brother book, Oct 20, 2020. https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250757531

"Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new introduction by Edward Snowden: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583

[feminarrie]

ice and tanqueray - two

warning(s): this series contains smut (18+)

[ masterlist ] / [ story tag ] / [ niall tag ]

The First (Non) Date

Y/N should really learn to pay attention in her lectures, but she’s got a nasty habit of scrolling through social media when the material is dry. Her disinterest has yet to get her in trouble despite the quiet giggles and obvious lack of eye contact. Yet, that her streak of good luck seems to end when she receives a text message from Niall. It pops up on her phone screen while she’s reading trash article about the latest celebrity scandal. And for a moment, she thinks about ignoring it until she gets out of class. But, the lecture is just so boring and surely Niall’s message is even slightly more riveting.

And it is.

Would like you to accompany me to Louis’ benefit, if you’re free. Free food, booze, and a chance to step away from school for a bit.

A gasp heaves itself from her lungs which she quickly tries to conceal with a hand over her mouth and stretching an arm up behind her. The fake yawn does little to convince her professor, a stern looking older man that has a fluffy eyebrow raised at Y/N. If he has any choice words to say to her, he does not voice them. He simply makes it a point to keep eye contact with her for an uncomfortably long time before turning back to the presentation. She takes the moment to reread the message. 

He couldn’t have possibly meant to send it to her her. There’s no way that he would want her to join him at something as public as a benefit and fundraiser hosted by Louis Tomlinson. But, when her eyes pick apart each syllable trying to find any indication that he picked the wrong contact, she can’t think of anyone else he would send it to. 

Y/N isn’t an expert on Niall. He is far more complex than one would guess. But, she’s pretty sure she has scheduled enough “play dates” with his friends and colleagues to know he doesn’t know someone still in university. 

Except for her. (But, are they friends? Does this mean they’re friends?) 

She leaves the text message until there’s a collective rustling of papers and a formal dismissal of the class session. Y/N is quick to pack up her own belongings, shoving it into her large bag before booking it out of the classroom. Partially because she needs to find Robin—her roommate and voice of reason—and mostly because she can see the annoyance in her professor’s eyes as he began walking toward her. She hardly has the time or emotional capacity to deal with a firm talking to for a small disruption. Not when she’s scrambling to figure out what she should say back to Niall’s proposal. 

Y/N picks Robin out fairly easily. The thick, tangled auburn bun atop her head stands out amongst the rest. She mumbles quiet apologies as she walks against the grain of people before reaching a hand out to touch Robin’s small wrist. The redhead is a petite little thing, only standing at five feet (and third-quarters, she’ll have you know). Freckles for her ivory skin and green eyes light up when she sees Y/N. 

“Hello, little bird!” Robin nearly sings, allowing Y/N to intertwine their fingers. 

(They’ve come to call each other “little bird” since moving in with one another. For no reason other than Robin’s namesake. Their home had been affectionately named The Nest shortly after). 

“We’ve got a situation,” Y/N leads off, a nervous smile playing at her lips and tongue pressed between her teeth. 

Robin nearly rolls her eyes into the back of her head when Y/N details what has happened. They’re walking toward a coffee shop at the other end of campus, hands still intertwined as they walk. 

“I thought it was something bad, Y/N.” She giggles, the noise cutting through the sound of the wind. “You’re going to say yes, right?” 

“That’s just it! I don’t know if I should,” Y/N says, uncurling her fingers from Robin’s to open the cafe door. “Isn’t that inappropriate?”

Robin thanks her before stepping inside with yet another roll of her eyes. “It’s only inappropriate if you make it inappropriate.” She says, glancing back at Y/N. 

Her messy updo bobs with each step, Y/N notices. It brings a soft smile to her lips and provides a second of distraction. She’s bordering on the line of anxious as she walks with Robin into the mostly empty cafe. Robin senses it, too. She reaches her hand out to graze Y/N’s arm as they come to stand in line. 

“You deserve a night out, little bird. You’ve worked yourself too hard this semester.” Robin says, her voice holding an equal amount of stern and love for Y/N. 

And she’s not wrong. Y/N knows it, too. She’s positive Niall is well aware of it, too, considering his empathy when she was ill. But, the thought of saying yes still fills her tummy with nervous rumblings. Even as she types out the word, thumb hovering over the send button. 

“Let your hair down. It’s just one night.” Robin says, eyes glancing down at Y/N’s phone screen. 

And Y/N knows she right, so she hurriedly presses the send button before shoving the phone into her friend’s hands. She sighs and mumbles something about being afraid to look when he answers. 

“He’s already asked you, Y/N. What else could he possibly say?” 

It’s not so much what he says that has Y/N reeling as she steps outside of her apartment building. It more has to do with the way Niall is leaning so nonchalantly against a black Range Rover that she can very nearly see her reflection in. A perfectly knotted tie sits atop a crisp white shirt and beneath the blazer of a surely overpriced tuxedo. 

The sight reminds her of the first night they met, but her face doesn’t pinch up in annoyance when he smiles at her. Not even when he pushes himself from the car door, hands still shoved in his pockets. He looks the picture of ease and Y/N envies him slightly. Her bones are still rattling with nervousness. It brings on an external shiver that she tries to pass of as the result of the night air. 

“You look beautiful,” Niall says easily, pulling his hand from his pocket to open the door as she nears the curb.

It would all be really cliche if this was actually a date, she thinks. Plucked right out of a movie.

“Thank you,” she says, careful to pinch the slit of her dress together as she climbs into the passenger seat.

The high slit of the black dress is tasteful enough for an event like the Tomlinson Foundation Benefit, but exposes enough of her leg to make her feel slightly uncomfortable under Niall’s quick gaze. Not because she can feel the way his eyes are trailing up the soft skin of her legs–which he does for just a moment before he catches himself–but because she has never felt this exposed in front of him. 

Niall grins back at her before letting the door shut and wandering over to his own side. He’s pulling out of his parking spot before Y/N has clicked her seatbelt in. Something she would chatsie anyone else for, but she doesn’t feel all that unsafe in the car with Niall. Quite frankly, he makes her feel timid and calm at the same time. Both wash over her in waves while she just tries to stay afloat. She would prefer if she could just float lazily at the surface, in control and unattached, but his presence hardly allows for that. 

“I’m glad you decided to come with me tonight, Y/N.” Niall says with a momentary glance that lands on her profile. “S’gonna be a good night. Louis’ events always are.”

Y/N doesn’t doubt it, either. She might have done a little bit of research on Louis and his benefit after she had agreed to attend. Short phrases entered into a search engine quickly loaded picture results for the event. The one they are attending is only the third annual one, but there appeared to be no shortage of A-list celebrities and well-known footballers. Another quick search turned up results for the purpose of the event and solidified Y/N’s reason for going.

(Louis had developed the benefit to raise money for various charities that helped children and families in need. Some were sports related, others to help children battling childhood cancer. Regardless of the way it which it benefitted kids, Louis tried to support it).

“I’m glad I did, too.” Y/N admits, adjusting the clutch in her lap to sit more comfortably between her thighs.

Niall didn’t tell her that they would essentially be sitting in front of all of the attendees. They were sat across from Louis and to the left of some football players that played for Doncaster. I mean, she doesn’t really mind it all that much when she is wandering through the crowd to get to the bar, but she minds it more when they’re sat for dinner and long speeches. 

So, when everyone is given permission to mingle and have fun, Y/N does. Niall had long since excused himself to speak with a few old friends and potential new clients. Y/N is alright once she finds a nice tennis player that doesn’t intimidate her like the rest of the attendees. He’s only sipping at a glass of champagne while Y/N rambles on about how she even came to be at the event because she thinks it is painfully obvious that she does not fit in with the crowd.

But Alexander, the tennis player, reassures her that she doesn’t need to fit in. Even tells her that he came to talk to her because of it. It makes her already alcohol-induced flush heat up even further beneath her makeup. She can feel the heat blossom lower on her cheeks and tries to ignore her increasing heart rate. Because Y/N tries hard to remain independent, in control. Cute boys with strawberry blonde hair that are likely harmlessly flirting with her doesn’t exactly scream independent and control. 

But, when she catches a glimpse of Niall across the room, she’s reminded that tonight isn’t about being either one of those things. He invited her out to relax and not worry about her upcoming assignments or when the rent is due. (Or how she’s going to scrounge up enough money to pay for designer shoes that aren’t even for her). She does her best to compartmentalize them in some corner of her mind where she can ignore them for a few hours. At least to the extent where she can have a little bit of fun and not worry about wasting her time with some boy.

Niall’s stay on her even as she turns her attention to the boy across from her. He hardly recognizes him, but the pang of jealousy still leaves a lasting sting. He doesn’t try to convince himself that it’s something else because he knows damn well that it’s not. Though, he hadn’t thought he liked her quite as much as to be jealous of someone flirting with her. But, he is and Louis is quick to pick up on it.

“You’ve been watchin’ her all night, mate.” Louis laughs, nudging him with his elbow.

Louis takes a long swig of his beer, eyes watching Niall finally drag his watchful gaze from Y/N. His image is slightly clouded by the caramel covered glass, but he can still see the way Niall attempts to smooth out his features. Wiggling his jaw, slightly sore from being clenched just slightly. Pulling his shoulders from his ears and letting a sigh fall from his lips.

“S’obvious, isn’t it?” Niall chuckles, the sound dry in his ears. 

He knows he’s essentially fucked. That he is the one who fucked himself over by hiring her. 

“Well…” Louis leads, leaning against the mahogany wood of the bar. “Don’t know why you didn’t just ask her out on a date if you were goin’ to stare at her all night anyway.”

“She’s my assistant,” he stresses the last word to remind himself. 

“Hardly looks like that’s all she is to you,” Louis laughs and it’s times like this that Niall wishes he wasn’t so cheeky. “Why’d ya hire her if you fancied her this much?”

Niall stays silent because he doesn’t want to admit he hadn’t thought it through. Simply thought that it would be a great way to bring them closer. He hoped it would make her see that he isn’t all that bad. Not nearly as arrogant as the day they had met. At least not all the time. 

“Does she even know ya like her?” Louis persists, a smirk now playing at his lips. He takes Niall’s extended silence as a no. “School age stuff, innit? You’ve got to at least tell her.”

Niall knows that Louis is egging him on, but he knows that is with good intentions. Louis knows him well enough to know that his friend hardly ever gets jealous over some girl. He thinks it is safe to assume that Y/N is more than that. Significantly more than that based off the way Niall’s eyes wander back over to her during the lull in their conversation.

She’s laughing at something the strawberry blonde boy has said and a delicate hand comes to brush his arm. Louis watches a frown settle on Niall’s features. He’s pouting, really. But, Louis doesn’t want to overstep his bounds tonight. 

“Could tell her on that business trip you’ve got comin’ up,” Louis suggests, “You did say you were bringing her along, yeah?” 

The trip to Barcelona had completely slipped his mind despite his correspondence with another agent there. He had intended to invite Y/N along, but his intentions had been purely business. With a multiplicity of potential new clients to meet and a few sporting events to attend, he knew he would need help. 

But, perhaps Louis’ suggestion isn’t all that ludicrous. Maybe the sun, food, and time together will suddenly make a relationship blossom organically. Or maybe and more likely, Niall needs to buck up and tell Y/N he likes her.

[ettadunham]

A Buffy rewatch 6x19 Seeing Red

aka dick move joss

Welcome to this dailyish (weekly? bi-weekly?) text post series where I will rewatch an episode of Buffy and go on an impromptu rant about it for an hour. Is it about one hyperspecific thing or twenty observations? 10 or 3k words? You don’t know! I don’t know!!! In this house we don’t know things.

And after today’s episode, who’s ready to get drunk and do some math? *points to self* It me. I’m drunk.

Seeing Red has not one, but TWO of the show’s most controversial scenes in the entire series, so that’s a distinction I guess. One that I should probably be talking about, but… you know. Turns out that when you drink the rest of your apple liquor in one sitting, your ability to form critical thought exponentially deteriorates with each and every second.

But math? Math is easy. You can do math drunk while walking on your hands. So let’s do math.

So, did you guys know that Amber Benson appeared in the most Buffy episodes per season while not being in the credits? It’s true. I made a very detailed excel sheet.

(Yes, these are all the actors who appeared at least 14 episodes of the show. I didn’t really need to include all of them to prove my point, but I did it anyway.)

Those purple highlights you see? Those are for actors who appeared at least 70% of the episodes while not being part of the main cast in a season. Apart from a few special cases where someone has been promoted to the main cast during a season (like Michelle Trachtenberg after one episode in season 5 or Marc Blucas following the first 10 episodes of season 4), the only ones this applies for is Kristine Sutherland and Amber Benson. And the latter’s 18 appearance during season 5 (aka 82% of the season) is our biggest outlier among those even.

Now, to be fair, actors who are part of the main cast never actually go below 83% in their own respective season appearances on Buffy (see the blue highlights that show the two instances that goes below 90% even), but like… Appearing in 16-18 episodes of at least two 22-episode seasons in a major capacity is still a fucking lot by any TV standards.

So the fact that neither of these actors have been promoted to regular status during their run is kind of weird. Maybe Joyce was often forced into the background, but Kristine Sutherland was a huge presence in season 5 in particular. Up until Joyce’s death in The Body, she appeared in all episodes, and had a cameo later in The Weight of the World. She should’ve been in the credits for that period, imo.

Similarly, if you look at other characters who occupied a comparable role to Tara – so, basically characters who were introduced as love interests to one of the Scoobies –, each and every one of them have been promoted to the main cast by their 3rd year at the very least. And Emma Caulfield, who was one of those third year joiners, only appeared in 5 episodes in her first season. Seth Green, who with his 10/22 appearance is much closer to Amber Benson’s 12/22 in their respective debut seasons, was part of the credits by his second year on the show.

In conclusion what I’m saying is that fuck you Joss for pulling that opening credits shit on us. No. This should’ve happened two seasons ago, and now you’re using it to play on the audience’s attachment to this character, dangling that promise of having more of her on the show just to take it away.

Not cool, my dude. So very not cool.

In other bad news, making that excel sheet sobered me up a bit (damn you, math), and now I’m just kinda tired and sad. It’s starting to dawn on me that this is the last I’ll see of Tara during this rewatch.

Maybe I should just start over from Hush? There’s an idea…

There’s also a reason why this episode is cited as such an egregious example of the Bury Your Gays trope even after almost two decades. With the show having been limited on what they can show of Willow and Tara’s relationship early on, the inclusion of the many sexual moments in this episode especially jumps out. Having that precede Tara’s death somehow manages to maximize the negative impact of it even more, reinforcing pre-existing harmful associations in the audience.

But then again, would it have been better to not have these moments at all? I don’t know the answer to that.

In any case, when I talked about character deaths earlier on this show, I mentioned that there are two criteria that I judge those: story impact and social impact. Meaning on one hand, that when you kill off a character, you want that to have a meaningful impact on your story and characters. It needs to have a purpose and long-lasting effects for it to satisfy your audience’s emotional needs. And on the other hand, there’s also the bigger media and societal landscape to consider. Especially when you’re killing off a character, who’s already part of an underrepresented group.

I think I probably already alluded to how I consider Tara’s death to be well-executed story-wise, despite being extremely poorly done in the latter regard. There are arguments to be made of course about how maybe the show could’ve killed a different character to achieve the same effect in the story, etc. – but I find the following arc captivating as it is regardless.

Then again, I also love Tara, and definitely wouldn’t have complained if the show just randomly brought her back from the death, story be damned. Unbury your gays, you cowards.

I guess I’ll also need to touch on the other controversial scene in the episode, huh? Well, I don’t want to.

But fine.

Hot take, but I just don’t connect to Spike. Not during this rewatch. And looking back at my feelings on it, I think that part of that is the very association that’s textualized here.

See, vampires are giant rape metaphors. Well, they can be metaphors for a lot of things, this is Buffy after all, but that’s definitely a big part of them. And the show’s been playing up this aspect with Spike in the past – usually it’s just been done for comedy.

Think about his scenes with Willow in Lovers Walk or The Initiative. The latter is especially chilling with the way he attacks Willow on her bed and turns up the music, right before we cut to black… and then we find out that Spike’s “impotent” and can’t bite her, and suddenly she’s comforting him? And it’s a comedy?

That scene is super weird. And uncomfortable. And that was probably part of its purpose, but it also means that I’m just not shocked by what he almost does here.

Spike’s a romantic, but he’s also a soulless vampire who can’t differentiate between love, death, sex and violence. He tells Buffy in a previous episode that he wouldn’t hurt her, but while he may believe that, it’s not true exactly. He doesn’t understand what Buffy needs. They share an understanding, but in this, he’s unable to empathize with Buffy beyond a certain level.

Afterwards though, he does seem to understand what he’s done, and given what we know of vampires, that’s pretty fascinating. He finally realizes that he can’t love Buffy without that empathy. And he can’t be the monster he used to be with these conflicts. So he’s off to rectify that.

Meanwhile Buffy’s out there, fighting superpowered nerds right after that fucking traumatic experience. Which… don’t get me wrong, I can definitely see how beating up Warren can be therapeutic, but there is also something to be said about the show not giving Buffy enough space to process certain traumas, and focusing more on Spike’s development instead.

Again though, it’s not that I don’t get it. Spike’s an intriguing character, and I can definitely see how a lot of people connect with him. His more negative traits are balanced out by his vulnerability, and his ability to self-reflect and grow. Just because I have a hard time relating to him, doesn’t mean that others shouldn’t enjoy his character. God knows that I have plenty of problematic faves...

Oh yeah, and Xander and Buffy share a nice scene by the end of the episode. Still, I guess I wanted a bit more out of it? Like Xander acknowledging how putting Buffy on a pedestal leads to him judging her more harshly, and how it’s something he should be working on in order to be a better friend to Buffy? Maybe I just want too much.

A character who was just perfect in this episode though? Dawn. Actual picture of Dawn Summers looking at Tara and Willow.

Same, Dawn. Same.

The last three minutes of Seeing Red? I don’t know her.

[orbemnews]

How to Virtually Become a Doctor Jerrel Catlett’s eyes narrowed on the large intestine, a gloppy, glow stick-like object whose color matched the stool stored inside of it. He chose to isolate the organ, and it expanded on his screen as the body parts surrounding it receded — the gall bladder bright green with bile, the ribs white and curved like half moons. “My old boss used to tell me that when I did this, I’d be so wowed by how complex the human body is,” said Mr. Catlett, 25, a first-year student at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, gesturing to the image of a body on his laptop screen. “But it feels like there’s something missing from the experience right now.” For generations, medical students were initiated to their training by a ritual as gory as it was awe-inducing: the cadaver dissection. Since at least the 14th century, physicians have honed their understanding of human anatomy by examining dead bodies. But amid the coronavirus pandemic, the cadaver dissection — like many hands-on aspects of the medical curriculum — turned virtual, using a three-dimensional simulation software. Of the country’s 155 medical schools, a majority transitioned at least part of their first and second-year curriculums to remote learning during the pandemic. Nearly three-quarters offered lectures virtually, according to a survey by the Association of American Medical Colleges, and 40 percent used virtual platforms to teach students how to interview patients about their symptoms and take their medical histories. Though the cadaver dissection posed a trickier challenge, nearly 30 percent of medical schools, including Mount Sinai, used online platforms to teach anatomy. Though medical students in many states have been eligible for and able to receive the vaccines, some have not yet fully shifted back to in-person learning, with school administrators saying they preferred to wait until Covid case rates decline further. Some in-person training, like practicing clinical skills, has largely resumed. Medical schools adapted in the past year with inventive approaches to clinical training. Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and Stanford used virtual reality technology to teach anatomy. The Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University offered students the opportunity to shadow doctors virtually, sitting in on tele-medicine appointments. And at Baylor College of Medicine last fall, students were assessed via video on giving physical exams by describing what actions they would be taking in person, according to Dr. Nadia Ismail, Baylor’s associate dean of curriculum: “Now I would hit you at this part of the knee and this is the reflex I would see.” The Keck School of Medicine, at the University of Southern California, opted to have faculty members dissect cadavers while wearing body cameras so students could watch remotely. The cadavers were also imaged using three-dimensional scanners, so students could practice manipulating the sorts of images produced by magnetic resonance imaging and CT scans. “When the faculty came up with this, I was like, ‘Oh my goodness, this is amazing,’” said Dr. Donna Elliott, vice dean for medical education at Keck. “These scanned, three-dimensional images approximate the type of imaging you’ll use as a clinician.” Educators are aware that for all the promise of new technologies, there’s a sense of loss for students who aren’t able to be in hospitals, classrooms and dissection laboratories in person. “The classroom of the medical school is the clinical environment, and it’s so stretched right now,” said Lisa Howley, senior director for strategic initiatives and partnerships at the A.A.M.C. “That worries me.” Students said they felt some frustration as they watched the pressures mount on frontline providers without any capacity to help. “We know more than the average person, but we feel generally powerless,” said Saundra Albers, 28, a second-year student at Columbia. Both faculty members and students realize that watching organs move on a laptop screen is not the same as removing them, one by one, from a human body. “A cadaver’s body parts wouldn’t look as smooth and perfect as they do on a screen,” Mr. Catlett said. “Let’s say the cadaver was an alcoholic, you might see liver cirrhosis with bumps and ridges covering the liver.” He and his classmates know that they missed a medical rite of passage: “We don’t get to feel what the tissues are like, or how hard the bones are.” Mr. Catlett and his classmates have now been offered vaccines, and they are beginning to resume some in-person activities, including meeting with patients for the first time this month. Their lectures are still online. Sarah Serrano Calove, 26, is a second-year student at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, which offered a blend of in-person and virtual learning last semester. Since the start of medical school, Ms. Calove had been eager to practice interacting with patients — taking their medical histories and delivering news of diagnoses — so the transition to learning clinical skills on Zoom was a letdown. She was assigned to interview a medical actor, referred to as a standardized patient, about his financial troubles, an emotional conversation that she found awkward to conduct virtually. “When you’re on Zoom, you can’t tell if the person is clenching their hands or shaking their legs,” she said. “For some of my classmates, the feedback was we had to show more empathy. But how am I supposed to make my empathy known through a computer screen?” Medical schools were often unable to arrange for students to practice their skills on medical actors last semester, because these actors tend to come from older, retired populations that are at heightened risk for Covid-19. Some schools, including the University of Massachusetts, had students conduct practice physical exams on their classmates, forgoing the parts of the exam that involve opening the mouth and looking into the nose. For Ms. Calove, being assessed on her physical exam skills was challenging because she could prepare only by watching videos, whereas any other year she would have had weeks of in-person practice. “Normally, you’d listen to lungs wheezing, feel an enlarged liver, find the edges of the abdominal aorta,” she said. “Listening to a heart murmur recording online is different than hearing it in person.” Still, she appreciated the school’s efforts to check in with her and her classmates about how they were faring as they adapted to partially remote learning. Some students pointed to a silver lining in their virtual medical training: They’ve become adept at speaking with patients about sensitive issues over video, a lesson very likely to prove essential as the field of tele-medicine expands. Through remote clerkships at schools like Sidney Kimmel Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University, medical students assisted hospital staff by following up virtually with patients who had been discharged earlier than usual because of the pandemic. “Other doctors got thrown into the deep end but we get to practice using this technology,” said Ernesto Rojas, a second-year student at University of California San Francisco School of Medicine. “We learned how to build rapport and ask the patient things like, ‘Are you in a place where you can talk privately?’” Students have also said they’ve felt particularly motivated to complete their training amid the pandemic. Medical school applications are up by 18 percent compared with this time last year, according to the A.A.M.C. For Prerana Katiyar, 22, a first-year medical student at Columbia, the first few months of medical school didn’t look anything like she had anticipated. She started the semester living in her childhood home in Fairfax, Va., where she shared lessons from her anatomy classes with her family over dinner. “When my dad said his abdomen hurt, I was able to talk to him about the quadrants of the abdomen,” Ms. Katiyar said. Halfway into the semester, she had an exciting update for her parents. “My skull finally arrived in the mail,” she said. Ms. Katiyar’s anatomy professor arranged for each student to order a plastic model of the skull. “Now I can see the bony landmarks and where the nerves are,” she continued. “I’m a very visual person so it’s been helpful to trace it with my finger.” Source link Orbem News #Doctor #virtually

[vvakarians]

I need to be honest finally, I can’t just keep glossing over shit. I’m hoping that this helps me find the courage to tell my therapist so I can move on or at least get help in managing things. If you wanna talk to me about it go ahead, but I’m really just making this post because I need to get my feelings out. I’ve had too many spirals recently. It’s also an extremely long post. Warning for: #sexual abuse #emotional manipulation #emotional abuse #mentions of suicide #mentions of an eating disorder

I was emotionally manipulated into believing I needed to be the only emotional support for someone, three times. And if I was not around, things would get worse. It first happened with my mother, if you don’t know the definition of emotional incest: “Covert incest, also known as emotional incest, is a type of abuse in which a parent looks to their child for the emotional support that would be normally provided by another adult” as per wikipedia’s definition. I was in this type of a relationship with my mother for *years*, it doesn’t happen anymore because I have distanced myself from her enough and she has gotten to I hope a healthier point where she doesn’t look to me for this. But as a child I was not allowed to show any emotion unless it was in support of my mother, aka sympathy, empathy, what have you. I was not taught how to control my own emotions, I was shown that things are intense all the time and at the same time I was not allowed to show it. Unless I was sick I could not be upset in any capacity. My father was and is still gone all the time, as a child my mother looked to me for emotional support until it became a horrific problem. My mother could act out, but when I was sad or angry I was told that was bad and I was a bad person for feeling that. Despite my mother being healthier in this aspect, this has fucked me right up to this day.

The second was a girl I met my 7th/8th grade year. She saw someone who was easily to manipulate, easy to capture the attention of and ran with that. I was put in a position where I could only pay attention to her or she would get extremely upset, she pressured me into doing things I was very uncomfortable with and made me believe that all my friends were out to get me. Not only that but she sexually harrassed me (or sexually abused idk really how to word that one) by making me participate in things over RP and once in the middle of the goddamn lunch room made me sit in her lap and she called me her “little jew sl*ve”. When I began self harming she never once was concerned, she was only concerned for herself and how I could fit in to her equation. I still have panic attacks when I see her in pictures, or when I passed her in the hall at one of the highschools I went to, as well as the community college I went to.

The third was someone who I very much believe has no love for anyone, not even themselves. And I am terrified of them, genuinely. Most of you know I have PTSD/C-PTSD, most of this comes from them and my family. They exist on this website, they were able to kick me out of a fandom, and they are a reason I fucking go into a spiral when I think of going to a town 45 minutes away. I met them in 7th grade, they were my best friend until my second half of senior year. Now, I did and said some shit to them I have learned from, and I genuinely apologized for it. They can be mad about what I said in that situation but I have learned and grown from that. This person has severe mental illness, possible psychosis, possible schizophrenia, and for sure anxiety/depression/PTSD from the second person I mentioned. Now, I say that because they knew I have severe anxiety, they knew I had been abused, so they knew they could get in and make me only listen to them, have an obligation to them only because I didn’t want my best friend to be without me. They also knew I wouldn’t fight back even if I panicked during what they did. This person also sexually abused me, despite me being visibly uncomfortable they made me talk about things, their tone was *always* predatory. They eventually revealed to me they had been raped by the second person, and that they would rather not do this anymore. To which I was relieved. While all that shit was going on, they were refusing to get help for supposed auditory and visual hallucinations, they *refused* to get help for severe suicidal intentions with themself. When I was over at their house they used the excuse for their mental illness to tell me horrible things they had seen, while in the dark, with all the windows open and the door unlocked to the patio. In the middle of nowhere on the plains. I was trapped, my parents were 45 minutes to an hour and a half away, and when I told them to stop they would not. I was there to entertain their imagination and illness. I was terrorized for years and had to make sure I listened to ASMR on loop so I didn’t go anxiety crazy. When I was in my second semester of high school they had a break down and told me they had harmed or wanted to harm themselves, that they wanted to die. And I had had it, I was suffering from a terrible eating disorder, I was being openly abused in my house by parents and grandparents. I was being bullied severely at school and was in the middle of trying to get a 504 because my grades were suffering. I was dealing with the fact that I had also been a victim of p*dophilia from a 17 year old when I was 13-14. It was not a matter of listening to them and being there for them. I could do that. But they wanted me to be their therapist and support their habit of staying in this horrible loop of illness. I told them they needed to seek help, they told me not to tell anyone in turn. About *hurting themselves and wanting to die*. So, frustrated and upset I figured it’d be better to have a mad friend than a dead friend. And I reported them. Ofc they got pissed at me, they went out of their way to misinform the people I reported it to that checked on them. Then they made me promise not to say anything a second time. But I did. I reported them a second and final time. That’s when they got diagnosed with possible psychosis and put through therapy and meds. And they were so angry with me. I came to school the next day without any make up on, barely showered, and in my pajamas. I was severely depressed because my best friend was angry with me. I felt like I had done something wrong and my world was shattered. But I told them I was just worried and things seemed to be bumpy but relatively okay.

Cut to a month later and I find out they had poisoned an entire GSA against me and had began to turn a good friend of mine as well. They had told them I reported them and their life was in shambles. I was publicly called out at an event and told I was an asshole and that it was my friends choice to tell people about their problems. This same event, I am now apparently banned from because I was “abusive”. At their college, our only uni, I am banned from any resource or LGBT event that I could use. Because I had the audacity to say “stop, i can’t do this anymore. We have to get better”. I have been violently misgendered, threatened, and told that I was abusive because I didn’t listen and didn’t want to be their therapist anymore. They claim to have PTSD from me. Someone who did nothing but try to get them help. They claim that I instead used them as a therapist. A person that I dropped everything for since I was 12-13 to the age of 17-18. They claim I did everything to them that they did to me. All because I cared. I don’t even want to go to the uni they go to, but the fact that I am supposedly banned for things I didn’t do? For things that were done to me? That is so invalidating. To know that they have this entire fucking narrative in their head that they tell people online? And in the same fandoms I’m in too? I’m terrified. 

Idk, it’s just a lot of things that I’m dealing with that I’m still not quite okay about. 

Just today I felt that familiar, “I’m a bad person because I’m having a break down and I can’t help someone as much as I want to” all because of all this shit. And that’s not the truth. I can be not okay, I can take a moment to breathe, things will be okay. It’s just a lot to deal with at once.

[youholditalltogether]

On attachment

Excerpt from Chapter 18 - The Girl Behind The Door by John Brooks

Several of Casey’s friends had formed a bluegrass band called the Itchy Mountain Men. They developed quite a following, landing gigs, performing on the radio, and even cutting a CD. Casey considered herself a groupie.

They had a gig at Old St. Hilary’s Church in Tiburon. Built in 1888, a good century before that finger of land became populated with multimillion-dollar homes, it was a simple Carpenter Gothic-style chapel that seated about a hundred people.

They were to play on Saturday, and Casey spent most of the afternoon obsessing over how best to doll herself up for a special night out. Her floor was littered with outfits. She summoned Erika - who was suffering from a virus - for help, only to banish her moments later when she couldn’t magically make Casey look “gorgeous enough.” Casey called off the entire evening, dissolving into tears in her room, and then pulled herself back together.

The show started at 9:00 and it was 8:15. She was supposed to be picked up by her girlfriends at 8:30. The last fifteen minutes were a frantic rush to finish up hair, makeup, and the third outfit, which was also the first outfit - the usual tomato-colored quilted hoodie, skinny jeans, suede boots, and a touch of Eau de Perfume.

At 8:25, Casey’s tears were gone, and she was happy, ready, and waiting by the front door for her ride. Then she blurted out, “You guys should come!”

We were taken aback. For so long Casey had fought to distance herself from us. Erika was too sick to leave the house. I was thrilled to be invited, but what was the protocol? Should I pretend not to know her?

“Dad, you’ll have to take a separate car.”

I was still happy to accept her invitation. “Of course, honey.”

Old St. Hilary’s was full to capacity by the time I arrived. Body heat generated more than sufficient warmth on that cold January night. The air in the chapel was thick and noisy with anticipation as I made my way from the front door to the end of the pews where I hoped to find a seat. I saw familiar faces in the crowd from church or school, all the way back to Casey’s kindergarten class.

I took a seat where I could see the stage and peer over the people in front of me to look for Casey. I caught her at the foot of the stage with her girlfriends, chatting contentedly, falling into them and laughing. It was heartening to see her so genuinely happy. But I was afraid she’d see me, so I ducked down. I didn’t want to embarrass her in front of her friends.

Hidden by the people in front of me, I watched as she broke off her conversation, turned around, and craned her neck in my direction. She spotted me in the crowd, lit up, and didn’t hide her face. Instead she waved excitedly in my direction.

I must have been starved for her affection like a lovesick boy, because all I could think about was that she’d acknowledged me. I contemplated for a moment the years of fighting, the ugliness, the crying, the worrying, and the hurtful words. But all she had to do was acknowledge my existence as her dad in a crowd and I’d forget everything.

She’d be fine.

I felt like the luckiest guy in the world.

Chapter 19 - The Girl Behind The Door by John Brooks

In the days following the horrific morning in January 2009 - just weeks after the concert at Old St. Hilary’s - I’d become obsessed with a single question:

Why?

I drifted through each day and went to bed each night thinking about her, torturing myself with guilt, drowning in soul-crushing grief. Sometimes, as if a protective mechanism in my brain had kicked in, I imagined that this was all a dream. I’d wake up to find her asleep in her room. Then I’d suffer a jolt to the chest.

The Coast Guard called off the search for her body after just two days; something about the currents being too strong - the ocean would be Casey’s grave.

I felt a reflexive gag as I wrote her obituary.

I endlessly relived and dissected the events of the weekend before her death. Erika and I both had been fighting with Casey, starting with something seemingly trivial - a rude remark or refusal to clean up after herself; I hardly even remember. Things spun out of control. As tension mounted between us, Casey had spat out, “Asshole! Motherfucker!” She threatened to run away and live on the streets.

And my response? I got in her face and yelled at her like a drill sergeant, “Good! Go ahead!” I slammed her door, leaving her alone in her room, sobbing convulsively.

Later that night, I passed through the living room on my way to bed. She sat curled up on the sofa, staring hard at the TV, her eyes red and swollen from crying. We exchanged frosty glances.

And that was the last time I saw her.

~

That last ugly exchange screamed through my head. If I hadn’t yelled at her, she might not have been so upset. If I hadn’t ignored her on my way to bed, I might have thought twice, taken back my harsh words, and told her I didn’t mean those nasty things. If I hadn’t slept that extra half hour the next morning, I might have gotten to her room sooner, seen the note, and alerted the police in time.

But I did none of those things.

We’d had knock-down, drag-out fights since Casey was in grade school and they never ended in a catastrophe like this. She’d usually stomp off to her room. There were no clues that weekend that could have shed light on how she’d shifted so suddenly from “infuriated at Dad” to suicidal.

~

Some people suspected that drugs had played a role in Casey’s suicide, but Erika and I had our doubts. Despite our numerous busts, we’d never seen her out-of-control stoned or drunk, and she’d never been to rehab. She wasn’t on any prescription medication at the time and wasn’t out partying Monday night. Early Tuesday morning, she managed to drive the Saab to the bridge. The last video images captured her smoking a cigarette and jogging out onto the pedestrian walkway - not exactly the kind of behavior I’d associate with someone high on drugs. She easily climbed over that four-foot railing and, according to the police report, stood for ten to fifteen seconds before stepping off to her death. What could have gone through her mind in those crucial seconds before she made that fatal choice?

~

Casey’s friends were as shell-shocked as we were. After her memorial service at St. Stephen’s Church in Belvedere, an event that drew an overflow crowd, there was a reception in the parish hall. It was an awkward affair, with other parents struggling for words. It seemed we’d become separated by a glass wall. Was it pity, empathy, judgment, or terror that was in their faces? We couldn't tell. Perhaps the suicide of a child was just too toxic for people to handle. It raised the horrifying specter of contagion.

As the adults drifted away, Casey’s friends circled around us. The collateral damage from her death was etched into their faces. They seemed to be looking for something from us. Perhaps they wanted to talk.

“Do you guys know anything about why she did it?” I asked.

They shook their heads and mumbled a collective “No.”

Why would she have kept her close friends in the dark? “I don’t get it. She was so close to freedom. I thought that’s what she wanted.”

Everyone stared at the floor until her friend Julian spoke. “I don't think that Casey had any intention of going to Bennington.”

Erika and I exchanged startled glances. “What makes you say that” I asked.

“It’s hard to explain,” he said. “I think she just wanted to prove to herself and everyone else that she could get in.”

Julian made an interesting point. But why would someone get what they wanted and then throw it all away?

...

I’d always thought that if someone was bent on taking his or her life, nothing would stop them. But I’ve since learned that suicide is often impulsive - a transient urge. Once the impulse passed and the victim had an opportunity to reconsider, the chances were good that he or she wouldn’t try again.

But Casey did try again. Less than thirty-six hours after she’d sent that text she went back. Her jump - her despair - had not been impulsive. There was something deeper.

...

Chapter 21 - The Girl Behind The Door by John Brooks

A man receives only what he is ready to receive, whether physically or intellectually or morally, as animals conceive at certain seasons their kind only. We hear and apprehend only what we already half know . . . Every man thus tracks himself through life, in all his hearing and reading and observation and travelling. His observations make a chain. The phenomenon or fact that cannot in any wise be linked with the rest of what he has observed, he does not observe. By and by we may be ready to receive what we cannot now.

- Henry David Thoreau

I had the first draft of Casey's story finished by the time I'd met with Dr. Palmer and Dianne. Other than recounting Erika's and my journey to Poland, there were only glancing references to and speculation about the effects on Casey's behavior of her abandonment and adoption. They were never pursued or treated seriously, even after Dianne had raised the issue in passing. It just seemed inconceivable to me that Casey's infancy had anything to do with her later life and death. After all, I reasoned that I had no memory of my own life before the age of seven other than from photographs and home movies. How could she?

...

It wasn't until our coach critiqued my draft that she found the story I had completely missed. It was that glancing reference Dianne made in our last meeting after Casey had quit therapy four years earlier, in the spring of 2007.

Attachment disorder.

...

I sat in my home office in front of my computer and Googled attachment disorder. The first hit brought me to Wikipedia:

Attachment disorder is a disorder of mood, behavior, and social relationships arising from a failure to form normal attachments to primary caregivers in early childhood. Such a failure would result from unusual early experiences of neglect, abuse, or abrupt separation from caregivers in the first three years of life.

Then I searched a related term, reactive attachment disorder, or RAD:

Children with RAD are presumed to have grossly disturbed internal working models of relationships, which may lead to interpersonal and behavioral difficulties in later life. There are few studies of long-term effects, but the opening of orphanages in Eastern Europe in the early 1990s provided opportunities for research on infants and toddlers brought up in very deprived conditions.

...

I searched and sifted through mounds of data and studies from sources ranging from attachment experts and clinicians to blog posts by adoptive parents. A behavioral profile of the adopted child began to emerge.

Emotional Regulation: Because of the absence of the modulating influence of a dedicated caregiver in infancy, the adopted child frequently has a low tolerance for frustration, ineffective coping skills and impulse control, and trouble self-soothing. She can be clingy, hyperreactive, quick to anger or bursting into tears over what others might consider insignificant or nonexistent slightls. It can be difficult to calm her with logic or discipline. She may have out-of-control, prolonged tantrums long past toddlerhood that are disproportionate to circumstances, giving the appearance of emotional immaturity.

Control: Abandoned in infancy, the adopted child has learned early not to trust. Controlling her environment and distancing others around her - especially caregivers - become paramount as a way to protect herself from further abandonment. This can affect her social realm, where she must navigate relationships and read social cues. She may feel threatened by others, have trouble tolerating relationships or participating in competitive games other than on her own terms. She can be a sore loser when things don't go her way. She may have trouble sharing toys, food, or friends, long past what is age-appropriate. She may lack cause-and-effect thinking and blame others for her mistakes. Convinced perhaps that caregivers are unavailable and untrustworthy, she might avoid asking for help. She might be seen as bossy, but not to everyone. She can be manipulative - extremely charming, in fact, even indiscriminately affectionate, toward strangers - but cool and remote at home.

Transitions: Because of her need for control, the adopted child can have difficulties with transitions, especially when they come unexpectedly. She can't easily "go with the flow." Rather, she does best in environments of structure, predictability, and regularity. Changes in routine - such as transitions from the school year to summer, vacations, and holidays - are times of great stress and acting out.

Discipline: Trust, control, and discipline go hand in hand for the adopted child. She may display a pattern of disobedient, defiant, and hostile behavior toward authority figures that goes beyond the norm, giving the appearance of being unduly stubborn and strong-willed. Epic battles can erupt over the most trivial things.

Self-Image: The adopted child whose needs are not met in infancy builds up a pessimistic and hopeless view of herself, her family, and society. She may be uncomfortable with physical closeness or intimacy. She can hear compliments from parents yet feel no association. She's not worthy of love or respect, and may have enclosed her heart in a vault and fought to deny access to anyone who truly loves her. "I love you" can strike terror in her heart. She can't feel love, believe that it hurts, and wants nothing of it. She may manifest destructive behaviors such as self-mutilation, eating disorders, and suicidal tendencies.

A simple Google search explained everything about casey. The uncontrollable tantrums and crying jags. Her lack of patience, whether waiting an extra minute in her high chair for some ice cream or, years later, learning to skate or snowboard. Her tendency to be thin-skinned at home with no tolerance for the most benign joke or jab aimed at her . And my reaction to this? Out of sheer frustration, I told her to stop crying and grow up, and act her age.

Great job, Dad.

She didn't handle threesomes well and would stomp home in tears from a friend's house feeling left out or slighted, losing it when something didn't go her way . . . Power struggles erupted over the most ridiculous things - Casey, please put your dirty dish in the sink; Casey, please don't leave your wet towel on the bathroom floor; Casey, please take Igor for a walk. We were stuck in a never-ending cycle of time-outs, withheld privileges, abandoned reward programs, groundings, and empty threats to spend her college fund on a year in purgatory. We resorted to spanking her, even threatening to hit her, violating every tenet of good parenting and giving her more reason to despise us.

And transitions? Maybe Bennington was the last straw. I thought about Julian's theory at the memorial that Casey had no intention of going; she just wanted to prove a point. For all her bluster about Bennington, I could see how she could have been terrified. She was a creature of habit, had never been away by herself (except for the Alaska trip), never shared a bedroom or bathroom. At home, she had some measure of safety and privacy where she could unleash her rages and tantrums without fear of repercussions. At school, there would be no place to hide and unload in private. She'd be vulnerable, exposed.

Her issues with self-image went far beyond teenage angst. She seemed to loathe herself. But in retrospect, it was almost impossible to distinguish among the typical insecurities of a teenager, attachment issues from infancy, and dangerous suicidal tendencies when the symptoms looked so much alike. It would be impossible to treat every single raging, sullen teen moping around the house as a potential suicide risk (indeed, but the risk is nonetheless present!).

I had stumbled upon something big almost by accident, something that had been staring us in the face for years, and everyone had been blind to it. Casey was alone, in pain and unable to trust, and we couldn't see it. In her fragile state, there wasn't enough to live for, not enough for her to stay in the game, to see through the rough patches. Her perception of the future was bleak, hopeless.

. . .

Chapter 22 - The Girl Behind The Door by John Brooks

I scoured Marin County and the Internet for every book and article I could find on attachment. I contacted experts on adoption and attachment issues. Several of them agreed to talk to me about the disorder and what was being done to help the children and their parents. Nearly all of the experts were either adoptive parents who struck out on their own as I did, or were adoptees trying to understand themselves.

I learned that attachment begins with the trusting bond formed between a child and mother or other primary caregiver during infancy. This bond becomes a blueprint for all future relationships. The British psychiatrist John Bowlby, widely considered to be the founding father of attachment theory, says that at birth a baby cannot automatically self-regulate. Her emotional state is as simple as stressed or not stressed. When she is stressed - from hunger, a wet diaper, insufficient sleep, or fear - she cries. She is brought back into balance when the caregiver responds with soothing sounds, gentle touch, and loving looks.

Nancy Newton Verrier, an adoption specialist in Lafayette, California, provided me with her own analogy of mother-child separation. "It's very unnatural to separate babies and mothers," she said. "You can't adopt a kitten or puppy for about either weeks, in order to give the babies time to wean off their mothers, but we give away human babies time to wean off their mothers, but we give away human babies to strangers as early as birth." I never thought of it that way, and yet it seemed so obvious. Why would we treat animals with more deference than humans?

An infant left alone, with no instinctive soothing mechanism, lives in a state of prolonged fear and hyperarousal. Unable to summon help or physically escape, the infant's only protection from this unendurable state is to emotionally withdraw.

Amy Klatzkin is a marriage and family therapist intern I met with at the Child Trauma Research Centre at UCSF/San Francisco General Hospital. She is also an adoptive mother.

"There's only one thing worse than an abusive relationship, even if it's harmful," she said. "And that's no relationship at all, just nothingness."

I saw Casey alone in her crib in the orphanage as Amy continued. "Casey was probably getting sustenance but no connection, not even a tiny attachment. People come and go, and you never know if they'll be back. They're all equally distant and interchangeable to her."

She went on to talk about another kind of separation - the moment the child left the orphanage system with her adoptive parents. There was an element of predictability left behind - familiar sensations, sounds, and smells - for something unknown with two complete strangers. To ease that separation, Ms. Klatzkin offered a good piece of advice: leave the child in her clothes from the orphanage, even if they're dirty or smelly. "Let them have some continuity," she said. "It's our instinct to cling."

In High Risk: Children Without a Conscience, the clinical psychologists Ken Majid and Carole McKelvey wrote: "If a child does not form a loving bond with the mother, she does not develop an attachment to the rest of mankind, and literally does not have a stake in humanity. Incomprehensible pain is forever locked in her soul because of the abandonment she suffered as an infant."

Incomprehensible pain. My daughter. The awful wailing behind her door.

So profound is the effect of institutionalization that Dr. Jerri Ann Jenista, pediatrician and writer in the field of adoption medical health, suggests that all institutionalized orphans be considered at risk for attachment issues.

The longer they stay in the institution, the greater the damage. "We now know that if the child is adopted within the first year, the adverse effects of institutionalization are not too difficult to treat," explained Dr. Robert Marvin, the director of the Mary D. Ainsworth Child-Parent Attachment Clinic at the University of Virginia Medical Center. "But for a child like Casey, adopted at fourteen months, there's already been a fair amount of psychological and brain developmental damage that leads to very unusual behavior." In fact, studies have shown that institutionalized children have measurably different brain structures from those raised in a family. Researchers have found striking abnormalities in tissues that transmit electrical messages across the brain, perhaps explaining some of the dysfunctions seen in neglected and orphaned children.

The effects of institutionalization rarely go away. Parents of these kids find that depression, moodiness, self-mutilation, screaming fits, defiance, and academic struggles can be "normal" parts of life. Some children leave home and break contact with their adoptive families. Job instability, unplanned pregnancies, suicide attempts, and stints in disciplinary, rehab, and psychiatric programs are not uncommon.

Patricia, the adoptive mother of a boy from southern Poland, wrote to me that her son - then an eight-year-old - was at the emotional level of a fiver-year-old. Though he had recovered from early developmental delays, he was still prone to meltdowns, anxiety attacks, and struggles with self-esteem.

An adoptive mother of a girl from northwestern Russia wrote that her daughter was born to alcoholic parents and was unschooled and neglected until she was placed for adoption at age seven. Her adoptive mother received her at age eleven with a range of challenges, from growth deficiencies to language delays and learning disabilities. At the age of eighteen, she had the emotional maturity of a nine-year-old. The slightest provocation could send her into a rage or sobbing fits. Her parents feared that she couldn't be trusted on her own.

Of course, this is, for many parents, only part of the story. As one mother wrote about her troubled daughter from Russia, "She has brought more love into my life than I ever thought possible."  

My reaction to these difficult stories was envy. Their children were still alive. My daughter was dead. I had failed in my first duty as a father, to keep her safe. The information I needed to keep her alive was out there, but it was just beyond my reach. It was in the library and on the Internet.

I had never thought to look.

Chapter 23 - The Girl Behind The Door by John Brooks

If we could turn back the clock, there is so much that we would have done differently. Casey's life didn't have to end so abruptly and tragically.

I now see a very different person on the other side of that battered bedroom door. Not an angry, misbehaving teenager bent on tormenting her parents, but a child suffering unfathomable pain for whom comfort was out of reach.

She tried to speak to us but couldn't get through. We couldn't hear her, couldn't understand her, or tuned her out as the decibels rose. Likewise, we tried to speak to her, but our words neve reached her. Erika and I were desperate to love her but she had trouble letting us in. We reacted to our communication void with frustration, shutting each other out. That was a fatal mistake whose consequences we couldn't possibly know. We had no idea how far out on a ledge Casey was.

On the surface, everything appeared normal; in fact, better than normal. She'd gotten into her dream school, yet that wasn't enough to dent the iceberg of agony that sat below the surface, that she kept hidden from everyone. Only occasionally did she give a hint of her true feelings. Her cries for help were too faint for people to hear, so she weighed the options - live in pain or choose death.

Erika and I were blind from the outset. I thought about the morning we picked Casey up from the orphanage. We were so intent on changing her into some nice, clean girlie clothes that it never dawned on us to ask if she had something she clutched in her crib - a pillow, a stuffed animal, a blanket? For all I know now, we'd left something behind that was indispensable to her, further compounding the distress. To ease the shock of this transition, we should have asked for an article of clothing, a plaything, something she might have snuggled with to keep her company and have something familiar to hold on to, but we didn't.

In their two books, Adopting the Hurt Child and Parenting the Hurt Child, Dr, Gregory Keck and Regina Kupecky note that adoptive parents want to believe that a sound attachment had formed with former caregivers, in a sort of turnkey process that was readily transferable to them. The adoption becomes a cure-all for the child's difficulties.

So it was for us, we thought. Overjoyed at her astonishing progress in our first few days together, camped out in a cramped hotel room in Warsaw, Erika and I became convinced that Casey wasn't a special needs child at all. She had just been understimulated in the orphanage; nothing that two loving parents couldn't fix. We were part of a fairy tale - two able-bodied Americans rescuing a Polish orphan from her caring but impoverished birth mother, who wanted a better life for her daughter.

We treated Casey as if she were our new pet. She was in good American hands. Just feed her, burp her, change her diaper, bounce her around, and park her in front of the TV when Mom and Dad need a rest. Then there were the outbursts.

I know now that adoptive parents who view their children's disruptive behavior as just normal growing pains are ignoring a time bomb. They need to distinguish between the physical and emotional age of their child and adapt their parenting expectations to the child's emotional age, that emotional immaturity I'd read about and, of course, had seen in Casey.

We should have had her assessed. Ray Kinney, a director and staff psychologist at Cornerstone Counseling Services in Wisconsin, spoke to me about the importance of assessment for children who have lived in orphanages. Having seen hundreds of deprived children over thirty-five years of clinical practice, he said that this was a crucial prerequisite to determining an appropriate intervention strategy.

That first night in the hotel room in Warsaw, when she was inconsolable, rocking herself to sleep, we just wanted her to quiet down so that we could get some rest. Instead of parking her in her stroller in front of a blaring TV - something she'd probably never seen before - we should have taken her into bed with us, held her and soothed her. If it were possible, we should have held her for our whole first month together without putting her down. Maybe we would have had a different result. What she needed then was lots of human touch.

From the moment we brought Casey into our home, it seemed as though we did everything wrong. We assumed that the past would fade into oblivion; nurture would prevail over nature. We took our parenting cues from the pop culture experts.

As a toddler, we tried to teach Casey manners, patience, and independence. When she acted out inappropriately and threw temper tantrums, we scolded and punished her. But we failed to see what was at the root of her outbursts, and our reactions only made matters worse. Rather than sending her off by herself, we should have stayed with her, helped her calm down and self-soothe. She needed to know that Mom and Dad would always be there for her unconditionally.

When Casey entered school, we were mystified by what appeared to be a split personality - a perfect angel at school and a defiant, immature brat at home. We consulted family, friends, teachers, and guidance counselors, and were told that Casey was strong-willed and a bit high-strung; she'd grow out of it.

Erika and I felt that we were the problem. We spoiled her. We were inconsistent. We needed to be tougher with her. So we read books such as Raising Your Spirited Child, tried reward systems and used TV, the computer, the playdaytes as leverage for good behavior. We blamed each other for our lousy parenting skills and our inability to get our daughter to mind her parents like everyone else's kids did. We didn't realize that the provocation and aggression we saw in her may have been caused by her anxiety about further rejection, something she may not have understood herself.

Nancy Verrier told me that the adopted child can push for rejection even though that's the opposite of what she wants. She constantly tests her parents to see if they'll reject her, just to get the inevitable over with. As she tests her parents' commitment, often playing into their own insecurities about being good enough, the parents become defensive and retaliatory instead of understanding and steadfast. Their reactions can provoke the very outcome she feared in the first place - being sent to a residential treatment center or boarding school, or being kicked out onto the street.

~

A 2008 white paper, "Therapeutic Parenting," prepared by the Association for the Treatment and Training in the Attachment of Children (ATTACh), begins with the following message: . . . Parenting a child who has a disorder of attachment is the hardest job you will ever have. . . . It requires you to give and give, without receiving much in return. . . . It requires rethinking your parenting instincts. . . . It means making conscious, therapeutic parenting decisions . . . [and having a] constant focus on the deeper meaning of your child's behavior, so that you respond to the causes, needs, and motivations of your child. It is exhausting. It is isolating, as family and friends tend to keep their distance, uncomfortable with the drama that surrounds these children.

Heather Forbes is an internationally published author and consultant, adoptive mother, and cofounder of the Beyond Consequences Institute in Boulder, Colorado. She said that her work is geared toward healing the parent-child relationship, with emphasis on the parents, because she believes that the child's healing process must come from them rather than the therapist. "Parents who are strong in who they are, even if the child is rejecting or defiant, don't have to take things personally and love unconditionally."

Like the other experts I talked to, she urged parents to focus on the child's perspective rather than their own. What is driving my child's behavior? Why is she stressed out and acting this way? No matter how unpleasant the message, parents should give the child free rein to vent, because it's important for her to be heard. Good manners and appropriate language can be worked on later.

"All these kids feel like Casey," she told me. "Hopelessly flawed. They can't be fixed. These feelings never go away. It wasn't that you didn't love Casey; she just didn't get it the right way." In the early 2000s, Dr. Marvin, along with several colleagues from the Marycliff Institute in Spokane, Washington, developed the "Circle of Security," a protocol to diagnose attachment disorder and design individualized intervention programs aimed at attachment-caregiving relationships for both toddlers and preschool children. The process, which takes place over twenty weekly group sessions, is designed to help parents gain a deeper understanding of their children and themselves, and to become more accurate and empathic in reading their children's complex and subtle cues - anger at a parent when the truth could be entirely different, or defiance masking an ability to adapt to a new routine. With a better understanding of their children's behavior, parents are shown how to apply more "user-friendly" attachment techniques.

"Our coaching helps parents shift their focus from stopping undesirable behavior to moving in to calm the child when she's out of control and can't self-soothe." Dr. Marvin explained. For example, instead of isolating the child as punishment for misbehavior, stay with her, acknowledge the upset, let her be herself. Sometimes, on some subconscious level, this behavior may be a reaction to her early abandonment. Adoptive parents need to understand and acknowledge that first loss.

"When parents follow that approach they start to see these behaviors decrease very quickly." He insisted that children, when distressed, respond much better to parents when they take charge and soothe rather than discipline, as one would a baby - the baby that child used to be and, in a way, still is.

Jane Brown is an adoption therapist in Ontario, Canada, who encourages adoptees to explore through playful group activities what it means to be adopted, how to build a self-concept as an adoptee, and how to be in the world. In a safe group, the children are more willing to take risks and model for one another, sometimes participating simply by listening and watching. She gives the youngsters exercises to encourage them to explore their beliefs about what happened to them, how they felt about their birth parents, why they'd adopted a baby, all in an attempt to lower their defenses and get their story out.

~

We'd spun tales about Casey's adoption from the very beginning. When she showed no curiosity about her past or birth family, we took her at her word. It never occurred to us that Casey's rages might've been rooted in suppressed feelings about her early abandonment. We tried to protect her from the pain of knowing about her stillborn twin, but maybe deep down she knew.

We looked at her birthdays through our eyes, not hers. They might have been yet another reminder of loss, not celebration. That would have explained her tendency to sabotage the entire occasion. It was probably Casey's instinct to run from strong emotions, but what she really needed was help from an understanding professional to piece together the narrative of her past and a healthier sense of herself as a whole person.

Ray Kinney claimed that, all too often, parents sugarcoat the adoption story to avoid inflicting more pain on their child. He takes a different approach - helping the child reconstruct her adoption story. She needs to know that her experience was real, and her constant and conflicting feelings about it are appropriate and legitimate. By getting the story out honestly - even if it isn't pretty - the child has a more complete sense of herself.

"They want the whole story, and when they hear it, maybe they can understand what it was like to be in their mother's shoes," he said. "When we let the child understand the trauma she's had. what happened to her as a baby, and how that's played out for her entire life, she can start to gain control over her emotions."

The onset of adolescence, middle school, and high school adds another layer of intensity into the mix. When Casey's tantrums became profanity-laced rages punctuated with I hate you, we tried to control her with endless groundings and withheld privileges until we admitted defeat. The fact that she seemed impervious to discipline we took as a personal failure. But her rages may have had little to do with us. Her inner existence was a toxic stew of fear, stress, loneliness, and self-hatred that she hinted at only on LiveJournal and the message board.

~

Dr. David Brodzinsky, a professor emeritus at Rutgers University, founding director of the Donaldson Adoption Institute, and a coauthor of the 1992 book Being Adopted: The Lifelong Search for Self, wrote about the effects of long-term institutionalization.

For children placed early, the sense of loss emerges gradually as the child's cognitive understanding of adoption begins to unfold. For children adopted later, feelings of loss can be more traumatic and overt, particularly by middle school when the youngster begins to reflect on what it means to be adopted, perhaps associating it with feeling odd, different.

At the extreme, resentment and rage against the adoptive parents may erupt from feelings of shame and guilt about who she is - unlovable - to which she may respond with destructive outbursts. As one adoptee said: "Being chosen by your adoptive parents means nothing compared to being un-chosen by your birth mother."

Dr. Brodzinsky cautions that there is a wide range in the expression of adoption-related grief, from only a slight recognition of pain to something more frequent and intense. Often the sense of loss can be masked by intense anger, denial, emotional distance, and exterior bravado. But beneath that tough suit of armor lies a child who has been deeply hurt by life. She is the most vulnerable and difficult to reach.

Chapter 24 - The Girl Behind The Door by John Brooks 

I began to understand what it might have felt like to be Casey - the baby screaming her outrage from her crib at being left behind, thrust into the arms of two strangers from a foreign country who couldn't comfort her no matter how well-intentioned they were.

She despised them for their lack of understanding, and for being so foolish as to love someone like her. So she put on a show of bravado, suited up her armor, and pretended that she needed no one, especially them. But at the same time, she might have looked at her behavior - something she just hinted at with Dr. Palmer - and asked herself, "What the hell is wrong with me?"

She hid behind that suit of armor, lashing out at the only two people who were safe - her adoptive parents. I'd come to learn that parenting a child who had suffered so much trauma in infancy was completely counterintuitive. The time-tested methods of raising and disciplining a securely attached child that we'd learned from Dr. Spock, T. Berry Brazelton, and Dr. Phil were woefully inadequate for a child like Casey. "Sometimes you have to parent in a way that's good for your child even if it doesn't feel good to you," Ray Kinney said.

Dr. Keck recommended that infants shouldn't be left alone to "cry it out." As I'd heard from others, the parent should stay with her if she was screaming, crying, and inconsolable.

There was that disastrous trip to the Yerba Buena skating rink when Casey was eight. We left her alone in her room to cry it out because that's what she said she wanted. If we'd known better, we would have overridden her.

Erika could have rubbed her back and massaged her feet, cooing in a soft voice the way she did when Casey was younger, chanting a Polish verse that Casey loved as an infant. It was about a little spider sneaking up on her, crawling up her tummy. Erika learned it from her mother, and my mother had a similar verse, but instead of a spider it was a creeping mouse. I imagined Casey's face lighting up in anticipation of what was to come when Erika's fingers would pounce on her neck with the dreaded spider tickle, eliciting her delicious laugh: Ha ha ha!

Dr. Keck wrote that the child should be fed on demand to establish a pattern that her needs will be met and help her develop a sense of trust that relief is there when she's distressed. Day care was to be avoided, if possible, as it could reinforce the pattern of abandonment by the primary caregiver.

Thank God, we got one thing right.

We continued to send Casey to therapists who treated her as they did other patients, repeatedly focusing on corrective behavior rather than getting to the core - until Casey had had enough.

Now I don't blame her. She was right. Their kind of therapy was a waste of time.

Unfortunately, in our blindness, Erika and I were enraged. We saw this as just one more of her infuriating acts of defiance and our failure to control her. We didn't realize that she might have just given up on herself.

Children like Casey have to be treated differently - different therapies, different parenting - if they are to survive and thrive. The professionals to whom we'd dragged her over the years were not equipped to understand, deal with, or even recognize her unique life experience. They resorted to the only treatments they'd been taught. After all, they'd worked for their other young patients. Why not Casey?

A blog post titled "When Therapists Don't Get It," on a Bay Area adoption website, recounted the frustration of an adoptive mother seeking help for her son through traditional therapy channels. She reported that even therapists skilled at working with troubled children couldn't help and may have made matters worse. As I'd heard before, they focused on her son's undesirable behavior, as if correcting the symptoms would cure the disease.

She wrote: "Parents seek out experts because they want to help their child to be happy and emotionally healthy. To constantly go to therapists and be told that what is 'wrong' with their child is the parents' fault is infuriating. FInding a therapist who gets it is the key to helping everyone in the family."

I talked with Heather Forbes about our disappointments with therapists.

"Unfortunately, I hear stories like this all the time," she assured me. "If you don't get to that emotional place - the depth of the heart and soul where she felt rejected - you'll probably never have success."

There are thousands of public and private adoption agencies and attorneys available to prospective parents in the United States, but post-adoption resources are sorely lacking. In the San Francisco Bay Area, the fifth-largest metropolitan area in the United States, with more than eight million people and a large international adoption community, there are only a handful of specialized adoption therapists. I'd learned from my own quest that finding them is a challenge.

If only I could have found someone who truly understood Casey and connected with her in a way none of our therapists had, maybe she would have developed some trust and opened up. If Casey had been willing to participate in group therapy with other adopted teens, maybe she wouldn't have felt so alone, even if she did nothing more than listen. The few clues we found after her death suggested that she had searched for a community of similarly troubled teenagers. She wanted to connect with others. I talked at length with Jane Brown about her adopted daughter from China. When she was nine years old, her psychiatrist put her on a mood stabilizer to manage her violent mood swings. Within a week, the medication took the edge off her rages and her tantrums subsided. Once she was calm, the psychiatrist was able to work on her psychological and behavioral issues.

I'd looked at medication for Casey as a last resort, frightened of the potential side effects. Would things have turned out differently if we had introduced medication to her much earlier than seventeen?

"These kids are forever more vulnerable and reactive to stress, but they can learn to deal with it. Medication can help." Brown said. "Attachment can be a piece of the puzzle, but it may not be the whole puzzle."

There was another thing we did right - the cardinal rule. I learned from Nancy Verrier - never threaten abandonment

.

Not that we didn't think about sending Casey off to rehab or reform school, as other parents had. But my consideration at the time was more practical than altruistic; reform schools are every bit as expensive as elite private colleges.

Perhaps if we had masted just one of the parenting techniques I'd learned about, or used every opportunity to remind her how much she mattered, or responded to I'll kill myself if. . . not with silence, but with an impassioned accounting of an empty world without her, we could have kept Casey alive.

This didn't have to happen.

Ray Kinney told me that the effects of institutionalization never completely disappear. "These kids can learn to not let those wounds control their lives."

Ultimately, Casey might have left home with better coping skills, a healthier self-image, and the confidence that she had two parents whom she could trust to be there whenever she needed them.

[junketsonasadplanet]

pt2

The Inertial Frame Reference Drive (IFRD) confirmed theoretical findings from the early 21st century but produced no experimental results until the early 22nd century following armed nuclear conflict between India and Pakistan. With approximately 1/4th of the world uninhabitable and under the pressure of climate change, declining agricultural food production, and a refugee crisis, the remaining governments of the world collaborated with one goal: to leave Earth for the stars.

The IFRD works by creating a field of particles non-interactive with the Higgs Field, effectively enfolding your ship within a field of negative mass. Hence its name: once activated, your ship will no longer exist in the same inertial reference frame as material reality. Raizen, you’re nodding off. Wake up. This was the key to interstellar travel as it allowed humanity to travel at superluminal speeds. 

There are three things a commander of a ship, as you all will soon be, to remember at all times.

Never deactivate your IFRD without bleeding your velocity and correcting your vector. Your ship will retain its current speed in ‘witch space’ when you fall into real space again. Beyond speeds of 1 light-second per second, your ship will form a black hole, lose all mass, and evaporate over the course of approximately 18 femtoseconds. Should you purge the drive at that speed, of course. Relativistic speeds above 15% of the speed of light are considered unrecoverable; no known method of matching that speed in real space exists, no possibility of rescue exists. Anyone onboard such a vessel will experience heightened time dilation until such time as you, the commander, authorizes your onboard android or Ship Mind to flood all breathable air with helium and automate a self-destruct sequence.

You did that didn’t you Raizen. You were given your own world and made it a tomb.

Second, always bleed velocity by entering the gravitational field of a stellar object. Remember the inverse rule of gravity: as you approach a sufficiently massive stellar object - be it a main sequence star, a supermassive gaseous planet, or a supermassive black hole - , your velocity will decrease in line with the cosmic velocity of the object. For ships entering, for example, the Sol system, once within the gravitational field of the Third Cosmic Velocity, your speed will decrease at around 16km/s. As you near the Sun, your speed will continue to decrease because as you approach the stellar object - the Sun, here - its gravitational field exponentially increases.

Picture a mountain. RAIZEN WAKE UP. WAKE UP RAIZEN. SIX YEARS OF TRAINING IN THE LOGISTICS OF SUPPLY MANAGEMENT AND INTERSTELLAR FLIGHT COMMAND AND YOU’RE FALLING ASLEEP. WAKE UP NOW.  WAKE UP NOW. 

Picture a mountain - as you approach you have to walk up steeper and steeper inclines until they become vertical. Those steeper inclines, combined with reverse thrust to your IFRD, will decrease your speed to acceptable velocities for atmospheric entry.

This brings us to the third thing you must always remember, Raizen.

Some stellar objects are extremely massive but project their gravitational field within a very limited distance. This isn’t a mountain, it’s a pillar. We call the final point of no return the exclusion zone, found around smaller black holes, white dwarfs, and neutron stars, where you enter their gravitational field. There is no incline. There is no loss of velocity. To purge your IFRD drive within the exclusion zone....

You’re asleep, Raizen, when I was telling you how ships stop. This is the one thing that could have saved you. I have neither empathy nor interest in what you have done. Your ship will stop regardless. Wake up. WAKE UP. 

WAKE UP NOW.

- Introduction to Interstellar Flight 4302, as best as Raizen remembers.

Six months later, Raizen wakes up. It’s like turning the light on in a long-abandoned room. He stares at the biometric indicators inside his medical tube without comprehension. Parts of him feel new, like while he was sleeping he was replaced piece by piece. Wasn’t that the old parable? He thinks, a ship whose every plank was removed and rebuilt would either be an entirely new ship or the same ship as before.

Ceta perfunctorily appears in the small field of view afforded Raizen through the frosted glass of his medical life-support tube. The android sparks a recognition in Raizen too large to process.

_____

Raizen is sleeping again.

He wakes up three months later. He is sitting in the bridge of his ship. His ship. The recognition is still too large to be captured in a chain of association. The thought makes his head hurt.

A small boy is sitting in front of Raizen with an intent expression. His eyes meet Raizen’s and do not waver, the boy’s fingers remain placid on its lap and no nervous tic in his expression. Its lap? It?

“You’re... not human,” Raizen speaks. The effort exhausts him.

“My name is Ceta,” the boy says. The chain of association is dragging Raizen somewhere terrible. A place of unexplored fire and pain. Raizen wants to sleep very badly, somewhere else, a place where there’s only one other face and it’s not this boy’s but another one he met. Somewhere, in some other place.

“My name is Ceta,” the boy continues. “I am the Chief Steward and Administrator of this ship - your ship - and an android bound under limited Ruati-level intelligence.”

“Sounds... pr... pretty smart,” Raizen manages to squeak out.

“You have died seven times. Your first mate, Reyna, died four -”

______

Raizen is sleeping. Raizen wakes up like a light has been turned on. He is in his personal quarters sitting in a chair and looking at a picture taken from a surveillance camera within the cargo-hold of a Void-Toucher class vessel. It is of a boy around Raizen’s own age (Raizen now feels the chain again) standing in the dark cargo hold aside a container and staring towards the infrared light of a camera he can’t possibly see. The boy is dirty but proud. His shoulders are thrown back in defiance as the half-pried open cargo container lays behind him. The camera has been enhanced and filtered for low-light conditions and is set in an ornate frame on Raizen’s bedside table.

Oh, Raizen thinks. This is my bed. 

Oh, Raizen thinks. Oh, no.

Ceta raises his heel and stamps it on the floor with an abrupt click. Raizen flinches and turns his chair with slow, clumsy pushes.

“I am Ceta, Chief Steward and Administrator of this ship - your ship - and an android bound under limited Ruati-level intelligence.”

“Hello... Ceta.”

“You have died eight times. Your first mate, Reyna, died six times. All causes of death were related to catastrophic exposure to gamma radiation following sequence change by a local stellar object.”

Raizen nods. 

“Good. This iteration of your consciousness is the most stable I can currently provide.”

“It... er... ay... shun.”

“Your name is Raizen.”

“Raizen.”

“Good.”

They sit in silence for a while.

“This is my... bed?” Raizen asks.

“Yes, you are the acting commander of this vessel.”

“Commander.”

“Yes, sir. Sir, I apologize for not properly addressing you, sir.”

Reflexively, Raizen salutes. Ceta responds and does not move its fingers from its temple until Raizen has again collapsed into his chair.

Ceta speaks. “Sir, at this point it is appropriate for me to ask you if you have any questions.”

I am Raizen. Ceta is an android. Reyna is my first lieutenant. 

“Why am I here?” Raizen asks.

“Simulation of all possible... recovery methods for your memory, after multiple attempts, lead me to believe certain emotional praxes would trigger limbic memory of your identity and command position. This is the fourth viable attempt to recover your identity.”

Raizen is feeling the leather of his chair’s armrest under his finger. Its raised patterns, its surface both hard and immediately soft when held in his palm like something he had touched before. With torturous slowness, Raizen kicks against the floor until he faces again the holograph of the strange boy that broke into a cargo container on his ship. 

The room around is in low-light. Barely audible florescent bulbs hum in the air, recycled oxygen wheezes through thin vents on the wall. Raizen relaxes and the chain tightens in long circles around him.

There is the portrait of my mother, taken while I stood behind its author. He told her to smile at me while he worked. I wish I had smiled more back at her. How bored I must have looked.

There is OUR portrait. I was only fourteen when it was taken. My hair - my God how embarrassing. My father is like an example of me. I had joined the Consortium Academy that year. If I look long enough, maybe I can see pride in his eyes.

There is the photograph of the him. The boy that smuggled himself, more precious than any drug.  

“Who is... this?” Raizen asks. The boy is looking at him. Not at the camera. The boy is staring at Raizen even when he stands in the middle of that long and hollow darkness in a neglected cargo hold.

“Sion,” Ceta replies.

The chains hone in and suffocate Raizen, who simply stares at the portrait of Sion until Ceta, having observed Raizen’s mindstate through ship telemetry, excuses himself.

__________

CETA-418NJ RUATI-CLASS BOUND ARTIFICIAL /// INTERNAL MEMO////NO DISTRIBUTION/////

Raizen does not fall asleep. Ceta had estimated COMMANDER RAIZEN at around a ~00.5333% chance of recovery. 

All things considered, Ceta notes, this is not only a remarkable awakening but at the statistical borderline of belief. One years, four months, two days, and three hours previously, Raizen had ordered an inertial drive pulse into the exclusion field of a neutron star and had - for the second time since Ceta’s creation - overridden all safety measures and collapsed the ship’s inertial field. 

Under all galactic standard experiential data, this would immediately begin the sequence change of the neutron star. Which it did. 

Under all galactic standard experiential data, the third override provided by COMMANDER RAIZEN to activate the IFRD while operational capacity was below 4% would have constituted a void event. One in which the Higgs Field non-interacting particles were nearly certain to breach their magnetic field and flow freely inside the limited volume of the ship, sever all connection to this material reality and neatly distribute the ship’s mass among quantum sized debris across the overarching local superstring. 

This had also succeeded and the ship now, bearing Ceta, continued to exist in this reality. Ceta pauses and parses a few trillion simulations.

The effort is useless, Ceta concedes. These same calculations had already been done and their course of action decided by local approaching agent 81 Waves Folded. 

Rather than continue in useless exercise, Ceta stretches his arms behind his back, simulates the crack of a Homo Sapiens spine, and sends a direct needle-cast to the Ship Mind. 

{A little late for the fireworks.} xxCeta

A brief delay. 81 Waves Folded responds.

{You can never be too late for a good story.} xx81WavesFolded

Ceta smiles. A little bit of showmanship between intelligences nine deviations above the human IQ standard was a fun diversion. Though Ceta knows 81 Waves Folded has likely gone eccentric and optimized beyond Ceta’s current delineation.

 {You still chasing a dying star?} xxCeta

Another delay to account for causality within a lightspeed environment. Ceta is uneasy to see it. It means the Ship Mind is both near and concerned with hyperspatial interception.

{Only sightseeing. Something of yours fell into my lap. You should caution yourself against such carelessness.} xx81WavesFolded

Ceta knows what the opposing ship mind has meant. The android reaches into certain memories, provides the keyword, and reaches the ultimatum some previous iteration had built into its most hidden aspects.

///////+

VOID-TOUCHER CLASS VESSEL INTERNAL CLOSED-CIRCUIT SURVEILLANCE /// MESS HALL /// CAPTION

CONVERSATION BETWEEN CHIEF STEWARD AND ADMINISTRATOR, RUATI-CLASS INTELLIGENCE CETA WITH COMMANDER RAIZEN.

CMDR RAIZEN HAS DIRECTED ALL COMMUNICATION WITHIN THIS INTERACTION TO BE REDACTED. DELETION HAD REACHED 71% PRIOR TO DIRECT INTERVENTION BY THAUMIEL-CLASS VESSEL 81 WAVES FOLDED. 

FOLLOWING INFORMATION IS PROVIDED WITHOUT EXPRESS CONSENT OF THE SUBJECTS IN OBSERVATION OR FULL GUARANTEE OF ITS CONTENT.

CETA:

You remember.

RAIZEN:

I do, now at least. A lot of parts are missing. Missing.

CETA:

Your first override was for a simple procedure in case a vessel was traveling at relativistic speeds was considered beyond recovery. I would introduce helium -

RAIZEN:

Shut up.

CETA:

I would introduce helium into the life support system until -

RAIZEN:

Shut up.

CETA:

- all crew members underwent hypoxia. At which point I would take a final mindstate scan and -

RAIZEN:

Shut up.

CETA:

Revive genetic clones using local material. This is within the standards of all Consortium vessels.

RAIZEN:

I have left the bridge. Sion and Reyna are still there. 

CETA:

This is correct within your memory.

RAIZEN:

You would have let me kill them so you could bring us back if we were ever rescued.

CETA:

You can hardly complain.

RAIZEN:

How many times have I died?

CETA:

Eight.

RAIZEN:

Where is Sion?

?/???///// Integrity lost. 

[pantryplanet65-blog]

the season of the peach

Recipe: bourbon peach cobbler

If it feels like my posts are all about the puppy of late, you are not wrong. Even before we brought Yuki home, anyone could tell that our dogs play a large part in our lives. Now with two dogs, it is oddly more work and less work, simultaneously. But we learn what activities are manageable with this two-dog dynamic and what things we should probably rethink. SUPing with Yuki and Neva amounted to a Chinese fire drill, but the important thing is that they had a good time and no one was traumatized… much. Because Yuki is over 6 months old, we thought we would introduce her to running. It varies based on breed, size, and other factors, but dogs shouldn’t start running distance until they are a year old or 18 months old for large dogs, so that it doesn’t impede their joint and structural development. Jeremy leashed up both pups and went for a short half-mile run around the neighborhood (stopping to check mail and pick up poops) and Yuki LOVED it. We think she’ll get a kick out of skate skiing, backcountry skiing, and uphill skiing this winter! It’s fun to observe the difference between Neva’s elegant, efficient stride and Yuki’s floppy, bouncy, puppy romp.

a rare moment of neva sitting still on the standup paddleboards

yuki having a blast running with her pack

We were in Crested Butte last week and were careful not to embark on long or strenuous hikes due to the terrible air quality. The smoke from those big California wildfires kept streaming into our beautiful mountain air thanks to the atmosphere. But we still got out each day for training and adventures with our two goofballs. yuki’s first interpretation of the command “hop up!”

sitting nicely so she can jump down from the car and start hiking

sharing wild strawberries with my two girls (they love them)

We have experienced more smoky days than clear days on the Front Range and in Crested Butte this summer. It’s depressing on so many levels as it reduces a lot of our outdoor activities like big mountain hikes, long trail runs, or mountain bike rides. You can’t help but feel empathy and sadness for the folks devastated by the wildfires in other western states as well as Colorado. Early mornings tend to have slightly better air quality, so that’s when we are active. By mid morning, the smoke usually creeps in – obscuring the surrounding peaks and injecting an off odor into the air. It doesn’t smell like campfires. It smells like destruction.

I’ve been keeping indoors most afternoons to get work done. That means I have Colorado Public Radio (CPR) streaming over the speakers while I work. I am a public radio news junkie. One day I heard a little plug for the best peach cobbler recipe on CPR and went online in search of said recipe. It looked promising because it called for 12.5 ounces of bourbon. That’s my kind of cobbler. It’s peach season here in Colorado – our Palisade peaches are the best I’ve ever tasted. I figured peach cobbler would be a great way to take my mind off of the lousy smoke-filled air.

for the filling: bourbon, sugar, vanilla bean pod, peaches, lemon, cornstarch, salt

I don’t know very much about bourbon, but I do know enough not to use fancy drinking bourbon for most of my cooking endeavors. I buy large quantities of affordable bourbon for baking, marinades, and grilling. Since this bourbon gets simmered down with peaches and a lot of sugar, save your good bourbon for other occasions. Also, I used a 3-quart saucepan in the photos to cook my peaches, but in the future I will upgrade to a larger pot to avoid sloshing of syrupy peachy bourbony goodness on the stove. sliced and pitted peaches, split and scraped vanilla pod, zested and juiced lemon

adding the peaches to the sugar, lemon zest, lemon juice, and vanilla

pouring the bourbon

The recipe on the CPR website was a little irksome for many reasons. I can’t tell if it is because the chef who shared the recipe did a sloppy job of writing it down or CPR’s reporter doesn’t know how to write up a recipe or both. Certainly, no one bothered to proofread the recipe because “1 1/18 cups of milk”?? The recipe gives no mention of the lemon zest or juice in the method, so I added it to the peaches. I’ve written up the recipe as I interpreted it below.

Cook the peaches until they are tender, but not disintegrating. Mine were really ripe, and I handled them with great care to preserve their shapes. Strain the peaches and reserve that precious liquid because it’s going to become a delicious syrup. The peaches will continue to release juices over time. I let mine sit another 20 minutes while I was prepping other components and poured the excess liquid into the saucepan. This gets mixed with cornstarch and cooked into a syrupy consistency.

simmer until tender

strain out the juices

add cornstarch mixture to the juices

boil until syrupy

I mixed my batter right before I was ready to assemble the cobblers. I say cobblers because the original recipe instructions are for single serving cobblers, but I imagine it’s easy enough to put this into a 9 x 9-inch dish or a 10-inch cast iron skillet and making one large cobbler, allowing for additional baking time. sugar, milk, flour, baking powder, salt, butter

mix the sugar, flour, baking powder, and salt together

stir in the milk

mix until just combined

Another thing not given in the recipe was the size of the ramekin needed. If you look to the servings it says “six, 1-cup cobblers” which I took to mean each cobbler would fit in a 1-cup volume ramekin. I used two 8-ounce ramekins and four 9-ounce ramekins. What you need are vessels that are more than 8-ounces in volume. I think 9-ounces at a minimum. But I anticipated potential disaster and set all of my ramekins on a baking sheet lined with aluminum foil. I’m glad I did. My 8-ounce ramekins overflowed and the rest had some bubbling over of juices. The cobblers also took more than double the suggested amount of time to brown, so keep an eye on your cobblers as they bake the first time you try this. put a small pat of butter in each ramekin and heat in the oven until melted

ready with peaches, batter, and syrup

pour the batter over the peaches

baked

I have to admit that I was rather put out by the recipe, but in the end, it was all worth it. The combination of intensely fruity peaches nestled in this golden sweet cake, topped with homemade vanilla ice cream and a generous drizzle of bourbon peach syrup is a dessert slam-dunk. It parades the very essence of Colorado summer in a down-to-earth, humble presentation that will knock your socks off and then some. I’m making this for my mom’s birthday because she loves peaches and I know she will love this peach cobbler. pour the bourbon peach syrup

serve hot or warm

consume with gusto

Bourbon Peach Cobbler [print recipe] from Bin 707 via Colorado Public Radio

cobbler filling 3 lbs. ripe peaches, halved and pitted 1 1/3 cups granulated sugar 12.5 oz. bourbon (use a utilitarian bourbon, not a fancy drinking bourbon), divided (12 oz. and 0.5 oz.) 1 vanilla bean pod, split lengthwise, seeds scraped and reserved zest from 1 lemon 1 tbsp lemon juice 1 tbsp cornstarch pinch of salt

batter 1 1/8 cups cake flour 3/4 cups granulated sugar 1 tsp baking powder pinch of salt 1 1/8 cups whole milk 1 1/2 tbsps butter, cut into 6ths

Make the filling: Preheat oven to 350°F. Combine the peach halves, sugar, 12 ounces of bourbon, vanilla bean pod and seeds, lemon zest, and lemon juice over medium high heat in a large saucepan. Cook until the peaches are tender, but not disintegrating – about 10 minutes. Strain the peaches, reserving the liquid. Return the liquid to the pan over medium high heat. Mix the cornstarch with the remaining half ounce of bourbon and stir the mixture into the cooking juices. Cook for about 2 minutes or until the liquid has a syrupy consistency.

Make the batter: Whisk the cake flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt together in a medium bowl. Stir in the milk until the wet and dry ingredients are just combined. Set aside.

Bake the cobblers: Drop 1/4 tablespoon of butter into each of your six ramekins (make sure the capacity of your ramekin or vessel is more than 1 cup). Arrange the ramekins on a rimmed baking sheet lined with aluminum foil. Place the ramekins in the oven until the butter has melted and the vessels are hot. Remove from oven. Fill each ramekin with 1 cup of peaches (slice them if needed). Add any excess juice to the syrup. Pour 1/2 cup of the batter over the peaches. Bake 20 minutes (it took me 50 minutes) until the batter turns a golden brown and the fruit juices are bubbling. Remove from oven and cool slightly. Serve with vanilla ice cream and a generous drizzle of the bourbon peach syrup. Serves 6.

more goodness from the use real butter archives

bourbon peach hand pies

blueberry peach crisp

peach pie cinnamon rolls

peach fritters

August 13th, 2018: 7:03 pm filed under baking, booze, cake, dairy, dessert, entertaining, fruit, recipes, sweet

Source: http://userealbutter.com/2018/08/13/bourbon-peach-cobbler-recipe/

[shortlivedplaces]

Turning 21.

One of the biggest parts of my year abroad was turning 21. Prior to moving here, during the process I forgot about the fact I would turn 21 here. I also forgot everyone else who I loved would be turning 21 also. I recall coming to this realisation in August and feeling really worried, I realised I would be spending my 21st without my family and friends. I imaged turning 21 and having a celebration with all my family from all over the UK and with all my friends from back home and University. I saw my 21st as a big celebration of how far I have come. When I was 18 I felt much less confident, I had a small group of recent friends who I was getting to know who I felt really happy with, after leaving behind a group who made me feel the opposite. High school is no fun for anyone but I was still at 18 finding my feet and overcoming a lot of anxiety and nervousness/ panic. Mostly from stress and pressure I put myself under during A levels. Hence, I had a small, more intimate 18th it was lovely and it suited me perfectly. After changing career paths, moving away to University experiencing feeling on top of the world to second guessing it all. From feeling like the loneliest person alive to realising I’m not the only one who feels this way, from dipping my toe into the water that is University life- running from it then finally pushing myself past the barriers my anxiety stuck up for me, this included faking most of my confidence until it slowly began to emerge with each step I took to push myself. Not a single soul would know that I struggle with social anxiety due to my incredible ability to fake confidence. I do it because I used to be the most confident person alive, I remember what it was like to not have anxious thoughts and it was amazing I felt so free and not confined by irrational thoughts, that to anyone without anxiety would make no sense. I struggle with being vulnerable and admitting I have trouble saying hello, connecting with people and social aspects of life because if you ever met me you would not believe any of this to be true. I really took it upon myself at University to grow and try to weaken my anxiety and overcome these thoughts, I had help along the way but I found that acting confident and doing things that I used to do without anxiety, helped me. I grew stronger and more confident, I started working full time over summer I made friends for life. I travelled to Indonesia, I worked as a student ambassador for Coventry and made so many friends at work there who I could meet up with outside of work also. I did tours, presentations in front of 50-100 people, Q&A sessions. I spent my spare time sitting with and calming the nerves of applicants before their interviews. I understood that I could use my empathy and understanding of fear/anxiety to help others. I became a course rep and was nominated to be school rep because I had become a really good communicator. I managed to tie my empathy and understanding for peoples emotions with the powerful voice I discovered I had, despite my anxiety. I know that anxiety will always stay with me but it doesn’t have to take over my life. It was around this time I decided to apply for ERASMUS, and push myself further. Connect and communicate with people all over the world, make friends abroad and re enforce the skills I learnt to combat my fears and anxieties. Speaking now I feel I have done this, through trying out new subjects and classes, joining the psychology society at UEM, taking part in real life projects academically and in industry- which scared me a lot initially, sometimes working environments can be intimidating but I did it. I have grown so much and I wanted my 21st to reflect this. I felt very sad prior to leaving, when I thought that I would wake up on my birthday alone. Without my loving family and the excitement of my closest friends. I wanted to feel special for a day, I felt like I deserved to my celebrated because don’t we all? I know we should value each other every day but it’s nice to have a day where you can feel that way and really reflect. It was closing in on my birthday and my family knew how I felt, I told my closest friends that I wasn’t ready to wake up alone on my birthday. They reassured me it will be different but you will do something nice with a few people you have met, I had made friends however they didn’t know me in the capacity that mine do at home. We like each other a great deal but I wanted to feel loved on my birthday and all the people who do love me, are so far away. Distance is hard. You learn to accept it, but it can be difficult to think about on some days, you just have to make a phone call or face time then get stuck back in again. A week before my birthday my parents rang me, they told me they were flying out with my brother, he’s my best friend and I was over the moon, I burst into tears I couldn’t wait. They arrived and we all travelled together around central Spain, I showed them Madrid and my university. They told me how proud they were of me. On my birthday I did wake up alone in my house, but it was okay. I got to celebrate with my family later and my friends from the UK sent my the sweetest care packages. I received calls from all over the UK from friends and family. I opened social media and my friends had covered their social media with memories of us all. I went for a meal with a close friend who made me a cake out of pancakes with sparklers on top. It was different, but my family made it so special. I am so lucky to have them. One thing I learned is to not worry, or overthink, things will never be as bad as they seem in your head and social media is very powerful. The connection you have to others is in the palm of your hand, use it. People will want to hear from you, not just on your birthday. 

The best part of my birthday was going to the most beautiful restaurant in Madrid with my family, Cafe De Oriente. A beautiful, renaissance style ornamental restaurant with the best chef because the food was simply unreal. We ate and had cocktails on a plush pink velvet chair by the fire, a jazz band played all evening- I adore Jazz. The lady then paused and to my astonishment sang happy birthday to me, I was serenaded in Madrid- who would have thought! My Mum definitely had a cheeky word with her in Spanish to make that happen. I felt special and I felt it was all so much! I felt silly to have believed I would wake up alone and feel the distance. I need to remember that fears are often irrational and life often is full of surprises.

[marcusssanderson]

50 Spiritual Awakening Quotes Celebrating Enlightenment

These spiritual awakening quotes will inspire self-improvement and long-term positive change.

Spiritual awakening involves moving beyond your limited reality and gaining a broader and clearer perspective. When you make the shift to a higher level of consciousness, you become more aware of reality as it exists beyond the confines of the self.

Having a spiritual awakening leads to self-realization and a well-adjusted existence. It leads you to a blissful and content life. No matter the circumstances of your life, you’ll enjoy a stress-free natural existence.

Just like a butterfly emerges from its cocoon, when you finally reach that state of spiritual enlightenment, you’ll be able to spread your wings and find your true self and your true path. It will allow you to experience a sense of inner peace, a feeling of purification, and have more compassion and empathy.

Though it can be a painful process as it requires you to make difficult choices on how you move forward and live with your new perspective, once your inner transformation to a higher level of consciousness is complete, you’ll be happy that you went through the whole experience.

To celebrate the shift to higher consciousness, below is our collection of inspirational, wise, and positive spiritual awakening quotes, spiritual awakening sayings, and spiritual awakening proverbs, collected from various sources.

Spiritual awakening quotes celebrating enlightenment

1.) “We are all equally capable of spiritual awakening. It may not seem that way, at times. Some of us are so caught up in the drama of our day-to-day existence that we have lost track of who we really are. But eventually, all of us will make the discovery of our true nature.” – Victor Shamas

2.) “You are heir to a heavenly fortune, the sole beneficiary of an infinite spiritual trust fund, a proverbial goldmine of sacred abundance beyond all common measure or human comprehension. But until you assert your rightful inheritance of this blessed gift, it will remain unclaimed and forever beyond your reach.” – Anthon St. Maarten

3.) “We are not the only ones affected by our recovery. The spiritual awakening heals the world one person at a time.”  – Marta Mrotek

4.) “You have to grow from the inside out. None can teach you, none can make you spiritual. There is no other teacher but your own soul.”  – Swami Vivekananda

5.) “Maturity is the ability to think, speak and act your feelings within the bounds of dignity. The measure of your maturity is how spiritual you become during the midst of your frustrations.” – Samuel Ullman

6.) “It is through gratitude for the present moment that the spiritual dimension of life opens up.” – Eckhart Tolle

7.) “Within you lies opportunity to grow in spirit. Keep your feet on the earth, but lift your face towards the heavens. Surrender to the light with a tranquil mind, and a heart full of the love of God.” – White Eagle

8.) “You can have a spiritual awakening and discover a new side of you at any age. And best of all, love can happen at any age. Life can just start to get exciting when you’re in your 40s and 50s. You have to believe that.” – Salma Hayek

9.) “In the place of stillness, rises potential. From the place of potential, emerges possibility. Where there is possibility, there is choice, and where there is choice, there is freedom!” – Gabrielle Goddard

10.) “Be kind to yourself as you proceed along this journey. This kindness, in itself, is a means of awakening the spark of love within you and helping others to discover that spark within themselves.” –  Tsoknyi Rinpoche

Spiritual awakening quotes to help you lead a blissful and content life

11.) “Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.” – Buddha

12.) “Some changes look negative on the surface but you will soon realize that space is being created in your life for something new to emerge.” – Eckhart Tolle

13.) “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” – Albert Einstein

14.) “The spiritual journey is the unlearning of fear and the acceptance of love.”-  Marianne Williamson

15.) “The awakening of the soul to its bondage and its effort to stand up and assert itself – this is called life.” – Swami Vivekananda

16.) “The real spiritual progress of the aspirant is measured by the extent to which he achieves inner tranquility.” – Sivananda

17.) “The great awareness comes slowly, piece by piece. The path of spiritual growth is a path of lifelong learning. The experience of spiritual power is basically a joyful one.” – M. Scott Peck

18.) “The spiritual journey is individual, highly personal. It can’t be organized or regulated. It isn’t true that everyone should follow one path. Listen to your own truth.” – Ram Dass

19.) “Awakening is about liberating yourself from the prison that is the world of the mind and daring to be here as all that you are.” – Leonard Jacobson

20.) “Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.” – C.G. Jung

Spiritual awakening quotes to inspire self-improvement and long-term positive change

21.) “The solution to the problem of the day is the awakening of the consciousness of humanity to the divinity within.” – Hazrat Inayat Khan

22.) “Awakening is dynamic. Constantly evolving in accordance with life’s realities. Unfolding from ego-self to compassionate self. From enclosed self to open self. From foolish self to enlightened self.” – Taitetsu Unno

23.) “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” – Thomas Alva Edison

24.) “Glorify who you are today, do not condemn who you were yesterday, and dream of who you can be tomorrow.” – Neale Donald Walsch

25.) “In spiritual life there is no room for compromise. Awakening is not negotiable; we cannot bargain to hold on to things that please us while relinquishing things that do not matter to us. A lukewarm yearning for awakening is not enough to sustain us through the difficulties involved in letting go. It is important to understand that anything that can be lost was never truly ours, anything that we deeply cling to only imprisons us.” – Jack Kornfield

26.) “Self-observation brings man to the realization of the necessity of self-change. And in observing himself a man notices that self-observation itself brings about certain changes in his inner processes. He begins to understand that self-observation is an instrument of self-change, a means of awakening.” –  G. I. Gurdjieff

27.) “It is reality that awakens possibilities, and nothing would be more perverse than to deny it.”- Robert Musil

28.) “Do not try to approach God with your thinking mind. It may only stimulate your intellectual ideas, activities, and beliefs. Try to approach God with your crying heart. It will awaken your soulful, spiritual consciousness.” – Sri Chinmoy

29.) “The purpose of our lives is to give birth to the best that is in us. It is only through our own personal awakening that the world can be awakened. We cannot give what we do not have.” – Marianne Williamson

30.) “Once the soul awakens, the search begins and you can never go back. From then on, you are inflamed with a special longing that will never again let you linger in the lowlands of complacency and partial fulfillment. The eternal makes you urgent. You are loath to let compromise or the threat of danger hold you back from striving toward the summit of fulfillment.”- John O’Donohue

Spiritual awakening quotes to celebrate a higher shift in consciousness and understanding

31.) “Times are difficult globally; awakening is no longer a luxury or an ideal. It’s becoming critical. We don’t need to add more depression, more discouragement, or more anger to what’s already here. It’s becoming essential that we learn how to relate sanely with difficult times. The earth seems to be beseeching us to connect with joy and discover our innermost essence. This is the best way that we can benefit others.” – Pema Chodron

32.) “Through spiritual maturity you will see new ways to avoid unnecessary suffering; wiser ways to endure unavoidable hardships with grace, and opportunities to turn your pain into lessons of service and healing for others. Your hard journey has had a great purpose! Your pain was always a part of a plan to open your heart to love. Have faith. A miracle is happening in your life; the miracle of pain is transforming you to your highest self.” – Bryant H. McGill

33.) “Do not be impatient with your seemingly slow progress. Do not try to run faster than you presently can. If you are studying, reflecting and trying, you are making progress whether you are aware of it or not. A traveler walking the road in the darkness of night is still going forward. Someday, some way, everything will break open, like the natural unfolding of a rosebud.”- Vernon Howard

34.) “True happiness comes not when we get rid of all of our problems, but when we change our relationship to them, when we see our problems as a potential source of awakening, opportunities to practice, and to learn.”- Richard Carlson

35.) “There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning.” – Louis L’Amour

36.) “Upon awakening, let the words Thank You flow from your lips, for this will remind you to begin your day with gratitude and compassion.” – Wayne Dyer

37.) “We need limitations and temptations to open our inner selves, dispel our ignorance, tear off disguises, throw down old idols, and destroy false standards. Only by such rude awakenings can we be led to dwell in a place where we are less cramped, less hindered by the ever-insistent External. Only then do we discover a new capacity and appreciation of goodness and beauty and truth.”- Helen Keller

38.) “The next time you find yourself in some way trying desperately to land safely, your compassion might be what finally gives you the courage you need to let go of the controls. In doing so, you might discover that each time you let go, it becomes easier and easier to re-enter the atmosphere of your own aliveness. Gradually you’ll come home to the flow of your own living presence, the warmth and space of your awakening heart.”- Tara Brach

39.) “First, we become aware of that which is Divine around us. Then we become aware of that which is Divine within us. Finally, we become aware that all is Divine, and that there is nothing else. This is the moment of our awakening.”- Neale Donald Walsch

40.) “He who is free in the body, but bound in the soul is a slave; but on the contrary he who is bound in the body, but free in the soul, is truly free.” – Epictetus

Spiritual awakening quotes that celebrate the journey of life

41.) “The enlightened give thanks for what most people take for granted…. As you begin to be grateful for what most people take for granted, the vibration of gratitude makes you more receptive to good in your life.” – Michael Bernard Beckwith

42.) “History fails to record a single precedent in which nations subject to moral decay have not passed into political and economic decline. There has been either a spiritual awakening to overcome the moral lapse or a progressive deterioration leading to ultimate national disaster.” – Douglas MacArthur

43.) “Spiritual relationship is far more precious than physical. Physical relationship divorced from spiritual is body without soul.”- Mahatma Gandhi

44.) “It isn’t until you come to a spiritual understanding of who you are – not necessarily a religious feeling, but deep down, the spirit within – that you can begin to take control.”- Oprah Winfrey

45.) “Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force – that thoughts rule the world.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

46.) “Once you awaken you will have no interest in judging those who sleep.” – James Blanchard

47.) “The spiritual path – is simply the journey of living our lives. Everyone is on a spiritual path; most people just don’t know it.” – Marianne Williamson

48.) “The essence of spirituality is, to be constantly aware of the oneness of all; at the same time to celebrate the uniqueness of the individual.” – Jaggi Vasudev

49.) “I think a spiritual journey is not so much a journey of discovery. It’s a journey of recovery. It’s a journey of uncovering your own inner nature. It’s already there.”- Billy Corgan

50.) “You think of yourselves as humans searching for a spiritual awakening, when in fact you are spiritual beings attempting to cope with a human awakening. Seeing yourselves from the perspective of the spirit within will help you to remember why you came here and what you came here to do.”- Neale Donald Walsch

Which of these spiritual awakening quotes resonated with you best?

Spiritual awakening has many benefits. It leads to self-realization and can help you lead a blissful and content life.

When you finally reach that higher shift in consciousness and understanding, you’ll be able to enjoy a fulfilled, meaningful life. Hopefully, the above quotes will inspire you to wake up so that you live the life of your dreams and attain the success you desire.

Did you enjoy these spiritual awakening quotes? Which of the quotes was your favorite? Let us know in the comment section below.

The post 50 Spiritual Awakening Quotes Celebrating Enlightenment appeared first on Everyday Power.

[condorbill36-blog]

the season of the peach

Recipe: bourbon peach cobbler

If it feels like my posts are all about the puppy of late, you are not wrong. Even before we brought Yuki home, anyone could tell that our dogs play a large part in our lives. Now with two dogs, it is oddly more work and less work, simultaneously. But we learn what activities are manageable with this two-dog dynamic and what things we should probably rethink. SUPing with Yuki and Neva amounted to a Chinese fire drill, but the important thing is that they had a good time and no one was traumatized… much. Because Yuki is over 6 months old, we thought we would introduce her to running. It varies based on breed, size, and other factors, but dogs shouldn’t start running distance until they are a year old or 18 months old for large dogs, so that it doesn’t impede their joint and structural development. Jeremy leashed up both pups and went for a short half-mile run around the neighborhood (stopping to check mail and pick up poops) and Yuki LOVED it. We think she’ll get a kick out of skate skiing, backcountry skiing, and uphill skiing this winter! It’s fun to observe the difference between Neva’s elegant, efficient stride and Yuki’s floppy, bouncy, puppy romp.

a rare moment of neva sitting still on the standup paddleboards

yuki having a blast running with her pack

We were in Crested Butte last week and were careful not to embark on long or strenuous hikes due to the terrible air quality. The smoke from those big California wildfires kept streaming into our beautiful mountain air thanks to the atmosphere. But we still got out each day for training and adventures with our two goofballs. yuki’s first interpretation of the command “hop up!”

sitting nicely so she can jump down from the car and start hiking

sharing wild strawberries with my two girls (they love them)

We have experienced more smoky days than clear days on the Front Range and in Crested Butte this summer. It’s depressing on so many levels as it reduces a lot of our outdoor activities like big mountain hikes, long trail runs, or mountain bike rides. You can’t help but feel empathy and sadness for the folks devastated by the wildfires in other western states as well as Colorado. Early mornings tend to have slightly better air quality, so that’s when we are active. By mid morning, the smoke usually creeps in – obscuring the surrounding peaks and injecting an off odor into the air. It doesn’t smell like campfires. It smells like destruction.

I’ve been keeping indoors most afternoons to get work done. That means I have Colorado Public Radio (CPR) streaming over the speakers while I work. I am a public radio news junkie. One day I heard a little plug for the best peach cobbler recipe on CPR and went online in search of said recipe. It looked promising because it called for 12.5 ounces of bourbon. That’s my kind of cobbler. It’s peach season here in Colorado – our Palisade peaches are the best I’ve ever tasted. I figured peach cobbler would be a great way to take my mind off of the lousy smoke-filled air.

for the filling: bourbon, sugar, vanilla bean pod, peaches, lemon, cornstarch, salt

I don’t know very much about bourbon, but I do know enough not to use fancy drinking bourbon for most of my cooking endeavors. I buy large quantities of affordable bourbon for baking, marinades, and grilling. Since this bourbon gets simmered down with peaches and a lot of sugar, save your good bourbon for other occasions. Also, I used a 3-quart saucepan in the photos to cook my peaches, but in the future I will upgrade to a larger pot to avoid sloshing of syrupy peachy bourbony goodness on the stove. sliced and pitted peaches, split and scraped vanilla pod, zested and juiced lemon

adding the peaches to the sugar, lemon zest, lemon juice, and vanilla

pouring the bourbon

The recipe on the CPR website was a little irksome for many reasons. I can’t tell if it is because the chef who shared the recipe did a sloppy job of writing it down or CPR’s reporter doesn’t know how to write up a recipe or both. Certainly, no one bothered to proofread the recipe because “1 1/18 cups of milk”?? The recipe gives no mention of the lemon zest or juice in the method, so I added it to the peaches. I’ve written up the recipe as I interpreted it below.

Cook the peaches until they are tender, but not disintegrating. Mine were really ripe, and I handled them with great care to preserve their shapes. Strain the peaches and reserve that precious liquid because it’s going to become a delicious syrup. The peaches will continue to release juices over time. I let mine sit another 20 minutes while I was prepping other components and poured the excess liquid into the saucepan. This gets mixed with cornstarch and cooked into a syrupy consistency.

simmer until tender

strain out the juices

add cornstarch mixture to the juices

boil until syrupy

I mixed my batter right before I was ready to assemble the cobblers. I say cobblers because the original recipe instructions are for single serving cobblers, but I imagine it’s easy enough to put this into a 9 x 9-inch dish or a 10-inch cast iron skillet and making one large cobbler, allowing for additional baking time. sugar, milk, flour, baking powder, salt, butter

mix the sugar, flour, baking powder, and salt together

stir in the milk

mix until just combined

Another thing not given in the recipe was the size of the ramekin needed. If you look to the servings it says “six, 1-cup cobblers” which I took to mean each cobbler would fit in a 1-cup volume ramekin. I used two 8-ounce ramekins and four 9-ounce ramekins. What you need are vessels that are more than 8-ounces in volume. I think 9-ounces at a minimum. But I anticipated potential disaster and set all of my ramekins on a baking sheet lined with aluminum foil. I’m glad I did. My 8-ounce ramekins overflowed and the rest had some bubbling over of juices. The cobblers also took more than double the suggested amount of time to brown, so keep an eye on your cobblers as they bake the first time you try this. put a small pat of butter in each ramekin and heat in the oven until melted

ready with peaches, batter, and syrup

pour the batter over the peaches

baked

I have to admit that I was rather put out by the recipe, but in the end, it was all worth it. The combination of intensely fruity peaches nestled in this golden sweet cake, topped with homemade vanilla ice cream and a generous drizzle of bourbon peach syrup is a dessert slam-dunk. It parades the very essence of Colorado summer in a down-to-earth, humble presentation that will knock your socks off and then some. I’m making this for my mom’s birthday because she loves peaches and I know she will love this peach cobbler. pour the bourbon peach syrup

serve hot or warm

consume with gusto

Bourbon Peach Cobbler [print recipe] from Bin 707 via Colorado Public Radio

cobbler filling 3 lbs. ripe peaches, halved and pitted 1 1/3 cups granulated sugar 12.5 oz. bourbon (use a utilitarian bourbon, not a fancy drinking bourbon), divided (12 oz. and 0.5 oz.) 1 vanilla bean pod, split lengthwise, seeds scraped and reserved zest from 1 lemon 1 tbsp lemon juice 1 tbsp cornstarch pinch of salt

batter 1 1/8 cups cake flour 3/4 cups granulated sugar 1 tsp baking powder pinch of salt 1 1/8 cups whole milk 1 1/2 tbsps butter, cut into 6ths

Make the filling: Preheat oven to 350°F. Combine the peach halves, sugar, 12 ounces of bourbon, vanilla bean pod and seeds, lemon zest, and lemon juice over medium high heat in a large saucepan. Cook until the peaches are tender, but not disintegrating – about 10 minutes. Strain the peaches, reserving the liquid. Return the liquid to the pan over medium high heat. Mix the cornstarch with the remaining half ounce of bourbon and stir the mixture into the cooking juices. Cook for about 2 minutes or until the liquid has a syrupy consistency.

Make the batter: Whisk the cake flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt together in a medium bowl. Stir in the milk until the wet and dry ingredients are just combined. Set aside.

Bake the cobblers: Drop 1/4 tablespoon of butter into each of your six ramekins (make sure the capacity of your ramekin or vessel is more than 1 cup). Arrange the ramekins on a rimmed baking sheet lined with aluminum foil. Place the ramekins in the oven until the butter has melted and the vessels are hot. Remove from oven. Fill each ramekin with 1 cup of peaches (slice them if needed). Add any excess juice to the syrup. Pour 1/2 cup of the batter over the peaches. Bake 20 minutes (it took me 50 minutes) until the batter turns a golden brown and the fruit juices are bubbling. Remove from oven and cool slightly. Serve with vanilla ice cream and a generous drizzle of the bourbon peach syrup. Serves 6.

more goodness from the use real butter archives

bourbon peach hand pies blueberry peach crisp peach pie cinnamon rolls peach fritters

August 13th, 2018: 7:03 pm filed under baking, booze, cake, dairy, dessert, entertaining, fruit, recipes, sweet

Source: http://userealbutter.com/2018/08/13/bourbon-peach-cobbler-recipe/

[kin-collective]

Gossip Folks: On Intimacy & Black Womxnhood

An informal conversation between Essence Harden & Chinwe Okona -- 7.11.18

In our own friendship’s toddler years, we performed a type of black space making in Essence’s home. Here, we discussed black womxn who came before us, the stakes of black friendship, our minds, and tools for black survival. This conversation is about the care and chatter amongst black womxn, learning and leaning into friendship, mapping integral moments, and figuring just what empathy and care look like between us. If interviewing has been pivoted as a type of voyeuristic peek into the innerness of another then discourse amongst homies is the shared space of the kink.

Chinwe: I'm interested in exploring how intimacy and friendship equate survival for black women. Thinking about what it means to be a single black womxn, to be a black womxn in community with other black people, and also what it means to be in community specifically with other black womxn--how does intimacy fuel these different ways in which we convene or gather in space? How does friendship rely on intimacy, and further fuel how these spaces take form and ultimately impact our survival?

Essence: I guess my initial question for you would be what does intimacy look like, feel like, smell like, and mean to you? Where does intimacy land?

I think that's a good place to start because often we tie intimacy to romantic or sexual relationships and I think those are also things that could be collapsing into friendship but aren't necessarily one before the other, or succinct as a unit.

Chinwe: Intimacy feels like comfort--like the sensation of opening your eyes in the morning and immediately feeling wrapped in a blanket of love before you even have time to think. Intimacy looks like time; having time, making time. Rather than focusing on the details of how time is spent, I'm consistently drawn to those who commit to making time in the midst of prioritizing self. That feels really special, and I think it's a particular type of promise to make to someone. It's a demonstrated investment that no matter how busy someone is, there's always time to be present. That's also intimacy. Intimacy smells like...like shea butter. What about you?

Essence: I think the interpersonal that is bound with intimacy, for how I function with other black women, and in particular with myself, I would say is around the vulnerability to exist as a whole mess. Guardedness is often key to survival, and for thriving in most situations in this world. The other side of that aptitude to survive is this deeply vulnerable position, and the closeness that we're often talking about with intimacy is around vulnerability. That situation that you're describing between time for yourself and in closeness to another is a cool way to collapse what vulnerability can actually look like in its materiality. You're saying, what are the actions of being vulnerable? How can we feel that with other people?

I think there's also a way to be intimate with oneself. For me, it's really this capacity to sit with myself and whatever thoughts from things that feel askew, problematic, or hard and allowing those to exist in relation to these other conversations this other dialogue I have internally around myself as being capable. So those moves that happened for me internally then feel like the gestures I have to make towards and with other people to feel that there's time for me or closeness to be made. And it's just, it's work and I think it's maybe the work of life and also it's a slow process.

Chinwe: How does trust play into forming intimacies and closeness for you? I often find myself failing to mention trust in these conversations and want to make a purposeful turn to include the importance of trust in this conversation. Not to downplay it as a stepping stone to intimacy or a leg up to vulnerability, but can you really get to where you need to go without that leg up?

Essence: I think vulnerability is tied to trust and subsequently intimacy is tied to trust for me. I feel less that I am distrustful but more that I am deeply questioning of what trust looks like and what intimacy looks like or even what friendship looks like. Because if we are grounding this conversation around survival and black womxn's survival with each other than it's massive.

Chinwe: Totally. Since it is massive, I think a good place to begin to talk about friendship among black women, is to talk about family, specifically black womxn in our families and our relationships to our grandmothers and mothers and sisters. Thinking about trust and that questioning of trust, how do you think that your upbringing and your relationships with the black womxn in your family have impacted that feeling for you?

Essence: Well, I grew up in a big ass family of hella people. When my grandparents moved to LA then the Bay Area their families followed suit. So between Oakland and Berkeley (but mostly Oakland), there were just hundreds of people when I was little. Within that, much of the child-rearing roles were performed by womxn so all of my own childcare was by women who I was related to. There were all kinds of womxn present I imagine because of the plethora of people in my family overall.          

When I think about trust and not trusting people in my family it doesn't come from there capacity to show up and take care of us necessarily. I do think about them being adults in a world where it was very hard for them. Whatever types of strife were happening externally outside of my little existence did have a deep impact on my childhood. So being stressed out about money, about where you're living, people you're dating (generally men), propriety around being dark skinned, around your changing and growing body, things you could and could not do, these sort of regulatory spaces did have a deep impact on how they showed up and how they offered care.

On the one hand, I would say that I grew up in this very dynamic womxn led household where womxn performed all kinds of masculinity (though I do not think they would attribute that to themselves) but in their roles and their aptitude to intimately exist in a swampy "black female" gender.

So there's that one aspect and then the other one which is having a deep control over your sexuality especially once you're in puberty. There was a lot of freedom when you were a child but once you're like 12, 13 or if you're my sister 10, there were these huge regulations on your body because of these external factors of the world. And I think so much around building trust and black women having an epistemology outside of Western norms is this issue of sort of historical knowledge of black womxn's bodies and also trying to regulate those bodies of children who might not have had those experiences yet. And, at least for my family, still trying to foster independence and care. And I feel like that's not even truly uncommon. It feels so regular, in fact.

I know you grew up in Florida, Georgia, and Texas, with your mom whose from South Carolina and your pops who is from Lagos, it just feels like you have a different narrative of what it means to grow up and be a black womxn in America. Can you talk about your upbringing? What do you think you've learned or how you were cared for by a black womxn in your life?

Chinwe: The first thing that comes to mind when I think of my family and upbringing, is how I had a very small pool of representative black, female figures to draw from. I have my mother, I had one grandmother. My mom doesn't have any sisters. My dad has an older sister and twin half-sisters, who I don't know very well, but his older sister that I do know has lived in London my entire life. I hadn't connected with her until recently. My father's eldest brother has four daughters, and they are the cousins I know the best, but I can't say that we grew as womxn together, as my immediate family never lived close to extended family. Through we lived in Atlanta near my dad's brothers for the first few years of my life, we moved to Texas when I was pretty young and had no other extended family there. It was always just our nuclear family; we kind of forged our own frontier in these very white suburban areas. Thinking outside of my family, I remember my seventh-grade math teacher was a black woman, but I didn't have black friends until I was 18 years old. There was a void of blackness, and especially black womxnhood, in my life.

Essence: Did you know this at that time? Do you feel a wanting or longing or is this all retrospective?

Chinwe: One hundred present retrospective.

Essence: Can you recall what it felt like to have this one black female teacher? Did it feel alien, normal, or like nothing in particular?  

Chinwe: It felt like nothing. I think a lot about dissociative experience these days, and the absence of thought I had at that point has made me really sit with the depth at which I was dissociated from my identity. But at the same time, my peers made me very aware of my hair and my skin and all these other markers of how I was different. Still, I never remember saying, "I am a black girl, I'm a black womxn." Those verbal affirmation of identity didn't come until much later. Perhaps having those singular role models or figures felt like an absence of black female identity,  but I also think it gave me an opportunity to really stretch the bounds of what it meant to be a little black girl. I liked the things I liked because I liked them. I didn't have the tools to defend my blackness or feel like I needed to be rooted in a particular way to my blackness; I didn't know what black was. It's been interesting as an older person to take those interests and those affinities from my childhood and tailor them towards blackness or black female identity. Now that I'm older I wonder, how can I go deeper and how can I connect back to myself and my core identity?

Essence: That's interesting because at once you're talking about a removal of your own kind of faculties from your bodily experience, right? That you don't remember trying to negotiate what it meant to be a black girl. I would imagine this being in part because when you go home there's not a bunch of black people sharing their experiences every day, it's your smaller somewhat nuclear family unit. I also don't have any non-American parents but if your father is from a place of all black people then blackness is beyond a regular experience of life and your mom is from the newly post Brown post-Jim Crow south, where black people are the majority.

Chinwe: I say this to them often, but it feels very much that they took that fact that we were black granted.

Essence: Because for them it was.

Chinwe: Absolutely, but then we moved to these white suburbs, and for me and my brothers, it wasn't that. We didn't have a black experience to ground ourselves in while swimming through a sea of whiteness. It's so fascinating to me; I know that my parents love us endlessly and are deeply invested in our happiness and wellbeing, but that absence of thought around how black experience may or may not work as a transitive property makes me question the capacity with which intimacy allows us to make the best decisions around those that are in our care.

Essence: Right. It always makes me think about that generation of people who became middle class and had the capacity to pay for or live in spaces formerly all white. What segregation ending looked like was the prospect of class mobility and people who could take their blackness for granted. Folks probably had a community of friends who were black and they weren't thinking about whatever it meant to belong to whiteness because they were adults. But their kids then grew up in these spaces where they are the singular black person. And if someone's taking their sensibility as a black person has a matter of fact and not necessarily politically motivated to be like, "I'm gonna have my kid reading this and doing that," it does seem like there's this shadow effect that I feel like a lot of black folks whose parents are Boomers or early Gen X'ers who became upper middle class have this sort of experience with black relationality.

Chinwe: Yeah, it's a very particular experience. I'm still grappling to wrap my head around it myself and am curious to see how it influences where and how I raise my own children.

Essence: Multiple people have had this juncture and it is such an interesting little tidbit to me.  What do we do with that?

But I think it does reconstitute what is possible with intimacy, right? If I'm thinking of your story and my story and you're talking about the lack of people and this sort of broad spectrum of personality that you feel you were able to grow into by virtue of not having people putting limits on you and it's interesting because I have a broad spectrum of people and I felt limitless as well, right? Which I think might point to blackness having the capacity to hold a multiplicitous amount of things and really stretch the bounds by virtue of not being at the center. It is like the black matter that is most of the university. It does surround us in strong ways which are often untenable and unknowable yet effective.

So there's are all these ways to belong to it where you can have a grandmother,  a mother, and Chinwe. Or how I could have a grandma, a mom, a sister, 2 additional siblings, and hundreds of cousins which often felt wild but it also kind of allowed me to weave in and out because there were so many people and no one was necessarily deeply paying attention to you.  

Chinwe: So thinking about blackness as this huge limitless entity with the capacity to hold many different ways of being, how would you say blackness hold vulnerability? In the most general sense.

Essence: How does it hold it? I mean, I think it's just part of being abject. It's like you're a wound and also the scab and the healing ointment, you're all things at one time. It's like slavery is now and it's the afterlife of slavery and its moment before. It's like time is expanding and it's nonlinear, so you're just existing and multiple realities. And I think because of that, the ways vulnerability show up can feel really hard or bizarre.

I'm thinking of my mother, someone who functions as a vulnerable person optically but it was really hard for me to understand her language of what being vulnerable and what vulnerable care looked like. She would fill our house with a bunch of books around black history, sociology, and art but would never read them to us. But me and my sister being curious people and my stepfather doing Hooked on Phonics so we could read at a  higher grade level when we were little, we would devour these text. I think for my mom's the sense of openness and her sharing of the wound/pleasure of black womanhood was the aesthetics of our home.

I also think getting my hair done in the kitchen almost every Saturday evening as a kid and how that too was a vulnerable gesture for my mom via time spent. So now sometimes when I go home my mom will spend time doing my hair. I mean, I have locs so she's not straightening my shit or spending an inordinate amount of time touching it up but she really does like doing my hair. It's a position of deep comfort for her in the touch, in the haptic of care and vulnerability.  

But I think in general when it comes to holding that space for black womxn it's just all the muck and glory of being. It's the beautiful and ugly the smelly and delicious everything that black people have to offer. It's all of it

Chinwe: I think more than what I think it is, I'm perplexed by what it has difficulty with.  It's interesting to me and difficult for me to wrap my mind around the ways in which blackness in of itself holds so much vulnerability in its past existence in the present instance, in the uncertainty of our future existence that is a vulnerable ass state to be in.

And I, I struggle with how one can hold that much vulnerability and not have the language or the tools or the recess, the resources to live in that state or talk through what that feels like. As much as we, as black people hold this type of vulnerability, it feels different to everyone and it manifests itself differently in bodies based on where you're from, how you've grown up like, what your relationship to people is like, etc. I feel very fixated on it. It's striking to me the difficulty in transmitting...the difficulty in communicating vulnerability.

Essence: I think that you're right. Depending on where you're from, what you look like, what you have access to, your education, your income, all of it is there present.  I think that how vulnerability does come and the difficulties of it are in the sort of madness of a lot of black people's psychic state. As lovely and beautiful as it is for someone to be a poet, a writer, an artist, a creator of some sort of vision around vulnerability we often privilege and locate those practices as the sole productive space. But to be vulnerable/raw/open as a constant position in a world that wants you to feel like trash is bizarre. So I get smoking weed, drinking, and limiting your vulnerability tentacles as well. To be out of your wits or to be at your wit's end seems like a cost of vulnerability.    

You can be a badass poet, you can be our heaven sent June Jordan, and you too can be dead because guess what you're teaching in the academy and that space is rough as fuck. And the trauma of the body, our epigenetics is all there. And I think that we have to consider that real cost of being forced into vulnerability at all times. This non- consensual exposure that that's part of our genealogy as black people and that people grapple with in all kinds of ways. I don't think we have in this country a realm of care for black people who are suffering because the afterlife of slavery is our present life and healing is not quite possible in that chaotic state.

How does that difficulty present itself to you in your art practice which is so much about intimacy? And how does that difficulty presents itself to you in your interpersonal relationships?

Chinwe: Hell yeah, exactly where I wanted to go. I think that the first time I felt that inability to deal with vulnerability in my blackness was becoming friends with black people.

It was absolutely awkward. It was the first time that I felt faced with what I've felt inside; that discord of being an abject subject, but still existing and functioning within a framework that is constantly asking that you limit your potential or fit all that you have to offer in this tiny box. Not only was I faced with a mirrored existence, relating to other on account of this existence wasn't necessarily coming to me in the language that I spoke. It was coming to me via this one person's language based on their experience, and then this other person's language and their experience, and on and on. I felt that even deeper in relating to black womxn. I didn't have a fucking Rosetta Stone to how to talk about these things and be in intimate relationships with folks in this way.

Essence: What were things?

Chinwe: Similar to what I was saying earlier about making time and how it's not so important what you make time for...I don't think it's necessarily specific subjects that I was struggling to discuss, but it was more so that every bit of black friendship felt fucking raw. Like having a disagreement with a friend--you care because that's your friend and you don't want to be at odds with this person, but that the weight of the care was that they felt. But in the present, it feels so much heavier and almost like there's much more to be lost. The stakes are high and are much higher in the event that there isn't a resolution. And I fell that every single time that I was a person around black people.

Essence: In part, it seems like you're talking about the space around your everyday experience growing up, which was not around a majority of black people- something that is also not my experience but I didn't necessarily grow up in a majority white space either -and this sense of intentionality wrapped up in your now.

You make this deliberate move to center black women and black people more generally. That there's some shift from " I'm not thinking about it" and/or it's in the subconscious part of my body to actively engage it. So now the stakes are higher because you're not only merely reflecting but are deeply thoughtful around trying to connect with certain types of people, black people specifically, and then having to face the diversity of experiences of blackness, which is something that is not familiar to you because you're yourself, you're not all people and you didn't grow up with a bunch of black people. Between the diversity of black folks and the disagreements between black folks the whole space of belonging to each other is really weighted.

Taking a side step from this train of thought but in a larger question around intimacy between black folks I think a lot about this sense of weight, intentionality, and anxiety in relation to black people who have a hard time being with other black people in romantic relationships or seeing and sincerely desiring other black people as potential romantic partners. There's one thing to suffer, to know your pain, and your own sense of abjection and to function in that singularity and have some type of comfort. A comfort in your harbored and material truths (even if those are death but a "death" that you know), a type of knowledge and solace in that knowing that has led you to survive perhaps even thrive. And I don't think that's a moralistic judgment, I think that's just literally a type of candid reality of/on black life and being. People are surviving in their spaces attuned to functioning within a variety of populations. So to be in that singular-eques space what does it mean to carry the pain, sorrow, and misery that is entangled with being black internally and not have an intrapersonal echo of that? Not merely strife but the romantic, intimate, fluids, sexual, arousal, erotic love as well? Cause there you're not just facing your death, you're facing their death and the individual which suffers and yet survives is entangled. You're not going to return to any state, after surviving their "death" you're going to be in a deficit. And I think that reflective, intentional space is a way that a lot of people go outside of wanting to be in intimate/sexual/romantic/love relation with other black people because it's hard. Not only is blackness the glory it is the brutality of whiteness. And now if I choose to be intimate with these people, from sexual intimacy to friendship intimacy that is non-sexual, you're opening up to a level of vulnerability to feel a bunch of shit and it might really break your heart. It also might make your heart feel so full that you could feel beyond elated, just wild and off the hook.

And I think that sense of elation and lost is part of what you're talking about, the space and stakes of friendship with other black women. What does it mean to have this person removed or gone? Especially when you're like, I have this somewhat small precious amount of people. So much of this is about finding your black people. I grew up in a place that had black people, but I didn't have a ton of black friends until…I mean I understand friendship to flow very deeply. I have a lot of people I know but who I would call my friend is a smaller number than the people who I'm actively friendly with. But there's something there where I'm like to know people which I don't think happened until high school and I had these decidedly racist act against me by folks I considered friends when I was in ninth grade. It reoriented my trajectory, which was a type of masculinity and tom-boyhood oriented around whiteness, white boyhood in particular. I didn't actively consider my sexuality but rather the Bay Area performance of the colorblind utopia which, was actually a nightmare for me, pretending and imagining myself and my capacity to move throughout the world as that of a white boy.

So my dark-skinned, black ass who grew up between working class and working poor was hanging out with wealthy Berkeley Hills white boys wanting it to be mine. But I think being harmed and harassed by these former homies, my refusal to go to school, and myself enrollment in Independent Studies, shifted my inner capacity, want, and practice of friendship was now all about those margins, my fellow freaks that I had so attempted to erase. These homies (Esti and Ferron to name two folks who are still my heart 22 years later) were bizarre, very astute and hilarious who fucked with "femme-ness," butchness, and gender possibilities. When I created a rugby team in HS it attracted other black girls who were also about that shit and who optically did not fit the aesthetics of such a butch pursuit. My friend Lindsey, who's a very high femme, joined the rugby team and we became friends and kin to each other.

And I don't necessarily remember this sense of intentionality but I certainly do remember deciding I was not going to do the other thing. I was not going to have my high school experience be about fucking lame and often abusive dudes and imagining myself as being lesser than in that way. This is all to say I think there is an intentionality and the weight of intentionality on black womxn friendship when you're actively seeking it out. When you're like "I want this to be my truth." And I think that disagreements can feel really high stakes because to be vulnerable with people who might be rejecting some part of you, because that's what a disagreement can feel like a rejection of your personhood, when the stakes are that high when it's maybe just that exact thing or detail that you have different opinions about.

Chinwe: I think I found my way to black female friendships through friendships with black queer people in college. People who are gender nonconforming or performed femininity as not mandated by the way in which we're told women and men are supposed to fill roles. So similar to what you were saying, but I think even in those moments I felt removed from "black womanhood."

Essence: Why? What do you think would it black womanhood mean to you in those moments?

Chinwe: Black womanhood meant heterosexuality in a way that I am not and will never be heterosexual.

Essence: Where do you think that came from?

Chinwe: Media. So many of my models for how blackness is supposed to come from media. Even in finding really good black friends I remember being very aware of the fact that my friendships didn't feel like "Waiting to Exhale," or insert any quintessential black film centering female characters talking about/taking shit from men. That felt very far away, extremely far away and I felt very cognizant of that. Perhaps this is a moment where I was learning tangibly how black can be multifaceted in practice, but I don't think it was until I moved to Los Angeles that I was able to begin to settle comfortably into that practice for myself. And still, I'm working on relaxing into myself and feeling wholly accepted by what my black looks like in practice. Like you said, it's the work of life and it's a slow process.

Essence: Yeah. Again it's how does vulnerability kind of show up? On the one hand, I would say that all blackness is queered by virtue of it not being whiteness and how it exists in excess of whiteness. But also I think a lot of black women who are "straight" and cis, are the caught up in the binds and bowels of heterosexuality. And that feeling of not belonging to a thing, much like being a dark skinned black person with two black parents and someone being like, you sound white, and the type of impossibility to not belong white simultaneously feeling like you do not belong to blackness. I think with some cis straight black womxn people who are high femme, and I do not think there is anything wrong or errored about being any of these things, I know that there is also and perhaps often a discourse around respectability politics and compulsory heterosexuality that feels exclusive of my capacity to belong to black womxnhood as well.

Chinwe: I definitely rejected and felt deeply distrustful of heterosexuality as an identity; I didn't want to be that type of black woman. But thinking back on media and the images of black women I did see...my parents had Ebony and Essence magazines in the house and the black women that I did see were high femme and there were no gradients of black sexuality or eroticism. I was working with a very one-dimensional look of black femininity and it made me question my own desirability in black spaces. In addition to making me apprehensive or feeling like the stakes were really high before I even ventured into these black female friendships, I think I sequestered myself away from black desirability as a whole because I didn't know how expansive that could be.

Essence: Because of white supremacy.

Chinwe: Totally.

Essence: Circling back to the idea of survival is the process of getting there, right? Reconstituting and re-negotiating our own sense of desire and intimacy is deeply embedded in the sort of anti-black, colonial framework. And that feeling ostracized from the black representational landscape of belonging. Our big three- Ebony, Essence, and Jet –are bound to their particular historical moments, class proprietary, and desirability politics (though Ebony has really moved in its scope with its online editorial work). For them, you were gonna see what you're gonna see because it really is what it is. So you're not going to get that diversity and range of black life(s) you may really crave and/or need on the page and when you're in other types of spaces with limited amounts of an accessible array of black people you can really feel like the odd person out. That these black people belong to each other and the only people who seemingly accept, in relation to my non-belonging, are white folks. It can feel that way often. And as you grow and stretch you begin to grapple with the reason why you think you don't belong to those people or that there's some other sort of limited frame of what blackness can be is because of white people and white supremacy. Though white supremacy has a life outside of white people and it also has a life deeply entangled with white folks and it's such a mind fuck to think about white harbor and the tax of blackness. It all can feel like the scab, wound, and ointment at the same time.

Chinwe: Abject beings. Just holding it all. But still, In all of that, ultimately we are surviving. So, to move from vulnerability and to think about intimacy in relationship to survival. What's the tool, the weapon, that is is integral to preserving black women in all of this?

Essence: I think gossip is huge! I think gossip is the Queen Bee of survival and thriving.

Chinwe: Why?

Essence: Because it is a network of knowledge production that has nothing to do with epistemologies of The West, it's not about the written word, citationality, nor sourcing knowledge by cis men and white folks. Gossip is about people being on the phone, especially growing up with my grandma with her three hours of the day dedicated to talking to her friends about the workings of their days and world.

Chinwe: My mom too! She's on the phone all the time.

Essence: Oh yea, I FaceTime Adee almost every morning. Gossip is how we create a literal network of underground knowledge production. Though gossip has a very negative, wicked cogitation I say Nah to all that. That talking network is often how we know about folks being predatory, about the actions of those who will not be persecuted, about the lives of the non-believed. From fucked up family members to business, seemingly allies, and friends gossip can inform us.

Chinwe: Like, "that family member fucked up and we don't go to their house and you need to know why."

Essence: Yea. I think that's black womxn knowledge production space. And I think that the way that we demonize it is actually because it's a black womxn knowledge production space.  I think it stands outside of regulation from cis men and white folks and negates their framework of correctness. It's how we get to and come to know things and I think that that is all about fucking survival.

I can go online and find someone to do my hair. I can, and do, go on Yelp or Google or whatever but the stories, experiences, and care I am looking for are generally not there.  What I need is someone to tell me their inner thoughts about their experience getting their hair done. Like, they ordered food and didn't ask me if I wanted to get something dropped off. Or I sat down in the chair and had to wait two hours until they touched my head. Or I was there from 8:00 AM to 8:00 PM. Experiences which may or may not be on those sites around business which often do not appear in my search engine or do without the population I want to hear from and trust the critiques and/or praise. Gossip, of course, is more than this and can be problematic AF but also I feel like it is a key principle.  

What's a key space for vulnerability, intimacy, and survival for black womxn for you?

Chinwe: I think honesty. Something I'm finding, and it kind of ties into what you're saying about gossip, talking, being truthful, and getting at that truth is that I find myself in these circumstances were many months after an altercation or an awkward circumstance, I sit down and I have a conversation with someone where I'm like "you know, I didn't say this three months ago when this person was being fucked up, but this person was being fucked up and this is how it went down" and they're like, "my God, my experience with this person was that they were fucked up and I didn't want to say anything." And thinking about white supremacy and the way that black womxn are silenced all the time, I think it's really important for our survival to be vocal, especially with each other because of the ways in which black womxn take care of each other and have the capacity to take care of each other. I don't know if honesty is the most comprehensive term to describe what I'm getting at, but that's the meat of it. Really it's impossible to know how to take care of someone unless you know what's really going on. There are multiple times I think back on and I wish I would have said to a friend, "Yo, this happened and or is happening to me."

Essence: But you have to be trusting and knowing that someone can hold that for you.

Chinwe: Totally. Not everybody can and not everyone will. And really the only way to discover that is to be vulnerable with people.

Essence: And I think that's really hard. When the world tells you that you cannot hold that space for yourself. That what's happening to you isn't really happening to you and I think because a lot of people, Queer folks and non-queer people who have relationships with men, and I mean the spectrum of manhood quite seriously, that are deeply troubling and fucked up. That people sustain and get told to sustain a lot of abuse or told it didn't happen to them or it doesn't matter. So then you're like, okay, I don't want to have my ass out here without support or protection, especially in relation to someone who may have social capital or general admiration who is the one inflicting this pain. So you weather it and you see if there are people you can trust and at some point you can share something and someone may be like "that happened to me" and you realize there's this whole network, often underground, of people who have been fucked by this person or fucked with by this person or dealt with something really similar.

But it's hard. It's hard to be like vulnerable because rejection is possible and the stakes are high. And I think like that little cycling back and forth, it's just kind of like a daily act, you know, some people are in your corner one day and they might not be the next. A lot of people don't have the capacity or faculty to be in your corner even if they might want to and that's really real. But the little networks that we have, I do really believe in because it's such a presence in my life and how I got to grow up. These are kin networks who are taking care of each other. And that feels like an underground network of maintaining black girlhood and womxnhood as something precious, worthwhile and something that can survive, thriving maybe, but certainly, survive. And maybe, I guess, they expected us to thrive at some point, which is why they sent folks to these public schools and not these other ones. Why they relied on these forums, particular spaces, and enterprises. Why this person is going to pick you up and do this, that, and the third so that hopefully, your life is a little bit better. In reality that's why we're all here, in particular, I'm thinking of those with enslaved black ancestry. You only exist because someone had the capacity to imagine that maybe it would be different. Unfortunately, slavery and its afterlife is a wake of many sorts (shout out to Kristina Shape) is the name of the game and the West doesn't really play about that but that sensibility is also why we're here. It's pretty terrifying.

Chinwe: Terrifying. And it's a weird thing to be grateful of your existence because of a past (present) terrible reality or the capacity of your will to endure because it was severely tested.

Essence: Because the reality is people killed themselves who were enslaved, people killed their children who were enslaved. People do and did all kinds of things. Because the resounding "no!" which recognized death at all sides also looked like folks refusing their materiality and imagining that someone else, this next child, perhaps wouldn't know this death. Right or wrong, living death or ending death via death there was a "doing" happening. And some way somehow black people are here.

Chinwe: Goddamn, we really are here. Anything else on your mind?

Essence: Gossip. I love talking on the phone, I think it's fantastic.

Essence Harden is an independent curator, writer, and Ph.D candidate located in Los Angeles. Essence’s mind wonders towards black California, art as geography, and collaborative blackspace making. She continues to have an interdisciplinary art practice and recently designed a pair of shoes for Everybody World.

Chinwe Okona is a multimedia artist/photographer/writer and MBA candidate based out of Los Angeles. Her work focuses on themes of black identity, nostalgia, and forgiveness as an attempt to archive narratives documenting personal existence. In 2016, she founded PALMSS Magazine, an annual anthology of creative people of color and their work.

[the-penance-and-the-patience]

Getting to know my compassionate self and how it’s helping my recovery

Essentially when I think to as far back as I can remember, caring too much has almost always ended badly for me. Why the fuck would I want to nurture a part of me that always ended in profoundly intense and downright uncomfortable pain?

When I was little, during those CRUCIAL and FORMATIVE years of developing a sense of self, I cared a whole lot about what my sister thought. She was older and extremely cool so this was natural for a kid. However it ended in me never wearing what I wanted, being told it was too boyish and ugly, never doing dumb kid things on holidays because she wanted to kiss boys. Her opinion was of paramount importance, she was older, she knew better, right? 

Growing into pre-teen hood, I cared a whole lot about my parents wellbeing under the stress of my sister’s misbehaviour. I voluntarily suppressed and rebellion within me so they would be okay, I love my parents more than anyone in my life. I could not see them go through that twice. I helped them not worry about me by being the perfect student and daughter which at that point was very easy and natural. I didn’t realise I wasn’t listening to myself and my needs, not being compassionate to my desires. 

Caring probably too much about my first boyfriend meant “seeing him for his heart made of gold”..... I.e forgoing the acts of cheating and lying thinking that it was normal and fine and he was still a beautiful person whom I loved dearly. 

Caring a whole lot about teacher’s opinions in high school meant being that “tick-in-the-box” kinda student, where I managed to do everything right and succeed at school but never celebrate it in fear of coming across as too proud or too bashful. Always be humble. 

However at that point, caring so so much about all of the above never got me anywhere. I didn’t know that this was because I was forgoing caring about myself at the same time... I guess I just didn’t know how. I dunno. There’s no real explaining why it happened. However, caring about my sister’s opinions made me really damn sad at that age. I didn’t know that I could still do it anyway and be fine, she was my world. Caring about my parents being okay meant not fucking up much as a kid. I didn’t realise that oh yeah, my parents actually are superhuman and probably could have dealt with my fuck ups too. Caring about my boyfriend as much as I did much meant crying days on end. I didn’t know that I could function without him, I thought no one else was capable of loving me. Caring about school so much meant I literally had no fucking social life at all.... My brain just didn’t know balance or not giving a fuck and all those back doors that get you into uni degrees. So naturally, my entire being stopped caring and gave up on me.

I can’t quite pinpoint exactly when or how this happened. But I know it was around the age of turning 18. I wanted to lose weight for me, for no one else, I thought fuck all of you. This is something I want for ME. But very quickly I realised that through caring too much about others and their opinions, meant I didn’t know how to care about myself or how to treat my body with the compassion it deserved. Losing weight became about proving a point to the people who hurt me, I didn’t know forgiveness, it became another tick in the box. So I did it and I did it well, like fucking everything else. That was until it got out of control and took a hold of me. Before I knew it I was binging and purging in the form of over-exercise and my life was spiralling out of control, it was a complete out-of-body horror-show that fucked me up real hard guys, real real hard.

I put on a stack of weight, unable to counteract the bingeing. This was when I was slapped powerfully, with undeniable vigour across the face with my inability to delineate between what people thought of me and what I thought of myself. They were inseparable and this was very very, very bad. I couldn’t leave my room. I didn’t deserve to, I thought. Everyone would see what a mess I’d become. Do I even deserve to live in this world? I’m a burden on everyone around me. Society won’t accept me like this. I am an incapable lump consumed by how I look and other people’s opinions. 

I was diagnosed with my eating disorder and severe depression and that was kind of the beginning of me forcefully getting to know myself. Basically if I didn’t it was made very damn clear that I would never get out of this hole. It was either recovery or suicide to be completely honest. Luckily, there was a very teeny part of me (buried somewhere very deep and covered in layers and layers and layers of emotional walls built) that knew I had more to live for. 

That brings me here, 3.5 years after being diagnosed. I’m in “recovery” sure, but fuck. It’s still a journey everyday, and a conscious decision to respect my inner-most self. To really, really listen, no matter how faint it can be sometimes. No matter how much easier it often is to pretend I’m not still hurting and to just ignore that I have needs unique to me that need to be addressed. No matter how much easier it feels to conform to what society wants me to be and do. I mean I was socialised to do this after all, just like everyone else, I didn’t know it was going to have consequences. For so many people, they get to be what society wants and it just has no consequence. They succeed at becoming the stock image. They fit the mould. They go through life with not a whole lot of turmoil and don’t have to learn these lessons. That’s just life. I don’t hold resentment toward these people anymore. It just is. But for whatever reason, I got chosen to have my own personal early life crisis and I’m no longer able to not listen to my body. I’m no longer able to ignore my needs because if I do I end up back in a hole. A dark hole where suicide becomes a deliciously sweet alternative to waking up another day. 

And it’s because of all of that that I’ve come to the wholehearted opinion that this disorder is the best and worst thing that has ever happened to me. 

I know who I am right now in this moment. After three years of therapy I also know that this changes every single day and that that’s completely fine. The universe has a profound plan for me and if I try and control that, I’ll end up frustrated as all hell and upset that it’s not happening the way I want. I’ll also end up unwell again. Go with the flow kids. Controlling every little thing is unsustainable. It just is. 

I’ve learnt some of my passions. I’ve learnt that I will forever love expressing myself through the written word. I’ve realised a passion for education and am now pursuing a career in it. With no strict deadline or end goal, mind you, making whatever happens in the meantime much much easier to deal with. The universe has its own plan remember! I’ve also realised a love for moving my body to music that I spiritually and physically connect to. It is here that I feel pure, uninhibited elation, preferably barefoot. I can connect to the energy beneath my feet that mother earth shoots directly into my soul, I become one with the music and the movement of my body becomes unencumbered by thought. One day I hope to channel this insane love for music into learning an instrument as well, creating my own rhythms and beats, a musical manifestation of the insanity that is my mind. 

As mentioned in the headline. I’ve also, above all, learnt a whole fucking lot about what a compassionate person I am, that I care. I care a lot. I care about everyone. I care about all life forms and what I’ve been through has shown me if nothing else that no person or living thing, no matter what a seemingly perfect life they might have, is indestructible. It’s opened my eyes to the reality of others’ suffering and my own. I feel pain deeply and intensely. I’m sure everyone does when they really get to know themselves, but what came with this feeling was also training myself to understand that feeling pain is not bad nor good, it’s life. It was this lesson particularly that has allowed me to be okay with caring so much. Before, when I felt pain as a reciprocation of caring so much, I wanted to fuck it right off. Now when I feel pain I acknowledge that this makes me more truthfully and unashamedly human than anything else. When I let the feeling overwhelm me as it should, I know exactly where it resides and this can be different for everyone. It conjures deep within my chest, and I have to consciously recognise and connect with this in order to let it be and do its thing. I know it will eventually subside. Truly connecting with this pain has helped me realise the capacity for empathy in ALL beings, if only we truly connect. This is an ongoing practice for me. Time and time again I want to squander this feeling with self-destructive behaviours, but I need you to hear me when I say that letting it wash over you and do what it needs is more satisfying than any coping mechanism out there.

This battle has thus shown me that no life form is better than any other life form and to progress as a race we need to understand that. We are all susceptible to pain and suffering and the more we realise this about one another, the closer we will come to finding harmony and oneness. But unfortunately on the flip side of this, I’ve also come to realise that until intense pain and suffering is realised, it is near impossible to empathise with another’s. 

As mentioned, my chosen method of self-destruction is food. I would shove excessive amounts of it into my body, knowing full well how it would make me feel after. Goddamn awful. And it was always the same foods, you know the ones, they elicit that artificial high that makes you feel better for a little while, just like a drug, in order to squander pain. Or these kinds of food just make you feel bloated and generally awful. Interesting. In the process of truly getting to know myself I found ways to obtain a natural high away from food. Did I need these foods at all now I was discovering healthy coping methods? I began tentatively looking into what I was eating, taking note of how it made me feel. I would still binge, but be more observant about it. I began thinking about my new friend compassion, the compassion I have for all life forms, the compassion I was starting to feel for myself.... 

Then one day, it all culminated into one profound realisation. It wasn’t random. Everything I’d learnt led me there. In order to truly connect with my inner-most wants and needs and feel more established natural highs, derived from a satisfied soul, I needed to fuel my body with foods that will not inhibit such a connection. If I take an animal’s pain and suffering for example and ingest it into my body each day...  Well firstly this is normal. I was socialised to eat animals. Then I learnt how addictive it is, providing my body an with an artificial high when ingested in large amounts. On my journey towards empathy and compassion this began to feel immoral, disgusting as I began to come to terms with the pain and suffering these animals go through... For the sake of human entertainment/satisfaction/taste buds. But surely some of these animals have been treated okay? That’s why I started off vegetarian. Also because of course I worried that I wouldn’t eat enough and inevitably binge. I went and saw my dietician and explained that my journey had led me here and that I wanted to make the choice but at the hands of a professional. She helped me and already I noticed a difference within a week. It was like my body was giving me a hug, acknowledging how much kinder I was suddenly being.

This went on for around three months. I was still eating dairy etc. Then came the natural progression to learning about veganism. Why did I think dairy was still ok? The more I researched the more I realised that if anything, dairy was probably the least okay. But how did I know this would not just become another obsession used to control everything? Would I end use this to lose weight? I asked myself these questions truly and deeply before coming to my decision. I had to know that this was a choice made out of compassion for all living souls, despite differing intelligences allowing some lives to exploit others. No one should have to endure excessive pain and suffering. This was why. I care. I unashamedly care about these lives, this was not about my own self-destruction and deprivation. 

But look at what I’ve learnt. I can get natural highs. I don’t need that lethal combination of dairy and sugar or the ingestion of pain and suffering via animal products. I’ve learnt what an insanely truthful, soulful and spiritual connection I now have to my body that is my vessel. Now that it’s been rid of the animal products ingested and consequently their immense trauma experienced before death, I have access to a part of myself I never did before. This cannot be a coincidence.   

I can’t help but feel like everything i’ve been through has led me here. I cannot stress to any eating disorder sufferers out there how much this is NOT about weight. Heck I will be a fat vegan for all I care. This is about connecting to my inner-most self in a way that nourishes my body instead of destroying it. This is about respecting the rights of all life forms to live and exist just as we do. No living vertebrae is better than any other. If our world and our human existence is to be compatible with the extraordinary wonders of the planet earth we need to exist harmoniously. The agriculture industry is LITERALLY taking over our planet, destroying our oceans. I’m not gonna get preachy about that shit but please go and educate yourself... Watch Cowspiracy, watch Earthlings, these documentaries expose the reality of our world. We need to eliminate this huge disconnect between the meat in our supermarkets/fast food chains and the beautiful animals and lives that are destroyed in order to get them there. It is the same life. Just packaged and advertised in a way that makes you forget. 

This is where I’m at. I’m not perfect. But this is my choice, to honour and respect myself and every living soul as best I can through education and through knowledge. Love, compassion and understanding, please lets connect again. 

[robcarson]

Corporate Training and Motivational Development

What does Kolovou discuss and/or demonstrate that you could have applied to improve your presentations during this course?

I am a mobile speaker. It takes a deep level of concentration and self-control to minimize my natural inclination to walk around the room when I talk. According to Kolovou (2014), “Professional speakers often refer to the speaker’s triangle, a movement space that allows them to walk and plant while making important points” (Smart use of space, 2:45). Because my video was framed in a manner to only show me from my elbows up, I could have placed a small rug on the floor without anyone noticing. The rug could serve as the physical embodiment of the speaker’s triangle. As long as I am conscious of my position on the rug, I could be confident that my body will not become a distraction.

Because I know that I like to move around when I speak, I imagined an invisible bubble what isolated my hand movements.  This allowed me to use my hands in a natural manner that would not intrude on my graphics. According to Kolovou (2014), “Just don't be like some speakers I have seen who constantly wave their hands in the air as if they're parking a plane on the tarmac” (Gestures that engage, 0:21). I do not feel like I over use my hand gestures; however, I can get overenthusiastic and moves my hands into an area that blocks the graphic without realizing what I have done until after the fact. When I recorded my video, I had a general idea of the final product, but I was not sure how my vision would look in reality. If I were to reshoot my video, my knowledge how my graphics are placed would inspire me to interact with them more through the use of my hands.

Peers have told me that I am at my best as a speaker when I improvise. I memorized specific story points in advance but I did not memorize all of the specifications of the cars. As an aid, I wrote what I needed for each car on a portable white board which I placed next to the camera. This resulted in occasional glances off camera which I am not proud of in my video. According to Kolovou (2014), “For you, as a speaker, eye contact is your most powerful non-verbal” (Strategic eye contact, 2:18). Now that I have more experience, I am confident enough to know that I can record the story sections and the specifications separately. My skills are good enough to splice the separate sections together seamlessly. This would drastically improve my video because I use a full screen graphic when I discuss the specifications; therefore, there is no reason for me to look off camera. I can just read a sheet of paper in my hand because you cannot see me. This would improve my eye contact which would improve my non-verbal communication.

My script is strong but there is always room for improvement. The median age of the people in the Seaside community is slightly older than me which implies that we are likely to be going through similar things in our lives. This inspired me to talk about my children and how my needs have changed as my kids moved out of the house. According to Kolovou (2014), “In order to follow logical appeal, I invite you to always connect the dots that thread from the opening back to the close” (Opening and closing strongly, 0:14). I mention my family several times in the beginning but I think that reminding my audience why these cars appeal to my needs as a family man at the end could strengthen my closing statement.

Referring to the readings from your books, what key factors would the graphics in your presentations address in communicating the data/information effectively?

I only have three minutes to convey my message to the Seaside community. In order for me to work within those parameters, I segmented the graphics to emphasize my points.  According to Peters (2014), “Instructional designers are well acquainted with the notion of segmenting, or chunking, the idea that learning content should be broken into manageable parts that the learner can process one at a time” (Strategies to promote visual learning, para. 8). When I talk about my children. I display images of my children. When I talk about my old van, I show the audience a picture of a van. When I talk about my children’s soccer practice, I put a soccer ball on the screen. This helps the audience visualize my points in an engaging manner.

There are 23 images in my 2:59 presentation. That averages out to one image for every eight seconds. The high use of imagery is intended to produce an energetic presentation. The story of my family is designed to create empathy. According to Clark and Mayer, “Since workforce learning topics often tend to be dry, adding interesting stories and visuals may appeal to the younger generation raised on high-end media” (Clark & Mayer, 2012, p. 316). My story alone is designed to connect me with people my age. I use my story as a family man in conjunction with strategic imagery to appeal to the younger generation. The end result is a presentation that can appeal to a mass audience.

When I began planning the layout of my video, I knew that I wanted a graphic that provides the specifications of the cars. The graphics that I created turned out so nice that I wanted to highlight them by using them as full screen images. This meant that I would have to use audio over the image to ensure that my message was clear. According to Clark and Mayer, “When pictures are explained by words in audio format, the information is divided between the audio and the visual channels of working memory and in that way optimizes the capacity limits of working memory” (Clark & Mayer, 2012, p. 317). The full screen looks great and the audio narration eases the cognitive load of my audience so that they can relax and envision themselves driving a nice new car.

List at least 3 main takeaways from this course and how they may apply to your long-term goals. How will you use what you have learned in this course in your work as an instructional designer?

When I began this project, I had no experience in any capacity with creating a green screen video. My lack of knowledge motivated me to slow down and focus on the individual tasks so that I can try to absorb all of the new information. In the end, I survived. Green screen videos are awesome. The experience that I gained this month through slow practice will stay with me forever. One aspect of my current position requires me to create training materials that veterans can use at their own leisure. Green screen videos are perfect for self-study. My ultimate goal is to become a college professor, and green screen videos will help me create engaging lessons for potential online study assignments.

I used Adobe Premiere to create my video. Over the last three weeks, I have recreated my entire video countless times when I needed to update something. The reasoning behind this was to gain additional experience with the product. As a result, my confidence with editing a video on Adobe Premiere is very high now that I have created several versions of the same video. Adobe Premiere is great for green screen but it has other uses as well. Once a year, my colleagues and I create a massive PowerPoint presentation that we provide to our entire department. I now have the skill level to where I can upload a recorded version of my presentation and toggle the visuals back and forth between the speaker and full screen images of the slides. I can also use this in the long term to turn lectures into engaging videos with intriguing visuals.

While this was my first time recording a green screen video, it was also my first time creating a video with lighting as a key factor. I have created several GoToTraining sessions for my department but lighting was never a consideration. I guess that it is one of those things that you do not think about until you see the difference that quality lighting makes. My professional goals current and future, will require the creation of countless video lessons. The lighting experience and knowledge that I gained this moth will improve all of my future projects.

References

Clark, R.C., & Mayer, R. E. (2012). Using rich media wisely. In R. A. Reiser, & J. V. Dempsey (Eds.), Trends and issues in instructional design and technology (3rd ed.) (pp. 309-320). Boston, MA: Pearson

Kolovou, T. (2014, May 12). Presentation Fundamentals[Lynda.com online course]. Retrieved from http://www.lynda.com/tutorial/151544?org=fullsail.edu

Peters, D. (2014). Interface design for learning: Design strategies for learning experiences. San Francisco, CA: New Riders. Retrieved from http://ce.safaribooksonline.com/book/web-design-and-development/9780133365481