#i need Sherman to set the office on fire

[tipsywench]

I knew today would be rough, but I've been catching myself almost falling asleep at work

It doesn't help that I don't have shit to do but sit at my desk and look busy

[pynkhues]

What advice can you give for making a dialogue sequence flow better. Rather than just saying he said, she said, etc.? Please and thank you (●'◡'●)

Hi! That’s a great question, anon!

I know it was definitely something I struggled with when I was a newer writer because so often I think when we’re first approaching writing, we tend to put a lot of weight in dialogue. That’s not a bad thing necessarily, dialogue is an important part of storytelling, more so for some writers than others. Amy Sherman-Palladino who created Gilmore Girls and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is a very dialogue-driven writer for instance, whereas Vince Gilligan who created Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul often prioritises silence and lets visual language stand alone, but the way they use the dialogue they have, whether it be with a light touch or a heavy hand, isn’t really about the dialogue at all, it’s about tone and rhythm.

As you grow as a writer, I think you start to get more of a sense of what that means, but an example and an exercise I use a lot when I’m teaching creative writing is to take the scenario of two girls walking through a forest. Try writing it as a horror, and then try writing it as a light drama. The scenario itself can be either, it’s the tone that creates the story, and as a part of that, what changes is setting and environment, dialogue, and actions.

In one, you’ll have twisting branches and darkness and panicked breaths and scrambling hands, and in the other you’ll have lush trees and warm midday light and laughter and gentle touches.

You’ll also have very different dialogue, and therefore very different context for which that dialogue is delivered. What helps it flow, as you put it, is something that’s responsive to the story that you’re telling and what else is happening in the scene.

So! Let’s break that down a little!

When you're thinking about anything on a scene level, I think it really boils down to six questions:

What's the story you're telling?

What's the purpose of your scene?

Where are your characters? What is the environment they're in?

What are they doing as they talk?

What is the context of the characters' relationship?

How are the characters feeling?

That's kind of a lot, haha, so I'll try to keep this relatively short.

What’s the story you’re telling?

This really comes back to what I was saying above about the story you’re telling having an impact on how you use all narrative devices whether that be dialogue, description or setting. It would make no sense for Walt in Breaking Bad to talk like Lorelai from Gilmore Girls or vice versa for instance – that’s not the story that the writers are trying to tell. Walt’s limited dialogue helps to reflect his secretive nature and the dark mood of the story overall, while Lorelai’s rapid-fire dialogue and tendency to be doing a lot while she talks reflects the frenetic energy of the show and the gravitational pull she has on those around Star’s Hollow.

The dialogue – and the way that dialogue is delivered – helps to embed the viewer or reader and create a tone that matches the story you want to tell.

What’s the purpose of your scene?

More than that, how you use dialogue and the cues around dialogue helps to realise the purpose of your scene.

All scenes have a purpose.

Scenes are the building blocks of your story. They are what get you from the floor to the ceiling, and you need to know what each of those building blocks is doing.

That doesn't have to be a lot! Sometimes a building block is just 'character has a bird poop on them on their way to the party'. On its own, the scene might seem light, but the purpose is actually to set up that they're about to have a really bad time at the party. That's great! Because you know the purpose of that scene therefore is Foreshadowing.

The point is though that that purpose - whether big or small - will impact the way your characters behave and interact not only with other characters, but the environment around them.

If the purpose is, for instance, two characters misunderstanding each other, they’ll likely be frustrated or hurt, which will contribute to not just what they say, but their tone of voice and their posture, and the space. They might feel the chill of the air conditioning a little more acutely, grab a couch cushion to hug to their chest, distract themselves by putting dishes away with stiff hands, push a hip into the kitchen counter hard enough to leave a mark.

Purpose informs tone which informs character which informs action.

Which brings me to a big point.

Where are your characters? What is the environment that they’re having this conversation in?

This is something I see often neglected in writing from newer writers. Which is a shame! Space can bring so much to your story – not only in terms of grounding your readers, but providing entry points and understanding to your characters state of mind without you having to explicitly say it. How your characters feel that environment, what they focus on, is a way to explore how they’re feeling and can punctuate your dialogue (but I’ll come back to that point in a minute).

For instance, things like weather and temperature, wide open spaces vs tiny, cluttered rooms, other characters in those environments (I always encourage people to draw diagrams of rooms and map out character action. It might sound a little silly, but trust me, it helps a LOT), and the characteristics of those spaces (like I said above with barren, twisting branches vs lush trees as a very broad example) are all things that are going to contribute to the way you build a scene.

And more than that, what your character’s doing as they talk.

Which, hey! What are they doing as they talk?

It’s pretty rare for people to do nothing as they have a conversation – they doodle on sketchbooks, or roll their eyes, take sips of their drink, flail and gesture, reach out to touch the other person's hand, pet their dog, check their phones, get dressed or undressed – and that’s not even including the bigger acts that might be in your story – running from an enemy, cooking a feast for a huge party, getting into a fistfight, hacking into a secret government database, etc etc.

This is often a question I fall back on, and try to imbue in my writing. Take this little bit from Clean Like Him, where Beth is having a tense conversation with Rio in Paper Porcupine.

“Official launches make businesses feel real,” she says tersely instead, irritation seeping into her tone as she slashes the last row of paper. She collects the cuttings, organises the notes and checks the edges, mostly just to have something to do with her hands. So they won’t hang awkward at her sides or balled into fists or – worse – touch him somehow (god, why is she thinking about touching him? Stupid. She clears her throat. Refocuses.) “And if this is going to work, we need it to feel real, remember?”

Beth's working, but I explicitly say she wants to have something to do with her hands to distract herself from him, and her actions are jerky, her task a little aggressive, which is really about showing that she's on edge and punctuating a tenser tone.

The point is, all of these things are actions that are going to interrupt and interact with your dialogue and what that feels like depends on history and feelings.

Who's having the conversation, and what's the history of their relationship?

This might sound like an obvious one, but I think sometimes people can underestimate the impact that it actually has on an exchange. How familiar your characters are with one another and what the context of their relationship is has huge impacts on how a scene plays out and what a character might be doing.

Beth and Rio for instance knowing each other so well and not knowing each other at all is actually a pretty complicated dynamic to capture, especially when it's often paralleled with Beth and Dean who also know each other so well and not at all but in a completely different way, haha. These contexts though are going to affect how they interact. After all, Beth's not going to treat Rio the same way she treats Dean because that history and that context is different.

Really thinking about what that means is going to help you to think about the way these characters interact both broadly and specifically to what you're writing, which in turn is going to help you start to find a rhythm to their conversation.

How are your character’s feeling?

This is really the lynchpin of all of the above. How your character is feeling is going to define the purpose of your scene, how they interact with their environment and other characters, and what it is they’re doing. A character who’s frazzled is going to have more scattered dialogue, a more urgent tone, they’re going to pick up the wrong thing or lose things and their relationship with their space will be different.

Think of Beth in 2.07 when Jane’s missing. She and Dean go to a private space – his home office – to have a fight even though their house is full of police, neighbours and friends, and Beth is furious at him, and he throws something historic at her (and important to the context of their current relationship) - Rio shooting him - to deflect from his failure as a parent.

Immediately afterwards, Beth is frazzled and desperate. Her tone becomes harried, she can’t find her car keys and rummages through her handbag and the things on the hall table, even though she’s holding them, something Ruby has to point out, and then she leaves to find Rio to try and get him to help her.

The dialogue itself is there to build tone and atmosphere and in fact, Beth’s dialogue with Dean is punctuated by her tone and anger, not her words – she doesn’t tell Dean she doesn’t think Rio would ever take the children, she throws the question back at him and her fury is what tells us as an audience what she thinks.

Tone is what generates atmosphere and meaning, and to work out what your tone is is to understand the purpose of your scene and your character’s feelings, which in turn determines how they respond to their environment and tasks, and it’s that response that punctuates feelings and tone.

It’s all a bit of a snake eat tail situation, haha, but my point is, thinking about dialogue tags and flow is really thinking about the energy and context of an interaction, and the tone and the purpose of a scene. Think about sensory description, think about space, think about what a character might be doing as they navigate that interaction, and think about how you can use that to further explore the character’s interior life.

But most importantly, always be thinking about what you want your readers to take away from the interaction.

I’ve plucked another scene out of my most recent fic, Clean Like Him, just because it’s still pretty fresh in my head, and I've marked a few of these points in these screenshots (please open the image in a new tab so you can, y'know, actually read it, haha)

A lot of this excerpt is reliant on the context of Beth and Dean's relationship and the reality that Beth is using him but also still feels tied to him through their history, which in turn makes her feel guilty.

This is the second scene in the fic, so there's a lot of establishing stuff that comes up again later too – particularly Dean's insecurity and ego failings, and the fact that he diminishes and doesn't see her. Things like interruptions, like mid-conversation pivots, like wounded puppy expressions and Beth deliberately tuning him out are all utilised as active dialogue tags, but also tone and mood builders which hopefully creates the rhythm of the story.

You don't necessarily have to think about all this at once either. A lot of this sort of stuff I tend to work out more when I'm re-writing - so I'll already have a barer bones draft which is more about me putting the scene purpose down on paper; because, like I said, that's really the most important thing.

So yes! Sorry! That got a bit long, haha. I hope it's a help though, anon! Let me know if you have any questions 😊

[maxineswritingcenter]

Bray Road - Fox Mulder x non binary!reader part 6

Fic Drop 2021

- 

Mulder just finished speaking with the Sheriff when he spotted his partner. (Y/N) looked so tired. They were holding their head in their hands and had been like that ever since the boys in blue zipped up the body bags for Jason, his mother, and the other patient that had been attacked. He walked to them slowly and placed a hand on their shoulder. 

“You alright?” He asked. (Y/N) took a deep breath and looked up. 

“I don’t know. I know everything that happened was real, but it feels...I never thought that I would experience that again.” They shrugged, “On the bright side, the cops believed my story this time.” 

Mulder smiled a little and nodded towards the car, “C’mon, let’s head back to the motel.” They stood and the two began walking towards the rental car. 

“What about Winterfield?” 

“Cops are going to search the office now to find evidence of the albuterol and anything related to the DEA. The courthouse is going to have a search warrant by the morning.” 

“Mulder.” They said as Mulder started opening his door, “The full moon is tomorrow.” 

He paused for a moment and looked up in the dark sky and saw the moon was almost full. He looked back at his partner, “We’ll get him. I promise.” 

- 

The next morning, both agents made their way to the pediatrician’s office where there was already a search in place. They met with the sheriff as he was walking out. 

“Agents,” He greeted them, “We found some research regarding the albuterol in a safe in the crawl space.” He handed some of the paper work to (Y/N). They looked them over. 

“It’s like the scrawling of a mad man.” The sheriff said, "Talking about rituals and turning the weak into warriors. As far as we know, there are two other kids in the reports. Both of which were killed in the last attack. According to their parents, they only used their inhalers for emergencies or not at all.” 

“So the DEA was never able to take hold in their systems.” Mulder concluded, "That also means that Winterfield was trying to make more of him."

"That seems to be the case," The sheriff looked back at (Y/N), who was still reading, their face paler than before. The writings from when they were a child were disturbing, describing their body in great detail and how they were perfect to create the master race of lycanthropes.

"We suspect that he's in hiding, but we believe that he's going to come back for you, Agent (Y/L/N)." They looked up at the sheriff's words.

"What?" Their heart dropped.

"We would like to place you under house arrest at your motel until we can apprehend Winterfield. You will be with the best big game hunter in the area, as well as two deputies." The sheriff motioned to the large camo wrapped pickup truck in the other end of the parking lot.

"I-...Right. of course." (Y/N) looked down at the ground. Their fingers gripping the paperwork.

Mulder took notice to their hesitation, "Sheriff, can you give us a minute?" The sheriff nodded and went to speak with the hunter in the truck.

"(Y/L/N), what is it?"

They finally looked up from the papers to Mulder. He seemed genuinely concerned about them. There was a calming sense about him that made them want to relax, but, in this situation, it was nearly impossible.

"I understand why I need to be under lock and key, I do. But I don't feel right about not going after him too." They felt tears burn at their eyes. They were so emotionally exhausted after years of fear just culminating to this moment and they wouldn't get the resolve they wanted.

"Is this about your parents?" He asked.

They glanced at this eyes again, then stared back at his tie, "Partially."

"Aw, you're not worried about me, are ya?" He chuckled.

They met his eyes again, so green and full of determination. It's what (Y/N) liked about him. Fox Mulder may have been known around the bureau as Spooky Mulder, but no one saw the passion. All they saw were the Xfiles. And (Y/N) thought Mulder liked to keep it that way. He had been ridiculed his entire career. But he believed the weird, he believed the strange.

"Skinner didn't assign you as my partner," They blurted out without thinking much. But the fuel was already in the fire, they had to elaborate, "I made up the case file. I kept it secret from my friends at the office because I didn't want them to treat me like I was a joke. I took the case to Skinner and asked to be your partner. I knew you would take it seriously. I knew you would believe me." (Y/N) placed a hand on his arm and smiled weakly, "Please be careful. I don't want to lose anyone else." Before Mulder could speak, he watched (Y/L/N) make their way to the camo truck to speak with the big game hunter and the sheriff.

-

At the motel, they had been given a box of evidence from Winterfield's home to look through. The big game hunter, Rodger, was in the corner of the room facing the door, cleaning the silver bullets he had been given to him from the local jeweler in town. He was an interesting looking guy, the was tall and lean. But his hair was styled so one side of his head was shaved to the skin, 3 long pink scars ran from his crown to his temple.

He noticed their staring and nodded, "Bear."

"Excuse me?"

He pointed to the scars, "Grizzly in Alberta. Probably stood about twelve feet tall. Smacked me right here but I put three slugs between it's eyes. So I can handle your werewolf just fine." He loaded to shells into his shotgun.

"Bears act on instinct. When they feel their family or their territory is threatened they attack. This werewolf thinks just as well as he does as a human." They looked out the window and saw the sun lower in the sky, making their stomach feel like there was a sack of rocks pulling them down.

"You have nothing to worry about, uh...what are your uhh..."

"It's Agent."

-

The search in the woods around Winterfield's house wasn't showing any sign that he had been there recently. But what they did find was a body. In the basement of his home they found a decaying body shackled to the wall, almost mummified. But the anatomy was inhuman.

Mulder looked was looking over a map of the area that they had already searched, needing to use a flashlight now that darkness was setting in. He looked up when he saw the coroner, Dr. Sherman, making her way towards him and taking her gloves off.

"I've seen a lot of weird things, but nothing as crazy as that." She said.

"How so?"

"Well, when the guy died his bones had grown so much that they were splintering. His teeth were so large they cracked his jawbone. He died in a lot of pain." She said.

"Any similarities to the Mulligan boy?" The sheriff, who had walked up behind Mulder asked.

"Sort of. There were signs of the splintering and the cracks in the jaw but they had healed almost instantaneously. But I'm sure when the lab comes back with the results, they'll show DEA like you said, agent Mulder."

"Any luck?" He turned back to the sheriff.

"None. The dogs can't pick up a damn thing. And the tracks we saw lead off into the woods disappeared about a mile in."

Before Mulder could speak, his mobile phone started going off in his pocket.

"Excuse me," He said, stepping away from the group and standing by his car before answering, "Mulder."

"So we found some info on Winterfield." Frohike began, "Or lack of info."

"I couldn't find any family history on him. That is, until I found these articles from the sixties." Byers said, "His name was Lyle Montgomery. And when he was fourteen he went missing for a month in northern Michigan and when he was found, he was covered in blood but completely unharmed."

"There's another news article a month later from the same area saying that an entire family but one was mauled by a bear. The survivor was relocated, but we can't tell where because the adoption was closed." Langley chimed in, "But it was around the same time that we found the yearbook for Elkhorn high school showing their star quarterback."

"Winterfield." Mulder answered, "Thanks guys."

"You got it, Gunmen out." Frohike signed off and the line went dead.

As Mulder walked back to the group his phone rang again, he answered, "Mulder."

"Hey Fox, I think that uh we're not gonna find this guy. He outsmarted us." (Y/L/N) said.

"When did we start on a first name basis, (Y/N)? And it's not over, we're gonna find him." He said, his eyebrows knitted together in confusion at his partner's use of his first name. Not even Scully called him by his first name.

"No, I think I'm just gonna go home ."

"We can't go now. What happened to you wanting to finally end this? To move on from all this?" He was closer to the sheriff and the coroner now, who gave him confused looks as well.

"Fox, I need to go back home." They said again, more sternly this time.

Suddenly, his eyes widened, "(Y/L/N), is he there?"

"Yeah, I just need to hurry up and get home." There voice shook then, "I've decided to leave the bureau and just go home." They took a deep breath, sounding a little choked up.

"Goodbye, Fox." The line went dead.

"We need to get to the motel right now, he's got (Y/L/N)." Mulder had barely gotten the phone back in his pocket before running with the sheriff to his truck and leading the department towards the motel.

-

(Y/N) hung up the phone, a shaky hand setting it back down on the receiver. They avoided looking in the corner of the room where the majority of Rodger was still in the corner. They looked back at Winterfield. His hands were larger than usual and covered in dark hair. His eyes glowed red. He was spattered in blood from the deputies that he been outside and the big game hunter.

"You know he doesn't believe me." They said.

"Oh I know." There was a gravel to his voice that made it sound more animal, "But he's gotta write something when the FBI starts asking where you are." He grabbed their arm with his massive hand and began dragging them out of the room through the broken doorway.

"Wait!" They shouted, "Let me grab my bag. It'll be more believable for the crime scene photos."

"Fine," Winterfield let go, "Hurry up." He seemed on edge, turning his head from side to side as if he could hear something coming. They went to the side of the bed where their bag laid, there was blood from the hunter on it. Out of the corner of their eye, they saw the silver bullets.

Winterfield began angry, "Come on!" He grabbed them by the back of their neck.

"My bag!"

"Screw the bag!" He growled, pulling them outside. In the distance, they both saw the red and blue lights flashing and the sirens screaming the distance.

-

The cars screeched to a stop, the entire sheriff's department pointing their guns. Mulder called to the others, "Don't shoot, he's got a hostage!"

Then Winterfield seemed to shift before his very eyes, growing a long snout and large animal like arms and legs, all covered in thick dark hair. Still standing on his hind legs, he grabbed (Y/N) by their middle and took off into the woods near the motel.

"MULDER!" They called back, their voice fading into the darkness.

"(Y/L/N)!" He called back, leading the department and the canine unit into the woods after Winterfield.

"Mulder!" Their voice was farther away now.

"(Y/L/N)!" He stopped when he no longer saw tracks, looking around for any signs, "(Y/L/N)!"

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

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Read part 7 here!

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[xtruss]

The Forgotten Tale of the Confederate Spies Who Invaded Vermont

In 1864, Southern soldiers plotted to take tiny St. Albans, rob its banks, and change the course of the Civil War.

— By Michael Tougias | July 16, 2021 | Boston Globe Magazine

Captives, including students from St. Albans Academy, under guard by Confederate raiders. FROM THE VERMONT HISTORICAL SOCIETY

ON OCTOBER 10, 1864, Bennett Young stepped off the train from Canada, and into the train depot at St. Albans, Vermont, 15 miles south of the border. Young, a handsome, clean-shaven 21-year-old divinity student, took a room at the Tremont House on Main Street and spent the next few days familiarizing himself with the town. But Young was not what he seemed. He was a native of Kentucky, not Canada, and a Confederate officer recently escaped from a prisoner-of-war camp. He was here in this bustling railroad center of about 4,000 residents to change the course of the war.

It had been fewer than five days since Young received a message from C.C. Clay Jr., a former US senator from Alabama. Clay, sent to Canada in 1864 by Confederate President Jefferson Davis to build a network of secret agents, had written: “Your suggestion for a raid upon the most accessible towns in Vermont, commencing with St. Albans, is approved, and you are authorized and required to act in conformity with that suggestion.”

Davis himself had approved the bold series of raids. The South was clearly losing the Civil War. Atlanta had fallen to General William T. Sherman a month earlier. General Ulysses S. Grant’s forces were hounding Robert E. Lee’s Army of Virginia. The port of Mobile, Alabama, had been blockaded by Rear Admiral David Farragut. The hope was that several dramatic raids from Canada into the North would at the least force Union troops north to defend the border, easing pressure on Lee. If Union troops chased the raiders into Canada, it might help draw neutral Canada and Great Britain into the war on the side of the Confederates. And if things went really well, it might demoralize Northern voters so much that they would elect a Democrat as president instead of the Republican incumbent, Abraham Lincoln. Plus, the Confederacy needed cash.

Over the next nine days, some 20 more men from Canada arrived in groups of twos and threes. Like Young, they were also Confederate soldiers posing as Canadian civilians in St. Albans for business or relaxation. These men, only two of whom were older than 30, made polite inquiries about horses they could rent and guns they could borrow for a bit of hunting. Some took day trips to nearby towns, to play out the ruse and scout other targets to raid. Others wandered into the town’s banks, striking up conversations with the locals or inquiring about the price of gold. Their real interest was determining how many employees each bank had. Some occasionally met with Young clandestinely at his hotel, to share information and discuss the outlines of their mission.

Young, meanwhile, played his part with flair. He courted a woman staying at his hotel, impressed the villagers with his conspicuous Bible reading, and visited the home of the governor of Vermont, railroad magnate J. Gregory Smith. Smith was in Montpelier at the time, so his wife, Ann Eliza Smith, showed Young around the grounds. She thought Young “a nice mannered man,” not realizing he intended to burn the mansion down as retribution for the burning of Southern governors’ mansions.

Young had determined two potential escape routes for the bold plan, which would turn out to be the northernmost action of the Civil War. But he also saw a threat: Just a couple of blocks west of Main Street was a busy railway station and foundry, employing dozens of men who might leap into action. Still, he was confident — the raiders were going to need 30 minutes, at most, to rob several banks, torch the town with bottles of an incendiary liquid called Greek fire, and run. In the commotion, Young hoped to also set fire to the governor’s mansion, then raid Swanton, another town, on the way back to Canada.

He fixed Wednesday, October 19, as the day of the attack.

A Confederate raider shoots at E.J. Morrison outside Miss Beattie’s Millinery on Main Street in St. Albans.FROM THE VERMONT HISTORICAL SOCIETY

AT 3 P.M. ON THE 19th, St. Albans’ church bells rang to mark the hour. Under leaden skies that threatened rain, Young strolled down Main Street, then climbed a couple of steps onto a hotel porch. Reaching inside his coat, he pulled out his Navy Colt revolver and raised it over his head. “I’m an officer of the Confederate Service,” he shouted. “I am going to take this town and shoot the first person that resists!”

At first, St. Albans residents within earshot thought Young was joking. They stared at him until he pointed his gun at them and other raiders herded them onto the village green. Other Confederates went to get horses, and three groups of them headed to the town’s banks: Franklin County Bank on Main Street, St. Albans Bank at the corner of Main and Kingman, and the First National Bank on Fairfield. They were barely more than a block apart, all near the town common.

Young climbed on a horse and trotted up and down Main Street, overseeing the roundup of prisoners and monitoring his men’s assault on the banks. He knew his two revolvers had only six shots each, and would be difficult to reload while on horseback. So whenever he saw someone emerge from a building, he’d point his gun at them and tell them to get back inside, intimidating them before they made trouble.

Collins Huntington, though, on his way to pick up his children from school, ignored Young’s threats, thinking he was drunk. Young leveled his revolver and shot at him, inflicting a glancing wound along Huntington’s rib cage.

Inside the Franklin County Bank, a cashier saw a neatly dressed man named William Hutchinson approach the counter. Assuming Hutchinson was a customer, the cashier, Marcus Beardsley, asked how he could help. Hutchinson pulled a revolver from his coat. “We are Confederate soldiers,” he said. “We have come to rob your banks and burn your town. There are a hundred of us here. You must keep quiet and hand over all your money.”

A customer nearby made a run for the door but stopped when the raiders threatened to shoot. Two raiders pushed him into the vault, then began filling their haversacks with bills. Hutchinson, meanwhile, told Beardsley to give him the money from the counter, then locked Beardsley in the vault, too. The four raiders left the bank with approximately $70,000, the equivalent of about $1.2 million today.

Down the street in the St. Albans Bank, Cyrus Bishop stood, terrified, as raiders on either side of him pointed revolvers at his head. “If you make any resistance or give any further alarm, we’ll blow your brains out,” one told him. One of the raiders pointed his pistol at an assistant cashier and told him, “Not a word out of you. We are Confederate soldiers, we have come to take your town, we shall have your money.”

Then the raiders took the time to do something unexpected: They made Bishop and the assistant cashier swear allegiance to the Confederate States of America. While three more raiders entered the bank and stuffed as much money as they could fit in their pockets and satchels, one of the Confederates guarding the two bank employees lectured them on the destruction of the South by Generals Sheridan and Sherman.

The cashier was having none of it. He said if the robbery was an act of war, he should be allowed to take an inventory so that the bank could be reimbursed by the federal government. “Damn your government, hold up your hands,” hissed the raider.

At that point, someone knocked on the bank’s front door, which the rebels had locked behind them. One of the raiders opened it. In walked Samuel Breck, a merchant looking to make a deposit. A rebel grabbed him by the collar with one hand, pressed a revolver to his head with the other, and said, “I take deposits.” He took $393 from Breck and shoved him in the room with the two bank employees.

Suddenly, the sounds of gunfire erupted outside the bank, and three of the raiders ran out. The last two raiders left the bank more slowly, walking backward with their guns raised. They had been in St. Albans Bank for 12 minutes.

Inside the St. Albans Bank, a clerk is threatened at gunpoint by a group of Confederate raiders. FROM THE VERMONT HISTORICAL SOCIETY

YOUNG DIDN’T KNOW where the shots were coming from. There was at least one St. Albans local, possibly more, firing at his raiders from buildings on Main Street. No one had been hit, but Young hadn’t planned for armed resistance.

He had already fired his revolvers three times — at Collins Huntington; at stable owner Sylvester Field, who’d objected to the theft of his horses (the ball passed through Field’s hat); and at Leonard Bingham, a local who had tried to charge him when Young was climbing onto a horse. Young had hit Bingham, but the ball had been stopped by Bingham’s heavy silver watch, and Bingham had escaped. Young had only nine bullets left, but he was going to have to do something to regain control of a situation that was spiraling out of control.

Leonard Cross heard the commotion and stepped out of his photography studio. “What are you trying to celebrate here?” he asked Young.

“I’ll let you know,” Young said, and shot at Cross, barely missing his head. Eight bullets left.

It was time, he thought, to start setting the town on fire. His raiders began throwing their bottles of Greek fire at buildings.

An old editorial illustration depicts William H. Blaisdell of St. Albans accost a raider outside of the First National Bank as another Confederate raced toward them. Blaisdell, like others that day, was taken at gunpoint into what today is Taylor Park. The First National sat at the southeast corner of Main and Fairfield streets, across the street from what is now Taylor Park. CREDIT: VERMONT HISTORICAL SOCIETY (these images originally appeared in Frank Leslie's magazine)

Over at the First National Bank, the third group of robbers had gathered $58,000 (nearly $1 million in current dollars). The four of them left the bank, escorting an employee toward the common, where they were going to put him with the other captives. As they were leaving, they saw a local business owner, William Blaisdell, approaching the bank. Blaisdell quickly realized what was happening and grabbed a raider, throwing him down onto the boardwalk. But other raiders pointed their pistols at Blaisdell’s head, forcing him to surrender.

Buildings should have been burning by now, Young must have realized. But they weren’t — the bottles of Greek fire had hit their targets, but they merely smoldered. Nothing was burning.

More townspeople had realized St. Albans was under attack. Nearby, at the governor’s residence, a neighbor’s servant girl rushed in to tell Vermont’s first lady, Ann Smith: “The rebels are in town, robbing the banks, burning the houses and killing the people,” the girl exclaimed. “They are on their way up the hill, intending to burn your house.”

Smith and a Scottish servant girl sprung into action, calmly closing the blinds and shades of the house and bolting the doors. Then, Smith found one of her husband’s pistols. It wasn’t loaded, but she hoped the raiders wouldn’t realize that. She carried the gun to the front steps, to stand and wait. She wished she had raised an American flag, so if they went down it would be with colors flying.

The Confederate raiders set fire to the bridge over Sheldon Creek, but it did not fully burn. FROM THE VERMONT HISTORICAL SOCIETY

BACK IN THE CENTER of town, Erasmus Fuller, a livery owner, grabbed an old six-shooter, pointed it at one of the raiders, and pulled the trigger. Click. Young burst out laughing. “Fetch me some spurs!” he yelled.

Fuller had other ideas. He ducked into Bedard’s Harness Shop and ran to the back door. He started shouting that the town was being attacked, hoping the men who were building a large hotel nearby would come and help him. E.J. Morrison, a Manchester, New Hampshire, man overseeing the hotel’s construction, heard Fuller’s shouts and ran to the stable owner.

Fuller, with Morrison now trailing behind, returned to Main Street. He saw Young, lifted his pistol again, and took aim.

“Look out Cap’n!” shouted one of the raiders. Then he and Young both fired at Fuller. Fuller ducked behind an elm tree, evading their shots.

Not so Morrison, who dropped to the ground, mortally wounded. He would be the raid’s sole fatality, leaving behind a widow and five children. (What the raiders didn’t know is that he was also likely the only man in town sympathetic to the Confederate cause.)

George Conger had heard the gunshots and come running. Young saw him, and asked, “Are you a soldier?”

“I am,” Conger replied. He had been a captain in the Union Army and had been wounded at the Second Battle of Bull Run.

“Then you are my prisoner,” Young said. But Conger dashed into the American House hotel, next to the Franklin County Bank, ran through the back and then down Lake Street toward the foundry, yelling, “There is a regular raid on St. Albans. Bring out your guns and fight!” Workers at the foundry and at the railroad grabbed weapons and followed Conger back to the center of town.

Young realized his plot was quickly unraveling. He began to move his men north, shouting, “Keep cool boys, keep cool!”

An old editorial illustration depicts cashier Marcas W. Beardsley and Jackson Clark, a woodsawyer who happened to be in the Franklin County Bank, being freed from the vault where they had been imprisoned, even though Beardsley had pleaded with the robbers explaining it was airtight. The men, who understood the Confederates planned to burn the town, feared for their lives either by suffocation or fire. J. Russell Armington and Dana R. Bailey heard their shouts and came to their rescue, however. CREDIT: VERMONT HISTORICAL SOCIETY (these images originally appeared in Frank Leslie's magazine)

Conger, gun in hand, tried to shoot at the raiders, but his gun would not fire. The Confederates started firing on him and yelling the rebel yell, but this riled up their horses, which were not used to battle. Over the din, Young was hollering, “There is too great a crowd gathering round here!” He knew they had to get out of town, and quickly.

Spurring his horse around those of his men, he told them to throw their remaining bottles of Greek fire at the closest buildings. Again, they failed to ignite. It was time to go. Once Young was sure his men were all accounted for, they were off at a gallop, occasionally turning to fire pistols behind them.

Conger shouted to all those nearby, “Bring on your horses, men, and arms and we will follow them. If you can’t get arms there is no use, they are going to fight hard!”

On the steps of the governor’s residence, Ann Smith saw a man galloping to her. The hour has come, she thought, the invaders have arrived. But the man on horseback turned out to be her brother-in-law, Stewart Stranahan, who was home on sick leave from the Army of the Potomac. Stranahan told her the raiders had robbed the banks and killed a man, but failed to set St. Albans ablaze. He had come for any weapons he could scrounge.

“Here, take this pistol, it is all I have yet found,” Smith said, feeling rage build inside her. “And, Stewart,” she added, “if you come up with them, kill them! Kill them!”

Soon, Conger and a posse of some 50 men were in pursuit of the raiders, followed quickly by 40 more men led by Stranahan. The Confederate party split up before it reached Canada, to increase the odds of escape. Conger’s militia reached the border and kept going, joining with some Canadian constables. They were able to capture about 13 raiders, including Young, and some of the $208,000 ($3.5 million in today’s money) that was later determined missing.

THE PLAN OF THE St. Albans group was to bring their prisoners back to town to face charges of murder. But as they neared the border, more Canadian authorities arrived at the scene and demanded charge of the rebels. Conger reluctantly agreed. The prisoners were first brought to St. Johns and then transferred to Montreal on October 27. The raiders were well received by a contingent of Canadian Confederate sympathizers, cheered as they were brought to jail.

They gave Young and his men food, clothing, and even liquor. Some of Montreal’s finer restaurants sent over meals and scores of citizens visited them at the jail, where they had been given a large room rather than cells. A relaxed Young wrote to the St. Albans Messenger requesting two copies of the paper be delivered each day. “Your editorials are quite interesting and will furnish considerable amusement to myself and comrades,” he wrote.

Young’s taunting infuriated many Vermonters, and for a short period of time it appeared that the Confederates might succeed in dragging Canada into the war against the Union. The St. Albans Messenger editorial page stated that if the prisoners were not handed over, “The sooner we declare war on our neighbors to the north, the better.” Lincoln’s secretary of war, Edwin Stanton, later called the St. Albans Raid “one of the most important events of the war,” with the potential to draw both Canada and Britain into hostilities.

But over the next few months, a series of contentious court proceedings went against extradition, as Canadian judges ruled that the raid was an act of war, not murder and robbery. All the raiders were eventually freed.

Some of the Confederates in jail in Montreal. Bennett Young is seated at right, William Hutchinson is at left. FROM THE VERMONT HISTORICAL SOCIETY

But Bennett Young’s gambit had failed. Perhaps if the Greek fire had worked and more damage had been done, it would have enraged Vermonters more. Or if there had been follow-up raids on Swanton or other towns. But the St. Albans citizens had forced them to abandon those plans. No Union troops were diverted to the border, Canada and Great Britain did not enter the war, Lincoln was reelected, Sherman reached the sea in late December 1864, and on April 9, 1865, Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House. The Canadian government even reimbursed the Vermont banks for the amount of money it found on the raiders, approximately $88,000. The other $120,000 was not accounted for.

After the war, Young was specifically excluded from an amnesty for Confederates. He fled to the United Kingdom, where he studied law. He returned to the United States after a full amnesty was granted in1868, becoming a successful lawyer in Louisville, Kentucky, and was regularly applauded at Confederate reunions and parades.

In 1911, when he was 68, Young took his wife on vacation to Montreal. He contacted the people of St. Albans, saying he would like to meet with them. The town sent a four-man delegation to the Ritz-Carlton, where he was staying. Young put on a Confederate uniform for the session, and told his visitors that “the raid was only the reckless escapade of a flaming youth of 21 years, steeped in patriotism for the South.” Perhaps it was something like an apology. The get-together was friendly and lasted well into the night.

— Michael Tougias is the author of more than 30 books for adults, most recently “The Waters Between Us,” and five for middle readers. He is currently working on a book about the St. Albans Raid. Send comments to magazine@globe.com. In addition to reporting and eyewitness accounts from the St. Albans Messenger and other periodicals, significant sources for this story include materials from the St. Albans Historical Society and The St. Albans Raid, Complete and Authentic Report by L.N. Benjamin.

[caydencarinopablo]

T-34: Soviet Technology

It’s 1941. The Germans have launched Operation Barbarossa, and the situation in the Soviet Union is extremely dire. Panzers are everywhere, and are destroying many Soviet tanks. However, the Soviets have their own tricks up their sleeves...

The design of the T-34 started in 1937. Mikhail Koshkin is recruited by the Red Army development offices to work on a new tank to replace BT tanks. The prototype, designated A-20, is equipped with 20 mm of armor and a 45mm gun like the gun on the BT-7 and BT-5. It has a convertible drive that allows it to run on wheels without caterpillar tracks. On road, this meant it could travel ~50 kilometers per hour, though in combat it was complex to repair and usually gave no advantage when in a fight.

In Khalkhin Gol and Lake Khasan, BT tanks use engines that catch on fire easily when hit by incendiary anti tank weapons. The flammable liquids that are in the anti tank weapons seep into improperly welded armor, setting the tank ablaze. Soviet tanks are not invulnerable to the 37mm guns on the Japanese tanks, and are easily destroyed.

The shock of this led Mikhail Koshkin to decide to ask Josef Stalin to redesign his tank, with 32mm front plating, a powerful 76.2mm gun, and bigger tracks. Stalin approves, and the tank’s design is underway. After tests, the new prototype, the A-32, is as fast as the A-20. However, Koshkin decides, it needs heavier armor, and gives it 45 millimeters of armor! It also is given a more up-to-date 76.2mm gun. He names it the T-34, after the year 1934 when he decided to start on the tank.

2 T-34 prototypes were completed in 1940, and Koshkin decided to impress Stalin by driving a whopping 2000 kilometers from Kharkov to Moscow. Then, he drives it to the Mannerheim Line, and finally, back to Kharkov.

However, Mikhail Koshkin does not survive. He gets pneumonia, and shortly dies after. It appears that the T-34 does not have a heater out of all things.

T-34s are soon mass produced after the start of Operation Barbarossa. They are very powerful against the Germans, and in one German report, it is stated that several anti tank shells are fired on one T-34, but it is not enough to wipe out the tank and it goes on towards German lines.

The tank does very well in Operation Barbarossa. The Germans thought it would be another easy picking, that the Russians would have inferior tanks. It wasn’t true. It came as a shock, to the Germans. Their anti tank weapons ricochet or simply don’t penetrate. They need bigger, 105mm or 88mm guns to wipe them out.

More T-34 variants such as the T-34-76 and 85 are produced, in response to heavier German tanks like the Tiger I. T-34s are responsible for assisting in the encirclement of the Germans in Stalingrad. In 1943, newer tanks like the Panther are however responsible for destruction of many T-34s. Meanwhile, newer tanks like the IS-2 are introduced to the battlefield by the Soviets, greatly allowing for more destruction of enemy tanks, however more tanks are destroyed by the T-34. The Soviets slowly crept through Poland, and eventually Germany, after the Battle of Kursk, and while the Panthers could destroy the T-34 at long distances, a shortage of molybdenum for fortifying tank armor meant Panthers could have catastrophic damage on parts like the lower glacis of the tank.

World War 2 was not the end for the T-34. Oh, no. Of course not. The T-34 was used in the Korean War by North Korean forces, and American weapons like the Bazooka and the Chaffee’s 75mm gun were unable to penetrate it. However, following the introduction of tanks such as the M4 Sherman and M26 Pershing, the NKPA began to slowly lose tanks before altogether abandoning use of armor after 1950.

The T-34 was also used in more conflicts such as the war in the Balkans, the Angolan Civil War, in the Vietnam War, and heck, it’s sometimes used today as well!

However, after World War 2, the T-34 was somewhat being phased out in favor of the other tanks such as the T-44 and T-54. The former was kept a secret however, and the latter was used in the Afghan-Soviet war.

The T-34 was a well made tank by the Soviet Union that was easily mass producible and very powerful. If you look hard enough, you even can find a T-34 on the market!

[brushlesprouts]

The Wreckers - The First Job

This brain bug series was inspired by my friend Puck and her pokemon Superhero AU (Check out her twitter Puckarooni it’s awesome). This is my Pokemon #thuglife AU using the scrappy “route 1″ pokemon that most players tend to throw away early on. Enjoy.

~~~~

Brief Character explination:

Alolan Joe - Alolan Ratata 

Ben - Spearow 

Zach - Zigzagoon

Sherman - Sentret

~~~~

Zach and Ben stood idly next to a hardware store. Sherman waddled up and was ready to look tough with his crew. They passively welcomed him and returned to their idle stances. Eventually, Sherman sheepishly spoke up, “So, are we gonna do, uh, crimes or something?”

They responded that they are waiting for Joe. As if summoned, Joe appeared, holding armfuls of supplies.

“Listen up, gents.” He said as he set down the stuff, “We got work.”

Ben quirked an eyebrow, “What kind of work?”

Joe put on a smug grin, “See, folks like to have their enemies embarrassed but there ain’t ever anyone who is willing to do the dirty themselves. So, in come The Wreckers.” He gestured at the small group, “We take a little cash from the proper folks, go do some property damage or the like and then disappear. Get cash, commit crimes, it’s perfect.” He twizzled his mouse-stache. The others muttered in a mix of agreement and excitement.

“And” Joe continued, “We got our first gig. Messing up a rich dude’s car. Any suggestions?”

“Bust it up with a bat!” Ben said, swinging his arms.

“Slash the tires?” Says Zach, looking over some loose change he found scattered on the ground.

“Pour milk on the seats!” Said Sherman, chittering at his nefarious plot, “The smell will never go away. I should know, this one time, I had some milk in the car and–” He trailed off as he noticed that no one was listening.

“All good ideas, gents.” Said Joe, he bent over and reached into the bag of supplies he brought out of the store. “But we need to make a smash with this one. Or should I say,” He revealed a canister of kerosene, “A blast!”

The others mused in excitement.

“That’ll send a message.” Said Zach, pocketing the coins.

“Yeah! Don’t mess with the Wreckers!” Ben said, eyes sparkling.

“Whoa, this is gonna be so cool! Good idea, Bossman.” Sherman said.

Joe drank in his praise. “Alright you punks. Let’s move out!”

. . . . .

Under the cover of darkness, they zeroed in on the vehicle in question. A super pretty muscle car. The four of them ogled at the car in their own way. Zach scurried around it, Ben grumbled about rich people having all kinds of money, Sherman prattled about make and model and such, and Alolan Joe pretended to understand everything he was being told.

“Alright, enough of this crap,” Ben said, grabbing the kerosene. “Let’s light this thing up.”

Alolan Joe saluted, “So passes a gallant waste of people’s money. Joker had it coming no doubt.”

Ben soaked the car. Zach whipped out a match stick and handed it to Alolan Joe.

“When I toss this thing, the Wreckers will be in business. It, kinda chokes me up a little.”

An Arcanine in a police uniform appeared behind them. “And what are you punks up to?”

Alolan Joe pocketed the match in a single smooth motion as they all turned around.

“Good evening officer, just out for a stroll.” Said Alolan Joe a little too quickly.

“Yeah, is that against the law now too?” Ben said, accusingly.

“Maybe?” Zach muttered, his restless hands fidgeting.

Sherman stayed quiet as he had been instructed to when the FUZZ shows up.

“Ahuh, just four youths innocently loitering around someone’s car.” He sniffs the air. “Have you been drinking?”

They look at each other.

“What? No of course not.” Said Alolan Joe.

“No, sir.” Said Ben, begrudgingly.

Zack shook his head.

Sherman stayed quiet.

The Arcanine growled. “Okay, I think it’s time to take you kids back to your parents.”

“You’ll never take me in!” Sherman snapped and he turned to dash away.

The Arcanine scoffs and sent out a flare of embers to shock the kid, maybe get him to shape up. Unfortunately, the embers managed to spark the kerosene and the car went up in flames almost instantly.

Everyone jumped away from the blazing vehicle. They turned to look at the officer and he looked back at them. 

“I am going to contact the fire department,” He said in a voice shaking with anger, “You will be gone when they arrive, that is my favor to you. Now do me a favor and never speak of this again.”

Alolan Joe saluted him, “You got it boss.” And rushed off, picking up a stunned Sherman along the way.

Ben put on a smug grin in before booking it. Zach followed, hot on their tails.

...

The next day, Sherman scurried up to Ben and Zach who are loitering by the shop again.

“So,” Sherman said, “No long term repercussions, I assume?”

Ben shrugged and looked over to Zach who is working on a wire puzzle. The fidgety Zigzagoon paused and looked up to the two of them.

“Probably,” He said, looking down at his fidgeting hands. A tense air lowers on the crew.

Alolan Joe sauntered out of the shop with more junk in his arms. “Afternoon gents.” His prideful voice cracked the tension like a hammer. “I am pleased to say that we will not have to worry about that officer blabbing anything. And!” He set down his bags and reached into his pocket to pull out a small envelope. “The Wreckers are now officially in business.”

He opened it up and fetched a bill for each of them.

Ben looked at the bill and scoffed, “This is barely allowance money. We nearly get the slammer and we can’t even afford a lemonade!”

“All things in time, Ben.” Said Alolan Joe. “This is just the beginning.”

Sherman looked at the bill and smiled, “My first strip of–” He snickered, “dirty money.” He chittered and stuffed it into his pocket. He looked to Zach, who had pocketed his loot.

“Crime is pretty fun.” Sherman said.

“There’s nothin better.” Zach said.

[berniesrevolution]

The building loomed over the intersection like an apparition. Though hollowed out and lifeless, the shell of the former A.O. Smith Milwaukee Works headquarters on N. 27th Street and W. Hopkins was still magnificent. But the grand two story brick structure, wide as half a city block and featuring the odd boarded up window, felt like a tombstone. “Here lies the dream of the Great Migration,” it read.

“The 53206,” as the area is commonly called, and the predominantly black neighborhoods surrounding it currently have the highest rate of incarcerated black men in the country. Deindustrialization, wealth inequality, unemployment, and historical patterns of discrimination and police terrorism have created a toxic mix for Wisconsin’s 359,000 black residents.

Yet, few outsiders seem to realize that Milwaukee is substantially black. And many of its black residents, who make up 40 percent of the city, have been simmering in their frustrations for decades. Those frustrations came to a head in 2016, after police killed 23-year-old Sylville Smith, when residents set fire to Milwaukee’s Sherman Park neighborhood. But there may be an additional form of resistance bubbling under the surface of Milwaukee’s famed breweries and steadily gentrifying neighborhoods.

A common narrative about the November 2016 election is that a wave of white backlash thrust Donald Trump to the White House and that white Obama voters “flipped” to Trump. This may have been true on a small scale, but Obama-Trump voters did not make a significant difference. White people of all genders and classes voted for Trump at about the same rates as they voted for Romney, McCain, and George W. Bush, and both white and Republican voter turnout stayed fairly steady between 2012 and 2016. More significant was the critical mass of Democrats who defected from the party or didn’t vote at all in the battleground states the Democratic Party needed most. The rate of this decline among Democrats in key swing states was larger than the increase of Republicans who brought Trump to victory. And in some states, the drop was unprecedented.

While the Democratic Party argues about whether and how to win back the vanishingly small number of white Obama-Trump voters, the uncomfortable fact remains that black voter turnout in 2016 was down in over half the country. In Wisconsin, the decline in black voter turnout between 2012 and 2016 was 86,830 votes. Hillary Clinton lost the state by a mere 22,748 votes. If Clinton won over more of the black Democrats who voted in 2012 in just three states—Wisconsin, Florida, and Michigan—she would have won the election.

So why didn’t black voters turn out for Clinton? Even accounting for the thousands of potential voters who were likely harmed by Wisconsin’s incessant suppression tactics, studies show that voter suppression was among the least important factors affecting black turnout in Wisconsin.

In search of some answers, I trekked to Milwaukee last fall to talk to some of the city’s black residents about why they stayed home.

When newly-elected Alderman Khalif Rainey parked his car a couple of blocks from the Sherman Park neighborhood in August 2016, he was met with a stranger’s warning. “Don’t go over there. It’s about to go down tonight.” On August 13, 2016, the historically black, middle class community was in flames, from police cars, to an auto parts store, to the BP gas station that had been a match point for prior protests. This north side Milwaukee neighborhood, which Khalif knew and loved since childhood, burned before his eyes.

Just a few hours after police officer Dominique Heaggan-Brown killed Sylville Smith, the neighborhood was burning. The arson wasn’t just the climax of mourning for Sylville’s death. It was also about the police killings of Dontre Hamilton and Derek Williams, whose deaths were still a recent memory. It was about the folks who were out of work and with few legitimate employment options, and the decades of legalized police terrorism that wracked residents since the earliest years of black migrants seeking refuge in Milwaukee from the Jim Crow South.

In the early 1970s, black people from the corners of rural southern towns could find a relatively fresh start in Milwaukee. Despite the city’s notorious housing segregation, black residents were hired in manufacturing jobs with nothing more than a high school diploma. The city’s culture of anti-black police violence could be mitigated some by its economic opportunities, which ranked among the best in the country for black people.

But the jobs left and the police presence remained. The union labor, pensions, and benefits offered by manufacturing employers gave way to insecure, contractual service work or, in many cases, nothing at all. A 2017 report from the Center of Wisconsin Strategy (COWS), a “think-and-do-tank” based in the University of Wisconsin-Madison, notes that black people in Wisconsin experience “extreme” economic and social inequality far exceeding national rates. In 2015, blacks in Wisconsin were nearly three times more likely to be unemployed than whites. Thirty-one percent of black people in Wisconsin are in poverty, six times the white poverty rate. The black household income is half that of whites in the state, giving it the second highest black-white income gap after Minnesota.

These figures are even starker for black men in the state’s largest city. “No metro area has witnessed a more precipitous erosion in the labor market for black males over the past 40 years than has Milwaukee,” according to University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee professor Marc Levine in his analysis of U.S. Census data. “[A]nd in no other large metro area is the contemporary black male employment crisis more acute than in Milwaukee.” In 1970, 85% of black men in their prime working years of 25-54 were employed. This was above the national average. But by 2010, amid the Great Recession, that employment rate dipped to 52.7%.

This was the lowest level of employment for black males in their prime working years in any metropolitan area in the country.

At the break of dawn, at a news conference following the Sherman Park uprising, Alderman Khalif Rainey diverted from the usual talking points about the ills of violent protest and instead issued a searing indictment of Milwaukee’s failure to address racial inequities:

“This entire community has sat back and witnessed how Milwaukee, Wisconsin has become the worst place to live for African Americans in the entire country. Now this is the warning cry. Do we continue with the inequities, the injustice, the under-education that creates these byproducts that we see this evening?”

With increasing passion, the Alderman professed that “the black people of Milwaukee are tired. They’re tired of living under this oppression. This is their existence. This is their life. This is the life of their children. There’s racial problems here in Wisconsin that have to be rectified. Rectify this immediately.”

Alderman Rainey speaks with the same clarity and fervor over a year later when I meet him to discuss the rebellion, and similar rebellions that took place in Milwaukee and other black, urban centers 50 years prior in the midst of parallel economic and racial conditions. The walls of his wood-paneled office are lined with plaques and notable achievements, including a framed media clipping from TIME magazine highlighting his protest statement.

I asked him what the Sherman Park uprising could have meant for the typically Democratic stronghold and a presidential election that was set to transpire just a few months later. Here, too, the young politician’s response was unconventional: “I felt that there was no one that really spoke—they were speaking to [us] on a superficial level about what was going on.”

(Continue Reading)

[kiss-my-freckle]

Dialogues

1x2 -

Red: Watch yourself with her, Donald. She hates men, and cops most of all.

1x3 -

Red: I prefer to play with myself in private.

Liz: He’s a myth. Red: That’s what they said about Deep Throat … and the G-Spot.

1x5 -

Red: She owns that nightclub. Last time I was there, we had a great deal of fun, until she tried to strangle me with her stocking.

Red: Or just bend over any available piece of furniture and let her slap you on the ass. She loves that.

Red: He knows you better than I do, and I know where that lovely little freckle is.

1x6 -

Red: Because Yuri talks faster than a cheerleader after a nooner under the grandstands. Probably not a metaphor you understand.

1x8 -

Red: Oh, my God. I’ve never been more scared of a woman in my life. She was thrilling in bed. What a pair of legs. I think she played field hockey in college.  

1x14 -

Red: I had a little talk with Rasil. We had a few laughs, compared notes about you. He told me all about that delightful thing you do with a trouser belt, which was a bit hurtful, since I was pretty sure it was our thing.

1x18 -

Vlad: You slept with my wife. Red: How is Fadila? Vlad, it was a mistake. I can easily blame it on the hashish and the grappa, but the truth is - may I speak freely? You’re better off without her. She’s fickle.

1x19 -

Red: Calculus. I can’t even think about derivatives without thinking of that tutor in manor hall. Cindy something-or-other. Never wore a brassiere. Always a bounce in her step.

1x20 -

Red: Ah. Smells like decadence and vice.

2x1 -

Red: They know your habits, the banks you use, the pills you pop, the men or women you sleep with.

Red: Lord Baltimore. Aren’t you a surprisingly saucy minx.

Samar: Aren’t we confident today? Red: I’m confident every day. Samar: And I thought we had nothing in common.

2x7 -

Red: Keep your plum covered. We’re not alone.

2x10 -

Red: Luther, I never thought I’d enjoy having anything in my mouth as much as Petty Officer Virginia Sherman, but this - My God! It tastes so good! I hesitate to swallow, and I certainly don’t want to spit it out.

2x2 -

Red: Mmm! Tastes just like Patty Sutton.

2x3 -

Red: Titillating. But what Laskin and Russo do with or to one another in their spare time is none of my concern. Red: A threesome? Interesting. Based on his sartorial splendor, I gather this is Mr. Vargas. Does that even look like real hair?

Red: You poor thing. Honestly, I don’t know how you do it. It boggles the imagination. B.B., you don’t look well. Are you alright? Let me guess: irregular heartbeat, shortness of breath, perhaps a little tingling in your nether regions? Those drinks you’ve been enjoying on the house? They weren’t from the house. They were from me. I hope you don’t mind. I took the liberty of adding a special surprise ingredient, something to treat any localized dysfunction you may be suffering. Has the little man been falling down on the job? It’s a miracle drug, not so much for a glutton with a bum heart, however. But look on the bright side, you’ll die with a marvelous erection.

2x11 -

Red: The other one, the watercolorist, she - legs like a shot-putter. She gets me in this headlock. I black out. Next thing I know, I wake up - no sheets, vaseline everywhere. The lipstick on the mirror overhead reads, “Same time next year?” I haven’t missed an art expo in Basel since.

Red: Ah. A Russian milonga. Watch closely, Lizzy. Everything you need to know about negotiation is there in the tango milonga. At the outset, they are opponents. Each has something the other wants. They size one another up, assessing risk, setting boundaries, challenging each other to breach them. A sensuous battle - violence and sex balanced on the blade of a knife. Nothing given that is not earned - nothing taken that is not given. This is the pure essence of negotiation. Not a poker game, but a milonga. A tango. A seduction.

Red: And I assure you my bed accommodates a broad spectrum of behavior.

2x12 -

Red: Samar, my dear, bump in the road I can help smooth over, or have the clouds finally parted and this is a social call?

2x14 -

Red: Careful there, boys. You don’t want to bruise the merchandise.

Red: Really, I’m all for being thorough, but at this point, you’re just taking the nickel tour.

Red: Oh, the Dinky. No matter the time of day, that damn train is always full of hungover frat boys and co-eds in the throes of morning-after regret.

Red: Good heavens, Earl. You’ve never had any feeling in your heart, but now it looks like there isn’t much going on below the waist. Earl: I do all right. The wheelchair is just a little memento of our time together in Bolivia. Red: No hard feelings, I trust.

2x18 -

Red: Because, Mr. Jasper, you strike me as a man who would prefer to pitch rather than catch.

2x20 -

Red: Don’t look so glum, Kenneth. You just spent 10 minutes being ridden hard by Agent Navabi. I’d die for five.

2x21 -

Red: She makes her real money consulting. Costs a fortune. She did, however, let me name a lipstick color - “Fire In The Hole.”

Kimberly: I can only tell you what they’re doing. I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you who they’re doing it to.

3x7 -

Hasaan: What do you want? Red: Well, another spin of the bottle in Melanie Reichman’s basement, but, I’ll settle for you.

3x8 -

Red: When’s the last time you got any of that, Pablo? Or have you? Pablo: We share everything.

Red: No wonder Cash doesn’t trust you with anything more important than babysitting. Pablo: That’s big talk coming from a guy who’s -

3x9 -

Red: I prefer that slight curve at the small of the back, the swell of a breast, the soft nape of the neck to quicken my heartbeat.

3x21 -

Cynthia: I read his e-mails. Ever since I found him with the nanny, I look at everything. Samuel: We don’t even have a nanny! It was a movie. Red: A nanny movie? Cynthia: Not just nannies. Schoolteachers, nurses, and a ridiculous threesome with two completely unbelievable policewomen. Samuel: Cynthia, they’re just movies. I have never cheated on you. And besides, I don’t think he wants to hear about it. Red: Yes, I want to hear about it. All about it. Unfortunately, I do need to hear about your contract with Halcyon. So business first, and then, Cynthia, I’ll be all ears.

Red: I had an enlightening meeting with Samuel Rand today. More to the point, with his wife, Cynthia.

Scottie: Howard didn’t take that job. We haven’t had sex in four years. We’re rarely in the same country, let alone the same bed. Red: What bed have you been occupying? Scottie: I’ve been assuming a larger role in a management position lately. Red: You don’t say.

Red: You have it all wrong, dear. I didn’t come to kill you. I came here because you and I are about to climb into bed together, just for a quickie.

3x23 -

Red: Aram… set him up with someone, for God’s sake. He’s like a kid with his first erection on the school bus.

4x7 -

Red: My sympathies to your significant other. And if your flag is flying at half mast, rest assured, I find in the privacy of one’s boudoir, pleasing others is the key to pleasing oneself.

4x14 -

Red: Oh, my goodness. This is tedious. I’d give almost anything to have a scratch. But seeing as how, given your profession, David, you might be more inclined to squeeze them rather than scratch them, I won’t impose. I’ll just wait for the next break.

David: Forget having your testicles scratched. You’ve been castrated.

4x20 -

Red: Baldur, you and I are deal-makers. We buy low and sell high. Getting that cruise line on the cheap was better than sex with your mistress. Either of them. I’m a little down on my luck. A penny stock. Invest in me now and when I rise, you’ll be able to afford three mistresses.

4x22 -

Red: I do wonder what else Donald’s men will find in your nightstand. Are you a vibrator kind of gal, Laurel? We’ll see.

5x1 -

Car guy: How’d she do? Red: Like Bergita Olofson in her parents’ rumpus room on a Saturday night.

5x2 -

Cooper: No, he’s playing grab-ass by the pool between naps and happy hour.

5x10 -

Isaacson: Bite me. Red: Hmm. A woman after my own heart.

5x12 -

Red: Joro spiders. In Japanese folklore, the joro is said to be able to change its appearance to that of a beautiful woman who seduces men, binding them in her web before devouring them. Hence its name “joro-gumo,” or “whore spider.”

5x13 -

Red: Imagine the confidence a man has to have in his own genitals to take on a nickname like “Big Willie.”

5x15 -

Red: Yes. Very impressive. What a gymnasium - a real shrine to athleticism. I can just feel the testosterone.

Fagen: You promised me a sure thing, gives me Viagra, and all I have to show for it is a four-hour erection.

[deleted scene]

Smokey: You’re a sucker, Red.  Everyone thinks you’re soooo tough with the hat and the shades and the people you kill but I know better.  Circus folk know a sucker when we see one.  You’re a sucker.  You’re a sucker for the pets, you’re a sucker for Heddie. And God knows why, you’re even a sucker for me. Red: I suppose I am.   Smokey: Well, that’s good for me. I’ll follow you anywhere. Red: Well, let's start in the back. I believe we have some cash to count.

5x19 -

Red: This apartment. Right here. Oh. My God. To have been the proverbial fly on Clyde Tolson’s duvet. Liz: Clyde Tolson lived here? J. Edgar Hoover’s lover? Red: This was their secret hideaway. Imagine the conversations. Cooing over JFK’s lovers. Slandering Dr. King. What peignoir to wear to bed. When I saw the apartment was for sale, I couldn’t resist. Liz: You own the apartment where the homophobic head of the FBI carried on his affair with his boyfriend? Red: Allegedly. I wouldn’t admit this in mixed company, but J. Edgar and I have a surprising amount in common. For instance, we both always get our man.

5x21 -

Red: I’ve heard steroids make your penis shrink. Have you found that to be the case?

Liz: Gonzalez called you. Red: His guard, actually. We developed something of a bond.

6x2 -

Red: Through five marriages, numerous lovers, allegedly both male and female.

Red: Cary Grant once said after a particularly evocative LSD trip, “I imagined myself as a giant penis launching off from Earth - “like a spaceship.”

6x4 -

Red: Baldomero, what do you say we call this whole thing off? What happened in Iztapalapa was a terrible mistake. I regret it dearly, and I had no idea she was your mother. Baldomero: You were in my bed. There was a picture of me on the nightstand. Red: Okay, in our defense, it was incredibly dark, and we’d been drinking heavily. Honestly, I regret the entire weekend. Of course, don’t tell your mother that.

[thedcdunce]

Martian Manhunter

“I am Mars' sole survivor. There is a reason for that.” - Martian Manhunter

Real Name: J’onn J’onzz

Aliases:

Fernus

John Jones

Bronze Wraith

Bloodwynd

El Hombre Verdad

Charley Dimes

Isobel de la Rosa

Jade Warrior

Joan J'onnz

Marco Xavier

Secretary of State Kakalios

William Dyer

Yuchiro Takata

Hino Rei

Goldie Johnson

Josh Johnstone

Mrs. Klingman

a cat

Nathaniel Mackelvany

Paris Jackson

Officer Mike Sherman

Officer Perez

Lora Denton

Gender: Male

Height: 6′ 7″

Weight: 300 lbs (136 kg)

Eyes: Red

Hair: Bald

Skin: Green

Race: Martian

Powers:

Martian Physiology

Abilities:

Genius Level Intellect

Investigation

Multilingualism

Meditation

Weaknesses:

Vulnerability to Fire

Chocoholism

Equipment:

Kuru pendant

Base of Operations:

Mobile

The Astral Plane

Mars

Middleton, Colorado

Denver, Colorado

Detroit, Michigan

Z'Onn Z'Orr

JLA Watchtower

Universe:

Earth-One

New Earth

Origin: Martian survivor living on Earth as a superhero.

Parents:

M’yrnn J’onzz; father

Sha’sheen J’onzz; mother

Marital Status: Widowed (M’yri’ah; wife)

Citizenship: American

Occupation:

Adventurer

Detective

First Appearance: Detective Comics #225 (November, 1955)

Powers

Martian Physiology: Martian Manhunter has been described as "the Swiss Army knife of superheroes." His powers come from his alien physiology. Born on Mars over a millennium ago, from a super advanced civilization, boasting advanced technology and genetic modifications over its people, the Martian Manhunter would appear to be a genetically modified being with incredible powers stemming from the changes made in his body. Whether this is their natural state or an advanced state given to only a few individuals is unknown. The Martian's physiology would seem to be composed of a complex molecular chain that resembles polymer bonds but with the ability to be altered at will. The Martian Manhunter can change his mass, color, relative shape, imitating even clothing if desired. The biopolymer is extremely flexible, durable, incredibly strong for a biological material and apparently self-sustaining. It is unknown if the Martian Manhunter actually needs to eat or not but he has been seen consuming food, particularly "Chocos," a brand of cookies.

Shape-Shifting, Malleability, Plasticity, Elongation: Arguably one of the most incredible powers possessed by the Manhunter is the ability to shape-shift. He is able to literally control the molecular structure of his body's biopolymers and manipulate them into any construct he desires, in addition to and including his own body. He can form clothing and weapons with non-moving or non-functioning parts. There does not seem to be any limit to the number of people the Manhunter can imitate and has stood in as a double for many famous people. His ability to imitate people and their mannerisms has stood him in good stead for his disguises. He has recently been seen to shape-shift into the size and shape of a common house fly and to enormous sizes comparable to skyscrapers. He is also able to change colors and turn himself into objects.

Invisibility: The Manhunter can cause the biopolymers in his body to lose their ability to reflect light, rendering the Manhunter invisible to normal light and human sight. With more increased concentration, he can render himself completely invisible along the electromagnetic spectrum, including the infrared and the ultraviolet ranges of the spectrum. This invisibility does not affect every other sense and he could still be detected by touch.

Phasing: The Manhunter can phase through solid matter. No explanation of this power has been given, but it might possibly be an aspect of his psionic powers, perhaps shifting his mass into another dimension or out of vibrational phase with other objects in this dimension. Since it is known that he can alter the density of his biopolymers, it may be that he can simply become less substantial than solid matter, thereby decreasing the molecular density of his body by loosening the bonds within the biopolymers, due to - and further demonstrating - the absolute control he has over them.

Superhuman Durability: The biomorphic structure of the Manhunter's body allows him to absorb almost all kinetic energies such as high caliber bullets, shrapnel, or flying debris easily. He can harden his biopolymers by rebinding them and increase his durability. Along with his nigh-invulnerability, his shape shifting makes him even more difficult to harm. Hazardous environments practically do not affect the Martian Manhunter. In addition, Martian Manhunter's immune system protects him from all toxins and diseases.

Superhuman Strength: The Martian Manhunter is one of the strongest beings on the planet. The Martian's superhuman strength comes from his Biomorphic structure formed from immensely long and complex molecular chains, augmented with his psionic and telekinetic abilities allowing him to lift incredible weights without these weights crumbling under the stress. By modifying the density of these biopolymers, the Manhunter can make himself stronger by forcing them into tighter bundles. While at a resting state the limits of his strength are unknown, the Manhunter can lift 100 tons without much effort.

Superhuman Stamina: J'onn's endurance is just as formidable as his strength and invulnerability. He can operate under extreme conditions for an indeterminate period of time without showing signs of fatigue. The exact range of this power is unknown.

Regeneration: The Martian Manhunter has shown amazing regenerative capabilities. So great are they that he has been able to completely regenerate from nothing but his severed hand, regenerate in moments from nothing more than a puddle of green liquid, and in another instance, survived beheading.

Flight: The Martian Manhunter flies by manipulation of gravitons, manipulation of magnetic fields and control of his absolute molecular movement. These combine to give him the ability to fly great distances with little fatigue and at great speed. The Manhunter has also been seen flying in space with no difficulty. J'onn can therefore fly at speeds exceeding the escape velocity of earth under his own power.

Superhuman Speed: Either through flight or natural movement, the Martian Manhunter can maintain speed and demonstrates reflexes far in excess to that of most metahumans, and for far longer. Like the power of flight, this is accomplished by manipulating the magnetic fields of energy surrounding his body, as well as ambient gravitational particles. Traditionally, J'onn only uses his superhuman speed while flying. He can process thoughts, move, and react at super speed as well. J'onn has also demonstrated that he is fast enough to comfortably catch bullets and other exceedingly fast projectiles.

Extrasensory Input: J'onn possesses nine different senses. One of these senses could account for instances of the Manhunter's perceived precognitive abilities.

Longevity

Super Hearing

Super-Breath: The inner valves and chambers inside the Martian Manhunter's air canals are very dense and greatly enhanced, allowing him to create strong hurricane force winds just by exhaling pressurized air from his lungs in an incredibly strong burst.

Enhanced Senses

Martian Vision: The actual nature of this power seems to vary depending on the reports. It has been seen to be a bolt of force, directed by the Manhunter's eyes causing considerable damage. It has also been seen to cause flammable objects to catch fire. It also grants J'onn the ability to see into other spectrums of light. J'onn can use his Martian vision to see people and objects that are invisible to others.

Electro-Magnetic Spectrum Vision

Telescopic Vision

Microscopic Vision

Heat Vision

Telepathy: The Martian Manhunter is the most powerful telepath on the planet, and is one of the strongest telepathic beings in the Universe. He is able to read the mind of any human with no difficulties, and the only minds that can cause him trouble are insane minds. He can even read the subconscious mind as well. He is able to read minds over great distances and has been known to scan the mind of every person on Earth within a matter of moments. This telepathy extends to distances as far away as the moon, since it is known that the Martian Manhunter can telepathically communicate with someone on Earth while on the moon. It is not known whether there is any limit to the number of people he can be attuned to or whether there are any special requirements to being attuned to him. In addition to reading minds, the Martian Manhunter has a multitude of other telepathic capabilities, one of which allows him to literally reprogram the mind of a subject into believing whatever he wants them to. He can use this ability to help subjects forget things that he does not want them to remember as well as set up post-hypnotic suggestions.

Illusions

Possession

Astral Projection

Mind Control: The Martian Manhunter can also control other beings mind's. Insane minds seem to be the only minds he has some trouble controlling.

Telepathic Relay: Otherwise known as a telepathic link. The Manhunter is able to use his telepathic prowess as a relay station for a group of minds, who can then "speak" to each other through him. This relaying ability seems to be limited to the same range as the Manhunter's normal telepathic range.

Telepathic Assault: The Martian Manhunter can also use his telepathic abilities in an offensive manner. He has the ability to cause mental shutdown in a target using his psionic powers. The Manhunter does not use this power often due to the invasive nature and harshness of such a telepathic attack.

Thought Sensing: The Manhunter can use the mental signature of a being to track it, and can detect life forms by their empathic as well as telepathic signatures. He can detect whether a being is intelligent or not, and can communicate with it empathically if it does not have a communication-driven frame of reference with which normal telepathy may function. He can also detect various states of mind from anywhere in the world.

Mayavana: One of the most prized abilities of the Martians is Mayavana. It is the ability to reach into another mind and create a mental reality as real as any normal reality. The strain of Mayavana is such that it can only be used once in a lifetime, and so is normally used on the one that a Martian loves the most.

Telekinesis: J'onn possesses the ability to move objects with his mind, which he described as ""molecular hypnosis" and "Martian mind-over-matter".

Abilities

Genius Level Intellect: The Martian Manhunter possesses highly advanced reasoning and logic capabilities, and uses them to great effect. The Martian Manhunter's particularly astute reasoning capabilities and long-term association with Earth's global population gives him an edge in dealing with humans of diverse governments, cultures and religions.

Investigation

Multilingualism

Meditation: Martians enter a meditative state as a form of sleep.

Weaknesses

Vulnerability to Fire: The Martian Manhunter has a psychosomatic fear of fire. The Guardians of the Universe have built in a fear of fire when they first confronted the Burned. Exposure to fire, causes him to lose his powers, and in the case of extreme fire, to lose his control over his biomorphic form. The Manhunter is more vulnerable in this form and can take damage in this vulnerable state.

Chocoholism: It has also been suggested that something within J'onn's physiology makes him addicted to the chemicals used in the Earth snack, Chocos. Withdrawal symptoms include violent bursts of rage and loss of intellect. However, these claims have never been accurately substantiated, and may even be false.

Equipment

Kuru pendant: The Martian Manhunter owns one of two Kuru pendants. The pendant acts as a repository of ancient Martian lore and knowledge. The second pendant belonged to the late Martian, Roh'kar.

Personality

Like all Martians, J'onn has a somewhat cold and stoic demeanor. He has very restricted emotional expressions. J'onn typically acts as the voice of reason in the Justice League and is one of the wisest leaders within the hero community, along with Batman and Superman.

Despite his cold exterior, J'onn is one of the kindest and most noble heroes operating on earth. The Manhunter has demonstrated enormous willpower, as evidenced by his ability to retain his sanity after the death of his race. He has a subtle sense of humor and an affinity for the chocolate cookie sandwiches called Chocos. The Martian Manhunter is considered by many to be the heart and soul of the Justice League.

Origin

Centuries ago on the planet Ma'aleca'andra, the Green Martians known as M'yrnn and Sha'sheen gave birth to twin sons. The bearing of twins was uncommon among the Martian culture, and as such, the first of the twins was named J'onn J'onzz, whose name means "Light to the Light." J'onn's brother, however, was born a mutant, bereft of a Martian's innate ability to communicate telepathically. He was named Ma'alefa'ak, whose name means "Darkness in the Heart."

As an adult, J'onn became a Manhunter and married a Martian woman named M'yri'ah. The two established a modest home for themselves beneath the windswept Martian plains and gave birth to a daughter named K'hym.

Years passed, and J'onn's brother Ma'alefa'ak grew to despise everything about Martian culture. In an ambitious endeavor to commit full-scale genocide against his own people, he engineered a contagious virus known as H'ronmeer's Curse. The virus reacted to telepathic energy and carried from one Martian to the next whenever they elected to use their psionic powers. The plague responded to a Martian's innate fear of fire, causing them psychosomatic stress so intense, that their bodies and minds would literally burst into flame. J'onn desperately tried to keep his wife and daughter from using their mental gifts, but they were unable to do so, and thus ultimately contracted the virus. K'hym was the first to experience the symptoms, and M'yri'ah followed soon after. J'onn was anguished as he watched his family burning to death before his very eyes. The trauma of the event shattered his psyche, and nearly drove him mad.

Welcome to Earth

Meanwhile, on the planet Earth, a would-be scientist named Dr. Saul Erdel developed a transmitter machine based upon ancient Martian technology. Seeking to make contact with extraterrestrial life, he aimed his device towards the vicinity of Mars and activated it. The transmitter beam streaked across both space and time, striking the Martian Manhunter at a point in time several centuries before Erdel would even be born. The beam brought J'onn back to Erdel's natural time era, where he collapsed on the ground outside of the doctor's Colorado laboratory.

Erdel brought the distraught Martian inside and attempted to nurse him back to health. The anguish of J'onn's mental state created a psychic bond between the two, and Erdel became aware of the events that took place on Mars. In an effort to heal J'onn's mind, Erdel used the mental link to fabricate a new history for the Martian. He created a back-story inspired by the writings of famous science fiction novelists such as Ray Bradbury and Edgar Rice Burroughs. Eventually, J'onn's sanity was restored, and he was prepared to function in this strange, new world. Erdel put the idea into his head that he should become a great champion, and thus J'onn adopted the heroic guise of the Martian Manhunter.

When J'onn shapeshifted into a human-like form, Erdel was shocked and suffered a heart attack that killed him.  As he was dying, Erdel asked J'onn for forgiveness for making him a prisoner of Earth.

It was later revealed that Mars was dead when J'onn was taken, killed by a mental plague deliberately started by his brother Ma'alefa'ak. He took the identity of the Bronze Wraith, and fought crime with the Justice Experience.

John Jones, Police Detective

J'onn was able to use his powers to fit into human society.  He adopted a human appearance and called himself "John Jones."  He became a police detective in the city of Middleton. For a long time, he worked as a policeman while secretly using his alien powers to solve cases and help people.

Some time later, the existence of the Martian Manhunter was accidentally revealed. From this point on, J'onn stopped hiding his superhero feats from the world, but he kept his double-identity as John Jones secret.  It was at this time that he began to publicly appear in his green-skinned humanoid form.

He subsequently acquired policewoman Diane Meade as his partner, and an pet Zook who helped him solve cases.

J'onn J'onzz was one of the founding members of the Justice League of America.

J'onn's career as a police detective was ended by the Idol Head of Diabolu. This evil statue expelled a deadly cloud.  John Jones saved a child from the cloud, but in doing so he was engulfed by it.  His fellow policemen believed he must have died. J'onn took this as an opportunity to abandon his double life. He allowed the police department to believe he had died, and as the Martian Manhunter he even attended his own funeral.

Martian Manhunter Without John Jones; Justice League of America

After this, J'onn J'onzz and Zook began a quest to combat the Idol Head of Diabolu, which they finally managed to destroy.

J'onn then briefly assumed the alias "Marco Xavier" in order to infiltrate the international crime cartel known as VULTURE.

J'onn served as a regular member of the Justice League of America. However, when a group of evil Martians led by General Blanx destroyed the surface of Mars, forcing all the good Martians to flee in a rocket, J'onn accompanied them into space, leaving the Justice League.

Over the next few years J'onn was rarely seen, but he occasionally showed up to help the JLA.  Eventually he returned to the JLA full-time.

When the original Justice League of America disbanded, J'onn became the leader of the new "Justice League Detroit". He remained with that team until it, too, disbanded.

Justice League International

J'onn was one of the founding members of the Justice League International.

J'onzz revealed that his familiar appearance is not his true Martian form but a "compromise" between his true form and a human appearance - explaining that his real form is private and that, even on Mars, his "public" appearance was the familiar version.

In addition to serving in the League under his own identity, he also joined as "Bloodwynd."

JLA

The Martian Manhunter is the most recognized hero in the Southern Hemisphere, and he maintains a number of different secret identities, many of them outside the United States. However, following two incidents, he decides to focus on his original human identity and retire the others.

Later, the Martian Manhunter attempts to conquer his fear of fire and makes a deal with a flame-wielding villainess named Scorch, who wants J'onzz' telepathic help in dealing with her own mental issues. 20,000 years before, an extremely dangerous race of beings called "the Burning" caused large fires to help themselves reproduce asexually. In order to prevent the Burning from destroying much of the universe, the Guardians of the Universe split the species into the Green Martians and the White Martians, changed their reproductive behavior, and instilled in them a fear of fire. When the Martian Manhunter confronts his fear of fire, he reverts into one of the ancient creatures and changes his name to Fernus. His genetic memory identifies threats such as Vandal Savage, who killed one of the Burning on ancient Earth. This same genetic memory also makes Fernus hate the Green Lantern, due to his association with the Oans.

Fernus increases the strength of the powers he inherits from J'onn: For example, he can phase other beings rather than just himself, and he has access to pyrokinesis. He can breathe fire of such intensity that it harms Scorch, who had previously been thought immune to damage from fire. Fernus' tremendous strength also allows him to dominate the Justice League in combat even without his Martian telepathic powers. He can also heal himself from almost total destruction within seconds.

The Justice League eventually defeats Fernus by re-enlisting Plastic Man, who is immune to Fernus' psychic powers and has superior shape-changing abilities. It is implied that Batman recruited Plastic Man to the Justice League as a balance in case the Martian Manhunter ever got out of control.

After destroying Fernus, J'onn grieves for Scorch, who had fallen into a coma, and with whom he had fallen in love. J'onn later tells Superman that his aversion to fire has changed: he is now invulnerable to flames unless they are "flames of passion" or of some other "psychic significance."

Infinite Crisis and "One Year Later"

Although J'onzz is initially thought killed in the explosion of the Justice League Watchtower, Justice League member Manitou Dawn receives a telepathic vision of J'onzz assuring her that he "will reveal himself in time," but needs her help to keep an eye on a mysterious, newly-powerful telepath - the mind-controlling villain, Key - whose abilities he had always managed to dampen before.

J'onzz resurfaces during Infinite Crisis, unconscious and connected to Alexander Luthor, Jr.'s vibrational tower, along with Lady Quark, the Ray, Black Adam, Power Girl, Nightshade, and Breach. Wonder Girl, Superboy, and Nightwing free J'onzz and the others from Alexander's tower.

Oracle asks J'onzz to telepathically coordinate the heroes' response to the Society's global jailbreak. He joins the assembled heroes in the defense of Metropolis from the combined might of the world's super-villains and in the battle against Superboy-Prime.

In the following months, J'onn masqueraded as U.S. Secretary of State Kakalios in an attempt to bring down Checkmate. He was successful in eliminating it as a U.S. government-controlled agency. However, it soon reorganized under the United Nations.

One of the most dramatic changes in J'onn's life occurred a short time later. While operating under the guise of William Dyer, he discovered that several Green Martians had crash-landed on Earth, and were being held by high-ranking members of the Defense Department. One of the Martians, Roh'kar, broke free of his confinement and made contact with the Martian Manhunter. The union was bittersweet, however, as a brainwashed assassin ended Roh'kar's life with a weapon designed to target Martians. J'onn found five of Roh'kar's colleagues and rescued them from the bowels of a government think tank. He established a safe house for them and pledged to do everything in his power to keep them safe from government scrutiny.

Salvation Run and Final Crisis

When Checkmate decided to capture a number of super-villains and exile them on a "prison planet" in an event known as Salvation Run, J'onn volunteered to disguise himself as Blockbuster and infiltrate the planet to keep an eye on things, making periodic reports to Batman. Catwoman finds out his true identity and, to save her own skin, outs him to the other villains, who torture him. When the villains escape the planet, teleporting back to Earth, they leave J'onn in his cage to die.

He is "rescued" by Libra and the new Secret Society of Super-Villains who open a Boom Tube between the planet and Earth. Libra brings him back to Earth with the express purpose of killing him, doing so with his spear tipped scale staff, for the Human Flame to show the Society members that he can give them their hearts desire--Human Flame having wanted J'onn dead for foiling a crime of his years ago. In his final moments J'onn broadcast a telepathic message to fellow heroes Batman, Superman, Green Lantern  Hal Jordan, Gypsy, and Black Canary prompting them to say his name and, hours after his death had been discovered, simultaneously record part of his life story in their sleep.

His remains were interred in a pyramid removed from Egypt and placed back in its original location on Mars in a ceremony attended by many heroes. He was eulogized by Superman.

The Blackest Night

During the events of the Blackest Night, the dead rose across the universe and J'onn was one of them. After his resurrection and admission to the Black Lantern Corps, he went to confront Barry Allen and Hal Jordan, who were talking over Batman's grave being robbed. He approaches them saying that they should be dead and begins to fight the two, and is soon joined by Black Lanterns Elongated Man, Sue Dibny, Firestorm, Hawkman, and Hawkgirl. When the Atom arrives, Barry and Hal create a fire tornado to destroy J'onn. This fails to stop him, and the heroes are cornered until Indigo-1 and another Indigo Lantern arrive to drive them off. At the end of the Blackest Night, J'onn is revived by the Entity along with other heroes and a few villains. When Superman asks if J'onn is truly alive, J'onn responds, "It appears so."

Brightest Day

J'onn is a very prominent member, finding a water source on Mars and seen talking with the daughter of Doctor Erdel. J'onn was seen last tucking her into bed in a retirement home, in the form of her father. J'onn then visited the doctor's laboratory, but plant life around him starts to die every time he gets near. He later went to see M'gann M'orzz in Australia during her mediation search, but found her beaten and tied up. While tending to her, he is contacted by the Entity, who instructs him to burn down the newly-formed forest. When J'onn's asks M'gann who did this to her, M'gann says she was attacked by a female green Martian. J'onn presumes the forest he is to burn down is in Star City but is questioned by Green Arrow. He attempts to burn down the forest before being telepathically attacked by the Entity. The Entity reveals to him that the newly-formed forest he is to burn down is on Mars. After J'onn lashed out the Star City's forest, he starts to return home.

When J'onn enters his home, he is confronted by a female green Martian named D'Kay D'Razz, who is the one responsible for M'gann's attack. D'kay explains her origins and wants to be his mate. J'onn refuses, learning she is a psychopath when D'kay angrily lashes out to attack and enters his mind. J'onn tries to resist influence from D'kay's mind, but her control over his mind tempts him with visions of a fantasy world where all the Martians and J'onn's family are resurrected by the Entity. While reunited with his lost family, J'onn discovers that they are false and realizes that they are a ruse and the death corpse is carved of Martian symbols of love and hate from D'kay's influence. J'onn arrives vengeful and wrings D'kay's neck in disgust. J'onn defeats D'kay by forcing her into the sun but is saved from the same fate by the White Lantern Entity, who informs him that his mission has been accomplished, and returns his life to him. The Entity then told J'onn to choose between Mars and Earth. J'onn chose Earth and returned only to be absorbed into the Earth by the Entity and Deadman as "part of the plan."

When the "Dark Avatar," made his presence known, Martian Manhunter is revealed to be one of the four Elementals, the others being Aquaman, Firestorm, Hawkman and Hawkgirl. He becomes the element of Earth to protect the Star City forest from the "Dark Avatar," which appears to be the Black Lantern version of Swamp Thing. The Elementals are then fused with the body of Alec Holland in order for him to be transformed by the Entity into the new Swamp Thing and battle against the Dark Avatar. After the Dark Avatar is defeated, Swamp Thing brought Martian Manhunter and the other Elementals back to normal. Afterward, J'onn helps Melissa Erdel and removes the piece of machinery from her head that made her lose her mind.

Fun Facts

Although obviously alien in appearance, the form that most Earthlings associated with the Martian Manhunter is not actually his true form. In his natural state of being, J'onn has a slender body, with sharp, angular features and a tapered cranium. The more muscular "beetle-brow" appearance was inspired by Saul Erdel, who convinced J'onn to assume a form derived from the literary works of science fiction authors such as Edgar Rice Burroughs and Ray Bradbury.

Batman left one Choco on his casket.

In his earliest appearances, the Martian Manhunter resembled a normal human, albeit with green skin. He was drawn with standard human eyes and eyebrows. In later years however, creators decided to give J'onn a more alien appearance and provided him with the more modernized beetle-brow look.

In some of his earliest adventures, the Martian Manhunter possessed the ability to see into the near future. However, there have been scant examples of this, and it is no longer a power that he possesses in modern continuity. By his own account, the Martian Manhunter cannot perceive the future.

[dreeeeiii]

How To Write A Simple, Yet Powerful Cover Letter

Did you realize that more than 85% of resumes got by recruiting supervisors to show up without an introductory letter?

While that may not mean a lot to you, it implies a great deal to individuals inspecting and confirming resumes for the work you are applying for. Resumes that are sent in without somebody setting aside the effort to compose an introductory letter appear to the employing supervisor to be submitted aimlessly. It seems as though the work candidate has sent their resume into bunches of occupations - shotgun approach - trusting somebody may get back to them.

This isn't the sort of initial feeling you need to give an employing director.

Then again, those resumes that do show up with an introductory letter stand out enough to be noticed and are regularly the primary continues of HR individual audits. An introductory letter tells the recruiting administrator that you care enough about the work you are applying for that it is significant for you to remain over the opposition. At the point when you set aside the effort to compose an introductory letter, it likewise shows activity and confirmations your capacity and readiness to go that additional mile. It flags that you are somebody who is mindful of detail and that you will do what others candidates (and laborers) are not able to do.

It shows that you are coordinated, competent, and proficient. An elegantly composed introductory letter tells the recruiting administrator that you are not kidding about landing the position, and it gives you the most obvious opportunity (alongside an applicable resume) of handling a meeting and eventually the work you truly need.

While an introductory letter is a tremendous advantage for work candidates, there are two things to keep away from and some distinct prescribed procedures you can use to guarantee your introductory letter is heads and tails above anyone else's.

Step by step instructions to Address your Cover Letter:

We should begin first with what to stay away from. The clearest thing you need to try not to is composing a nonexclusive introductory letter that is vague to the work you are applying to. Doing so eradicates any advantage of assembling one in the first place. The principal thing you need to try not to is addressing your letter to the nonexclusive: "To Whom It May Concern." This, by and by, simply irregularities you into the conventional introductory letter heap, and doesn't separate you from different candidates.

To keep away from this, attempt to discover the recruiting supervisor's name or occupation title, and direct the introductory letter to him/her. On the off chance that this is preposterous, the accompanying locations are ideal:

1) Address your introductory letter to the office head you are applying to. So if it is dealing, use: "Dear Hiring Sales Manager," or "Dear Hiring Marketing Director," or "Dear HR Director."

2) If you don't have the foggiest idea about the office, at that point a decent location is: "Beloved Hiring Manager," or "Dear Human Resources Director."

3) If you do know the name of the employing director, at that point consistently utilize their name thusly: "Dear Mr. Creeks," or "Dear Ms. Collins."

This is the sort of detail that requires one little while to modify, however it establishes a gigantic first connection with the employing administrator. Once more, it confirms that you care enough - and are sufficiently ingenious - to set aside the effort to go past what most occupation searchers are not able to do. The surmising is that you will likewise be more coordinated and thorough at work also. What's more, this is the sort of individual employing workforce are searching for.

Then, the substance of the introductory letter is the place where you will represent the deciding moment a decent impression. Presently, don't be scared here. The recruiting supervisor isn't searching for a school paper, nor are they searching for an example of your composing abilities. What they do need, be that as it may - and what you need to give them - is the reason you are remarkably equipped for this specific work. All in all, they are searching for applicable experience that coordinates explicitly to the position you are applying for.

Allow me to say that again because this is critical: What the recruiting administrator is searching for is a significant experience of yours that straightforwardly identifies with the particular occupation abilities and obligations they are employing for.

Furthermore, the uplifting news is there are some simple, sure-fire, best practices you can follow that will quickly give them what they are searching for. Here are the means by which to go about it:

Number One: Carefully audit every business advertisement depiction and select explicit words and expressions that portray the abilities and everyday exercises they are publicizing for. A model would be the expression:

"Important involvement with prospecting by telephone, up-and-comers ought to be set up to make between 50 to 75 cold pitches each day. Furthermore, the ideal up-and-comer ought to likewise have insight in reaching existing or non-dynamic records to extend and develop the customer base."

When you see something like this, it is advising you precisely how to compose your introductory letter. What you need to do next is coordinate any (or whatever number as could be expected under the circumstances) of your past positions where you performed comparable obligations. And afterward, remember a short depiction of that for your introductory letter. For instance:

"The abilities and obligations which you are looking for - explicitly prospecting by telephone and calling into non-dynamic records - are by and large the sort of work I did at Sherman Rentals and ABC Financial. I'm exceptionally proficient at cold pitching and routinely normal 68 prospecting calls each day.

"Moreover, I was likewise answerable for calling into existing records and surprisingly won honors for my capacity to reactivate and up-sell existing clients."

Presently how simple was that? By requiring only a couple of minutes to feature explicit words and expressions and rehash them in your introductory letter, you will do what 98% of your opposition essentially will not set aside the effort to do. Your work will get seen and it will move your resume to the highest point of the stack.

Incidentally, on the off chance that you didn't win any honors, don't make it up! All things considered, talk about the accomplishments you did achieve and the outcomes that you got. Your objective here, once more, is to coordinate your pertinent experience that straightforwardly identifies with the particular occupation abilities and obligations they are publicizing for. Keep in mind, the key is to utilize their definite words and expressions while portraying your involvement with your introductory letter.

Making this basic stride is 75% of composing an amazing introductory letter. The other part is to show an earnest premium in their organization and the open position and to keep it brief. Here is a finished, best practice introductory letter that you can use as a format:

Dear Sales Hiring Manager,

My name is John Brown, and I was exceptionally eager to secure your position posting on Monster.com. I have consistently been keen on the web-based publicizing industry (whatever industry their organization is in), and feel that I have the important experience you are searching for that would empower me to be exceptionally effective with your organization.

The abilities and obligations which you are looking for - explicitly prospecting by telephone and calling into non-dynamic records - are by and large the sort of work I did at Sherman Rentals and ABC Financial. I'm profoundly proficient at cold pitching and routinely normal 68 prospecting calls each day.

Likewise, I was additionally liable for calling into existing records and surprisingly won honors for my capacity to reactivate and up-sell existing clients.

I would appreciate the chance to get familiar with the situation of record administrator you are publicizing for, and anticipate investigating how my professional experience can be a resource for your organization.

I have joined my resume for your survey and would be glad to talk about my experience or any inquiries you may have.

The most ideal approach to contact me is by my cell: (515) 555-1234. Then again, you can email me here: John@youremailaddress.com

I trust my experience meets what you are looking for, and anticipate hearing from you soon.

John Brown

Utilize this format for any business work you are applying for. (Or then again some other sort of position also.) Simply change the name of the organization and kind of occupation where suitable and coordinate your abilities and obligations as talked about already.

By requiring only a couple of minutes to tweak a painstakingly phrased cover letter this way, you will immediately get one of - if not the absolute first - competitors that get a get back to. You will be especially sought after and soon you will have your pick of which freedoms to seek after. Furthermore, having numerous organizations who are keen on recruiting you gives you the influence to request and get things like a more significant compensation, a superior commission structure, and surprisingly a potential employing reward.

[bluesakura007]

What She Had To Do - Chapter 1: How to Defrost a Cryotube - Khan Noonien Singh x OC

Summary: Two years after the events of the alternative sad ending of Undeniable - after Khan Noonien Singh was sealed away in an eternal sleep - commander Zinalya Hamilton isn’t ready to give up the man she adores without a fight, and has decided that she’s going to rescue him. 

Warning: Mentions of implied alcoholism

The afternoon sunlight, despite being cold and much more white than yellow, was nonetheless harsh despite being hidden behind a vast cloudy curtain. On a certain small island nearby, Lady Liberty, as always, stood proudly with her torch aloft as though she were watching over the surrounding lands like a mighty extradimensional being born to live solely as a benevolent overseer.

On the subject of mighty women, a young Starfleet officer was standing only about four feet away from the front gates of the facility known as Sierra-Lambda 3, which was owned and operated by this very same organisation. An officer with burgundy hair, glimmering hazel-green eyes and a few Trill spots going from the top of either side of her forehead down to her neck and then her toes, and who was currently twenty-seven years old as of the previous day; she also happened to be the very same woman who was a key individual in the court tribunal that took place a little bit over two years prior regarding a certain superhuman and the events of his quest for vengeance.

"Could you show us your transport order, ma’am?" A burly guard in front of her requested, a phaser rifle strapped to his back, to which commander Zinalya Hamilton - who was promoted several months beforehand - handed over a translucent rectangular data pad to him. Her current getup consisted of the grey jacket, skirt and peaked cap of her dress uniform with immaculately-polished black leather boots. After holding the pad in his left hand and scrolling down on it with his right to fully read over what was on it, a few seconds passed before he looked up again and nodded. "Okay." He pulled a smaller handheld device with a keypad out of his pocket, akin to a tricorder, and entered several passcode keys on it, upon which the gates smoothly and gradually slid open from the middle, in the same way as the doors of a turbolift.

You see, these contents of the data pad she’d just handed over were forged orders from a higher-up officer, a Caitian named admiral S'toia, for the transport of a batch of photon torpedoes to Starfleet Headquarters for further research, complete with the equally fake required signature from the above-mentioned admiral. 

The reason behind this ploy was that Sierra-Lambda 3 was holding a specific something which she wanted, and from what she’d gathered there’d most likely be no way she would be permitted to take it - specifically, there was a man in the belly of that facility, stuck there like some kind of houseplant in a state where he could never age.

The guard, along with another who had been standing several meters to his right with his own rifle being actually held in his hands, both led Zinalya through the now open gates and across the wide tarmac path that led up to the actual entrance doors themselves. 

Her dress uniform, especially the peaked cap on her head, and the assertive way she carried herself which was the usual way she walked while on duty on the USS Enterprise all added together to make her look like a goddess of war right now. After all, this body language was most often needed during this on-duty times to establish herself as a dominant and combat-ready force due to her being the ship's chief of security, but the valiant look on her face which was used to match it was different this time: on this particular occasion, the fire in the gaze of her eyes was of a newfound craftiness. 

For the last year and a half or so, Zin had unintentionally but gradually given off the impression to those around her that she always had one thing or another on her mind, quietly ticking away underneath the surface encasing the cogs and gears of her brain. It caused most of them to become unsure of what she might be thinking about at any one time.  

"Sir, there's an officer from the Enterprise here to see you about an order of torpedo transport from admiral S'toia. It's commander Hamilton." The second guard, the one who'd remained silent during the exchange at the gates, said upon approaching the director of the facility, another Starfleet admiral called Nathaniel Fletcher. This man was inside the foyer beyond the the entrance doors, talking to two other men and a woman who were all dressed in form-fitting white tunics and matching trousers and shoes, the woman holding a data pad of her own under her right forearm and one of these two men being a Vulcan. "I've already just checked this order myself."

"Thank you Mr. Perez." Admiral Fletcher was a man in his early fifties with greying blonde hair and light brown eyes, who, like Zinalya while on duty, carried himself with an aura of confidence, but he was capable of the occasional instances for letting his hair down. "You're dismissed." He momentarily addressed the three white-clad facility scientists he'd previously been having a discussion with, who nodded before heading off to their duties, and then turned to hold out his hand with a courteous smile. "Nice to meet you, commander. Admiral Nathaniel Fletcher."

"And you too, sir." Now it was Zinalya's turn to show her own smile in the same manner as he reached out and shook his hand.

"Shall we go up to my office so we can confirm the transport?" He briefly motioned behind him, towards a set of stairs.

"Yes sir, lead the way." She nodded her head, after which roughly the next minute and a half was the time taken for the pair to walk up these stairs, into one of several hallways on the upper floor and through said hallway on their way to the office belonging to him, past several other scientists and security guards. 

Sierra-Lambda 3 as a whole was, Zinalya thought to herself without saying a word about it out loud, rather like a deep underground cavern, as it appeared to be windowless and it had a hefty size to put it mildly; additionally like a dungeon complex, which was an especially fitting image considering the fact that she was looking for an imprisoned man.

"So, you've been ordered to send this request on admiral S'toia's behalf?" Asked Fletcher a couple of seconds after they'd ascended the stairs.

"That's right. Do you know her?" The half Trill hybrid put forth her own question.

"She's more of an acquaintance, but we have met once, at a conference three years back I think. She was a pretty easy person to get along with - friendly but professional."

"I'll be sure to send her your regards." A light chuckle fell from her lips.

He also chuckled to himself. "Good luck with that, she might've forgotten who I am in those three years, and like I said, it's not like we've had other meetings since then, so it's not like there's any reminders." It was shortly after this when they made it to his office, as evidenced by the fact that this was the only door where he proceeded to step through into the room behind it. After they'd both entered, the door slid shut behind them again, and it was during this time when Zin managed to momentarily take a mental note of the photographs on the wall behind his desk, one of which evidently being a picture taken of admiral Fletcher and his wife on their wedding day based on the white dress this wife was wearing and another, slightly smaller one being of a pair of young boys around the age of ten or eleven. "Have a seat, commander. Can I get you a Jack Daniel's?"

"No thanks." Zinalya took off her peaked cap and held it next to her right thigh, and gracefully sat down in one of the two armchairs sitting opposite each other in front of the desk on either side. On this desk sat a computer with table between the armchairs in addition, and all of this furniture in the office was organised neatly, including the drinks cabinet on the side of the room she was facing, where Fletcher was retrieving a bottle of Jack Daniel's Tennessee whiskey and pouring himself a glass. She took another glance at the picture of the two boys and saw more details about the photograph in the process, such as them both smiling brightly at the camera in front of a colossal tree. "Are those your sons?"

"Hm?" The admiral was confused for a second until he turned around with his now half full whiskey glass and saw the photo that she was looking at. "Oh, yeah, they are. Twins. That picture was taken at the General Sherman tree in California last Summer - I had a little shore leave time sitting around, so my wife and I went over there with them for a week as a vacation."

"I’m actually in the middle of my own shore leave myself. Well, apart from this torpedo transport business for S'toia, obviously." She fondly recalled some of the memories of the last few days she’d spent with her family as she spoke, especially the ones from yesterday, March 30th, due to it being her birthday. "I spent some time with my parents in Canada before it came through."

"Sometimes the workload just wants what the workload wants." He jokingly shrugged in reply. "And going off topic, congratulations on your promotion to full commander."

"Thank you, sir. Captain Kirk told me that most lieutenant-commanders in Starfleet apart from commander Spock don't reach that rank until they've reached thirty."

"How old are you, Miss Hamilton?"

"I'm twenty-seven." Replied Zin amicably as, at the same time, he then sat down in the other armchair directly opposite her after putting down his now empty whiskey glass on his desk.  

"You've beaten that average age to it before the inescapable adulthood of that one fateful birthday comes along." Said Fletcher, just as lightheartedly as his previous comment that he'd given a few moments ago with the shrug. There was a pause for another of these moments. "I've gotta say, I'm kinda surprised you accepted S'toia's order and came here to Sierra-Lambda 3 of all places after the business with Khan Noonien Singh's court case in San Francisco."

She nodded her head slightly. "It was a little hard for me to come knowing we're basically sitting on top of where he is right now, but it's never a good idea to ignore an order, especially one from a member of the admiralty."

"That is true." He gave his own nodding in return.

"Still, at least this whole thing means nobody who'd want to hurt Khan can get to him, though. None of them'll get the chance to defrost that microwave lasagne." The woman once again chuckled jocularly, causing the same reaction for the admiral in front of her. And then, after a few more seconds and while leaning herself somewhat further back against the armchair she was in, she suddenly and without warning reached into a pocket of her jacket with the same hand that she'd been using up to now for holding her peaked cap. "Seriously, how do I defrost him?" Her hand emerged again, just as quickly, with a phaser being held in it that was aimed at Fletcher across the space between them, all while she was smiling sweetly.

He felt a surge of surprise at this abrupt development, as expected, but his eyes then narrowed by a fraction confrontationally - during their conversation just now, he'd gradually gotten a tiny inkling that she had an ulterior motive up her sleeve relating to this English-accented and black-haired Augment. "This must be what you accepting the order was really all about."

"Wrong: there was no order in the first place. I just picked S'toia's name for the bluff because she turned out to be one of the higher-ups on the jury who wanted the sentence he got to be agreed to." Zinalya still maintained the smile on her face while the fire in her eyes from a few minutes ago made a reappearance.

"So you lied your way in here to pull a stunt to get your boyfriend back." Said Fletcher with a stony expression growing on his own face. Underneath this, however, he felt somewhat uneasy without admitting it, as he could see very clearly that her phaser, still unwaveringly trained on him, was on the stun setting but no one particularly relished having a weapon aimed at them nonetheless.

"You make it sound like something to be downplayed, sir." Said Zin pleasantly. "Since it sounds like you know about the court case - obviously news gets around - I've got another fun fact for you: if I had to rate the events of my life, that day scored pretty low to say the least."

"And now you think that means it's an excuse for you to come in here and just take a convicted criminal, this is getting better and better." The admiral rolled his eyes in contempt before taking a moment to eye up his desk to his right. He kept a phaser of his own in one of its drawers for if and when he might need it, and he was weighing up how quick he'd have to be in order to get to it before the younger officer opposite him could fire her own.

"I wouldn't even think about it if I were you. I can drop you before you'd get the chance to do anything." She told him immediately after noticing his gaze to the side, speaking more tersely now and making him look back at her in the process. The smile which had previously adorned her face had nearly melted away to leave only a scowl, which was brought on by what she was about to say next causing her to recall to mind the pain of it. "If you were in my position and your wife was taken from you never to return, for example, I'm sure you'd be ready to resort to the same thing I'm doing now. It's really not nice when the person you wanna be with and who you essentially realise is the other half of yourself is stolen from you, Mr. Fletcher."

"Here it comes, the life story monologue."

The wildfire already blazing through her eyes doubled in intensity at this. "You're going to listen to what I have to say whether you like it or not, because after two years I'm sick of sitting around and waiting for a change that'll never come unless I do something about it. Two years of having to lie in bed on some nights fooling myself that maybe if I wait long enough he'll just walk right in through the door and say that he's come back. There was a long while soon after that actual day itself where every so often I'd think to myself, 'Things can't be any worse than this'." Despite her grip on the handle of her phaser tightening in anger, she was already beginning to feel like she was healing. She'd told Scotty and Pavel about these deep emotions of hers on some occasions when they'd come to provide her with comfort during the moments of despair she'd had, but it felt even better to this time vocalise it with venom and to a man who, based on his comments, appeared to have disregarded her feelings so far. "There was also a longer while where most of the time the key for me getting over it even for just a couple of days was at the bottom of a vodka bottle. To put a long story short, one of the only things I could think about back then and still nowadays was what could've been, and after they took him away to stay frozen here until God knows when, there've been no other men who I liked. Basically, the whole thing meant in the end that apart from my job I've had no other ambitions, no future, and no life."

"I sympathise with everything you went through after he was sentenced, Miss Hamilton. But threatening me with that phaser isn't going to accomplish anything or make it any better."

"Wrong again, sir." Zinalya retorted. "You're going to tell me how to deactivate Khan's cryotube and wake him up."

"Or else what, you'll stun me?" He said. "I'm sure you and I both know that'll defeat the possibility of me being able to tell you anyway."

"Three wrongs now. If you refuse to tell me, then I can stun you and look for someone else here who'll tell me instead; if you won't talk, there's still dozens of others here who might. The only thing that will have changed is that the task of finding out will have just been made slightly more difficult." Another pause briefly hung in the air. "I've got no intentions of killing you or anyone else, admiral, but I'm done with living this life where I've stuck to the rules and the man I like is still kept dead to the world."

The pause made yet another comeback. "Fine." After several seconds of his eyes flicking between her phaser, Zinalya herself and the distance to the door, Fletcher grudgingly replied with this word. "There’s a passcode for activating the cryo’s defrosting process, you can put it in on my computer and do it remotely from here, but to actually wake him up after that and complete the whole revival you’ve gotta do it on the tube’s keypad." He briefly smirked to himself at the last half of this sentence - there had to be no way she’d manage to make it all the way to the Augment tubes before security stopped her.

"Care to tell me what the passcode is, sir...?"

"It’s six zero two, hyphen, seven delta tau." Said the older one of the pair. "Then the tube code for fully waking him up in person is one zero zero, omega eight omicron, in that order."

"If you’re lying to me..." Said Zinalya in a somewhat quiet and ominous tone to make her warning clear.

"I’m not lying to you, those’re the real codes, and the tubes are in Hangar 2. Now let’s see how long your memory can hold on to all that, commander."

One corner of her mouth curled upwards ever so slightly. "Thank you for sharing." She then, instantly after speaking, proceeded to pull the phaser’s trigger due to not really wanting to risk Fletcher running off and telling the facility’s security personnel about the plot she was now in the middle of carrying out. 

Zinalya got up out of the armchair following this and walked past the now unconscious admiral to the other side of his desk, where, still keeping her weapon at the ready in her right hand in case anyone else walked in, she used her other hand for turning on the computer and then searching through the list of the seventy-three cryotubes. They’d all been given identifying serial numbers by Starfleet shortly after Khan was put into stasis, and for some time this was, effectively, the only thing she had to remember him by. A number.

After a little bit of scrolling through the list, she eventually found the particular serial number she was looking for, which she selected and then typed in the keys she’d been told for the passcode: zero, two, hyphen, seven, delta and tau. She did all of this as quickly as she could, so as to make sure she was out of there as soon as possible in order to ensure that she didn’t get caught, but without rushing it to the point where it was sloppy.

"Iadras, it’s me." She flipped open her Starfleet communicator, which was currently tuned to one specific channel that wasn’t anything to do with the Enterprise, and spoke into it.

"Go ahead." Said the man on the other end of the line, a fully Trill starship captain named Iadras Mirehl who’d agreed to let her use his ship as the metaphorical getaway car and had helped her with some parts of the actual plan itself after having heard of her plight.

"I’m in. I’ve found the right stasis tube on admiral Fletcher’s computer and put in the passcode to defrost it." Zinalya informed him. "I’ve got to head on over and press the right buttons for waking him up in person; apparently they’re all in Hangar 2."

"I’ll get the engineers working on getting the transporter lock on the other seventy-two tubes." Acknowledged Iadras. "Remember, as soon as you put in the chip, you’ll have twelve minutes to revive Khan and for the both of you to get out of there so we can beam you up with those others."

"And then if everything goes as we hoped, we can run like hell away from Federation space." She smiled. "I’ll let you know when he’s up and awake, and until then we should probably maintain radio silence."

"Okay, Mirehl out."

She reached into the same pocket from which she’d drawn her phaser a couple of minutes ago, this time retrieving an electronic microchip which contained a virus programmed by Iadras’ chief engineer. 

The virus would disable Fletcher’s computer - the object she was going to plug it in to - and a large majority of the facility’s security systems, providing twelve minutes of time before the backup energy supply would kick in and get said security system running again, during which the surge of this backup energy coming to life after the twelve minutes would be remotely fed to the transporter systems of Iadras’ ship via the microchip, therefore allowing them to penetrate the walls of Hangar 2 and beam out Khan’s Augment crew along with Zin and this man of the moment himself. The hangars of Sierra-Lambda 3, thanks to this facility being one of the especially secretive ones, had walls around them which blocked out other transporter signals apart from ones originating from Starfleet Headquarters.

As she held the microchip up in her fingers to look at it for a moment before initiating the rest of the plan, the smile on Zinalya’s face didn’t dissipate.

[historical-waifus]

1, 9, 10 and 13

1 - Who is your favourite historical person?

Probably Captain Jack Churchill! I love the Special Operation Executive’s history, and its air of being the Allies’ professional lunatic squad, proving left, right and center that the Axis Powers could bleed. But Mad Jack, he takes the cake for being the craziest of the bunch. I need a movie about this guy, taking on Waffen SS units with nothing but a sword, a bow, a quiver of arrows, a set of bagpipes and a burning hatred of fascists.

9 - Favourite historical film?

Glory, BUT I do have a problem with how it ends. Not that the ending was inaccurate, not at all, but that story does have an inspiring end! They just stopped too early! 54th Infantry is wiped out trying to take Fort Wagner, that much is true. What they don’t show is the 56th Massachusetts marching on Atlanta with Sherman nearer the end of the war, a city many of them would have escaped from as slaves, but returned to as enlisted, federal soldiers. Doesn’t that sound a lot better?

10 - What pieces of art (i.e. paintings, sculpures, lithographies, etc.) related to history do you like the most?

I’m afraid I’m not that much of an art person, but the memorial to Bomber Command in London is a very touching sculpture. It’s awful that they only got their memorial very recently, considering the effect they had on the war effort.

13 - [share some random historical trivia!]

When the Soviet Union first unveiled its monstrous, super-heavy KV-1 tank in 1941, the Germans were so unnerved by it that they mounted espionage operations to find out where these beasts were being made so they could stop their production before their invasion of Russia could be reversed.

During the First Battle of Bull Run, the 1st Louisiana Special Battalion killed five of their own side. A friendly fire incident made the Tigers to turn on their heels and friendly fire right back, killing four men of a North Carolinian regiment. The fifth came when a Georgian officer challenged their mysterious Capt. Alexander White to a duel, as the Tigers had ignored orders to pursue personal glory. White shot him right between the eyes.

When Roman legions first entered Poland in the 1st century AD, the forests were so dense that legionaries didn’t see the sun for days at a time.

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10 Undeniable Reasons People Hate Plaistow Nh Town Report

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In homes that experienced a smoke detector existing, half of them experienced smoke detectors with missing, disconnected or lifeless batteries

You are able to sign-up your Puppy in man or woman within the Town Hall in the course of standard company hours. Find out more about what you should bring plus the Charge on our Pet License webpage »

Click the E-Reg button down below to ask for a car or boat registration on the net or to have an estimate on the price to sign-up a car or truck.

The town-Facts.com criminal offense rate weighs major crimes and violent crimes additional closely. It adjusts for the amount of readers and each day workers commuting into cities.

Every single resident of Canaan who's got a set and long lasting domicile within the town, that's a citizen of the United States, and that is 18 many years of age could sign up to vote inside the town.

ACTION ITEM REVIEW none OTHER Small business J. Ingerson congratulates the fire Department for your one hundred Year Anniversary. D. Poliquin notes which the Fore Department has had some major situations recently with several departments associated. Someone set on the market they had been amazed concerning how the departments all operate jointly. Congratulations to all associated with Those people functions and Thanks. J. Sherman really wants to make all conscious of The college District warrant articles or blog posts, Specially the one in which it will alter the Short article of Agreement changing the allocation of cost. The proposed adjust would change the expense of the two town s Together with the decreased assessed values to your 2 towns with the upper assessed values. He states his position around the subject is to go away the distribution of Price alone. D. Poliquin states if there is consensus on the Board J. Sherman may well speak for the Board at the Public Listening to for The varsity. SIGNATURE FOLDER D. Poliquin states the manifest is going all around. SELECTMENS REPORTS

assuming that our recyclables are specified as “Class A” recyclables.  The designation of our recyclables as “Course A” is predicated on the quantity of contamination (a lot less than 5%) in the hundreds from Bow.

A few intending to be married in New Hampshire may possibly file for the relationship license from any NH town/town clerk. Each the bride and groom will need to look ahead of the clerk to acquire the license. Proof of age is necessary--the bride and groom must be at least 18 years of age. Age waivers might be attained if necessary from Top-quality or Probate court - Get hold of clerk's office for more aspects.

These tax foreclosed homes are available for pennies around the greenback - about 75 percent off whole market price (and much more)! Enjoy the pride of homeownership for less than it costs to rent in advance of It truly is much too late.

But we're not pretty much offering wonderful promotions. We're about encouraging Many others during Plaistow and beyond. Every one of our merchants features a Group Donation Heart the place buyers like you can donate your items to help nonprofits with your Neighborhood. And donating signifies landfills drop as well as the earth wins! Just previous yr we repurposed more than 650 million lbs . of goods. Which is how we are one among the biggest textile recyclers on the earth!

These are typically the predominate kinds of housing inside the neighborhood. Percentages are depending on the quantity of housing units during the community of every housing style.

People today may perhaps register to vote on the Town Office on Main Avenue all through office hours. Applications might be manufactured at any time with the year (apart from 10 times before any election).

And, like I discussed, you need to take into consideration what your use is.  Most folks often set pricing based mostly on buildability.  If there's a 100ac whole lot, with only one buildable website, it's going to usually sell for identical or below a considerably-lesser whole lot with two or even more buildable web sites.

[20thcentutygeek]

5 Haunting Horror films based on true stories (aside from Amityville Horror).

When I started researching this I was expecting to find a glut of films that would fit this category in the 70s and 80s. There were a couple but they were a bit tenuous (The Exorcist). It seemed more like a nugget of a real-life event was taken and then turned into something completely different. I suppose this way no one extra had to be paid. This changes in the early 2000’s and from 2005 onwards we have had a continual stream of Horror Movies based on ‘real events’. This has culminated in the Conjuring films, based on the accounts of the Warrens.

Below is a list of 5 films that are based on alleged real paranormal events:

1.       An American Haunting (2005)

Events: in 1817 the Bell family started to suffer an alleged haunting by a ghostly witch. It started when the head of the family, John Bell, came across a strange animal in his corn field. Shocked by the animal’s appearance he opened fire, the animal vanished. That night for the first time, the family were bombarded by a beating sound on the side of their home. From that point on the haunting got worse.

The noises continued. Sometimes outside the house, other times in the same room as members of the Bell family. Many people as well as the family reporting the sounds as well as seeing and feeling things within the house over several years.

Whatever the entity was that was haunting the family it made its final attack in 1820, when it allegedly poisoned and killed John Bell. Laughing loudly as he took his final breathes. It is said that the ghost returned in 1828 for a short time but was not heard of again after that.

This is regarded as one of the earliest and most wide spread hauntings in American History.

Film: The film has got an interesting cast with Donald Sutherland and Sissy Spacek and several up and coming actors at the time. It has an interesting modern wrap around mechanism as access into the period setting. It also maintains the actual, relative down beat, ending of the legend but condenses the haunting period of years to what feels like months. While the film maintains the haunted happenings the scares and tension never really amount to much, it was only a 12 (PG-13).

It was an interesting exercise in period drama horror, however I think this would have been better if it had either been more stylised (ala Sleepy Hollow) or tried for some harder edged scares and content (ala Annabelle Creation).

2.       The exorcism of Emily Rose (2005)

Events: The film is based on the tragic events that lead to the death of German woman Anneliese Michel. She dies in 1976 suffering from malnourishment and dehydration after months of being subjected to exorcist practices.

After suffering a seizure at the age of 16 Anneliese began to suffer increasing periods of depression. These low points and neuroses began to become focused on religious artefacts. A huge concern for a girl that came from such a religiously devoted family. Soon both she and her family became convinced that she was possessed by something evil. After several attempts the family convinced two priests that she needed intervention.

This started the exorcisms that eventually led to her death. Following her death her parents and the two priests were prosecuted for murder. They were found guilty of negligent homicide. This also forced the Catholic church to distance itself from the case and change its stance to state that she had been mentally ill and not in fact possessed by an evil force.

Film: They take a leap with this film as the story is told in retrospect, dealing with the court case that follows the death of Emily Rose. This is not a film about whether they can save the possessed girl, we know the answer is no. The film spends more time dealing with the question of whether she was possessed at all. It’s an interesting conceit and that isn’t fully explored. If they had had the confidence in the audience, it would have been a better film. However, they never want to completely condemn the priest.

In a better film, he would have been played as a more unreliable narrator. There would have been more uncertainty about whether she was possessed or if the priest hadn’t been obsessed due to his religious zeal.

That said, the film is good fun and the core cast are mostly good. This is a solid possession horror film with an interesting concept. The frustration is that this had the potential to be something more and elevate the genre and story into a classic.

3.       The Haunting in Connecticut (2009)

Events: of all the ‘True Events’ on this list, this is the one that has the most holes. This is the first but not the last appearance of the Warrens on this list and their paws are all over this.  The haunting was alleged to have focused around the House and son of the Snedecker family, who was suffering from a form of Cancer. Minor events were reported but nothing of great note. That is when the Warrens got involved and the story became ‘clearer’.

The entity harassing the family was supposed to have been linked to the previous use of the house as a mortuary. It was stated that there were several employees of the mortuary that practiced necromancy and necrophilia. It was the spirits of these people that were returning at the heart of the events.

This did lead to several grander events. This included the son attacking his cousin and being held in a mental health ward for a period. However, following Ed Warren’s death in … several people linked with the investigation and the documenting of the events admitted that Ed told them to embellish what they knew in any way they could think of to make it scary.

The House is still occupied and the current occupants have frequently stated that they have never experienced any paranormal activity.

Film: The movie has a couple of well-placed scares and some moments of tension, however the overall film is very pedestrian. The facts from the true events are close enough regarding the house and its history. However, elements of the family are changed for safety. The focus on the main son having cancer is reduced.

There is little to say about this film really. It’s competently made, the acting is sufficient and its creepy at times but it just feels very run of the mill and safe for this genre. It’s a shame really because again, like the Exorcism of Emily Rose, this has the potential to add an element of ambiguity and tension with a just a few changes. Could the son’s illness have been at the root of the events? Could it be suggested in the film that this was a hoax to raise money to cover medical costs.

It’s worth checking out if you are a fan of the genre but there are better films on this list.

4.       The Conjuring (2013)

Events: Ah the Warrens. The couple that have now become synonymous with modern haunted house movies, thanks mostly to this film. As is usually the case, the story the Warren’s tell is very different from the truth the family have sated. The Perron family lived in the house at the heart of the story of a decade and the hauntings were spread over this while period.

The haunting was centred around the spirit of an alleged witch called Bathsheba Sherman who died in 1885. There is little evidence that she was in fact a witch, however it was alleged that she killed several infants as sacrifices to the devil. The haunting took on several aspects for the different inhabitants. Some saw apparitions, others were physically attacked but all the heard the noises and voices.

The haunting was never fully resolved. The case may have been closed by the Warren’s however after the Perron’s sold the house in 1980 there were further reports of ghostly activity. This is an event that I think deserves a more attention and possibly a closer adaptation of the story.

Film: Forgetting the alterations of the history this was a return to form for haunted house films. I really enjoyed the tone and feel of the film. It’s has an excellent sense of creepiness and uneasiness running through it. There are some incredibly well placed and paced scares that are incredibly effective.

The strength of the film is in the first two thirds. The build-up of the family dynamic and the relationship that grows with the Warrens. This investment in characters underlines the tension and scares. However, this is partially undone by a clichéd and overly dramatic finale. This will most likely be regarded as a milestone in horror history however it just falls shy of becoming a horror classic. I won’t even go into the dreadful sequel and Annabelle spin-offs. This Franchise has such potential but is being squandered on cheap jump scares and poorly written and preposterous characters.

5.       Deliver us form Evil (2014)

Events: The book ‘Deliver us from evil’ written by Lisa Collier Cool, chronicles the supernatural cases of former New York Police officer Ralph Sarchie. It is set up to be like the real life X-files. It covers a number of cases of possession and ghostly attacks that are alleged to be related to crimes that were left unsolved. Of course, they have been solved by Sarchie but the truth would not be accepted by the public.

Sarchie has appeared on several podcasts, radio and TV shows to promote the book and Film, telling his tales of the supernatural that lives in the Bronx. Demon neighbours, ghostly vengeful brides and the exorcisms that were carried out to save the people involved. Its sounds like he was a busy guy, maybe the Bronx is over a hell mouth and they would have been better off with Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Film: Eric Bana is a New York cop that starts to uncover a conspiracy of soldiers possessed by demons from the middle east. The plot is a little daft and the direction is not subtle in anyway however this odd combination of horror and cop drama is fun if not scary. Bana is committed to the role and is sufficiently brooding and earnest about it all. It does all fall a part in the finale, as they usually do. If these events are alleged to have happened I am sure that someone in the media would have noticed.

A fun film for Halloween or with a few beers but not a solid recommend.

[deadboxprime]

Lee’s Choice

I heard recently that the judge in the case of Charlottesville’s Robert E. Lee statue has stated that it will take months for a decision, as he sees merit on both sides. Lee himself was once asked to lead the Union army against the Confederacy.

Can you imagine how difficult this must have been? Could you lead an army against your home and the people who raised you? Think about your community. What would it be like to give the order to destroy it? Lee said that he couldn’t do it. While I do not believe in the cause of the side he fought for (and I’m not sure he himself did), I can have empathy for him and the terrible decision he was forced to make.

The statue debate has raged for some time now. During it, I did some research about war atrocities. What I learned made me sick.

Soldiers on both sides raped women indiscriminately, black or white. Apparently, the principles behind the great race war didn’t apply to women. You could hold a gun to her head and if she gave in, that was considered consent. These crimes were almost never prosecuted.

In 1864, Union general Philip Sheridan lead an army down the Shenandoah Valley. The Union army forced people from their homes, including women and children. The soldiers then burned the homes, the barns, the crops. Over 400 square miles were burned. Sheridan’s own men wrote their families describing the shamefulness of turning women and children out into the elements at the start of winter. There’s no way to know how many civilians died. No records were kept.

Sheridan was sent west after the war to deal with problems there. He is quoted as having said, “The only good Indian is a dead Indian.”

The fire in the city of Atlanta was set off, unintentionally, by Confederate general John Bell Hood. After the city had burned, Union general William Tecumseh Sherman ordered his men to shell the city of Atlanta, killing civilians. When he encountered slaves on his march to Savannah, he offered them the opportunity to join the Union army as unarmed porters. If they refused, he had them shot.

It gets worse. Not only did these men commit what would be considered war crimes today, they did so with the full knowledge, support and encouragement of their commanding officer: general and future president Ulysses S Grant.

Even worse was what was done to allow this. At the start of the war, the US military operated under the 1807 Articles of War. These were fairly restrictive where acts against civilians are concerned. In 1863, president Abraham Lincoln signed general order number 100. This replaced the Articles of War and allowed the targeting of civilians, "when done as a military necessity." What a loophole.

Sheridan, Sherman, Grant, Lincoln were all involved in the targeting of civilians during the civil war. Do these sound like the acts of men who care so much about the slavery of African Americans? Slavery was abhorrent…and yet how do we reconcile what was done to end it with the profession that we are possessed of a higher morality that will not tolerate slavery? Our disdain for the repugnant has caused us to commit the repugnant.

We see slavery as a horrible way to treat someone, and certainly not “Christian.” When we think of forms of government we use terms like “republic,” “democracy,” “monarchy,” and “aristocracy.” When we talk of economic systems we refer to “capitalism,” “consumerism,” “mercantilism, “socialism,” and “communism.” These men did not. They weren’t fighting against the humanitarian crime of slavery against a person. Some of them didn’t even believe that African-Americans were equal. They saw slavery as a form of government and an economic model that had to be beaten and destroyed, and didn’t give a damn about anything else – least of all people.

People screamed bloody murder over the Patriot Act and the “enhanced” interrogation techniques it justified and made legal. Yet, the government was only doing what it has always done: win, at any cost. Target your own people, abandon all that you hold sacred, preserve the Union. "Bring order to the galaxy." I will not defend the cause of the Confederacy, but I cannot forgive the actions of the Union!

By all accounts, Lee was an honorable man, perhaps more so than any of his contemporaries. Nonetheless, Lee’s statue in Charlottesville will eventually come down, while the statues of the murderous Sheridan and Sherman will continue to stand in Washington, D.C.

I have lost faith and confidence in my country. Everything we’ve been told has been a lie to preserve the nation, and the result is a nation that lacks the integrity and legitimacy needed to be worth preserving. What do I do now? Do I turn from my native land and abandon everything that I called home? If so where can I go, now that the shining city upon a hill has proven to be nothing more than marketing, propaganda and lies? As I consider whether to stay in the US that is a nation of lies and betrayal or to leave to go a foreign land that cannot help but disappoint, I can only conclude that Lee’s choice was a bitter one.

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