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disfordevineaux · 5 years ago

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I don't know if you've done this before. But, do you have any Chase headcanons about his childhood or early teens? I'm kinda curious about how my favorite disaster boi could've been like back then 🤔

Chase childhood/teen/early 20s headcanons

I actually answered an ask I will link HERE with a little bit into what I think about his whole ‘growing up’ situation, if you can even call it that. I’ll delve a bit deeper into my hcs but I recommend you read that post I linked. It establishes my thoughts on his childhood to where a lot of these hcs will spawn from. So essentially this is a Part 2 of my Chase childhood headcanons. Going to focus on his late teens and early 20s.

As stated in my previous hcs Chase was an ‘orphan’ until his uncle (his mothers older brother) who magically showed up to adopt him for the government checks. His uncle was a long haul fisherman or something along those lines. This is where he officially received his last name of Devineaux once again.

I have a feeling his name wasn’t originally Chase. That being most likely his middle name or one he came up with which he changed to be his first, either shortened from something or just as is. He seems like an Alexandre to me. He would have negative connotations towards that name and preferred to decide a name a for himself rather than keeping the given name from a mother or family who didn’t really want him. He would have changed it once he left home.

No matter the living situation he was in, there wasn’t a lot of money around and if there was it wasn’t shared with him.

The majority of his teen years or the years that sculpted him into who he is now were in a town North-West of Paris along the coast. Somewhere like Dieppe, a fishing-port town.

You’d think by looking at him as an adult he was a bully or one of those ass hats at school who tried to be cool by being a dipstick or forcing a ‘class clown’ motif. In reality, he did everything in his power to blend into the shadows as he hated school, especially the social aspect of it.

Still, he was a sarcastic little shit when needed.

Spent a lot of his time outside or working dead-end jobs. Sometimes couldn’t return home or had to get into his house through a window instead of the front door.

Didn’t have many valuable possessions but had many crazy experiences like witnessing a flock of birds attack a drunk man, and won.

Was strangely optimistic about his future. Couldn’t get any worse than this, yeah? Yeah, it can and it will buddy.

Did watch Footloose religiously and intensely enjoyed it. *Wink*

He was reasonably good at school and tried to fast track it and graduate a year early. His application was accepted even with the few blemishes on his school academic report thanks to a few fights he partook in.

He was best at literature, English studies and writing in general. He was the top English and writing student and once even tried joining the drama club but the second he walked in the door he was instantly annoyed with everyone inside and did a full 180 out of that hellscape.

He then tried out for the sports clubs and teams but didn’t have time between work after school.

Chase actually made a friend during his last few years at school who managed to be the school’s main weed dealer (Chase draws chaos to him enough said). They actually were a good duo and Chase developed a serious attachment to him. His friend had a lot of money thanks to his business and often would get Chase to be his ��bodyguard’ when selling to older clients.

They were both weird guys with different levels of intensity over random things. Both had that ‘dudebro’ vibe who would listen to Abba but in reality, the type of dudes who sit right next to each other in a hot tub, no need for 5 feet apart.

Somehow both comfortable with their sexuality which is refreshing. But, that won’t last long :(

They never got to really developed their relationship further before Chase left but it was a silent agreement between them that they liked one another on a physical and emotional level. They rekindled and I guess, ‘officially’ date when in the Air Force when training together. (Lovers in the military trope don’t @ me it fits him PERFECTLY.)

He and his friend were actually going to join the Air Force together. And they did. Chase first and his friend later.

Dude did some stupidly impulsive shit. Especially once he had a friend. Antics? Yes, many. Young, bored lonely boys with repressed feelings do stupid shit to fill the long hours. Jumping off things at high speed? Yes. Buring stuff? Yes. Smashing stuff? Yes. Listening to Green Day? Unironically, Yes.

No doubt they once burned down an abandoned house while trying to hotbox in one of the rooms. Nearly replicated the incident with the school DURING CLASS in the janitors closet. Boys just wanna get high and kiss okay?

Chase was born strong physically but mentally? Nar. Could fight a bear but would crumble under an anxious moment.

Never wanted to appear weak. It was what everyone expected but he never backed down from a fight or rivalry to his detriment. Stood up for himself no matter the circumstance. He always stood up for his boyfrie- SORRY I MEAN FRIEND.

He was an angry guy, mostly because people constantly tested his patience and intelligence and his home life was always a tense situation where there was no time to be soft or delicate.

Did get into many fights with one particular guy during school and out of school hours.

He was an attractive teenager. I like to think (like is a strong word) he was targeted by this one particular asshole because of their pent up feeling towards Chase. Chase either rejected his advances which set it all off or you just got that vibe from all their exchanges. Either way, at one point the tormentor made his feelings cryptically clear and Chase made sure they weren’t reciprocated.

One particular final fight between them, Chase wound up with a bat to the face which broke his nose badly.

The nose never really healed the best or back to how it was originally. This was something that scared him forever, becoming more resentful and unable to let things go. A lot more guarded from then on.

Chase used to be the pretty buff tall boy but the nose downgraded him to just a tall buff boy who has hints of a pretty boy in him.

Worked a few jobs during most nights. Needed money, mostly supported himself financially. Worked as a dish boy in a local restaurant and at the cinema as a cleaner. He always seemed to get the cleaning jobs.

Chase used to skateboard. He was pretty good at it too.

He started smoking young, around 15-16. And thanks to his companion, would often smoke weed supplied to him by his friend.

Loved going to the dentist when he could. He started eating those strong cheap dusty mints when he smoked as it was a cheap form of keeping his breath fresh after he smoked. Also, he thought it made him look cool and ended up getting addicted.

He wasn’t a joyless kid or teen, He just wasn’t one who smiled a lot.

Chase never really trained for his driving license. He just went for his test at the police station. They made him drive around the block once and they just gave it to him.

Chase: the aspiring pilot.

Chase wanted to be a pilot ever since he was young, specifically the French Air Force. No real trigger set that dream in motion, he just liked the idea of piloting a high-speed plane and seeing the world from up above. Moving fast is his ultimate goal.

He studied and prepared early to join the École Militaire de l'air (Military Air Force before it folded into the Air School). But you have to be over 18 and with his plans to complete school early, he would spend the year until then in basic military training, then would transfer over. All of this was to increase his chances of being accepted along with the examination, which he passed thanks to his passion for it.

Of course, things don’t always go to plan and even though he was on a path to graduating early a huge final brawl broke between him and a longtime bully halted this.

He had always fought with him specifically and this time, after years of building it all up, it hit the fan. The incident put a hold on his plans and wasn’t able to graduate a whole year early.

Fast track forward and due to home pressures and school weighing him down he decided to just leave school and home and when he left, as one last ‘fuck you’ to his tormentor, his friend helped him break into his house and stole his car and drove it straight to Paris, abandoning it in the countryside just before. No one ever knew it was him and it is by far his greatest victory, as he knew how much he loved that car. Major mood. Chase was tempted to push it off a cliff in spite but couldn’t find one.

Chase still went into the general military before transferring to the Air Force once over 18 and acing his entrance evaluations.

Chase and his ‘friend’ managed to get in at the same time. Que, LLLLLLLL LOVERS!

They made sure they were in the same dorms, ‘classes’ and that their schedules lined up. They even swapped around so they had the same duties.

Chase thrived and was a great pilot. He achieved his pilots’ license and began working his way to completing the 2 years here then moving on to a higher position. His friend focused more on the engineering courses.

For someone spontaneous in an impulsive way, he liked the regimented schedule. It gave him purpose and meaning

Chase ended up getting kicked out after a massive brawl incited by an argument with another cadet about the particular notion of his relationship with his ‘friend’.

It was made clear to him such behaviour receives no second chances and was forced to leave, meaning he never officially completed his 2 years and was never allowed back in the foreseeable future.

Chase was desolated and once again hardened by this turn of events.

His 20s in a nutshell

Chase sought employment in the police force thanks to his military origins. He did, in fact, complete the basic military training aspect so he was a front runner for the police force.

He needed a job as all his money was wasted on a fruitless dream.

Spent the first few years of his police force employment as a ‘beat cop’ until his arrest numbers/success and work availability sought his promotion to a detective quite early in his 20s.

Chase was used to working full time and all the time at odd hours from very early on. He started his work career young.

They say you have 10 years in the prime of your career and Chase used that up instantly, shooting up the police then detective ranks fast due to how hard he worked, non-stop. His obsession and dedication with keeping busy and solving cases made him unmatchable.

Chase was physically skilled despite his smoking habits and mentally quick too, even if he acted dangerously without foresight sometimes.

He was very successful as a detective. It was his true calling

Chase has seen some nasty things and is a very good shot with a handgun.

Has he killed anyone? You decide. Personally? Yes, obviously. This has never and will never phase him.

He has been through so many police issued cars he now gets the second-hand cars due to how reckless he is.

Perused criminals with crazy car chases even when he was just a lowly beat cop. It got worse when he became a detective.

No doubt he kept and took home case files (sometimes even evidence) and didn’t give them back even when he became an Interpol liaison. He worked on those cases, he solved them, they are his. He keeps them all either at his apartment or in a storage unit.

Work became his life. His only vice.

Opted out for a partner as it wasn’t a department regulation just a personal option if wanted. Don’t need someone wasting his time, slowing him down or possibly taking away his shine.

Developed obsessive tendencies.

Detective work is competitive. You end up running around trying and fighting to get the best brutal murder homicide case as it will look great to your superiors. It was all a race to see who was the best. Chase was one of the best thanks to having no outsider life to distract him.

Somehow Chase wasn’t a suck-up his those above him. You would think he would be but Chase just enjoyed working and solving, completing things.

You are measured by your achievements and you have to be sure of yourself and your capabilities to survive in the race.

For work that was on the outside very heroic and selfless. Most detectives he worked around and ‘with’ were selfish, heartless and egotistical. The successful ones were anyway. Chase one of them.

He hated them all just as much as they hated him.

Ended up not caring for normal citizens and fellow employees disdain for his abrupt nature. Developed a superiority complex as a result.

But he remained composed and well mannered when dealing with victims and witnesses.

He was very susceptible to the alluring nature of the egotistic know it all.

All of this aged him rapidly. I have no doubt he is only in his early to mid-30s (in the show) but has aged himself visibly with unhealthy working hours and lifestyles.

(I’m not going to go too deep here as at this point I might as well insert my dam fanfiction. I have a whole story planned for what I think his detective days were like. I’ll give you a hint, it’s dark.)

Final relationships.

In regards to his love life? Don’t have one. One night stands? Eh, maybe very occasionally but he isn’t the sort of person to get wrapped up in such things. He is very professional and despite being touch starved he can live without physical relationships easily. They also make him uncomfortable now due to certain events.

His ‘friend’ asked for Chase to wait for him, that once he was finished in the Air Force his partner would come find him. Chase did for the entirety of his 20s and pretty much would for his entire life. First loves are hard to forget.

They only met up again once when Chase was in his late 20s and his friend no longer felt that way towards him or that kind of way anymore. He had a family. Chase sort of understood that his lover realistically would have moved on and blamed himself for not looking for him instead. He became obsessed with his success with work after all.

He couldn’t comprehend why his friend would finally contact him after all these years just to tell him he didn’t love him anymore. He always assumed it was to tie up loose ends or to make fun of him for waiting. To hurt him.

Chase was physically and mentally devastated to say the least. Especially when the last interaction they ever had was his old friend handing him a goddam conversion camp pamphlet.

This really dragged on and I’m sorry I really went off there. I hope it was at least relatively what you were after.

#this got so out of hand IM SO SORRY ITS SO HUGE I-#SOme one confiscate my brain from me #disfordevineaux ask #chase devineaux #carmen sandeigo 2019 #carmen sandiego #devineaux #inspector devineaux #netflix #disfordevineaux #headcanon #hc #ask #cs chase devineaux #cs 2019

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wirewitchviolet · 4 years ago

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Hate Mobs Gotta Go

Last night, I did something I have never expected to do, and just full on gave up on a fun RPG writing assignment. Which I had to do because I hit a point where it was so overdue and unfinished that I was falling asleep sitting up and stress vomiting and other such things. There’s a whole lot of factors behind that. Other health issues, the toll of being on total pandemic lockdown for months, with neighbors just straight up open mouth coughing at my door, emergencies with friends and family, multiple fires and hardware failures, but the main thing was, and still is, the constant harassment from a militant hate mob, completely out of touch with reality.

Years ago, I remember there was this thing the internet at large was fond of doing with foaming at the mouth far right religious extremists- Mercilessly ridiculing them in public to expose how disconnected everything they said or did was from reality. Remember seeing this one float around and laughing your head off?

And if I mention the Westboro Baptist Church, you immediately picture a single family of raving bigots picketing funerals and such with their big homophobic signs, with a bigger crowd mocking them, right?

For some reason, the modern version of that particular flavor of fringe weirdo doesn’t get that sort of ridicule. Presumably because they’re focusing almost exclusively on trans people, and most people have this weird thing where like if you stick up for trans people you get cooties or something and never dig into the real juicy ridicule fodder. But for real, this stuff is OUT THERE. Just look at a few examples here.

Come for the weird ravings about harvesting baby organs. Stay for the... adult woman who apparently believes breasts get their shape from actually being sacks filled with milk under women’s skin? Now, how about this colorful comparison?

For anyone who wasn’t aware, pronouns are words like “I” “you” “he” “she” “it” and “this,” while rohypnol is colloquially known as “the date rape drug,” so this is utter gibberish. The full context of course is that this person is trying to make the argument that forcing this bigot to refer to women she’s prejudiced against as “she” instead of arbitrarily tossing around “he” or “it” is... raping her brain, I guess?

So... this is pretty clearly some creep’s weird little fantasy. The obvious giveaway is pretending that trans women “aren’t in the correct bathroom” when going to... the correct bathroom, and that the non-existent law about this is somehow enforced by... random bigots opting to deputize themselves. What DOES happen for real though is bigots like this being arrested for barging into public restroom stalls with camcorders aimed at the crotches of women on toilets and trying to defend themselves by insisting they have some duty to check what their genitals look like. On which note...

That’s just disgusting. It’s also as close as I feel comfortable to posting all the graphic fantasies I see from these people about the barbaric genital mutilation they imagine trans women subject ourselves to which really has no basis at all in reality. Well maybe I can post this one.

I’m not going to go through and itemize all the baldfaced lies in that, because I really kinda hope I don’t have to, and also because the person who slapped this together was kind enough to break it up in such a way that I legitimately can say “every single line of this is a completely baseless lie.” Also the art in the corner is stolen from a child-friendly comic whose author is trans, so, that’s extra slimy. Also wow that “bone scans” bit is actually one I’ve never seen. Where the hell do they even get these ideas?

Also this one needs some setup. If you have time, this right here is a freaking journey, if not, I’ll try to summarize.

So a while ago, this one particular unhinged bigot decided the most productive way to spend all her time was to get in touch with a bulk sticker printing business and order thousands if not millions of these weird gross poorly framed slabs with a really crude drawing of a penis and bunch of gibberish she really wishes were the names of popular twitter hashtags that nobody else but her ever uses. And then after receiving these, just... wandering around the city she lives in all day every day plastering them on phone booths and power poles and the mirrors of bathrooms in like.. elementary schools and park benches, just everywhere. And then makes multiple passes a day apparently to make sure nobody has tried to remove any of them, as detailed in this amazing thread I’ll link again.

So the latest break in that particular saga is that same zealot going around plastering stickers like this around too, to make it seem like “both sides do it.”

It should be obvious that that’s a “blacks rule!” sort of fake between the baffling text and using the extra inclusive, particular emphasis on supporting people of color, general purpose LGBT+ flag, but also, like their fellows on 4chan, they plan this sort of “false flag” crap in broad daylight:

I should really properly credit the whistle-blowing on that particular oddity, and I should also note that aside from the breast milk sacks, this is all just stuff I saw TODAY catching up on my twitter feed, but my main point with all this is to illustrate that we really are dealing with Jack Chick/Westboro Baptist-level unhinged zealotry... but again, nobody’s out there pointing and laughing. And it turns out, when you don’t have people pointing and laughing at this sort of thing, you get people taking it seriously. So... when I went to quickly search for a news story to link with the bit about creeps barging in on women with cameras, the results I got were... this.

That... sure is a lot of stories about totally innocent people in a demographic I belong to being murdered by total strangers goaded into blind murderous hatred by the sort of people I’m pointing and laughing at! Ha ha! There’s a very real chance of that happening to me every time I step outside, for any reason! Tee hee! I live in a state of constant fear! Whoopsie!

And it’s not just stuff like that. The people posting these rambling tirades about “breast milk sack implants” and putting crude penis stickers everywhere, never being called out as the unhinged weirdos they are, either have the world turning a blind eye to all this crap, or have everything they do downplayed in the media to the point where outright sexual harassment, doxing, and slurs I don’t want to repeat get headlines like “so-and-so made comments that some fringe trans activists on the internet deem ‘possibly transphobic’” and that’s AT BEST. More often you get stuff like the one incident I managed to bring a lot of public attention to way back when, where some bigot just literally walked up to someone on the street, grabbed them, savagely beat the hell out of them until pulled apart, had friends film the whole thing, and bragged after the fact about it, and every story that appeared as a result claimed the assailant was the victim, because they were all written by her friends.

Face obscuring provided by me here, by the way.

And that isn’t a one-off incident. Because, see, most of these unhinged weirdos spewing out all this transphobic gibberish are not, as you would think, a bunch of barely educated Trump hat wearing members of some fringe religious congregation. They’re editors and producers in major British news outlets. This isn’t me shouting conspiracy nonsense either, this is well-documented. Like, The Guardian gets public internal protests over this crap. So does the BBC. Yes, other respected news sites cover this. Media watchdog groups do their best to reign this in with hearings and such, but, don’t actually have any power to enforce anything really. So when there’s “reporting” on this crap, it’s coming directly from the “breast milk sack implant” people. Oh and here’s some screenshots of the headlines of those stories you’re too lazy to click through and actually read:

And of course, sometimes when they want to really come across as respectful, they try to find “scientists” and “doctors” who back up their ravings but all they have to fall back on are disgraced quacks who spend most of their time on activism work to normalize pedophilia.

I’m not bringing that point about Cantor up to discredit his writings about trans people by the way. He doesn’t really HAVE any writings about trans people. He just pasted the names of a bunch of random studies from the 70s about whether playing with barbies makes you gay into his blog a few years back and this crowd was so desperate for validation they declared him an “expert in the field” and started passing out links to his.... pro-pedophila blog. Which is part of this whole pattern, but I’ve written about that before. Oh and the governments of multiple countries manage to treat all these people as “experts” and make policy decisions based on their ravings. That’s fun.

Anyway, aside from encouraging random people to, you know, just randomly murder anyone they see who looks like maybe a trans woman, every so often this weird little cult pulls in an actual celebrity who then has a public meltdown as they post all this gibberish to a wider audience. Currently this is going on with Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling (who’s actively promoting the pedophile guy up there on Twitter), and I think also William Shatner, but I haven’t really looked into it. The last big one though was Graham Linehan. Who you might remember from co-writing some sitcoms that were popular decades ago in Britain, or from being the weird cartoon villain who tried to kill the funding of a children’s charity, prompting this strange pledge drive marathon of Donkey Kong Country.

You might also know him as one of... I think honestly just two people who have ever managed to be such out of control stalking hate mongers that they were actually given a permanent no possible appeal ban from Twitter. Personally though I know him more as, you know, that one absolute creep who’s been obsessively stalking me for like 5 years and never shutting up about his weird personal obsession with me.

I WOULD link the recent freaking filmed interview he did where he spent forever rambling about me, but I’d have to actually watch it to confirm I had the right link, and also the only place I could quickly find a link to it would be on his twitter feed, which as stated, no longer exists. Oh and random side note there, despite being personally, by name, the person he was explicitly targeting all his hateful ramblings at, he wasn’t banned from that site for any of the disgusting stuff he said to me. He just slipped up and mentioned a cis woman with a professorship while shouting about this crap recently and that caused people to actually take action. I do so love being invisible.

Anyway, point is, prior to Rowling grabbing the baton from him as his social media presence went up in flames, this guy was name-dropping me a LOT. Presumably he still is, just in places fewer people see it. And when you have as big an audience as he did, and that audience is as full of hatemongers as his was, that has a pretty noticeable effect. I’ve been deluged with so much hateful garbage for so long it’s impossible for me to put any numbers on it. The closest I can do to quantify it is note that hate dump was big enough that I was also flooded with more weird messages intended as support from total strangers than I could deal with, totally losing access to social media feeds and my e-mail from the volume for a good bit, and THAT flood was big enough that I got this whole second wave of creepy stalkers who’d built up this whole weird fanon where this stalker here is like, someone I used to date or be business partners with and not just some creepy dude like twice my age stalking me over the internet, from a completely different hemisphere.

And I mean... in the broadest of strokes, I can kinda laugh all this off. Because... these people are completely ridiculous, out of touch with reality, and mostly live in other countries. But... all the threats and shouting are very real and very constant and like.. picture someone outside on the street shouting at your windows about how they’re going to break in and kill you. You really can’t ignore that. Even if they’re unarmed, and all they’re really capable of doing is shouting and pounding on your door, you can’t really just ignore that shouting and pounding and just watch a movie or play a game or write this article you promised would be done 3 months ago. You can certainly try, but a pretty big part of your brain is going to be occupied with thoughts about how maybe you should call someone to see if they’ll escort this violent person away, or maybe you should barricade your door in case all that pounding does something.

And I mean this isn’t a bad metaphor for how all the constant threats and stalking I’m dealing with thanks to celebrity bigots personally obsessed with me impacts my life, but it also does a pretty good job of describing how my night went pretty recently when I ACTUALLY DID HAVE SOMEONE POUNDING ON MY ACTUAL REAL PHYSICAL DOOR SHOUTING ABOUT STABBING ME TO DEATH, and no, there was no resolution to that beyond the sound of sirens causing that person to back off.

I also had an experience not too long ago where I was supposed to take a cab to a routine appointment, a car showed up with the cab company’s name on it, somewhat early, and proceeded to drive me... out to the middle of the freaking woods like an hour from where I live, and when my phone rang with my actual cab asking where I was the driver freaked out, had me get out of the car, and took off leaving me just... stuck in the middle of nowhere freezing to death and trying to find a landmark an actual cab could pick me up from. Still don’t know what the hell that whole thing was about and whether a cab driver just REALLY didn’t know what he was doing and panicked or what, but I do know that talking about it publicly in the vaguest of terms lead to a bunch of unhinged shouting from... apparently some unconnected ride share driver with a habit of dumping trans women between stops when they try to get medications or something, convinced I was calling him out for that.

So.... yeah. Things aren’t exactly going great in my neck of the woods. I’d really appreciate it if people would properly treat these unhinged violent weirdos like unhinged violent weirdos and not respectable members of society so they quit getting so bold and public with the violent stuff, and people who listen to them get properly shouted down for doing so.

#transphobia #stalking

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johnchiarello · 6 years ago

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The tower

LUTHER- THE TOWER EXPERIENCE

Blog- https://corpuschristioutreachministries.blogspot.com/

The blog is my main site- on some sites if you click the link it gives a ‘warning’- if that happens- simply type the address in or search on google- the site is safe- the most up to date posts are on the Blog.

Site- https://ccoutreach87.com/

Facebook- https://www.facebook.com/john.chiarello.5?ref=bookmarks

Youtube- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZ4GsqTEVWRm0HxQTLsifvg?view_as=subscriber

Other sites- https://ccoutreach87.com/links-to-my-sites-updated-10-2018/

Cloud links- https://ccoutreach87.com/cloud-links-12-2018/

Youtube Playlist- https://ccoutreach87.com/youtube-playlist/

[Links to all my sites at the bottom of this post]

NOTE- Every so often some of my sites think I am Spam- or a Bot- I am not. My name is John Chiarello and I post original content [all videos and text are by me]. I do share my past posts from my other sites- but it is not spam- Thank you- John.

Let’s start with some church history. In the last post I covered the early years of Martin Luther- probably the most significant figure of the Protestant Reformation.

Luther studied for the priesthood in Erfurt, Germany. He would eventually wind up in Wittenberg- one of the major university cities of the Reformation. Wittenberg was actually a small insignificant town- but the political leader over the region- Frederick the Wise- sought to put it on the map.

He wanted to turn Wittenberg into a German ‘Rome’. He wanted it to become a major Pilgrimage city where Christians would see Wittenberg as a destination- just like they saw Rome.

So Frederick embarked on this plan and he searched thru all the Catholic learning centers of the time and finally recruited 3 top scholars to teach out of the university at Wittenberg- Luther was one of the 3.

Just as a side note- Frederick would succeed at making Wittenberg a major catholic center. He would eventually obtain over 19,000 Relics for the Cathedral church there [Relics were used in the ancient system of buying indulgences and making special pilgrimage trips to important Churches. If the church/city that your making the Pilgrimage to has a lot of Relics- bones or other famous material objects from church history- then the value of the Pilgrimage was high. In theory Frederick collected so many that if you added up all the ‘time off’ from Purgatory- you would get 1 million, 900 thousand years off! Some of the famous relics at Wittenberg were a hair from the beard of Jesus- straw from the manger Jesus was born in- and even a branch from the famous burning bush of Moses! As you can see- there was a lot of commercializing going on- even back then].

When Luther arrived in Wittenberg- he made a name for himself as a top scholar. Many protestants- who revere Luther- usually are not aware that he was a master Linguist [sort of like Rick Perry!]

Yes Luther mastered language- and he showed it in his teaching on the book of Psalms.

In 1515 he began his famous study on the book of Romans and as he went thru the very first chapter- something shook him. He came across the passage that says the Just shall live by faith. This verse first appears in the O.T. book of Habakkuk- and is quoted 3 more times in the N.T.

Luther was very aware of the concept of the righteousness of God- he struggled for many years trying to reconcile his own sinful nature with Gods holiness- but he never really ‘saw’ the biblical concept of righteousness as a free gift that God ‘imputes’ to the sinner.

Yes- for the 1st time in Luther’s life- after his years training for the priesthood- the pilgrimage he made to Rome- the thousands of hours he spent confessing his sins while a monk in Erfurt- he never really understood that the righteousness of God was a free gift given to those who have faith.

It was a giant weight lifted from his shoulders- Luther did not need to try any more to live up to the standards of God- in a way that would earn for him forgiveness- but he would simply believe- and the righteousness of God would be counted to him as a gift.

Luther would go on to call this an Alien Righteousness- that is it is not found within the person who tries to do all the church works he can- or buying all the indulgences- or any other of the many religious actions he was practicing- but this free gift of being right with God- it came to those who had faith- the Just shall live by Faith- this was indeed good news for the scholar.

As time went on- Germany would get embroiled in the political machinations of the day- Luther’s top political cover was Frederick the Wise- hardly a Protestant Reformer! He spent lots of time trying to make Wittenberg the major Catholic center in Germany.

But at the time there was a political fight raging between Rome and some of the other nation/states. There was a figure head office called the Holy Roman Emperor. This office was really in name only- but it rose up during the first Millennium of Christian history and sought to replace the influence that Rome was losing.

So you had France, Spain and England all vying for the title. Eventually it would go to King Charles of Spain- but the Pope- who played a major role in nominating the person- he did not want any of these top 3 to get the position. Henry the Eighth was the king of England at the time- and these ‘3 kings’ were sort of in competition with Rome- so the Pope tried to get Fredrick the Wise to throw his hat into the ring.

Frederick just happened to be one of the Electors of this position.

His actual title was The Elector of Saxony.

So Fredrick had lots of influence- and as Rome would eventually but heads with the stubborn bull of Wittenberg [Luther] Frederick would become the major protector of Luther.

Okay- I think we’ll stop here for today. The experience that Luther had- the enlightenment that came to him while teaching the book of Romans- this is often called The Tower experience of Luther- it took place in the year 1515.

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aliwept · 6 years ago

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WARNING : MASSIVE TOKOYAMI HC DUMP AHEAD ! part one of ..... many sldkfjds i gotta transfer a lot from old blogs

triggers: body talk, religions mentions, mentions of binding, self hatred and transitioning.

BELIEFS / MOTIVATION:

tokoyami looks at becoming a hero the “wrong” way — or rather, in a way that cripples his success.he doesn’t want to become a hero in and of itself, but to help as many people as he can.

this is usually a good thing, but it is motivated by his extreme guilt and self doubt rather than pure desire, believing that that is the only way to pay for his “sins.” (i.e., the destruction or potential destruction his quirk as/could cause(d).)

he holds himself up to an extremely high standard, (it is impossible to have a totally “pure” motivation,) one of being perfect and disciplined in every way, but he consistently fails to reach that (as any human being would), making it so that he falls deeper into a circle of self-doubt and pity.

he also tends to idealize his friends for their faults, and when those difficult traits show up he gets extremely bothered, then angry at himself for his idealization, then angry for bothering them, & it escalates until he’s simply angry at himself for being what he believes to be a burden.

this is an extremely deeply rooted process, one that even daily actions contribute to, & while the source isn’t completely his parents, it is certainly reinforced by his mother’s abuse & his guilt relating to his father’s death.

PHYSICAL:

he’s not particularly muscled — well, compared to his more muscular classmates. most of his muscle is in his legs & stomach. he does not have a particular training regimen, typically unmotivated unless prompted.

unlike the majority of his classmates, because a lot of his fighting is done with dark shadow moving him (so that it’s harder to predict movements, as well as going from a large range), the majority of the time he’s not challenged physically.

against close attacks, both attacking which he uses his sword for (seen in his dorm room), when allowed. he inherited that sword from his father after his death. he also feels fatigue easily, not so much due to muscles but because of his exhaustion that is his “normal” state, given that dark shadow is nocturnal. (this & his low work ethic. he works a lot harder when training with friends.)

he doesn’t feel the need to bind more than not, given his skinny physique, with his hips being only a little bit wider than the average cis man’s.most of his scars are on his arms, self inflicted from his talons cutting into his skin. parts of his skin are covered in a gel like skin, clear to see the feathers that poke out from them, going much like arm hair down his sides. these are mostly around his shoulders.

most of the feather is underneath skin (though the skin & the feather both have no nerves), visible with the skin being mostly clear (no muscles adding color, only the natural dark pigment) with the rest of the feaher poking out at a low angle to his arm.

HABITS:

he has a diary that he writes in religiously. it’s kept in a hat box under his bed when he returns to the dorm, along with a collection he’s had since he had been able to write.

at times, in nostalgia, he’ll read through his earlier books. he also tends to doodle his classmates in them ! he’s an incredibly private person — especially because his mother ignored his privacy, refusing to let him keep secrets of any kind in ‘fear that he was hiding something’ — but also enjoys putting his thoughts into words.

PAST:

tokoyami was bullied due to his appearance / personality. for someone who was already uncomfortable with his body (not knowing what being trans was at that point) this became the root of deep insecurity regarding his appearance, whether it was as simple as hesitation.

he is autistic !! he stims a lot with his hands, though usually it’s in his hoodie / under his cloak, because he’s very self conscious about it. he also has adhd: inattentive type, bpd, depression & anxiety!

fantasy verse: he’s a witch & i will fight you on this fact. my boy loves the occult. he’s also. in generally he tends to be superstitious, & more than that enjoys different rituals! it probably won’t show up in my rp cause i honestly don’t know much about that type of thing but ! he absolutely adores things like that, not necessarily because he fully believes them but because they’re interesting & he believes that they probably stem if only in part from fact.

now im gonna add some notes here. while he is obviously pretty strong, he has problems with control, considering that not only does he have to react, he has to communicate those thoughts with dark shadow. speed / offense / defense obviously are enhanced w dark shadow, as well as his own abilities (he would still be able to hold his own if he couldn’t use his quirk).

as well, a lot of his stats are basically his stats + dark shadow, which obv makes them higher than they otherwise would be. he also has really high stamina and working out for a long time doesn’t really. make him tired, nor dark shadow, because dark shadow doesn’t get tired & he’s not the one doing a lot of the actual physical stuff. he’s not good w weapons tho in general. note that these are basically during the daytime w/o a huge light source so things change when it’s darker/lighter.

parents: tokoyami’s mother had the ability to call spirits of the dead to her and talk to them, & his father’s was to house things, as in objects, so he cld like. store things inside of his body. it’s real wild.

a quirk that combined with another in tokoyami’s lineage, so one of his ancestors had the ability to shapeshift, specifically with birds & banged w someone who has a quirk similar to aizawa’s, where it basically ‘stills’ the action of .someone’s quirk, if that makes sense? so down the line people wld inherit a birds’ features, but it would switch. in his dad’s case, he got a raptors ‘arms’ & eyes.

i am here to inform you that not only is he really short, he’s also chubby! espcially as a child. while he now has muscle! :tm: ive made earlier posts about how he doesn’t have a good. regimen & shit so. yeah. just like deku, while he may be muscled, (though he’s less muscled than. most of his classmates) he still is v chubby on other parts of his body.

also ! he’s trans & he has. a large bust, which he does not bind most of the time due to fear of asphyxiation. being demiboy, he is bothered at it at times, but dislikes tight clothes as a whole (like binders). this is because he is easily overstimulated by excessive contact with his body, causing sensory overload.the exception is his neck, which his choker is a source of comfort. (though, warning, there are scars underneath that the large choker hides!)

tokoyami. will say/do something & then become embarrassed by it, after the act has already been done. he’ll fuckin melt on the spot.

tokoyami is absolutely someone to leave ppl on read. or respond w several paragraphs w ‘K.’ like. that’s just how it is. he’s lowkey an asshole in that way but he just. he has to think a lot before having a response but he gets distracted & just leaves it.

he has dark fucking brown skin !!!!! people who draw tokoyami w light skin cause he’s a ‘pale goth uwu !!!!’ are weak & will be weeded out by natural selection.

people he trains with most are ,,, mostly kirishima, kaminari, aoyama and momo when they’re available

he’s mix of japanese, native american, and indian!

self knowledge questions: neediness, independence, shyness.

NEEDINESS: being affirmed & nurtured by others is a central requirement for you to feel safe. this means you can be slow to warm up to other people, which is difficult because what you most need from them is their warmth. yet you know how to be vulnerable: to let down your defenses and accept that you need another person. this lack of pretense is a valuable trait, and ultimately more endearing than the macho efforts others make to deny their childlike sides.

INDEPENDENCE: you don’t set out to be different for its own sake; you are more easily guided by what interests & moves you. you are more concerned about what is right for you than about the pressure to fit in. you know the value of selective irresponsibility, of forgetting occasionally about being ‘good’.

SHYNESS: part of you is gripped by the fear that you’ll launch into something and completely mess it up. the upside of this is wise caution: people are indeed often too rash, whereas you know, by instinct, that holding back can save you. probably, you feel shame and self-disgust a bit too much. but when you do feel in your element, you act with a wisdom and sensitivity never found in people with thicker skins.

there’s an au where he’s tamaki’s half brother tamakis hmu

more ramblings cause i lov him so anw. i figure that like. if he had to have a motivator it would be an outside force but basically he’s riding on the fact that he has more physical ability because he doesn’t perform very well in studies. ( bird brain …… )

getting 14th place out of the class on midterms, he’s aware that he’s not motivated & as well as his migraines & other mental illnesses ( adhd, executive dysfunction, etc. ) this means that he doesn’t really reach his “full potential.”

he’s aware of this, though, which causes him to train physically. physically training also allows him to ( a ) feel proud of himself, something that he struggles with ( b ) help him generally, esp with dysphoria ( c ) get his mind off of other things / points of stress.

i still don’t think he’s like. as buff as shouji for example, though part of that is that he’s naturally lean ! & he has trouble motivating himself sometimes but when he stays up late ( due to dark shadow ) it basically wrecks his sleeping patterns, so this gives him something beneficial to do while also exhausting himself, which he hopes will help him fall asleep.

like i know that i said that . . he was skinny / not v muscled ( when compared to his buffer classmates, rather ) but i guess i’ve been proven wrong because it took both Buff McFuck mina and hagakure 2 push him out of the way ( not tht it took that long but that was w them straining / time skips )

so @ this point i Just Don’t Know. he got 9 in the practical which means he’s obv like ?? p good but that was the entrance exam. ( he got 10 rescue my baby !!!! im so proud of him ) & then w aizawa’s exams he started off at 5 & im tryna find the other thing what it ended up as but @ this point i’m just , pretty divided cause i’m not seeing much reason for him to learn to train w/o proper training ( & we kno that he’s not someone who was trained specially like todoroki / momo tho tht doesnt mean it’s not possible & at this point im just ) ya. he’s gotta be able but from what we know he’s not v motivated ? ausdjkfdsfjk we’ll see ig.

tokoyami is a mix of shinto (where his hero epithet comes from), taoist (due to the values), & hindu (again, values). i think for now it’s going to be some mix of that, though i’m going to do some research on shinto values since i don’t know much about it !!!!!

generally, he’s pretty superstitious, just because he knows many myths are based on facts, & the idea of ‘it doesn’t hurt to watch out for them.’ he prefers to avoid possible things that would make him have bad luck.

#dont rb or i manifest in your house n kill you /

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discoveringthebible · 3 years ago

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Theology Research Paper

AKA The Exegetical Paper

In the field of Theology, there is a type of research of Biblical text known as Exegesis. In my online class, New Testament Gospels, I had to write one for my big semester project. We were able to pick our own topics. I chose to do the Parable of the Good Samaritan from Luke 10:23-37. (All Translations actually start with verse 25, but for context purposes for my paper, I started with verse 23.)

Below is the research paper. I thought I knew a lot about this parable, but I learned a lot completing this. (Yes, it is long. It comes out to approximately 18 pages in Microsoft Word at 12 point font Times New Roman.

(Normally there is a specific standard in which exegetical papers are written, but because of this blog, some of the format changed.)

The Parable of the Good Samaritan

Luke 10:23-37

By Cody Marie Bolton

INTRODUCTION

ORIENTATION AND CONTEXT

Significance of Text

The Parable of the Good Samaritan answers a very important question, “Who is my neighbor?” In this paper, I will attempt to convey that this passage of Scripture proves that everyone is our neighbor. In order for us to real grasp the Gospel message, we need to not only believe in who Jesus is, but also go out and share that with our neighbors, not just with our words, but especially with our actions.

There have been two major ways in which to interpret this parable. I am not going to use this paper to side with one way of interpretation. I am not going to push for whether or not the Samaritans were in fact hostiles against the Jews in Jesus’ day or not. While many scholars do believe this, however, there is a growing debate to suggest in fact, they were not. The purpose of this paper is to focus deeper on what it means to “be a neighbor” and how this passage helps us look at the major themes of compassion, mercy and love.

“…the parable of the Good Samaritan elevates the importance of showing mercy, and implies that it is an essential response of God’s people to his covenant” (Luke 10:25-37; Deut. 6:4-5; Lev. 19:17-18), and to be valued much more than mere cultic acts (Hos. 6:6; Matt. 9:13.) (Alexander, 622).

A parable is a very common teaching done by Jesus, as represented in the Gospel. “The most famous form used by Jesus in his teaching is the parable. Scholars have frequently pointed out that this is the most characteristic element of his teaching, for not less than 35 percent of his teaching in the Synoptic Gospels is found in parabolic form” (Stein, 33). Stein has also suggested that this parable has a specific form. One that made it easier for those hearing it to remember it. He suggests that Jesus was teaching using irony.

In a broader sense, however, irony, can refer to an event or a result that is opposite to what one would normally expect….Some possible example of irony in the Gospels are:….Luke 10:29-37 (the irony here in the reversal of roles-the devout of Israel [the Levite and the priest] are the villains and the despicable half-breed and rebel [the Samaritan] is the hero) (Stein, 22).

It is important to note that “[p]arables are not a shortcut to wisdom. They foster through reflection, meditation, and emotional engagement. They challenge accepted norms and subvert attempts to assign simplistic meaning. In interpreting parables one must work for the reward, and then own the result” (Neale, 45). We must remember that when we study or read parables, that there is no easy understanding and that we must work toward their meaning. The fact [t]hat Jesus’ parables continue to stimulate, even centuries after they were spoken, proves that he was a master of the genre” (Neale, 45). When we study the communication greats, like Aristotle, Hitler, etc., we should also be taking a close look at Jesus because Jesus had an incredible influence with spoken word over tens of thousands of people.

Historical and Social Setting

In doing research for this topic, I came to a couple of different conclusions for the historical and social setting. And much of it came down to whether or not there was a lot of hostility between the Samaritans and the Jews. Most commonly, it has been interpreted that there was hostility between the two people groups, because the Jews believed the Samaritans perverted the Jewish bloodline and were considered “half-blood.” A newer interpretation suggests that there was no hostility and that there were no differences between the two groups.

“Scholars most often interpret the parable of the good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37) one of the best known passages in the New Testament, in the context of intergroup hostility between Jews and Samaritans….Ancient text contemporaneous with Luke-Acts often include Samaritans within Israel without marginalization or classification as absolute non-Jewish “others.” The emphasis on absolute difference emerges rather, from a scholarly habit of both racialized and polemicized readings of the text” (Chalmers, 543).

Literary Context

The Parable of the Good Samaritan was written in the Gospel according to Luke. “He [Luke] is an evangelist in the sense that he seeks to persuade his readers to adapt a life of repentance and redemption” (Neale, 33).

“A significant amount of material found in Luke is neither in Mark nor Matthew. Thus the ‘special’ Lukan material is especially important….[t]he analysis of this material provides the richest source for understanding Luke’s unique perspectives and receives particular attention” (Neale, 33).

Jesus used parables to illustrate and reveal his message to his followers. Certainly the parable of the Good Samaritan illustrates ‘who is my neighbor’ (Luke 10:29) in a most unforgettable way, even as the story of the prodigal son illustrates the love of God for sinners and his joyous welcome of the repentant in a heart-moving manner. There is therefore truth in the view that some parables are meant to ‘illustrate.’ Yet frequently the meaning of a parable was available only to the disciples, to whom ‘he [Jesus] explained everything in private’ (Mark 4:34) (Stein, 40-41).

Robert H. Stein, in his revised edition of The Method and Message of Jesus’ Teachings, says that the Parable of the Good Samaritan is a type of parable known an allegory. “In an allegory the details of the story are not simply coloring to fill out the story. They are not simply parts of the main story, as in story and example parables, but are of great importance in and of themselves and must be ‘interpreted’” (Stein, 37).

We need to remember that there was a lot of diversity in Jesus’ day. Not just diversity in culture, but there was diversity is religions as well. “Scholarship since the mid-twentieth century has shown that Judaism was diverse in the first century A.D. A negative characterization of all Jews in Palestine in the period is no more appropriate that it would be of any religious group at the time. Jesus was a Jew, after all, as were all of the disciples and first Christians” (Neale, 38).

PRESENTATION OF TEXT

Scripture Passage

Although the official section for the Parable of the Good Samaritan begins at Luke 10:25, for purposes of context and background information, I am starting with verse 23 in the English Standard Version (ESV).

23: Then turning to the disciples and he said privately, “Blessed are the eyes that see what you see! 24: For I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and hear what you hear, and did not hear it.”

25: And behind, a lawyer stood up to put him to the text, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” 26: He said to him, “What is written in the Law and how do you read it?” 27: And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” 28: And he said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this and you will live.”

29: But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” 30: Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half-dead. 31: Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him, passed by on the other side. 32: So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33: But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. 34: He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. 35: And the next day he took two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, “Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I get back.” 36: Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” 37: He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” And Jesus said to him, “You go, and do likewise.”

Text Critical Notes

In the original Greek, the same word that has been translated in English, as “blessed are” is used in both Luke 10:23 as it is used throughout Matthew 5. According to the Strong’s New Testament Greek Concordance online: “makários, describes a believer in ‘fortunate’ position from receiving God’s provisions (favor)—which (literally) extended (“make long, large”) His grace (benefits). This happens with receiving (obeying) the Lord’s inbirthings of faith.”

In verse 34, in the ESV, the Samaritan brings the badly injured man into an inn. According to the ESV Archaeology Study Bible, the Greek word used here for inn is pandocheion, which is “a proper way station for travelers, as opposed to katalyma “guest room” which appears in Mark 14:14; Luke 2:7; 22:11 (pg. 1504).

Outline of Passage

I. Jesus addressing the disciples and religious leaders (10:23-24)

II. A Lawyer testing Jesus and Jesus’ initial response (10:25-28)

III. The Lawyer trying to justify himself and Jesus’ parable (10:29-37)

a. Man getting robbed and left for “half-dead” (10:30)

b. The Priest (10:31)

c. The Levite (10:32)

d. The Samaritan (10:33-35)

IV. Jesus asking the Lawyer the Point and Purpose of His parable (10:36-37)

JESUS ADDRESSING THE DISCIPLES AND RELIGIOUS LEADERS

Beginning with verse 23, we see Jesus having a private conversation with his disciples, however, as we understand from verse 25, the disciples were not the only ones in close proximity listening to Jesus. While there is not much mentioned here, Jesus does bless his disciples, and uses the same type of blessing that He used in his Sermon on the Mount (see Matthew 5:1-12, ESV): “blessed are.” [See Text Critical Notes for more information.]

A LAWYER TESTING JESUS AND JESUS’ INITIAL RESPONSE

Starting with verse 25, a lawyer enters the picture, with Jesus and His disciples. According to the ESV Reformation Study Bible online, a lawyer is “an expert in the law of God, and so a religious man. Yet he was not genuinely looking for information but for something that would enable him to accuse Jesus.” From other passages in the Bible, we understand that Jesus is not surprised by this lawyer’s actions, but listens and answers this lawyer anyway. Jesus wants to know this lawyer’s perspective on the Bible and all the laws that are written in it. This would be summarizing all 613 commands in the Mitzvah.

According to Britannica online, it states that a Mitzvah is

any commandment, ordinance, law or statue contained in the Torah (first five books of the Bible) and, for that reason, to be observed by all practicing Jews. The Talmud mentions 613 such mitzvahs, 248 mandatory and 365 prohibitive…Through nonobservance of a mitzvah constitutes a transgression, it is understood that not all mitzvahs are of equal importance; circumcision, for instance, is a direct response to a divine command, while the wearing of a skullcap in public is not. In a broader context, Jews consider all good deeds as the fulfillment of mitzvahs, for such actions express God’s will.

Because this lawyer is an expert in the law, Jesus wants to know how he interprets it, as he has spent his whole life studying it—it should be something he can and should be able to do. So, Jesus asks him, and the lawyer answers him, referencing back to a very important commandment from Deuteronomy 6:5: “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” (c.f. Luke 10:27, ESV). The lawyer also adds loving your neighbors into the mix. Jesus commends the lawyer in verse 28 and then tells him to follow this mitzvah.

THE LAWYER TRYING TO JUSTIFY HIMSELF AND JESUS’ PARABLE

The lawyer, although we do not get the adjective shrewd, might as well have been a shrewd lawyer. According to verse 29, he wanted to “justify himself.” He essentially wanted to know what he could get away with not doing, but still following this commandment of loving God, and loving his neighbor. And here we get the all-important question, “Who is my neighbor?” It’s clear that this lawyer wanted Jesus’ answer to be something like: “those who think like you; those who look like you; whose who worship like you; those who live next door to you.” But this isn’t what Jesus had in mind, hence an important, yet, as we already pointed out, the ironic parable begins.

a. Man getting robbed and left for “half-dead”

We are introduced to a man who was traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho. We don’t know anything else about him. We don’t know if he was from Jericho or Jerusalem, but culturally, both of those cities were presumably Jewish. What we do know is that he was at the wrong place at the wrong time, and ended up getting mugged, pretty badly, and was left for dead on the side of a road, by not one, but by at least two robbers, since the term robbers is pluralized. They took his clothes and beat him, probably hoping that he would die and that the wild animals would dispose of his body. This man was lying there, in considerable pain, naked, and most likely covered in blood. We also don’t know anything else about these robbers, where they came from, or where they went, we just know what it was they did.

b. The Priest

And then, in verse 31, we are introduced to a Priest, who happened to be walking along this same road—from Jerusalem to Jericho. We don’t know much about him either, except that being a Priest means that he is a religious leader. One who is an expert in the law. You’d think a Priest, someone who was charged with teaching people about God, would help this “half-dead” man, but no. Instead, when he notices the man on the side of the road, he crosses the street and continues walking. Maybe the man looked dead, or maybe he was reaching out for help. Although the parable doesn’t say, we know that this priest would have known all 613 commandments, which would have included Numbers 19:11-16. To paraphrase, it was forbidden to touch a dead body, or the person touching it would be unclean for a week, but then had to cleanse themselves to become clean again, or they could be “cut off from Israel.” It is important to note that a High Priest, otherwise called a Kohen Gadol, “may not defile himself for any dead person” (Negative Mitzvah #168, pg. 22).

c. The Levite

After the Priest walked on by, we then see a Levite. A Levite, is, essentially, an assistant to the Priest, someone from the tribe of the house of Levi. Maybe this Levite was associated with the Priest, Jesus doesn’t specify. But similarly, a Levite would also know all 613 commandments, and would have therefore walked by and not assisted for probably a very similar fear, if not the same fear of “becoming unclean.” So, out of fear for his own personal “status,” he leaves this poor man in the road, still bleeding, still needing desperate help so that he doesn’t succumb to his injuries.

d. The Samaritan

And this is where we are introduced to the Samaritan. As stated before, there are two ways in which we can look at the Samaritan from the cultural perspective of Jesus’ day. The more common interpretation is that the Samaritan was someone who was not a welcome person in Jewish circles (even though they were half-Jewish). They were seen as the outcasts, those who defiled what it meant to be wholly Jewish. The second perspective, as stated above by a quote from Childers, suggests that there was no hostility between these two people groups in Jesus’ time. In any case, it is the Samaritan who is the star of this ironic parable.

Now, the lawyer listening to Jesus’ story, is probably shocked to hear Jesus introduce a Samaritan regardless, and wondered, “What is this Samaritan going to do?” Jesus doesn’t specify the journey that this Samaritan is on, but he does something the other two in the story did not do: He had “compassion” on this “half-dead” man, as verse 33 says. He didn’t just check to see if the man on the side of the road was dead or alive. “He went to him and bound up his wounds.” This Samaritan wasn’t worried about becoming unclean, he wasn’t worried about anything in regards to himself, he was worried about the bleeding man. He not only put band-aids on this man’s wounds, but treated them as best as he could with what he had: i.e., oil and wine, as verse 34 informs us. He then, he put this injured man on his animal, probably a donkey or camel, and walked alongside, guiding both to an inn, a place where this man could be better taken care of than on the dirty, hot road. [See Text Critical Notes]

Now, this could have been the end of it, and the Samaritan would have been remembered for helping this man, but no. Once he got him to the inn, and made sure this injured man was as comfortable as he could be, he paid in advance for care this this man needed, plus he would pay for any additional fees that would incur with his future care.

The Samaritan displays the selfless love that God commands of us. While we do not know if he was a real person or not, “What we have described in the parables stems from everyday experience. No doubt many of them arose out of experiences that Jesus had as a child, youth, and young man in Nazareth….Jesus was no doubt observant as a child and saw in incidents occurring around him examples that he later incorporated into his parables” (Stein 41-42).

Because of this however, we cannot rule out the possibility that the Samaritan wasn’t a real person. Whether he was a real person or not, isn’t what is important. What is important is his example, and how we can learn from that example. C.S. Lewis, in his book, The Problem of Pain, goes deep into the reasons why pain exists. To summarize his work, he suggests, and according to this author, rightly so, that the pain and suffering that humanity deals with stems from The Fall. And that because of our free will to choose to do harm, God therefore cannot stop it from happening. (To specifically read his views, refer to chapter 3). However, this is where Samaritans and Christians of the world are so important. It is here that we can help heal and restore some of what has been broken with examples of compassion, love and mercy. And this means to lay aside our own thoughts and feelings for the sake of others.

There is another route to the center: a more reckless and extravagant path, which is attained not through storing up that energy or concentrating the life force, but through throwing it all away—or giving it all away. The unitive point is reached not through the concentration of being but through the free squandering of it; not through acquisition or attainment but through self-emptying; not through ‘up’ but through ‘down’” (Bourgeault, 66).

But, if Christians love, whether God or fellow Christian, it is in response to God’s love (Col. 3:12-15; 1 Pet. 1:8; 1 John 4:11.) Although Christian love is invariable the obligation of Christians, it is the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:13). It is characterized by humility and gentleness (Eph. 4:1-2); in emulation of the Master, it eschews retaliation (1 Pet. 3:8-9). Inevitably self-restraint becomes a watchword (Rom. 14:13-15) as the Christian learns to love with heard and attitude no less than with action (1 Cor. 13)” (Alexander, 649).

JESUS ASKING THE LAWYER THE POINT AND PURPOSE OF HIS PARABLE

After finishing this ironic parable, Jesus asks this lawyer a very simple question in verse 36, “Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” There is absolutely no denying that the answer is the Samaritan. In verse 37, the lawyer, who clearly by this point couldn’t deceive Jesus simply replied with, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus instructed him to do the same.

“[The Hebrew word] Hesed, expresses a complex of ideas which includes love, mercy and compassion” (Alexander, 661). According to the article The Meaning of Hesed, “Hesed is not just a feeling, but an action….Throughout the Hebrew Bible, we see hesed translated in a number of different ways; steadfast love, mercy, kindness, and goodness” (Snow, FIRM). This is the kind of love that the Samaritan showed to the “half-dead” person. Jesus is calling the Lawyer, the Disciples and us, to go and do the same for our neighbors. It is through this parable this this lawyer has been given a new definition of who his neighbor is.

CONCLUSION

SUMMATION

“The parable itself seeks to make a single point. It seeks to demonstrate what it means to be a neighbor. The details merely provide local coloring to aid in making this one point” (Stein, 50).

“At its most basic level, liberation is an act of charity. It is freely opening our hands to the poor and the hurting….It is food, clothing shelter, medicine and financial support….It is, as in the parable of the good Samaritan, showing compassion on the beaten man, bandaging up his wounds, and taking care of him (Luke 10:30-35)” (Stone, 103).

It is a path he himself [Jesus] walked to a very end. In the garden of Gethsemane, with his betrayers and accusers massing at the gates, he struggled and anguished but remained true to his course….It was not love store up but love utterly poured out that opened the gates to the Kingdom of Heaven. Over and over, Jesus lays this path before us (Bourgeault, 70).

I know I am ready to make more of a commitment to love my neighbors as I love myself and God. How about you?

APPLICATION

If compassion for humankind is the best religious practice, then presenting a façade of religious legitimacy while failing in compassion is the worst practice. Those who ‘passed by on the other side’ (10:31) may have done so in order to preserve their ritual purity….Perhaps their reasons were even more complex, touching on social stigma and sectarian practice. Perhaps they feared that this was a trap and the robbers were hiding nearby (10:30). In any case, the heroic actions of the Samaritan call us to a new social construct based on compassion (Neale, 71).

Jesus picked a Samaritan as the hero of the story, and the religious as those who failed…But this parable, as well as countless other teachings of Christ and his interactions with people, shows that we are called to love persons regardless of their status in life. Those who love more are those who have received more mercy and grace, he implies (Luke 7:47). We are now called to re-present this love of God to any and all and to be the compassionate hands and feet of Jesus” (Leclerc, 232-233).

And how do we become the “compassionate hands and feet of Jesus” if we are unfamiliar or if we are a new Christian? Brent D. Peterson, in his book, Created to Worship, quotes from a “mosaic of a theology of worship.” I will only quote some of this mosaic here: “God breathes (inhales) and gathers in individual Christians to heal, transform and renew them as the body of Christ to breathe (exhale) them out to continue the ministry of the incarnation that participates in the kingdom of God more fully coming” (Peterson, 55). We cannot expect to do what the Samaritan did, without first being part of a community. We need to learn and grow in what it means to be the hands and feet of Jesus Christ, so then we can go and do it, in similar and in different ways than what the Samaritan did. This isn’t a one size fits all. This could mean taking someone to the hospital to help someone get physical help. It could mean buying clothes for someone who doesn’t have any or who doesn’t have the proper ones for the weather. We each have our own part in the Kingdom to play.

[T]he influence of…the story of the Good Samaritan (10:30-35) in wider (at least American) society is utterly profound. As Robert Wuthnow has learned, this parable has become ‘one of those ancient myths that embodies the deepest meanings in our culture. In learning it and reshaping it we define what it means to be compassionate….Understanding how the message of Luke articulates with and challenges its world may shed light on our own experiences of the world and of God” (Greene, 129-130).

“The gospel of Jesus Christ…is a proclamation not only of what God requires, but also, and more importantly, how the Father loves us and offers rich and costly forgiveness in Christ” (Lodahl, 232).

And sometimes, we don’t know how to help a person best, and that is when we need to get in touch with the Father, the Son and the Spirit. We need to pray. As Max Lucado says in his book, Anxious for Nothing, we should be specific in our prayers. “A specific prayer is a serious prayer” and that a “specific prayer is an opportunity for us to see God at work” (Lucado, 83).

A quick side note from Richard J. Foster is needed for clarification between “true service” and “self-righteous service”:

Self-righteous service comes through human effort. It expends immense amounts of energy calculating and scheming how to render the service….True service comes from a relationship with the divine Other deep inside. We serve out of whispered promptings, divine urgings. Energy is expended but it is not the frantic energy of the flesh” (Foster, 128). He also says, “Self-righteous service fractures community….True service builds community (Foster, 129).

May we all choose to build community, rather than “fracture” it.

WORKS CITED

Alexander, T. Desmond. New Dictionary of Biblical Theology. Intervarsity Press. 2000.

Archaeology Study Bible. Crossway. 2017.

Blomberg, Craig. Jesus and the Gospels: An Introduction and Survey. B&H Academic. 2009.

Bourgeault, Cynthia. The Wisdom Jesus: Transforming Heart and Mind—a New Perspective on Christ and His Message. Shambhala Publications, Inc. 2008.

Chalmers, Matthew. “Rethinking Luke 10: The Parable of the Good Samaritan Israelite.” Journal of Biblical Literature. Vol. 139 No. 3 (2020). DOI: 10.15699/jbl.1393.2020.6

Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica, The. Mitzvah-Judaism. Britannica.com/topic/mitzvah-judaism. 1998. Date accessed: 08/28/2021.

ESV Reformation Study Bible. Edited by R.C Sproul. 2015. Accessed through

biblegateway.com. Date Accessed: 08/26/2021.

Foster, Richard J. Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth. HarperOne. 1998.

Green, Joel B. The Theology of the Gospel of Luke. Cambridge University Press. 1995.

“The 613 Mitzvot-Commandments-of the Torah. Negative Mitzah #168. Pg. 22.

Havurahshirhadash.org.

Leclerc, Diane: Discovering Christian Holiness: The Heart of Wesleyan-Holiness Theology. Beacon Hill Press. 2010.

Lewis, C.S. The Problem of Pain. HarperOne. 1996.

Lodahl, Michael. The Story of God: A Narrative Theology. Beacon Hill Press. 2nd Edition. 2008.

Lucado, Max. Anxious for Nothing: Finding Calm in a Chaotic World. Thomas Nelson. 2017.

Neale, David A. Luke 9-24: A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition NBBC. Beacon Hill Press. 2013.

Peterson, Brent D. Created to Worship: God’s Invitation to Become Fully Human. Beacon Hill Press. 2012

Snow, Avital. The Meaning of Hesed: Hebrew for Love. Fellowship of Israel Related Ministries: FIRM. 2021. Firmisrael.org.

Stein, Robert H. The Method and Message of Jesus’ Teachings. Westminster John Knox Press. 1994.

Stone, Bryan P. Compassionate Ministry: Theological Foundations. Orbis Books. 1999.

Strong, James. 3107. Makarios. The Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible: United States, Hunt & Eaton, 1894. Accessed through Biblegateway.com. Date accessed: 08/23/2021.

#samaritan #parable of the good samaritan #new testament #gospels

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radedneko · 4 years ago

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Top Graphic Novels of 2020

I read a ton of graphic novels this year, and they were almost all wonderful. Middle grade graphic novels are hitting it out of the park and I spent well over an hour narrowing this list down to just 11 series/titles. When possible, I chose series, and all but one are new reads to me this year. There’s no number one title/series here; everything’s just in alphabetical order.

The Avant-Guards by Carly Usdin and Noah Hayes: This series absolutely hasn’t gotten the recognition it deserves. No, it’s not earth-shattering literature, but it’s well-done and I look forward to reading each new volume. I don’t even like basketball and I would happily read about 30 games play-by-play to see more of these characters. It reminds me a lot of Giant Days and Questionable Content in ways I can’t quite explain.

Azumanga Daioh/Yotsuba&! By Kiyohiko Azuma: Yes, these are both old and are not even a single series, but Azuma’s work kept me going during the quarantine and I couldn’t in good conscious leave it off this list. Do yourself a favor and re-read these. She also wrote Sailor Moon doujinshi, which...is exactly what you would expect it to be given the humor in her official works.

Class Act by Jerry Craft: Did you somehow miss Craft’s Newberry-winning New Kid last year? Go read it. Now you’re ready for the sequel, which does not disappoint. I’m predicting this one also racks up the awards; it deserves it. I’m not even going to bother summarizing it; just read it.

Dragon Hoops by Gene Luen Yang: No really, I don’t like basketball. But this made me care about the (real) people involved in this school’s hunt for athletic glory. I would probably automatically put anything by Yang on my best-of lists, since every book he writes is gold, but to make me learn basketball terms and care about whether some kids throw a ball into a hoop? Yang is a genius. If this doesn’t win some major awards, I’m going to be pissed. Go read a real review of this, then pick up the graphic novel.

I Know What I Am: The Life and Times of Artemesia Gentileschi by Gina Sicilano: This was the very first book I read in 2020, and it’s still stuck in my head. It shouldn’t be surprising that an artist’s biography has beautiful artwork, but I could look at any panel in this book for hours. I had no idea who Artemesia was before reading this (you probably don’t either) and spent way too long looking at her pieces during and after reading this. As a biography, this would have been an impressive read, but as a graphic novel biography, it was a visceral experience. Read this even if you dislike graphic novels or art history; you won’t regret it.

Komi Can’t Communicate by Tomohito Oda: I am also jumping on the Komi bandwagon. It’s fun, humorous, gives you the feels, and plays with manga tropes. It’s also notable for having a character whose expression of gender isn’t played for laughs; everything else about their personality is, but Najimi is one of the most popular students at the school despite refusing to adhere to any form of gender binary.

Our Dreams at Dusk by Yuhki Kamatani: Even if this series wasn’t great all-over, I would have still included it in my list for this simple fact that this is the first manga I’ve ever seen with an explicitly ace character. But is a great series in all aspects. The art style is unique, the characters are all explored in as much depth as you can expect for a four-book series, and it ends on a good note, even if everything isn’t tied up into neat, little bows.

Satoko and Nada by Yupechika and Marie Nishimori: This short series is slice-of-life but with the twist of exploring religious and cultural differences between two study-abroad students who end up roommates in America. It’s never heavy-handed despite the fact that it was absolutely created to teach Japanese people about Islam and I’m honestly sad it only has four volumes. Take the afternoon and binge-read them all.

The Way of the Househusband by Kousuke Oono: There is a reason why this series has been on pretty so much every best-of list. It’s laugh-out-loud funny, heartfelt, and weirdly, has taught me laundry tips. I can also say that it’s my mom’s favorite graphic novel series.

The Witch Boy books by Molly Knox Ostertag: When I said middle grade is hitting it out of the park, this is one of the series I meant. Class, gender roles, race, friendship, and more done well for a middle grade audience in a series masquerading as a magic adventure? I didn’t have this kind of quality when I was growing up and I am slightly jealous that today’s kids do. I also can’t wait to see where this series goes.

Witch Hat Atelier by Kamome Shirahama: This won an Eisner, with reason. This series may be the most inventive fantasy I’ve seen in years, and the artwork is just beautiful. I’m completely hooked on the storyline, with hints of lore handed out between lovely character development and critters I’d love to see in real life (brush-buddy? I want 20). If you haven’t given it a go, do so immediately.

#graphic novels #manga #middle grade lit #ya lit

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elizabethenroute-blog · 7 years ago

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No place I’d Radler be

“Plans are what you make to keep God amused.”

This is something my mother’s said to me countless times, and although you may not agree with the religious element, the sentiment is still a good point. It’s impossible to live your life the way you want to. Things, people, natural disasters get in the way, and some would argue the beauty of it all is precisely this unpredictability. An algorithm impossible to understand.

However, this was not the remark I particularly wanted to hear when I was planning my year abroad. For some reason I was convinced that I would be given a placement in the centre of Bolzano, with easy train links to Verona and Padua where two of my best friends are studying, alongside all of the benefits that come with living in a university city.

You can imagine the profanity that ensued when I got the email telling me that while I was going to be in the province of Bolzano, my actual placement was situated 75km north east of the city, in Bruneck. A skiing town, which is apparently the Aspen of Italy, with a population of approximately 16,000 (not including mountain cows). I don’t ski, and my home town in rural Herefordshire has a population just 6,000 less than that. To put it in Shakespeare’s words, I would have bitten my thumb at anyone who got on my nerves that day.

Some would argue that I really got one of the worst deals in terms of placement. The nearest other teaching assistant to me lives an hour away (depending on traffic in the valley), the choirs and societies that I’m interested in are a similar impractical distance away, and teaching in a high school with the drinking age being 16 here, the very thought of a night out is completely off the cards.

It really could have been a recipe for disaster, sat in my mountains with no one to easily socialise with, I genuinely could have lost my mind.

However, the past 7 months have taught me that much of your mental state depends on you staying proactive. Now that’s not me saying that people with depression are lazy, not at all. My point is that it’s easy for me personally to get into a low mood when I just sit around, wallowing for hours on end, which I was very tempted to do on several occasions.

To stop myself from doing exactly this, I’ve tried to plan something every weekend. Whether that’s going on a weekend trip to some city or simply meeting for a coffee in Bolzano. Literally just doing anything to prevent myself from sitting on my laptop all day, inside.

This got particularly difficult in February. The weather was grim, which meant I really didn’t want to do any exploring, and I had an essay deadline looming, so adventuring off into the unknown was the last thing on my mind.

Somedays I did just want to lock the front door and snuggle down with a blanket and netflix. One of the pieces of advice you get repeatedly thrown at you before your year abroad is to “say yes to everything”. That’s all well and good, and I can appreciate the want to encourage us to go out and explore. The problem is that sometimes, for your own mental wellbeing, you do just need to say no, and that’s okay. It doesn’t make you introverted or antisocial, it makes you human.

There’s a big difference between being independent and isolated. There’s also a big difference between experiencing loneliness and experiencing solitude. I flick between viewing myself in these two states constantly.

Being by yourself means you really get to know yourself. Not really having had any outside influences, I’ve learned how I like to dress, the sports and films I want to watch and the music I like to listen to. In fact, I’ve missed the sound of my Dad’s turntable so much this year that I’m determined to buy my own as soon as I’m back, so I’ll never be deprived of that sound again.

That brings me on to homesickness, another big thing we were warned about pre-departure. This is something that can strike at the most random moments, triggered by the most random things. I saw some Weston’s cider being sold in the supermarket and immediately wished I was sat by the River Wye on a sunny afternoon with my mates from 6th form, even though it’s been almost three years since I spoke the majority of them.

I was in a bookshop when my eye caught a book on architecture which had a photo of the Birmingham Bullring on the cover, and straight away I felt a longing for Selly Oak, with its glorious odour of fried chicken shops and whatever my fellow students had regurgitated the night before.

One of the worst cases though, is always having to ask for a jug of milk with my tea whenever I go to a caf��. I could shake off all possible signs of Britishness in both my appearance and my accent, but this request has the power to shatter all illusions in a matter of seconds. The homesickness only increases when they bring you a jug of warm, frothed milk.

So how’ve I coped with this? I’ve surrounded myself with Britishness in the broadest possible term. Watching The Crown has helped a lot, as has being able to listen to everything and anything on Spotify. I truly take my hat off to anyone who had to do a year abroad before Skype, before YouTube, before the internet. Being able to talk to my family and friends at home with just a few clicks has undoubtedly kept me sane, and kept me going.

However, social media is by no means a completely positive thing. I’m guilty myself of always posting the most rose-tinted view of whatever I’ve got up to that week. The problem with that is other people only ever see you having a good time, which is in no way realistic. For me, watching my best friends post photos and updates in the same sunny manner has caused me to enter countless thought spirals worrying that I’m not doing this year properly, that they’re all having a better time abroad than me, and that the last thing they’ll want is me bothering them with my problems when they’re all having such a great time. The reality is that they’re looking at everyone else’s posts and worrying about the same things.

Something that’s really stood out to me over the past few months is how I’ve come to terms with the idea of Heimat. It’s a German word which has no direct English translation, I can only describe it as a sense of home. It’s not necessarily the same as your actual home where you reside, but a feeling of where you belong in the world. This was a tricky concept for me. While I was born in Guildford and spent my early childhood in Surrey/Hampshire, I grew up on the Welsh borders. Yet, I don’t feel I can securely say I’m from either one. I’ve never felt a sense of belonging in Herefordshire, in fact I loathed it most of the time I lived there, but at the same time, I’ve spent such a small fraction of my life living in the home counties that I can’t identify with there either.

Living in South Tyrol has taught me that your Heimat doesn’t have to be an exact grid reference. The majority of people I’ve spoken to here have very cloudy opinions about whether they identify more as Italian or Austrian. It’s a very sensitive subject, in fact. I’ve been shown that it’s okay to simply say you’re South Tyrolean. It is an identity in itself, and regardless of whether I feel more like a Southerner or a Midlander, I’m undoubtedly British.

Going back to the idea of planning, I wouldn’t change my year abroad for the world. Yes, it’s been hard, and yes, I could have chosen to do my Erasmus somewhere completely different like Vienna or Florence. I could have gone for the complete Lizzie McGuire experience in Rome, but I wouldn’t have met any of my hilarious students or my wonderful colleagues. I wouldn’t have proved to myself how amazingly independent I can be, and I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to live in one of the most beautiful locations in the world. I can’t put into words how much I love the school I’ve been placed in. The students never fail to make me smile and as challenging as it was in the beginning, (teaching in an institution with 90% male pupils aged 14-19 was daunting to say the least) it’s going to be very hard for me to leave in seven weeks time.

Until next time,

Beth ❤️

#erasmus #third year abroad #south tyrol #italy #austria #dolomites #radler #heimat #homesickness #bolzano

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tessatechaitea · 5 years ago

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Eclipso #5

Oh, it's happening!

You can't arrest Bruce for this murder because it was a perfect murder.

Every time I run somebody over in traffic, I just keep driving because I think, "Did I just smash into that pedestrian? Or did he jump in front of me?!" Then I pick up something they dropped and say:

My collection of right shoes and broken sunglasses is enormous.

I'm not saying it's right to invade an indigenous tribe, refuse to acknowledge their cultural beliefs, take photographs they expressly forbade me to take, gotten angry because they destroyed my camera, threw the shaman off of a cliff, and then stole an obvious religious artifact to keep as a souvenir of my perfect murder. I'm saying you have to appreciate the context! And the context is that Bruce Gordon is a white man from Western Civilization which means he can get away with whatever the fuck he wants! Bruce Gordon wakes up from the dream about his origin and then claims that he's a scientist while expressing thoroughly unscientific theories.

"The scientist in me knows that the evil I did was caused by a cut by a magic diamond which allowed a vengeance god who lives on the moon to take over my body! Science!"

As a "man" of "science," I know that nobody ever wakes up from a blackout tied to a bed and still has their pants on. Whoever put him there would have at least taken off his muddy boots! Yeesh.

My first dog's name was Fucky.

I'm not sure what kind of vibe Giffen and Fleming were going after when they decided Bruce Gordon would wake up tied to a bed with a kid nearby watching Bruce sleep but I think it was somewhere in-between horror and reverse pedophilia. Bruce winds up shackled to a chair at a large dining room table sat across from Mona. He asks her what happened and she says, "When that gong sounded, two women appeared, dressed me at gunpoint and brought me here! You?"

Yes. Two women dressing Mona at gunpoint is pretty much the same as some creepy kid telling you that the noises you make when you sleep are the same noises that his pervert dog makes. Practically twinsies!

The more I think about the current state of the world compared to this Eclipso comic book that purports to be a study of evil, the more I realize a real world Eclipso would make sense of everything. I wouldn't have to believe that Jeffrey Epstein was murdered and made to look like a suicide if we knew Eclipso was a thing! Everybody would just go, "Oh, did you find a black diamond on him? Yeah? That explains it! Possessed by Eclipso, got caught, abandoned by Eclipso, and then killed himself when he realized what he did while Eclipso'd! End of story!" Then later when we discovered that all the MAGA hats were lined with Black Diamond dust, we'd all go, "Fuckin' hell. Well, that explains that mess!" Then in Great Britain, you'd discover that all the hard candy had traces of black diamonds in them which is why all the old people voted for Brexit. Or at least that's what people would claim instead of wanting to admit that all the old people are fearful racists. Not to let all the young racists off the hook for voting for Brexit! But I'm sure if people died at much younger ages than they actually do, young people wouldn't continually get handed a fucking shit future that old people keep voting for even though they have no future themselves. Chained to the table with Mona's extreme cleavage staring him in the face, Bruce Gordon comes to the realization that this is all his fault. While I want to agree with him, I'd lay some of the blame at Madame Xanadu's feet as well. How come that barn owl didn't see this coming and tell the Justice League that the end of the world was coming if they didn't get off their asses and do exactly what she says without proof or evidence? Maybe if Bruce Gordon had visited Madame Xanadu instead of going straight to the Justice League, everything would have worked out okay. Which means, I think, I can agree with Bruce Gordon! It's entirely his fault! Also, he did murder that shaman who cursed him to become Eclipso which brought Eclipso back which led to Eclipso murdering 85% of Parador so he could run drugs and kill off all the coke sniffers in the U.S. And, I mean, is that so bad? I think maybe I'm on Eclipso's side here. At least for the first part of his plan. Although after imagining how many people are going to think I'm racist after that fact because I just remembered that most of Eclipso's coke will wind up as crack and distributed to poor, urban locations which are comprised of majority black populations due to decades of systemic racism in the United States government, I take back my endorsement of Eclipso's plan. It's as racist as Bruce Gordon's origin story! I mean, it's as racist as Bruce Gordon's origin story totally wasn't! It's hard to remember the reality I'm supposed to be sticking with in my reviews because I absolutely don't give a shit or pay attention to what I type.

See? You can see how I might side with Eclipso's plan! If we could just forget the way the U.S. treated the crack epidemic as a failing of the people who wound up addicted to crack as opposed to an 80s pushback against civil rights by conservative politicians to help undermine (or strengthen, in way too many cases) white America's attitude toward black Americans, it's a good plan, right?! I mean, you probably shouldn't forget those things I just said. Never forget that conservative politicians did that. Fuck Reagan and Bush and their toadies forever and ever.

And then the comic book finally does something so perfectly perfect that I can't believe I stopped reading after Issue #7 (especially since Ted McKeever began doing art in that issue!). I mean, nowadays, I would have given this comic at least another six months for this perfect moment. Let me set the scene: earlier, the little boy wouldn't untie Bruce Gordon because if he did, his mother threatened to kill his dog. Now at dinner, Bruce and Gordon were served their dinner under silver serving trays. When Bruce's tray is lifted, he discovers the boy's dog roasted with an apple in its mouth (because that's how you roast things!). This is how the scene then plays out:

This moment is such a great nod to early EC horror titles and — for me at least — the first really horrific act of genuine evil. All the rest of the shit Eclipso has done has just been mindless violence.

Later, Eclipso decides to eclipse The Creeper.

How do you get this close to an anus joke so many times and never deliver?! It's not like this is a Comics Code Authority backed comic book!

It's times like this when I have to admit that the critics of my criticism who say I'm not subtle must be right. Because Giffen and Fleming's entire plan in this scene was probably to make the reader think, "It's going up his ass, isn't it?!" And in that way, they never had to go so low and vulgar because they knew his readership would do it for them. But still. I wanted to see Eclipso reference suppositories. Eclipso stuffs black diamonds into Bruce and Mona as well before taking them and Creeper out for a drive through Parador. It's now become a living Hell with terrific new sightseeing destinations like the Shitting Demon, the Burning Crawling Lady, and the Pile of Dead Children on the Side of the Road. None of them get angry enough to become possessed by Eclipso so he drops them off at the border and tells them to get out of his country. It must be part two of his infernal plan! Have them shit out the diamonds in a U.S. toilet so that the rats and alligators become possessed, killing the next million people who don't do cocaine. No, that's not the plan because they all vomit up the black diamonds before heading off down the last 20 miles before crossing the border of Parador into, I don't know, Urazil. I've done that one, haven't I? I can't think of any more South American countries to mix up! Eclipso #5 Rating: B+. I really did enjoy the dinner scene. And letting Eclipso make reference to a pile of dead children was a nice touch too. A god who kills children?! Why, that's the very worst kind of God there is! I know Christians can be naive so, yes, that was a shot at your God. Boom!

#Eclipso #DC Comics #DC #Keith Giffen #Robert Loren Fleming #Bart Sears

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johnnys-so · 8 years ago

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vixx!uni seniors: Hongbin

A/N: i feel like I haven’t written one of these descriptive imagines in a long time and after reading several *insert kpop group!* in university, I just really craved some more for VIXX. So why not write it? If you have any ideas about a vixx as “____” then do let me know and I’ll write it for you! Any other kpop groups would do too!

hongbin would most definitely be the quiet but cute guy that everyone knows about but no one really knows him. Do you see where I’m going with this?

visual design major hongbin is a shy boy that barely got into the course, battling the immense peer pressure of taking something more fit for his intellect like computer science, engineering or even religious studies (his grandma would have been so proud).

but he’s a closet photography fanatic. not very closet because everyone spots him in all the aesthetic places around college and he’s usually bent over a pot of plants or standing for several long minutes in front of a stone wall and looking lazily at the neon lights outside a bar whenever his friends drag him there. He’s a huge fan of those polaroid cameras and even the disposable ones, though they are very frustrating for him. But something everyone knows he has, is that darned DSLR of his that he holds like it’s his third hand

hongbin is most often in and out of class. no one ever knows his schedule but everyone in class knows he’s in college when all the girls are crowding around the door, urgently powdering their nose and discussing strategies to make him look them in the eye. Which, ofcourse, is an impossible feat. Hongbin has spent his life looking at people’s shoes, their hats, the edge of their skirts but never their eyes. He’s just too impossibly shy for that.

but hongbin also has a secret passion for travelling, alone for now. his best friends wonshik and gongchan are too busy with their assignments or exams to ever spare him some time. they do indulge him when he really needs it. but most often, he doesn’t mind trying a new burger at some crazy place alone. it gives him time to think of his designs and lets him click portraits of the people around him in peace. that’s when he meets you.

you only entered the cafe because it was so filled with plants, you were sure you could get away with reading books and completing your assignments in peace. you did appreciate the silence that the library provided, but there were far too many people for your comfort. even though you weren’t as painfully shy as hongbin, people did tire you out eventually. so imagine your surprise, when you’re barely through 180 words of your 2000 word essay and you look up to see a camera lens staring at you and a boy frozen in the table across from you.

you genuinely consider getting up to yell at him, but that would drag more attention to you. so you let it go. you run a lazy hand through your hair and get back to your essay, stretching to highlight some sentences in one of your reference printouts and then leaning to the end of your seat to pick out your phone from your book bag. about 20 mins later, hongbin huffs and sighs quite irritably. (because you move so much!!! how is he to take a good photo??)

when you look up to glare at him, he raises a hand with his palm wide open. you freeze, your eyes growing big in shock. having no clue about what this boy was trying to do,, you tilted your head in question.

hongbin had to look away from the camera and a laugh escaped out of him. you were just so ... //CUTE// with your head tilted and your eyes so big and wide and your lips that looked so soft---- oh god no stahp.

he coughed unnecessarily and tried to go back to this cofffee but too late. the girl had gotten up and she was walking towards him and oh god ABORT MISSION WHAT HAS HE DONE

but you’re having none of it. “did you take pictures of me?” you nail down the question on him. you aren’t really waiting for an answer so you put your hand out and sigh heavily.

hongbin, the silly boy places his hand in yours like a sad kitty giving you a paw when it knows it’s done something wrong. “not your hand goddamit, let me see the camera” you barked and took the camera from him

you were fully intent on deleting your pictures because you really didn’t like your face in any picture really let alone one that some stranger had taken but the pictures were actually....... not of your face????

there were photos of your hands tightly gripping the yellow highlighter and pressing it to the paper, another had a pencil stuck between your lips as you pursed them in confusion. yet another picture had your fingers combing through your hair but all of these were just parts of you no one would ever know it was you and it was so..... beautiful.

hongbin got up suddenly and grabbed the camera back. ‘im sorry but i really didn’t... do it on purpose. i swear i wasnt trying to be creepy” he pressed on urgently. he still wasn’t looking at you, just your hands that were still holding onto the strap of the camera.

you nodded unintelligibly and when he offered to send you the pictures you were in a daze but still wrote down your email so he could send it to you.

it wasn’t a week later that you finally got a set of pictures in your inbox with Hongbin’s hand written apology attached to the mail with the words “I’m sorry if I creeped you out but you looked so beautiful and so stressed, i couldn’t help it. i hope you did well with your assignments!”

he was stressed for WEEKS after that email because he couldn’t understand where that came from because omg he’s never seen you before but why does he care so much about how your assignments went he just really doesnt want you looking so stressed like that ever again and he really wonders if he should have offered you post-exam coffee as a date in that email and just as he’s about to loose it while sitting in a restaurant with gongchan, you email him back with a “thank you!! and my assignments did go well” and a smalll run down of your week

so you and hongbin start telling each other about your days via emails. he even sends you cute pictures of the places he goes to and it eventually turns into a game of “where do you think i went today???” and you both send each other super mysterious pictures of cafe doors or your bills or the flowers in a park and the other has to try and guess where it is.

one day, after a long series of emails and shared jokes and well-mannered sharing of how you felt about things in your life, you post up a picture of a cafe both of you had gushed over. the same cafe you guys first met at.

now, hongbin didn’t know but gongchan was a common friend of yours, because your friend occassionally fantasized being mrs. gongchan (not imp right now) so when you post a super nice pic of the cafe, gongchan shares it with hongbin and he goes BUT I KNOW WHO TAKES STUPID ‘HAND PUSHING THE DOOR’ AESTHETIC PICTURES and gongchan mentions how it was uploaded like SECONDS ago and hongbin RUSHES to the cafe, only to see you laughing over a book

in the same booth

yet again

and here we go, this time, hongbin sits in front of you and gushes about hahahahah *rubs his hand over his neck* idk how to start this but umm

and then you just go, “how about you sit down and we get some coffee”

and that’s how you end up lowkey flirting with hongbin the visual arts major and then it blossoms into a cutesy college romance

the end

#hongbin #vixx #vixx scenarios #hongbin scenarios #vixx!college seniors #scenarios

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orangiah · 8 years ago

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5 things meme

tagged by @deadbirdlife! :D (over a month ago but i always do this)

5 things you’ll find in my bag well you can check out my meet-the-artist meme if you want to know not just five but basically everything you'll find in my bag/on my person but for the sake of this meme:

bokutowl/bokuaka nitotans (unless they're in my pocket instead of my bag) to accompany on my many adventures

i haven't really used my sketchbook for like over a year now but i still bring it with me wherever i can, maybe in the hope that i'll use it again at some point

if i do draw anything by hand it's usually on a loose sheet of paper that i carry in my clipboard case. also useful to have for any papers i might pick up while i'm out

i carry around earplugs and athletic tape/bandaids for taiko, since they're small enough that i can leave them in my bag (and bandaids are useful in general). on sundays i bring my taiko bachi and shinobue to practice

my phone case is a wallet case which i use to carry more frequently-used cards like my ID, metrocard, and primary credit card, but i keep another wallet in my bag where i leave cash/coins, other IDs, credit/debit cards, insurance info, membership/stamp cards, etc

5 things you’ll find in my bedroom

an absurd number of books/artbooks/doujinshi/comics. an entire wall of my room is dedicated to books

currently a bunch of moving boxes that i haven’t finished unpacking yet and probably won’t finish unpacking for years tbh

a few real plants and a few fake plants :P i like the idea of a room full of plants but i can only take care of so many and i'm not really opposed to supplementing with fake ones, especially in hard-to-reach places

a fledging little bokuaka shrine that i have many grand ambitions for......

okay wait i’m really excited about this because i recently moved into a new apartment and one of my goals for my room was to make a cozy little under-bed nook but this ended up being a lot more complicated than originally imagined and took like a month of wrangling with furniture weight capacities/materials/budget/help from my ex-structural engineer dad but i finally did it and it’s great

5 things i’m currently into

bokuaka but if you didn’t know that then i’m not sure who you’ve been following

went to a LITE and mouse on the keys concert a few weeks ago so i’ve been re-listening to the setlist a bunch as well as some CDs i bought

for some reason i've also been listening to a lot of ayumi hamasaki lately, digging through my old middle school favorites...

i finally started watching voltron last week okay OKAY FINE

reading paradox blue in japanese! the english scanlations stop halfway through volume 3 and i really want to know what happens -- it’s usually a bit draining for me to read anything longer than 40 pages or so or that involves a lot of non-conversational language, but i’ve been slowly moving along and it’s been good practice

5 things on my to-do list see also: new year's resolutions

HOLIDAY CARDS LOL I DIDN'T FORGET ABOUT THEM i just wasn't joking when i said they'll be like... early spring cards... or later......

starting up classes again this wednesday so i should probably brush up a bit and review my notes from last semester

i finally bought some bird repellent gel for my balcony because these pigeons have been waking me up every morning and it’s really been messing with my sleep. it’s kind of a pain to climb out there so i’ve been putting it off but they’ve been getting increasingly persistent these past few days so i should probably do it soon

i need a haircut lol

gotta call my doctor about some changes in my insurance and also (separately, but falling under the “calling medical offices” category) schedule a surgery consultation which i’ve been meaning to do for weeks now but i’m a weenie

(sticking this in as a sixth item since it’s semi-private but it’s important enough that i’d feel remiss if i didn’t include it) qkbis expxjz dkhyzxpt yrkppku, igh xp kpb ykjs, yopesjj ho jyklers

5 things people may not know about me

my dad is an ordained reverend (and so am i)

i sort of collect cute candy packaging -- i was pretty intentional about it in early high school, then recently dug up my old collection while moving to my new apartment and instead of doing the sensible thing and throwing it out i ended up keeping it

other things i casually collect: postcards, playing cards, cool hats, cool socks, knives, artbooks, doujinshi, stickers, am i a collector or just a hoarder

things i seriously considered majoring in while i was at uni: english, computer science, psychology, film, religious studies, astronomy (of them all, i probably went the furthest with astronomy). the main reason i ended up doing art wasn’t because i particularly wanted to, but because i ended up spreading myself too thin trying to do everything while also consistently taking at least one art class a semester so it ended up being the only subject i had enough credits in to complete with minimal suffering

i really like singing! i wouldn’t say i’m particularly good or bad at it, but i love going to karaoke, and in high school i spent a lot of my time participating in amateur online song cover groups and learned a bit about audio mixing while i was at it. i’ve posted a few covers on tumblr in the past, but it’s been over a year since my last one so a lot of people probably don’t know about it. i’d like to do more at some point, but it might be harder now that i’ve moved to an apartment (bonus: i live right across from a railway line)

tagging @roboraptor3000 @cmktusa @menopiano @thasali @shun-takei @toondoon-here @aidenmoo @silvercistern @twomilkmen @spacevocals @zorofab @cattletyrants @candide-kun @adropofcolour (as always, only if you want to! if you don’t like being tagged in these sorts of things, feel free to shoot me an ask and i’ll make a note of it. same for if i missed you and you really like being tagged :P)

#my post #tumblr games #blag

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lbstudieo · 6 years ago

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Confused

Here is my three cents on several subjects.

# Assuming you did not have a compulsion disorder before you joined the Army, you most likely did after you had been there a while. A person could walk into the barracks, open all foot locker's and see they were organized exactly the same. Socks, T-shirts, etc folded and lined up. Right down to the razor and soap. Beds made to look the same. Shoes under the bed and laundry bag all lined up. Open a standing locker and you would see the same care was taken here also. Winter uniform's, summer uniform's and work clothes as well as shirts, all the same.

We wore our hats exactly alike, hands never in the pockets. All buttons buttoned. We stood in formation, marched and exercised exactly alike.

To this day I hang my clothes up the same way and am very uncomfortable with my hands in my pockets. Is that compulsive?

# Cats: Have yo ever owned a cat? No one has. You never own a cat. You are its servant. Cats work hard to train its human. Lets not disappoint them.

# Dogs: When I meet a dog for the first time I am not thinking about it's breed. I am trying to see if it will harm me. The same goes for any pet. Much like I do when meeting strangers. Are some breeds more dangerous? Could be. But I am more inclined to be concerned about the owner. If the owner is nasty, expect the dog to be so. Dogs will react to the way they are treated. They can sense a good person & know a bad person when they see one.

# From the time I was about 6 or 7 yrs old I discovered the printed word. Prior to that, I knew there were things in a comic book I did not understand. But I was more interested in the pictures than I was to read about superman’s home life. Pictures were good enough for me. Then I found out some books did not have pictures. Imagine my surprise! I could not understand the story. It may have been a very good cowboy story and I would never know how it turned out. From that moment on I needed to learn how to read. I wanted to know how the story ended. I buckled down to learn how to read.

Little did I know I was to go on to learn how to write. That was just as hard. After I started the learning process, the adults expected me to learn other things. Every since that time long ago I have been learning. Sometimes by studying, other times by doing. I disliked the whole idea of school but many times the learning by doing was much harder. For example when I decided to learn to ride a horse, which was not one of my brighter moments.

Of course I thought the best time to do so would be during school time. I did not know how to get on top of one let alone not to pick such a big one. But there were only so many horses available. Namely just one. A big one. After getting on top of one, I learned that day just how hard a plowed field was when a youngster falls onto it from a great height. It also hurt when I got home and it was found out I had skipped class.

Sometimes it hurts to learn something new.

# Insane world leaders such as the one in N. Korea must be stopped for the good, and survival, of humanity. There are others. It took awhile but Hitler was stopped. Most of the world got together and said enough. Let's not take so long with the current crop of insane leaders.

# If you are one of those people that thinks mankind has not affected Mother Earth, you need to get out more. Get away from all those indoor toys. Take a walk in the woods. Oh that's right, the woods were cut down. Well, go out at night and look at the stars. Can't see them due to all the artificial lights? How about a fishing trip. Oh yeah I forgot, fish are disappearing. The ones left are not fit to eat. How about a swim in the lake? What, afraid of the oil slicks and other pollution? What about a drive in the country. What do you mean the price of gas is out of your budget....No Respect.

# If you are one of those that think HAMAS & other fanatical groups are a friendly religious organization you are delusional at best. But you are tolerant so turn the other cheek. If you do so they will not only slap it but, if you are lucky, put you in chains. The other option you may wish for at some time. Their sole purpose appears to be to convert or KILL those not of their religion or ethnic group. Kill is preferred. Man, woman or child. Makes no difference to them. All in the name of God. Maybe the same one you pray to. As long as they continue to be organized they will not stop. But stopped they must be. Cut a snakes head off and it dies. Our world leaders must be strong & do the right thing.

# LGBT: This is the first opinion I have given about this subject and I hope it is my last. First, I am heterosexual and proud of it.

Fact; the parents of non-heterosexuals love their children no matter their orientation.

Fact: you can't get “gayness” from another person. A handshake, a hug or pat on the back will not harm you. They are born that way. If this upsets you, you are wrong.

As long as they are not asking your dumb heterosexual ass for a date what do you care what orientation anyone is? I dare say LGBT's are not sexually interested in heterosexuals and are as law-abiding as the rest of society.

Whether you know it or not, you interact with non-hetero's every day. At work, play or even members of your own family or extended family & friends. They are not always identifiable by looks, actions, dress or speech. They are a fact in all walks of life. I dare say not one profession is truly heterosexual.

It is theorized we had a non-heterosexual president. Did anyone leave the country because he may have not been “normal”? Of course not.

The idea companies are “gay” or “going gay” is asinine. Makes no sense. Are all their employees “gay”? Would you stop going to church because you think some one in the clergy, somewhere, is not “normal”? The answer to those questions are “no”.

Companies are non-sexual by definition. Company's publish policies about sexual issues because it is required. I dare say every company has such a policy. Very few make it public. If you chose not to do business with a certain company that's your choice. Doing so because you think the company is “gay” is not rational, but that's your choice also.

The people you need to be concerned about are the rapist, child molesters, etc. They are far more dangerous. And predatory. But thank goodness, because they are born that way, you can't catch that sickness either.

That's my thoughts and I am sticking to it.

# Now is the time for strong leaders that will work for the people. The more I read about our national law makers, the more I am convinced the two major political parties (machine) are at war with each other. This must stop or we as a nation will fall apart. Politicians are currently doing the wrong things for the wrong reasons. They are in fear of their jobs. As they should be. So they make terrible decisions. They are working for their own interest and the interest of the money supporters. They must get back to doing what the majority of the people want. If not our nation will go down in flames.

Our borders are being invaded. Big time. We are having a border war with Mexico. If you do not believe those statement's you live in your own little (perhaps insane) world. Illegals entering our Nation from the south must stop. Our neighbors from the north are not fighting to mass move to the U.S.A. We can not support the whole world. We can not solve the problems of, nor shelter, the whole world. We should not want to. We, as a nation, must survive.

“An estimated 11 million or more immigrants are living illegally in the United States, many of them for years or even decades. They work, go to school and otherwise participate in American society even though they broke the law coming here and lack papers allowing them to stay.

An increase in tougher enforcement laws and resources without any corresponding legal remedies for undocumented immigrants led to the huge illegal population.”

This crisis needs to be solved a.s.a.p.. It is a huge strain on our resources. Allowing them to stay is not a solution. We need strong leadership that will close our borders & take action to force immigrants to apply for citizenship lawfully.

# UFO: Unidentified flying object. Have you seen one?

Me neither.

Why do these objects, presumably from some other planet, need to fly around our planet with their driving lights on? If they need lights, one can assume they are humanoid AND in some degree smarter than the average Earth Bear. I would assume they have ways to determine if they are going to run into something that far exceeds the use of lights. Do they want the attention we give them? Are they trying to attract us much like moths to a light or flame?

They have to be smarter in terms of space travel than we are. After all, they have traveled across space to visit us. But what is “us”.

Are we a living zoo or vacation spot for others to visit? Are they here to observe the “wild” Earthlings in their natural habitat? A scientific sample dish to be studied? Maybe we are a different kind of space ship traveling thru time and space. On a voyage so long it takes a living environment to make the trip. For what purpose?

Are they coming by once in a while to check-up on our archaic voyage? Hoping one day to announce our arrival at our final destination?

I would propose we, planet earth, are a living time capsule. Stocked and started on a long voyage to our final destination by those who had a funny sense of humor. The planet “seeded” with stock of all types. Some mysterious items were also left here for us to find and try to solve not only what there are but how were they constructed. Example the pyramids in Egypt and in South America as well as many other places. As well as many other mysteries.

When we finally discover the answers to these many clues, we will be at our final destination. And be welcomed to our earthly future.

# My experience has been life changes and we need to adapt, persevere & move on. Some decisions come easy. Others will be agonizing. I would not have chosen the path I was given. I would have chosen to remain on the farm my entire life. Although I never returned to farming, to this day I miss those good, simple & hard working times on the farm. We do not always get to live the life we want. We live the life we are dealt.

If you think farming is hard work during the '50's, you would be right. You got up early to do chores before breakfast. Milking the herd of cows may be done without milking equipment, by hand if you will. No automatic machinery to muck out the barns. All done by back breaking labor.

Back in the day, work was done during daylight hours because farm equipment were not known to have lights. Many did not have batteries. The motors ran off of magneto's. A comfortable cab on a piece of farm equipment was unheard of. Perhaps not invented yet. The farmer was exposed to Bees, Flies, rain, snow, cold, wind, sunshine, dirt and anything else you can think of. A large tractor may have as much 60 hp! They were rated per the size of the plow they could pull. 2 bottom 14 inch, 3 bottom 16 inch, etc. If you saw one with a radio, it was a luxury. Some times a farmer would attache an umbrella for sun protection.

Farmers could not always hire an extra hand to help so they made do. One innovation was an “A” frame draw bar welded to the combine in such a way as to be able to pull a grain wagon along to empty the hopper into. A combine harvested grain. Nothing else. Not like the “Harvesters” of today which harvest most everything using different attachments.

Farmers were the inventors of their day.

#farmlife #humor #countryside #thoughts #outdoors #space

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abarahman-richard-chignell · 6 years ago

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Christchurch: Muslim reaction is to lash out!

Media coverage and indeed the killer himself may make you think that the default Muslim reaction to the massacre on Friday 15th March 2019 is to lash out. I'm here to tell you that, alhamdullilah (all Praise is due to God), that just ain't so.

This media narrative and desire by the killer in his manifesto to create an overreaction and division is simply ill-conceived and is going to spectacularly backfire. Actually what you see happening is that it makes us stronger as a community of Muslims and indeed grow our ranks. Let me elaborate on the non-Muslim and Muslim reaction and show how this kind of thing is only going to backfire, why it always is going to backfire, and why if you hope for division you're going to be sorely disappointed. The overwhelming majority of the non-Muslim Western world community members are intelligent, humane, educated, and events like this horrify them and cause their hearts to go out to their neighbours. Hatred is not alhamdullilah widespread in communities and never will be. Misunderstanding, lack of knowledge, mixed levels of inter-community bonds.... maybe.... but hatred towards the 'other' not the case! These extreme groups will never prevail as they simply don't have the numbers that sympathise. Our Western communities are more mindful, intelligent and loving than that. (As a minor caveat: I focus on Western due to the nature of the attack and the desire according to the killer's manifesto to specifically incite European and Western (over)reactions) For many non-Muslims, this will be their first real interaction with Muslims and this shared pain as well as learning about what Muslims are really about and like, will knit the communities together and remove much of the media-induced fear. When statistics show that so few actually 'know anything' about Muslims and often times haven't even had a conversation with a Muslim, this real-world interaction will break down barriers. You see humanity is disgusted by this kind of thing. It always will be. Slaughter hurts people at their core. That pain transcends hate-filled ideologies. Even the most atheist and irreligious feel the pain and the senseless in acts like this. Westerners as a whole have a live and let live attitude. We have for the longest time respected an individual's freedom to worship, even if we may disagree, and will stand up for the right to that worship. Whether it is liked, accepted or altogether understood, the fact is that Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world. Incidents like this or even those by extremists claiming to act in the name of the religion force many to research and study about the religion. The numbers show, and indeed I can attest to this from personal experience, many will start a journey as a result of the Christchurch massacre where they will end up embracing Islam as their own religion. Let's ignore politicians and country heads for now, although most have called this terrorism (finally), shared in our pain and shared many genuinely heartfelt things: let's look at the actual non-Muslim community reaction around us. Well, actually I should clarify that! Alhamdullilah the reaction has been so broad-based that I am just going to pick an indicative few: Flowers and condolences cards by the hundreds in Christchurch alone, the broader community showing their care and support, other religious communities embracing their Muslim neighbours and offering support in any way they can. Far away from New Zealand, community members standing guard outside mosques so that their friends and neighbours can feel safe praying. Police and community support officers standing guard outside mosques in a demonstration of solidarity to the Muslim communities in their neighbourhoods. I am a huge rugby fan and one of the biggest events in the rugby calendar the 6 Nations was concluding this weekend with packed stadiums. I watched the matches in Cardiff where you had Wales vs Ireland and in Twickenham where you had England vs Scotland and at both heartwarmingly you had 70,000 plus fans and dignitaries hold a minutes silence for all those lost. This was of course broadcast to households everywhere. The rugby community showing its solidarity for the disgusting slaughter of innocent people in their house of worship. Wales went on to win the 6 Nations and with a Grand Slam to boot and whilst jubilation for the players and fans I think it is significant that New Zealand born Hadley Parkes dedicated their Grand Slam to the victims of the attacks on the two New Zealand mosques. I could go on with these but I will simply say that it is clear that for so many 'regular' folk Muslims are part of their community, not some 'alien other'. They stand with us in times like this, as we do with them, in any times of hardship. We are all one and the same, we all have families, we all bleed the same blood and we all have hearts that feel the same pain. Now, what about the Muslim reaction? It's perhaps interesting how I view these things with 37 years of 'western' education prior to becoming Muslim. I have the ability to put on two different hats (pre and post-Islam) and am always going to have a foot in both camps identity speaking. I also found I took this incident incredibly hard as I'm as western as they get, well educated, white, but also 100% Muslim. This kind of disgraceful killing hits at me from multiple different angles. I'm going to address and try to unpackage elements of this in a series of posts. In this one, I am going to try to stick to the topic of community reactions. So, let me get back to it: Let me tell you what I have seen personally as the Muslim reaction: A global community checking up on each other. Phone calls, emails, messages within moments of the news breaking about the attacks. The immediate reaction being dua (prayer) for the victims, the families, the community. In every single communication. Over and over again. There is great pain for our Brothers and Sisters who were harmed. We are told by the Prophet pbuh in an authentic hadith “The parable of the believers in their affection, mercy, and compassion for each other is that of a body. When any limb aches, the whole body reacts with sleeplessness and fever.” This was incredibly evident in the aftermath of this event. As believers, as an ummah (a community), we felt the pain as if one. This is what Brotherhood and Sisterhood really mean. The realisation that however horrid, those killed were martyred (an incredibly noble death in the view of all Muslims), in the best of places (to be martyred in the mosque whilst worshipping their Lord), on the best of days (on a Friday a holy day for Muslims). The messages were reminding us of what a blessing this actually was for these people, what a noble and honoured status they have with Allah swt. Specific prayers for the martyred that they would be accepted by Allah swt as martyrs and granted the highest levels of Jannah (heaven). Prayers for the injured and that they would be granted healing. Prayers for the family members that they would be granted patience and ease to their emotional suffering. Prayers for the broader Muslim community around the world in the face of this tragedy. Prayers for the non-Muslim community during this trying time. Over and over again we Muslims make duas, pray to Allah swt, say Ameen to other peoples prayers. The default reaction is prayer and remembrance of Allah swt. Due to timezone differences here in the UK, it was soon time to go to the mosque for our own Jumaah (Friday Prayer). I have to confess my feeling was that nothing was going to stop me. An event like this has an internal reaction with someone like me of increasing my already strong commitment to represent. I asked my wife if she was comfortable with going to the mosque and was pleasantly unsurprised when she said why would I not? Upon arriving at the mosque Epsom police force had sent community support officers to stand guard at the front of our mosque. More examples of the broader community pulling together for their own. The mosque was full. Do you want to scare us? Seems we don't scare so easily? In fact, it is quite the opposite. You have a few nutters who back you up - there are a billion plus of us and we have the Creator of the Heavens and the Earth backing us up! Allahu Akhbar - God is Greater!! Naturally, the Imam covered the incident in Christchurch in his Khutba but rather than reactionary and incendiary as the media might have made you think it would be, on the contrary, it was heartfelt, measured and balanced - like our religion always is. From what I remember he covered: 1) That we never know when we are going to die 2) That those killed were martyrs: martyred in their place of worship, on a blessed day, in a state of remembrance of Allah swt, in congregation. 3) On the importance of community and personal responsibility to build it with the local non-Muslim communities in our own town. 4) Not to share the horrific imagery as it furthers the aims of the murderer, hurts the families of the victims, dishonours the victims, and can create fear amongst our community around the world. There were more duas and prayers in the masjid and everywhere I seemed to turn. Intelligent reactions from Imams and Scholars in the West in khutba's (sermons), articles, being shared amongst the community. Even materials on how to cope with trauma from US-based Sisters with psychology expertise in these matters. There was NOT ONE angry, lashing out style, clash of civilisations type of message or reaction that I saw or read. What there has been on other hand is the first reaction that Muslims should have. That first reaction is to call on Allah swt. It is an incredibly optimistic sign that as a global community we remember our Creator and ask of our Lord before anything else. This is Islam (submission) where you try to hurt us and it does nothing but strengthen us. You want a reaction, it is not going to be one of hate like your life is filled with, the real Muslim one is going to be one of prayer and worship. Do you want to see how real Muslims behave? Who the followers of Islam are? Then simply look to your communities after Christchurch. We are Muslim and this is what we do. Let me end with my own dua (prayer): I pray for all those murdered that Allah swt makes them martyrs and offers them (Jennah al Firdaus) the highest levels of heaven. May He give shifa (healing) to all those injured in these attacks. May He give the families of the victim's patience and steadfastness during this incredibly trying time. May Allah swt bring the Muslim community closer together and deepen our resolve to worship none but The Most Merciful and Most Kind. May our bonds with our broader communities strengthen based on our shared humanity. And may the remembrance of Allah swt always be on our lips, the following of His final Messengers example our aim, our community bonds strengthened until we are also inshaAllah in the company of our Brothers and Sisters taken from us in Jennah al Firdaus (the highest level of heaven). Ameen.

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citizentruth-blog · 6 years ago

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The Hidden Tribes of America, the Cultural Revolution Underway, and Why We’re Not as Divided as You Think We Are

I first realized something in America was changing back in November 2015. My family was on vacation in New Zealand to visit my sister who was studying abroad there. A Republican candidate for president, Donald J. Trump, was gaining in popularity on the right. Politics came up. I defended the Donald and I came under attack from my sibling. I became far too defensive. Things got heated and personal and have in the intermittent months since then. We haven’t talked politics for quite some time now. With Trump’s rise to the White House, things appear to have gotten only more divisive. At least on the surface. I hope you made it through Thanksgiving without any uncomfortable conversations over dinner. But with everything coming back to politics these days, I’m sure many of you were unable to avoid it. The nation feels more polarized than ever and we were already trending in that direction prior to Trump. He has accelerated the division and the hatred of left vs. right. The personalization of politics and the emotional state Americans have been getting in over politics has become unhealthy. I think it peaked during the Kavanaugh confirmation process, but who knows, things are likely to get worse from here as we are entering into the dreaded 2020 presidential race already (one more time for Hillary?). I contend that the division is likely manufactured and a solid majority of Americans have much more in common than many of us believe is possible. Still, it is impossible to ignore the rise of divisive rhetoric and actions in the country’s political discourse over the last few years. Political violence especially has gotten out of control. Politicians are being harassed at their homes and out at restaurants. Trump supporters are beaten and attacked for wearing a red hat. Senators are confronted in hallways and elevators for adhering to the standard of an accuser being innocent before proven guilty. Civility appears to be out the window today, prompting some to call for a disbanding of the union. Doug Casey, an investor and best-selling author, recently said, “The United States, for one, is way too big to be a single country at this point. I’m pretty confident that over the next couple generations, the U.S. is going to break up into several different countries.” I don’t think that is going to happen. We are different in many ways but that is what makes us great as a country. I’ll get into more on that later. Back in 2010, well before Trump came onto the scene, Pete Warden, CTO of Jetpac Inc and author of multiple books on data and mapping, wrote a piece analyzing Facebook data from 210 million profiles, the patterns that emerged, and how we can split the country up six ways. “Looking at the network of US cities, it’s been remarkable to see how groups of them form clusters, with strong connections locally but few contacts outside the cluster,” Warden wrote. “For example Columbus, OH and Charleston, WV are nearby as the crow flies, but share few connections, with Columbus clearly part of the North, and Charleston tied to the South.”

Just for fun, I’ll briefly summarize the six regions that could form new countries if we decided to disband the union and give up on the great American experiment that is the United States. Stayathomia: New York to Minnesota. People live near most of their friends and they don’t move far. God is low on the list of fan pages. Sports and beer pages are much more prevalent. Would be a solidly liberal country with New York City at its center. Dixie: the Old South. Atlanta is the hub of this network, but South Florida has some connections to New York. God is regularly in the top spot on fan pages. Definitely the most conservative country, even with the inclusion of Florida. Greater Texas: a big radius around Dallas. Ties between Texans and residents of Oklahoma and Arkansas put those two neighboring states into Greater Teas as opposed to Dixie. God is near the top of the list, below the Dallas Cowboys and other sports teams. A very red country, but becoming more Hispanic (on track to be largest group in Texas by 2022). Mormonia: Utah and a part of Eastern Idaho. Communities are very interwoven and unlikely to have many friends outside the region. Mormons make up more than 62 percent of Utah’s population. A pretty red country. Nomadic West: much of the western half of the U.S., outside of Utah, California, and much of Washington. Inhabitants tend to move around the country quite a lot. Residents in Boise, Bend, and Phoenix all have a wide range of connections, much more than what you’d expect from towns of their size. A mix of red and blue, but mostly red. Socalistan: LA, not San Francisco, is the center of this region. Almost everywhere in California and Nevada has links to LA. This is a tight clustered region with Californians connected to other Californians, outside of the two large megacities in the north and south of the state. God is not of much concern to many residents and Barack Obama is on top. A highly populated coastal country of mostly liberals. Pacifica: “the most boring of the clusters,” according to Warden, “the area around Seattle is disappointingly average.” These people are also tightly connected to each other and are not big travelers. When I lived up there it did seem a bit cliquey to me. Just 8 percent of Seattle voted for Trump. Uber-liberal country to say the least. The United States is devolving into a cultural revolution. People take politics far too seriously and way too personally. People increasingly believe political violence is acceptable. People treat others a certain way based on the other person’s political beliefs. Singles increasingly will only date people based on the others’ views of the current president. Families continue to move to locales that are more in line with their political philosophies. It’s all become too much. We need to be peaceful and tolerant of other people. We need to agree to disagree without hating the other side. We need to remember that we are all Americans and have much more in common with each other than we think. The mainstream media continues to stoke the fires of division. They highlight acts of violence and ignore the hopeful stories of unity despite our many differences. We do not need to retreat to our political camps and fight against each other for supremacy in DC. We need to remember that human beings, by nature, are tribal. Nonetheless, we are all of the same culture and creed: that of America. More in Common released a groundbreaking project on America’s current tribalistic tendencies in October, titled, “Hidden Tribes: A Study of America’s Polarized Landscape.” A new international initiative created “to build societies and communities that are stronger, more united, and more resilient to the increasing threats of polarization and social division,” More in Common surveyed the views of more than 8,000 American citizens including six hour-long focus groups and 30 one-on-one interviews with people across seven different population segments. The main takeaway from Hidden Tribes is the fact that today’s supposed division is brought upon us by the radical fringes of both ends of the political spectrum. The media has played an integral part in all of this. They would have you believe that our country is a 50-50 society, divided by two political tribes eternally in conflict. But we all know that Democrats and Republicans claim to fight one another and work for their constituents, all while enriching themselves and growing the size of government in perpetuity. The media’s misinformation and increased politicization has only furthered the apparent divide between the left and the right. Therefore, people think we are more divided today than ever before. More in Common’s research found a different reality, “one that probes underneath the issues that polarize Americans,” finding seven groups or tribes, “that are defined by their core beliefs, rather than by their political opinions, race, class or gender.” From Facebook feeds to the family dinner table, bitter political debates appear to be omnipresent. Most Americans are fed up with this tired “us-versus-them” mindset and are desperate to find common ground for the betterment of the entire country. We hold many different views on a wide range of topics, but more than three in four Americans (77%) also believe that our differences are not so far apart that we cannot work together. We are not a country of Democrats and Republicans. We are a country of seven distinct groups. We are bound together by what we believe, not by whose “team” we are on. These are the Hidden Tribes of America: Progressive Activists (8% of America): “are deeply concerned with issues concerning equity, fairness, and America's direction today. They tend to be more secular, cosmopolitan, and highly engaged with social media.” Traditional Liberals (11% of America): “tend to be cautious, rational, and idealistic. They value tolerance and compromise. They place great faith in institutions.” Passive Liberals (15% of America): “tend to feel isolated from their communities. They are insecure in their beliefs and try to avoid political conversations. They have a fatalistic view of politics and feel that the circumstances of their lives are beyond their control.” The Politically Disengaged (26% of America): “are untrusting, suspicious about external threats, conspiratorially minded, and pessimistic about progress. They tend to be patriotic yet detached from politics.” Moderates (15% of America): “are engaged in their communities, well informed, and civic-minded. Their faith is often an important part of their lives. They shy away from extremism of any sort.” Traditional Conservatives (19% of America): “tend to be religious, patriotic, and highly moralistic. They believe deeply in personal responsibility and self-reliance.” Devoted Conservatives (6% of America): “are deeply engaged with politics and hold strident, uncompromising views. They feel that America is embattled, and they perceive themselves as the last defenders of traditional values that are under threat.” If you want to see what tribe you fall under, take the short quiz here.

The two far wings of these tribes of America have hijacked the political discussion and receive an inordinate amount of media attention. Progressive Activists and Devoted Conservatives make up just 14 percent of the population, but they have taken over the national conversation. Along with Traditional Conservatives, who value much of what Devoted Conservatives do, these three tribes or wings of the Hidden Tribes make up just one-third of the population. These groups’ distrust and fear of the other side has created the polarized environment we have today. This divisive environment is important to keep in perspective, however, as two-thirds of the country are in the “Exhausted Majority.” Americans in the majority are much less certain about their views and hold a wider range of beliefs. They are also much more open to compromise and change while holding a much less hateful view toward those they disagree with. The wings dominate the conversation because the mainstream media has learned how to monetize divisive politics. News outlets have given up trying to be objective and are now pushing a political agenda to get more views, clicks, and likes. It’s all about politics these days because that is what sells. Fox News throws red meat to its viewers and doesn’t care about liberals’ point of view. CNN and MSNBC have become the anti-Trump networks and even late night talk shows have now become extremely political and anti-Republican. With this media climate, the most extreme and strident voices get the most airtime. Talking heads refuse to concede points to the other side or even attempt to see where the opposing viewpoint is coming from. “All this can make entertaining television and viral social media content,” More in Common writes. “But it is distorting how we see each other, fracturing our society, and adding to distortions in our political system that give undue weight to the most extreme views.”

Even though members of the Exhausted Majority hold views down the middle on average, most members of the majority are not political centrists or moderates. They hold a wide range of different views, but are also united in a number of ways: They have had enough of the polarization tearing our country apart They are often overlooked in the public discourse as the radical wings gain the most attention are are heard from the most They are flexible in their viewpoints and willing to endorse different policies depending on the situation, rather than remaining dead set on a particular issue They believe in compromise and think we can find common ground “While partisans argue and score political points, members of the Exhausted Majority are so frustrated with the bitter polarization of our politics that many have checked out completely, ceding the floor to more strident voices.” This despondent attitude is especially prevalent in the Politically Disengaged and Passive Liberals tribes, while Traditional Liberals and Moderates remain engaged no matter how troubled they are with the current direction of the country. Most importantly, the Exhausted Majority is not extreme or ideological and does not dismiss the other side as evil, bigoted, racist, or ignorant simply because they hold differing political views. “They want to talk and to find a path forward.”

Long story, short, we have much more in common than we think. While it might be hard to identify with the other side sometimes, we all want what is best for our country and our families. Though we have different ways of achieving that, we can all do a better job of working together and paring back the divisive rhetoric that is bringing us closer to a cultural civil war. Some examples of common ground: 81 percent of the population agree that racism continues to be at least somewhat of a problem in the U.S. 72 percent of Americans think we should end birthright citizenship, according to a C-SPAN Washington Journal poll Three-quarters of Americans believe Dreamers should be provided a pathway to citizenship if they serve in the military or go to college Four out of five Americans believe political correctness has gone too far in America In its November-released Midterms Update, Hidden Tribes stated that 86 percent of Americans felt exhausted by division in politics Here’s my final plea. We are all Americans. We cannot continue to be divided by the media, the two political party establishments, and our radical ideologues on separate ends of the political spectrum. We need to learn to come together and fight for America instead of fighting against each other. We need to learn to have open and productive debates about the many serious issues facing our country. We need to be open to compromise and willing to change our viewpoints so we can move forward as a country. And finally, we need to stop the acts of political violence before someone gets killed. Read the full article

#democrats #Division #elections #media #politics #Republicans #Tribalism #Unity

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woodenshoebrews · 7 years ago

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This Colorado city declined to allow pot sales. Now it’s having second thoughts

By Kurtis Lee

Dec 14, 2017 | Reporting from Colorado Springs, Colo.

At the A Wellness Centers marijuana dispensary in Colorado Springs, only medicinal marijuana can be sold. (Matthew Staver / For The Times)

At the two malls in town you can buy key chains and Christmas ornaments shaped like marijuana leaves. Along a downtown shopping corridor, paintings of cannabis plants grace storefront windows.

Even Kmart stocks its shelves with T-shirts and mugs decorated with the signature green leaf and “Colorado est. 2012” — the year the state legalized recreational marijuana.

But that is the one pot product you can’t buy in Colorado Springs.

When Coloradans voted overwhelmingly to make non-medical marijuana legal, they left it up to cities whether to allow sales. Colorado Springs, home to five military bases and known for its conservative politics and religious values, blocked recreational cannabis sales. Now some in town want to change that, saying the state’s second largest city is missing out on sales taxes that are enriching cities across Colorado.

Similar debates are already happening in cities in California, Maine, Massachusetts and Nevada — states that passed legalization measures last year. Recently, the Los Angeles City Council, eager to pull in new tax revenue, crafted rules for recreational marijuana sales that will begin in January.

In Colorado, one of the first states to legalize recreational marijuana, just a handful of cities still forbid such sales. The Colorado Springs City Council enacted its ban in 2013, but Denver, suburbs and mountain ski towns rushed to implement sales and quickly saw the boon.

Left: A T-shirt reading "Dude I think this whole town is high. Colorado Springs" is for sale. Right: Workers hang holiday decorations downtown. (Matthew Staver / For The Times)

Last year, Colorado pot sales and fees produced nearly $200 million in tax revenue. In Denver, the city raked in about $24 million, which, among other things, was used to build a recreation center near downtown. Aurora, a Denver suburb, brought in about $16 million and used the money to help fund projects to help homeless people.

And in Manitou Springs, a community of about 5,300 known for its eclectic charm — it has a weekly Wiccan meetup — pot money has revitalized the town.

For nearly 12 years, a project to revamp the main thoroughfare stagnated. Now, marijuana taxes are funding new bike paths, decorative sidewalks and lighting. Major improvements were already underway thanks to a voter-approved road initiative, but money from pot made the extra amenities and aesthetic improvements possible.

Work continues on a construction project near Manitou Springs, where money from legal marijuana sales has allowed the city to install new bike paths, decorative sidewalks and lighting.

The town’s two dispensaries last year generated $1 million in taxes — some of that from the pockets of residents from neighboring Colorado Springs. In 2016, Manitou Springs’ budget was about $8.3 million. And this year, it increased to about $10.4 million, thanks, in part, to pot.

“It’s brought new life to this town,” Farley McDonough, president of the Manitou Springs Urban Renewal Authority, said. “In many ways, it’s good Colorado Springs does not have sales.”

Marcy Morrison, a former Manitou Springs mayor, staunchly opposed legalizing pot back in 2012.

“I thought it was terrible,” she said. “But really this has been a learning experience. Legal pot has helped the city.”

People are going all over this state to buy marijuana and it’s outrageous.

Top: Richard Skorman, president of the Colorado Springs city council, supports legal recreational pot sales in the city. Left, Marcy Morrison, changed her mind about marijuana sales after seeing the tax revenue it generates. Right: Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers remains opposed "It’s largely a moral issue." (Matthew Staver / For the Times)

For Colorado Springs City Council President Richard Skorman, it’s frustrating to watch the cash flow to other cities — “sales tax leakage,” he calls it.

“People are going all over this state to buy marijuana and it’s outrageous,” Skorman said. “It’s already legal. It’s in the state’s Constitution.”

Skorman is teaming with a local group, Citizens for Safer Neighborhoods, which is working to get a legal pot initiative on the local ballot in November. The group must gather 20,000 signatures by the summer to place it before voters in this city of 465,100.

Safer Neighborhoods commissioned an economic study by a University of Denver professor that estimated Colorado Springs would make an additional $20 million in taxes — money that supporters say could, among other things, help repair roads and hire more police officers.

A large portion of that would come from medicinal marijuana shops looking to sell recreational pot. According to the study, if all 356 licensed medical marijuana establishments in the city were to pay a licensing fee of $7,500 for recreational pot, Colorado Springs would collect about $2.6 million.

Tom Scudder, who is a member of Safer Neighborhoods, said his two marijuana shops illustrate some benefits, and unfulfilled potential, of legalized pot.

At Rocky Road Aurora, which sells recreational and medical weed, the line of people waiting to buy strains of Agent Orange sativa and Lemon OG indica loops around stanchions and a Christmas tree in the lobby. The walls of the bustling shop are decorated with hats and T-shirts emblazoned with the company’s name, and near the checkout counter are marijuana themed greeting cards.

Clockwise from top left: Bud tender Sandy Mead helps patient Chris Webb inside A Wellness Centers dispensary in Colorado Springs. Jars of marijuana inside the dispensary. A view of the dispensary’s white board. A worker measures out marijuana for a patient. (Matthew Staver / For The Times)

An hour away back in Colorado Springs, Scudder runs a medical pot dispensary, A Wellness Centers, out of a small office space in a low-slung, cinder-block strip mall that looks like an aging motel. Inside, the hum of a dusty air-conditioning unit attached to the paint-peeling walls fills the silence of the often empty shop.

“Not having legal sales here is wrecking my business and hurting this community,” Scudder said in the Colorado Springs dispensary.

But his effort faces strong pushback from a prominent local voice: Republican Mayor John Suthers, who was the state’s attorney general when Coloradans passed legal weed.

“I may well be behind the times, some have called me a ‘drug war dinosaur,’ but I remain absolutely convinced it’s terrible public policy,” Suthers said. “People should not be getting high for fun. … We’re creating a generation of young marijuana users who will go on to become lifelong drug abusers.”

Tom Scudder, who owns A Wellness Centers dispensary, is helping lead a campaign to legalize recreational marijuana in Colorado Springs.

Suthers often points out that local law enforcement supports his view. He also notes past reports from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration that showed an uptick in teen marijuana use in Colorado since voters passed legal pot. (A report, however, released in December by the agency found that the current rate of marijuana use among Colorado 12- to 17-year-olds dropped from 11% in 2014 to 9% in 2016.)

And cutting off the black market? That’s wishful thinking, Suthers said.

He cited a recent example in Denver, where grand jurors indicted 62 people in a marijuana-trafficking organization that amassed millions of dollars by illegally growing pot and selling it out of state. It was among the largest crackdowns on illegal growing since marijuana sales went into effect.

And Suthers says the city’s conservative values and image are at stake. Not since Lyndon B. Johnson was on the ballot in 1964 has a Democratic presidential candidate won here, and the community recently faced backlash for opposing needle-exchange programs embraced throughout much of Colorado amid the country’s opioid crisis.

When asked what he would do with increased revenue from marijuana taxes should it become legal here, Suthers demurred, saying the notion the city would “fund essential government services with proceeds from drug sales in violation of federal law is irresponsible.”

“For me, it’s largely a moral issue,” he said.

On a recent evening, a trickle of customers arrived at Scudder’s Colorado Springs shop, which he admits could use a renovation. He decided a while back to hold off on putting in new floors and walls until legal sales are implemented. And he never thought it would take this long.

Jeremy Brent works on pruning marijuana plants inside a grow facility for A Wellness Centers dispensary in Colorado Springs.

“We are literally allowing money to walk right out of the city,” Scudder said. “For what? Because of some so-called ‘conservative values.’”

Chris Webb, 45, who uses marijuana for anxiety, came into the shop to buy a quarter ounce of Flo sativa. To him, the pushback against recreational sales has been surprising.

“I’ve lived in this city most of my life,” he said. “We could use the money to fix some of these damn potholes.”

As the shop’s employee — the bud tender — handed Webb his change, her face lit up in agreement.

“I hit one of those the other day,” she said.

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