#it’s like there’s the thing about ‘if I knew a fascist was a great poet I’d kill him anyways’

[onsomekindofstartrek]

Absolutely. One of my favorite examples is Citizen Kane. It’s a breathtakingly beautiful movie about how a traumatized child becomes an authoritarian billionaire media mogul with apparently no soul. It was written, performed and directed by an anti-fascist who was a leader in the racial integration of the theater. It’s a movie that was timely in 1949 and remains relevant to this day, possibly more than ever.

And yet it’s also a product of 1949. Despite Welles’ track record on race, it barely has a black character. Its sexual politics are not blatantly offensive, but its female characters still exist to be props in Kane’s story. There’s a lesbian-coded librarian who’s very shrewish and cold to the reporter for no reason, and that’s probably not a coincidence. Its sole Jewish character is not the most negative stereotype ever, but there are definitely some very dated ideas about Jewish men still clinging to his character.

And we have to say, hey, this is a piece of art, it’s a window on a time that’s worth understanding, and it’s part of a conversation worth having about power, money and fame. What does it say that in some ways Welles failed to live up to his progressive ideals at time? What does that say about him and what does that say about society in 1949? And how does that inform and/or conflict with the themes of the film?

People with limited understanding of media can’t engage with a piece of art without either wholeheartedly endorsing its creator or wholeheartedly condemning them. And it’s like, both of those responses have their time and place, but much more commonly… artists are human and art is our window to understand them, perhaps their failings, the reasons for those failings, and what good they did or failed to do in light of those failings.

You gotta read and watch some old books and films that aren’t 100% modern politically correct. I’m not saying you should agree with everything in them but you need to learn where genres came from to understand what those genres are doing today and where media deconstructing old tropes is coming from.

Also, more often than you might think, they’re not actually promoting bigotry so much as “didn’t consider all the implications of something” or just used words that were polite then but considered offensive now.

Kill the censor in your head.

[cassandraclare]

Not too spoilery, but very long!

fieidofpoppies said: I was hoping to get some clarification about the LGBT situation in TLH’s background. 

What exactly is the Clave's position on homosexuality? Alec struggles with people's opinion in 2008, so I guess in 1900ish things are definitely not rosey, but to what extent? We know that being gay is considered a crime in mundane London at the time and I'm guessing that is not the case for the Shadowhunter world, so how seriously is it a problem? What does it/ would it mean for our characters to be out?

Okay, so I’ve gotten a few of this question, leading me to believe it is A Conversation that needs some addressing. It’s a complicated issue so I’m going to try to break it down in parts.

There is no “The Clave’s position on homosexuality” that is unchanging: it has changed, advanced and regressed through history just like you, know, regular human history. :) If you’re asking about the Clave’s position on LGBT Shadowhunters in 1903, we will get to that.

Just because Alec is struggling in 2007 doesn’t mean things were worse for Anna in 1903. The idea that culture moves inevitably forward towards tolerance and progressivism is an oversimplification. We see it assumed all around, so it’s easy to believe it, but actually it’s more of a two steps forward, one step back scenario. There are always periods of cultural progress, marked by periods of cultural regress. If someone had told me when I was a teenager that a woman’s right to choose would be more trammeled and in danger in 2020 America then in 1989 I wouldn’t have believed it; it is, however, the truth. We are in a more regressive period culturally now than we were ten years ago; LGBT rights are more under threat. This isn’t the first time in history this has happened and it won’t be the last: “During the golden years of the Weimar Republic [Germany's government from 1919 to 1933] Berlin was considered an LGBT+ haven, where gays and lesbians achieved an almost dizzying degree of visibility in popular culture” — but by 1934 LGBT+ Germans were being persecuted and eventually would be sent to death camps with Jews, communists, and other “undesirables.”

Alec is living in a time in which a regressive, conservative group that his own parents belonged to nearly toppled the more progressive aspects of the Clave. He already comes from a family in exile, during a time in which progressive and regressive aspects of the Clave are battling each other and the situation with Downworlders is explosive. Four years after Alec comes out, the fascist Cohort rises to power and splits the Clave in half. Nothing like that is happening in 1903: there is a progressive Consul in power, demon attacks are low, there is generally peace with Downworld.

It is reasonable that Alec would have concerns about how the Clave at large might treat him, and also have concerns about family and friends, given his parents’ past. And while Anna and Matthew etc. might have similar concerns about coming out to the whole Clave, which they haven’t, they are not concerned about their particular group of friends, and have mixed concerns about family. (Also, we have plenty of characters who have been just as worried about coming out as Alec was: Charles, Alastair, Ariadne. We don’t yet know Thomas’ attitude. Everyone who doesn’t consider themselves a “Bohemian” isn’t taking this very lightly, and even Matthew isn’t “out” to anyone except his friends. It’s not like the Wentworths know he’s bisexual.)

None of this is to say it was “easy” to be LGBT+ during the early 1900’s. It isn’t easy now. It’s to say that “Well, it sucked across the board then and now it’s great across the board!” isn’t true, and ignores the significance of context in the lives of characters — and people. There’s a great moment in the movie Colette (set in the 1890′s and early 1900′s) that focuses on Mathilde de Morny, Colette’s lover. Mathilde was assigned female at birth (academic scholars are widely divided on whether Mathile was transgender so I’m going to be gender-neutral here.) Mathilde dresses in men’s clothes, and openly romances women, but in this particular moment, Mathilde speaks about the fact that if Mathilde were not rich and titled, it might be a problem. But given Mathilde’s social status and power, and the Bohemian set of people Mathilde spends time with, it’s not. Colette herself also dresses in men’s clothes and is open about her same-sex romances, even kissing Mathilde onstage at the Moulin Rouge.

(Colette and Mathilde, 1907.)

The artist Romaine Brooks wore men’s clothes, even painting herself in them: according to the Smithsonian “By 1905, she had made a name for herself in Paris as a painter of women, some of whom were her lovers. Her most visible and lasting relationship was with the American poet Natalie Barney, who also lived in Paris.” (There’s a reason the characters are often talking about Paris or visiting Paris: being LGBT+  wasn’t illegal in France, and Paris was a gay and lesbian mecca, complete with LGBT+ cafes, high society, celebrities, and so on.)

People like Anna existed in the mundane world in 1903. It’s important to realize; this isn’t something I wrote because I’d have liked it to be true and historically accurate, it is true and historically accurate. It’s also true that even though male homosexuality was illegal in England in 1903, there were plenty of gay men who were out to their friends and community. Lytton Strachey (part of the Bloomsbury Group which included Virginia Woolf) “spoke openly about his homosexuality with his Bloomsbury friends, and had relationships with a variety of men.”  Which isn’t to say he spoke openly about it to everyone —  just that there have always been spaces within “mainstream” society where it was safe to be queer: Anna and Matthew, by going to the Hell Ruelle, by standing somewhat apart from their contemporaries save those they already trust, are inhabiting those spaces.

Now, if the question becomes: what happens if everyone in the Clave finds out the sexualities of the LGB+ characters in TLH? Well, first, they won’t be arrested; it’s not illegal. But that hardly covers the whole issue. We look at what happened to Oscar Wilde and think, horrors, as well we should — had he not sued the Marquess of Queensberry, though, he probably would have lived out his life with society turning a blind eye to his affairs with men. What happened to him is fucking terrible. Yet even today, there are celebrities who remain in the closet — though their queerness may well be an open secret to their friends, family and colleagues — not because they’re worried about being arrested, but because of the fear of what the damage to their career might be were it publicly known. And how is that so different from the situation Charles finds himself in? He’s pretty clear that if people knew he were gay, he couldn’t be Consul. He wouldn’t get the votes. In the same way, it’s likely that the other LGB+ characters would face societal disapproval and issues with their families. That’s not really about the “Clave’s official position” though, any more than a politician today not wanting to come out is worried about being arrested rather than losing their career. The official position is important, but it’s not the only indicator or generator of societal, systemic bigotry.  (” It turns out that one of the worst times to be a homosexual - that is, in terms of being at risk from the law - was in the run-up to and aftermath of the liberalisation of the 1960s [when homosexuality was decriminalized].” )

So if you made it this far: what I’m basically saying is three things: one, that any comparison to Alec has to take into account Alec’s specific family situation, the Uprising, and who the Clave and Inquisitor are in 2007. And that I can’t say what it means for the characters of TLH to be out because it’s going to mean different things, and have different repercussions, for all of them. I can say “They won’t be in trouble with the Law”, which is true, but in terms of their family situations, their personal goals and dreams, and where they are socially, it would be different for each one of them. 

And third, that we can’t assume that progress is one inevitable forward march. That things will always be more tolerant, less oppressive, in “the future” simply because it’s the future.  While we can believe that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice” it’s important to remember that rights can be abridged, freedoms taken away, times of tolerance and harmony can end, bigotry and nationalism can rise. To assume progress is inevitable is, I worry, to forget to fight for it. And we can never forget to fight.

[Recommended reading: Strangers: Homosexual Love in the Nineteenth Century, by Graham Robb.]

[kcrabb88]

I Knew Prufrock Before He was Famous: Frank Turner Songs for Les Amis

We planned a revolution from a cheap Southampton bistro

Enjolras-Brave Face :  Now if we have to do this, let's do it smiling/And I don't let it show that my hands are shaking/We're gonna die like kings and queens Though we live like beggars/So put on your brave face, I need your brave face Honey and let's go down together

Combeferre- Journey of the Magi :  Paupers and kings, princes and thieves/ Singers of songs, righters of wrongs, be what you believe

Courfeyrac- Demons :  At this truth we have arrived/God damn, it's great to be alive/ If life gives you demons, make demands/Take them to the mountain tops, show them the valley, then take a chance

Feuilly-Be More Kind :   They've started raising walls around the world now Like hackles raised upon a cornered cat/On the borders, in our heads/Between things that can and can't be said/We've stopped talking to each other/And there's something wrong with that Bahorel-1933 :  Be suspicious of simple answers/That shit's for fascists & Photosynthesis :  And I won't sit down/And I won't shut up/And most of all I will not grow up

Jean Prouvaire-Poetry of the Deed :  Me and all my friends are poets of the deed/We're exactly what this country needs & I Still Believe :  And I still believe in the need/For guitars and drums and desperate poetry

Bossuet-We Shall Not Overcome : Be a fan of every band that made you want to move your feet/ Fall in love with every person who ever made your heart want to skip a beat

Joly-The Next Storm :  I don't want spend the whole of my life inside/I wanna step out, and face the sunshine

Grantaire-I Knew Prufrock Before He Was Famous :  And I know I'm not the one who is habitually optimistic/ But I'm the one who's got the microphone here so just/ remember this:Life is about love, last minutes and lost evenings & Love, Ire, & Song :  Cos if it's still going to hurt in the morning/And a better plan's set to get forming/Then where's the harm spending an evening/In manning the old barricades,

[dillydedalus]

january reading

why was this january at least 3 months long

unequal affections, lara s. ormiston (audio) this is jane austen fanfiction about an alternate version of the story where lizzy does accept darcy’s first proposal - their ensuing engagement, which (because lizzy doesn’t go off about how she feels about darc in this one) is full of unspoken conflicts and tensions & hella awks. the initial premise needed some suspension of disbelief but once i got over that i found it super enjoyable, pretty believable in terms of character interactions and interiority (darcy is a dick), funny & sweet. i don’t think i will necessarily start getting into JAFF now (tho goodreads rly thinks i should), but this was just. nice. wholesome. also now i want to reread p&p..... 3/5

lincoln in the bardo, george saunders (uni) ya know what i really liked this. this is about abraham lincoln mourning his young son willie during the civil war, not exactly a topic i’m particularly (at all) interested in, but the execution is so cool - it’s told partly thru fragments from historical records, books, letters (both real and imagined) and partly thru the voices of the many ghosts stuck in a kind of limbo in the graveyard, who are trying to get willie to move on, while they themselves desperately try to stay in limbo, bitter about what went wrong in their lives and in denial about their state. & it’s done really well, the polyphony and contradiction of the historical record (one chapter has a bunch of quotes about how ugly lincoln was & then the last is like ‘idk i thought he was kinda handsome’), and the ghosts are so sad & bitter & desperate & hopeful. 4/5

the steppe & other stories, anton chekhov (tr. from russian) bunch of short stories from 1880-1890s russia. to be honest, i found most of them pretty boring, although ‘the duel’ is pretty good, an interesting look at how sticking too closely to your worldview/ideology/morality will probably either make you a useless disaster person or a eugenicist douchebag. some of the other stories were okay as well, but overall: 2/5, i’mma stick with his plays

perfectly preventable deaths, deirdre sullivan  teenage ocd witch book! this is a pretty good YA witchy horror book about twins who move into their new stepdad’s castle (yeah he has a castle) in a weird irish village where girls have been going missing for decades. creepy magical-ish things start happening (of course) & our narrator isn’t sure whether her sister’s new age-inappropriate boyfriend is just creepy, or creepy. i love the concept of ocd witchery & the atmosphere is really good as well, but the pacing is off, with slow build-up & a climax that happens way too quickly. also like can someone please say the word ocd it’s not gonna kill ya. 3/5

the priory of the orange tree, samantha shannon gonna be controversial here & say... yeah this should have been a duology. give the world some room to breathe, give the characters some room to breathe (give me another book w/ a cover this spectacular). anyway, this is a bigass book about eastern vs western dragon lore, a holy queendom (go sabran of inys!!), dragonriders, lesbian sword mages, how religion & historiography marginalises women, and magical trees. & like, okay, i wrote a lil thing right after finishing it about how i had some quibbles with it but enjoyed it overall but you know what? the more i think about it/let it sit the more complaints i have and the more annoyed/disappointed i get. 1) i liked all the characters fine, but none of them feel like they have any depth - i feel like i could sum all of the main characters up in like 3-4 words, and while i was rooting for ead/sabran, even this, the most central relationship of the book felt... surface-level. like, there were some big emotional moments but generally all i felt was like ‘good for her’ or ‘that sucks i guess’, 2) this world & its mythology is very much inspired by eastern vs western dragonlore so i understand the need to ground the fantasy world with real-world parallels but the extent to which some of the countries are literally just fantasy versions of real countries was... frustrating? irritating?? this is especially grating as, while inys is very clearly fantasy!britain, there is a lot of cool world-building (religion, aristocracy, history/myth) to make it more than that, while fantasy!japan and fantasy!china are literally just ... ‘what if japan but with dragons’. i did like fantasy!netherlands because at least you don’t see that a lot. 3) so much of the plot is just people travelling to different locations to get and transport different items but most of the travelling is cut short by some magical animal/being turning up and just transporting them in a cutscene.. 4) considering that this is all about dragonlore the dragons sure aren’t as important in the end as the three macguffins of power. 5) i loved so much about kalyba but not where it led, that said i want a kalyba-hawthorn-nurtha backstory.   okay that’s it for now but like. idk. this had a lot of potential but the execution was just severely flawed. 2/5 

trust exercise, susan choi this was super hyped, especially for a game-changing twist of some kind, but has a rather low rating on goodreads (3.18!) so y’all know i was intrigued. i’m not going to give away the twist because it is genuinely really cool if not really all that original, but this is a really clever & cool book about theatre kids, teenage dramatics, constructing your own narrative and what that excludes, elides, changes, and most of all consent & abuse (some very triggering depictions of sex/sexual abuse here). i really liked this, and am considering buying a copy so i can reread it. 4/5

soldiers of salamis, javier cercas (tr. from spanish by anne mclean) very meta novel about a writer called javier cercas writing a book (tentatively called soldiers of salamis) about a (real) falangist poet who escaped a mass execution & survived in the forest for a while with a group of republican deserters. ‘cercas’ researches, speculates, despairs, talks to roberto bolano (who compliments his previous books lol), and finally tracks down the man who he believes/imagines/hopes to be the soldier who let said fascist poet go, leading him to consider who really should be remembered & written about. made me think about that one poem about reading ezra pount that ends w/ a veteran saying ‘if i knew a fascist was a great poet, i’d shoot him anyway.’ interesting book altho i far prefer his book anatomy of a moment, one of the weirdest & most fascinating nonfic books i’ve read. 3/5

the stopping places, damian le bas (audio) damian le bas comes from a settled british romani family and, feeling somewhat unsure about his place in & connection to the community, he decided to go on a roadtrip through britain (+france) in a van to seek out the atchin tans or stopping places, starting with the ones his great-grandmother remembers from her childhood before the family became settled. he combines the travelogue with insights into romani culture(s) (mainly british) and history, as well as his own family history. it’s really interesting & engaging (the history&culture more so than the travelogue) and le bas narrates the audiobook himself & sounds like a cool dude. 3.5/5

confessions of a bookseller, shaun bythell  bythell records a year of working as a second-hand bookseller, with an entry for every day. he talks about the impact of amazon, rude & weird customers (but also nice customers), his weird staff, and some of the books he’s reading. the look into bookselling in the age of amazon is pretty interesting but much of this is banal & repetitive, & if it wasn’t the perfect thing to read in little bits while at work i probably would have dnf’d it. 2/5

giacomo joyce, james..... joyce  super short story by my man jamesy joyce that never made it out of manuscript (literal). not much to say about this - it’s interesting to see jj play around with themes while still working on portrait & thinking bout ulysses & the prose is nice, but the whole english tutor feels attracted to his student is a bit... eh. 3/5

[davidpwilson2564]

Bloglet

Saturday, September 3, 2022

Nice weather.  

Practice.  

Note: Said to be a Russian joke (thanks, Armand).  A little girl shows great promise with her piano playing.  She plays Bach, the next year she plays Liszt.  Then she plays Debussy.  She then takes up Schoenberg.  Her father says, “I can’t believe it.  Your piano playing gets worse every year.”  

Despite Aaron Judge’s hitting streak (fifty two homers as of last night) the Yankees keep losing.  Their fifteen game lead in the Division has shrunk to four.  

HERE

Note: The week of operas on the big screen is drawing to a close (tonight, more Massenet coming through my window).  I will miss it. 

Note: After a very long time of being too distracted to read I actually got through A Robert Lowell memoir.  In it is a brief but telling description of life in the nuthouse.  (They even had him attend an arts and crafts class.)  I guess I wanted to know more about the man who knew all of those other poets and was married to two such accomplished women (Jean Stafford and Elizabeth Hardwick.)  

Sunday, September 4, 2022

Very nice weather.  

Jean and the girls are upstate.  Labor Day weekend.  (Labor Day already!?) They want to do more country time before the camp (”Yogi”) closes for the off-season.  Funny...Kenichi sent me a photo of the girls taken on their first day of school.  Both were in “stressed” jeans (is that what they are called?).  Holes and all.  I think back in Oak Ridge, had we worn this sort thing, we’d have been sent home.  Years after I left my mother sent me a clipping that showed some Oak Ridge High scholastic award winners (Honor Society? Of which my brother was a member.).  Hippiedom had already closed in.  All that hair and loose clothing.  They looked like a bunch of fugitives.  

HERE

Note: DJT made particularly fiery speech to his MAGA crowd in Pennsylvania (following Biden’s speech a few days ago in which Joe referred to the MAGA people as semi-fascists).  Trump, of course, making a big thing about the “vicious monsters” who broke into his house, complaining that no part of the house was off-limits.  Calls Biden an “enemy of the state.”  His crowd loved it.  “They {the Mar-a-Lago raiders] looked in the First Lady’s closet (funny) and in the room of my sixteen year old son.” (We don’t hear much about the son [and heir] lately. Note that we never see a photo of the two of them

HERE

 together.  I don’t think “The First Lady” would allow it.  (The emperor has no clothes.)

The week of movies on the big screen draws to a close.  Tonight it is “Turandot” (or Puccini’s Unfinished).  I sit for a while in Dante Park but have to pee.  It would be bad form to go in the bushes.  I’m only two minutes from home.  (So I miss my favorite moment,  the conclusion [”Non piangere, Liu”] of Act One.)

to be continued

[jasonfry]

Author’s Notes: The Secret Academy, Pt. 2

WARNING: These notes will completely spoil Servants of the Empire: The Secret Academy. Haven’t read it? Stop and go here.

(Go here for notes for Edge of the Galaxy, here for Rebel in the Ranks and here for Imperial Justice. And here’s Pt. 1 of The Secret Academy. )

All right! It’s our last go-round for Servants of the Empire author’s notes. Thanks to everybody who’s followed along this far – I’ve had a blast writing these notes and hope they’ve been useful, whether you’re a budding author or an interested reader.

Part 2: Merei

At the end of Imperial Justice, Merei Spanjaf escaped her service to the crime boss Yahenna Laxo and her mother Jessa’s investigation of her intrusion into the Imperial data network. Yet Merei then immediately used her forged credentials to resume her snooping, discovering that Zare Leonis was sent to Arkanis at the Inquisitor’s orders.

I did that in Imperial Justice so the reader would go into The Secret Academy worrying about Zare and suspecting that Merei wouldn’t be able to leave well enough alone – in Godfather-style, she thinks she’s out but they pull her back in.

What pulls her back in is her determination to save Holshef, an elderly poet endangered by Laxo’s demise. She’s worried about Holshef himself, but also frustrated by her inability to help Zare and guilt-ridden about Laxo’s death. Holshef becomes her way of turning that frustration and guilt into something positive.

Originally Holshef’s rescue had more moving parts: Merei enlisted his daughter to help and played a game of cat and mouse with the bounty hunter trying to apprehend him. But I realized I didn’t have room to weave another strand into the plot. In fact, I was worried I didn’t have enough room to do everything necessary to wrap up book and series properly. So Holshef’s daughter got pared down to a quick reference and the bounty hunter was reduced to a briefly glimpsed antagonist. 

I had to economize elsewhere too, sometimes to a fault – I agree with reviewers who found the last two sections of The Secret Academy a little rushed. This book taught me that while wrapping up a series is easier than constructing a middle chapter, the little grace notes needed for a satisfying ending require more words than you think. Live and learn. 

One dynamic I liked in Merei’s story was how Jessa turns cool and resourceful once Merei reveals the truth about the Empire. Rather than waste time mourning misplaced loyalties, Jessa swings into action and becomes an effective partner for her daughter. Which makes sense -- apple and tree and all that. But I wish I’d seen the dramatic possibilities earlier and played up the conflict between Jessa and Merei in Rebel in the Ranks and Imperial Justice. That would have made the payoff from Jessa’s turn more satisfying. 

An unexpected complication was how to get Holshef, the Spanjafs and the Leonises from Lothal to Garel. My original idea was that Merei would call in a favor from the Spectres via Old Jho, with Ezra insisting that his compatriots pay their debt to Zare by joining the raid on Arkanis. But at that point in the Rebels timeline the Spectres were laying low and avoiding Lothal. I could use them for the raid, but not the rescue.

Plan B was using Lando Calrissian, but I hated the idea – Lando had played no role in the series and I felt a cameo would distract readers and slam the story to a halt. At that point I needed readers to be biting their nails, not going, “Hey neat it’s Lando!”

Plan C was using Old Jho himself, and I disliked that idea too. But I warmed to it out of necessity since there was no Plan D. At least I liked the character – his trolling the Imperials in “Idiot’s Array” was pretty funny – and I’d already decided to pair him with Holshef as another elegiac voice for Lothal. Expanding Jho’s role from go-between to rescuer wasn’t ideal, but it wasn’t the end of the world, either. So I added some light comedy about whether or not his ship would fly, dropped a few The Force Awakens Easter eggs and moved on. 

Some notes on Part 2:

“Wox ho uffdon comda,” mutters a speeder truck after Merei cuts it off in traffic. That’s Bocce, derived from the Galactic Phrase Book and Travel Guide. An approximate translation would be “You go shut down now.”

Merei and Holshef talk about jogan blossoms, with the old poet musing that scent can unlock memory. This is, of course, exactly how Zare will cut through Beck’s brainwashing around 60 pages later. I’d woven the theme of scent and memory through all four books, but needed to double down on it now that I was so close to the story’s climax.

The events of Chapter 14 tie in with the Rebels episode “Call to Action.” I liked that Tarkin’s toppling the tower creates problems for the Empire that insurgents can exploit – I thought that was a realistic consequence, and one it would be natural for Jessa and Gandr to comment on.

Operation Guiding Light, the directive that Holshef ran afoul of, is another fascist strategy designed to mesh with Imperial Justice. Its directive that nostalgia should be suppressed as “a product of dissatisfaction and anger” is an homage to a line I love in Don DeLillo’s White Noise.

On a less highbrow note, Old Jho’s sorrowful note that the forests of his youth have been “turned into mines and machines” is right out of Lord of the Rings. Which makes sense, as Ithorians are basically the Legends version of Ents.

Merei’s long speech to her parents recounting everything she’s done behind their backs was meant as a bit of domestic comedy, with Jessa and Gandr staring at their daughter in disbelief as this treasonous chronicle rolls on and on. There’s a similar scene with Tycho and his family in Jupiter Pirates: The Rise of Earth, which was written at much the same time. In both books, a few readers missed the joke and complained about getting a big chunk of exposition about things they already knew. Oh well.

Something went awry with the bit about the locator in Chapter 17, or else I’ve forgotten what I was trying to do. Jessa tells Merei to leave it with Gandr, but then tells Gandr she’ll send him their location. Huh?

Some readers have asked what happened to Jix. Beats me – I assume he went to prison. An experiment I tried in Servants of the Empire was letting things be a bit messy. Merei forgets to tell Zare about Project Unity, we don’t find out what happened to Oleg or Jix, and Chiron makes a promise to Penn that he winds up unable to keep. I think a certain amount of messiness is realistic – certainly more so than having every single plot thread tied off neatly by the end of a series.

Merei stunning Leo – and Tepha’s reaction to it -- was a scene I had in mind from the very beginning of the series. It’s Merei’s Indy in the Casbah moment. Auntie Nags was supposed to then lecture Merei that it’s bad manners for guests to shoot people, but I unthinkingly used that joke in The Weapon of a Jedi and so had to drop it here. I wish I’d done the reverse – C-3PO has plenty of good lines already. 

Part 3: The Tower

This section brings everything together and so moves quickly, reuniting Zare and Merei and then Zare and Dhara, sacrificing Beck, then getting everybody off Arkanis for a pair of emotional reunions.

I worked hard on Zare’s speech, reading it out loud to myself until I thought it was right. I like it both as an emotional recitation of the journey he’s been on and a call to arms -- an indictment of the Empire that could only be made by someone who’d once believed in it.

Three books’ worth of work on scent and memory pays off with Beck’s turn, but I also brought grav-ball back as a reference point. I overdid the grav-ball references -- Zare and Beck talking about a center-striker sneak would have been enough -- but think it works. That last image of Beck’s hand with the jogan blossom clutched in it is a little cheesy, but I figured I’d earned it.

Another scene I polished obsessively was Zare’s long-awaited reunion with Dhara. I mulled including brief interludes in the series from Dhara’s point of view, but decided it was more dramatic to reveal nothing about her fate until we see her here. As for why Dhara was kidnapped, there are clues in what she tells Zare in her cell and aboard the Ghost. That’s all I’ll say for now.

Chiron’s death was another part of the endgame that I had in mind from the very beginning, complete with Dhara’s burning eyes and Zare swearing Merei to secrecy about her Force tantrum. I liked that there’s no real villain in Chiron’s demise – he follows his misguided sense of duty to the very end, Dhara acts out of self-preservation, and you can’t really blame either of them. A nice bit of tragedy, if I do say so myself. The logistics were a pain, though – I had to isolate Zare, Merei and Dhara, figure out how the auxiliary elevator came into play and then get everybody to the roof.

The scenes aboard the Ghost were reworked at the very end of the process. My editor Jen Heddle asked for a quiet scene between Zare and Dhara, which was a great call, giving them a moment that Zare had worked so hard for. As for Zare and Merei’s vow to make use of the data she’d stolen and keep fighting, it was another late addition. Once again, that’s all I’ll say for now.

Thanks so much to everyone who’s begged, cajoled or campaigned for further adventures of Zare and Merei. There are no plans that I know of, but I’d love to bring them back for another story. I want to know what became of their campaign against the Empire, where their relationship went, and if Dhara recovered from her ordeal at the Inquisitor’s hands. (And yes, I have ideas about all of those things.) But if that never happens, it’s fun to think of Zare and Merei continuing to fight the good fight, as they learned to do so capably over four books. 

Quick notes on Part 3:

The other cadets stripping Zare’s uniform and breaking his saber was borrowed from descriptions of Han Solo’s expulsion from the Imperial Academy in Han Solo at Stars’ End and the Dark Empire Sourcebook. To keep the reader from being distracted by a new uniform, I made sure the cadets wore their dress blacks in an earlier scene.

Beck mentioning that he stopped taking his medication was a quick add to reinforce the idea of the jogan perfume cutting through his brainwashing. I think little buttressing details like that are effective provided they neither stop the narrative nor give the game away.

I liked that Zare doesn’t really have a plan once he and Beck break out. Zare’s a smart kid who’s cool under fire, but he’s in a facility he knows nothing about so he’s just improvising wildly. Hey, when you’ve got a date with a firing squad any plan is better than nothing.

Where’s the rest of the Ghost crew? I left Kanan out because he would have sensed Dhara’s dark-side tantrum and started asking questions. Story Group’s Pablo Hidalgo also taught me a good trick from TV: leave out a member of an ensemble cast in case you need to explain what happened in some later project. That way you can handle the needed exposition through conversation. 

I enjoyed writing Dhara’s reunion with Tepha and Leo – after so much tension and anxiety, it was satisfying to craft a scene that was just pure love and joy. But if Servants of the Empire is ever collected into a single volume, I’m campaigning to edit out that last line. After everything the Leonises had been through, Dhara telling the rest of her family not to let go said it all.

If you enjoyed these notes and are going to Orlando for Star Wars Celebration 2017, I’m leading a Star Wars University session about writing and storytelling on Friday April 14 at 6:30 pm. Come on out! 

Thanks for coming along on the journey with me, and here’s to new adventures ahead.

[zrtranscripts]

Radio Abel, Season Four

Part 3 of 6

ZOE CRICK: And we've still heard nothing from Baz and Domhnall?

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Not a peep.

ZOE CRICK: Damn it!

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Mmhmm. Uh, but don't worry, citizens. We have been picking up some other broadcasts, and there's one me and Zoe think you might enjoy.

ZOE CRICK: Seems disloyal, though, doesn't it? To Baz and Domhnall?

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Well, it's not like they knew we were listening. And you like Eloise. You said she sounded like a kindred spirit.  

ZOE CRICK: Eloise is pretty cool.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: And Hugh's great, too. Now, you're going to love them, listeners, we promise. They're travelling around the country -

ZOE CRICK: No spoilers.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Oh, okay. Well, stay tuned, and you'll find out all about Eloise and Hugh, right after this.

[static]

ELOISE: Is that better?

HUGH: There's still some interference, Eloise!

ELOISE: Well, then, stop and let me down, Hugh.

HUGH: I can't quite at the moment, my love.

ELOISE: Stop the van, you [?]. I'll drag the aerial right off the roof.

HUGH: You know I can deny you nothing, but that zom we saw, it phoned a friend! Now there's two fast ones got our scent, and they're gaining! I can't slow down!

ELOISE: If you go any faster, I'll fall off!

HUGH: I've opened the window. Can you do a Dukes of Hazzard?

ELOISE: Are you having a laugh? I'm 53!

HUGH: Now would be a good time! [ELOISE climbs in through window] Handled like a ballerina.

ELOISE: Next time, we check the bloody bushes before I climb up there. I found the problem. It was a zombie foot wedged into the aerial mount. Look! How'd a foot get onto our roof?

HUGH: Uh... maybe you should throw it out the window. With the contamination and the blood and all.

ELOISE: Oh Hugh, you're a big wuss, aren't you? Wait! That light's on. Are we transmitting? Did you hit transmit?

HUGH: Uh, I was trying to change the air conditioning.

ELOISE: Turn it off. Turn it off!

ELOISE: Hello!

HUGH: Hello.

ELOISE: I'm Eloise, and this is Hugh.

HUGH: Hello.

ELOISE: Yes, Hugh. Thank you. And thank you, the listener, for tuning in to our first show. We are travellers voyaging through the wild isles of zombie Britain in our faithful Volkswagen camper van.

HUGH: It's a Type 2.

ELOISE: Thank you, Hugh.

HUGH: With everyone dead, I thought we'd get a [?], but they're no good in the winter. And quite frankly, they're a bit slow for eluding the undead.

ELOISE: Yes, Hugh. But we were going to introduce the show.

HUGH: Oh yeah. Now, I used to be a postman, see, and I've still got my keys. So I can get into every postbox in Britain.

ELOISE: And I'm a telecomms engineer. So we've lashed a transmitter on the roof, and I've rigged up some relay stations along the road. We thought we'd do a show, to pass the time, and as a public service, you see, and we thought, "What did we used to like?"

HUGH: It was that show on Radio Stafford with that lady who answered your personal problems, Lucy Lockjaw.

ELOISE: Lucy Lockhart. Our idea is, we'll be your travelling agony aunt and uncle, bringing you wisdom from the road, and advice from the heart. So if you've got a problem, write a letter to Hugh and Eloise, and just pop it in the postbox. Everywhere we visit, we'll check all the boxes, and if your letter's there, we'll try to help! We're waiting to hear from you. And in the meantime, here's some music to keep you going. [audio clicks]

That went well, didn't it? I thought that went well.

HUGH: You didn't press it right. It's still going.

ELOISE: Oh, shit!

ELOISE: Well, a lot has happened since we last did a show. We've been coming up from the lake district, a lovely place to settle! Apart from all the zoms.

HUGH: All that moisture's hell on the axles.

ELOISE: If we were going to settle, we wouldn't do it in a camper van, now, would we? That would kind of defeat the porpoise.

HUGH: You mean purpose.

ELOISE: That's what I said.

HUGH: No. You said porpoise, like a dolphin.

ELOISE: Why would I want to defeat a dolphin?

HUGH: I don't know. You were the one who said it.

ELOISE: You always do this! You know fine well what I mean, but you pick up on a slip of the tongue and try to make me sound stupid. Any reasonable person would just take it as I meant!

HUGH: It's my Royal Mail training. When you read an address, see, you can't just guess what you think the customer meant. You have to deliver it exactly what it says on the letter!

ELOISE: Exactly where it says on the letter.

HUGH: It says it on the front.

ELOISE: There you go again. You are a pedant, Hugh Caulfield.

HUGH: Well, they never gave me a bike.

ELOISE: You're just making fun of me now.

HUGH: I might be, my love. But just remember, you're the one I voyage with every day through this cruel world.

ELOISE: Yeah, and I know where you sleep. Where did I put that zombie foot?

ELOISE: Good afternoon. I'm driving today because Hugh is busy opening your mail.

HUGH: Where'd we put them scissors?

ELOISE: They're in one of those boxes back there. Now, as you remember, we're here to answer your questions, like the agony aunt and uncle you've been deprived of since the zombie apocalypse. The idea is, if you've got a problem, whether it be about relationships, or careers, or health, or just everyday zombie matters, you write it down in your best handwriting and pop it in the postbox, addressed to Hugh and Eloise. And when we come to your town, we'll pick it up and offer you some confidential advice. Just listen in on this frequency.

HUGH: It won't be confidential, will it? If it's on the radio.

ELOISE: Well, it'll be anonymous, then.

HUGH: Yeah, but if we read a letter by Jane from Carlisle, it's going to be obvious who it is, right? I mean, there aren't many people left in Carlisle. Even less called Jane.

ELOISE: We'll use a fake name, won't we?

HUGH: Then how will they know it's their question?

ELOISE: Strike me down! They'll know because they'll hear it, won't they? They'll recognize the words, Hugh.

HUGH: Oh yeah.

ELOISE: So, have we got any first questions today?

HUGH: I'm soryr, Eloise. It's just the usual bills and charity stuff. There's this one package someone is returning to a website called Happy Tools.

ELOISE: Might be something you can use for the van.

[packaging tears]

HUGH: Oh. Oh, um....

ELOISE: What is it? Oh! My goodness!

HUGH: It might keep you happy, dear.

ELOISE: I... well, uh, well, maybe we could keep it.

HUGH: Oh, hang on. It's been used.

ELOISE: Ugh! Oh, throw it out the window. Throw it out the window!

ELOISE: People like you are why kids don't read!

[gunshots, glass shatters]

HUGH: Bugger. There goes another one. It's not the repair I hate, it's picking the little bits of glass out of my vegetables.

ELOISE: Well, she was a cranky lady.

HUGH: Nobody likes being called a fascist, dear. Not even a fascist bookseller.

ELOISE: Oh, really! What did she think we were, zombies driving about in a purple camper van? The hungry dead come to get their decaying hands on the latest Inspector Wexford?

HUGH: Well, possibly she's had previous experience with bloodthirsty raiders.

ELOISE: Bloodthirsty raiders come to pillage the largest secondhand book selection in Dumfries and Galloway? Oh, talk sense, Hugh.

HUGH: Bloodthirsty readers, then.

ELOISE: I'll bloodthirst you in a minute.

HUGH: Maybe save the pillow talk until we're off the air, my love.

ELOISE: Oh, I forgot about you and your vampire thing. [clears throat] This is an announcement for anybody requiring our services in the vicinity of Wigtown. I'm sorry to say we are unable to access the postbox because some nutter is on the roof of a bookshop, blazing away with a dangerous firearm. Yeah, that means you, lady! Get over yourself!

HUGH: We'll be around again, one day.

ELOISE: That's right, folks. You hang in there with your romantic dilemma or your baby turning gray. We'll be around again and we promise to respond to your letter in what, two years or so?

HUGH: Providing the van doesn't break down.

ELOISE: So um, just hang in there.

HUGH: Once again, I'm denied a chance to pick up the final Dick Francis.

ELOISE: Dick Francis? You only read him because you thought it gave you an edge at the bookies.

HUGH: You know what's coming up? Alloway, birthplace of Robert Burns, the Ploughman Poet, known the world over. I picked up a leaflet at the last place. It says, "His national pride, fierce egalitarianism, and quick wit have become synonymous with the Scottish national character." You can see the cottage where he was born and everything! Do you want to go?

ELOISE: Nah. You?

HUGH: Nah. Place'll be heaving with tourists.

ELOISE: [laughs] That's one good thing about the collapse of civilization.

HUGH: No tourists?

ELOISE: No poets.

HUGH: There's bound to be some bastard in one of them fortress towns knocking out free verse.

ELOISE: Doing readings to people who know it's either that, or be torn to bits by the undead outside.

HUGH: Hang on, here's a postbox. [parks van, opens door]

ELOISE: Any luck?

HUGH: No. Must have been empty when the plague hit. [starts van]

ELOISE: I really thought we'd get letters.

HUGH: We will, love. Give it time. It's only been a few weeks.

ELOISE: Deep down, I kind of knew we wouldn't.

HUGH: I know something to cheer you up! We're approaching Prestwick.

ELOISE: No!

HUGH: 100%! Prestwick Airport, the only piece of British soil upon which Elvis ever walked. And I am to know that there are no flights scheduled this afternoon, so if you're very good, I'll knock down the gate and take you on a tour of the runway.

ELOISE: Hugh Caulfield, you are the greatest man who ever walked this earth! Except Elvis, maybe.

HUGH: I'll take that.

ELOISE: If you've been listening to us for a while now, perhaps you've thought, "Yeah! I should get on the road like Hugh and Eloise and live the life of a free spirit!" But if you're thinking of leaving your nice, safe, gated community, hold your horses. It's not all picnics at sunrise and the fresh smell of pine after the rain. There's certain practical considerations.

HUGH: Any sign of them?

ELOISE: No, you're fine! Get on with it! In a camper van, your water supply is precious, and you need to preserve it. Okay, there's reservoirs and little streams, and of course, it pisses down every second day, but you try washing your smalls in an icy river come February, and frankly, a girl gets fed up of doing her big gypsy skirts in a basin the size of a grapefruit.

So every now and then, we make a special trip, and that's how we come to be parked outside the Chery Launderette. It's supposed to be the Cheery Launderette, but one of the E's has dropped off. Also, there's a lot of bloodstains in there.

Now, your average launderette don't work too well these days, what with there being no electricity. But we've got a little generator, and Hugh does some magic that only he can, so we get a couple of loads in. Well, to be honest, I could rig the same thing up easy, but who wants to spend their golden years doing electrics in launderettes? I swear - wait. Hugh! Get your ass in here!

HUGH: We're nearly at the spin cycle!

ELOISE: Sixteen shamblers incoming! Get in here!

HUGH: Oops.

ELOISE: Where's all my leggings?

HUGH: In the dryer.

ELOISE: Oh! And so, for a good half hour now, we'll be leading zoms into the suburbs until we can go back for our clothes and the genny. This is the harsh reality of life on the road.

HUGH: But it makes you smell so fresh.

ELOISE: Ah, zip it.

HUGH: Eloise, it's a very special day.

ELOISE: No, we didn't!

HUGH: I've got the letter right here.

ELOISE: No! Read it out. No, give it to me! No. Read it out. I'll drive. [starts van]

HUGH: "Dear Eloise –" Looks like this one's just for you. "Dear Eloise, it's Jasmina here. I heard you say that you are a telecomms engineer. I would like to learn that stuff so that I can help with the reconstruction of society, but how can I learn it now all the colleges have closed? Yours sincerely, Jasmina."

ELOISE: Good for you, Jasmina! We all need to find our place, and the more engineers we have, the quicker we'll get back on our feet. Before the zoms, you'd have been working on fiber and switches, setting up redundant networks and so on. But we're in a back to basics situation here. The old cables are still around, but there ain't the power to drive them, so radio makes more sense.

You don't say what age you are, but don't begin by trying to set up your own Rofflenet node. If you get stuck into the books to early, you'll maybe get bored. So go break into a toy shop or a craft shop and look for their electronics kits. Or the museum gift shop! Often, they've got a build your own radio. Follow the instructions, and try and understand how the circuit works. You can listen to our program on something you built yourself!

HUGH: Nice.

ELOISE: After that, you'll want your local library and a shop like Maplin or Radio Shack. Get a soldering iron and a suitcase worth of components. Build up the difficulty until you've done a transmitter, and then give us a call, all right?

HUGH: There's more on the back. "P.S. I am thinking of getting into Elvis, too. Can you recommend any records?"

ELOISE: Wait a minute. Let me see that. Do you think I'm daft, Hugh Caulfield? This is your handwriting.

HUGH: Uh...

ELOISE: Did you write this letter yourself?

HUGH: You wanted one so badly. I was just helping the process along.

ELOISE: You're a bloody twit. But I do love you.

ELOISE: Where are we?

HUGH: Inverkip.

ELOISE: Where's that?

HUGH: Under the ocean, it looks like.

ELOISE: I did suggest we take the other road instead up to the loch.

HUGH: Yeah, because up the hills, it didn't rain.

ELOISE: No need to take that tone.

HUGH: I wish we could find a good pub completely protected from zombie attack, so on a day like this, we could sit near the fire and get trollied.

ELOISE: A man of your ingenuity should be able to set up a pub inside a castle.

HUGH: All the good castles are taken.

ELOISE: You know that's the marina over there.

HUGH: What gave it away? All the boats?

ELOISE: You, Mister Crabby Esq., are missing the point. The owners of all these boats are most likely dead. We could have our pick. There's no reason we have to stay on land. You could load the bugger up with canned soup and lager and do what generations of weekend fisherman have done before you – sail out into the unknown waters and get wrecked. Of course, you would take that literally.

HUGH: Even in my cups, I'd be a responsible pilot.

ELOISE: Come on, let's check them.

HUGH: I think I saw a zombie on that one.

ELOISE: Really? You sure?

HUGH: Definitely. We'd better go before it smells us.

ELOISE: You just don't want to go out in the rain.

HUGH: Nothing to do with that, Eloise, nothing at all.

ELOISE: Hello. We're in some godawful bed and breakfast on the outskirts of Glasgow. I've moved the whole broadcast rig inside so we can bring you our program today, which is #2 in our occasional series: Why life on the road after the zombie apocalypse is not like the great music festivals of your youth.

HUGH: I got a bit of flu.

ELOISE: As you can perhaps hear, my handsome co-presenter is a little under the weather, as I came to realize when he nearly drove us into a hedge yesterday.

HUGH: It wasn't a hedge! It was barely a bush!

ELOISE: Camper vans are not optimized for illness. I could have made a bed for him in the back, if I'd been willing to ditch three weeks of food or 800 miles worth of petrol. [HUGH sneezes] Thank you, Hugh. Under these circumstances, a small hotel or a B&B is a good choice. They often had vacant rooms when all went to hell, so you can find somewhere clean to sleep without scraping up infected remains. And crucially, they often have private parking with a gate that locks.

HUGH: The pay-per-view's rubbish these days.

ELOISE: The what?

HUGH: The breakfast. It's the breakfast.

ELOISE: Of course, it's always on our mind that one of us might get seriously ill. All the big settlements have doctors, but they don't all welcome new faces, particularly new faces who have any symptoms that might look even a little like the gray plague. You're as likely to get shot as to get an appointment, and good luck persuading them to send the doctor out.

HUGH: [?]

ELOISE: I have no idea what he is saying. My point is, you have to be your own GP and pharmacist now. My old doc always prescribed antibiotics and never anything else. So early on, we started raiding pharmacies for antibiotics. We took a small supply and left the rest. 

As we travel around, we still look, but lately they've always been looted. So we save the antibiotics for the times it's really bad. We're not there yet, but these drugs have a shelf life. And as far as I know, nobody's making any more of them. [HUGH sneezes] 

So the message is, eat as well as you can, give your body all the rest it needs, and if you approach a settlement, do not look like a zombie on the turn.

HUGH: [?]

ELOISE: Move over, you. We might as well treat this like a holiday.

HUGH: Eloise. Eloise!

ELOISE: What?

HUGH: We got one!

ELOISE: No!

HUGH: Look!

ELOISE: This better not be another one of your fake letters to make me feel better.

HUGH: I swear! Look! "Hugh and Eloise." It was on the top, totally fresh. No stamp or nothing.

ELOISE: And really nice handwriting, look at that! Fountain pen or something. Female hand.

HUGH: Well, open it.

ELOISE: I don't know.

HUGH: What?

ELOISE: I kind of want to savor it for a minute.

HUGH: It might be urgent.

ELOISE: Hugh, we've been broadcasting for three months about our agony aunt program without getting a single inquiry. How urgent could it be?

HUGH: So are you ready yet?

ELOISE: Where did we put the letter opener?

HUGH: Use your fingers, for God's sake.

ELOISE: We might want to save this one. Frame it or something.

HUGH: Open the damn envelope.

[paper tears and rustles]

ELOISE: Do you want to read it?

HUGH: No, no, you read it.

ELOISE: [clears throat] "Dear Hugh and Eloise..."

HUGH: Well, come on!

ELOISE: "Thank you for your show. Since I found it, I listen all the time. Sometimes life can be very grim, and I get a vicarious thrill from listening to your adventures up and down the country. Please keep going and broadcasting. Yours, Louise."

HUGH: Wow, that's nice. Lovely.

ELOISE: Yeah, but... but...

HUGH: What?

ELOISE: She didn't have a problem.

ZOE CRICK: "Dear Eloise and Hugh: I'm a tightly-wound control freak who'd prefer it if all human interaction was carefully scripted, not just my radio segments. I think jokes get funnier every time you tell them, and washing up my tea mugs is for other people.

Sometimes I nod off while Jack and Eugene are acting out scenes from Thelma and Louise for us, using all the voices. And then I like to pretend I haven't, even though I've been snorning incredibly loudly. Can you help me to be a better partner to my lovely cohost?"

PHIL CHEESEMAN: "Dear Eloise and Hugh: I think I'm so funny, I laugh at my own jokes, even when no one else is laughing. Sometimes I start laughing four hours later because I've just remembered my joke again. Sometimes I do this when my best friend is trying to tell me a very serious story about his mother.

I'm so anal that I rewash anything anything else has already washed up. Also, I've alphabetized all the novelty mugs. I've recently been pretending I'm extremely well-read, but actually I just found a stash of CliffsNotes at the back of the pantry, and I don't think anyone else has realized. Can you tell me how to be a better human being?"

HUGH: Well, this is all very picture-skew.

ELOISE: You know what that is? It's the Harry Potter viaduct!

HUGH: Eh?

ELOISE: The viaduct from the films.

HUGH: What, that bridge?

ELOISE: When it's got all those arches, you call it a viaduct.

HUGH: Why did he have a bridge?

ELOISE: Who?

HUGH: Harry Potter.

ELOISE: He didn't have a bridge.

HUGH: So they named it after him?

ELOISE: It's Victorian, you wazzock! How could they name it after Harry Potter?

HUGH: I thought maybe they changed it when the film came out. For the tourists, you know.

ELOISE: They call it the Harry Potter viaduct because his train goes along it in the films!

HUGH: Oh, I got you now. When they go to his castle?

ELOISE: Who's castle? Voldemort's?

HUGH: Harry Potter's castle.

ELOISE: He doesn't have a castle.

HUGH: He does! Where all the kids go and have the big dinner.

ELOISE: That's a school! Hogwarts Academy of Magic and Witchcraft.

HUGH: That explains why they're all wearing ties.

ELOISE: We watched all the films on the telly.

HUGH: That might be one of the times when you watched them and I caught up on my snoozing.

ELOISE: Unlike those gripping times when we watched the Three Stooges.

HUGH: All right, then. Let's go to his castle while we're in the area. You got the map. Where is it? What?

HUGH: This is from Alan. "Dear Hugh and Eloise, thank you for your program. We have built a little community up here on the banks of the Ness. On the whole, we get on fine, but we do have personal disputes from time to time over issues which might seem trivial to an outsider, that take on great importance with living in such close quarters. I am sure you know all about this." No, Alan. I can honestly say that despite living full-time in a camper van, Eloise and myself never disagree.

ELOISE: You bloody liar.

HUGH: Yes, dear. Alan says, "Lately, it has become something of a big deal to decide whether Inverness is in the northeast or the northwest." Well, Alan, we've got the map here, and we will tell you exactly where you live.

ELOISE: I'm looking at it right now. I can state quite definitely that you live in the northeast. I hope that helped.

HUGH: There you are, Alan. One of our easier – wait. Northeast? You must be looking at it sideways.

ELOISE: It's on the east coast! It can hardly be on the east coast and in the northwest, now, could it?

HUGH: That's not how you work it out. You find the center point of the country and draw a line due north. Then if it's on the left, it's northwest, and if it's on the right, it's northeast. Where would you say the center of the country is?

ELOISE: I don't know! Huddersfield.

HUGH: It's about 200 miles west of Huddersfield, so it's in the northwest.

ELOISE: By that same argument, the whole of Scotland's in the northwest.

HUGH: Well, it is.

ELOISE: When you're up here, you use the center of Scotland!

HUGH: Okay. Where's that?

ELOISE: Fort William. Inverness is clearly northeast of that.

HUGH: Fort William's on the west coast, so how can that be the center of Scotland?

ELOISE: You're not allowing for the Western Isles.

HUGH: Yeah, and if you include Shetland, Inverness is at the center. Don't listen to her, Alan. You're in the northwest.

ELOISE: Northeast!

HUGH: Northwest.

ELOISE: Northeast!

HUGH: Read one out.

ELOISE: Just drive.

HUGH: This lot's been after us for half an hour. I'm bored. Read one out.

ELOISE: Hugh, will you concentrate on saving our lives?

HUGH: Not unless you read a letter.

ELOISE: No! Now shut up.

HUGH: The pressure. It's getting on my nerves, it's making me slow down. If only there was something to distract me.

ELOISE: Hugh, I swear I'll do that thing to you that you don't like.

HUGH: Just read a letter, Eloise.

ELOISE: Right. Right! "Dear Hugh and Eloise." Speed up! "Dear Hugh and Eloise, I like someone and I think we could become a couple. Frankly, neither of us has many options these days, but when we get together, there's no spark. Can you suggest a way I can spice things up and see if she's at all interested? Thank you, Mandy."

HUGH: You're the relationship expert, my love.

ELOISE: Oh, no. You wanted to hear the letter. Let's hear your romantic solution.

HUGH: Well, Mandy, it's actually very simple. [ELOISE scoffs] Some of the big settlements have runners – people that go out on missions and gather supplies. Ask your prospective mate to come out with you on a zombie run. You may find that the sheer peril of roaming undead and the looming prospect of a hideous death will bring your hearts together in a way that simple words cannot.

ELOISE: And Mandy, if that load of crap don't happen, make sure that you can run faster than this other girl. After all, it's great to be single!

ELOISE: You know what you're going to find.

HUGH: I prefer to think positive.

ELOISE: It's going to be the same as the last twelve.

HUGH: My dear, you are a beautiful woman, a charming companion, and a considerate lover, as well as no mean driver when you put your mind to it. But right now, you are throwing off my karma something awful.

ELOISE: You just have to accept that it's a good idea and somebody had it before you. Somebody who lives closer with a bigger van.

HUGH: All that means is there's a stockpile somewhere.

ELOISE: Yeah, with armed guards.

HUGH: Armed, they may be. Sober, they may not be.

ELOISE: You think a raid by a middle-aged agony aunt and her painfully obsessive husband might succeed where others have failed?

HUGH: I was thinking stealth.

ELOISE: That's it ahead. Which one's this?

HUGH: Glen Spey. Not so well-known, see, but slap-bang in the middle of the heartland.

ELOISE: The gates are off the hinges.

HUGH: Think positive.

ELOISE: That's the warehouse. The doors are open. It's empty. Cleaned out, just like the others.

HUGH: Buggeration. I'm going to check the office. There might be a special bottle or two in a drawer.

ELOISE: No, you ain't. There's something moving up there, and it's gray!

HUGH: [sighs] Where's the next one?

ELOISE: Aberlour. You get three more tries. Got that? Then we're off. Choose wisely.

HUGH: I suppose.

ELOISE: You don't even like whiskey!

HUGH: I just fancied a bottle or two. For visitors, like.

ELOISE: Visitors? Well, make sure I know when they're coming so I can freshen up the parlor!

HUGH: We've got a letter here from Angus, and he says, "Dear Hugh and Eloise, I used to eat too many convenience foods. Then I cleaned up my act and started cooking, with a consequent improvement in my health. Then civilization collapsed, and I was right back to eating from tins again. How do you make sure you get the right nutrition, especially as you are travellers of no fixed abode?"

ELOISE: What a good question. Well, there's two ways to look at that. One way is that we travel to make sure we get a varied selection of natural produce from up and down the country, and to minimize our impact on the environment.

HUGH: Yeah, that's a good way of looking at it, but it isn't true.

ELOISE: Well, it's sort of true. If we just stayed in one place, we'd probably exhaust local stocks and leave none for the next people.

HUGH: She likes them Ritz crackers. We got four boxes in the back. Not the little boxes, either. The ones they bring on the forklift.

ELOISE: Thank you, Hugh. We do cook every day on a camping stove. A lot of soups and stew and stuff, from vegetables in the fields and peoples' gardens. There was a slight plan to grow our own on the roof, but we had to give up on that before I installed the aerial.

HUGH: I took a corner too tight and we lost every last radish.

ELOISE: Hugh has been trying to grow things inside the van.

HUGH: I'm giving up on that until we can get proper hydroponics.

ELOISE: I suppose our best advice, Angus, is to become a gardener. Try a few different crops to test the soil, and build a wall around your beds to keep the zombies off.

HUGH: Zombies don't eat vegetables.

ELOISE: No, but they do eat gardeners.

HUGH: Uh, thanks for your question, Angus. Stay safe out there.

ELOISE: Hugh, don't look now, but I think we're being followed!

HUGH: What?

ELOISE: I said don't look!

HUGH: Is it zombies? We haven't got much in the tank.

ELOISE: No.

HUGH: Who is it?

ELOISE: It's the paparazzi.

HUGH: Oh. [laughs] Not again, eh?

ELOISE: I think it's the show that's the problem. Now our listenership is in the hundreds of thousands, people are thirsty for the intimate details of our glamorous life.

HUGH: Well, it's true. Every move around these rugged isles is a glittering cavalcade of drama and high fashion.

ELOISE: I'm glad I'm wearing a little Chanel number today with my matching handbag and all.

HUGH: I'm wearing Cinzano.

ELOISE: [laughs] That's a drink, you pillock.

HUGH: No, no. During my brief spell as a visiting scholar in Florence, I had something of a personal tailor who later became globally renowned. Humberto Cinzano made me many original designs.

ELOISE: I never heard of him.

HUGH: Yeah, he died.

ELOISE: Was that before or after you addressed the United Nations?

HUGH: Around the same time. What were you doing then?

ELOISE: Well, I think it's safe reveal to you now that I am a sleeper agent for the KGB.

HUGH: Your English accent's quite good.

ELOISE: [imitates Russian accent] Der Mister Caulfield, at last I have you in my grasp! My submarine is parked in the Scottish [?], or whatever it is called, and I must insist you accompany me to motherland, where I will both interrogate you and make mad passionate love to screw with your head!

HUGH: You think we could uh, [laughs] pull over for a bit? Maybe turn off the mic?

ELOISE: What about the paparazzi?

HUGH: They can take all the pictures they like.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Jack and Eugene need to listen to that.

ZOE CRICK: Yeah, they really do.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: That'll show them.

ZOE CRICK: Exactly. Indulging in a bit of harmless, non-sexual roleplay is totally normal.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Completely! There's nothing odd about spending two hours pretending to be Dastardly and Muttley.

ZOE CRICK: Especially when you're as good at the laugh as I am. [imitates Muttley’s laugh]

PHIL CHEESEMAN: And I bet lots of people pretend to be Q and M for extended periods of time. Days, even.

ZOE CRICK: Yeah. We should definitely make Jack and Eugene listen to it.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: [gasps] Hugh and Eloise are an old married couple, though. Wouldn't that kind of be proving Jack and Eugene's point about us?

ZOE CRICK: Only if we tell them Hugh and Eloise are married.

[corkcitylibraries]

Interview with William Wall

by Donal O’Driscoll

Interviewing William Wall, it soon becomes apparent how much of a place Whitegate, where he was brought up, holds in his heart. To paraphrase a generic saying that can use any place name as its subject, “you can take the man out of Whitegate, but not Whitegate out of the man” seems very apt. Yet I had no idea William was from Whitegate before I interviewed him. I knew him as a writer, a socialist and a Facebook friend whose content I enjoy, even though I didn’t really know him except for to nod at him and say hello when he passed me in the old Hollyhill Library when I worked there.

So interviewing William was very informative, William Wall, the man, emerged throughout the interview, giving very interesting and instructive responses and showing great patience and restraint when I had to pause the interview for over a minute to investigate a phantom knock at the door.

He loves living in Cork now. He says the green belt around the city has not changed much down through the years and that in ways it doesn’t feel like a city. “It is big enough to have everything you need, yet small enough to be human”.

William started writing at about 12 years of age when he became very sick with ‘Still’s disease’, a form of rheumatoid Arthritis. By the age of 15 he had written around 250 poems and 20 short stories, most of which he describes, candidly, but I suspect not entirely accurately, as “shite.”

He first got his real sense of being noticed for being a writer, when his mother sent off one of his stories to John B Keane when the Listowel Writers’ week was still in its infancy. John B inaugurated a prize and sent him ten pounds as a reward, which William acknowledges as a fortune at the time. It would be the start of a relationship with both John B and the Writers’ Week, which was to last many years.

In fact, Listowel soon became a holiday destination for the Wall family, who would deposit William at the Festival and go off and do their own thing. “I started going to Writers’ Week when I was 16 and went every year for several years.”

However, William is careful not to fall into the trap of identifying his own writing too closely with other writers before him. He admires writers like Elizabeth Bowen, John Banville and John McGahern but sees the importance of writers ploughing their own furrows. William laments that some publishers want to know five writers whose work is like your own, before they will publish a writer’s work.. “It’s strange because what was popular this year might not be popular this year. Each writer is unique.”

William does a quick mental tally of how many books he has had published and comes up with 24. Six of these were novels, which include Grace’s Day, Alice Falling and This is the Country. There are also four books of poetry, three books of short stories and 11 children’s books. The children’s books, William confesses were primarily written for his own children when they were younger.

William chose to write his children’s books under his grandmother’s name, Ellen Regan . This is perhaps unsurprising given that it was his grandmother who first inspired his love of reading. He recalls fondly the days when the county’s mobile library used to call. William was a prolific reader and soon became well known to the library staff. Given the difficult childhood William had due to his illness, he believes that the library saved his life as a child and kept him going.

William, who is still a massive advocate of libraries and a proud library member, believes that while new technologies have changed libraries in some respects that things are largely similar. William recalls people who would frequent the Reference Library and spend most of the day reading old papers on microfilm.

In his own writing, William, who is unashamedly left-wing politically, does not shy away from political themes. Alice Falling deals with the power of the clergy, while This is the Country looks at the capitalist nature of Celtic Tiger Ireland.

His penchant for left wing politics is one of many reasons William identifies strongly with Italy, a country he has long had a love affair with. “In Italy, all my friends are Communists or ex-Communists”. However, not everyone who William has encountered on his travels to Italy has been on the left politically. “It was funny one time, this man came up to me to ask me to sign one of my books, I thought no more of it. Then one of my friends informed me afterwards that he was a fascist, who used to have a picture of Mussolini in his office.”

William is particularly taken with Liguria, near Genoa, a region where he has been visiting since 2000. William laments that with the Covid 19 crisis, he has been unable to go this year. He states that Liguria is very like Ireland in terms of scenery and ways. A very proud people, they have their own language, Genovese, a language that William, although he is fluent in other dialects of Italian and translates books from Italian, is not brave enough to attempt to learn.

One could never accuse William of not living life to the fullest. Yet, from the boy who devoured books as a means of helping him through ill health to a teacher of over twenty years’ experience to a much lauded figure on the Irish literary scene, the influence of growing up in Whitegate has never left him.

Read about how William Wall, Cork city’s first ever Poet Laureate, will write a poem every month to document the times we live in: 

https://www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle/artsandculture/arid-40282307.html

Many titles by William Wall are available from Cork City Libraries and Grace’s Day is also available on BorrowBox

[raystart]

Love the Design Work, Hate the Designer. How Much Do a Designer’s Morals Matter?

Each month we present three diverging opinions one on divisive issue. Here, Erik Carter, Debbie Millman,and Paula Scher take sides on whether we can (or should) separate great design work from a morally objectionable designer. Ready, set, debate.

“We must set a precedent so that the design industry becomes more inclusive and diverse.” —Erik Carter, independent graphic designer and art director

The industry needs to show people that bad behavior won’t be tolerated. We shouldn’t celebrate the work of a morally reprehensible designer; it sets a terrible example. It says that even if someone has done something awful to someone else, they’ll still be championed. When we discover that a designer has acted terribly, first they should be called out. Then, they should be historicized for what they are. And then, their work shouldn’t be promoted by the community. If someone you look up to or work with is outed for bad behavior, it’s your responsibility to stand by their victims and against their malignant viewpoints. If someone is outed today, we cannot invite them to design conferences, or write profiles about their work online. They need to have no opportunities for financial gain whatsoever, and no professional gain.

Someone like Eric Gill should be discussed as he was: a type designer and a child molester. If it’s a choice between using Gill Sans or Johnston Sans, I’m more than happy to use the latter. There are more than enough good typefaces by decent humans to go around.

Western graphic design has had a persistent diversity problem and if someone is rightfully called out for abusive behavior, then that’s an opportunity for a designer with an underrepresented voice in the community to be heard instead.

The sexism and lack of diversity that is in design is not a problem that’s unique to our profession. It’s rooted in many things outside of design, but it is our job as designers to try and fix it. For the next generation it’s even more important to try and create a community that is more diverse and inclusive. And it is the responsibility of those currently working to stand up for victims and call out bad behavior.

  “It’s very difficult to reconcile the fact that we’ve been duped.” —Debbie Millman, writer, educator, artist, brand consultant, and host of the podcast Design Matters

I’m conflicted by people whose work I adore when I’m also disgusted by their behavior. I’m crushed by Woody Allen, for example. Growing up, Woody Allen’s movies helped me become the person I am now. If you look back at interviews that were conducted with me at the start of my career, when people asked what my favorite movie was, I would always say Manhattan. Always.

But I fell out of love with Woody Allen after he started a relationship with his stepdaughter while in a relationship with Mia Farrow. Now, the allegations that he sexually assaulted his daughter has made it impossible for me to see any new Woody Allen film. I don’t want to participate in s contributing to his prosperity, knowing the things that he’s done and been accused of.

It’s also really hard for me to reconcile the fact that Elizabeth Moss is a Scientologist, and Scientologists have very specific points of view about women that I don’t agree with. But I loved her performance in The Handmaid’s Tale. The fact that she’s a Scientologist doesn’t take away from the excellence of Moss’ performance, but what it takes away from is my willingness to participate in her artwork.

Discovering that someone is morally reprehensible really changes how I view the person, but whether or not their work is good work becomes hard for me to assess. I don’t know if that’s necessarily a fair thing to do. And as someone who has been perpetrated against in some really difficult and abusive ways, I’m saying this fully cognizant of the bad behaviour people are capable of.

I wouldn’t commission or collaborate with a designer that I discovered had behaved badly. Why would anyone? I wouldn’t buy a typeface from them, or hire them to do work with me, or collaborate with them on Design Matters. If they wanted to come clean on Design Matters and talk about their regret and apologize, I might consider it. But I would not give them a forum to promote their work if I felt that their behavior was abusive.  

  “Don’t confuse protest with value judgement.” —Paula Scher, graphic designer, partner at Pentagram

Ezra Pound is a great poet, even though he was a fascist.

Louis CK was a brilliant comedian, and I will miss him.

Al Franken was a terrific senator who committed a misdemeanor, and I will miss him.

We all know about Thomas Jefferson’s treatment of Sally Hemings; do we throw out all of his achievements?

Sometimes terrible people make great art, and sometimes wonderful people make mediocre crap.

Repugnant human behavior has nothing to do with the judgement of art. The two are not aligned. If you want to boycott something in protest, that’s okay. But you can’t make a value judgement about the work that way. Art is art.

I had an experience with Planned Parenthood recently. I was doing a mural for them that was theoretically about their history, but I couldn’t put up a picture of the founder, Margaret Sanger, because it turned out she was into eugenics. So the founder of Planned Parenthood, who essentially changed the power structure and shape of women’s lives forever, is written out of their own history. I mean, that’s sort of sick. To put her on the mural doesn’t mean you’re for her position—which is disgusting—but by leaving people out from history, you become part of this crazy dialogue that doesn’t accept the fact that human beings aren’t perfect. By this standard, we’d never be hanging up Pablo Picasso’s work. Wouldn’t that be a loss?

I’ve only ever had problems with people—never their work. I knew a few designer-predators firsthand; they were terrific designers and their best work is still great. It’s always a bit confusing because you can admire them for their work while you also resent and hate them. But you can’t make a visual judgement about a typeface because the person who designed it is a predator. That’s insane. It’s pointless, actually. You could say that they shouldn’t get a royalty for it, but that’s another story.

Peter Martins of the New York City Ballet was my client. On the one hand the notion of him is as completely offensive; and on the other hand, there are movies made about people like him. He was an artistic director who had a Machiavellian relationship with his ballerinas that’s like something out of literature. You can’t say you’re shocked when you discover he’s a predator, because that’s his expected role.

This stuff is very confusing. I don’t think any woman should put up with bad behavior, but also you can’t change your judgment of artistic or literary or political contributions based on it. We have to look at the culture that something occurs in. It’s the culture that should change.

[succorcreek]

George Orwell's 1984 Decodes Trump in 7 Articles You Need Today George Orwell's 1984 Decodes Trump in 7 Articles You Need Today Article 1 1. The New Yorker: 1984 and George Orwell I have Im afraid a terrible confession to make: I have never been a huge fan of George Orwells 1984. It always seemed in its extrapolations from present to future too pat a little lacking in the imaginative extrapolations we want from dystopian literature. As the British author Anthony Burgess pointed out a long time ago Orwells modern hell was basically a reproduction of British misery in the postwar rationing years with the malice of Stalins police-state style added on. That other ninth-grade classic Aldous Huxleys Brave New World where a permanent playground of sex and drugs persists in a fiercely inegalitarian society seemed to me far more prescient and so did any work of Philip K. Dicks that extrapolated forward our bizarre American entertainment obsessions into an ever more brutal future in whichKen and Barbie might be worshipped as gods. 1984 seemed in contrast too brutal too atavistic too limited in its imagination of the relation between authoritarian state and helpless citizens. rest of article: http://bit.ly/2gZS2sv 2. 1984 Book sales surge: A Book Decoder for Dystopian Trump CNN Watching me read "1984" arguably the greatest dystopian novel ever written in high school my mother told me that it was a book that everyone should read not just once but again every 10 years. It certainly deserves a reread right now. Alexander J. Urbelis Indeed dozens of news stories this week have alerted us to surging sales of George Orwell's "1984" since the inauguration and even more so in the wake of Kellyanne Conway's now-infamous "alternative facts" gambit. Most media outlets have reported glibly on the figures with some going so far as to compare the Amazon best-seller list (where purchases of "1984" have gone up nearly 10000%) to a "political barometer" before making the obvious parallel between the Orwellian concepts of newspeak and doublethink and the words of Conway....... more: .............. Donald Trump and doublethink In everything from his Cabinet appointments to the rationale for destabilizing executive orders President Trump appears to have taken a cue directly from "1984's" fictional ministries whose purposes are diametrically opposed to their names. Orwell's Ministry of Truth ("Minitrue" in newspeak) for example had nothing to do with truth but was responsible for the fabrication of historical facts. In that vein President Trump has provided us in the name of security with a travel ban on immigrants and refugees from countries whose citizens have caused the terrorism deaths of no Americans while leaving out countries whose citizens have caused the terrorism deaths of thousands of Americans. He has provided us with Betsy DeVos a secretary of education nominee who is widely believed to oppose public education and who promotes the truly Orwellian-sounding concept of "school choice" a plan that seems well-intentioned but which critics complain actually siphons much-needed funds from public to private education institutions. but see this power article with much more info at:http://cnn.it/2h0mz9z 3. 1984 a Bestseller again in the Age of Trump Key Concepts Revealed In the last 15 hours at time of writing George Orwells classic has moved from number 6 to number 1 on Amazons overall bestselling books list. The Guardian noted its placement at number 6 yesterday. The shift comes just days after White House press secretary Sean Spicer told assembled reporters a blatant lie about the size of crowds at Donald Trumps inauguration and after Trumps counselor Kellyanne Conway defended the untruth as alternative facts.http://bit.ly/2eL3My9 4. George Orwell's 1984 explains Trump: Doublespeak alternative facts and reality control A Guide to Trump Doublespeak The normalization of Donald Trump began in 1984: How George Orwells Newspeak has infected the news media (note: when this Blog began February 1 2017 in response to the Trump presidency one of the first things added to this site was the quote also cited here by Maya Angelou. See the topic cloud below for references to this article and print and post this and any photo quotes to put on your fridge post to your Facebook and send to those you love. Dr. Bunch) The poet Maya Angelou wisely observed Whenpeople show you who they arebelieve themthe first time. In keeping with his fascist and authoritarian beliefs during the 2016 presidential campaign Donald Trump threatened to sue members of the news media he did not like offered conspiracy theories that the media were somehow unfairly maligning his campaign called reporters scum and disgraceful and made reporters the objects of mockery and violence at his rallies. Trumps white nationalist supporters and other deplorables responded in kind yelling the Nazi chant Lügenpresse and Jew-S-A in roaring approval during his campaign events. President-elect Donald Trump is continuing his war on the free press with enemies lists a proposed expansion of slander and libel laws and threats to ban critics in the news media access to his administration. This should not be a surprise. In the United States the Fourth Estate is supposed to serve as a guardian for democracy a type of watchdog that helps members of the public make informed decisions and sounds the alarm on unchecked power and threats to the Constitution and the values it embodies. In this moment of crisis theAmerican corporate news media has been presented with a critical choice: Itcan normalize Trumps radical and dangerous anti-democratic behavior or it can stand up against it. full article at:http://bit.ly/2h0Lmu3 5. Welcome to dystopia George Orwell experts on Donald Trump Why is 1984 Number 1 sales Amazon.com? Experts on George Orwell Dystopia: A. Jean Seaton: The seeds were sown during the George W Bush era Reading George Orwells Nineteen Eighty-Four again now hurts. And Im not the only one to be revisiting it: sales of the book have soared in the past week. What you had previously thought you read at a cool intellectual distance (a great book about over there somewhere in the past or future) now feels intimate bitter and shocking. Orwell is writing of now when he writes Every year fewer and fewer words and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Of course we all have to keep our heads (especially we have to keep our heads). The lies about the crowd size at Donald Trumps inauguration by the hapless White House spokesman Sean Spicer at his first briefing were not earth-shattering. But any lie from this podium is deeply unsettling. Any hopes that Trump or his team were underneath it all normal rightwingers have dissipated. The post-truth era certainly shares aspects of the dystopian world of Orwells Nineteen Eighty-Four. Michael Goves infamous comment that Britain has had enough of experts is just one step away from 22 = 5. In the interrogation scene in 1984 this is the most appalling moment: before now we read it as a ludicrous indictment of the rejection of reality (surely we conclude the party itself must know that 22 = 4; science machines all depend on it). In Nineteen Eighty-Four the elite personified by OBrien foster and control this willingness to believe one thing one day and one thing another. Now it seems the party itself may believe the lie. As Orwell writes: Science in the old sense had almost ceased to exist. In Newspeak there is no word for science. Sales of George Orwell's 1984 surge after Kellyanne Conway's 'alternative facts' Read more Then there is privacy Orwell puts the diary and the private self at the heart of his writing. In 1984 keeping a diary is Winstons first act of transgression. Orwell knew that authoritarian regimes want rest of article:http://bit.ly/2uWbBY8 6. George Orwell's 1984 explains Trump: Doublespeak alternative facts and reality control DONALD TRUMP was predicted in George Orwell's 1984 and sales of the book rocket over comparisons with doublespeak crimestop alternative facts and reality control. 7. Teaching 1984 to High School Seniors:My classroom becomes a totalitarian state every school year toward the end of October. In preparation for teaching 1984 to seniors I announce the launch of a new program aimed at combating senioritis a real disease with symptoms that include frequent unexplained absences indifferent reading and shoddy work. I tell each class that another class is largely to blame for the problem and require for a substantial participation grade that students file daily reports on another students work habits and conduct; most are assigned to another student in the same class. We blanket the campus in posters featuring my face and simple slogans that warn against the dangers of senioritis and declare my program the only solution to the schools woes. Last year my program was OSIP (Organization for Senior Improvement Project); this year its SAFE (Scholar Alliance For Excellence). We chant a creed at the start of each class celebrate the revelatory reports of heroes with cheers and boo those who fail to participate enthusiastically. I create a program Instagram that students eagerly follow. I occasionally bestow snacks as rewards.http://theatln.tc/2tA34X7 and 1984 on Broadway: Art mirroring Life the Lie and Liarshttp://bbc.in/2uWt2aR Click Here: Catalog of 100 Books Kindle Hypnosis Binaural Subliminal CDs 1984 alternate truths and alternate realities articles crimestop doublespeak dystopia george orwell reality control thrown under bus trump guide #trumpbully #stopbully #trumpmentalhealth http://bit.ly/2rZ1vSp

George Orwell's 1984

[wolvesdevour]

From Russia With Love

[Title is taken from one of the protest signs I saw today.] There’s a post I’ve been thinking on writing for awhile, and it’s a mix-bag of things, which makes it even harder for me to write. Also, by this necessity, it is very long. Sorry :/ I want to talk a little on American-Russian relations, and not simply on a White House-Kremlin scale, but on a citizen-to-citizen scale.

I think I first should say why Russians. My great grandparents moved to the USA during the first Russian revolution. They were nobility and fled, rather than be killed. They were hands the Tsarina. Upon reaching American shores, they quickly, purposefully destroyed their family culture. It is difficult to really research it through family, because no one  wishes to talk much about it. This isn’t the first I’ve heard of this tactic. In order to appear “legitimately American,” sometimes people attempt to erase all traces of their immigrancy. This is very depressing to me. From what I understand, they were Prussian-Latvian, although they also lived in Russia, of course.  A second reason for why I am interested in this is because, from an early age, I realized that even if a country has a dictator in place, that does not mean the people are supportive of the dictator. My grandmother spent time in Germany during the 30s and she often spoke to me about it. She was a tourist and student to Germany, young, and not fully understanding the trouble brewing. She was often a dark and gothic individual, yet strangely positive and naive at the same time. I think she believed the human species better than fascism and Nazism. I like to think she’s right, in the end, and that we may at times enter these states, but that as a species, we are inherently fascist.  My grandmother’s friends were some of the first to go into the CCCP and take photos and report to Americans about their troubles--starvation, oppression, imprisonment. As a child, I’d leaf through these photos, but in college, I finally got more appreciation for what was happening to the Russian people at this time. Everyone I have known has said that they hate Russians. They hate Russians because of Soviet Communism and their desire to rule/control the world. They hate Stalin, Khrushchev, Gorbachev, Putin. They call them thugs, thieves, and look down upon their women as mail order brides. They call them hackers and spies. They call them oppressors and criminals. These are not the people I saw in the photos; these are not the people I have met. I do not disbelieve that there are bad Russians. There are bad Americans, too. Russia and the USA are brothers. Since our time in WWII, we have been strange brothers. We gave them aid, and Stalin used that aid to fund his gulags--to oppress his own people. They helped us win the war against fascism. We have always been both at odds and at help to each other, but we’re a brothership with a rocky relationship. I think that is Stalin’s work most of all. I do not think the Russian people should have reason to hate us--the American people; we do not have reason to hate them--the Russian people.  Russia, similar to the USA, has made bad actions. We have both warred and oppressed people. This is difficult to hear about one’s own country. This isn’t unusual for a country--I can think of many others who have harmed others that seek to deny their harm. It is particularly difficult for a people to know that their country did terrible things under the peoples’ noses. I went to a film event set by the Ukrainian embassy about the Crimean Tatars. There was a time when Crimea was occupied by the Nazis, to which  they could do nothing. However, they had fighter plane pilots who continued to fight for the Russian side against the Nazis. They Nazis left, then the Russians moved in. The CCCP then decided that the Crimean Tatars were all Nazis because they were occupied. So, they shoved them in cattle cars and sent them on the railroad. Many died in transit, packed shoulder to shoulder, unable to sit or lie down, with no food or water. They traveled through Moscow. No one knew. The trains were marked with symbols of cows. People did not think their government was deporting and imprisoning people like this. There were Russians who spoke against Stalin, but they often found themselves in gulags, killed, or sent abroad. I have friends whose family were ostracized to Kazakhstan until they eventually fled to the USA. Many poets or writers dreamed of winning clemency to flee to the USA. Some, such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, spent time in the gulags. People died in those camps. Some prison camps formed prison camps. I cannot remember the name of the city at this time, so I apologize, but there is one prison camp that effectively became a prison city. It had its own prison. It had children and women. Life was prison. Poets wrote of their pain on rolling paper--used for making cigarettes--and burned them away. They memorized stories, unable to write them down, for manuscripts do not burn* and they hoped for a time when they could speak freely again. But what about modern times, right? That is all history? The first that I notice from people is that they say every modern Russian they have met has been overbearingly in love with their home country. Russians are in love with Russia. Which puts a lot of Americans off. After all, we are taught that Russia is the Soviet Union. That Russia is the spy-thug enemy. So we see that they are proud of being bad. Most Russians I have met? They love their country because they are Russian. Americans love their country because we are American. It is a very similar love.  From childhood, we are told to love our country. I think there is a line between love of country and nationalism--the bad, obsessive and oppressive love. Many may love their land, their people, their culture--all of which is what makes up a country--and there are others who think we must hurt and destroy others with that love, to be blinded in their love and see no faults or what harm their country is doing. We can love our land, people, and culture. As Americans, we can love it. As Russians, I think they can love theirs too. Indeed, Russians should love their land, their people, their culture.  Why should they, despite the issues their country has caused, should love their country? I do not think Russians should love their for the harm their politicians, the Kremlin, or their country--as a political entity--have caused. Do not ignore the harm, but do love for the good. There are lessons that the German people learned that I think we Russians and Americas both need to learn.** Post-Nazi Germany, they felt great shame and despair for the actions that they committed. And yes, they should feel shame for that. People within their country committed such great crimes against each other, against the world. For much time post-WWII, Germans felt shame and self-hatred. Yet, there was a time when the Germans were facing a major football/soccer cup win. My German professor gave a lesson on this, because in part, it takes a little understanding. The people were effectively afraid to be proud. The German people were scared to love themselves.  Because loving themselves too much led to the Nazi Party. After all, that’s what Nazism was. It was nationalist pride. It’s literally there in the title. Germans were scared because if they started to be proud, to say “YES! We are German! We won! We are amazing!”, they would instead be saying “YES! We are German! We are Nazi! We are proud of our atrocities and terrible past!” But this was also something the Germans needed. They needed to realize that there was good about Germany, too. There was bad, but there is always good as well.  This is what nationalism runs on, however. Germany turned to the Nazi Party largely due to great depression as a nation. They had lost their war. They were poor and in great debt. Their leader had promised to return their people to greatness and failed. Some of their economic oppression had been long term, other parts short term. There were good things happening in Germany. Except people couldn’t see it. They were unhappy and a man began to promise them a new way. He promised them to make them great again. He promised and was not part of the old guard--he was not nobility. He was from poverty, too. He was a common person. He could help them, and he knew there were people to blame. They were the wrong people, but this made the Germans feel better. It made them feel like they could do something. And they did. The wrong things, of course. Although some had their limits, and then they became the enemy, too.  So what I am saying is that even if there are bad things that a country is doing, the people are not bad. I think our generation should understand this. After all, do I enjoy the wars in the Middle East? Do I enjoy how we handled Syria? How we’ve handled our relations with African countries? Because we have also helped cause economic troubles there, too. This is the same with South American countries and Latin American countries. I hate how we have treated the First Nations and native peoples.  But I think we have done good as well.  This is the same as our brother, Russia. There is great depression there, too. And there is a feeling that no one cares about them. I used to talk to the vendors in D.C. about this, strangely enough. Those little flag pin sellers? In the metro stations? Many I met were Russian. I would talk to them, in my mangled awkward Russian, and they would typically say “Alright, let’s speak in English,” because my Russian was very crappy, but I think they were excited, too, to speak in English and practice it. They always would say “YOU are learning Russian? YOU have interest in Russia? You must be crazy. Why would anyone care about us?” 

When I spent time at the Russian embassy film events, I got a similar reaction--despite there being a lot of American students, just like me, most of the waiters, bartenders, and general staff assumed that the only people to have an interest in Russian films and culture were Russian.

This probably only fueled me to care more. It is not pity that I care for Russia, or want others to understand why we shouldn’t villainize the Russian people. It comes from sympathy. I have always hated myself, after all, and eventually learned that maybe, even if I hated parts of myself, I should recognize and love the good parts, too. This is why I do not support loving the good parts of Russia despite being transgender, bi/pan, queer, and a feminist, but because of it. There are Russians who are transgender. There are Russians who are LGBTQIA+. There are Russians who feminists. There are Russians who are good people. Being Russian doesn’t make you a bad person. Being a bad person makes you bad.   As our country heads into its Trump presidency, I think we need to keep this in mind, too. We are who we make it to be. I think there will be a lot of fight, but no matter how depressed we get, we need to remember that there are good parts to our country, but there are and will be many bad parts. We need to understand and talk about those bad parts. We need to make sure that those bad parts do not lead us to make further terrible decisions.  I think, as an American, our best bet isn’t to further ostracize ourselves from the Russian citizens. From citizen-to-citizen, we have tried a cold war. I believe this only made everything worse. From citizen-to-citizen, I think if we help each other, learn about each other, we can better both our countries.  Also, there are Russian immigrants as well as Russian students and tourists to the USA. I’d rather make them feel welcome than to continue villainizing them and their culture. Are there people who come here and do stupid, rude things? Eh, yes. I think this is a human condition, not a country-specific one. We should not be shy about telling them or talking to them about this, although perhaps patient or learn how to delegate--that is literally the reason why we have ambassadors, but even as citizens, I think we should learn about other cultures, considering that we’re a country of immigrants. Of course, we also go to other places and do stupid, rude, terrible things, so we need to check ourselves, too. This isn’t a new idea. This is seen in stories--Star Trek, Man From UNCLE. The more we work together, the better we are. I could probably write a lot of posts about stories where Americans and Russians work against each other and why that is terrible when they could have done so much better by working with each other--such as Iron Man 2--and about movies where Americans and Russians work together and why that is awesome, but that’s another post. You can love your culture, your land, your country and not be a fascist.  ________________ *This is a Mikhail Bulgakov reference. He was strangely beloved by Joseph Stalin. Bulgakov despised him and constantly applied to leave the CCCP. He was never granted this. The police had raided his home and kept record of his work. “Manuscripts do not burn” is a quote from The Master and Margarita and is a bit of a warning--there is nothing you can do that isn’t noticed or recorded. **There are other countries that I am not mentioning that I think could also learn this lesson, but that’s a different day, a different post.

[succorcreek]

George Orwell's 1984 Decodes Trump in 7 Articles You Need Today

George Orwell's 1984 Decodes Trump in 7 Articles You Need Today Article 1 1. The New Yorker: 1984 and George Orwell  I have, I’m afraid, a terrible confession to make: I have never been a huge fan of George Orwell’s “1984.” It always seemed, in its extrapolations from present to future, too pat, a little lacking in the imaginative extrapolations we want from dystopian literature. As the British author Anthony Burgess pointed out a long time ago, Orwell’s modern hell was basically a reproduction of British misery in the postwar rationing years, with the malice of Stalin’s police-state style added on. That other ninth-grade classic, Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World,” where a permanent playground of sex and drugs persists in a fiercely inegalitarian society, seemed to me far more prescient, and so did any work of Philip K. Dick’s that extrapolated forward our bizarre American entertainment obsessions into an ever more brutal future in which Ken and Barbie might be worshipped as gods. “1984” seemed, in contrast, too brutal, too atavistic, too limited in its imagination of the relation between authoritarian state and helpless citizens. rest of article: http://bit.ly/2gZS2sv 2.  1984 Book sales surge: A Book Decoder for Dystopian Trump CNN  Watching me read "1984," arguably the greatest dystopian novel ever written, in high school, my mother told me that it was a book that everyone should read not just once, but again, every 10 years. It certainly deserves a reread right now.

Alexander J. Urbelis

Indeed, dozens of news stories this week have alerted us to surging sales of George Orwell's "1984" since the inauguration and even more so in the wake of Kellyanne Conway's now-infamous "alternative facts" gambit. Most media outlets have reported glibly on the figures, with some going so far as to compare the Amazon best-seller list (where purchases of "1984" have gone up nearly 10,000%) to a "political barometer" before making the obvious parallel between the Orwellian concepts of newspeak and doublethink and the words of Conway....... more:  ..............

Donald Trump and doublethink

In everything from his Cabinet appointments to the rationale for destabilizing executive orders, President Trump appears to have taken a cue directly from "1984's" fictional ministries, whose purposes are diametrically opposed to their names. Orwell's Ministry of Truth ("Minitrue" in newspeak), for example, had nothing to do with truth but was responsible for the fabrication of historical facts.

In that vein, President Trump has provided us, in the name of security, with a travel ban on immigrants and refugees from countries whose citizens have caused the terrorism deaths of no Americans, while leaving out countries whose citizens have caused the terrorism deaths of thousands of Americans.

He has provided us with Betsy DeVos, a secretary of education nominee who is widely believed to oppose public education, and who promotes the truly Orwellian-sounding concept of "school choice," a plan that seems well-intentioned but which critics complain actually siphons much-needed funds from public to private education institutions.

but, see this power article with much more info at: http://cnn.it/2h0mz9z 3. 1984 a Bestseller again, in the Age of Trump Key Concepts Revealed    In the last 15 hours, at time of writing, George Orwell’s classic has moved from number 6 to number 1 on Amazon’s overall bestselling books list. The Guardian noted its placement at number 6 yesterday. The shift comes just days after White House press secretary Sean Spicer told assembled reporters a blatant lie about the size of crowds at Donald Trump’s inauguration, and after Trump’s counselor Kellyanne Conway defended the untruth as “alternative facts.” http://bit.ly/2eL3My9 4. George Orwell's 1984 explains Trump: Doublespeak, alternative facts and reality control

A Guide to Trump Doublespeak

The normalization of Donald Trump began in “1984”: How George Orwell’s Newspeak has infected the news media

  (note: when this Blog began February 1 2017 in response to the Trump presidency, one of the first things added to this site was the quote also cited here by Maya Angelou. See the topic cloud below for references to this article, and print and post this and any photo quotes to put on your fridge, post to your Facebook, and send to those you love. Dr. Bunch)

The poet Maya Angelou wisely observed, “When people show you who they are, believe them the first time.” In keeping with his fascist and authoritarian beliefs, during the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump threatened to sue members of the news media he did not like, offered conspiracy theories that “the media” were somehow unfairly maligning his campaign, called reporters “scum” and “disgraceful” and made reporters the objects of mockery and violence at his rallies. Trump’s white nationalist supporters and other deplorables responded in kind, yelling the Nazi chant “Lügenpresse” and “Jew-S-A” in roaring approval during his campaign events. President-elect Donald Trump is continuing his war on the free press with enemies lists, a proposed expansion of slander and libel laws and threats to ban critics in the news media access to his administration. This should not be a surprise. In the United States, the Fourth Estate is supposed to serve as a guardian for democracy, a type of watchdog that helps members of the public make informed decisions and sounds the alarm on unchecked power and threats to the Constitution and the values it embodies. In this moment of crisis, the American corporate news media has been presented with a critical choice: It can normalize Trump’s radical and dangerous anti-democratic behavior or it can stand up against it. full article at: http://bit.ly/2h0Lmu3 5. Welcome to dystopia – George Orwell experts on Donald Trump Why is 1984 Number 1 sales Amazon.com?

Experts on George Orwell, Dystopia:

A. Jean Seaton: The seeds were sown during the George W Bush era

Reading George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four again, now, hurts. And I’m not the only one to be revisiting it: sales of the book have soared in the past week. What you had previously thought you read at a cool, intellectual distance (a great book about “over there”, somewhere in the past or future) now feels intimate, bitter and shocking. Orwell is writing of now when he writes, “Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller.” Of course, we all have to keep our heads (especially we have to keep our heads). The lies about the crowd size at Donald Trump’s inauguration by the hapless White House spokesman Sean Spicer at his first briefing were not earth-shattering. But any lie from this podium is deeply unsettling. Any hopes that Trump or his team were, underneath it all, “normal” rightwingers, have dissipated. The post-truth era certainly shares aspects of the dystopian world of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Michael Gove’s infamous comment that Britain has had enough of experts is just one step away from 2+2 = 5. In the interrogation scene in 1984 this is the most appalling moment: before now we read it as a ludicrous indictment of the rejection of reality (surely, we conclude, the party itself must know that 2+2 = 4; science, machines all depend on it). In Nineteen Eighty-Four, the elite, personified by O’Brien, foster and control this willingness to believe one thing one day, and one thing another. Now, it seems, the party itself may believe the lie. As Orwell writes: “Science, in the old sense, had almost ceased to exist. In Newspeak there is no word for science.”

Sales of George Orwell's 1984 surge after Kellyanne Conway's 'alternative facts'

Read more

Then there is privacy – Orwell puts the diary and the private self at the heart of his writing. In 1984, keeping a diary is Winston’s first act of transgression. Orwell knew that authoritarian regimes want rest of article: http://bit.ly/2uWbBY8 6. George Orwell's 1984 explains Trump: Doublespeak, alternative facts and reality control

DONALD TRUMP was predicted in George Orwell's 1984 and sales of the book rocket over comparisons with doublespeak, crimestop, alternative facts and reality control.

7.   Teaching 1984 to High School Seniors:

My classroom becomes a totalitarian state every school year toward the end of October. In preparation for teaching 1984 to seniors, I announce the launch of a new program aimed at combating senioritis, a real disease with symptoms that include frequent unexplained absences, indifferent reading, and shoddy work. I tell each class that another class is largely to blame for the problem and require, for a substantial participation grade, that students file daily reports on another student’s work habits and conduct; most are assigned to another student in the same class. We blanket the campus in posters featuring my face and simple slogans that warn against the dangers of senioritis and declare my program the only solution to the school’s woes. Last year, my program was OSIP (Organization for Senior Improvement Project); this year, it’s SAFE (Scholar Alliance For Excellence). We chant a creed at the start of each class, celebrate the revelatory reports of “heroes” with cheers, and boo those who fail to participate enthusiastically. I create a program Instagram that students eagerly follow. I occasionally bestow snacks as rewards.

http://theatln.tc/2tA34X7 and, 1984 on Broadway: Art mirroring Life, the Lie and Liars http://bbc.in/2uWt2aR

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