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hoe-doroki · 4 years ago

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ana’s bnha x reader masterlist

first updated 11.17.20 last updated 07.13.21 desktop version found here bkdk masterlist: desktop | mobile

fics [38] drabbles [13]

Thanks for dropping by! I want to note that I no longer write x reader and instead am writing bakudeku shipfic. So! By all means, read, like, comment on my fics here! But I can't recommend that you follow me unless you like bakudeku. Hope you enjoy your time here regardless! <3

legend:

character x character

Title w/ link | [rating] | word count | genre

Synopsis

ratings are bracketed: e.g. [g], [t], [m], [e]

[g] - appropriate for general audiences [t] - appropriate for audiences 13+ [m] - contains non-graphic adult themes [e] - explicit, 18+ readers only

🌸 = personal faves

characters x reader: no ship (1), aizawa (2), bakugou (12), endeavor (1), iida (2), kaminari (1), kirishima (4), midoriya (7), shinsou (2), todoroki (19)

Everything is in alphabetical order <3

no ship

2020 Election Night Comfort | [g] | 0.6k | hurt/comfort

The results are in and your class is all with you as you process the results

aizawa x reader

Stress Relief | [e] | 3k | smut

There's a new regulation that forces you to take an extra class before you can graduate college. When you learn that Eraserhead is teaching the class, you’re a little more interested.

2020 Election Night Comfort | [g] | 0.6k | hurt/comfort

Aizawa reminds that you were prepared for this and, together, you can handle it.

bakugou x reader

Can’t Find My Breath | [e] | 4.2k | smut 🌸

At the beginning of the day, Ground Zero was just another hero you wrote articles about. Now it’s nighttime and you’ve just left a bar together. Companion to The Rest with No Sound

Christmas Cold | [g] | 1k | fluff

You and Katsuki manage to make it to your parents' house for the holidays, but you've come down with a little cold.

Doing Something Right | [e] | 1.8k | smut

You’re pregnant and happily enjoying domestic bliss when Katsuki comes in, unable to resist you.

Frustration | [e] | 3.1k | smut

request. After a long day of work, Katsuki comes home frustrated and you, suffering from a different kind of frustration yourself, know exactly what will help you both.

Gorgeous | [e] | 1.5k | smut, hurt/comfort

ask. When you have a negative response to Katsuki touching you in a moment of insecurity, he intends to do whatever he can to alleviate your fears.

version 1: petite reader

version 2: curvy reader

Magic | [e] | 2.2k | smut

request. Katsuki comes home early and catches you...taking care of yourself.

Miniskirts | [e] | 0.8k | smut 🌸

After a long day, Katsuki takes a shower and his thoughts turn to you.

On the Job | [e] | 4.5k | smut 🌸

Super human society has a secret. Aphrodisiac quirks aren’t just of porn and fantasy--they’re common and too often fall into the wrong hands. When heroes get hit, someone has to be able to activate the quirk’s release condition. If they’re single, who might that someone be?

You.

The Rest with No Sound | [t] | 8.5k | slow burn, fluff 🌸

Bakugou thinks that people who wake up not remembering where they are are idiots. This is confirmed when it happens to him, head aching from a night of drinking. Idiot. But when he looks over, and sees you there, he realizes he doesn’t remember anything. So he has to gather the scattered pieces from the day before to figure out exactly how he ended up with you. Companion to Can’t Find My Breath

Stay | [g] | 2.2k | hurt/comfort 🌸

ask. The last thing you want to do on a rough day is worry Bakugou with your problems. So you try to hide it. You should have known better.

Steamy | [e] | 2.7k | smut

request. You're a pro hero, rising in the ranks and, happy though he is for you, Katsuki's old jealousy begins to roil. After you've been paraded around all evening as one of Japan's finest, Katsuki finds himself feeling more than a little possessive, and can't help himself from taking you as his.

Steel and Lace | [e] | 3.8k | smut

The only one who manages to get Bakugou’s birthday right is you.

endeavor x reader

When the Smoke Clears | [e] | 17.4k | slow burn, smut

Soulmate AU. After his battle with Hawks against Hood, Endeavor wakes up in the hospital to find that a young doctor saved his life, their quirk being able to counteract the negative effects of his own. His first thought is that he has to talk to you–you might be able to fix the drawbacks of his quirk. His second thought is oh no, not again.

iida x reader

Broken Glass | [g] | 1.8k | fluff, mild comfort

request. In a quirk-related accident you find yourself surrounded by shattered glass. Worst of all, most of that glass is from every single pair of your boyfriend’s glasses.

Flotsam, Jetsam, Lagan, and Derelict | [g] | 1.5k | hurt/comfort

ask. Trying to hide a panic attack from your boyfriend isn’t easy when he’s right next to you. But you’re determined to suffer alone.

kaminari x reader

2020 Election Night Comfort | [g] | 0.4k | hurt/comfort

You share your unsteady hope with Kaminari.

kirishima x reader

Silhouette | [e] | 1.8k | smut, hurt/comfort

ask. Before a gala, you’re stuck in the mirror, caught on all your old body insecurities. Kiri comes in and loves you regardless.

version 1: petite reader

version 2: curvy reader

We’ll See | [g] | 6.3k | gen, light romance 🌸

demisexual!Reader. After a fateful meeting, you and Kirishima keep running into each other. And although he’s so nice, you fear the fact that he might be interested in you. Even though all you want is, for once, to let yourself be happy and maybe fall in love, you can’t seem to be able to.

What We Look For | [t] | 15.5 | slow burn

Last time, you and Kirishima became friends—nothing more, nothing less. The idea of being something more sounds nice. But you can’t. You just can’t. So you won’t. Whatever happens will be on your own terms. Sequel to We'll See

2020 Election Night Comfort | [g] | 0.4k | hurt/comfort

Kirishima freaks out while you experience a numb calm. You meet in the middle.

midoriya x reader

Bad Days | [g] | 1.4k | hurt/comfort

Izuku helps you get out of bed.

Sunlight | [e] | 2.1k | smut 🌸

request. An early afternoon in bed with your husband, Izuku.

Surprised, Just Once | [e] | 5k | smut

request. You were planning on just another predictable night out with the girls. What you got was much, much more.

2020 Election Night Comfort | [g] | 0.3k | hurt/comfort

Izuku holds you close while you watch the results.

Multiple unrelated oneshots with Deku with an s/o with an eating disorder | ask

Gratitude | [t] | 1.4k | hurt/comfort

After having been with Izuku a while, you’re suffering a relapse and he helps you through with some gratitude practices on date night.

Picnic | [t] | 1.8k | hurt/comfort

Izuku surprises you with a picnic on your second date, much to your horror.

A Start | [t] | 1.2k | hurt/comfort 🌸

You ask Izuku for help when you realize you need it.

Trust Yourself | [t] | 2.3k | hurt/comfort

Shortly after moving in together, Izuku learns of your struggles and tries his best to comfort and encourage you.

shinsou x reader

Passing the Night Stars | [g] | 3.2k | hurt/comfort

The party was neon and you needed darkness.

2020 Election Night Comfort | [g] | 0.4k | hurt/comfort

Shinsou helps you prioritize yourself.

todoroki x reader

All Dressed Up | [e] | 4.6k | smut 🌸

quarantine fic. It’s been months since you’ve dressed up, felt pretty, and felt seen by anyone. Your husband’s birthday is a perfect excuse to get all dressed up. And then take it right off.

All the Wasted Time | [e] | 3.2k | smut, fluff

Three months ago, you’d been ripped from Shouto’s side with something less than a love confession, something more than a show of feelings. Now that you’re back, you’re eager to make up for lost time. Siberia sequel, First Snow prequel

Bad Days | [g] | 0.9k | hurt/comfort 🌸

Shouto comforts you when your demons arrive unexpectedly.

First Snow | [g] | 2.2k | fluff

A year after the events in Siberia, you and Shouto are happily together, and it’s the first snow of the year. Siberia and All the Wasted Time sequel

On the Job | [e] | 3.4k | smut 🌸

You. Sequel to On the Job (Bakugou); can be read alone

Siberia | [e] | 13.8k | pining/angst, smut, fluff 🌸

On the field, you and Todoroki are rising stars amongst hero pairings. Off the field…you’re kind of in love with him. After a successful capture, you’re boss brings you in to let you know you’re being sent on assignment in foreign country…alone. Before you leave, you have to act. You’re not partners anymore, after all. And with a little liquid courage you do. Then, the next morning, you still have to leave. All the Wasted Time and First Snow prequel.

Worth it | [t] | 0.3k | gen

The morning after with your boyfriend, Shouto.

2021 Election Night Comfort | [g] | 0.5k | hurt/comfort

The stress of election day comes back swiftly during the Georgia runoff and Todoroki’s quick to notice.

all works below are within the world of the a spare heart series:

A series about a fem, American reader who had to transfer to U.A. partway through second year. You’re there to become a hero, that much is obvious, but why else did you come? And, more importantly, what—or who—makes you stay?

timeline

may, year two:

- reader finishes junior year of American high school early

- reader transfers to u.a. from the united states

The Meeting | [g] | 0.1k | gen

Reader meets Tokoyami for the first time. Sequel to first impressions from my wip list

Hollow Victory | [g] | 9.6k | gen, action

chapter 1 | chapter 2

You transferred to U.A. from America two weeks ago. No one has found out your quirk yet. Today, they’re going be meeting it head on and you have the advantage: surprise.

june, year two:

Illiterate | [g] | 2.1k | fluff, comfort

Being unable to read Japanese makes you feel so stupid. And who comes into the common room after midnight just as you’re about to cry? The boy who hasn’t spoken to you in three weeks.

sequels

The Offering | [g] | 0.4k | fluff, gen.

The Mission (Shouto POV) | [g] | 0.3k | fluff, gen., silly

september, year two:

Impetus | [g] | 2.1k | friendship

Ever since Shinsou found out what your quirk was, the two of you have been each other’s best friends and confidantes. But when he turns a casual training session into a tease over your supposed crush on someone in your class, that trust might just break.

january, year two:

This Clock Never Seemed So Alive | [g] | 1.2k | fluff, comfort

You and your boyfriend, Shouto, always walk to class together, but today you haven’t yet left your dorm. When he checks on you, he finds you awake, but curled on your side, suffering from period cramps.

sequels

The Questions (drabble) | [g] | 0.1k | gen.

The Sweetness (double drabble) | [g] | 0.2k | fluff, comfort

february, year three:

Between Fear and Guilt | [t] | 2.5k | light angst, comfort

You and Shouto only started being intimate a couple months back, but you’re already experiencing a dry spell. Today you’re going to figure out what’s up with your boyfriend once and for all.

fifteen years after graduation

Something Perfect | [e] | 3.7k | smut, fluff

After years of questioning if Shouto would ever want children, he’s finally decided that he really does. Overjoyed, the two of you decide to get started.

#bnha x reader #mha x reader #bnha #mha #todoroki x reader #bakugou x reader #bakugo x reader #deku x reader #iida x reader #ida x reader #kirishima x reader #aizawa x reader #shinsou x reader #endeavor x reader

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hvlfwygod · 4 years ago

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know your strength, part 2 | patrick & ben

tw: idk it’s a little intense

June 20

When he opened the door, his father was on the other side.

Very creative, he thought, or said. So the dream skipped a few minutes and got right to the point. Despite himself, his heart started beating faster, faster, and he closed his eyes, but this was a nightmare so he saw it all happening anyway.

I’m not going to give you the satisfaction, he said, or thought, just as the door slammed in his face again and the dark started to suffocate him. Whatever you want, I’m not doing it.

I’m just happy to know you’re stuck here. The voice sounded muffled, far away, and then footsteps retreated, leaving him there.

His heart was still racing when he woke up.

—

A small canvas, coated in blacks, grays, browns. Dark reds. Jagged bursts of white.

His stomach curled, threatening to eat itself.

His head hurt, hurt, hurt.

The figure in the doorway stood like a menace, face blurred because his fingers would not stop trembling.

Patrick hadn’t slept so much in months, and the inspiration was spilling out of him. He woke up in the middle of the night and finally knew how to finish the painting. His throat burned, he wanted to be high and far away, anchored only by his frenetic brushstrokes. This scene was not his mind, but it was shaped like his nonetheless. All quaking lines and consuming shadows. It was hungry and aching, just like him.

His leg bounced, shaking his easel.

He felt like shit.

But he was nearly done. Withdrawal was a bitch and lasting long, long, but he’d be out of the woods soon. Soon. Focusing on creating let him shut out the rest.

June 21

Constant nightmares were not new to him. He could handle them, especially since he knew why they were happening. There was no monster waiting for him when he closed his eyes.

Still.

He knew how to function on little to no sleep. And he’d started napping, snatching a few hours of peaceful, quiet rest.

Still.

He was sure that the point was to break him. Make him tell someone, or beg for it to stop, or grovel and apologize. He wouldn’t. He could endure more than most.

Still. Still. Still.

Ben kept waiting for his mother to come, but she must have had better things to do.

June 22

When the painting was done, he set it to dry, then scoured his kitchen. Left his roommate a sloppy apology note. Ate until the hunger pangs stopped.

His head was clearer now, and he thought about his knife.

Patrick would never tire of his nightmares. He reveled in them, came alive when he had them. He’d never stop relying on them first, always.

Still, a push might be nice.

Hence the painting. And the knife. (An impulsive purchase, back when he could make those.)

He hadn’t really had a plan when he started this. All he wanted to do at first was attack, to indulge his powers. But now that days had circled by and Patrick had circled deeper into a hellish sobriety, he wanted more. He wanted to see Ben’s face.

Patrick found it on his shelves. He watched the blade spill into shape, roll back, spill again. Roll back, again. Spill.

He really felt like shit.

Patrick hadn’t slept so much in months, but he slept anyway, because the other option was to think and think and think and think about little pills, little tabs, little piles of powder.

—

Ben didn’t try unpinning himself from under the beast— he knew in this version of events no one came to save him. But he did look it in the face. How much longer until you get bored?

Never, it answered, showing off its teeth. Are you? I can make things worse. I love a challenge.

Ben felt the ground move. A hand emerged from underneath him and rested on his forehead. It pulled him down, down. He didn’t flinch, even as his chest tightened up. Whatever you do, it won’t work.

The monster made a low, growling noise, but it sounded amused. It will work on someone else, I’m sure. You have a roommate? I noticed on my walk in.

Ben did not answer, which felt like a defeat. Another hand snaked around his arm, his leg, hugged his torso from below. Because this was a nightmare he knew he was going somewhere worse. The beast hummed again, the noise huge and deep.

I won’t, I won’t. As long as you meet me tomorrow. I have a gift for you.

June 23

For how excited he was, it was hard to get out of bed. His head felt as though it was trying to detach itself from his body.

Patrick felt almost delirious from the pain exploding out of his skull. Had withdrawal been this bad last time?

It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter. He found something that resembled a painkiller, drank water straight from the faucet. He felt like complete shit, but it didn’t matter. He had somewhere to be.

—

Every morning since this started, he woke up angry. Today was no different.

Ben considered the candle, still in the same place on his dresser. Unlit, and no offering beside it.

He was in no mood to cook.

There were no instructions on where to meet, so he just went to the same place as before. He bought another coffee, sat at a bench, and waited.

Something approached him that was tall and gaunt and resembling a human that hadn’t slept in days. Ben confirmed after a few frantic blinks that it wasn’t a ghost. His shoulders relaxed.

He had about three seconds of relief before his shoulders tensed up again. Ben had no time to get up, so he pressed himself back into the bench. “Are you fucking crazy?”

There was a knife in Patrick’s hand. It was oddly shaped, and the blade was black and slick like an oil spill. Ben’s eyes didn’t move from the sharpened point, because he wasn’t sure where it would go once he looked away.

“Oh, relax,” Patrick scoffed. Ben watched the knife get lifted, and the blade slide into its hilt, defying all that he knew about knives and the laws of physics. “Of course you assume I’m going there. Fucking scumbag.”

“What the fuck do you want?” Ben asked. Cautiously, he glanced up to Patrick’s face. The man looked very, very sick, and equal parts smug.

Instead of answering, Patrick presented the object in his other hand. Ben had been so focused on the weapon he hadn’t even noticed the painting until it was in his lap.

His father glowered back at him. He stood in the doorway to Ben’s old room, body slightly turned. Clothing rumpled. One arm hung down, hand curled around a bottle. The other was gently bent at the elbow. He was pointing, just firmly enough to be menacing. Clothes scattered the room, his bed just peeked into view, mostly eaten by shadow. His father was mid-sentence. His face drooped into its scowl, as if his muscles has learned to settle into that expression.

The lines were shaky, but it was so perfectly him.

Ben poured his coffee all over it.

Patrick was laughing, but Ben heard it at a slight delay. He could barely see anything besides his father’s painted face, warping.

Aw, you don’t like it? Ben realized Patrick was talking. “But I worked so hard! I guess I’ll try to do better next time. Don’t worry, Prius, there’s plenty more where that came from.”

Ben was so mad he couldn’t speak. His heartbeat shook his entire frame. His teeth practically chattered as he tried and failed and tried and failed to respond.

“How d—”

“How dare I?” Patrick interrupted. Suddenly, he was in Ben’s face, and Ben jerked away. Another laugh, but he couldn’t hear it at all.

Sometimes anger was like a living thing.

—

Something was wrong. The headache hadn’t subsided. In fact, it’d only gotten worse since leaving his house.

Ben was unresponsive. Patrick’s skull was spitting open. Something was wrong. The wrongness needled at him. He was almost nauseous, but stubbornly he refused to stop smiling.

“Prius? Oh, poor guy, did I upset you? Good.” He sneered as he grabbed Ben’s face, forced him to look up from the ruined painting, now on the ground. The man flinched, but not out of fear. He couldn’t describe it, but the distinction was obvious. Ben was returning to this reality, and he was pissed.

Plus, his eyes were all wrong.

“You’ve had it too good for a killer, Ben,” Patrick sneered. His knife was close; maybe unneeded, considering the response the painting had caused. But he’d come this far, and the guy deserved it. So he held it up, pressed it to Ben’s cheek, pulled it down.

It didn’t draw blood, not really. It was more interesting than that. His knife was an extension of his powers, and it harmed accordingly. Something inky and unkind sank into Ben’s skin. In the same instant, his screamed. He curled over, hands flying to the mark. Patrick backed away, watching with a bright, hungry interest. For as much as he loved his nightmares, there was a sick satisfaction with seeing the fear in person.

Ben had said he was immune. Patrick had called bullshit, and he was right. He reveled in that.

Then, his head exploded.

—

Ben hoped that Patrick felt every second of his nightmares. Every single, terrible second of this. This unrelenting terror, this mind-bending fear, fear, fear. This free fall into the worst of his memories. He hoped Patrick felt it all, tenfold.

No, twenty fold.

Feel it. Physically, terribly feel it.

His mind scrambled to steady itself. He came to just as Patrick was passing out.

And then, he left again, this time with his mother. Ben could barely tell up from down; all he knew is that she was just as angry.

—

For a split second, Patrick thought he died.

He pushed himself upright. Instead of Ben, Morpheus sat across from him. They weren’t in New Athens anymore. If he had to guess, Patrick would say his dad brought him inside a cloud.

“How do you feel?”

Patrick scowled. “Good to see you, too.”

Morpheus sighed. “Kiddo, what’s going on?”

“Don’t call me kiddo,” Patrick snapped at him. “Nice of you to show up after I figure out my powers. Really convenient.”

“Did you want me to leave you on the sidewalk?” Morpheus looked genuinely confused. Patrick just scoffed. The god sighed again. “I am glad your dreams are back, son.”

“Don’t mock me. You gonna take them away again?”

Another look of confusion. Morpheus tilted his head. “I didn’t take them away.”

Patrick frowned at him. “Then why—”

“Patrick, come on. You just needed to sober up.”

All this time. Patrick stared at Morpheus. “Bullshit.”

“I don’t deal in bullshit.”

“Ugh.” Patrick rolled his eyes. “No one says that.”

Morpheus shrugged. “I’m a god, I don’t need to keep up.”

“Whatever.” Something about this conversation was deeply humiliating. Patrick turned away. “Thanks for the help, I guess.”

“You didn’t answer me. How do you feel?”

He paused, thought about it seriously. “My head feels better. I feel, okay.”

“Good.” Another stretch of quiet. “I love how you use your powers. But be responsible, please.” When Patrick didn’t respond, there was another, longer sigh.

He reemerged in his bed. At his side was a few bills and a bottle of water. A little note that read: say no to drugs -M

—

“What are you thinking?”

Nemesis was raging. Ben stood in a parking lot in Canada, shaking.

“This is what you use your power for, Ben? A petty fight?”

Ben sucked in a breath. “I didn’t—”

“You cursed him days ago—”

“I didn’t know.”

“That is no excuse! You cursed him then, and then again just now! You could have killed him!”

“I don’t know what to do.” Ben was crying, all at once. Everything crashed on top of him, all at once. “Sorry, can you give me a minute?”

She gave him six, since that was how long he needed before he could speak again.

Slowly, he wiped his face with his palms. “How do I control it? Why didn’t you come earlier?”

“You need to figure this out. Your power is triggered by anger. You cannot let it consume you like this.”

“I don’t want it to,” he argued, but weakly. His eyes burned. “That was what he did, I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to be like that.”

“Don’t think about him. This is about you, Ben.”

“Mom, what do I do?” He looked up at her. “People hate me, they’re out to get me, and I can’t even blame them, but I still did this. I want to stand up for myself without—” He shook his head. “I can’t keep doing this. Please help me not do this.” He was shivering, cold to his bones.

Nemesis was quiet. Then she placed a hand on Ben’s head. “I will try to guide you, Ben. But this is still your responsibility.”

It was a kinder response than he expected. Ben felt like crying again. He closed his eyes. For the first time that week, he felt as tired as he should be. When he opened his eyes again, he was back in town. The sun was bright, the painting gone. Patrick, too, was nowhere to be seen.

He took a deep breath.

Ben put his head in his hands for a while, then he stood. He needed to go home. He needed to lay in bed for the rest of his life, but just the rest of the day would have to do.

#sp: ben #sp: patrick #know your strength #ben #patrick

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 4 years ago

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

June 28, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

This evening, President Joe Biden published an op-ed in Yahoo News about the infrastructure bill now moving forward on its way to Congress. He called the measure “a once-in-a-generation investment to modernize our infrastructure” and claimed it would “create millions of good-paying jobs and position America to compete with the world and win the 21st century.”

The measure will provide money to repair roads and bridges, replace the lead pipes that still provide water to as many as 10 million households and 400,000 schools and daycares, modernize our electric grid, replace gas-powered buses with electric ones, and cap wells leaking methane that have been abandoned by their owners in the private sector to be cleaned up by the government. It will invest in railroads, airports, and other public transportation; protect coastlines and forests from extreme weather events; and deliver high-speed internet to rural communities.

“This deal is the largest long-term investment in our infrastructure in nearly a century,” Biden wrote. “It is a signal to ourselves, and to the world, that American democracy can work and deliver for the people.”

Biden is making a big pitch for this infrastructure project in part because we need it, of course, and because it is popular, but also because it signals a return to the sort of government both Democrats and Republicans embraced between 1945 and 1980. In that period after World War II, most Americans believed that the government had a role to play in regulating business, providing a basic social safety net, investing in infrastructure, and promoting civil rights. This shared understanding was known as the “liberal consensus.”

With the election of Ronald Reagan to the presidency in 1980, the Republican Party rejected that vision of the government, arguing that, as Reagan said, “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” But while Reagan limited that statement with the words “in this present crisis,” Republican leaders since the 1980s have worked to destroy the liberal consensus and take us back to the world of the 1920s, a world in which business leaders also ran the government.

For the very reason that Biden is determined to put through this massive investment in infrastructure, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) would like to kill it. Until recently, he has presided over the Senate with the declared plan to kill Democratic bills. He opposes the liberal consensus, wanting to get rid of taxes and stop the government from intervening in the economy. But today’s Republican lawmakers are in an awkward place: by large margins, Americans like the idea of investing in infrastructure.

So the Republicans have engaged in a careful dance over this new measure. Biden wants to demonstrate to the country both that democracy can deliver for its people and that the two parties in Congress do not have to be adversarial. He wanted bipartisan support for this infrastructure plan.

A group of Democrats and Republicans negotiated the measure that is now being prepared to move forward. Last week, five Republican negotiators backed the outline for the measure. They, of course, would like to be able to tell their constituents that they voted for what is a very popular measure, rather than try to claim credit for it after voting no, as they did with the American Rescue Plan.

Negotiators were always clear that the Democrats would plan to pass a much larger bill under what is known as a “budget reconciliation” bill in addition to the infrastructure plan. Financial measures under reconciliation cannot be killed by filibuster in the Senate, meaning that if the Democrats can stand together, they can pass whatever they wish financially under reconciliation. Democrats planned to put into a second bill the infrastructure measures Republicans disliked: funding to combat climate change, for example, and to promote clean energy, and to invest in human infrastructure: childcare and paid leave, free pre-kindergarten and community college, and tax cuts for working families with children.

Crucially, that bigger measure, known as the American Families Plan, will also start to dismantle the 2017 Republican tax cuts, which cut the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%. Biden wants to return the corporate tax rate to 28%, still lower than it was before 2017, but higher than it is now.

To keep more progressive Democrats on board with the bipartisan infrastructure bill, Democrats need to move it forward in tandem with the larger, more comprehensive American Families Plan. This has been clear from the start. After announcing the bipartisan deal, Biden reiterated that he would not sign one without the other.

And yet, although he himself acknowledged the Democratic tandem plan on June 15, McConnell pretended outrage over the linkage of the two bills. McConnell and some of his colleagues complained to reporters that Biden was threatening to veto the bipartisan bill unless Congress passed the American Families Plan too.

It appears McConnell had hoped that the bipartisan plan would peel centrist Democrats off from the larger American Families Plan, thus stopping the Democrats’ resurrection of the larger idea of the liberal consensus and keeping corporate taxes low. Killing that larger plan might well keep progressive Democrats from voting for the bipartisan bill, too, thus destroying both of Biden’s key measures. If he can drive a wedge through the Democrats, he can make sure that none of their legislation passes.

Over the weekend, Biden issued a statement saying that he was not threatening to veto a bill he had just worked for weeks to put together, but was supporting the bipartisan bill while also intending to pass the American Families Plan.

McConnell then issued a statement essentially claiming victory and demanding control over the Democrats’ handling of the measures, saying “The President has appropriately delinked a potential bipartisan infrastructure bill from the massive, unrelated tax-and-spend plans that Democrats want to pursue on a partisan basis.” He went on to demand that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) agree to send the smaller, bipartisan bill forward without linking it to “trillions of dollars for unrelated tax hikes, wasteful spending, and Green New Deal socialism.”

McConnell is trying to turn the tide against these measures by calling the process unfair, which might give Republicans an excuse to vote no even on a bill as popular as the bipartisan bill is. Complaining about process is, of course, how he prevented the Senate from convicting former president Trump of inciting the January 6 insurrection, and how he stopped the establishment of a bipartisan, independent committee to investigate that insurrection.

But McConnell no longer controls Congress. House Speaker Pelosi says she will not schedule the bipartisan bill until the American Families Plan passes.

Pelosi also announced today that the House is preparing legislation to establish a select committee to investigate the January 6 attack on the Capitol. She had to do so, she noted, because “Senate Republicans did Mitch McConnell a ‘personal favor’ rather than their patriotic duty and voted against the bipartisan commission negotiated by Democrats and Republicans. But Democrats are determined to find the truth.”

The draft of the bill provides for the committee to have 13 members. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), himself likely to be called as a witness before the committee, will be able to “consult” with the Speaker on five of the members, but the final makeup of the committee will be up to the Speaker. This language echoes that of the select committee that investigated the Benghazi attack, and should prevent McCarthy from sabotaging the committee with far-right lawmakers eager to disrupt the proceedings rather than learn what happened. Instead, we can expect to see on the committee Republicans who voted to establish the independent, bipartisan commission that McConnell and Republican senators killed.

Biden’s op-ed made it clear that he intends to rebuild the country: “I have always believed that there is nothing our nation can’t do when we decide to do it together,” he wrote. “Last week, we began to write a new chapter in that story.”

—-

Notes:

https://news.yahoo.com/biden-americans-can-be-proud-of-the-infrastructure-deal-214533346.html

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/reconciliation-republicans-mcconnell-biden-infrastructure-bipartisan

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/06/26/statement-by-president-joe-biden-on-the-bipartisan-infrastructure-framework/

https://www.axios.com/mcconnell-approach-infrastructure-biden-democrats-440f11de-2661-4f7c-951c-d3b304374325.html

Sahil Kapur @sahilkapurThe Jan. 6 select committee will have 13 members. Kevin McCarthy gets "consultation" on five of them but Nancy Pelosi has the last word. From the text: 666 Retweets3,137 Likes

June 28th 2021

https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-resolution/567/text

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#infrastructure #Heather Cox Richardson #Letters From an American #Biden Administration #goverment #effective government #political #corrupt GOP #criminal GOP

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noxtms · 5 years ago

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AFTER THE OVERNIGHT SUCCESS of rita skeeters second biographical novel, the boy who lived & other tragic tales, the audacious blonde tells us here at the prophet that she very briefly considered fading into anonymity. ”it was the perfect time,” she admits, that charming smile never fading, “and my publisher certainly would have had me do it. get out at the height of it, rita, and leave them ALWAYS wanting more. that’s what he told me, and that was the plan. put down the quill. move to france. write... travel blogs, maybe, for the rest of my days.” she LAUGHS, and it’s difficult not to laugh with her. the image of this woman ever leaving down that iconic peacock quill is laughable. “but you know better than anyone : once i get a hint of a story that needs to be told, there is nothing, not even that desire for sandy beaches and endless sunshine alongside a strong cocktail, that can pull me away from it. and that is what this is. ‘SEVERUS SNAPE: SWAN SONG’ might be, perhaps, my own... i won’t say. but it is also a story that deserved to be told.”

WHO, WHAT, WHEN, WHERE :

rita skeeter’s book launch, being held on june 10th, 2020, includes a questions and answers panel at flourish and botts ( please clear your questions with miss skeeters publicity team in advance ), after party in the leaky cauldron ( booked out entirely for the event ) & discounts and special treats in shops all along diagon alley itself ( madam malkin’s is giving out imitations of miss skeeters iconic spectacles, amanuensis quills is providing quality peacock quills at a 20% discount and fortescue’s ice cream parlour promises your ice cream, free, if you promise you didn’t purchase and don’t plan on purchasing a copy - unrelated to the event, but they’ll never know if you lie ! ).

to date, she has now written three books :

the life & lies of albus dumbledore : a tell all exposé on albus dumbledore and his young life, that ‘stripped away the popular image of serene, silver bearded wisdom, revealing a disturbed childhood, lawless youth, lifelong feuds and guilty secrets carried to his grave’.

the boy who lived & other tragic tales : a biographical book claimed to be the true life stories of a number of the victims of the battle of hogwarts ( among them fred weasley, padma patil, colin creevey, remus lupin, vincent crabbe and, for some reason, cedric diggory ) but focusing a frankly INNAPROPRIATE amount upon harry potter himself. rita had initially been intending on writing a biography for him along until her publisher convinced her otherwise, but some of her ‘hot takes’ could be pried from her cold dead hands. it sit on the bestseller list in england and america for several weeks.

severus snape, swan song : another biographical book, the blurb of which reads ‘severus snape was known by many as the ill temptered and largely unliked potions master at hogwarts school of witchcraft and wizardry. his highly publicized role in the death of albus dumbledore and his brief period as headmaster at the aforementioned school during the time it was run largely by the dark lords most loyal followers painted a narrative of a man dedicated to the wrong sides cause : but what if i were to tell you that despite the story spun all these years... we were wrong? through the lens of severus snape’s own ( verified ) memories, i, rita skeeter, bring you a new narrative. one of a boy raised in a volatile home in spinners end, a teen who made a mistake, a young man who lost the love of his life... and a war wearied individual who tried his whole life to save her son, and played the role of villain so that no one else had to.’

OUT OF CHARACTER:

she’s sure gone and done it now ! rita skeeter has proven to be quite the master of dropping bombshell level books when the wizarding community least expects them, and let me confirm what i’m sure you’re all wondering, right off the bat : she really HAS revealed severus snapes life story to the wizarding world, with this new book of hers. rita’s unregistered animagus form came in CLUTCH, for her, as she fell into possession of memories that were lost in the cleanup of the war ( and subsequently verified by the ministry of magic themselves, papers confirming which will be released through the prophet on the morning of her surprise book release ). memories that harry potter watched before heading off to the forbidden forest. memories that changed everything : told him the real role he was to play, exposed the truth about severus snapes role in everything, and revealed just how far albus dumbledore went in his striving to defeat the dark lord. i know. it’s a doozy !

rita skeeter now possesses the most valuable information of all, and unfortunately for everyone, she hasn’t kept her big mouth shut : though colored by the vapid voice she employs to write her greatest hits, the information is now out in the world. public opinion is naturally going to shift on severus snape as more and more people read / hear about her work, but since the book is heavily biased against dumbledore, opinions are going to change there, too - and many might begin assigning to the idea of one man being an unsung hero, while the other was an over glorified VILLAIN. the only person getting off easy is harry potter, who of course, is just yet another tragic sidenote.

the event is beginning NOW ( june 15th ) and will end in a week, or there abouts - the end date might change based on wider involvement, but you’ll be informed in advance if it does !

for the purpose of the event, i’ve set up a sideblog @skeetertms - you read it right ! rita skeeter herself is making an appearance, and her open starter is right here for you to reply to if you so choose ! depending on how fun it is, and whether i can come up with a good reason to justify it, she might be sticking around a while past the event - we’ll see !

the book release ( including the early morning q & a session, the late night party at the leaky cauldron where there will be live music, an open bar and free food & of course, the wider event upon diagon alley ) is an open event, meaning that while press was invited, everyone else is just sort of.. turning up. your character might just stumble upon it, while on diagon alley. they might genuinely want to be there, as a fan of rita skeeters work. really, it’s up to you - but given the fact this is not an intensive event, you are more than welcome to continue your older threads in addition to starting new ones !

speaking of event starters : they should be tagged as nox.event003 ! the location is diagon alley, but feel free to specify where !

if you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to message the main ! please reply to this post with ‘beetle’ once you’ve read it !

#nox.event #nox.event003

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comicteaparty · 5 years ago

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June 22nd-June 28th, 2020 CTP Archive

The archive for the Comic Tea Party week long chat that occurred from June 22nd, 2020 to June 28th, 2020. The chat focused on The Stoop-Gallants by MJ Alexander and WW Rose.

Featured Comment:

Chat:

Comic Tea Party

BOOK CLUB START!

Hello and welcome everyone to Comic Tea Party’s Book Club~! This week we’ll be focusing on The Stoop-Gallants by MJ Alexander and WW Rose~! (http://www.thestoopgallants.com/site/)

You are free to read and comment about the comic all week at your own pace until June 28th, so stop on by whenever it suits your schedule! Discussions are freeform, but we do offer discussion prompts in the pins for those who’d like to have them. Additionally, remember that while constructive criticism is allowed, our focus is to have fun and appreciate the comic! Whether you finish the comic or can only read a few pages, everyone is welcome to join and chat with us!

DISCUSSION PROMPTS – PART 1

1. What did you like about the beginning of the comic?

2. What has been your favorite moment in the comic (so far)?

3. Who is your favorite character?

4. Which characters do like seeing interact the most?

5. What is something you like about the art? If you have a favorite illustration, please share it!

6. What is a theme you like that the comic explores?

7. What do you like about the comic’s story or overall related content?

8. Overall, what do you think the comic’s strengths are?

Don’t feel inspired by the prompts? Feel free to discuss anything else that interested you!

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

I need to reread/catch up to answer the prompts, but I gotta say this comic absolutely excels at what it does.

Nutty (Court of Roses)

I've been meaning to read this one too, I'll try and set aside some time to!

Delphina

Stoop-Gallants has so much adorable humor and sass, Predictably, Alta is my favorite character; seeing her extremely awkward yet sweet relationship with Mica is my favorite.

Flea is also a sweetheart and I love seeing them learning more about their unpredictable magic and coming to be comfortable with it after avoiding it so long. This page in particular where they finally internalize that they're not a mistake and they're not alone made me tear up a little bit. T_T http://www.thestoopgallants.com/site/tsg/page-547/

RebelVampire

What I like about the beginning of the comic is that it basically opens with accidental necromancy. I think it really just kind of paints the entire tone of the comic, sets the right expectations, and is honestly, just hilariously convoluted. My favorite moment in the comic so far was actually probably the accidental necromancy as well. I love necromancy, and just the way this happens is so hilarious. Plus, I like a lot of the other scenes it ties into, like Maxwell getting mocked for not being able to do any sort of necromancy. In the theme of this trend, my favorite character is Ru. Ru is just adorable and tries his best. I like his overall kind of boyish charms sometimes mixed with his honesty and honestly, just a great friend to everyone. As for characters interacting the most, I probably enjoy seeing Marigold and Alta the most. I really like how their relationship is kind of equal trust and equal wanting to punch the other person in the face. And yet, despite all this, Marigold really sticks by Alta and helps out in the ways only Marigold can. So I just find it to be such an interesting but wholesome relationship. What I like about the art is probably the character designs. I love that there's so many different body shapes, and in particular the heights. I love that some of the characters just basically tower over the others, cause I think that's something people neglect when it comes to fantasy settings in that you can really play around a lot more with those sorts of proportions. So I appreciate seeing it here.

For themes, I like the comic explores what to do when you have a natural talent at something but you don't like that something. I feel this is something we see with Flea, Alta, and Ru. And yet, all three handle it so differently, with Alta accepting, Flea reluctantly dealing with it after fleeing, and Ru going "Nah bro I don't want this." And I really like we get to explore whether our natural talents and destiny can be run from, or if we should just accept it. For the comic's overall story, I like the balance of character conflict vs. world conflict. This is a very character driven comic, but I never feel like the world is being neglected. Like the situation with the king, now the elves. The world is built slowly, but still at a place where you get a feel for where the characters live and how the world they live in affects them. As for the comic's overall strengths, likeable characters. Even when the characters are jerks, there's still something about them where you're like, "Ok I get it." And in turn, you're invested in all their goals, even when those goals are not necessarily something that fit together.

Comic Tea Party

DISCUSSION PROMPTS – PART 2

9. How do you think Mica and Alta’s relationship will progress throughout the story? Will the two continue to blunder through everything, or will things continue to go smoothly? Also, how might Alta’s personal feelings about her career affect them?

10. Do you think Flea will successfully learn to control their magic? If so, how will this change them as a person? All in all, what do you think Flea’s story has to teach us about identity, destiny, and self-acceptance?

11. Will Ru be able to solve his necromancy problem? If so, do you think he’ll be happy about it? How does this all compare to Flea’s tale? Lastly, how will the events of Ru’s story affect Cymonee solving her problem?

12. How will the Consortium’s plans surrounding the king affect the main characters? Will they do something to stop it to achieve their own ends? Additionally, what role do you think Maxwell will play, whether as a “good” guy or “bad” guy?

Don’t feel inspired by the prompts? Feel free to discuss anything else that interested you!

Delphina

@RebelVampire I think this is a really good way of putting it! I also like that Ru's been gradually having to come to terms with the fact that he did what he did and grow from someone who's trying desperately to shed the consequences of the drunken magical mistake he made, and into maybe accepting he's responsible for it and should stand up for the zombie he's affected. I'm so curious to see if the elf kingdom in the current arc is going to have a solution, and if so, if it's a solution he wants to go through with.(edited)

The cast is very big and while I would love to see more Alta and Mica, I think they've gotten some of their big stuff out of the way and can move on with a relatively normal relationship. If the story does revisit them in a more dedicated arc, I would love to see some exploration of Alta's extreme savior complex and how that clashes with her perception of Mica's disability.

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

Did a reread recently -- this comic is so good, funny and genre-savvy with smart writing and lovable characters. Can't wait for the Volume 2 Kickstarter.

From the early chapters, I really liked Mica's and Maxwell's weird bond. Seems like they're going to be in different settings following unrelated storylines for a while, but I'm looking forward to when their paths cross again...mostly for Mica's reaction once she gets caught up on the progress of Maxwell's secret-magical-figurehead-coup gambit.

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

Also, the whole sequence where Maxwell has to explain "ugh, this stuff depends on an otherwise-useless narrow and restricted concept of 'virginity'". (And Ru has to unpack why he still qualifies...) I think that's the first point where you really feel the contrast between "a fantasy setting with lots of these traditional tropes and formalities" and "characters who feel and react like real people." ...without spoiling anything too specific, Rekhet's whole aesthetic (their fashion sense, their interior design) is the pinnacle of this. It is hard to pick a favorite character, but boy did they shoot waaay up the list almost immediately after their introduction.

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

I feel like the first solution Ru gets is gonna be something like "don't worry, we can incinerate your problem into a pile of ash that'll blow away on the wind!" -- and he's going to balk, because he's gotten attached enough that he wants the denizen free, not destroyed. No idea what he's ultimately going to settle on -- I think it'll be something weird and offbeat, not this easy to predict. In the meantime, Denny's antics are great. Especially when there's something plot-relevant or serious going on and it's just bopping around doing its own thing in the background. (And that one scene where they all got into fancy dress, and somebody gave the denizen a bowtie -- priceless. If it started getting a new themed accessory for every scene, I would not complain.)

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

Mica seems like she has lots of plans and interests and desires, but hasn't had the time/money/resources to pursue anything more than "reading about them." Meanwhile, Alta is well-traveled, practiced and competent at lots of things, and has the resources to go around offering her services pro bono...but doesn't really like or care about her job, it's just something she fell into because she was good at it. Point being, I hope they'll get into a setup where Mica picks some dreams to follow, and Alta focuses on giving her the support/backing to do it, and then gets to share in Mica's actual enjoyment. And maybe Alta figures out she likes one of these things for its own sake, so they decide to settle down and pursue it together? Or maybe they just keep exploring indefinitely, and it turns out Alta's really into "being the devoted protector while someone else is in charge."

RebelVampire

@Delphina He named the Denizen. Once you name something, there is no going back.

RebelVampire

I feel like even though things are going good between Mica and Alta, that right now were in that happy passionate phase before real issues start to heat and they start to realize theyre kind of two different ppl. So I really think that they're going to increasingly face more and more challenges in that regards. I also think Alta is about to rethink careers, and that will probably make her defocus from building the relationship. I do think Flea will successfully learn magic, and I think in so doing Flea will gain newfound confidence but also just an entire new perspective on who they are and life in general. And I think Flea teaches us that if we continue to reject parts of ourselves, even if we dont like that, that we're just gonna wind up hurting ourselves until we explode and hurt everyone else around us. I also think Flea teaches us that identity is also fluid and that you can, will, and should change and that just cause you change, doesn't mean you aren't who you are. I think Ru will find a solution, but I don't think Ru will act on it. I reiterate in this chat again, once you name something, there is no going back. However, I don't think Ru's choice will help Cymonee. I do think Ru will find other ways to help as a sort of payback for Cymonee sticking with him. However, what I'm most interested here is the comparison so far with Flea. Flea is embracing powers, while Ru isn't. And I find this contrasting journey to be interesting. I mean Ru didn't get no Alta speech about self-acceptance, so I'm wondering how that alone paved the course of events. I feel like the Consortium's plans is what will bring the main cast together again, since they'll either stop the Consortium, or clean up their mess. Since places without a ruling head of government usually don't do so hot. I think Maxwell will serve as the person who tattles in the hopes he can come out on top.

Comic Tea Party

DISCUSSION PROMPTS – PART 3

13. What are you most looking forward to seeing in regards to the comic?

14. Any final words of encouragement for the comic?

Don’t feel inspired by the prompts? Feel free to discuss anything else that interested you!

RebelVampire

I am most looking forward to seeing more of Ru's story, cause I really want to know if he's gonna start self-accepting those necromancy powers of if he really will just react them for all time. As for final words, this a comic with some fantastic characters, has a really unique humor with how the characters conduct themselves,, and all around is definitely a comic that deserves some praise.

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

I hope that if Ru does choose to accept these necromancy powers, it's because he wants to, not because he has to. Like, I'm hoping he finds a solution to his problem, but he chooses not to go through with it. One thing I'm loving about the current two arcs is that it's given us a chance to go more in depth with these characters. I loved the parts where the whole gang was together as a group, but this just gives us a chance to see these relationships flourish. Though, I do hope we see more Marigold soon, plus some other side characters like Maxwell. All in all, I really love this comic, and I can't wait to see where it goes next!

Comic Tea Party

BOOK CLUB END!

Thank you everyone so much for reading and chatting about The Stoop-Gallants this week! Please also give a special thank you to MJ Alexander and WW Rose for volunteering the comic and creating it! If you liked The Stoop-Gallants, make sure to continue to support it via some of the links below!

Read and Comment: http://www.thestoopgallants.com/site/

The Stoop-Gallants’ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/snartha

The Stoop-Gallants’ Store: https://www.redbubble.com/people/snartha/shop

The Stoop-Gallants’ Twitter: https://twitter.com/snartha

#ctparchive #comics #webcomics #indie comics #comic chat #comic discussion #book club #bookclub #webcomic book club #webcomic bookclub #comic tea party #ctp #the stoop gallants #the stoop-gallants #mj alexander #ww rose

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weekendwarriorblog · 5 years ago

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The Weekend Warrior Home Edition May 8, 2020 – CLEMENTINE, SPACESHIP EARTH, BLUE STORY, VALLEY GIRL, ARKANSAS, HOW TO BUILD A GIRL and more!

And the summer that never was continues with no new movies in theaters unless you include a number of select drive-ins scattered across the country. There’s a lot of new stuff out this weekend, some good, some bad, but we’re getting to a point where every distributor big or small is dumping their movies to VOD in hopes of making money. But I guess that means there’s a lot more options of things to see, right?

The Virtual Oxford Film Festival continues this Friday with the virtual premieres of Steve Collins’ comedy I’ve Got Issues and the unrelated doc feature, I Am Not Alone (Note: both of these are only available for folks in Mississippi!). Also, the Hello, Gorgeous Shorts block (love the names they come up with to put these shorts together!) will debut with 8 new shorts, including Bad Assistant. You can get tickets to all of these things at the festival’s Eventive page.

For the next few days only, you can also win the Oxford Film Festival award-winning short Finding Cleveland right here for free! The film directed by Larissa Lam that follows husband Baldwin Chiu’s journey to Mississippi to investigate his roots will have its feature version, Far East Deep South, premiere as part of Oxford’s virtual festival in June.

One of the better films I watched this week (I guess that makes it this week’s “Featured Film”) is Lara Gallagher’s feature debut CLEMENTINE (Oscilloscope), a seemingly simple two-hander indie drama showcasing two fantastically talented actors in Otmara Marrero and Sydney Sweeney (HBO’s Euphoria). Marrero plays Karen, a young woman looking to get away after ending a relationship with a significantly older woman, deciding to break into her lover’s isolated lakeside home. There, she encounters Sweeney’s Lana, a mischievous younger teen of indeterminate age who Karen befriends. The two of them get closer as Karen is still in mourning for her previous relationship, but as she learns more about Lana, things clearly aren’t what they seem.

Gallagher has written a sweet and subdued character piece that at times veers into thriller territory but never goes so far across that line to take away from the drama. At the film’s core is the mystery about the two young women and their respective pasts, because we don’t even learn that much about Karen before heading to the lakeside house.

where there’s a lot of mystery about both of the young women at the story’s core, There were aspects of the movie that reminded me of the recent dramatic thriller Tape, where there’s also an aspect of sexual abuse and revenge, but it really never goes to places that might be expected. I’m a little bummed that I missed this at Tribeca last year, and part of that can be blamed on the enigmatic title which doesn’t really give a sense of what the movie is about at all. But Gallagher and her cast have done a fantastic job with a film that’s not necessarily easy to define or describe but leaves you with a warm feeling that films like this can still be made. (See Never Rarely Sometimes Always as another example of this.)

Now might be the perfect time for Matt Wolf’s new doc, SPACESHIP EARTH (Neon), which is all about the eight people who locked themselves into Biosphere II in the early ‘90s with the plans to live inside the ecologically self-contained environment for two years. Neon had two amazing scientific docs in 2019, Apollo 11 and The Biggest Little Farm, both which were in my Top 10 for the year, so imagine my disappointment when neither of them received Oscar nominations. Wolf previously directed 2013’s Teenage and last year’s Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project, the latter being a decent doc using archival footage, and Spaceship Earth mixes all of the amazing archival footage with interviews with many of the key characters. In case you weren’t familiar with Biosphere II, it was an experiment set up where 8 individuals would spend two years inside an environment that’s meant to be fully self-sufficient. Wolf’s film goes back to the start of what was essentially a theater group who put together a number of global projects before tackling Biosphere II, a project that wasn’t taken very seriously by the scientific community because there were no scientists among the group. It was seen as “ecological entertainment” by some and a cult by others, and those feelings increase when it was discovered that not everything is what it seems. When an accident causes one of the “biospherians” to have to go outside, she ends up sneaking things back into Biosphere II, which is against the rules set up by the group. It’s a fairly fascinating doc if you were around during this time but only heard about it filtered through the news and the PR, but Wolf’s film goes deep into the project and the controversy surrounding it, as well as when it inevitably goes wrong. Wolf manages to get many of those involved, including the group’s leader, John Allen, and there’s even an appearance by another figure from U.S. politics who had their own documentary just last year! This is a really strong doc that is getting a digital release and apparently, it will even be screened on the sides of some buildings, which is a cool idea in this time where there aren’t many theaters.

A relatively big hit in the UK, BLUE STORY (Paramount), the directorial feature debut of British rapper Rapman, adapted from his own YouTube series, is now available via digital download, having originally been planned to get a US theatrical release in March. It’s about the friendship of two young British teens, Timmy and Marco, from the Peckham area of London but from opposite sides of what’s become a violent street gang feud. I saw this movie way back on March 11, and I had to rewatch it more recently since I had forgotten whether I liked it or hated it. I’m probably somewhere more in between, as I thought the young leads, Stephen Odubola (Timmy) and Micheal Ward (Marco), were both terrific in a movie that generally had some storytelling and pacing issues.

Honestly, I didn’t understand a lot of what was going on due to the heavy accents (even with the necessary subtitles), but it also didn’t really stand up to last year’s Les Miserables, a film set in a similar setting in France, but that one was nominated for an Oscar after being submitted by France. Besides writing and directing, Rapman also acts as the film’s ad-hoc narrator through a number of raps that gives his film a bit of a hip-hop musical feel. I’m not sure I was crazy about this decision since a lot of the time he is recapping something that we just saw take place.

The film definitely has a unique energy, as the first half alternates between youthful innocence and faux machismo, neither which generally does very much for me. I did enjoy the film’s romantic underpinnings as it shows young love between Timmy and a classmate named Leah (Karla-Simone Spence) , but that storyline comes to an abrupt and shocking halt about 45 minutes into the movie before the story jumps forward three years into something very different. (To be honest, the romantic aspects were handled in a far more interesting way in the recent indie Premature.) The movie does get far more dramatic and tense in this last act, while it also shows what a talented cast Rapman has put together in order for them to shift gears into the very different tone the movie then takes. It’s a jarring change, but it adds to what Rapman was trying to do in making Blue Story an almost-Shakespearean coming-of-age story set against an authentic urban landscape. I’m not 100% sure Blue Story will connect with young urban Americans in the same way as it clearly did in the UK, because the dialect and slang that pervades the film often makes it difficult to follow, but it’s quite a striking debut from the rapper/filmmaker.

Next up is VALLEY GIRL (Orion Pictures), a musical remake of Martha Coolidge’s 1983 movie that introduced many people to one Nicolas Cage. The new movie is directed by Rachel Lee Goldenberg (A Deadly Adoption, “The Mindy Project”), and it stars the wonderful Jessica Rothe (Happy Death Day) as Julie Richman, the valley girl of the title who is going to high school with her valley girl friends but becomes enamored with the punk kid Randy (Josh Whitehouse), who comes from a very different world. I’m not sure what else I can tell you about Valley Girl, since I’m under embargo on this one until Friday, so I’m not sure if I can tell you if it’s good or bad. I will say that if you like popular ‘80s groups like Modern English and others, the movie may give you a smile. It also stars Alicia Silverstone as the older Julie, telling her own daughter this story in a framing sequence, as well as Judy Greer as Julie’s mother and others, such as Mae Whitman, who can really belt it out in her role as Randy’s bandmate, “Jack.” This is supposed to open in some of those aforementioned drive-ins, as well as being available digitally.

Getting away from this week’s musicals, Clark Duke co-wrote and stars in his feature film directorial debut, ARKANSAS (Lionsgate), based on John Brandon’s novel. I haven’t read the novel, but Clark plays a lowlife named Swin, a drug-runner along with his partner Kyle (Liam Hemsworth), both of them pretending to be park rangers. Kyle is particularly interested in learning more about their enigmatic boss, the Arkansas-based drug kingpin known only as “Frog,” but their business arrangements get more complicated.

I had a few problems with this movie, much of it coming from the relatively weak writing that comes across like it was made by someone who has watched way too many Scorsese or Tarantino movies without really understanding why those filmmakers’ movies are so brilliant. I hate to say it, because I generally like Duke as an actor, but casting himself in the role of Swin without doing much beyond growing a moustache to make himself look sleazier really didn’t much for the material. He was a very odd pairing with the rugged and tougher Hemsworth.

The best part of the film is when it flashes back to 1985 West Memphis and we meet the actual “Frog,” played by Vince Vaughn, and we see him interacting with Michael K. Williams’ “Almond,” who he betrays to take over his drug business. I liked this bit of the movie even if Vaughn’s accent wasn’t great, but then we’re back to Duke and Hemsworth in present day, and that doesn’t hold up as well. Clarke overcomplicates things by creating a non-linear narrative that jumps back and forth in time and between two storylines – again, like Pulp Fiction – but the storytelling and dialogue doesn’t do enough to make up for the confusion this cause.

Clark certainly has brought on some decent actors, such as John Malkovich and Vivica A. Fox, but making himself the focus of much of the movie compared to the far more charismatic Hemsworth, hurts the movie more than helps it. I didn’t hate Eden Brolin as Swin’s love interest, Johnna, but they really didn’t enough chemistry to make them believable as a couple. Don’t get me wrong. I definitely commend Clark on taking on such a big project as his directorial debut, and it definitely grew on me, but it’s an erratic piece that pays tribute to far better films and that is its biggest detriment. Originally planned for a theatrical release on May 1, Arkansas will instead hit Apple, Amazon, On Demand platforms, DVD and Blu-Ray on Tuesday.

Beanie Feldstein from last year’s Book Smart stars in Coky (“Harlots”) Giedroyc’s HOW TO BUILD A GIRL (IFC Films) as Johanna Morrigan, an ambitious 16-year-old from Wolverhampton, England who gets a job at music magazine “D&ME.” She creates an alter-ego pseudonym for herself in Dolly Wilde, and quickly learns she has to be mean in order to succeed and earn the respect of her peers as one of the UK’s most hated music journalists, even after falling in love withs (and then betraying) rock star John Kite (Alfie Allen, who also was on “Harlots”).

Based on British journalist Caitlin Moran’s 2014 semi-autobiographical novel of the same name, I definitely should have liked this movie more, having been a regular reader of the Melody Maker around the time Moran would have been writing for it. The screenplay she’s co-written adapting her own book isn’t great, and everyone involved just seems to be trying too hard to be funny and failing miserably.

I guess the biggest issue, once you adjust to Beanie Feldstein’s British accent, which falls somewhere between Harry Potter and the Beatles, is that it’s hard to care about her character even a little, since she’s acting all quirky one second and then becomes a monster as the film goes along. Johanna is just annoying and when she transforms into “Dolly,” she becomes even worse.

Paddy Considine plays Johanna/Dolly’s father, who still has aspirations of being a rock star after giving birth to a huge brood of children. There’s a few other small roles from other actors like Emma Thompson, Michael Sheen and Gemma Anderton, many of them portraying Johanna’s author inspirations talking to her from her wall of idols.

How to Build a Girl is just another example of the sad state of British comedies, although there are a few shining stars like last year’s Yesterday, which was in my top 10, and this year’s Emma. This one just isn’t particularly funny, and there’s a general feeling of been-there seen-that, as it tells a fairly typical rise and fall story where Dolly’s debauchery turns into an awful human being, and it’s not like I liked her much to begin with. She isn’t as funny as intended and then she gets awful, and it’s impossible to feel bad for her when things ultimately go wrong. Anyway, five minutes later, everything is fine.

It’s the type of autobiographical thing that a writer writes to make themselves look like some kind of hero, and it reminds me a bit of last year’s Blinded by the Light in some ways. h I know a lot of people liked the movie, but I wasn’t really a fan at all. This movie is even less funny and not particularly original, making it feel about as pretentious as the British music press became in the ‘90s. Either way, it will be available to watch at home via VOD as well as in some open drive-ins where applicable.

There are a ton more movies this week, and unfortunately, I didn’t get to fully watch many of the movies below, though I still hope to watch more of these over the next few days and may add a few more reviews.

I heard good things about Christophe Honoré’s comedy ON A MAGICAL NIGHT (Strand Releasing), particularly about Chiara Mastroiani’s performance as Maria, which won her an acting award at last year’s Cannes. She plays Maria, a woman dissatisfied with her marriage of 20 years, who moves into a hotel room across the street after getting into an argument with her husband (singer Benjamin Biolay). I haven’t gotten through it yet as it seems, like so many French movies, to be very talky, but I’ll try to get to it. It will open virtually as part of Film at Lincoln Center’s virtual cinema, following its debut at the “Rendezvous with French Cinema” series that was unfortunately cut short midway this year.

Also continuing this weekend is Cinema Tropical’s “Cinema Tropical Collection” of Brazilian films, this week’s being Caetano Gotardo’s YOUR BONES, YOUR EYES, in which the filmmaker stars as João, a middle class São Paulo filmmaker who has long conversations and monologues with the people around him.

There are a few other docs available virtually this week, including Sasha Joseph Neulinger’s REWIND (FilmRise), a collection of home videos from 20 years ago, when his father would film family gatherings but also documenting a family secret that would lead to a media firestorm and a court battle. The film will be available to stream and download on iTunes, Prime Video, GooglePlay and Microsoft this Friday, and then will air as part of PBS’s Independent Lens on Monday, May 11.

The Maysles Cinema in Harlem is continuing its virtual cinema with Alex Glustrom’s MOSSVILLE: WHEN THE GREAT TREES FALL, which will be available for a 48-hour VOD rental for $12 from Thursday through April 14 with a Zoom QnA with the filmmakers on Saturday at noon Eastern. The film centers around Mossville, Louisiana, a community founded by former African-American slaves that has been overrun by petrochemical plants and toxic clouds that have forced residents from their homes. Glustrom’s film focuses on Stacey Ryan, a man who refuses to abandon his family’s land and fights for his own human rights.

Apparently, William Nicholson’s HOPE GAP (Screen Media) is getting a second chance to be seen on VOD after a rather half-hearted theatrical release on March 6. It stars Annette Bening as Grace who is dealing with her husband of 29 years (Bill Nighy) leaving her and how that break-up affects their grown-up son (Josh O’Connor).

Following its premiere as part of the virtual Tribeca Film Festival, Emily Cohn’s sex comedy, CRSHD (Light Year), will get a virtual theatrical release in New York, LA and other regional markets. It stars Isabelle Barbier as college freshman Izzy Alden who goes with her best friends (Deeksha Ketkar, Sadie Scott) on a journey to help Izzy lose her virginity.

Also in select theaters, on demand and digital this Friday is José Magán’s The Legion (Saban Films/Paramount), starring Mickey Rourke, Bai Ling and Lee Partridge. It takes place during the invasion of Parthia where two Roman legions are brought to a standstill in Armenia’s snowy mountains where they’re dying from the cold. Their only hope against the cold and the Parthian patrols is half-roman soldier, Noreno, who must cross the mountains to find the men who can help them change the course of this losing battle.

On VOD starting Thursday is Spa Night director Andrew Ahn’s Driveways (FilmRise), starring Hong Chau from HBO’s “Watchmen” and Alexander Payne’s Downsizing as Kathy, a single mother who is travelling with her 8-year-old son Cody (Lucas Jaye) to her dead sister’s house with plans to clean and sell it. There, she befriends a Korean war vet named Del (played by the late Brian Denneny), who quickly bonds with her young son.

Also in theaters and On Demand is Tom Wright’s Walkaway Joe (Quiver Distribution), starring David Strathairn and Jeffrey Dean Morgan, a film about an unlikely friendship between a young boy and a wandering loner, who helps the boy look for his father in pool halls across the country.

STREAMING AND CABLE

This week’s Netflix offerings including the comedy special, Jerry Seinfeld: 23 Hours to Kill, presumably taped at one of his nights in residency at the Beacon Theater. The hour-long special is now available and has been said might be Seinfeld’s last special. The Michelle Obama doc, Becoming, will also be on Netflix by the time you read this. It’s the first feature length doc from Nadia Hallgren, and its produced by the Obamas, much like the recent Sundance opener, Crip Camp, and last year’s Oscar winner, American Factory. The second season of Dead to Me also debuts on Friday as well as a number of other series.

In case you missed it earlier in the week, you can now watch last year’s Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker on Disney+, which means the entire nonology is now on Disney+. You can also watch a new docuseries about the making of last year’s hit, The Mandalorian, called Disney Gallery: The Mandalorian, which has Jon Favreau doing roundtables with some of the creatives with the first episode, “Directing,” now on the service and the second episode, “Legacy,” premiering on Friday.

The new Hulu animated series, Solar Opposites, will premiere on the streaming service this Friday. It’s the new series co-created by Justin Roiland and Mike McMahan (respectively the co-creator and former head writer of Rick and Morty), and it features a voice cast that includes Roiland, Thomas Middleditch, Mary Mack and Sean Giambrone with a huge line of guest voices, including Alan Tudyk, Alfred Molina, Christina Hendricks, Tiffany Haddish and many, many more!

The final film in Lionsgate’s Friday Night at the Movies will be Keanu Reeves’ John Wick, which will show for free on the Lionsgate website on Friday night starting at 9pm Eastern.

Next week, more movies not in theaters!

By the way, if you read this week’s column and have bothered to read this far down, feel free to drop me some thoughts at Edward dot Douglas at Gmail dot Com or drop me a note or tweet on Twitter. I love hearing from readers … honest!

#TheWeekendWarrior #Movies #Reviews #Arkansas #BlueStory #ValleyGirl #HowToBuildAGirl #Clementine #SpaceshipEarth #Streaming #VOD #Digital

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cutsliceddiced · 4 years ago

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New top story from Time: West Coast Farmers Had A Hellish Summer. It Might Not Be An Aberration.

Larry Tristano is looking out over what used to be his lush 13-acre farm in Santa Rosa, California. Less than a month ago, the fields were full, and he and his small team at Triple T Farm were harvesting cherry tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, and squash.

Now, there’s nothing but burnt ground. On Sept. 27, two raging Northern California wildfires, the Glass and Shady fires, converged, rapidly burning thousands of acres. The family homes on the property—where he and two more generations of his family lived—were burnt into ash; so were the barns, tools, livestock, an SUV and more. “After the fires in Paradise, I drove through and said, ‘I feel so sorry for these people.’ But you’ll never know how anybody feels until you’ve gone through it,” Tristano says, choking back tears. “It’s just horrible.”

Up and down the West Coast, farmers are reeling from a hellish summer of consecutive and overlapping crises. First, COVID-19 spread across the country, endangering the lives of farmworkers who were deemed as essential and devastating the restaurant market. Record-breaking hot stretches, which made this August the hottest one on record in California, burnt crops and decreased yields. Then a new wave of fires descended across the forests and hills, displacing workers, demolishing homes and blanketing regions with stifling smoke. “We’re trying to put the best food on the table and it’s been very, very rough,” Tristano says.

While some might chalk up these events to a series of freakish aberrations, there are signs that none of these crises will disappear anytime soon. Climate change is facilitating record-breaking heat spells; fires are raging every season in part due to poor forest management; many employers are resigned to COVID-19 lingering through the start of next year’s planting season. Once a land of bounty, the Golden State has turned into an unrelenting minefield of obstacles that have exposed the many flaws of an entire ecosystem.

As West Coast farmers and farmworkers start thinking about long-term solutions, they are often stumped. “We’re focusing on ‘How I get through today,’ but this might be what California looks like every August and September,” says Lorraine Walker, who runs Eatwell Farms in Dixon, California. “I have spoken with a few farmers and asked them, ‘What are you planning? Everyone’s response is, ‘We don’t really know.'”

Jenna Schoenefeld—The New York Times/ReduxA volunteer with GleanSLO organizes strawberries in a bin at a farm in San Luis Obispo, Calif., on June 4, 2020. Before the pandemic, GleanSLO volunteers typically gleaned from backyard fruit trees—now they visit farms.

COVID-19’s “Rollercoaster Ride”

The agricultural output of the West Coast is massive. California’s Central Valley grows a staggering quarter of the nation’s food and 40% of its fruits, nuts and other table foods. Oregon raked in $238 million in 2019 from wine, while Washington produces 65% of the nation’s fresh apples. If you buy a piece of produce from your typical American supermarket, there’s a good chance it came from a West Coast farm.

But the state of farms in the United States was precarious even before COVID-19 struck earlier this year and plunged the nation into a recession. In 2019, the number of farms filing for bankruptcy increased 24% from the previous year, while the U.S. farm debt grew to $425 billion. Foreign competition, trade wars, regulations and unpredictable weather made life hard on farmers. In California, massive wildfires ripped through expanses of fields that grow wine grapes, tomatoes and other goods.

COVID-19 added a new chaotic layer of unpredictability. “It’s been a rollercoaster ride, from panic buying to loss of demand to the food service business disappearing,” says Joe Pezzini, the president and CEO of Ocean Mist Farms, which is based in Castroville, Calif. “Every day’s been a new challenge.” Some farms took a huge hit from the loss of critical buyers like restaurants and school systems; others were buoyed by the increased interest in home cooking with fresh produce. The decreased price of many crops hit some farmers hard; others were able to float through thanks to government loans. As farmers realized they had excess supply, they dumped milk, slaughtered livestock and smashed eggs.

Regardless of COVID’s impact on a farm’s bottom line, the workforce bore the brunt of the risk. There are 400,000 agricultural workers in California, a population that was deemed essential during the pandemic. Researchers and advocates estimate between 60% and 75% of them are undocumented, and a majority are Latinos. Their typical lack of unionization and the constant fear of deportation have long made them vulnerable to workplace coercion. “The inequities that COVID-19 has highlighted, they existed pre-COVID,” Estella Cisneros, the legal director of the Agricultural Worker Program at California Rural Legal Assistance, Inc., says. “There’s a lot of pressure on farmworkers to continue working, and a lot of fear of retaliation.”

This year, Cisneros says that her office has fielded many complaints from California farmworkers who say their employers are not taking proactive steps to protect them or are simply ignoring Cal/OSHA regulations about protective equipment. “Some workers said that instead of being given masks, they were given something that much more resembled hairnets,” she says.

Many of the farmworkers that the CRLA assists are part of an aging population, have preexisting conditions like heart disease and diabetes, and have little access to healthcare or job alternatives. Harrowing statistics have confirmed how vulnerable Latino populations are to the virus: In California, they represent 61.1% of COVID-19 cases and 48.6% of deaths, despite making up only 38.9% of the population. “It’s highlighted how at the mercy these workers are at the hands of people who are not the workers themselves,” Cisneros says.

In Oregon, Reyna Lopez, the executive director of the farmworker union PCUN (Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste), says that a quarter of farmworkers polled in a member phone survey said they hadn’t seen any improvements in safety measures being taken by employers. “We’ve also heard that enforcement of the rules isn’t good—and when there is a complaint, people aren’t seeing it getting investigated,” she says.

Lopez and Cisneros are both fighting for the extensions of OSHA regulations related to COVID-19 in their states. They worry that the virus will continue to spread through vulnerable communities if workers are kept in packed labor housing units and sent out into the fields and processing plants in unsafe conditions, especially once the season picks back up next spring. “We have to be ready for May, when we’ll see lots of people coming for the harvest,” Lopez says. “This year, that’s when we saw a lot of outbreaks.”

Brian L. Frank—The New York Times/ReduxWorkers pick corn in the pre-dawn hours to avoid the heat of the day in California’s San Joaquin Valley on Aug. 21, 2020.

A Record-Breaking Heat Wave

Some farm owners have viciously complained about regulations like a rising minimum wage and water restrictions, saying they are squeezing their already meager margin of profit. “The costs are becoming so exorbitant, you’re seeing a lot of ground be idle or sold to other growers,” says Bruce Blodgett, the executive director of the San Joaquin Farm Bureau Federation. “People seem to forget we compete in a world marketplace that doesn’t have the labor or regulatory costs we do. Farmers are saying, ‘I’ve had enough, I can’t compete.’”

While Blodgett and others fight a battle over regulation, they’re also getting hammered by increasingly chaotic weather systems. Blodgett says that heavy rains during cherry harvest season in May slashed the potential cherry revenue in half. Then a record-breaking scorching summer set in, threatening both the crops and the ability of farmworkers to work in the face of heat exhaustion. In August, nearly 14,000 lightning strikes hit California over a 72-hour period. In early September, L.A. County hit an unprecedented 121 degrees.

Some 300 miles north of Los Angeles on the central coast of California lies Taylor Farms, which produces salads and vegetable kits and racks up billions a year in total sales. For the last two decades, Taylor Farms’ crops have thrived in the moderate climate of Salinas, where the coastal breeze and fog suppress summer temperatures and allow leafy greens to thrive.

But this year, record high temperatures hit Salinas once again, forcing Taylor Farms into a work schedule they’ve never tried before: complete night shifts, with workers reporting at midnight and working through 6 or 7 in the morning. “We kept people as cool as we could. At the same time, it was an awful rough six weeks for everybody who’s in this business,” Mark Borman, the president of Taylor Farms California, says. Despite the change, Borman says the company has lost about 23% of its projected yield over the last four weeks due to the heat wave.

Ocean Mist Farms, which specializes in artichokes and brussels sprouts and operates in the same area, was similarly impacted. “Lettuce gets burn on it, and there may be a supply issue coming up for Thanksgiving,” Pezzini, the CEO and president, says. “You have to salvage what you can.”

Bigger companies like Taylor Farms and Ocean Mist have some flexibility to deal with climate change: they can simply alter or move their operations. Pezzini hopes to move his artichokes and brussels sprouts closer to the coast where it’s cooler, and has been using drip irrigation in order to combat the water drought plaguing the state. Borman is looking at his options outside the state entirely. “Today, we grow more and more lettuce in Central Mexico. We’re growing more in Colorado,” he says. “We want to diversify our growing regions, so as things continue to change, we’ll have the right development from a seed perspective and have some flexibility.”

But smaller farmers aren’t afforded the same adaptability. Walker, at Eatwell Farms, says her tomato crop was “beyond disappointing” this year due to the combination of an extremely hot August followed by weeks of smoke blocking the sun. She says she might plant her tomatoes earlier in the season when it’s cooler—but that would impact the planting of her winter crops before it. “We don’t have much wiggle room,” she says.

Courtesy Kendra KimbrauskasThe view from Shimanek Bridge Farm near Scio, Ore., when wildfires swept through the area in September.

“The Sun Didn’t Rise”

While rising temperatures threaten livelihoods, they mostly don’t threaten actual lives. But the fires that follow the heat waves do. Over five million acres have burned in California, Oregon and Washington combined during what has been the most active fire year ever on the West Coast. Experts say that climate change, lightning strikes and poor forest management have combined to provide the kindling for infernos that have killed over thirty people and destroyed thousands of buildings.

Kendra Kimbrauskas, the co-owner Shimanek Bridge Farm near Scio, Oregon, had previously not thought much about the risk of fires when in September, she woke up to a strange sight. “The sun didn’t rise. It was black like it was midnight,” she recalls. “The ash was falling, and it looked like it was in the middle of winter, with snowflakes in your headlights. At like 11 a.m., the sun finally came through and turned everything a really eerie red—like blood red.”

Kimbrauskas hooked up her horse trailer and headed to the county fairgrounds, where she stayed for almost a week. While her farm was ultimately untouched by the fires, many were not—and she dove into a community rescue effort to save the many animals that had been left behind. She ended up using her truck and a trailer to transport abandoned animals to the Linn County Expo Center, where a noisy scene was developing. “We’re talking hundreds of farms, thousands of animals,” she says. “It was like Noah’s Ark, with any animal you can imagine that people were scrambling to get out of danger: horses, sheep, bunnies, ducks, geese, alpacas.”

Kimbrauskas says she has committed to regenerative farming practices that will hopefully lead to more fire-resilient farms. But this experience has shown her how even the best preventative measures may not be enough. “We also have to be prepared to just leave,” she says. “If we don’t have a plan, we may lose our lives.”

Amanda Lucier—The New York Times/Redux Julio Hernandez cuts the hair of his brother, Alvaro Hernandez, at a farm that opened space to people displaced by wildfires in Central Point, Ore., on Sept. 26, 2020. The Almeda Fire leveled some of the only affordable housing for the immigrants who work the fields, kitchens and construction sites of southern Oregon.

Lopez, of PCUN, said that many farmworkers in areas adjacent to evacuation zones were still told to go back to work and endure hazardous air quality. “It’s really important for people to understand there were thousands of outdoor farmworkers still out there working while this was still happening,” she says. “We spoke to a farmworker, Manuel, who said that during the peak of the wildfires, he was feeling nauseated, had a headache, and his body was hurting. He’s still not feeling 100%.”

Many more lost their homes. In Phoenix, Ore., about 200 miles south of Scio, a wildfire ripped through a predominantly Latino community, destroying nearly 1,000 housing units, most of them mobile homes and RV parks. Many members of the community are agricultural workers who toil at the area’s food processing plants and wineries, and have nowhere to turn. “In less than five minutes, everything was gone,” Phoenix resident Jairo Gomez told the Washington Post.

Larry Tristano, in Santa Rosa, suffered the same fate. He himself was in Wyoming when the fire rolled through—but his family was still in their Santa Rosa house and scrambled to get out when they learned of the evacuation order. “My wife grabbed our parents’ wedding pictures, her mother’s scrapbooks, personal things, clothes, our dogs, and that was it,” he says.

Two days later, Tristano returned to nothing. “The only thing that survived was one greenhouse and the tractor. Everything else is gone,” he says. In response, he started doing the only thing he knows how to do: farming the land. “We got a generator. We hooked up the well. Our vegetable crops did survive, and we’re actually back at the market on a limited supply. We’re not going to let this beat us.” Over two weeks, over $29,000 has been raised on GoFundMe for the farm’s workers and its recovery.

Jessica Christian—The San Francisco Chronicle/Getty ImagesGround scorched by the Glass Fire leads to an untouched vineyard along Silverado Trail in Calistoga, Calif., on Sept. 29, 2020.

While Tristano is plowing ahead, there are many signs that the triple crisis for West Coast farmers is far from over. In Washington, the apple crop will be up to 10% smaller than expected due to wildfires and extreme windstorms battering orchards. Economic recovery has been slow, and COVID-19 could very well be lingering when many farm workers return in full force to plant seeds in the spring, threatening their health and slowing down schedules. And federal assistance has been underwhelming: while President Trump has spearheaded record farm subsidies, most of the money has flowed to Southern states and big farms, a nonpartisan watchdog agency found.

Borman, of Taylor Farms, says these compounding issues could affect the consumer through higher prices or a decreased selection. Restaurants may start building their menus around less perishable greens, like cabbage or iceberg lettuce, to protect against volatility. He expects some farmers to move out of the region to greener pastures, “whether that be into central Mexico or even further south into South America.”

As far as how West Coast farmers are adapting to these looming struggles, Borman doesn’t have an answer. “It was a really tricky year. There’s a lot of uncertainty, but I don’t know if there’s a lot of strategy coming out of it yet,” he says. “Honestly, everybody’s a little shell-shocked right now.”

via https://cutslicedanddiced.wordpress.com/2018/01/24/how-to-prevent-food-from-going-to-waste

#Time #top stories #IFTTT #news

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freelancer1971-blog · 5 years ago

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#SEO #on page optimization #on page seo #2020 #SEO 2020 #SEO 2021

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magzoso-tech · 5 years ago

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Cultivating adaptability is a pandemic coping skill

New Post has been published on https://magzoso.com/tech/cultivating-adaptability-is-a-pandemic-coping-skill/

Cultivating adaptability is a pandemic coping skill

Jason Shen Contributor

Jason Shen is a three-time startup founder and the CEO of Midgame, a gaming technology company backed by Techstars and Betaworks.

It’s no secret that adaptability has become a critical trait for knowledge workers. To stay on top of a rapidly evolving world, we must assess new situations, make intelligent decisions and implement them effectively.

A 2014 research report by Barclays indicated that 60% of employers say adaptability has become more important during the last decade, and BBC called adaptability the “X factor” for career success in an era of technological change.

But even the most intrepid executive, entrepreneur or freelancer would be forgiven for struggling to adapt to a global pandemic. The impact of coronavirus has been unrelenting: hospitals at capacity, students sent home, conference cancellations, sold out inventory, markets in free fall and cities under lockdown.

Whatever you thought 2020 was going to look like, you were dead wrong. Box CEO Aaron Levie and Stanford professor Bob Sutton’s recent Twitter exchange said it all:

Not just start-ups. Every big company, every nonprofit, every government organization, and most people too

— Bob Sutton (@work_matters) March 16, 2020

This moment requires us to learn new skills, develop new habits and let go of old ways of working. In the book “Range,” there’s a chapter about “dropping familiar tools” that details how experienced professionals will overlearn specific behavior and then fail to adapt to a new circumstance. This mentality affected everyone from firefighters to aviation crews to NASA engineers, often with deadly results, and underscores how hard it can be to adapt to change.

To help us cultivate adaptability in this unprecedented moment, I sought answers in unexpected places. Here’s what I learned.

Let go of your attachments

Adaptability is required first and foremost when circumstances change. It’s easy to get attached to certain outcomes, especially when they’ve been planned long in advance or have significant emotional weight.

Due to coronavirus, a couple I know is postponing their wedding originally set for April. Having tied the knot only a year ago myself, I can’t imagine how frustrating that must be for them. But it was the right decision; demanding that the show go on would have been dangerous for their families, friends and the public at large.

I recently spoke with my friend Belinda Ju, an executive coach with a longstanding meditation practice. Non-attachment is a core concept of Buddhism, the spiritual path she’s followed for many years, and I wanted her thoughts on how that idea might help us adapt to unforeseen circumstances.

“Attachment doesn’t work because certainty doesn’t work. You can’t predict the future,” she explained. Being attached to something means “seeing the world through a false lens. Nothing is fixed.” For Ju and her clients, non-attachment doesn’t mean giving up on goals — it means focusing on what you can control.

“You might have a fixed goal of needing to raise X million dollars to keep your team afloat,” she said. “But in the age of coronavirus, investors might be slower to respond. So what are the levers in your control? What are the options you have and the pros and cons to each one?”

Her points hit home for me. As a NYC-based startup founder, I was preparing to make several trips to the West Coast to raise the next round for my company, Midgame, a digital party host for gamers.

I like pitching in person, but that’s obviously not going to happen, so I need to embrace video calls as my new reality. By doing that, I can get to stocking up on coffee, cleaning up my work space and setting up a microphone so when I do pitch over video, I’m bringing my A game.

Be present

Another way to think about adaptability is that it’s the ability to improvise. In theater, improv performers can’t rely on prewritten lines, and have to react in real time to suggestions from the audience or the words and actions of their scene partners.

“ ‘Playing the scene you’re in’ is a principle from improv which means to be present to the situation you’re in.”

That’s what Mary Lemmer told me. As an entrepreneur and VC who spent a stint at The Second City improv theater in Chicago, Lemmer knows a thing or two about having to adapt. Today, she brings her insights to corporations through training and workshops.

She explained that as an improv performer, you may start a scene with a certain idea in mind of how it will go, but that can quickly change. “If you’re not present,” she said, “then you’re not actively listening and because there’s no script, you’ll miss details. That’s when scenes fall apart.”

When I was a PM at Etsy and we had a major launch, we’d get engineering, dev ops, product, marketing and customer support together in a room to talk through the final event sequencing. These weren’t always the most exciting meetings and it was easy to get distracted by email or chat. One time engineering announced a significant last-minute issue that almost slipped through the cracks. Luckily, someone piped up with a clarifying question and we were all able to work together to minimize the issue.

Lemmer argues that in improv, like in business, you can’t make assumptions about people or situations. “We see this a lot in board meetings. People start to assume ‘Sally’ will always be the proactive one or ‘Jim’ will always be the naysayer and tune out.”

This is kind of attitude is problematic in a stable environment, but downright dangerous in an unstable situation where new data and events can quickly open up a new set of challenges and opportunities.

Early on, some experts thought the coronavirus crisis would stabilize globally by April. In early February, S&P Global stated that in the “worst-case scenario,” the virus would be contained by late May. A month later, that prediction already looked wildly optimistic.

Build mental toughness

Experts are saying now that cases may peak in May or June, which means everyone should be hunkering down for eight or more weeks of social distancing and isolation. A COVID-19 vaccine just started human trials, but testing in large enough sample sizes to identify side effects and then ramping up large-scale production still might not be fully available for more than a year.

In other words, dealing with this virus is not a sprint, it’s a marathon. A marathon no one signed up for.

Someone who knows a lot about this topic is Jason Fitzgerald. A 2:39 marathoner, Fitzgerald now helps people run faster and healthier as an author and coach.

When we spoke over the phone, he pointed out that running, unlike say basketball or gymnastics, is a sport where “you have to voluntarily want to experience more and more discomfort.”

Fitzgerald calls this ability to endure “mental toughness,” and it’s a skill we all can build. For runners, it requires doing workouts that scare them, putting in mileage that’s higher than they have in the past and racing regularly. It’s also about accepting and even embracing the pain of running hard.

The same is true for adaptation. We can train ourselves to respond better to change (we’re all getting lots of practice right now!), but developing new habits and working in new ways is always uncomfortable. As decorated cyclist Greg LeMond once said, “it doesn’t get easier, you just get faster.”

We also have to recognize that we won’t get it right every time. “The more that we get comfortable with poor performances, the more we can learn from them,” Fitzgerald said, noting that he’s had his share of bad races, including failing to finish an ultramarathon in 2015. “Sometimes you dwell on a bad race for a couple days, but then you have to just forget about it and move on with your training.”

Many of us are reeling from more cancellations, suspensions and complete one-eighties in the last month than in the last five years. But we can’t let ourselves stay bogged down by our feelings of frustration or disappointment. We accept our new reality, learn what we can from it, and keep going.

It’s clear that the people who can let go of their past plans and embrace the new environment ahead will thrive. Already we’re seeing companies pivot from live events to online webinars, and remote-first workplaces becoming the new normal. Shares of Zoom have risen even as the stock market has taken a beating and I’m sure other winners will emerge in the coming weeks and months.

But adaptability doesn’t just matter for individuals or even companies, it matters for governments. For China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, thanks to aggressive testing and quarantining efforts, life is returning, somewhat, to normal. New cases are on the decline and there’s hope of life returning to normalcy in the near future. Countries that bungled their response to the disease progression, including Italy, Spain, the U.K. and the United States, are now facing increasingly dire consequences.

Whether you want to survive a global pandemic, reach the next phase in your career or be selected on a mission to Mars, it’s hard to overstate the importance of adaptability in getting there.

#Miscellaneous

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aleatoryalarmalligator · 8 years ago

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Life Story, Part 47

For a brief time, at age fifteen, I had a crush on John Malkovich. I saw him as his character as Basie in 'Empire of the Sun', and I really liked his character. He seemed really distant and cool. And then my father, reminiscent of the days that he used to play music, bought me a Live album of Lou Reed's (I believe it was simply called Live), and I used to listen to this all day for about a month, and even though it was far from Lou Reed's best, I still have really strong feelings about that album. Though Basie and Lou Reed were seemingly unrelated, I connected the two strongly. I didn't feel the same way towards the early seventies Lou Reed that I did towards John Malkovich's character, but there was a certain distant coolness that seemed to connect the two of them, at least in my own mind at that time.

My father, on one of his other trips down to Boise to meet Patty, got me Hunky Dory, by David Bowie. I ended up loving this album nearly as much as I loved The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust. This was one of the last time periods that I was ever able to get into a video game. Sarah and I both bought Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire. I remember that early summer I spent playing that game on my gameboy advanced, listening to Hunky Dory. I especially loved Quicksand and Fill Your Heart, but the whole album was beyond perfection. I looked at the pictures of David Bowie in the sleeve of the album, and I admired his make up and his style. I really wished that I had that sort of presence about me.

Strangely, for the half year that my dad had been seeing Patty, she had not once come up to visit us. Given that he wanted to leave us all for Patty in Boise, us meeting might have bothered him and caused him to feel some guilt. He was just kind of hoping that Allison, David and I would just disappear somehow, the house along with it. He was done being our father. He was embarrassed by the house and by his job. But she wanted to see where he actually lived and who we actually were. So my father drove up that June with her two daughters and her little Yorkshire Terrier. When I met her, I was alarmed at how thin she was. My father used to talk about her and say she had 'a little eating disorder' as though it were something minor. I knew she had to burn 1500 calories on the treadmill every single day and that she only ate about 600 calories. This woman was starving. I noticed that in public places other women would glare at her body jealously. Most of the time body shaming is towards fat people, but it can definitely happen to very thin people as well. She was really nice though from what I could tell. Something seemed wrong with her, but it was hard to put my finger on it. She was very nice, but there was a sort of shadow behind her eyes. She wasn't phony, but there seemed to be something missing.

That was a very strange weekend. First, of all, my dad wanted the house absolutely spotless. He figured that this meant no furniture or items sitting out at all. It had to look like an empty shell of a home. So in a rush, we had to pack up everything in the house while he was down in Boise to get her and bring her and her daughters up. The day before there had been a very strange incident that I only found out about later. My father had set a coffee cup on the counter, sort of backed up against the wall by the flour jars. He watched the coffee cup fly off the table and crash onto the kitchen floor. Not a person who believed in ghosts, or god or anything really, he put it in the back of his mind as some kind of fluke of nature that he didn't want to understand.

The morning that Patty showed up, I woke up feeling like someone was watching me. Nobody was there however. It's hard to explain the room layout, but my bedroom had a door that was directly in my vision that lead to the bathroom door, and that door was open. I felt very strongly like there was someone in there watching me, but clearly there was no one. I could see in there completely, all there was to see. Nobody else was awake yet. I wasn't even scared really. It was a sunny day and I wasn't worried. I just felt this disattached feeling and this sense of knowing that something was up, and it seemed like something that was connected to me in some way. It is my habit to lay in bed for a few minutes before I start getting up. In the mean time, I sat there absently and watched the bathroom, since it was right in front of me. Suddenly, my toothbrush flew off the counter in a very rapid manner onto the floor. Like, as if someone knocked it off the bathroom counter.

I got up cautiously and went into the bathroom. I looked around, and I thought that was extremely odd. I picked up the toothbrush and put it back. I put it out of my mind for the rest of the day. It was such a sunny day, and we had a lot of plans and such, so I didn't want to get really invested in worrying about whatever apparently had thrown my toothbrush. It really felt like some kind of weird sign, but I had/have no way of proving that.

The day went on as usual – I don't remember but I think my father was really attempting to be showy for Patty's sake, and the next day I woke up to another weird feeling that there was something going on. The time was about the same, eight, the morning sun was the same, and everyone else was still in bed. I laid in bed for awhile, just thinking and processing the feeling of being awake, when suddenly I heard a loud boom that seemed to shake the whole house. I got out of bed, and my father, Patty, her daughters and Allison and David and I all ran downstairs. The front door had been completely slammed to the ground. It was alarming, and my father had a very frightened look on his face but said nothing. Patty was supposed to stay another night and there were a bunch of things we had planned in advance, but her daughters hated the house, and hated us so they made her go back that day. They weren't very nice from what I recall. They demanded things, and called Allison and I both ugly openly. They seemed to be able to say and do whatever they wanted, and they seemed to hate their mom. Patty would always let them do what they wanted, usually with this strange sad and guilty look on her face. About three weeks later, Patty broke it off with my father. I wondered if her daughters had simply not liked us all that much.

I forgot to mention this in the previous chapters I have written thus far about my life, and I ordinarily don't believe I would go back and explain something that happened before, given that the moment has passed, but this is worth explaining because it was a big deal to me at the time it happened, and forever gave me this eerie sense that either something was fundamentally wrong with me, or reality was not as I thought it was – though I had always had my suspicions. Earlier on, in the beginning of tenth grade year before the summer that I am now talking about, I had one of the most terrifying experiences in my house alone. So, it was night time and my father had taken Allison and David to some kind of event in Lewiston. I for whatever reason didn't end up going to this event, and opted to stay home instead to be alone perhaps. The house was completely empty all evening, with only me there. I ended up calling Sarah on the phone and talking most of the night, and we were both up late talking into the night. Sarah's mom didn't want Sarah talking on the phone past 9:30pm or so on school nights, so if and when we did talk on the phone that late in the night, we had to keep it quiet. I had to wait for her to call me, and if I called, her mother would hear the phone ring. We kind of had a system in place for this. I was also not supposed to be on the phone, so I had to be a little careful myself.

However, we tended to be able to get away with this system pretty easily. My father was always easy to fool, and Sarah's mom might have been more suspicious that Sarah was not following orders, but she wasn't always going to do much about it. On this particular night though, Sarah and I were talking on the phone, and it was getting late, not too late, but later on. My family still wasn't home. I wasn't particularly scared, and in fact I think I was in the middle of talking about someone at school that pissed me off, or something of that nature when I heard this loud hard voice screaming impossibly loud at me throughout the house 'RENEEE!! GET OFF THE PHONE!. It seemed like it was coming for a few rooms away. It was more of a roar than a yell actually. It sounded almost monstrous. Instinctively, I put down the phone believing it to be my father. It had this tone that was similar to him when he was angry. I told Sarah I had to go frantically, and shut the phone off. Within moments I was just sitting in the house alone. I listened and realized with horror that nobody was in the house at all. And the more I thought about that voice, the more I realized 'that was not my dad'. In fact, it sounded inhuman. It said my name with personal contempt, like it knew me. But there was murder in that roaring voice.

So I sat there on my bed frozen in fear. The house was completely silent. At any moment for the next twenty minutes, I fully expected someone or something to come into my room, but nothing did. I was afraid to move, fearing that if I did whatever it was would find me and chase me. I strongly imagined that it wanted me to stay exactly where I was. I wanted so much to go up to Sarah's house and hide, but it was too late for that. I was shaking to hard to move. I stayed in place for I think twenty to thirty minutes. Never once was there a single noise. And eventually, after a million years of waiting in fear, I was relieved to hear the door open and my father and Allison and David stumble in talking about whatever even they just got back from, totally oblivious to just how dark and uncertain reality had just become for me alone in the house.

As convinced as I am that I heard what I did, I know that there is always a chance that whatever I dealt with was something deeply uprooted in my psyche. Because if whatever I heard was real, than I almost don't believe such a thing could be considered human. And yet, I don't happen to believe in god in the classic sense. I don't believe in objective good or evil. I don't put much faith in the unknown, though I have always had thoughts about it. Whatever I heard was not some shadow of the past, but an active entity – be it in my own thoughts or in the world outside of me, and that entity had this force in it's vocals that conveyed extreme violence. My father, as horrible and at times frightening has he has always been to me, has never possessed that kind of violence in his yell. The most frightening thing about my father was always that he was all too human and deep down, even though I think he is a weak and sometimes awful person has never actually enjoyed himself at his worst. I don't think he ever really wanted to hurt anyone. This voice I heard though, sounded like him, at least initially, but it was almost like it was mocking my father's voice, like it knew about all the times he had ever yelled at me, and about how I felt. So whatever it was, it knew or had knowledge of the intimate details of my father and my relationship, to a degree that it knew it could mock that. No, whatever I was dealing with was far more destructive than anyone I have ever known could be. And it's really hard to say what it actually was. And fortunately, nothing like that has ever happened to me since.

I mention this story beside the story of the door falling and the toothbrushes flying because they all happened in the same year, and it always gave me a sense that there was some kind of presence I the house that was specifically invested in me, at least during that time period. If I was making it up, it felt just as real as going into a grocery store or talking to a friend.

I got the courage and I called Zack that June. It was beginning to feel sick and wrong to me that he had simply left school and we weren't talking anymore. It made no sense to me. I seemed to be building into being some kind of defensive and jealous shell of a person without him there. I missed him. His dad answered the phone, and then said something very Minnesotan sounding utterance like 'aye, the boys in his room' and gave the phone over to Zack. I was petrified with fear as I waited. Zack's low voice answered the phone. I told him who it was. I asked him what he had been up to. I had some really basic things to say on the phone that I had psychologically labored to even consider saying. It took me a week to even think of the very most basic things I might be able to say. The conversation didn't last all that long, but I remember he started talking about how everyone in society needed to quit their jobs to overthrow the power structure. And it was strange, but this was one of the first times I didn't quite agree with him. Well, in a sense I did, but in a sense I didn't. I asked Zack how anything would get done. He just explained to me in this really vague way that it would cut out the middle man and essentially life would be this blissful existence where we could all be artists with no struggle, everyone would love everyone equally and we could pick food off the vine and there would be no shortages.

I had spent the last two years believing and/or wanting to believe everything he ever said, and there was this strange pause in me then, perhaps because I was slowly becoming independent in ways that I had not been before, and I seriously saw some flaws in the social structure he was so certain was 'THE WAY'. That was the thing about Zack. He almost had this religious obsession with a certain kind of purity of mankind's interactions with one another. At an early age, even when he had not been religious, he was always at his core a highly religious person. He put blind faith into things, felt there was guidance by higher powers, believed in good and evil and felt he was being tested. He had this idea of heaven on earth before he ever really considered the bible. And I had bought into all of that, and now I was beginning to see some flakiness behind it all, like he was talking out of any sort of context relaying to reality. It's not that I thought society was properly structured, or that I didn't have a pinch of faith stirred into my belief system here and there. But Zack's feelings about the world and what he wanted to see didn't help the world as it was. He didn't seem overly concerned with solving real problems, and instead focused on making up pretend ones.

I questioned him a little bit, but I kept it light.. I was so happy to hear him on the other end. Unfortunately, his dad called him to do yardwork and he had to go.

That summer, my mom was watching houses. We were going to move into this nice place she had found the coming month, but it had to be cleaned out. Some of her friends from her connections as a bartender had offered for her to stay at their place for a few weeks while they left town. She had his friend named Brenda, who I never ended up meeting, and we stayed at her place. It was a very nice home. The living room was highly decorated in bamboo and African paintings. There were two bathrooms, and there was cable, but all of us had televisions to ourselves. There was plenty of food for us to eat. I was pretty happy camping out in Brenda's living room with her soft sofa and her nice big television screen and air conditioner.

It was a strange time in my life. I didn't feel like 'me' anymore, and there was this subtle sense that there was no 'me' actually – never was, but rather I was a system and at any time I could essentially reprogram myself to be anything or anybody. The concept of reinventing myself was fascinating to me. I always hated Courtney Love and this hatred of her had caused me to read a book written by the private investigator who was hired by Courtney to find Kurt on the days surrounding his murder. The book was interesting, and insightful, but there was a part of it where the investigator explained Courtney's crazy upbringing and how she had essentially fought her way to the top and reinvented herself – getting surgery on her nose, meeting the people she needed to meet and all of that. It sort of fascinated me. She seemed so strong, and at the same time, very broken. And in other ways, she seemed completely horrendous. But given the limitations that I had grown up seeing in the music world, it subconsciously had really eaten at me, how women couldn't just be monsters. It seemed like women were supposed to be sexual, but only this squeaky clean kind of sexual that simultaneously almost desexualized them, and as soon as there was a flaw the media and the people who were exposed to that media were trained to put the women down. I mean, there were some exceptions with someone like Bjork who seemed to have made a strange new world that people had to travel into to appreciate, rather than drag her out of.

So even though I was thoroughly convinced that Courtney had killed Kurt, I actually sort of liked her anyway. She represented a girl like me in a way that most female stars could not. The things that were awful about her actually gave her definition and intrigue in the backdrop of a hollow facade. She gave me a strange hope that I too could rise, if I knew the right people, if I worked my way up ruthlessly. And, I thought her look was so gorgeous. She was some kind of monster, hiding in the body of a bruised angel. I wasn't that exactly, but I felt that same kind of contradiction in my own nature. I had always felt compelled to dress like a boy, since my father didn't seem to want me to be a girl, or to be seen as pretty. And I had always felt really insecure about it. I had never been allowed to be 'feminine' or to be myself wherever I was. Even when I wore make up, it had always been more of an act of defiance against authority rather than me trying to present any personal beauty to the world. I had spent most of my life trying to be a good person. I had been fooled so horribly by Ava, and overlooked by Zack, and I had thought that I could win Kyle over by being faithful and virtuous. None of these things ever worked. And even when people cherished me, it always seemed painfully and annoyingly sweet. I wanted to have the right to be objectified just like other women could be. But I wanted to be objectified in a way that challenged others psychologically and challenged society.

I spent three weekends at Brenda's watching America's Next Top Model. I got really invested in the show for some reason. It didn't seem like something I would have been into, but there was this aspect of physical beauty that had always seemed out of reach to me, and now, watching this show I started getting this blissful feeling in my bones that I too could evolve into someone physically beautiful. A year previous and I would have rejected it entirely. But these pretty girls were all getting these lovely pictures taken, and there was something in me that clicked that weekend. I didn't want to be fat anymore. I wanted to lose weight, change my hair, my face. I had never felt so compelled as I did then. Watching that show, I immediately stopped eating very much then and there. I had never held back before, at least not really. I could feel that unfamiliar itch of hunger that I had avoided feeling for several years at all costs for the first time. And there was something very pleasing about feeling hungry. It gave me a strange adrenaline rush.

There was now something exciting about looking at myself in the mirror. There stood the seemingly forgettable, chubby mousy girl – nobody had ever really liked entirely, but in my own eyes I felt like I had sold myself to the devil somehow. There was something difficult and chaotic in my eyes, something final. Nobody could see it or feel it, but it was swimming in my veins. It's really hard to explain that. There was a piece of my innocence that I had quietly pawned off in order to become a new person, I had in a way, thrown away something childish and of good virtue, and even though I had done nothing, said nothing, and it would be very hard to explain it to anyone what I had done at all exactly, there was nothing I could do now to go back, even if I had wanted to. And I felt really good about all of this. There was nothing about the old me worthy of going back to. This new girl was a much stronger, almost in my mind a sort of goddess that I would eventually have to live up to. And I knew there would be more things about myself that I would have to sacrifice if I wanted to keep this magic alive. This whole notion of changing myself became such a fixation that it was difficult for me to think of anything else.

Later, one of these weekends, I had heard that there was live music playing in downtown Lewiston. Given that I had really been exposed to very little live music in my life, considering I had goals of actually being a musician someday, it made sense to go and see this band. I went down there, and there were many sweaty families sitting around, eating cotton candy and BBQ and watching this band play. Children were dancing. I found a place to sit by a tree and watch. I didn't want to be a jerk, but I didn't really get into their music all that much. This isn't to say that live music from small bands is not worthy of consideration or support. I was happy to be there overall. It was just that I noticed that this band was trying very hard to imitate a few other bands to the degree that they seemed like nothing more than a wannabe of other mediocre acts that had gained some notoriety. They mostly did covers. And maybe some of my lack of enthusiasm was based on the fact that it was a very warm day and I've never handled the heat all that well. But I didn't think that seeing a band perform should have felt this boring.

The next act that came up was absolutely atrocious. I had been a fan of pop punk back in my early preteen days, but those times were definitely over for me, and I felt very distanced from that whole scene now. Pop punk had sort of transformed into emo and screamo at least that's the direction popular music had headed. And I was having none of it. Though I still liked modern music to a limited extent, and though I was far from any sort of expert, at the time I was caught in between early 90's alternative and the 60's. I often wished I had been in San Francisco during the 60's to be a part of that scene.

The band was so horrible to my ears that I had to get up and go straight away. The smell of meat in the air, the flies, the heat and this shrill whining voice was getting to my psyche. My mother was supposed to pick us up soon, but I had troubles sitting in the same place. On impulse, I walked into a store nearby to get away from it all, which turned out being this record store called Pepperland that I hadn't even known existed. I guess it had been there since the 50's, but when Hastings came into town a lot of people stopped shopping for music in the record store, and instead got their Cd's either online or in bigger stores. So this place was going out of business, but it was in that shop that day where I discovered that they had all of The Stooges records. I had heard so much about Iggy Pop and the Stooges. But their music was always out of reach. At the time, though I am sure there were platforms online where I could have listened to them, I didn't know what those platforms were, and back in these days when I bought an album, I often times had to take a chance on it. Raw Power stuck out to me the most and I grabbed it and bought it with whatever money I had on me at the moment, which was all I had.

I looked at the cd sleeve for Raw Power many times, again and again. Though Iggy Pop was definitely a male, I couldn't help but admire just how thin he was. He seemed to have this crazed aliveness about him. And Raw Power was excellent. I listened to it over and over again for years, and remember that day finding it as a very special day.

When I got back home to my father's house, he offered me a biscuit that next morning and I refused it. He must have realized that I was now dieting (I was never one to deny a biscuit). And he started actually, at least initially being very helpful and supportive. He spent a good deal of time that summer explaining to me about how the body processed food, carbs, calories, different kinds of fats, proteins and what exercise and metabolism did. He knew a lot about these things because he was a body builder in the 80's. This all helped me considerably to lose weight more effectively. I started regimenting my days, getting up early, walking up and down the hills in town and along the bike path. When I got back, I would drink a sort of gross protein shake and then listen to music, before going to exercise again. Besides The Stooges, I was also listening to a lot of Soundgarden and Sonic Youth. Later on in the day, I would visit Sarah, but I would avoid eating very much. And before I went to bed, I would go out and exercise again.

At the same time, a few things happened that caused my dad to become very invested in working out as well along with me. Patty left him. He was sort of in denial about it. I guess she had started dating a much younger man. He was upset and heartbroken as he had actually intended on leaving us all behind just for her. He shaved his head a week later. He had been balding more and more over the years, with a very pronounced widow's peak. He came into my room one of those days and he took his baseball cap off and shocked me with a bald head. I think it was his way of fighting off age, and it honestly did make him look much younger.

And as he was walking into Walmart one evening, he was stopped at the door by a group of official looking women. These women were scouting for attractive men in the Lewis-Clark Valley, and they seemed to think my father was one of the handsomest men they had seen all day – just what they were looking for. They intended on having a professional photo shoot for him in about a month or two, they were going to put him in this 2006 Hottest Men of the Valley calendar and there was going to be some contests. I guess my father is probably attractive given that a lot of women have always come up to me and told me so, but it's really hard for me to ever see him like that because he's blegh, my father, and he always seemed very plain to me, kind of miserable and silly.

Of course he agreed to do this as he was never the type of person to shirk opportunity, and I think this played into some kind of goal he had of attempting to get back with Patty. He was hoping to do this photo shoot and then send her one of the calendars kind of flirtatiously to show her just how great he was, having been hand selected to be in this competition. So he wanted to look really toned for it and he started doing just that. He started lifting a lot of weights and scaling back on his food intake – though not as much as I was, even still. He had lived his life working out and doing all of these things as a younger man, so a lot of this was nothing new to him. This made it a lot easier for me too since he gave me very small amounts of food and kept me on track. I was still working out harder then him somehow, and it kind of freaked him out a bit. He mentioned to me that my fear of calories was a little bit out of hand. I was eating about 500 calories a day around that time. He was studying my metabolism, and I think it was starting to worry him a little. Because even though I was easily working out nearly twice as hard as he was, and cutting my carbs out almost entirely (at the time I adhered to the whole low carb thing), I had only managed to lose about 5 pounds in a month. He had managed, being that he was in his 50's, nearly 20 pounds working half as hard, and this didn't include the muscle he was putting on – which is heavier than fat. And he mentioned to me that there might be something wrong with my metabolism. Sure, I was looking better than I had been, but logically, mathematically even when you counted calories and exercise , I was supposed to be dropping more weight, and it wasn't really happening to the degree that it should have been. I was getting more and more frustrated and I would simply starve myself harder, or double my exercise regimen. It got to where I could think of little else. I really couldn't afford to. The only way for me to make progress was to completely starve and march up the hill. And if I failed in any way, some blanket of self loathing and frustration would fall heavily on my head. I felt like I was betraying everything I cared about and this was the only way to escape the gross, empty, psychologically abusive and boring life I was stuck in.

My father called my doctor and booked an appointment for me for three weeks later.

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